{"id":688030,"date":"2026-06-06T14:13:08","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T14:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/688030\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T14:13:08","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T14:13:08","slug":"more-republicans-are-breaking-with-trump-is-it-conscience-or-politics-us-politics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/688030\/","title":{"rendered":"More Republicans are breaking with Trump. Is it conscience or politics? | US politics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The wrath of Donald Trump<\/a> has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term thus far. But as the November midterm elections draw closer, the president\u2019s allies in the Senate and House of Representatives appear increasingly willing to defy a president who appears to have asked lawmakers for too much in some areas and too little in others, all while the public sours on his administration.<\/p>\n

In both<\/a> chambers<\/a>, small groups of Republicans have in recent weeks joined with Democrats to advance resolutions requiring that Trump receive Congress\u2019s permission before continuing hostilities against Iran. Republican dissidents in the House helped pass another round of aid for Ukraine<\/a>, as well as an effort to protect Haitians<\/a> from deportation. In the Senate, a critical mass of Republican senators has given Trump\u2019s nominee<\/a> for director of national intelligence, Bill Pulte, a cold reception.<\/p>\n

In the wee hours of Friday morning, the Republican majority passed<\/a> a $70bn bill that will ensure the federal agencies leading Trump\u2019s mass deportation campaign have the money they need to operate through the duration of his term. But that effort was delayed<\/a> by concerns over an attempt to include $1bn in spending to secure the ballroom Trump is building at the White House, which was ultimately dropped after it became clear the money could imperil the bill\u2019s chances of passage. Even as voting on the measure began in the Senate Thursday, Republicans spent hours<\/a> considering, and ultimately rejecting, amendments that could have permanently barred the president from using $1.8bn in an \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund to pay his allies.<\/p>\n

Internal disagreements are nothing new for congressional majorities as they consider a president\u2019s asks, but Republicans<\/a> appear bedeviled by the complications of their three-seat majority in the Senate, and historically slim hold on the House.<\/p>\n

While they managed to enact<\/a> a major domestic policy bill less than six months after Trump\u2019s inauguration, the president has made few serious asks of Congress in the months since, leaving lawmakers to navigate<\/a> shutdowns<\/a> instigated by Democrats in protest of his policies and the brouhaha<\/a> over the government\u2019s investigation into convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Trump has made no apologies for his apparent disengagement with the concerns of congressional Republicans, saying at a recent cabinet meeting: \u201cI don\u2019t care about the midterms.\u201d<\/p>\n

Were the GOP\u2019s majorities bigger, protest votes and uncooperative members would not be such a big deal. Instead, they have wound up tilting votes against the wishes of Senate majority leader John Thune and House speaker Mike Johnson, who regularly has to bat away questions about whether he is actually in control of his chamber.<\/p>\n

The open dissent has proven a boon for congressional Democrats, who have seized on the fractiousness as proof that the Republican majority is already unraveling. Trump\u2019s approval ratings are consistently<\/a> low, gas prices remain high<\/a>, polls show<\/a> voters believe the conflict with Iran is a poor choice and Democrats are leading by various<\/a> amounts<\/a> in surveys of the generic ballot, an important indicator of their chances to take back control of Congress in the midterms.<\/p>\n

\u201cRepublicans right now, in both the House and the Senate, are in free fall,\u201d House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries said on MS Now last month, after Johnson canceled<\/a> a vote on the Iran war powers resolution. When it finally came up for a vote this week, the resolution passed with the support of four Republicans and all Democrats.<\/p>\n

Those trends may indeed have been motivating the defections by some lawmakers. Two of the Republicans who backed the war powers resolution in the House, Tom Barrett of Michigan and Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania, are top targets of Democrats in the midterms, as is Susan Collins, the Maine senator who was one of four Republicans who voted to advance a similar measure. Many of the 19 Republican-aligned House lawmakers who voted for Ukraine aid, and the 11 who backed continued temporary protected status for Haiti immigrants, also face tough re-election contests.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s threats against lawmakers who defy him has the knock-on effect of creating new obstacles in Congress. Last year, North Carolina senator Thom Tillis<\/a> opted to retire, after drawing Trump\u2019s ire for refusing to support the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, his main domestic policy. He has since become a prominent critic<\/a> of what he sees as poor choices being made by the president\u2019s advisers, and spent months holding up the nomination of Kevin Warsh to lead the Federal Reserve in protest of the justice department\u2019s investigation of then chair Jerome Powell.<\/p>\n

This year, Trump has backed successful primary challenges against Kentucky congressman Thomas Massie<\/a>, who championed the release of the Epstein files, Louisiana senator Bill Cassidy<\/a>, who voted to convict him after the January 6 insurrection, and Texas senator John Cornyn<\/a>, who fell out of favor<\/a> with his Maga movement.<\/p>\n

Cassidy, a physician, appeared to try to make amends with Trump by casting a deciding vote<\/a> to confirm vaccine skeptic Robert F Kennedy Jr as secretary of health and human services. After losing his primary, he publicly condemned Trump\u2019s bid to create the anti-weaponization fund, then fruitlessly tried to forge a compromise to add language to the immigration enforcement spending bill the Senate passed this week to bar the payouts from ever happening. Cassidy also signed on to a court brief challenging the fund, and voted for an Iran war powers resolution.<\/p>\n

Others in the party appear to now view breaking with the president as politically expedient as they face uncertain re-election prospects in November.<\/p>\n

As the Senate was considering the immigration bill on Thursday, the Democratic minority leader, Chuck Schumer, proposed an amendment to bar the anti-weaponization fund for good. While the proposal failed, three Republican senators voted for it: Collins, the only Republican senator representing a state won by Kamala Harris in 2024; Ohio senator Jon Husted, whom a Fox News poll<\/a> this week found was trailing his Democratic challenger by eight percentage points; and Alaska senator Dan Sullivan, another target of Democrats.<\/p>\n

Even senators not facing re-election have been vexed by some of Trump\u2019s demands. Thune and other senators have expressed skepticism at Trump\u2019s nomination of Pulte, who currently leads the Federal Housing Finance Agency, for one of the nation\u2019s top intelligence jobs. His nomination has already complicated the GOP\u2019s prospects<\/a> of winning the necessary Democratic support for the renewal of a key surveillance law.<\/p>\n

Yet the defectors have done little to curb Trump\u2019s powers or force him to swallow policies against his will. Despite many attempts, no war powers resolution has actually made it through Congress, and even if one did, Trump could veto it, while the effort could also face legal challenges.<\/p>\n

The \u201canti-weaponization\u201d fund is dead not by law, but rather the decision<\/a> of acting attorney general Todd Blanche and a federal court ruling, though Trump has continued to praise it, raising fears among Democrats that he could order it reinstated. The measures providing aid to Ukraine and continuing deportation protections for Haitians have yet to pass the Senate.<\/p>\n

Doug Heye, a former House Republican leadership aide, said that the instances of Republicans standing up to the president may be less significant than they appear. The Republicans who voted for Schumer\u2019s effort to block Trump\u2019s payouts did so only after it became clear the amendment would fail, which Heye called a \u201ctime-honored\u201d technique to limit an individual lawmaker\u2019s risks on a contentious vote.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s nothing about it that\u2019s unique to Trump or Mike Johnson or Thune or anything like that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

And while the four Republicans who voted for the House\u2019s Iran war powers resolution were enough to see the measure to passage, Heye argued the episode is of little significance to Trump\u2019s overall control of the GOP.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat does it say about Trump\u2019s hold on the party that 1.8% of the House Republican conference voted against him? I\u2019d submit nothing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The wrath of Donald Trump has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term thus…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":688031,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4,450,451,3,452,453],"class_list":["post-688030","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-breakingnews","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688030","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=688030"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/688030\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/688031"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=688030"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=688030"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=688030"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}