The last few days have been surreal in terms of the pushback that President Donald Trump is seeing from within the GOP.
This week, there were three fairly big moves made by Republicans to either block Trump or criticize him.
One of them was a given, but the other two caught me completely off guard.
The fight between Donald Trump and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has been all over the place lately, and we actually have a full report on this below.
After Trump called out Grassley for allowing the custom of senatorial blue slips to block his judicial appointments, Grassley responded, "Now, to people in the Real America -- not here in Washington, D.C., an island surrounded by reality -- the people in Real America don't care about what the 'blue slip' is, but, in fact, it impacts the district judges who serve their communities and the U.S. Attorneys who ensure law and order is enforced.”
He then stated, “I was offended by what the president said, and I'm disappointed that it would result in personal insults."
Now Grassley has blocked three of Trump’s treasury nominees over tax credits for green energy, clearly flexing to see if he can get Trump to back off.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently announced that he would redraw the state's district maps for the upcoming election cycle, which could result in five Democrat seats being flipped.
Unfortunately, several large Democrat-led states are now saying they will do the same to remove red seats from their congressional maps. I had warned earlier that this is a battle the GOP will likely lose when you consider what states like California, New York, and Illinois could do if they gerrymander their maps, more so than they already are.
Rep. Kevin Kiley (R-CA) will now present legislation in the House to block mid-decade redistricting, limiting the redrawing of maps to the time period immediately following the release of new census reports.
I have not read the legislation in full, but on the surface, I like what Kiley is proposing, as I have recommended something very similar on multiple occasions. I doubt Trump will see this as helping the country or the GOP cause, but I believe that is what Kiley is doing here.
As I am sure you know, Trump recently fired the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) this week after an unfavorable jobs report.
After Trump fired BLS Commissioner Erika McEntarfer, Democrats used the talking point that Trump's firing of her was authoritarian and akin to shooting the messenger.
Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) just uttered a nearly identical sentiment, stating, “I do think it was a mistake to so rapidly fire this director. I think it was probably very important to get the facts first and then make a decision. But shooting the messenger when you’re the boss has a lot of impact. … I think, in this case, the numbers reflect about 45% of the data for the first month and you’re going to have the second and third month to get more data, and you can get some revisions.”
I honestly cannot recall having ever seen this level of direct pushback against Trump in public by Republicans. We have all seen comments here and there, but lawmakers were never so willing to put their names on them. This is significant, and it presents a real problem for Trump in terms of his influence within the party. The question now is how Trump will react. Will he lash out again, or will he try to make peace to present a more united front? If I had to guess, there are about to be some rather epic rants hitting Truth Social very soon.
