‘I am tired of amateur hour’: Republicans begin to test the limits of Trump’s power

Washington: On a tour through Asia last year, US President Donald Trump took a moment on the world stage to celebrate a legislative victory at home: after months of iron-fisted pressure, he had compelled Republicans to pass legislation that cut taxes and slashed into the country’s social safety net.

Ever since, Trump has been intent on testing that theory, daring lawmakers to defy him and doing his best to vanquish them from office if they do. But after a retributive romp through primary season, Trump’s style of governing – unilateral, and often impatient – has collided with restive Republicans who seem to be exacting some political vengeance of their own.

On Wednesday evening (Washington time), four House Republicans sided with Democrats to demand that Trump withdraw US forces from the conflict with Iran or win approval from Congress, rebuking a president who has repeatedly said he does not need congressional authorisation to continue the conflict.

That came on the heels of another high-profile setback: a Republican revolt against a $US1.8 billion ($2.5 billion) fund to reward Trump supporters who claim political persecution by Democrats. Many Republican senators had indicated they would not move forward with plans to fund Trump’s immigration agenda unless those plans were axed. This week, acting Attorney-General Todd Blanche said the administration would abandon the effort.

But on Wednesday, just as the Senate moved to debate an immigration bill that it had held up because of the fund, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that he wasn’t quite sure if the fund was dead or on hold.

“I love it,” he told a reporter who asked about the pot of money, effectively jamming his foot in the way of a door lawmakers had hoped to close. “I think it’s so important.”

Republican senator John Cornyn, whom Trump helped dispatch during the primaries, shared a Wall Street Journal editorial on social media earlier in the day, calling on Congress to pass legislation to kill the fund.

“The way to ensure the Trump retribution fund is more than mostly dead would be for Congress to put a stake through it,” Cornyn wrote, echoing the editorial.

(The senator, who has been posting up a storm about the concept of betrayal in recent days, added the word “retribution”, which did not appear in that sentence in the editorial. Last week, he shared a fable about a frog who was wronged by a scorpion.)

Republican senator Bill Cassidy, who voted in favour of impeaching Trump in 2021 and lost his primary, also supports legislation that would kill the fund.

“You want to make sure i