Trump’s power may never be the same after Ed Martin’s Senate defeat | Opinion
When Donald Trump stepped into the Oval Office on Jan. 20, he unleashed a tide of his highest priority executive actions – declaring a national emergency on the U.S.-Mexico border, freezing federal hiring and regulations and rescinding 78 of Joe Biden’s executive orders. Among those day one actions was appointing former Missouri GOP chairman and “Stop the Steal” activist Ed Martin as D.C.’s U.S. Attorney. Trump was so eager to have Martin take office that he gave him a temporary appointment to the job even before his nomination was sent to the U.S. Senate.
On Thursday, for the first time, one of Trump’s first-day priorities has been undone, not by activist judges or carping Democrats, but by Republican Senate opposition that took direct aim at one of Trump’s most dearly held illusions — his ridiculous claim that the 2020 election was stolen. To be sure, this isn’t the first time a Trump nominee has withdrawn, but it is unique in that nominating Martin was a Day 1 priority, appointed “minutes” after Trump took office..
“We have to be very, very clear that what happened on January the 6th was wrong.” said North Carolina Republican Sen. Thom Tillis, a normally docile pro-Trump vote. “They disgraced the United States by absolutely destroying the Capitol,” he continued, speaking of Martin, who was a scheduled speaker and organizer of the Jan. 6 events as well as a lawyer for several of the defendants.
The office of U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia is widely considered the most important of similar positions all over the country as it has jurisdiction over federal government ethics and corruption probes and national security cases, as well as criminal cases.
In addition to Martin’s support for Jan. 6 defendants who assaulted police officers, Republican senators raised national security concerns about a man who had appeared on Russian propaganda outlets RT and Sputnik more than 100 times, even backing false Russian military claims days before the nation invaded neighboring Ukraine.
To have a tool of a foreign adversary as well as an ardent defender of hundreds of men charged with assaulting police on Jan. 6 in service to a lie that came close to overturning American democracy is about as egregious as Trump’s appointments get.
And indeed, since temporarily taking office a little over 100 days ago, Martin has gone on a rampage of Trumpian excess, dismissing 1,600 prosecutions of Jan. 6 defendants, firing Jan. 6 prosecutors and taking whatever vengeance he could on anyone connected to Jack Smith’s independent investigation of the attempted coup.
With 18 months to go before midterm elections allow the public to deliver a verdict on Trump’s second, even more populist term , the president remains incredibly powerful. He could take action to make the handful of Republican senators who undid Martin’s nomination pay for their disloyalty in an effort to reassert his hold on the party.
No doubt, Trump will find someone else to appoint who will be just as servile to the billionaire businessman’s persecution fantasies, but this moment may be important as a sign that there are limits to how far Republican leaders are willing to descend on behalf of the president. Perhaps it is even a sign that Trump’s iron grip on the party is starting to loosen as his standing in the polls weaken and his court defeats grow more serious.
If Trump’s opponents have learned anything in recent months, it is to never count the president out. But at least now there is the first sign since he took office that 47’s worst excesses can be defeated just as 45’s were.
This story was originally published May 8, 2025 at 4:26 PM with the headline "Trump’s power may never be the same after Ed Martin’s Senate defeat | Opinion."
