OPINION:
It has already started. Weak-willed Republicans now feel free to distance themselves from President Trump. With whisker-thin majorities in the House and Senate, it takes only a handful of turncoats to spoil outcomes.
This week, the Senate is working on the National Defense Authorization Act that the House approved on a 312-112 vote. The bill deadnames the Department of War, refusing to identify it by the name the Continental Congress bestowed upon it at its inception in 1781.
Instead of codifying Mr. Trump’s restoration, the Republican majority inserted a passive-aggressive ultimatum to Pete Hegseth, slashing the war secretary’s travel budget until he delivers unedited videos of drug dealer boats being blown up off the shores of Venezuela.
National Transportation Safety Board Chairman Jennifer Homendy is furious that the House gutted sensible safeguards that Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put into place after a military helicopter carelessly slammed into a PSA Airlines jet as it was landing at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport.
Those VIP helicopter flights are a convenience for generals and Pentagon brass who think they are too important to sit in the notoriously snarled inside-the-Beltway traffic. Their time isn’t worth one of the 64 innocent lives lost in January.
“This provision is an unacceptable risk to the flying public, to commercial and military aircraft crews, and to residents in the region,” wrote Ms. Homendy, who was appointed by Mr. Trump.
The bill authorizes $8 billion more than Mr. Trump requested, including $400 million to perpetuate the stalemate in Ukraine. Still, Mr. Trump is enthusiastic about the overall National Defense Authorization Act package because it supports his other priorities.
In the upper chamber, four Republicans — Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan of Alaska, Sen. Susan M. Collins of Maine and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri – jumped ship to help Democrats rescue the fraud-addled Obamacare giveaway.
Their procedural motion scored 51 votes, short of the necessary 60-vote threshold. Remember this when weighing the wisdom of eliminating the filibuster. If the Senate could pass bills with a simple majority, this clunker would have advanced to the House of Representatives.
There, 20 squishy Republican members defected to shield federal employee unions, which are essentially arms of the Democratic Party. The Protect America’s Workforce Act cancels Mr. Trump’s executive order from March, excluding additional executive branch agencies from collective bargaining agreements.
Current law forbids federal spies from using union contracts designed to, for instance, allow employees to collect a salary without showing up for work. Mr. Trump merely adds agencies that share national security functions to the list.
An Office of Management and Budget memo explains the purpose of the modification. “Agency [collective bargaining agreements] often create procedural impediments to separating poor performers beyond those required by statute or regulation.”
That is, they defend loafers by requiring convoluted and lengthy arbitration proceedings before malingerers can be fired. Government leaders are often unwilling to endure the hassle of initiating the termination process, as it saves the public money, not their own.
It may seem like theater to enact legislation that the president can and will veto, but even petty moves carry real consequences. Partisan federal judges will point to expressions of the congressional will to bolster their schemes to declare the president’s actions illegal, even though they aren’t.
Unless the Republican majority intends to become the Republican minority in January 2027, it ought to stick together. The “America First” agenda is the one that voters endorsed last year.
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