The story hasn’t dominated front pages, but a rather dramatic fight has unfolded in recent weeks on Capitol Hill over extending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, or FISA, which was set to expire. Many members, including some of the more libertarian-minded members of the House Republican conference, have demanded new privacy safeguards to the surveillance law, while GOP leaders insist on maintaining the status quo.

Donald Trump and his White House team have weighed in, publicly and privately, to pressure Republican lawmakers to reauthorize the law without changes. So far, the presidential lobbying hasn’t worked. After many GOP lawmakers balked, the House, shortly after 2 a.m. ET, scrambled to approve a short-term extension to allow time for further negotiations. The new deadline is April 30.

The developments are notable in their own right, but stepping back, it’s hard not to notice that the president issued a directive to House Republicans — and his demands went unmet.

Hours earlier, something similar happened on an entirely different issue. The Wall Street Journal reported:

The House passed a bipartisan measure Thursday that would reinstate temporary legal protections for Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. …

The 224-204 vote marks a rare GOP rebuke of President Trump’s agenda. Trump maligned Haitian immigrants on the campaign trail and moved to strip their legal protections, known as Temporary Protected Status, soon after taking office. The bill will next head to the Senate, where the prospects for a vote are unclear.

At issue are TPS protections for roughly 350,000 Haitians, who were eligible for work permits. The Republican administration, despite Trump’s earlier campaign promises, decided to revoke those protections, which were set to formally expire in February, making the Haitians eligible for deportation.

Democrats launched a discharge petition, it picked up some GOP support, and the measure ultimately passed with the backing of 10 House Republicans — the first time in the current  Congress that the Republican White House has faced real pushback on immigration policy.

In case that weren’t quite enough, also on Thursday, the House narrowly turned away a war powers resolution on the U.S. military offensive in Iran. The New York Times reported on the intraparty tensions over the conflict:

But even as the G.O.P. thwarted the measure, some in the party indicated that support for the conflict, now nearing its eighth week, was not open-ended, and could wane as an initial statutory deadline approaches within weeks for Mr. Trump to either withdraw American troops or certify to Congress it is not yet safe for U.S. troops to withdraw.

After the vote, Representative Brian Mast of Florida, the Republican chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, signaled that patience within his party was running thin and that a resolution to halt the military campaign could very well pass in the coming weeks.

All of this comes on the heels of related incidents in which some GOP lawmakers — not an overwhelming number, but enough to prove consequential — rebuffed presidential orders on trade policy, artificial intelligence policy, Trump’s crusade to acquire Greenland, White House-backed spending cuts and collective bargaining rights for federal workers.

To be sure, it’s best not to overstate matters. Across both chambers, there are 270 Republicans in Congress, and most of them continue to act like Trump employees.

But there’s a growing list of examples of GOP lawmakers telling the president the one word he hates most: no.

Conventional wisdom suggests that Trump’s control over congressional Republicans is complete and unrelenting. The president barks orders and GOP lawmakers on Capitol Hill obey, motivated by some combination of fear, partisan allegiance, loyalty and ideological agreement.

But with the president’s approval rating sinking to unusually low levels and Republican members expressing understandable concern about their own electoral futures, Trump’s grip appears to be slipping.

A recent New York Times analysis noted, “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.”

That was published in January. It’s arguably worse now.

An adept president with extensive leadership experience might be able to navigate these waters and take steps to keep his GOP allies in line. Trump, however, appears to have no idea how to do this, which suggests his troubles will only get worse as the midterm elections draw closer.

This post updates our related earlier coverage.

The post Trump’s grip on Congress slips (again) as several Republicans buck White House demands appeared first on MS NOW.

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