As Trump pursues his trade agenda, other countries’ views shift on ties with China:

These opinions have shifted over time, and there’s no telling where they’ll go in the future. But as the U.S. tries to shift its trade policy and tries to counter China geopolitically, these surveys offer some early evidence of backlash in one realm that could affect the other.

Republicans keep voting for bills they say they don’t like

By Sahil Kapur

There’s a new trend in Congress that has emerged in President Donald Trump’s second term: Republican lawmakers across the ideological spectrum keep voting for bills they have publicly criticized.

In some cases, GOP members of Congress have explicitly threatened to vote “no” on bills they say are deeply flawed before eventually folding and voting “yes.” In others, they warn bills they have voted for will require fixing down the road.

A few notable examples:

Medicaid: Two weeks after voting to pass a sweeping domestic policy bill that cuts Medicaid by about $1 trillion, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., introduced a bill to repeal some of those cuts.

“Now is the time to prevent any future cuts to Medicaid from going into effect,” Hawley said in a statement.

Hawley said he feared the party’s megabill would cause long-term harm if the Medicaid cuts are fully implemented, but still voted for it because it will deliver more hospital money for Missouri in the first four years.

“You can’t get everything you want in one piece of legislation. I like a lot of what we did. I don’t like some of it,” he told reporters after unveiling his own measure on Tuesday.

National debt: Nowhere has this dynamic been more pronounced than with the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, whose members have repeatedly threatened to oppose bills before acquiescing under pressure from Trump. With Trump’s megabill, they complained about red ink: It’s expected to add $3.3 trillion to the national debt over 10 years, according to the Congressional Budget Office.

“What the Senate did is unconscionable,” Rep. Ralph Norman, R-S.C., said in a Rules Committee meeting, vowing that “I’ll vote against it here and I’ll vote against it on the floor.” He ultimately voted for that bill, unamended, after conservatives were told Congress would consider future bills to lower the debt.

Rescissions: And in the run-up to the votes on a package to cancel $9 billion in previously approved funding for foreign aid and public broadcasting, several Republicans expressed serious concerns with its substance, its deference to the executive branch and the damage it could do to bipartisan dealmaking on government funding in the future.

“I suspect we’re going to find out there are some things that we’re going to regret. Some second- and third-order effects. And I suspect that when we do, we’ll have to come back and fix it,” said Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina, before voting in favor of the bill.

Bottom line: It isn’t unusual for lawmakers to back legislation they call imperfect. But this year, that contrast has become more stark. It comes as Trump has solidified his grasp over the GOP base, resulting in lawmakers growing increasingly leery of crossing him and risking their political futures.

Read more from Sahil →

✉️ Mailbag: Could Democrats undo the ‘big, beautiful bill’?

Thanks to everyone who emailed us! This week’s reader question is on the future of the megabill President Donald Trump signed into law.

“If the Democrats gain control of both chambers of Congress how much of the Republicans bill can they change?”

In theory, Democrats could change much, if not all, of what’s in the new tax cut and spending law if they were in power in Washington, using the same party-line “budget reconciliation” process Republicans just utilized. But they won’t be in that position for a while — and they may not want to completely do away with the sweeping package.

Let’s start with the first point. Given Republicans’ tiny majority in the chamber and the usual headwinds the party in power faces during a midterm, Democrats have a good shot at winning the control of the House next year. But the Senate is a different story. As we’ve written, Democrats face an uphill climb to the majority in 2026, and the 2028 map doesn’t look much more favorable, with the number of states splitting their presidential and Senate tickets dwindling.

Then of course, even if Democrats manage to take control of both chambers of Congress, they won’t have an opportunity at the White House until 2028.

As for the second point, there are a lot of aspects of the “big, beautiful bill” Democrats would like to reverse, most notably the cuts to Medicaid and food assistance programs. But there are others, such as “no tax on tips,” that have garnered support from Democrats.

And while Democrats support increasing the current tax rates on the top earners, they wouldn’t want the 2017 tax cuts that the law extends to completely expire. That would mean tax hikes on middle- and lower-income Americans, too.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner and Dylan Ebs.

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