President Donald Trump surprised most Republicans with a series of executive orders on immigration on Wednesday. | Getty Trump keeps Hill GOP in the dark

PHILADELPHIA — Congressional Republicans came here to lay out a deliberate, step-by-step agenda to reform the healthcare system, cut taxes and slash Obama-era regulations.

But President Donald Trump has stolen the show.


The new chief executive surprised most Republicans with a series of executive orders on immigration on Wednesday — and undercut their argument that President Barack Obama was an imperial president who governed with a pen and a phone while ignoring Congress.

But in a break even from Obama, who often gave congressional Democrats in-depth briefings on policy changes, members of Trump’s own party had little idea of what was coming on Wednesday. Ahead of the announcement, Republicans had received no specific briefing on his plans to build a border wall, beef up immigration enforcement and flood the border with new law enforcement officer.

“This is the new order,” said Rep. Pat Meehan (R-Pa.). Asked what he thought of Trump’s new immigration decrees, he replied: “I haven’t had a chance to go through it.”

Meehan’s not alone. In interviews Republicans said repeatedly they didn’t have enough information to respond to Trump’s executive actions because they hadn’t been briefed or even had a chance to read it. Still, they said they were comfortable with what Trump was doing, even if they didn’t have much idea of what, exactly, he was doing.

“As far as I was concerned, we had no briefing,” said Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), a member of Republican leadership. “It’s been part of their plan for many months. A lot of what they are saying today is not earthbreaking … there was some heads up with you guys in the media.”

House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) appeared to have a better grasp on Trump’s plans than other GOP leaders and rank-and-file members. A spokeswoman for Ryan said they are in "constant communication" and a spokesman for McConnell said that he and Trump are in “regular communication.”

But Sen. John Thune of South Dakota, the No. 3 Senate Republican, said he had little inkling of Trump’s enforcement directives until they were actually issued on Wednesday and news reports confirmed the details.

“With respect from some of the particulars, yeah, we’re not seeing some of that stuff until it comes out,” Thune said in an interview. “This is a president who came into office with a very clear idea about what he wanted to do. And they obviously wanted to hit the ground running and get a lot of things enacted right away.”

And that put Republicans at a disadvantage with reporters on Wednesday as they tried to coalesce around a legislative agenda amid a flurry of activity from the White House. First Trump issued vague new directives on Friday targeting Obamacare, ordered a hiring freeze on Monday, moved to approve new energy pipelines Tuesday and on Wednesday turned to immigration.

So even as they defended Trump for erasing, in their view, Obama’s intransigence on energy pipelines, Obamacare reforms and immigration policy, almost all of them admitted they didn’t know exactly what Trump was doing.

“Like most White Houses with supporting majorities in the legislative branch, they’ve done appropriate outreach,” said Rep. Patrick McHenry (R-N.C.). But he added: “I haven’t personally read them yet.”

Indeed, Republicans are often left to try to divine out Trump's plans on their own. During a Tuesday Senate GOP lunch senators buzzed about vague guidance they’d received about the immigration orders. And on the Wednesday trip up to Philadelphia for their annual joint retreat Republican lawmakers tried to figure out if Trump was preparing a new policy on torture and enhanced interrogation techniques.

Indeed, even from more than 100 miles away, Trump was still dictating the GOP’s political narrative. And congressional Republicans seemed to be settling in for four years of reacting to Trump, rather than knowing what he's up to ahead of time.

“We expect a lot of actions,” said Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.). “Obviously I have no idea what it’s going to look like. For me, he’s elected president, he’s got his first days planned and what he’s going to do … there’s no reason that he needs to communicate all the details of executive actions to us.”

Rachael Bade contributed to this report.