President Donald Trump has picked off Republicans he considers insufficiently loyal in the Senate — with the result that he may have just created a GOP Senate majority too paralyzed, deadlocked, and resentful to do his bidding at all.
This comes after Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), one of the few remaining Republican senators to vote in favor of impeaching Trump after Jan. 6, was defeated in his primary when Trump endorsed opponent Julia Letlow, and after Trump endorsed Attorney General Ken Paxton in the Texas Senate primary over longtime incumbent John Cornyn.
Some analysts now expect that this could have the opposite effect Trump wanted, as Senate Republicans become too fractured to do much of anything for the president — including pass the immigration policy funding reconciliation bill the GOP has been struggling to craft for weeks.
"Stating the obvious, the Senate GOP is going to be pretty ungovernable for the next couple months," wrote Republican strategist Josh Holmes on X. "Unenviable task for White House office of legislative affairs."
"Josh is right here," agreed Punchbowl News' Jake Sherman. "Cassidy, Cornyn will have zero incentive to do anything. Combine that with in-cycle Republicans -- reconciliation 3.0 looks miles away."
Already, the new dynamic is threatening the GOP's plan to slip $1 billion in security funding for President Donald Trump's White House ballroom into the reconciliation bill, which was already on the ropes after the Senate parliamentarian determined it had to be rewritten to comply with the rules. On Tuesday, Cassidy came out and made clear he won't back the funding in any form.
