The real reason the GOP tanked Trump's 'dumbest' grift

U.S. President Donald Trump attends an event to honor Angel Families at the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 23, 2026. REUTERS

Ever since it was announced that the Trump administration would create a slush fund for the benefit of convicted January 6 rioters, Republicans have been unusually vocal with their criticism of President Donald Trump. In a rare moment of bipartisan agreement, GOP resistance to the fund appears to have tanked it. By Tuesday afternoon, Republican Senators were telling reporters that they expected acting Attorney General Tood Blanche to confirm the fund’s end during a testimony later in the day, otherwise, it would further delay their make-or-break immigration budget reconciliation bill.

“It was a nonstarter from the get go,” Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) told NBC News. But according to Vox, Republican reasoning for opposing the fund may have had less to do with what is right or wrong, but hinged on public perception with the midterms looming.

In order to learn why Republicans finally stood up to Trump, Vox “spoke with DC insiders on both sides of the aisle, as well as leading scholars of American politics. They told a fairly consistent story: one in which the awful election year politics of giving Trump a fund to pay out January 6 rioters, combined with the specific timing of a must-pass funding bill for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), forced usually deferential Republicans’ hands.”

“We’re kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place right now,” said one Senate Republican aide on Monday. “There were dozens of senators that had concerns [on our side].”

The major concern was that Democrats now had a powerful new weapon with which to attack the GOP, which is already expected to take substantial losses in the November midterms due to Trump’s historic unpopularity driven by the ongoing war with Iran and its resulting economic calamity. Suddenly, with Trump’s almost universally despised fund complicating a key Republican legislative priority, the party was finally forced to take decisive action to oppose the president.

“The timing of it forces their hand,” said Matt Glassman, an expert on Congress at Georgetown University. “It can’t be ignored, because the administration chose to announce it at the dumbest possible time.”

“The point is not that Congress has, all of a sudden, discovered its constitutional spine,” notes Vox. “It is still uncommon for Republicans to fight back against something Trump really wants, and many of his defeats there are symbolic. High-profile effective challenges to Trump remain quite rare. However, there is a difference between ‘quite rare’ and ‘unheard of,’ which is basically how Congress operated in the early months of Trump’s presidency. It seems that the specific ways he has gone about trying to consolidate his own power has, over time, created space for greater friction in Congress — or even actively generated pushback. And given the narrow majorities in both the House and Senate, it doesn’t take a lot of resistance to block a bill.”

As Vox explains, this dynamic has offered Democrats opportunities to impede Trump’s agenda while the GOP is weakened electorally. Democrats are expected to reclaim the majority in at least the House later this year, which will make Trump's ability to consolidate power substantially weaker.

“If Trump were a more competent authoritarian,” concludes Vox, “he might be using his remaining time controlling Congress to grab as much formal power as he could. Instead, he’s chosen to mismanage his relationship with Congress, a series of costly and time-consuming fights that could have been avoided with defter management. American democracy would be in far better shape if Republicans actually did care about stopping Trump’s power grabs as a matter of constitutional principle. They don’t, for the most part. But their instincts for political survival, and frustration with the White House, are starting to assert themselves in democratically valuable ways.”

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