ALWAYS BET ON THE dEEP sTATE:

On Monday, the Senate formally adopted an amendment to a broader Middle East policy bill, 70 to 26, that rebuked the president for what Republicans saw as a precipitous withdrawal of troops from Afghanistan and Syria.

In December, Republican senators broke with him to call for the withdrawal of American support for Saudi Arabia's war in Yemen, as they recoiled from his inaction in the face of the kingdom's murder of a Washington Post columnist, Jamal Khashoggi.

[T]he most important critic of the declaration is Mr. McConnell. "I don't think much of that idea," Mr. McConnell said last month when asked about the declaration. "I hope he doesn't go down that path."

Mr. McConnell, according to three people familiar with his thinking, has grown increasingly frustrated with the White House in recent days, telling associates that he thinks members of the president's staff have failed to adequately brief him on the legislative and political perils of moving ahead with a disaster declaration.

During his White House meeting, disclosed by The Washington Post, Mr. McConnell predicted that Speaker Nancy Pelosi would have the House immediately pass a "resolution of disapproval" attempting to block him from using existing funding for the wall.

Any senator from either party could then demand a vote, because the resolution would be deemed "privileged." Mr. McConnell told Mr. Trump that he would have no choice but to schedule a floor vote on the measure within 15 days, and Republican aides have estimated that between three and 10 Republicans would side with the chamber's Democrats against Mr. Trump.

That would force the president into a politically costly effort to keep the Senate from overriding his veto of the resolution, even as Democrats moved to block him in the courts.

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