Michael Barbaro

From New York Times, I'm Michael Barbaro.

This is The Daily.

In ways big and small, the Republican-controlled Congress has begun rebelling against President Trump as never before — on everything from the war in Iran to his plan to use taxpayer money to pay his allies.

Today, Congressional Editor Julie Davis on whether the uprising is a preview of a new dynamic in Washington or a temporary show of independence that will vanish just as quickly as it arrived.

It's Monday, June 8th.

Julie?

It's wonderful to see you.

Great to see you, Michael.

Thank you for coming on the show.

I appreciate it.

Thanks for having me.

I would say, Julie, I don't think you're going to contest this, that from the first moment of Trump's second term, the question on kind of everyone's mind was whether the manner in which the president had consolidated his power had basically rendered this Congress, this Republican Congress, irrelevant, right?

I mean, it very much looked like a co-equal branch of government was choosing subservience very willingly.

Right.

And we started to ask the question, is Congress over?

And the answer over the past 10 days or so seemed to change.

And now it feels more like a no, it's not over.

Yeah, I mean, I think in the first months of President Trump's second term, we were actually surprised on the Hill to see the degree to which Republicans were just deferring to him on everything, not just refusing to challenge him on things, but actively kind of giving back their power on some pretty key things, on spending, on

on trade and tariffs, on foreign policy, things that you typically see Congress jealously guarding as its own prerogatives, finding every possible way to give it over to the White House and really even just avoiding voting on things altogether.

Right.