The “Friday news dump” was the first piece of Washington practice upturned by Donald Trump’s Executive Order (EO) on immigration.
It probably won’t be the last.
The order, and its fallout, may have changed political calculations and attitudes on Capital Hill, with consequences for the upcoming Supreme Court nomination, Republicans’ legislative agenda, and even the 2018 elections.
The news dump, in political and journalism lingo, refers to the practice of releasing controversial news on Friday afternoon, ensuring that it will escape widespread notice over the weekend. Trump waited until almost five o’clock to sign the EO Friday — after originally planning to sign it Thursday — and the White House didn’t release the text until more than two hours later, after the nightly network news.
The brave new world of social networking, however, proved more than capable of thwarting the news dump. Almost immediately, protests sprung up at dozens of airports across the country. Within 24 hours, tens of thousands participated in major demonstrations, including a massive gathering in Boston’s Copley Square.
It was continuation — and almost certainly not a culmination — of a two-week stretch in which a Trump resistance movement found its voice and power. It began with pressure on members of Congress to boycott Trump’s inauguration, exploded in the Women’s March, and has found expression in phone calls swamping Congressional offices.
Though protesting against the Trump administration, the movement’s energy has been partly directed at congressional Democrats who have been reluctant to charge full-bore at the new administration.
Democratic leaders in the U.S. House and Senate, along with most of the Massachusetts delegation, have tried to avoid an “obstructionist” label, instead seeking to demonstrate their willingness to cooperate. They believe that a show of helpfulness on some issues — an infrastructure funding bill, for example, and the less-offensive cabinet nominees — will make targeted opposition more effective, on the most important matters. They also have a cautious eye on the 2018 mid-term elections, which will see Senate Democrats trying to hold onto seats in states carried by Trump, and House Democrats trying to win back seats in Trump-voting districts.
The degree to which the movement is ahead of the party was clear when Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren found herself under attack from usually adoring progressive organizations, after she voted in favor of Ben Carson’s nomination to Housing and Urban Development.
Evidence suggests that the immigration EO may have prompted congressional Democrats to play catch-up.
It wasn’t just that they condemned the EO and joined the protests; they have started to come forward on other fronts.
On Monday morning, Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp from red North Dakota, announced her decision to vote against Education Secretary nominee Betsy DeVos. The same morning, Jeff Merkley of Oregon told Politico he plans to filibuster Trump’s yet-unnamed Supreme Court nominee, a tactic only previously employed once against a nominated justice. And Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York, widely seen as leading the cooperation-over-obstruction strategy, announced his intention to vote against five of Trump’s cabinet nominees (in addition to three he already opposed).
It might not have helped that Trump accused Schumer of “fake tears” over the EO, and that press secretary Sean Spicer reiterated that insult at Monday’s press briefing.
There is also increasing chatter about Senate Democrats entertaining the option of withholding unanimous consent –– an aggressive plan floated by former Minority Leader Harry Reid’s chief of staff in the Washington Post. That would force hours of floor debate on every vote, grinding the Senate down to a crawl.
But it’s not just Democrats in Congress who are looking more rebellious after this weekend’s events.
Since the election, the striking acquiescence of congressional Republicans to Trump has withstood stories about Russian election interference, concerns about his business conflicts, and even his public criticism of their legislation proposals.
Yet most GOP lawmakers failed to come to the administration’s defense on the immigration EO. Their silence was broken only by periodic criticisms, and non-committal statements.
The problem seemed to hinge less on the policy, than on the ham-handed execution — even worse, politically, because it makes them wary of how the administration will handle the rollout of everything in the future. Members were left uninformed about the details of the policy, and watched with confusion as the administration failed to clarify it to the public and the media. Those few who defended it, including Speaker Paul Ryan, had the rug pulled out when Trump surrogate Rudy Giuliani, and Trump himself, seemed to acknowledge that the policy was an attempt to ban Muslims; and when the White House appeared to backtrack on provisions, such as the applicability to Green Card holders.
Further distance was added to the rift between White House and congressional Republicans, when Spicer insisted that appropriate committee leaders had been consulted — which those leaders’ offices have denied in several reports.
One of those committee leaders, Appropriations Committee chair Rodney Frelinghuysen of New Jersey, released a statement Monday critical of Trump’s EO and warning that “Congress has important oversight responsibilities over all executive orders, which we intend to exercise.”
And, when Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham jointly released a statement of concern about the EO, Trump lashed back at them on Twitter, calling them “sadly weak on immigration,” and “always looking to start World War III.”
Those are two important Senate votes that Trump seemed to be alienating. An even more important one is Susan Collins of Maine. But Spicer appeared to insult her too. Collins had joined the chorus criticizing Trump’s statement marking Holocaust Remembrance Day on Friday, tweeting that its failure to mention the Jewish people “an historical mistake.” Asked about her tweet at the Monday briefing, Spicer railed against such criticism, calling it “pathetic.”
All of this comes on the heels of a Republican retreat in Philadelphia last week, which failed to bring clarity within the party on the way forward with its substantial legislative agenda — a problem that Trump added to, instead of helping solve.
Republican congressional leaders wanted to come out of Philadelphia with a clear message on its three top priorities: repeal and replace of ObamaCare; extensive tax reform; and undoing business regulations. Without guidance from Trump — and increasingly uncertain about what he might say publicly — that clarity never came. Meanwhile, the gathering was overwhelmed by Trump-induced headaches over inauguration crowd size, the CIA, voter fraud accusations, and torture policy — most of which Trump raised yet again in his rambling speech to the group on Thursday.
Instead of unifying, Washington Republicans look more fractured coming out of that Philadelphia retreat than they did going in. Fissures are showing between, for example, conservative members hell-bent on immediate ObamaCare repeal, and party leaders who are trying to forge a compromise on repeal first. Senate Republicans are worried about House Republicans passing legislation — including the regulation-rollback REINS Act — without due concern with how it will play in the other chamber. And budget-conscious members have started expressing reservations about some of the party’s costly agenda, including the trillion-dollar infrastructure plan that Trump wants atop that priority list.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are looking at Trump’s historically bad early job-approval numbers, and the obvious grassroots energy of anti-Trump protesters, and imagining a 2018 mid-term election that mirrors the Tea Party fueled gains of 2010. That year, Republicans gained 68 seats in the U.S. House, and six in the Senate.
We’re a very long way from knowing how those 2018 elections will really go. But at least for the moment, expectations of swift, unified Republican action seems as outdated as the Friday news dump.
