President Donald Trump is finding new and growing pockets of resistance on Capitol Hill, raising questions over whether he can hang on to his dominance over the GOP.
In the span of a month, Trump has encountered GOP grumbling or outright defiance on a growing number of fronts. Much of the pushback has come from the Senate, where select Republicans have rejected his nominees, rebuked him over trade, and shrugged at his desire to end the filibuster. But that willingness to buck the president has more recently expanded to the House.
The most striking example came with the release of the Epstein files as one-time MAGA allies forced Trump’s hand and delivered him a rare legislative defeat. The episode culminated in a dramatic falling out with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who refused to back off the vote, and her sudden resignation announcement last Friday.
Trump still enjoys deference from the vast majority of congressional Republicans, and his willingness to primary anyone who dares to oppose him means his sway over the GOP is likely to extend longer than most second-term presidents.
The friction also defies what until now has been a compliant GOP Congress that quickly passed his agenda and changed Senate rules to speed his nominees through a Democratic logjam.
Yet Trump is fighting a creeping narrative that his hold over Washington is slipping, and that he will soon be a lame-duck president with diminished influence. Not only are his allies turning against him — Greene was one of three Trump supporters to allow the Epstein vote — but Republicans have seemingly grown comfortable breaking with him on policy.
In some cases, that break is registered delicately or in private, as happened with Trump’s plan to import Argentinian beef. At other times, Trump is running into Republicans who flatly reject his requests as a bridge too far.
He moved some Republicans into his corner with his calls to end the filibuster earlier this month, finding receptiveness from MAGA allies and those up for reelection next year. But the majority stood by the 60-vote threshold.
He found similar pushback to his proposal for $2,000 tariff rebate checks and a moratorium on state AI laws he wants tucked into Congress’s annual defense bill.
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The White House emphasized Trump’s legislative accomplishments to dispel the idea that congressional Republicans are working at cross purposes.
“The president’s legislative agenda is a historic success,” said White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson, citing the tax bill Republicans passed by July 4 and their willingness to claw back funds from NPR and PBS. “The President has gotten massive amounts of his agenda through Congress in the face of total Democratic obstruction.”
Separately, Trump has fumed that the pushback is being exaggerated by a handful of Republicans he tarred as “lowlifes” on Sunday, mentioning Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) by name.
Massie helped deliver the signatures needed for Democrats to force a vote on the Epstein files, putting Republicans happy to sit out that fight in a bind. Paul has similarly helped Democrats force votes on Trump’s tariffs in the Senate.
Congressional leadership continues to operate in lockstep with the White House, helping blunt some of the negative headlines. Using a procedural maneuver, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) effectively turned off the ability of Democrats to force a House vote on Trump’s tariffs.
In the Senate, Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has spent months working to get the White House’s blessing on a new package of sanctions on Russia.
Yet the two leaders are, to a certain extent, constrained by congressional math and have increasingly had to advise Trump on what cannot get through the House and Senate.
Paul Ingrassia, Trump’s nominee to lead a whistleblower office, withdrew his name last month in the face of insurmountable Republican opposition, owing to racist texts he allegedly sent. Trump’s ambassador to Kuwait is likely to face the same fate over allegations of antisemitism and his past comments on Israel.
Johnson, meanwhile, reportedly delivered Trump the news that the votes aren’t there for a healthcare plan the White House had been preparing to roll out earlier this week.
Is the party looking past Trump?
The points of friction have become so common and so pointed that Trump is facing inevitable questions about whether the party, seeing he only has three years left in office, is preparing to move past him.
There is an ideological dimension to that question. The MAGA wing of the party has grown frustrated with Trump on foreign policy, including his bailouts for Argentina and escalating military operations near Venezuela, and Greene is seen as encapsulating that frustration.
In announcing her retirement, she claimed that Trump was not focusing enough on domestic concerns, including the cost of living.
Trump, meanwhile, has given oxygen to a more self-serving reason some Republicans may be bucking him: political ambition.
He blamed Greene’s dissatisfaction on his discouraging her from running for Senate or governor in Georgia, something Greene denies. On Sunday, she also disputed reports that she was eyeing the presidency in 2028.
Anonymous White House allies have separately fumed over the impression that Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), Trump’s 2016 rival, is laying the groundwork for a 2028 run by intermittently breaking with Trump and his allies.
For now, the midterm elections provide Republicans with their most immediate reason to break with Trump, especially for purple district lawmakers looking to distance themselves from the president’s underwater approval ratings.
The glaring exception is incumbents locked in competitive primaries or fearing headwinds if Trump comes out against them. Sens. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Bill Cassidy (R-LA) stand as two examples and have stuck closely to his agenda so far this year.
Trump can also expect criticism from retiring Republicans who feel insulated from his attacks. Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE), in particular, has been on a tear after announcing he will step down from Congress next year.
This past week alone, he accused the Pentagon of amateurish behavior over its investigation of Sen. Mark Kelly (D-AZ), which Democrats have denounced as politically motivated, and panned Trump’s yo-yoing foreign policy on Russia as “embarrassing.”
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“I don’t play nice when it comes to a few things. I don’t want to be an a**hole across the board, but when it comes to Ukraine, it’s time to be aggressive,” Bacon told the Washington Examiner on Monday.
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another centrist, has been more selective in breaking with Trump, but decided to retire after a bitter feud with the president over his opposition to Medicaid cuts in the tax law.