House Republicans are hoping to win a special election to replace booted GOP Rep. George Santos in New York or wait for Majority Leader Steve Scalise, who is battling illness, to return to Washington. “They’re unable to rally behind anything but extremism,” said Massachusetts Democratic Whip Katherine Clark.
McConnell faced a separate mutiny in the Senate over the border security plan he grudgingly decided to pursue to meet hard-right demands to attach Ukraine's national security aid to an almost politically impossible immigration solution. After the bipartisan plan was announced, Republicans headed by Sen. Mike Lee of Utah, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, and others blasted it, pushing McConnell to reject it.
This was McConnell's second retreat, after GOP senators rejected his counsel and opposed extra international help for Ukraine last autumn. Lee tweeted, “Time to disband The Firm,” ridiculing McConnell and Schumer.
Republicans filibustered the border plan on a party-line vote Wednesday, but senators began considering a smaller $95 billion assistance package for Ukraine, Israel, Taiwan, other friends. However, final passage remains questionable.
Trump, the former president and current party frontrunner, orchestrated from afar, calling the border package the “dumbest bill I've ever seen” and criticizing McConnell, one of the few GOP leaders who has not endorsed his presidential bid.
Since December 2020, when Biden won the presidential election Trump lost, the two men have not talked. After the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack, McConnell blamed Trump for spinning “wild” charges of a stolen election, alienating the two former partners in an uncharacteristically critical address.
McConnell insists he would back the Republican presidential nominee, but it's evident their relationship has worsened. Democratic Sen. Patty Murray of Washington state urges Republicans to recognize the consequences after “we all had to flee or be barricaded ourselves into our offices” during the Jan. 6 mob attack by Trump supporters.
“Why be a senator if you let Donald Trump make all the decisions?” First-term Republican Rep. Cory Mills of Florida said the week's losses weren't why he entered Congress after the service.
He departed the Capitol on Wednesday saying, “We’re definitely seeing a shift in politics.” Mills, a Trump supporter, said this Congress “went from kind of the old guard” to a “American First agenda” under Trump.
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