And speaking of Trump grudges…

Senate Republicans, after years of unblinking deference to Donald Trump, are returning to Washington this week with a newfound spirit of resistance. It’s not just that the president blindsided them by announcing his $1.8 billion “anti-weaponization” slush fund. It’s also a sense that Trump effectively broke their political contract when he took out two of their own: Sen. Bill Cassidy, who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges after January 6, and especially Sen. John Cornyn, who had the temerity to suggest, in 2023, that the party should find a new standard bearer.

This realization comes a bit late, of course. Senate Republicans stood by as colleagues including Sens. Jeff Flake, Bob Corker, and Mitt Romney retired in previous cycles rather than face the president’s wrath in a primary, and as more than a half-dozen House incumbents—including Liz Cheney and Tom Rice—have been deposed by Trump-backed challengers. Yet many Republicans continued to believe that they occupied a different category. Cassidy voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. despite his reservations as a physician, and Cornyn even introduced legislation to name a highway after Trump—a nice touch. Yet the president cavalierly ended their careers anyway.

Cornyn, who lost his primary after Trump endorsed Ken Paxton, summed up the mood inside the Republican conference by invoking the fable of the scorpion and the frog as he publicly processed the betrayal. It’s a variation of the cautionary tale that Trump often told on the campaign trail: The scorpion asks the frog to carry him safely across the river; then, halfway across, the scorpion stings the frog, condemning them both to drown. When the frog asks why, Cornyn wrote on X, the scorpion replies, “It’s my character.”

In many ways, the parable may foreshadow Trump’s own fate in Washington. With the most competitive primaries behind them and multiple Senate Republicans leaving next year, there are fewer reasons than ever to acquiesce to the president’s demands. And though the midterms are still months away, many are already reading the polls that herald the beginning of Trump’s lame duck era. “Stabbing Republican senators has put them in a place where these people could destroy their agenda, and there’s nothing the White House can do,” said one senior Republican Senate aide.

Republicans are now refusing to move on ICE and Customs and Border Protection in order to extract concessions from the White House over the proposed anti-weaponization fund. According to aides, senators have no intention of relenting unless the administration accepts meaningful guardrails. Senate G.O.P. proposals include judicial review of payments, congressional input on appointments to the five-person panel that decides who has been the victim of “weaponization,” and clear eligibility requirements.

But in the 10 days since senators stormed out of a meeting about the fund with Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche—which one aide described as downright funereal—the administration has neither offered concessions nor entertained those proposals, aides have told me. The result is a stalemate, and the Senate sees little reason to surrender. Even a federal court decision on Friday halting the creation of the fund failed to break the impasse. “Until there’s clarity on that issue” from the Justice Department, “we’re going to have to hold,” one senior Republican aide told me, noting that the opposition is coming from “more than a small group.”

The prospects for other Republican priorities are similarly grim. The party is already divided on an extension of Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which expires in two weeks. If Trump continues to demand that it be paired with the SAVE America Act—the voter ID and proof-of-citizenship bill that didn’t have the votes even before Trump angered the Senate—the bill’s prospects are even worse. The National Defense Authorization Act, which Congress prides itself on having passed each year for more than six decades, is looking increasingly daunting as well. “What used to be easy things are no longer easy,” another senior G.O.P. aide said. “I don’t know how we’re going to get any of this stuff done.”

Republicans have been known to cave under pressure, but aides tell me this time is different. Don’t expect Cornyn to push his proposal to designate a stretch of interstate between Texas and Montana “I-47,” for Trump, the 47th president. As for Trump’s face on a new $250 bill? Not a chance.