Happy liberation week! Who is ready to liberate a thousand points from the S&P 500? I know my Tesla puts are! Trump’s trade war is here, as he plans to enact still unannounced tariffs tomorrow on all of our largest trading partners. This has roiled the markets and Trump and Fox News are all but promising voters economic hardship in the near future as Trump enacts his modern Smoot-Hawley regime.
This open threat to tank the economy has inspired the first real backlash within Trump’s own party as the donor class realizes that they have hallucinated a fairy tale for themselves. Politico reports that Republicans Susan Collins and Rand Paul will join with Democrats to vote to end the national emergency that Trump declared last month, which enabled him to enact these wide-ranging tariffs. This would not stop him from doing it and would just be a symbolic rebuke because laws aren’t real and Republican Congresspeople have willingly neutered the power they spent their lives trying to achieve in order to lick dear leader’s boot. But if two more Republicans join the no votes, it could send a message to Trump about how isolated he is beginning to make himself, and remind everyone that if Congress still is a branch of the government that exists in 2025 America, it is narrowly divided, historically so.
Politico also reports that North Carolina’s Thom Tillis “expressed tentative support for the effort Monday,” but “a spokesperson said Tuesday he would vote against” the bill, so who the heck knows where his head is at right now, but it’s not a resounding “no.” Iowa’s Chuck Grassley has also said he is undecided on this Senate resolution brought forth by the most anonymous vice-presidential candidate in American history, Tim Kaine. That means this bill which is functionally a vote of no confidence in Trump’s trade war has 49 votes for it right now, assuming that all Democrats can rise to the level of bravery demonstrated by Susan Collins, with two open questions. If those two Republicans were to vote for this measure, it would pass the Senate but still not pass into law, because Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has already signaled he will not let it come up for a vote.
Mike Johnson is a central part of this intra-party squabbling, as he is currently soiling his diaper and shutting down the House for the week because he lost a vote 206 to 222 on something that seems to be a weird sexist hobby horse for him and the Freedom Caucus. As David Dayen, Executive Editor of The American Prospect details, a few Republicans defected in the House over proxy voting for new parents, setting up a much larger fight.
The story is that Democrats and some Republicans teamed up on a discharge petition to force a vote on proxy voting for expectant and new moms and new dads in the House. Johnson was virulently against it. If a discharge petition gets 218 votes it wins. And this one did.
— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 12:48 PM
In reaction, Johnson decided to hold a vote to change House rules to get rid of all discharge petitions, further centralizing power.
This is all because he doesn’t want an elected representative who just had a baby to have the opportunity to vote.
— David Dayen (@ddayen.bsky.social) April 1, 2025 at 12:48 PM
Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman reports that Johnson is going to add the budget resolution to this rule next week when he re-opens the House, and “force lawmakers to choose between advancing Trump’s agenda and proxy voting.” Huffington Post’s Jennifer Bendery and Arthur Delaney have a great report detailing this shockingly intense fight, where Rep. Anna Paulina Luna is accusing her own Majority Leader of being “blackmailed” by the Freedom Caucus to kill her bipartisan bill to accommodate new mothers in Congress. This mess would typically be relegated to sideshow status amid our ongoing constitutional collapse, but now that the Trump budget is literally tied to it, this has been elevated to The Thing to Keep an Eye On.
Sen. Bill Cassidy, seen earlier today saying on TV with a smirk, “is there some way that we cut Medicare so that it’s–excuse me, reform Medicare,” is now donning his hot dog costume and joining with Bernie Sanders to ask why RFK Jr. is doing the things he promised to do that Dr. Cassidy voted for. They sent a joint letter to the head of Health and Human Services asking that RFK Jr. testify on April 10th to explain his “proposed reorganization” of HHS. I cannot imagine that Cassidy must find himself in a great political position if he is willingly allying with a socialist to ask questions he surely knows the answers to.
So to recap not even a hundred days into Trump’s presidency (that will be April 30th): Republicans are already wearing their hot dog costumes and splintering over Trump’s tariffs before their effects even begin to really squeeze their districts, Elon Musk’s cuts to government that are already squeezing their districts have spurred them to corrupt action to lightly push back, and there is a bizarre nuclear-grade fight over new parents being able to vote in the House that is allying far right-wingers like Anna Paulina Luna with dreaded northeast liberal elites like Jim McGovern. Conveniently, Speaker Johnson closing the House down also means that none of these lawmakers will be around for when Trump’s liberation day begins, which is pretty telling as to how House GOP leadership views the politics of Trump’s trade war.
One week is not a trend, but it is notable that notable members of the GOP caucus are already demonstrating some level of independence so quickly after handing Trump eternal control over their souls (again). This comes on the heels of Trump pulling Elise Stefanik’s UN nomination over concerns that the GOP was not guaranteed to win a deep-red district she just won by 24 points, and a Pennsylvania state Senate district that has voted for a Democratic president just once since 1856 turning blue. Put it all together, and it strongly suggests that internal polling in the Republican Party may not look so hot right now.
Update (4/2/2025 at 12:20 EST): NBC is now reporting that Mitch McConnell will sign on to Tim Kaine’s resolution, and Lisa Murkowski is expected to pass it as well. It really may have enough votes to get out of the Senate.
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