Republicans Say No - For the First Time, They Are Seriously Pushing Back Against Trump

Washington, D.C. - Thom Tillis sat in his office, read a document, and called it "stupid on stilts." Mitch McConnell, a man who has treated words like scarce currency for decades, publicly wrote that it was "absolutely stupid, morally wrong." John Cornyn, one of the Republican Party's most experienced senators, is suddenly fighting for his own seat because Trump is backing his challenger Ken Paxton. Bill Cassidy, having just returned from his Louisiana primary after losing because he voted to impeach Trump following January 6, is now sitting in Washington and voting with Democrats. Thomas Massie of Kentucky is gone. And this week, the United States Senate simply stopped. No lost vote, no dramatic speech - they left the room and went home.

Republican Senator Thom Tillis sharply criticized Donald Trump's $1.8 billion fund: "I think this is complete nonsense... Taxpayer money is supposed to compensate someone who assaulted a police officer, was convicted - and now we're supposed to pay him for it? That's absurd!"

Read also our article: Trump: Corruption Now Has a Name, an Address, and the Seal of the Department of Justice

Two Police Officers Against Trump and Blanche's Corruption Fund

What triggered this moment was a $1.776 billion fund Trump calls the "Anti-Politicization Fund" - money for people he believes were wrongfully prosecuted, including participants in the Capitol attack. Trump inserted this fund, without warning and without consulting the Senate, into a legal settlement resolving his own $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. An agency that reports to his own government. He sued himself - and negotiated a solution with himself that he then placed before the Senate as a finished fact. Tillis called it "a payout for thugs" and asked under what circumstances it could ever make sense to compensate people who had been found guilty or pleaded guilty. McConnell asked whether the nation's top law enforcement official truly wanted to establish a special fund to pay people who assaulted police officers. Trump responded on social media by saying Tillis was betraying the party.

Attorney General Todd Blanche spent hours behind closed doors with senators, talking, explaining, trying to save the situation. He left the building without results. Todd Blanche had been Trump's personal attorney. Then he became Deputy Attorney General. Then, after Trump dismissed Pam Bondi last month, he moved into the top position. Since then, he has reopened charges against James Comey - over a social media photo of seashells arranged as numbers that prosecutors interpreted as a threat against Trump. He has brought charges against the Southern Poverty Law Center, a civil rights organization, for alleged deception of donors. He appointed Joseph diGenova, an 81-year-old attorney from the Reagan era, to investigate whether former law enforcement officials had conspired for more than a decade to harm Trump. And he helped oversee the $1.776 billion fund - the compensation program for people Trump believes were unfairly prosecuted, while simultaneously granting Trump and his sons tax immunity. Stephen Saltzburg, a law professor at George Washington University and himself a former senior Justice Department official, says Blanche appears less like Attorney General of the United States and more like Attorney General for Donald Trump personally. Senator Chris Van Hollen said directly to Blanche: "You are acting today like the president's personal attorney. And that is exactly the problem." Blanche replied that he was not seeking the position, felt no pressure, and if Trump nominated someone else he would say: "Thank you very much. I love you, sir." It is difficult to say which part of that is supposed to be reassuring.

Majority Leader John Thune later said the discussions had given the administration a sense of how deeply people felt about the issue. It was the most polite thing that could still be said. The result is concrete damage. Republicans' biggest goal this year - a roughly $70 billion budget package for Trump's immigration and deportation operations through 2029 - is now stalled. The vote has been pushed into June, meaning Trump's self-imposed June 1 deadline has collapsed. When someone in the Oval Office asked him whether he was losing control of the Senate, Trump shrugged. "I don't know," he said. It was one of the rarest sentences of his presidency.

Question: "Are you losing control of Senate Republicans, sir?" Trump: "I don't know. I really don't know. I don't need money for the ballroom."

Things did not look any better in the House of Representatives. A Democratic war powers resolution intended to limit Trump's military action in Iran gained enough Republican support to become a problem. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Tom Barrett of Michigan wanted to vote for it. Speaker Mike Johnson pulled the vote before it happened. Fitzpatrick had also introduced legislation with Democrat Tom Suozzi that would block taxpayer funding for Trump's compensation fund. Trump publicly complained that Fitzpatrick liked voting against him and hinted, in a way nobody could misunderstand, whether Fitzpatrick understood what that meant. Fitzpatrick replied: "What we do here is about policy." Don Bacon of Nebraska, thirty years in the Air Force and now a retiring congressman, put it more directly: "You sit down with somebody and work with them instead of threatening, bullying, and yelling. That doesn't work." Then Bacon said what many are thinking but not saying: "You don't want a completely loyal party that's in the minority. And maybe that's where we're heading."

Trump presented the arrangement as a personal sacrifice. He claimed he had given up large amounts of money to create a fund for supposedly politically persecuted individuals. In doing so, he once again attacked the release of his tax returns and the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago, which he still describes as an "illegal raid." At the same time, he is attempting to portray the fund as a form of retroactive justice - while Washington increasingly asks who exactly will receive money in the end and according to what moral standard.

What lies inside this IRS settlement goes deeper than the compensation fund. As part of the same agreement, the U.S. government granted Trump, his sons, and the Trump Organization permanent immunity from all ongoing tax examinations. A one-page document states that the United States is "forever barred and precluded" from reviewing or pursuing current tax filings involving Trump or his organization. Former IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel says it is unprecedented. Brandon DeBot of New York University's Tax Law Center says the Justice Department effectively wiped Trump's slate clean and sent the country a message: the president and his inner circle operate under different rules. "This goes far beyond what the Justice Department is actually authorized to do."

The automatic IRS review of presidents dates back to the late 1970s - a quiet agreement after Richard Nixon, who had claimed questionable deductions and paid only a few hundred dollars in taxes during a presidential year. Nixon said at the time: "I am not a crook." He later paid hundreds of thousands more. Since then, every president has been automatically reviewed. As a sign that the office is not above the law.

Until now.

Police officers who defended the Capitol on January 6 have already filed lawsuits seeking to block payments from the compensation fund - including payments to individuals who attacked them that day. Tax law experts expect the immunity provision to end up in court as well. DeBot says Trump is attempting to occupy every role in the system at once - plaintiff, defendant, judge, and jury. Trump has suggested that he may now release his tax returns. The ongoing reviews that supposedly prevented him from doing so for years no longer exist. All of his predecessors did so voluntarily. There was never a law preventing him from doing it.

Whether he will do it remains to be seen. Whether it would still surprise anyone - that is a different question.