Senate Democrats and Republicans took a significant step this week to advance a bipartisan infrastructure package. However, the deal is far from done.
The Senate's 67-32 vote Wednesday cleared the first procedural hurdle and put lawmakers on track to begin debate on the $1 trillion proposal soon. This development was a big win for congressional bipartisanship at a time when cooperation between the two parties is rare.
But despite being negotiated by a bipartisan group of 22 senators, the infrastructure deal still received harsh criticism from both the right and the left. And some lawmakers were also hesitant to support the deal because the legislation has yet to be written.
Sen. John Cornyn of Texas was one of the Republicans concerned with the lack of drafted legislation. "I'm encouraged that our colleagues have gotten us this far, but the bill's not ready, and we need to see the text and be given adequate time to read it," he said on the Senate floor Wednesday.
Because the bill has yet to be drafted, the exact investments and cost off-sets are not set in stone. Those details are likely to determine how many Republicans ultimately support the package, promising a rocky path forward as debate on the legislation begins.
While former President Donald Trump has already attempted to throw a wrench into negotiations by urging GOP lawmakers not to support the deal, lawmakers on the left aren't fully on board either.
Along with the infrastructure bill, Democrats are pushing a second $3.5 trillion package that includes other priorities for the Biden administration, such as expanding Medicare, support for families and children, and combating climate change. Democrats have said they want to move both packages in tandem.
However, on Wednesday, Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, one of the lead architects of the infrastructure deal, said she would not support the $3.5 trillion price tag for the second package. Democrats plan to use the reconciliation process for the second bill because such a maneuver cannot be blocked by a filibuster — but would likely require every Democrat to vote for it.
In response, progressive lawmakers pushed back, saying they would not support an infrastructure deal without the reconciliation package.
"The votes of the Congressional Progressive Caucus members are not guaranteed on any bipartisan package until we examine the details, and until the reconciliation bill is agreed to and passed with our priorities sufficiently funded," the caucus chair, Rep. Pramila Jayapal of Washington, wrote in a statement.
Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York more pointedly criticized Sinema for her stance.
While bipartisan agreement on infrastructure has proved difficult to achieve in Congress, recent polls have repeatedly shown a majority of Americans support such an investment in the country's roads, bridges, railways and broadband.
image of U.S. President Donald Trump is displayed on a digital billboard in Times Square in New York on April 8, 2026.
Trump is stuck between two realities. Neither serves the American people
Normally, I worry that events may overtake a column. But not so with the Iran war.
I don’t worry about running afoul of a headline or Truth Social post from the president because what is said about the situation is no longer very relevant to the reality.
On April 8, Nick Catoggio, my Dispatch colleague, dubbed an earlier stoppage with Iran “Schrödinger’s ceasefire.” This was a reference to the famous thought experiment by the physicist Erwin Schrödinger, who was trying to explain the weirdness of “superpositionality” in quantum physics. A cat in a box is both dead and alive at the same time until you open the box. Schrödinger meant to illustrate the absurdity of the idea that particles aren’t any one thing, but a “cloud of probabilities.”
The Trump administration is stuck in a word cloud of probabilities of his own making. The war is over. The war is on. The war isn’t a war. We have a deal, but we don’t have a deal, but we’re about to have a deal. We destroyed Iran’s military. No, we left it intact. We want regime change. No we don’t. We already accomplished it. We “obliterated” Iran’s nuclear program a year ago. We had to go to war in February to prevent nuclear war. The Strait of Hormuz is open, closed, or something in-between. No deal without “unconditional surrender.” Let’s make a deal!
This everything-all-at-once vibe can be disorienting, particularly since most Americans didn’t have a war with Iran on their bingo cards until the shooting had already started. President Trump didn’t prepare the country or consult with Congress beforehand because he thought it would all be a smashing success in a matter of weeks.
The miscalculation that started it all: killing Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and much of Iran’s senior leadership, on the first day of the war. To “the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom is at hand,” Trump announced on Feb. 28. “When we are finished, take over your government. It will be yours to take. This will be probably your only chance for generations.”
I support regime change in Iran and shed no tears for Khamenei or his goons. But when you start a war by killing the regime’s top leaders, it’s not unreasonable for the remaining ones to conclude that you really intend regime change.
Khamenei was a murderous fanatic, but he was a fairly cautious one. He liked to threaten closing the Strait of Hormuz or attacking our regional allies, but he was reluctant to actually do it, fearing it would invite a regime change war. The mullahs and IRGC goons believed, not unreasonably, that if they lost their grip on power, they’d be lynched by the Iranian people they’ve brutalized for decades.
By starting with a regime change war, Trump removed any reason for the regime not to go for broke. When you have nothing to lose — particularly when you are a millenarian religious fanatic — a Persian Alamo strategy makes a lot of sense.
So Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz and attacked its neighbors.
But it turns out this wasn’t the Alamo. In the contest of wills, Trump blinked. The Iranian regime’s tolerance for punishment proved — so far — to be greater than Trump’s and that of our gulf allies. Militarily we could finish the job, but that would require ground troops and much greater economic turmoil. In a conflict Trump launched unilaterally without the prior support of Congress, NATO or the American people, Trump doesn’t have the political capital for that.
But that’s only half the problem. Trump wants the war over, but he doesn’t want to pay — militarily, economically, politically — what that would cost. So he wants to make a deal that ends it. But there is no deal available that wouldn’t come at an equally undesirable cost. Any deal that looks like what President Obama struck with the Iranians would be too embarrassing to bear. But the Iranians are convinced that they can get just such a deal, and they’re willing to drag things out as long as it takes.
The result: Trump’s in a box of his own making. He thinks he can talk his way out by simply asserting a reality that doesn’t exist. When the financial markets get nervous, he announces a breakthrough that is, at best, a possibility. When the Iranians agree to a deal that looks similar to one Obama might negotiate, Trump goes back to his threats.
It can’t go on forever. But I’m sure it’ll last until long after this column is forgotten.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.