It’s Time to Govern, and Republicans in Congress Can’t Remember How
This is your TPM evening briefing.
Republicans Try to Remember a World in Which Not All Policy Came From Trump
We’re seeing a phenomenon play out right now that has cropped up repeatedly during both Trump terms.
At the heart of the phenomenon is this: in almost all areas of governance, the Republican Party stands for Trump. Nothing more, nothing less. Members of Congress have accepted this rebranding, or left government entirely. Occasionally, Republicans in Congress muster the ability to buck the president’s demands, but that is a rarity. At this point, they have little they want to accomplish that is not a Trump priority.
This creates an issue whenever an urgent need for a new policy proposal arrises, and we’re seeing that on multiple fronts right now. First, Republicans in Congress have spent months flailing, trying to figure out a policy to coalesce behind to deal with increasing Obamacare premiums. This problem was not a surprise. It had loomed ever since the Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in 2022, extended enhanced premium tax credits through the end of 2025. Democrats shut down the government for a month and a half, demanding a solution to the looming health care price hikes. It’s not the kind of thing GOP health care policy wonks could miss — yet there are few such people left with influence. Reporting indicates that congressional Republicans have this week finally decided to thrust forth a deeply uninspired policy — or perhaps a set of them. It’s still unclear they’ll have the votes to pass anything.
Then there’s the whole fad of “affordability,” a term for cost-of-living issues that has been championed on the left and sent Republicans scrambling since Democrats’ show of strength on Election Day. Trump initially embraced the need to address affordability, then determined it to be a critique of his own government and rejected it. And, so, Republicans have little to offer here, too. Trump is president, and he says “affordability” is a Democratic “hoax.” What can be done? Perhaps more assertions that Trump has already fixed the problem: “We haven’t probably messaged as effectively as we should,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune offered Politico in an interview, describing the need to redouble efforts to sell Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which was signed in July.
The phenomenon of a GOP that stands for little beyond Trump is nearly a decade old at this point, perhaps older. An early instance of it rearing its head was the floundering GOP effort to “replace” Obamacare in 2017, which ultimately ended with John McCain’s dramatic thumbs down. But it has worsened as the power centers that fuel the Trump-era GOP have become clearer. First, there’s Trump himself. What he wants, he usually gets. Then there’s the billionaires — increasingly, Silicon Valley billionaires — who get to splatter their pet policies and authoritarian proclivities throughout administration documents and orders, even when it cuts against Trump’s populist image (for example: Trump promises an executive order to ban state laws on AI will arrive this week). Then there is the furious and conspiratorial base, who must be tended by servicing what Josh Marshall has called the nonsense debt. This servicing, in Trump II, has taken a new, violent turn, with widespread attacks on immigrants and a clampdown on dissent. Policy documents like Project 2025 channel and interweave each of the threads that make up Trump-era Republican ideology.
Yet it’s only by accident that these objectives sometimes intersect with the needs of governing a country, leaving Republicans in Congress bereft of policies to draw on when confronted with the challenges of any particular moment. The movement’s intellectuals, such as they are, have been preoccupied with grafting an intellectual and policy framework onto Trump’s whims. In 2020, the party didn’t even publish a platform. In 2024, it did: Titled “Make America Great Again!” it promised to bring down prices through slashing government spending, curbing immigration, and opening up more oil and gas drilling — all ideas the administration has put into effect, and all ideas that have done little for the cost of living.
In 2016, writer William Saletan suggested that, for the reasons I’ve just described, the GOP was a “failed state.” It still is — more so now than then. And while there’s some schadenfreude in watching Republican members of Congress attempt, and struggle, to exercise their atrophied policy muscles, there’s little solace in knowing that a failed-state party controls … the actual state.
— John Light
Provision to Expand IVF Access To Military Families Is Out
The text of the National Defense Authorization Act — which lawmakers on both sides of the aisle have had some last-minute negotiations on over the past week — was released late Sunday. Despite being included in the earlier House and Senate versions of the annual defense policy bill, a proposed provision that would expand in vitro fertilization coverage for all active service members and their families was left out of the final text.
That comes as House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was reportedly working behind the scenes to get rid of the provision. Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) accused the Speaker of being the driving force behind the change.
“There’s nobody opposing this other than Speaker Johnson and his religious views,” Duckworth told CNN.
“The president of the United States promised on the campaign trail to make IVF available to all Americans,” she added. “And I can’t think of a better place to make it available than the men and women who wear the uniform of this great nation.”
Tricare insurance, the health care program for service members, currently only covers fertility services for members whose infertility was caused by an illness or injury while on active duty.
— Emine Yücel
Indiana Senate Gets to Work on Trump’s Redistricting Demands
The Indiana Senate convened on Monday for a hearing on a redistricting bill that passed the Republican-controlled House late last week. Although the proposal had widespread support in the House, it remains unclear whether Senate Republicans will pass the proposal.
The new map, if approved, could flip two of the state’s congressional seats currently held by Democrats ahead of the 2026 midterms. The fate of Indiana’s redistricting campaign is particularly important for the Trump administration’s larger gerrymandering assault, which appears to be losing steam. For months now, Trump has been pressuring red states across the country to redraw their congressional maps as a way to maintain control of the U.S. House in 2026 elections.
As it stands now, 16 Senate Republicans have publicly expressed their support for redistricting, while 14 have come out against it, according to the Indiana Capital Chronicle. The chamber needs at least 26 votes to pass the bill assuming all Democrats vote against it, per the newspaper.
For weeks now, Indiana Senate President Pro Tempore Rodric Bray has said that there were not sufficient votes in the Senate to approve the gerrymandered map. Following those announcements, President Trump has taken to social media to call out Republicans who have not caved to the administration’s gerrymandering blitz. Those lawmakers say they have faced bomb threats, swatting attempts, and other forms of intimidation.
Yet in a post on Truth Social on Friday, Trump called out the names of the individual senators who have not yet succumbed to the administration’s mounting pressure.
“The Indiana Senate must now pass this Map, AS IS, and get it to Governor Mike Braun’s desk, ASAP, to deliver a gigantic Victory for Republicans in the “Hoosier State,” and across the Country,” Trump wrote.
— Khaya Himmelman
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Unintended consequences: Trump’s Attacks on DEI May Hurt Men in College Admission
Backchannel: Rough Seas Abroad Under Trump II
More from the Edblog: Team Oligarch Suits Up to Torpedo Netflix/WBD Merger
Yesterday’s Most Read Story
Texas Gets a Pass for a Gerrymandering Free-For-All. Will California Be Given the Same?
What We Are Reading
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