Trump’s move to pause all federal grants and loans is a “legitimate exercise of executive oversight,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Tom Cole, R-Okla., who is often considered an institutionalist who has insisted upon the importance of Congressional power. “I don’t think putting a hold on things is extraordinary.”

Speaking to the three top House Republican leaders over the past three days at the House GOP retreat here in Doral, Fla., revealed how President Trump is both the glue holding the fragile majority together and an earthquake that threatens to fracture it.

House Republicans traded the bitter cold of Washington, DC, for President Trump’s ritzy resort near Miami this week to figure out how their tenuous majority can fulfill the grandiose promises they’ve made for a legislative package that will define the 119th Congress.