Just days after President Trump celebrated his military triumph in Venezuela, he suffered a rare defeat at home at the hands of Democrats and five Republicans in the Senate, who rejected his bold claim to unbridled power.
The striking bipartisan Senate vote on Thursday to open a war powers debate and potentially restrain the president’s ability to conduct military actions was just one of the notable acts of resistance registered on Capitol Hill this week, as Congress began what promises to be a tumultuous year with midterm elections hanging over its every move.
It was accompanied by strong Republican pushback to Mr. Trump’s designs on Greenland, a Democratic health care victory accomplished with significant G.O.P. help, and dozens of Republicans breaking with the president in an unsuccessful bid to override the first two vetoes of his second term.
Together, the events illustrated that the president, who for a year has been able to count on a largely compliant Republican-led Congress with no appetite to challenge him, is facing new defiance as lawmakers concerned about their political futures look to assert themselves ahead of midterm voting.
The war powers vote was the clearest sign that the president might not enjoy as free a hand as he has become accustomed to, even as he declared this week in an interview with The New York Times that the sole restraint on his power was his “own morality.”
Fifty-two senators on Thursday decided that might not be the case, as they agreed to consider whether the president had to seek their approval for future actions in Venezuela. They still carefully commended the president for removing the dictator Nicolás Maduro.
“Would Congress need to weigh in if the administration decided they needed to commit troops to the future for hostilities?” asked Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri, one of the Republicans who backed the resolution. “Based on what I know and my reading of the Constitution, I just kind of think we would have to vote on that.”
The rare loss, not surprisingly, infuriated the president, who lashed out at the defectors in his own party in a politically counterproductive social media post. He urged the electoral defeat of all of them, including Senator Susan Collins of Maine, whose re-election is critical to Republicans maintaining their Senate majority next year. Ms. Collins responded by suggesting that perhaps Mr. Trump would rather see a Democrat win.
The president began the week sounding resigned to Republican losses in November, telling House G.O.P. lawmakers on Tuesday: “They say that when you win the presidency, you lose the midterms.”
Whether his pressure will have an impact on those who broke with him on the war powers measure will be determined next week, when the Senate casts a decisive vote on the resolution.
It was not just Venezuela where Republicans sought to hold the White House in line. After days of Mr. Trump and his inner circle suggesting that Greenland might be next up for U.S. intervention, top Republicans had had enough. Senator Roger Wicker of Mississippi, who leads the Armed Services Committee and has consistently backed the administration despite some doubts, said flatly that the citizens of Greenland did not wish to be bought, and that the United States should respect their prerogative.
Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, who backed the war powers resolution, was even stronger, calling Trump administration rhetoric on Greenland profoundly troubling.
“I think most of us want to be able to just not only quiet that, but just make clear that is not only not going to happen — it is an option that has been taken off the table,” she said in a floor speech.
Across the Capitol, Republicans were also defying their leaders to bolster their own re-election chances. Seventeen of them sided with Democrats to support a three-year extension of pandemic-era Affordable Care Act subsidies, in what former Speaker Nancy Pelosi noted was a first for Republicans after years of condemning the health law.
While the measure has little chance of becoming law without changes, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, noted that many on Capitol Hill had been skeptical for months that Democrats could pull off such a win, saying the victory was one “a lot of folks in this institution believed was not possible.”
But the Republicans who backed the bill, many from competitive districts where they could lose their seats, said they had no choice but to give voters what they had demanded.
“Philosophically, I completely disagree with this,” said Representative Derrick Van Orden of Wisconsin. “But I’m not going to leave millions of Americans who truly need health care insurance in the lurch.”
Other signs of sprouting congressional independence were visible. The House passed a bipartisan package of spending bills that rejected many of the steep cuts Mr. Trump had requested, and that Democrats noted were carefully drawn to give the administration less opportunity to make unilateral funding decisions overruling Congress.
The Senate agreed to post a plaque honoring the police who protected the Capitol and lawmakers during the Jan. 6, 2021, pro-Trump riot, even as the White House this week falsely claimed in its own version of events that police officers were the ones who caused the violence. And Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said he would block any Department of Homeland Security nominees until Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, agreed to testify in the Senate after ducking earlier invitations.
Mr. Trump did avoid one congressional embarrassment this week, as the House failed to override his first vetoes of some fairly routine bills that he had rejected in his fights with interests in Colorado and Florida.
It was clear that many Republicans were ready to overrule Mr. Trump on legislation that had sailed through Congress with no opposition. But the back-to-back override votes came after his social media diatribe against the Republican senators who broke with him on the war powers measure. That outburst may have persuaded some G.O.P. lawmakers in the House to stay out of the line of fire.
Still, dozens of Republicans joined Democrats in the two unsuccessful override attempts, a notable development in the House, where unquestioning fealty to the president has been constant and nearly universal.
Democrats were relishing their wins over Mr. Trump and their newfound allies among Republicans, however short-lived they expected those alliances to be. Top Democrats suggested that reluctance among Republicans to blindly follow the president might be the shape of things to come as they accept that Mr. Trump has his own interests at heart, rather than their political fortunes.
“Public sentiment in terms of how Trump is behaving as president and what he’s doing as president keeps sinking and sinking and sinking,” Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, said after the war powers vote. “So I think on this issue and other issues, you’re going to find our Republican colleagues saying, ‘You know, maybe following Trump is like Thelma and Louise — right over the cliff.’”
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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