So no one’s suggesting Congress has suddenly grown a spine under Trump.

But the bipartisan talk of constraining and at times openly contradicting the president is something genuinely different about Trump’s Washington, and it already extends to a wide range of issues on the foreign policy front – a contrast to the fractured politics of such domestic issues as health care and taxes, where consensus is as elusive as the election results would suggest.

While those policy debates play out along more predictable Republican vs. Democrat lines, Cardin made the case for a Senate Foreign Relations Committee that will hang together against Trump on most of the pressing foreign policy issues of the day. He did not spell out exactly which Republicans he believes to be aligned with Democrats on these issues, though the panel does include, in addition to Corker, several other Republicans whose foreign policy views differ from Trump’s, such as his primary rival Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), and another outspoken critic in Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, who like Corker is not running for reelection.