Are Members of Congress Pushing Back against President Trump? Part III
Explaining GOP Resistance
Lawmakers generally believe that elections convey a message about what voters want.1 Thus, the recent big wins by Democrats in elections in New Jersey, Virginia, and elsewhere could encourage Republicans in Congress that their best means of political survival is to start distancing themselves from President Trump.
But as I argued in a previous post, GOP lawmakers have already been taking steps to counter, constrain, or limit the extraordinary (and largely unconstitutional) assertions of power by President Trump. To be sure, they have hardly been a serious check against the White House. Republicans have not been entirely passive either, however, and I identified roughly a dozen examples of GOP legislators resisting, to various degrees, the machinations of the White House.
Given that Trump commands the strong support of GOP voters and is not afraid to take revenge on those whom he perceives to be disloyal, why have we seen any Republicans in Congress pushing back against the president?
To try to answer this question, I gathered all instances I could find of Republican lawmakers defying, resisting, voting against, or criticizing Trump from January through October of this year. These include sponsoring and/or voting for measures to reverse Trump’s unilateral actions; voting against bills prioritized by the president; opposing a Trump nominee; or criticizing an action, policy proposal, or statement by the president.2 To err on the side of over-counting, I opted to exclude more indirect forms of resistance, such as criticisms of cabinet officials, White House staff, and decisions by the executive branch that are not directly connected to Trump.
An initial review of these cases reveals some common traits that suggest Republican defectors have been motivated by a mix of electoral, institutional, and personal incentives.
Senators, not Representatives, are More Willing/Able to Resist More Often
One noteworthy characteristic of Republicans who have pushed back against Trump the most frequently is that they were more likely to be from the Senate, not the House.
Lawmakers who went against Trump at least once were split about evenly between the chambers (17 Senators and 15 Representatives). But five of the six lawmakers who resisted Trump the most frequently were Senators. They include Susan Collins (ME, 10 instances), Lisa Murkowski (AK, 9 instances), Rand Paul (KY, 8 instances), Mitch McConnell (KY, 6 instances), and Thom Tillis (NC, 4 instances).
There are probably many reasons for this. Opportunity is an important one. As shown in the chart, the two most common issues on which lawmakers have disagreed with Trump are trade policy (usually tariffs) and presidential nominees.3 Nominees are confirmed by the Senate, not the House, and House members are unable to force roll calls on measures that would repeal Trump’s tariffs because the chamber has voted to block individual lawmakers from doing so.
There are also structural and cultural differences between the chambers that may have encouraged greater resistance from Senators than from Representatives. Senators serve longer terms, so they can afford to think about the longer-term policy and political implications of their actions. Senators are also more likely to see themselves as more equal to the president in power and importance.
The Role of Electoral (Dis)incentives
A second characteristic that many Republican dissenters share is that they have electoral incentives (or a lack of disincentives) to challenge the White House. Some have been getting strong pressure from their constituents to rebel; others are retiring from Congress or are otherwise more immune from the danger of Trump trying to oust them in a primary.
For example, looking at the Senate, 36% (12) of the 33 Republicans whose seats are up for reelection in 2028 or 2030 (when Trump will not be on the ballot) have opposed the president at least once. By contrast, only 25% of Senators up for reelection next year (5 of 20) have done so. Furthermore, of those five, two are not running again (McConnell and Tillis) and the third is Susan Collins, who is running for reelection in a solidly Democratic state.
In the House, meanwhile, the Representative who has resisted or criticized Trump the most – Don Bacon of Nebraska (9 instances in my dataset) – has decided not to run for reelection, and if he had not, he would have faced an uncertain electoral future, given he represents a relatively marginal Republican district.
Electoral incentives may also explain why trade is a common topic of disagreement between lawmakers and the president. Trump’s tariffs are not very popular. Polls do show that Republicans view them more favorably than Democrats; but GOP legislators are undoubtedly still hearing complaints from businesses in their districts and states that face higher prices on imported goods and an uncertain trading environment.
Another, more recent trade-related development – Trump’s announcement that he would import more Argentinian beef – has infuriated domestic cattle farmers, many of whom live in GOP states, and resulted in a sharply-worded rebuke from the influential National Cattlemen’s Beef Association. So it’s not surprising that Republican lawmakers in cattle-producing states have expressed strong resistance to Trump on this issue.
Personal Preferences Matter
Finally, we should not discount the importance of personal preferences in driving dissent. Bacon’s opposition to some of what Trump is doing (which he detailed in an interview with the New York Times) appears to be genuine. And Collins and Murkowski are more ideologically moderate than their peers in the GOP Conference.
Personal preferences would also seem to explain two of Trump’s biggest dissenters in Congress. Senator Rand Paul is a committed libertarian with some history of intraparty rebellion. So too is Thomas Massie (also from Kentucky), the other House member besides Rep. Bacon with more than one instance of resistance in my dataset. It thus makes sense that they would be willing to take on some of Trump’s executive actions, even if it risks Trump trying to oust them, as is the case with Massie.
Might More Republicans Resist Trump?
In short, Republicans in Congress most willing to oppose Trump in the public sphere are from the Senate, are not running for reelection in 2026, and/or likely have strong personal distaste for (or constituent opposition to) the White House actions they are opposing.
This does not bode well for those hoping that a GOP-led Congress will do much about Trump’s more serious abuses of power. The vast majority of Republican lawmakers are running for reelection next year; far fewer Republicans than Democrats are worried that Trump is acting like a dangerous dictator; and any significant legislative moves to check the executive branch will require the cooperation of both chambers of Congress, not just positive action by the Senate.
Even if many Republicans are secretly unhappy with the White House, fear of losing reelection (coupled with long-standing expectations of party loyalty to the president) will likely keep most of them in line. As Rand Paul said shortly before yet another Trump executive branch nominee was withdrawn because of (quiet) GOP resistance, “[I’m] tired of being the only one that has any guts to stand up and tell the president the truth…I hear a lot of flak from Republicans. They want me to do it… I’m waiting to see a little courage.”
This last example, however, underscores the extent to which the White House commands a lot of congressional compliance through fear, not loyalty or policy agreement. Furthermore, Republicans have been willing to openly criticize or resist other White House officials,4 express opposition to Trump privately or anonymously,5 or just ignore Trump’s requests to do things6 – types of opposition that I do not include in my dataset.
Should lawmakers cease to fear Trump – or at least if they start to worry about their reelection more, as suggested by the Democrats’ significant electoral victories on Tuesday – the president could find that more Republicans in Congress are willing to buck him.
As David Mayhew wrote in his landmark 1974 book Congress: The Electoral Connection, “Nothing is more important on Capitol Hill politics than the shared conviction that election returns have proven a point” (p. 71).
This exercise was inspired in part by the “sweeps” of news/historical accounts done by David Mayhew (see here and here). Unlike Mayhew, I gathered these data using an admittedly unscientific review of roll call votes and news stories, so by no means should it be considered a final or exhaustive list of instances.
Yuval Levin wrote in May that Republicans were the most willing to push back against Trump “not when the powers of their office have been threatened but when the trappings of their office have been threatened.” If one adds to the latter category the question of how Congress functions internally, the data support this argument: the third most frequent basis for resisting Trump is when he has tried to interfere in how the Senate operates (calls to abolish the filibuster) or with appointments to Congress-centered institutions (trying to appoint his own choice as head of the Library of Congress).
OMB Director Russ Vought has been a common target of lawmakers’ ire (see for example here and here). Other instances of GOP lawmakers opposing (or directing their displeasure at) White House officials or decisions by agencies include Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA) (see here) and Rand Paul’s response to being uninvited (temporarily) to the White House picnic.