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By Nathan Layne, Bo Erickson and Joseph Ax

May 20 (Reuters) – Sixteen months into his second presidency, Donald Trump may be as unpopular as he’s ever been among the American electorate – but his grip on his core base of MAGA voters remains unshaken.

That power was on full display over the last two weeks, as Trump ousted a string of fellow Republicans he considered apostates for not showing him enough personal fealty. The president’s revenge tour continued on Tuesday, when a hand-picked loyalist defeated U.S. Representative Thomas Massie, a frequent critic, in a Kentucky nominating contest.

But Trump’s success in purging the party of dissenters could also hurt its chances of retaining control of Congress in November’s midterm elections, some Republican strategists said.

Trump’s actions appear aimed at mobilizing his most diehard supporters, rather than reaching out to independent or moderate Republican voters who will likely play a determinative role in highly competitive races.

And the Republican candidates in those contests may feel pressure to tether themselves even more closely to Trump to avoid becoming the latest targets of his ire – even though it may cost them voters outside the Make America Great Again base.

“Anytime the party in power in the midterm elections faces headwinds, the president should be looking to grow his coalition,” said Jeff Grappone, a former adviser to several Republican senators.

With the Iran war driving energy costs higher, Trump’s approval rating was at 35% in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that closed on Monday, reflecting growing concern about inflation and the cost of living.

‘ADDITION BY SUBTRACTION’

Trump’s spring retribution campaign notched its first victory on May 5, when five Indiana state senators who had bucked his demand to redraw the state’s congressional map lost to Trump-endorsed challengers.

On Saturday, Republican U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy – whose sin was voting to convict Trump at his 2021 impeachment trial over the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol – finished far behind a Trump-backed candidate.

And on Tuesday, Massie, who had cast several votes that angered Trump, was defeated.

The same day, Trump endorsed Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for the state’s U.S. Senate race over the incumbent, John Cornyn, rejecting months of entreaties from Senate Republicans worried that the scandal-ridden Paxton could cost them a reliably Republican seat in November.

Even if Paxton ultimately prevails in the fall, Republicans will likely be forced to spend more money on that race, draining resources from competitive Senate races in states such as North Carolina and Georgia, said Rob Godfrey, a Republican strategist in South Carolina.

Chuck Coughlin, a Phoenix-based strategist who left the Republican Party in 2017 and now identifies as an independent, described Trump’s latest purges as a “purification exercise” that could alienate the smaller but significant minority of Republican voters who backed Cornyn, Massie and Cassidy.

“It’s addition by subtraction,” Coughlin said. “He’s shrinking the party.”

Trump dismissed concerns that he might be harming his party’s chances in November by going after incumbent Republicans.

“They’ll be alright with it,” he told reporters on Wednesday, referring to Republican leaders. “They want to win. I know how to win – I think I’ve proven that, haven’t I?”

VULNERABLE REPUBLICANS IN BIND

Trump’s refusal to brook any disloyalty could make it more difficult for Republicans in vulnerable seats to oppose him on politically divisive votes, such as funding for the president’s ballroom or forcing an end to the Iran war.

Rachel Blum, a political science professor at the University of Oklahoma, said the party in control has traditionally given members of Congress room to break with it in the run-up to the midterm election, especially when the president is unpopular.

“That’s exactly the conditions we have right now, but you aren’t seeing that kind of freedom or leeway being given to members,” she said.

A person familiar with Republican strategy pushed back against that narrative, saying Trump has largely targeted Republicans in very safe districts – like Massie and Cassidy – while allowing some members in competitive districts to show bipartisanship or even break with the president on certain issues.

Trump on Friday will campaign with Republican U.S. Representative Mike Lawler, whose New York district is widely seen as one of Democrats’ most viable pickup opportunities in November. Lawler has broken with Trump at times, including siding with Democrats on legislation protecting Haitian immigrants from deportation.

But Trump has also shown a willingness to go after Republicans in more competitive races. In remarks to reporters on Wednesday, he criticized U.S. Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican from Pennsylvania whom Democrats have targeted in the midterms and who is one of only three Republican House members to vote to end the Iran war.

“I don’t know what’s with him,” Trump said. “He likes voting against Trump. You know what happens with that … doesn’t work out well.” 

REFERENDUM ON TRUMP

Trump’s successful expulsions may also endanger his agenda in Washington, where Republicans’ razor-thin congressional majorities mean they can only afford to lose a handful of votes.

Less than 72 hours after losing his primary, Cassidy abruptly switched sides and backed a Democratic measure to force Trump to end the war or seek congressional authorization, helping to push it through the Senate after seven previous failed attempts.

“Trump is certainly in command of his own party, but he’s complicated his governing position on Capitol Hill,” Grappone said. “We now have Republican senators that he’s opposed or torpedoed who have nothing left to lose.”

Brian Seitchik, an Arizona-based Republican strategist, said the midterms will largely be a referendum on Trump’s record no matter what, making it difficult for Republicans to distance themselves from him even if they were inclined to try. 

“As a general rule, the parties swim and drown together,” he said.

But, he noted, Trump has a track record of upending political assumptions.

“It’s conventional wisdom to say if you’re not with Trump, then you lose the primary, and if you’re with Trump, you lose the general election,” Seitchik said. “That’s the conventional wisdom of the day, but Trump again continues to defy gravity.”

(Reporting by Nathan Layne, Bo Erickson and Joseph Ax; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Deepa Babington)

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WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican senators are considering whether to drop a proposal for $1 billion in security money for the White House complex and President Donald Trump’s ballroom after it has failed to win enough party support on Capitol Hill.

Pressured by the White House, Republicans have tried to add the money to a roughly $70 billion bill to restore funding to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the Border Patrol. But the security proposal has met with backlash from some GOP lawmakers who are questioning the cost and the lack of detail from the White House and U.S. Secret Service about how the taxpayer dollars would be used.

Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., said Wednesday that the bill was “back to square one” without the security money because “the votes are not there.”

Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., said the effort to add the security package to the bill was a “bad idea” and he does not think there is enough backing to pass it, even if it were reduced.

The text of the bill has not yet been released. But Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., acknowledged “ongoing vote issues” as leaders try to measure Republican support, as well as “ongoing parliamentarian issues” as they try to figure out what will be allowed in the bill under the chamber’s rules.

The wrangling comes as Democrats have criticized Republicans for trying to fund Trump’s ballroom when voters are concerned about basic affordability issues — and as some GOP lawmakers have grown increasingly frustrated with Trump. Several GOP senators have spoken out against the administration’s $1.776 billion settlement fund designed to compensate Trump’s allies who believe they have been persecuted, and many were upset by the president’s endorsement Tuesday of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton in the party primary runoff next week against Sen. John Cornyn.

“There’s always a consequence with taking on United States senators,” Thune said Wednesday. The president “obviously has his favorites and people he wants to endorse and that’s his prerogative. But what we have to deal with up here is moving the agenda, and obviously that can become slightly more complicated.”

The “anti-weaponization” fund, part of a settlement that resolves Trump’s lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service over the leak of his tax returns, has unexpectedly become one of the main complications in the bill. Democrats said they would force votes to block it or place restrictions on it.

Democrats have an opening because Republicans are trying to pass the immigration enforcement bill through a complicated budget process that requires a long series of amendment votes. Democrats are considering multiple amendments potentially to block that new fund outright or to ban any payments to Trump supporters who harmed law enforcement officers in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol.

Those amendments, along with others, could pass as a growing number of Republicans have voiced reservations about the fund. So Republicans are now discussing their own last-minute add to head that off, potentially placing some parameters on the settlement and who could receive compensation, according to two people with knowledge of the private discussions who requested anonymity to discuss them.

Thune — who said Tuesday that he is “not a big fan” of the settlement and doesn’t see a purpose for it —- said Wednesday that any new language potentially putting restrictions on the settlement is “a work in progress.”

It’s unclear how any Senate Republican changes would be received in the House, even as some Republicans there have also criticized the settlement.

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., said Wednesday that the House will pass the bill “whatever form it takes.”

As Republicans challenged the settlement and parts of his agenda, Trump unloaded on the Senate in a social media post.

He urged Republicans to fire the Senate parliamentarian, Elizabeth MacDonough, who said over the weekend that parts of the $1 billion security proposal cannot remain in the ICE and Border Patrol bill. Trump also renewed his long-standing calls for the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, a Republican bill that would require all voters to prove U.S. citizenship, and to end the Senate filibuster.

Republicans need to “get smart and tough,” Trump said, or “you’ll all be looking for a job much sooner than you thought possible!”

While they have been loyal to Trump on most issues, Senate Republicans have resisted his repeated calls — even in his first term — to kill the filibuster, which triggers a 60-vote threshold in the Senate.

Hanging over the growing GOP rift is Trump’s surprise endorsement of Paxton. That intervention has Republican senators privately fuming that it could cost them their majority in November as they view the incumbent, Cornyn, as the better candidate in the November general election.

Under the Secret Service request, about $220 million would pay for security improvements related to the ballroom. The rest would go for a new screening center for visitors, training and other security measures.

Tillis said the bill should not have included the other security improvements “because it’s just giving everybody the ‘billion-dollar ballroom.’”

Several other Republicans in the House and Senate have questioned the request, and senators left a briefing with the director of the Secret Service last week saying they needed a lot more information.

People “can’t afford groceries and gasoline and healthcare, and we’re going to do a billion dollars for a ballroom?” asked Louisiana Sen. Bill Cassidy, who lost reelection in his GOP primary on Saturday after Trump endorsed one of his opponents.

Left in the bill is the money for ICE and Border Patrol, which Democrats have blocked for months in protest of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement crackdown.

Democrats demanded reforms for the agencies, but negotiations with the White House yielded little progress. So Republicans are using the complicated budget maneuver called reconciliation — the same process that allowed them to pass Trump’s tax and spending cuts bill last year — to fund the agencies through the end of Trump’s term with a simple majority and no Democratic votes.

Still, passage requires signoff from the parliamentarian, and unity from Republicans.

“We’re working on it,” Thune said as he left the Capitol on Wednesday evening.

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AP Congressional Correspondent Lisa Mascaro contributed to this report.

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By Patricia Zengerle

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – A group of Democratic U.S. senators introduced a resolution to stop President Donald Trump from using the military against Cuba on Wednesday, as his administration escalated pressure on the island’s government by indicting former President Raul Castro.

Democrats Tim Kaine of Virginia, Adam Schiff of California and Ruben Gallego of Arizona introduced a War Powers Resolution to block the use of the U.S. armed forces against the Communist-ruled island.

They cited the Republican president’s repeated threats to send in the troops to change the government in Havana and reports that the U.S. Southern Command has been ordered to draw up attack plans, even though Cuba does not pose a significant national security threat to the U.S.

“The U.S. military is the best in the world, but our servicemembers shouldn’t be sent into harm’s way when there’s no clear benefit to the United States,” said Kaine, a leader of efforts in Congress to enforce the Constitution’s provision that the legislature, not the president, has the power to declare war.

In a rare rebuke to Trump, the Republican-majority Senate voted on Tuesday to advance a resolution to end the Iran war unless the administration obtains Congress’ authorization. It was the eighth time this year such a resolution was introduced in the Senate.

Although members of Congress, including some Republicans, are concerned about Trump’s multiple deployments of U.S. forces, it was not immediately clear how a Cuba war powers resolution would fare in a chamber where Trump’s fellow Republicans hold a 53-47 majority.

Last month, the Senate voted by 51 to 47, almost entirely along party lines, to block a similar Cuba war powers resolution. At the time, Republicans argued that there were no active U.S. hostilities against Cuba, so the resolution was unnecessary.

Trump has increased pressure on Cuba by imposing a fuel blockade that has triggered sustained power outages and dealt fresh blows to the island’s already struggling economy.

“The last thing that our country needs right now is a regime change war in Cuba based on imaginary threats to the homeland that would devastate the Cuban people and generate a man-made migration crisis,” Kaine said in a statement.

(Reporting by Patricia Zengerle;Editing by Sanjeev Miglani)

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By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff

WASHINGTON, May 20 (Reuters) – Since President Donald Trump’s administration announced the creation of a $1.776 billion fund for Americans deemed to be victims of political “weaponization,” January 6 Capitol riot defendants and other Trump allies have scrambled to figure out how to get their share. 

Enrique Tarrio, the Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy over the January 6, 2021 riot, said he planned to apply to the fund, assuming he could get between $2 and $5 million. 

“I’m not greedy,” Tarrio said. “But my life was all fucked up because of this.”    

Trump pardoned more than 1,500 January 6 defendants last year. Some have now begun to calculate the cost of their prosecution, jail time and businesses lost in the hope of compensation for what they regard as abuses by the Justice Department under former President Joe Biden.

Peter Ticktin, an attorney representing more than 400 January 6 defendants, said the fund may not be enough.

“People lost multi-million dollar businesses while they were locked up,” he said. “I don’t think the DOJ is ready for us yet.”

Trump also suggested the fund may be too small. “You’re talking about peanuts,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “It destroyed the lives of many, many people.”

Democrats and some Republicans have questioned the legality of the fund, as well as a part of the settlement “forever barring” the IRS from auditing past tax claims by Trump, his relatives and his businesses.

Two police officers who defended the U.S. Capitol from Trump supporters on January 6, filed a lawsuit on Wednesday seeking to halt the compensation fund, which they described as a “taxpayer-funded slush fund” for Trump followers who engaged in violence.

    U.S. ​acting Attorney General Todd Blanche told lawmakers on Tuesday that even people who assaulted police on January 6 would not be barred from receiving money.

Tarrio, for his part, thinks those who assaulted police should get their share.

“The Justice Department overprosecuted for political gain,” he said. “So everyone deserves to get money.”

In a Wednesday letter, Democratic Representatives Jamie Raskin and Richard E. Neal asked Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Blanche and IRS CEO Frank Bisignano, who negotiated the settlement, whether individual awards would be capped and what reports would be made public.

“Never in American history has a President pursued corruption this brazenly or on such a colossal scale,” they wrote.

Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware said on Wednesday he would try to block the fund through spending-bill amendments, though he acknowledged the issue might have to be resolved separately.

Ticktin, the January 6 lawyer, said he plans to file hundreds of claims once the Justice Department creates the application process and the attorney general appoints the five-member commission overseeing the fund. He said he suggested the idea to Trump, his high school classmate, in a March email, but doesn’t know if that had any impact on the creation of the fund.

Some January 6 defendants praised the Justice Department for adopting terms they have long used — including “lawfare,” “weaponization” and “victims” — and cast the fund as payback for years of injustice.

“Now liberals wanna cry about righting the wrong, too bad,” wrote Jennie Carso-Heinl, who pleaded guilty to parading, demonstrating or picketing in a Capitol building, on X. “Justice is coming.”

At least one Trump ally has already made a formal request: Michael Caputo, a former administration official, asked Blanche for $2.7 million in “restitution” over investigations by the Biden administration and special counsel Robert Mueller.

Some Democrats have floated applying too, arguing that Trump’s Justice Department has pursued flimsy political cases against them. Blanche told lawmakers Tuesday the fund could pay members of both parties.

Former FBI Director James Comey, twice indicted since Trump began his second term, said on CNN that he has considered applying.

“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, personal, political or ideological reasons,” Comey said. “So I’m guessing I’ll be in line.”

For some Trump supporters, though, the fund may not go far enough.

Barry Ramey, a Proud Boys affiliate convicted of attacking police officers, said he is unsure whether to apply because taking money could jeopardize his claim against the Bureau of Prisons.

“My commitment to justice is not about the money,” he said. “I want to show they acted illegally.”

But if he could secure $2 million, he said, he might reconsider.

(Reporting by Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Editing by Michael Learmonth and Alistair Bell)

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