President Trump finds himself in a predicament that would be painfully familiar to the man he succeeded in the Oval Office.

🪓 Why it matters: President Biden had Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who casually chopped his $3.5 trillion Build Back Better plan down to roughly $1 trillion. Now, Trump faces a blocking coalition of his own creation.

• Sens. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) are barreling toward retirement, while their colleague John Cornyn (R-Texas) could soon be (involuntarily) joining them.
• Trump's loyalty litmus tests led him to threaten to primary Tillis, actively campaign against Cassidy and endorse Cornyn's GOP opponent. All three are poised to take revenge.
• Complicating Trump's path to 50 votes are Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska)— a Republican he unsuccessfully tried to defeat in 2022 — and Sen. Susan Collins, who is fighting for her political life in Maine. Both voted to convict Trump after Jan. 6.

😩 Zoom in: Senate GOP leader John Thune is technically still the majority leader, but in practical terms, the Republican majority is shrinking — at least when it comes to Trump's reconciliation package.

• That became abundantly clear today when GOP leaders scrapped plans to vote on a more than $70 billion package for ICE and Border Patrol after failure, embarrassment — or both — became foregone conclusions.
• The White House ballroom security funding had been one of Trump's top demands as part of the broader package, but leaders were far short of the 50 votes needed to preserve the provision.

😵‍💫 A bigger problem for Trump: the dozens of lawmakers who were confused and concerned about Trump's new $1.776 billion anti-weaponization fund.

• The nature of a Senate vote-a-rama would have allowed Democrats to offer amendments to restrict the payouts, and those would have passed.
• "We made clear that we felt that this corruption was so vile that we were going to do everything we can in reconciliation to try to get it undone," Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer said.

📚 Zoom out: Trump's presidency has largely been defined by Republican loyalty to him — not defections from him. But every modern president has eventually been constrained by members of his own party.

• President George W. Bush saw his signature tax cut plans pared back, then lost his Senate majority after Sen. Jim Jeffords of Vermont defected from the Republican Party.
• President Obama watched Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut (then an independent) kill the public option during the health care debate in his first year in office. The following year, Obama's cap-and-trade climate proposal failed to advance in a Senate that Democrats controlled 59-41.
• And Trump himself saw his effort to repeal Obamacare collapse after Sen. John McCain's (R-Ariz.) dramatic thumbs-down vote.

The bottom line: Trump's reconciliation problems are not irreconcilable — but resolving them will take patience, creativity and compromise.

• "Different members have different issues," Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) said. "We just need more time to resolve them."

— Hans Nichols

House GOP leadership pulled a scheduled vote tonight to rein in Trump's military campaign in Iran after it became clear they did not have the votes to defeat it.

Why it matters: It would have been Congress' first successful rebuke of Trump's Iran war effort after multiple Democratic-led war powers attempts had failed.

• Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), the one Democrat who has consistently voted against Iran war powers resolutions, was planning to flip his vote to yes.
• Four Republicans, Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-Pa.), Thomas Massie (R-Ky.), Warren Davidson (R-Ohio) and Tom Barrett (R-Mich.) have voted in support of the measure previously.
• The vote is largely symbolic, as Trump can veto the measure.

Driving the news: GOP leaders plan to bring the measure back up when the chamber returns from its weeklong Memorial Day recess.

• Leaders held open a measure to establish a women's museum for 45 minutes as they tried to whip against the war powers resolution.
• Democrats were infuriated by the move, with House Rules Committee ranking member Jim McGovern (D-Mass.) being shouted down by the presiding officer as he attempted to question it.
• "We've gone from losing by one to tying last week to this chicken s*** retreat they did tonight," Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.) told us.

Between the lines: GOP absences would have allowed the measure to pass.

• Speaker Mike Johnson can afford only a handful of defections on party-line votes when the House is at full attendance.

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— Kate Santaliz and Andrew Solender