President Trump lost a big one when he caved to Nancy Pelosi's demand on the spending bill. Does that mean that “it's all over for Trump,” as headlines have regularly blared? No. But it does mean that until he reasserts his authority, the locus of power is with the speaker and not with the president. Power unused is power lost. It's a political truth that Democrats understand and Republicans pretend doesn't exist.
What is frustrating about this for supporters of border integrity is that the defeat was entirely self-inflicted. It didn't have to happen at all. In fact, the president had the whip hand — if he had only recognized it and chosen to use it. Adrian Vermeule, a constitutional law professor at Harvard, noted on Twitter that “Trump's advantage in various negotiations, for a time, was that he seemed crazy and capable of doing something genuinely rash if he didn't get his way. Lately he (or his advisers) have become excessively rational, and they're getting slaughtered.”
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