The Senate vote-a-rama is exposing a new class of vulnerable Republicans — and how Senate Majority Leader John Thune plans to protect them.

• 🔎 Why it matters: Most vote-a-ramas are performative. This one is revealing.

⚠️ The intrigue: In the day's opening act — a series of Democratic amendments designed to force uncomfortable votes for Republicans — Thune relied on Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) to help defeat a Democratic proposal targeting the Trump administration's "anti-weaponization fund."

• Cassidy's vote allowed a pair of politically vulnerable Republicans — Sens. Jon Husted (Ohio) and Dan Sullivan (Alaska) — to side with Democrats without jeopardizing the amendment's defeat.
• For both senators, it marked one of their first meaningful breaks with a president whose political standing appears to be sliding.
• The vote failed, 49-50. Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) joined Husted and Sullivan in voting for the amendment.

🎈 Zoom in: On Trump's ballroom, the universe of Republicans willing to buck their party expanded, with six GOP senators voting with Democrats to bar any funds for it. But the threshold for that vote was at 60, leading it to fail.

• Collins, Husted and Sullivan again voted with the Democrats.
• But so did Sens. Jerry Moran (R-Kan.), Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Cassidy. Moran is up for reelection in 2028.

📉 Zoom out: The vote-a-rama comes as Senate Republicans grapple with deteriorating polling and a series of Trump decisions that have led some GOP senators to question his political judgment.

• Many Republicans are privately skeptical of Trump's choice of FHFA Director Bill Pulte as acting director of national intelligence.
• Trump sought to ease concerns today by announcing that Pulte would not be his permanent nominee — a move aimed in part at preventing the nomination from complicating the reauthorization of Section 702 of FISA.

Between the lines: Even if Republicans defeat all the Democrats' amendments on the vote-a-rama, final passage isn't assured, especially if the "anti-weaponization fund" isn't definitively addressed.

• "There's enough people who really have great, grave concerns about the fund," Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) said.

🛡️ The bottom line: Cassidy, whom Trump forced into an early retirement, is serving as a political shield for colleagues trying to avoid a similar fate.

— Hans Nichols

The majority of House Democrats voted with Republicans today to defeat a Lebanon war powers resolution forced to the House floor by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).

Why it matters: It's a blow to the anti-war left just a day after the House passed a similar measure constraining Trump's ability to wage war in Iran.

• Democratic leadership spent months behind the scenes ahead of yesterday's war powers vote to get the party's most staunchly pro-Israel lawmakers on board, along with a handful of Republicans.
• Today's vote reveals that there are still deep divisions between progressive and centrist Democrats on Middle East policy despite their unity on Iran.

Driving the news: The House voted 92 to 324 against Tlaib's resolution, which would have directed President Trump to remove all U.S. armed forces from Lebanon within seven days of passage.

What they're saying: House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and his top deputies came out against the resolution ahead of the vote, saying in a statement, "there are no U.S. service-members involved in combat operations or hostilities in Lebanon."

• The leaders would support an alternative resolution that would preserve U.S. coordination with the Lebanese Armed Forces in their fight against Hezbollah, they said.

— Andrew Solender