President Donald Trump’s power to bend a compliant Republican Congress to his will has stalled amid a series of political setbacks that threaten to fracture the party heading into next year’s pivotal midterm elections.
In the last week, Trump capitulated to fellow Republicans’ demands for the release of the files of sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein; saw his $2,000 stimulus check proposal receive a chilly reception on Capitol Hill; and prompted an intra-party debate over midterm campaign priorities with his broader effort to reclaim the affordability mantle.
And late Friday, he lost one of his once-most stalwart allies, Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. An instigator of the push to release the Epstein files, Greene announced she would resign from Congress in January as the president and the congresswoman sparred online. That will at least temporarily shrink the Republicans’ already-tiny majority.
The Republican Party is increasingly at war with itself, which doesn’t bode well for its effort to prevent another election-day wipeout like it experienced earlier this month in off-year elections in New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia and California.
Victory With a Cost
Republicans ostensibly won the government shutdown fight, but they did so by blocking an extension of broadly popular tax credits under the Affordable Care Act. Millions of Americans now face spiking health care premiums, and the president’s party is splintered over how to respond.
Republican Representative Thomas Massie, who has frequently sparred with Trump over Epstein and other matters, this week shrugged off the president’s efforts to unseat him in his safely Republican Kentucky district.
“I’m winning. He’s losing,” Massie said.
Even the party’s typically mild-mannered congressional leaders — House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune — are at odds, with Thune more willing to buck Trump.
Thune first refused to obey Trump’s repeated demands to end the shutdown by changing Senate rules. The two congressional leaders then sparred over the handling of the Epstein legislation. That quickly morphed into another battle over a provision tucked into legislation that stands to enrich a group of GOP senators. Now, they’re playing pass the buck on Russia sanctions legislation.
A diminished Trump and a splintered party hurt prospects for furthering the president’s legislative agenda around a core issue in the upcoming elections: the state of the US economy.
Trump has returned from the brink of defeat before, most famously when he left Washington in disgrace in 2021 following his election loss and the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, only to return victorious in 2024.
Trump has repeatedly signaled his own worries about the party’s messaging ahead of the 2026 elections, where Democrats aim to retake at least the House. That would give the party shared control of the nation’s purse strings as well as subpoena power and a reliable check on Trump.
“Affordable should be our word, not theirs,” Trump said on Monday, referring to the Democratic victories in November where they won by focusing on family-budget issues.
‘Affordability’ Messaging
Only 15% of voters in a Fox News poll said Trump’s policies were helping the economy, and 76% viewed the economy negatively, with Trump’s approval rating slumping to 41% — a low for the year in that poll.
Vice President JD Vance appealed to voters for patience and predicted an economic boom is coming. “As much progress as we’ve made, it’s going to take a little time for Americans to feel that,” he said at a Breitbart News event on Thursday.
Trump even backed off some tariffs, notably on agricultural products like bananas and coffee from Brazil, a tacit acknowledgment that his favorite policy tool also can raise consumer costs.
Johnson, whose own fortunes are tied to Trump’s, has increasingly struggled to maintain control of his narrow majority. Both he and Trump were run over this week on the Epstein legislation, flip-flopping in the face of certain defeat after fighting the bill for months.
Thune also refused Johnson’s pleas to amend the bill to allow the Justice Department to redact information in the files. The Senate agreed to pass the bill by unanimous consent even before receiving it — a sign of just how toxic the Epstein matter has become.
Johnson also said he’s “very angry” that Thune had inserted a provision into the bill ending the shutdown that could net a group of Republican senators millions from taxpayers in lawsuits over the seizure of their phone records during the Biden administration.
The provision is already being used by Democrats to attack vulnerable Republicans running for reelection, like Senator Susan Collins of Maine.
Meanwhile, the party’s legislative agenda has largely stalled since July, thanks in part to the shutdown. But that seven-week break masked deep splits among Republicans that are now surfacing.
They do not yet have a consensus on how to deal with spending bills needed to avoid another shutdown at the end of January. They are just now trying to cobble together a Republican health-care plan to replace the Affordable Care Act — something that has eluded the GOP for 15 years. Trump said Friday he wants that done by Jan. 30.
Many of the most endangered Republicans want to extend the existing ACA subsidies for at least another year lest they be blamed for soaring premiums for tens of millions of Americans, but Trump has vowed to oppose any such measure.
Trump’s faltering clout could be seen when he started touting $2,000 checks to send to Americans, which he claimed would be paid for by tariff revenue. Already, enough Senate Republicans have told Bloomberg they oppose it to kill the measure.
“I think it would be crazy to send money to people while we have a deficit,” Kentucky Republican Senator Rand Paul said this week.
Redistricting Backfires
Trump’s push to have Republican states gerrymander their congressional districts to lock in a Republican House majority has backfired, as well, with Democrats potentially set to net seats out of the map-drawing war he started. Indiana Republicans ignored Trump’s public threats and declined to redraw their maps; the Texas GOP’s partisan map is at risk in federal court and Trump’s moves have spurred Democratic states like California to redraw their maps.
Trump himself has also started to lash out, telling reporters he had yelled himself hoarse to staffers about trade issues. He quipped he would fire Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent if the Federal Reserve didn’t cut interest rates faster.
He snapped at reporters for questioning his position on the Epstein files, for asking about his family’s business relationships with Saudi Arabia and about the killing of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi as he met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in the Oval Office.
Trump also called for the arrest and potentially the death penalty for a group of Democratic lawmakers who urged the military and intelligence community not to follow illegal orders. That earned him a mild rebuke from Republicans like Thune, who avoided the issue before finally saying he disagreed with Trump’s comments.
Politics8 years ago