Last week, the Republican-controlled Senate passed a resolution that would have ended Donald Trump's clearly nonsensical declaration of a "national emergency" on the United States-Mexico border. But with only a handful of Republicans willing to vote with Democrats to do so, the vote was not enough to override the promised Trump veto. The "national emergency,” then, continues to stand.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has expressed no desire to hold a re-vote to attempt to overturn that veto, but that doesn't mean Senate Republicans aren't still attempting mightily to show resolve in the face of Trump's clear abuses of emergency powers—so long as that resolve doesn't actually rein in this abuse of power. McConnell is now tasking Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson with crafting a new bill that would limit emergency powers in the future in some as-of-yet unspecified way. It will likely end up mirroring an existing bill by Utah Sen. Mike Lee that would require Congress to affirmatively approve a national emergency declaration within 30 days of presidential announcement, rather than the current law requiring Congress to vote to disapprove of one.

Sen. Lee’s bill has been the subject of heated (and hilarious) negotiations these last few weeks between the senator and the Trump White House. Vice President Mike Pence floated the notion that Trump might agree not to veto such a bill, if Republicans agreed to not vote their disapproval at his current "national emergency" declaration; Donald Trump then called up Lee himself, during a luncheon, to personally disavow Pence's proposal by saying he would agree to no such thing. Trump is promising a veto of any bill that would limit his emergency powers, all but daring Senate Republicans to put up or shut up.

The likely endgame here remains what it has been. Only a handful of Republicans are willing to challenge Trump on a clear, multibillion-dollar abuse of presidential power. But the party is united in scrambling to craft some new law that would limit the ability of future presidents (read: a Democratic successor) to take such extreme actions in the future. That is what the Pence compromise was geared toward, and what the Trump-captured Senate leadership is attempting to piece together now. And it may still be vetoed—or simply ignored—by a White House that has open contempt for the legislative branch.