Great to see you, Michael. Thank you for coming on the show. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me. I would say, Julie, I don't think you're going to contest this, that from the first moment of Trump's second term, the question on kind of everyone's mind was whether the manner in which the president had consolidated his power had basically rendered this Congress, this Republican Congress irrelevant. Right? Right? I mean, it very much looked like a co-equal branch of government was choosing subservience very willingly. And we started to ask the question, is Congress over? And the answer over the past 10 days or so seemed to change and now it feels more like a no. It's not over.

Yeah. I mean, I think in the first months of President Trump's second term, we were actually surprised on the Hill to see the degree to which Republicans were just deferring to him on everything. not just refusing to challenge him on things, but actively kind of giving back their power on some pretty key things on spending, on trade and tariffs, on foreign policy, things that you typically see Congress jealously guarding as its own prerogatives, finding every possible way to give it over to the White House, and really even just avoiding voting on things altogether.

Right? It was literally like a kid in the playground saying, "Take this toy. Take this toy. Take this shovel. Take this truck." Right? That was really all we were seeing from Republicans when it came to President Trump. But in the last few weeks, we have seen some pretty rare and unusual resistance coming from Republicans. They're refusing to act on legislation that's a big priority for him, refusing to move on the timelines that he's set out for them. They're stripping things from legislation and forcing the administration to drop proposals that they don't like.

And in the case of the war in Iran, they're actually using their power to push back on President Trump. They're basically rebelling. They're rebelling. To go back to your playground metaphor, Michael, it's a little bit like a group of kids who have obeyed their daddy for many, many months on pretty much everything and are finally just saying, "No, daddy, we're not going to do this for you." Mhm. That's quite a vivid completion of the metaphor. So, take us behind the scenes of this rebellion, if that's what we're going to be calling it. And we'll get to how durable it is and how far it may or may not go. But let's just understand it to the extent that it has been unfolding. On the surface, a lot of it seemed to revolve around the weaponization fund, the president's nearly $2 billion effort to compensate people he claims are victims of overzealous government prosecution. But my sense is that that's not quite the full story.

He intervenes in Louisiana, endorses a Republican congresswoman who's running against Bill Cassidy, the senator who's the head of the health committee, who has spent years in trying to ingratiate himself with Trump after having voted to convict him at his impeachment trial after January 6th. But Trump ultimately decided he wanted to take him out and did and he did and he did. But the second Senate primary where President Trump intervened and I think the more stinging one that made Republicans a lot angrier was in Texas where Senator John Cornin had been facing a challenge from Ken Paxton, the attorney general. They were in a runoff. It was going to be a competitive one. President Trump had stayed neutral and days before the primary he weighs in and endorses Ken Paxton. And that news that the president was going to do that just hit Republicans on the Hill like a bomb. They were completely irate in part because Cornin was seen as the much stronger candidate who would be able to win that seat without having to spend a lot of money without having to really worry about it cuz there are obviously a lot of other seats that they need to be worrying about defending in the midterm year. So that just soured the mood among Republicans who are sort of looking around, seeing that President Trump's agenda is getting less and less popular with voters, seeing that he's doing things really they feel like are for himself and not for the good of the party. You know, Republicans are fighting to hold on to majorities in both chambers and they have an uphill battle. And there started to be a real feeling like he was making it harder for them.

Mhm. And I should say that both of these senators are cost them re-election. This goes back to what you were saying earlier that at the heart of this Republican rebellion is this very strong sense that the president is not looking out for the best interests of the Republican party. Right? This is a president who has said in recent weeks that he doesn't care about the financial impact on Americans when he's thinking about the war. He doesn't care about the midterms. And Republicans are starting to look around and say like, well, where does that leave us?

And by this point, we're starting to see some interesting coalitions form here to really be the spine of this push back against Trump. You have swing district Republicans like Senator Susan Collins was among the senators who voted for the war powers resolution in the Senate. Brian Fitzpatrick, Tom Barrett of Michigan were the ones in the House. Purple state lawmakers, right? But you also have this other faction, you know, who are starting to get the nickname of the YOLO caucus that have been targeted by the president. They've been ousted and are lame ducks and they don't have a reason anymore to be unbendingly loyal to Donald Trump. Bill Cassidy already lost his re-election. John Cornin lost his re-election. Tom Massie was another Republican who voted for the War Powers Act in the House, lost his primary to a Trump backed challenger just a few weeks ago. So, they're sort of conspiring with these people who have everything to lose politically. They have nothing to lose politically, but the result is the same that they are willing to push back on a president who is not used to being resisted.

Well, I think Julie that gets at the ultimate question that we have to ask here, which is how durable and potent is this resistance likely to be in the long term? Obviously, a unique set of circumstances played out here all at once where the president ousted popular members of the Republican party from their jobs. That made folks really angry. Then he dropped this idea of the weaponization fund into everyone's laps. That made them angry. That doesn't happen every day. And how likely are these congressional Republicans over time to snap back into this more subservient role that Trump has conditioned them to take?

Right. It's it's a great question. It's the question to ask and it's instructive to look at what happened Thursday and Friday where Republicans finally were able to pass their immigration bill. And what we see is that given the opportunity by Democrats to go a step further and actually put it in writing in law that there can never be President Trump's compensation fund for his political allies. Republicans figure out a way to block that, not to vote for that. And that allows them to keep this immigration bill, this top priority of President Trump, on track. But even as they're handing him this big victory, there were all these signs still of how Republicans were sort of parting ways with and finding ways to distance themselves from Trump.

Before the immigration bill passed, there was this long series of votes overnight and into Friday morning. They call it a voterama where there were a series of amendments offered to the bill and there were some Republican votes for those proposals including several votes on the fund and a proposal to say that Trump could never use any federal money for his ballroom. The same was true on a Democratic proposal to try to block him from naming Bill Py, the housing director, as the director of national intelligence. Another thing that had really enraged a lot of Republicans. None of these things ultimately were able to succeed and be added to the bill. But the fact that Republicans were willing to vote the way they did showed that there is at least some mood in their ranks, which hasn't really existed before, to resist what the president is demanding of them, right?

And I think that's kind of where we're seeing them land. They're not going to be willing to derail their own party's agenda in the service of defying Trump, right? They still want to keep their immigration bill and their message to voters on track because in the end what this really is about is them trying to do what they think is best for themselves in the party. And their agendas overlap with his in many ways in most ways. But where there is some daylight and the president keeps on creating this daylight closer and closer we get to November, they're going to push back and rebel. And that marks a new chapter in the story of this president and the Republican Congress.

Well, Julie, thank you very much as always. Appreciate your time. Thank you, Michael. Same here.

In an interview on Sunday with NBC's Meet the Press, President Trump acknowledged the bipartisan opposition that killed his so-called weaponization fund. It's been blocked by the courts, met with opposition from Republicans and Democrats in Congress and Democrats. Excuse me. Mostly Democrats. Mostly Democrats and some Republicans. Very few Republicans. But said he still supported the idea in theory. Well, it's look, it was up to me. I'd pay them the kind of money that they deserve. People have been destroyed. Lives have been destroyed. During the interview, Trump also sought to downplay the war in Iran and the growing doubts that surround it. I call it a military exercise because people would rather have it called that. It's not a big war for us. It's not. We have the most powerful. The latest version of the War Powers Resolution against the war, already passed in the House, now heads to the Senate. Under congressional rules, the Senate must either pass or reject the resolution in the next few weeks. We'll be right back.

Here's what else you need to know today. On Sunday, Iran fired ballistic missiles toward Israel, the first time Iran has done so since a ceasefire began in early April. Sunday's attack was in response to a deadly Israeli air strike in Lebanon that targeted Hezbollah, a militant group backed by Iran. Israel said it intercepted all the Iranian missiles and a few hours later it fired back at Iran. The back and forth threatens to escalate a conflict that has been largely contained and further complicates peace talks between the United States and Iran that have sputtered for weeks.

Today's episode was produced by Chris Benderev, Mary Wilson, Anna Foley, and Olivia Nad. It was edited by Rachel Quester and Rob Zipco and contains music by Pat McCusker, Dan Powell, Alicia Baube, and Marian Lozano. Our theme music is by Wonderly. This episode was engineered by Chris Wood. That's it for the daily. I'm Meccao. See you tomorrow.