Cracks in the Wall

Consider these several events of just the past two days.

Anxious House Republicans. Public opinion is turning against Trump, putting Republicans in Congress at risk. After the Democratic candidate picked up a state Senate seat in a heavily Republican Pennsylvania district, Trump and panicky House leaders decided that Rep. Elise Stefanik, whom Trump appointed to be U.N. ambassador, had to stay in the House lest a Democrat pick up her vacated upstate New York seat in a special election. Trump carried the district by 21 points in 2024.

The fears were stoked by the even longer-shot risk of a Democratic pickup in Florida’s Sixth District, vacated by the appointment of the disgraced former congressman Michael Waltz as national security adviser. Trump carried that district by 30 points. Recent polls show the Democrat, Josh Weil, up by three points.

Growing Bipartisan Opposition. With budget negotiations just weeks away, Republican Susan Collins of Maine, chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, signed a tough letter to the White House with her Democratic counterpart, Sen. Patty Murray of Washington. The joint letter objected to Trump’s Monday memo to Congress claiming the right to spend only some of money authorized by the continuing resolution that kept the government open.

"Just as the president does not have a line-item veto, he does not have the ability to pick and choose which emergency spending to designate," the letter said. This matters because Collins will be a key player in negotiations over the budget reconciliation, which includes Trump’s attempt to extend and expand the expiring 2017 tax cuts. Collins is up for re-election in 2026, and herself vulnerable to a Democratic challenger.

In a second significant sign of bipartisan opposition, Republican Roger Wicker of Mississippi, chair of the Armed Services Committee, signed a joint request with the committee’s ranking Democrat, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, formally requesting an investigation by the Pentagon’s inspector general of the Signalgate fiasco. Their letter cited "questions as to the use of unclassified networks to discuss sensitive and classified information, as well as the sharing of such information with those who do not have proper clearance and need to know."

Hire Clowns, Expect a Circus. Despite frantic attempts of Republicans to spin the Signal mess as no big deal, leaks suggest that Trump is furious. It remains to be seen who will decide to "resign" on the usual bogus ground that "I am becoming a distraction"—Waltz or Pete Hegseth—or if the administration will keep twisting in the wind.

Putin’s Puppetry. Trump’s quest for a quick deal for a Ukraine cease-fire is going nowhere because Putin, characteristically, keeps changing the terms. Mitch McConnell frontally challenged the entire administration strategy, in remarks to a U.S.-Ukraine Foundation event Thursday where he was honored.

"When American officials court the favor of an adversary at the expense of allies, when they mock our friends to impress an enemy, they reveal their embarrassing naivete," he said. "Unless we change course, the outcome we’re headed for today is the one we can least afford: a headline that reads ‘Russia wins, America loses.’"

The Tariff Boomerang. Trump’s imposition of 25 percent tariffs on imported cars was supposed to be a boon for U.S. automakers. But the Big Three did not see it that way, since so many of their "domestic" cars are actually assembled in Mexico or substantially made with foreign parts. GM stock declined by 7 percent on the news. At this writing, the broad stock market is down for the third straight day.

Trump, expecting gratitude, had to threaten automakers not to raise prices but to absorb increased costs—depressing their share prices further. But threaten them with what exactly? Trump, whose core motivation is vengeance, is discovering that he can’t quite punish everybody.

As the costs of Trump’s actions sink in, the revolt of public opinion has only begun. And that portends one other piece of hopeful news. The more the public turns against Trump, the more he will think twice about defying the Supreme Court.

All that said, we are still right on the edge of full-on dictatorship. If democracy does survive, it will be a very close call.