Even some Republicans think Trump is a stupid fucking asshole.

New York Times - Congress Has a Breaking Point. This Week, Trump Might Have Found It.

By Sheryl Gay Stolberg and Michael D. Shear

March 14, 2019

WASHINGTON — Time and again — when President Trump stood by Saudi Arabia after the killing of a Virginia-based journalist, when it looked as if he might intervene in the special counsel’s Russia investigation and when he threatened to declare a national emergency to pay for his border wall — lawmakers on Capitol Hill warned him not to push them too far.

This week, in a remarkable series of bipartisan rebukes to the president, Congress pushed back.

On Wednesday, with seven Republicans breaking ranks, the Senate joined the Democrat-led House in voting to end American military aid to Saudi Arabia’s war in Yemen in protest over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, a columnist for The Washington Post. On Thursday morning, the House voted unanimously on a nonbinding resolution to make public the findings of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

And on Thursday afternoon, 12 Republican senators abandoned the president to pass legislation, already adopted by the House, that would block Mr. Trump from declaring a national emergency to build his border wall — an act of defiance that he has vowed to overturn with the first veto of his presidency.

“We’re saying today, ‘No, we do not acquiesce to this,’” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said after voting to block the emergency declaration. “We do not agree that the president should be able to come in and go against the express intention of the Congress when it comes to these appropriated funds” for his wall.

The series of votes vividly demonstrated a newfound willingness to stand up to the president among some of his Republican allies on Capitol Hill. And they underscored a deep frustration in Congress about the president’s supposed scorn for a coequal branch of government.

“We have an issue that has been litigated and adjudicated through Congress. I mean, what was more litigated than this very question? We had a government shutdown for crying out loud,” said Senator Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, referring to funding for the border wall, which Mr. Trump is trying to secure with an emergency declaration that would circumvent Congress.

“It’s about separation of powers,” Mr. Toomey said. “It’s about respecting the principles of the Constitution.”

For some Republicans, particularly those who have typically voted in lock step with the president, the votes were a moment of soul searching during a harried week before recess, when most lawmakers were looking forward to getting out of town. The Yemen vote was an exceedingly rare invocation of the 1973 War Powers Act, passed after the Vietnam War to restrain the president’s authority to use military force.

“We don’t often have great votes about great questions around here about separation of powers,” said Senator Rand Paul, Republican of Kentucky, adding, “I don’t think you can overstate how important it is that for the first time in the history of the country, the full Congress voted to tell the president that we can’t be in a war.”

Mr. Trump made it clear he would fight the bipartisan challenges to his authority.

“He feels good,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, a close ally of Mr. Trump who talked to the president shortly after the vote. “He said, ‘My veto will be sustained?’ I said, ‘Yeah, overwhelmingly.’ He feels like his commitment to build the wall is moving forward.”

But the rare coalition of Democrats and Republicans could bolster legal challenges to the emergency declaration that could tie up wall funding indefinitely. And the mere act of defying Mr. Trump foreshadows potential new difficulty for the president as he seeks to push his agenda through a Democrat-controlled House and a less pliant Republican-controlled Senate.

“There are moments where you see a partisan rebuke” of the president by Congress, said William G. Howell, a political scientist at the University of Chicago and the author of “Power Without Persuasion: The Politics of Direct Presidential Action.” “They are really pretty infrequent, and when you do observe them it speaks to real tumult in the party.”

Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic leader, said he hoped “the votes this week are green shoots: Republicans, out of courage, out of principle and maybe out of principle or maybe exasperation, are beginning to constrain the president when he goes too far.”

Most Republicans cast their votes as a matter of conscience, and some Republicans who fashion themselves “constitutional conservatives,” such as Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska, tied themselves in knots explaining how vexed they were to side with the president. Senator Thom Tillis of North Carolina, one of the first Republicans to declare his support for overturning the emergency declaration, faced a huge backlash from conservatives and flipped his vote at the last second.

House Republicans, who joined Democrats in voting to call for Mr. Mueller’s report to be made public, insist there was no tumult.

But Democrats saw it as an important declaration of principle. “Congress is finally asserting its authority under the Constitution — with enthusiasm,” said Representative Donna E. Shalala, Democrat of Florida, who spent eight years in the executive branch as health secretary to President Bill Clinton.

The rejection of Mr. Trump’s national emergency declaration could also give ammunition to a half-dozen legal cases challenging the president’s exercise of that power under the 1976 National Emergencies Act, said Jack L. Goldsmith, a Harvard law professor who led the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel under President George W. Bush.

“Some judges may count that as evidence of congressional intent,” Mr. Goldsmith said, though he added that he disagreed with that view.

Dror Ladin, a staff lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union, said Congress’s action would help convince federal judges that the president was acting illegally to fund his wall.

“This vote reinforces that the president has no right to that money,” Mr. Ladin said.

But as a political matter, Mr. Trump could use the congressional votes to his advantage on the 2020 campaign trail, portraying himself once again as the outsider candidate battling an unpopular Congress and the establishment in Washington.

Congress has for decades been what Ross K. Baker, a political scientist at Rutgers University, calls a “constitutional weakling” — excessively deferential to the president. But there have been moments in history where the legislative branch seeks to assert its power and relevance, particularly with respect to the military and foreign engagement.

That happened in the 1970s with the passage of the War Powers Act, which gave Congress the ability to compel the removal of military forces absent a formal declaration of war. Congress exerted its authority in 1991 and again in 2002, when it authorized the president to use military force in the run-up to both wars in Iraq.

In 2005, amid a public uproar over the torture of detainees, Congress tightened antitorture laws to ban the infliction of “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment” on prisoners — including those held overseas by the C.I.A. — over the objections of President Bush.

Now the fight over wall funding may incite yet another round of congressional muscle-flexing. A number of Republicans are pushing legislation to claw back the powers that Congress gave the president in the National Emergencies Act, which Mr. Trump invoked to declare an emergency along the southwestern border.

“The Senate’s waking up a little bit to our responsibilities,” said Senator Lamar Alexander, Republican of Tennessee.