President Donald Trump is struggling to keep House Republicans in line on key policy items, according to a recent report.
“House GOP leaders, for instance, are moving forward with an amended, bipartisan version of a Senate-passed housing bill this week, despite pressure from Trump to take up the Senate measure with no changes,” The Hill’s Sudiksha Kochi wrote on Sunday.
“Moderates have also balked at the administration’s proposal to provide $1 billion in security funding for a new White House ballroom and other Secret Service priorities, warning they would be reluctant to support an immigration enforcement funding package with such a provision attached to it.”
House Republicans are also standing up to Trump on issues like the president’s demand for a “clean” 18-month extension of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act’s (FISA) warrantless spying powers, with the House Freedom Caucus insisting on a warrant requirement and a permanent ban on a central bank digital currency (CBDC). Similarly Speaker Mike Johnson also delayed placing a Senate-passed bipartisan bill to fund the Department of Homeland Security for multiple weeks, despite White House pressure, because he wanted a budget blueprint for an unrelated bill.
“We are a separate branch of government,” Rep. Dan Newhouse (R-Wash.) explained to The Hill. “We should have different opinions and … we have a different process, and we have to bring together a lot of different minds to come up with a solution.”
A member of the House Freedom Caucus, which is far-right, expressed a similar view.
"He’s making the right decisions, and I think Americans appreciate that,” Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) “Now, is it close on votes? I mean, when you’ve got one body that has a one or two-seat majority, yeah, you have to get almost total unanimous votes, which is hard to get. So no, he’s not losing influence.”
Norman continued, “There are 435 members. 100 senators. You’re going to have some differences of opinion. That’s a good thing. That’s how democracy works.”
Despite Trump’s ongoing struggles with members of his own party in the House, many of their constituents remain loyal to the president. Speaking with Reuters earlier this month, Trump supporter Tonyah Bruyette described her inability to pay for groceries by saying that “we're putting it in the tank rather than on our table." Yet she still claimed that Trump “hears us” and “is fighting for us.” Similarly Trump supporter Lexys Siebrands told Reuters regarding the Iran war that “something was going to happen eventually, whether it was Iran doing something to us or us doing it to them."
She added, “It's just where we are with this war. People just have to give it time." When asked if she would ever stop supporting Trump, she replied “No. I’m all on board.”
“A recent Economist/YouGov poll suggests such troubles are now commonplace,” wrote The Economist earlier this month, describing farmers who struggle to make ends meet due to Trump’s tariff and war against Iran. “27 percent of rural respondents said it would be ‘impossible’ to cover an unexpected $1,000 bill. It would be easy to blame Mr Trump for the downturn. After all, he campaigned on promises to bring down prices and revive the heartland. But rural America does not.”
The article continued, “The president’s favourability rating is higher among rural voters than among any other group in our survey. Most still think he is doing a good job. In interview after interview with The Economist, farmers said they trust the administration—but that they need help to recoup the losses its foreign policy is causing them.”