President Donald Trump is lashing out at members of his own party and once again demanding changes to Senate rules that would allow the upper chamber to approve new restrictions on voting ahead of midterm elections that could cost Republicans control of the House, Senate — or both.
In a Thursday morning rant on Truth Social, he demanded Republican senators employ a parliamentary maneuver that would let them push any legislation through the Senate by ending the chamber’s 60-vote supermajority requirement for most bills and use that new power to end a weeks-long impasse over funding for the Department of Homeland Security instead of negotiating with Democrats over whether immigration agents can enter private homes without warrants.
“When is ‘enough, enough’ for our Republican Senators. There comes a time when you must do what should have been done a long time ago, and something which the Lunatic Democrats will do on day one, if they ever get the chance,” he wrote. “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER, and get our airports, and everything else, moving again.”
Trump also urged senators to “add the complete, all five items, SAVE AMERICA ACT items” and Go for the Gold” by doing so. The “five items” he was referring to include a host of new proposed limits on voting by mail and onerous national voter registration procedures that could disenfranchise millions of Americans based on flimsy conspiracy theories about non-citizen voting.
Not long after, he repeated his all-caps demand for senators to “TERMINATE THE FILIBUSTER” in a separate post before lashing out a third time against Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, who he called a “ a desperate, crippled politician” while suggesting that Republicans should threaten to enact the rule change if he does not “make a deal” to reopen DHS.
His rant took place less than a day after House Republicans awarded him a made-up prize, the “America First” award, at the National Republican Congressional Committee’s annual fundraising gala.
House Speaker Mike Johnson called the prize a “beautiful golden statue … appropriate for the new golden era in America.”
The president’s call for Republicans to short-circuit centuries-old senate procedures to make it more difficult for Americans to cast ballots ahead of the November midterm elections comes as travelers continue to face massive security lines at airports across the country.
Since February, approximately 50,000 transportation security officers have been forced to work without pay as senators battle over a deal that will provide the necessary funding to DHSwhile also include mechanisms to hold immigration enforcement officers accountable.
Until lawmakers reach a deal, many TSA agents are being forced to dip into retirement accounts, take on second jobs or rely on food pantries to get by.
Many TSA officers have called out of work and approximately 480 have quit – leading to staffing shortages at some of the largest airports in the nation. The result has been checkpoint lines that can snake around airport terminals for hours-long waits before being screened, causing many to miss flights.
Trump has rejected senators’ efforts to craft a compromise package that would fund TSA and other DHS components while leaving funding for ICE to a separate process.
Instead, he has ordered ICE personnel to deploy at airports and has suggested National Guard soldiers could fill in for absent TSA workers, though neither group has the specialized training needed to operate airport security checkpoints.
His demand for new voting restrictions and refusal to allow a compromise to end the DHS funding impasse is his latest expression of anxiety about voting with just seven months remaining until Americans will vote on whether Republicans should retain the unified control of Washington they have had since Trump and a GOP-led Congress took power in January of last year.
An Associated Press/NORC poll released on Thursday found six in ten American say the war against Iran he started alongside Israel last month has gone too far, while supermajorities of Americans oppose putting American troops on the ground there.
A separate Fox News poll found just 42 percent of Americans support the war, with 58 percent opposed and 64 percent of voters disapproving of Trump’s handling of Iran. Nearly as many adults, 62 percent, disapprove of the president’s foreign policy.
The Fox poll also found a record low number of Republicans voicing approval of the president at 84 percent, down from 92 percent last month, with 16 percent disapproving.
Overall, 59 percent of Americans polled say they disapprove of Trump’s job performance overall, with 41 percent voicing approval. That’s a record low for Trump dating back to his first term.
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