It's an old joke, but it's still funny: "The Republicans are revolting!"

Amusing wordplay aside, it is rather shocking (and heartening) to see how at least some Republicans in Congress are increasingly in open revolt against Donald Trump's agenda. At first a few cracks appeared in the dam, but it's now looking like that dam could be on the brink of just bursting wide open. One can only hope, at any rate.

This isn't happening in a vacuum, of course. There are a few reasons why so many in the GOP are now deciding to chart their own course away from Trump. The first is that Trump pretty obviously does not care what happens in the upcoming midterm elections. He's already sounding pretty defeatist on the issue, a sort of shoulder shrug and "Well, what can you do?" attitude that is alarming to those Republicans who are trying to get re-elected and trying to avoid losing control of one or both chambers of Congress in November.

The second is that Trump is also signalling that he just does not care what voters are going through economically right now. He brushes off sky-high gasoline prices as no big deal, swears that they're only temporary, and absolutely refuses to even face the fact that inflation has caused the prices of pretty much everything to go up ever since he took office. Trump refuses to admit this reality because he himself is the prime cause of the rise in prices -- through his tariffs and through his ill-conceived war with Iran. So both Trump and all his spokesmen continue to gaslight the American people by insisting that prices are actually down and that voters actually have more money in their wallets now than ever. Since this is utterly divorced from the reality most voters are actually facing, smart Republicans are realizing that it's time to put some distance between themselves and Trump.

The third big reason Trump is losing support from his own party is that his flailing around is becoming increasingly bizarre and indefensible -- even to his own staunch supporters. Handing gobs of taxpayer dollars to the January 6th insurrectionists and installing people with zero qualifications to critical high-ranking government positions is finally causing a big pushback.

And the fourth reason Republicans are turning away from Trump is that there are an increasing number of them with absolutely nothing left to lose politically by defying Trump. Members of Congress who have been defeated in primaries by Trump's favored MAGA candidates now have until the end of the year to serve, and zero reason to vote for what Trump demands.

This all started coming to a head just before Congress left for one of their extended holiday breaks (for Memorial Day). The Senate was initially going to vote on a reconciliation bill before leaving town. Because it was a reconciliation bill, it could pass with just Republican votes. But many Republicans objected to two parts of it, so they had to leave without voting on it (because they knew they didn't have the votes to pass it).

The first objectionable issue was the $1 billion included in the bill to build Trump's beloved ballroom -- which he had sworn over and over again was going to be fully funded by private donations and which "wouldn't cost the taxpayers one thin dime." Not to belabor the point, but one billion dollars is a lot of dimes. So this proposal was jettisoned from the bill.

The second big issue was the $1.776 billion slush fund Trump wanted so he could pay obscene amounts of taxpayer money to the January 6th rioters. This proved to be a bridge too far for many Republicans, some of whom were in the building when it was under siege. Thom Tillis, a Republican senator who is not running for re-election, did not mince words in warning his fellow Republicans about the political message this sent:

Republicans should do the stump speech test on this issue, particularly the ones who are in cycle [i.e., up for re-election this year]: "I stand solidly behind an administration that wants to potentially provide compensation to people who assaulted Capitol police officers. I stand fully behind that." Test that on the stump and see how it works out for you in November.

Tillis has also said: "There's no way to explain the fund [to voters], so the only way to explain it is to explain that you got rid of it. It's that simple."

As of this writing, the Senate is still holding a "vote-a-rama" session where the issue is being debated. So far, a number of Republicans have shown a willingness to vote for amendments to bar the creation of such a fund, but none have actually passed. By the end of the marathon voting session, however, something may emerge that is acceptable enough to both Republicans who are disgusted by the idea of such a fund and the Democrats, so stay tuned...

The truly ironic thing is that the Trump administration tried to head off this effort at the pass, and they might have even succeeded if Trump hadn't opened his own fat mouth and ruined the attempt. Earlier in the week, the acting attorney general testified and used some very carefully-chosen language to try to convey the idea that the Department of Justice was "not moving forward" with the plan to create the fund. Democrats (not being fools) suspected that he was just using weasel words -- a suspicion which was fully justified, since the acting attorney general refused to put any such promise in writing. But enough Republicans probably would have used the political cover of: "Well, they said the idea of the fund was dead," when they knew full well that "not moving forward" probably meant "not moving forward at the present time, (nudge nudge, wink wink)" -- which would leave the door open to do so at a later date, after the reconciliation bill was passed. This gambit might have worked, if Trump hadn't answered a reporter's question about it by saying he wasn't quite sure if the idea of creating the fund was dead, and that: "I love it... I think it's so important." This torpedoed the weasel-worded attempt to provide political cover, which is why some sort of ban on creating the fund might pass today (if Trump had just left well enough alone, the ban might not have had enough GOP support).

This open defiance of Trump isn't just happening in the Senate either -- the House just passed a resolution that would force Trump to withdraw forces from the Iran war or at least win approval of Congress to continue it. Four Republicans broke ranks to vote with the Democrats to pass the measure, 215-208. A similar bill advanced in the Senate a few weeks back, with three Republicans voting for it. If such a measure passes both chambers, it will be the most serious rebuke to Trump he's ever gotten from Republicans in Congress.

The House followed this up by advancing a bill to provide additional aid to Ukraine and to slap new sanctions on Russia, by a vote of 218-204. Trump is not a fan of this bill, so it represents yet another foreign policy slap in the face to him by the GOP Congress.

One other issue that Republicans have begun pushing back on is Trump's announcement to name Bill Pulte to be the acting director of national intelligence. Pulte has zero qualifications for this job, having no experience whatsoever with: intelligence, espionage, the military, counterterrorism, national security, or foreign policy. But he does excel at trying to weaponize the justice system to go after Trump's political enemies, which is all that Trump cares about. The law that created the Office of the Director of National Intelligence requires that the director "have extensive national security expertise," but Trump simply doesn't care about such niceties, obviously. This is not sitting well with a growing number of Senate Republicans.

Taken individually, these instances of Republicans pushing back on Donald Trump might not seem all that impressive. Only a handful of Republicans are standing up to him, after all. But the razor-thin majorities they hold in both the House and the Senate mean that even such slight pushback can result in Democratic bills passing, which is significant. And taken together, it could mean that the political calculation for Republicans seeking re-election is now shifting -- from blindly backing everything Trump wants to charting their own course in an effort to show some independence from him before November's vote.

So far, these are just cracks in the dam. It hasn't fully burst yet. But that is increasingly looking like a real possibility, after the past few weeks of signs of revolt from the Republicans in Congress. As I said, one can only hope that this trend continues to grow, over the summer.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant