2026-02-24T06:00:10-0500 / CBS新闻
华盛顿—— 周二晚上，当总统特朗普前往国会大厦，在参众两院联席会议上发表国情咨文时，他将在一系列不同政策问题上受到党内共和党同僚的热烈掌声。
但这种欢迎背后，掩盖着部分共和党议员的不满情绪，近几个月来，他们越来越愿意与总统唱反调。
众议院共和党人在关税、战争权力和爱泼斯坦档案等问题上的投票中批评了特朗普。随着议员们自身的连任希望开始与白宫推行的一些不受欢迎的政策产生冲突，随着中期选举临近，共和党叛逃者的数量可能会增加。
布鲁金斯学会治理研究高级研究员伊莱恩·卡马克表示：”他迟早会成为跛脚鸭，通常是在中期选举之后。”
“糖效”消退后
这种动态与一年前形成对比。当时，特朗普在重返白宫后向参众两院联席会议发表讲话，共和党各派系均吹捧”共和党使命”和党内高度团结。
乔治·华盛顿大学政治管理项目主任托德·贝尔特表示，当时共和党”正乘着总统选举胜利和重返白宫后一系列行政命令的浪潮”，党内出现了一种”糖效”（短期兴奋）。
他说：”现在情况不同了，因为我们已经执政一年，你看到一些美国优先运动（MAGA）支持者感到不满，他们认为唐纳德·特朗普把太多注意力放在了美国以外的地方。”
贝尔特指出，一些总统支持者对政府的经济和移民议程感到不满，认为这些政策违反了宪法原则的”核心准则”，这促使一些议员”在这些投票中表达自己的声音”。
“有时候这些投票不会产生影响，这让投反对票更容易被视为抗议，”贝尔特说，”但对一些人来说，他们看到总统民调数字下滑，因此更容易公开反对他。”
最新的众议院共和党人批评总统事件发生在6名共和党人加入民主党，投票撤销对加拿大的关税时。共和党领袖试图阻止该投票推进。特朗普承诺，共和党人”将在选举时严重承受后果”。
上周最高法院宣布特朗普多项关税无效后，特朗普兑现威胁，撤回对6名叛逃共和党人之一、科罗拉多州众议员杰夫·赫德的支持，并支持其对手。特朗普指责赫德是”少数让我和国家失望的立法者之一”。
1月份，特朗普差点面临另一项不信任投票。两名共和党人支持民主党人提出的决议，阻止美国在捕获前委内瑞拉总统马杜罗后向委内瑞拉派遣军队。预计议员们将在未来几天就战争权力决议再次投票，这次针对伊朗。
但对特朗普来说，最尴尬的失败是迫使司法部公布所有与性犯罪者杰弗里·爱泼斯坦相关的文件。特朗普一直强烈反对，直到最后一刻。四名共和党人推动就此事进行投票，除一人外，所有共和党议员最终都投票支持公布文件。这一事件也成为总统与佐治亚州众议员玛乔丽·泰勒·格林关系破裂的导火索——格林曾是总统在国会最激烈的盟友之一，后来成为直言不讳的批评者，现在是最新一位宣布退休的议员。
前众议院议长约翰·博纳和保罗·瑞安助手迈克·里奇表示，总统任期第二年出现”一些躁动不安”是正常的。
“你冲刺了一年，尽可能完成了工作，然后面临中期选举，这完全是对总统和政策的公投。在经济焦虑时期，这更加复杂，”里奇告诉CBS新闻。
里奇补充说，议员们”越来越多地展望未来，思考没有特朗普的生活可能是什么样子。”
“有些人可能不想卷入其中，有些人可能想站在前线。但议员们开始面对这种情况：对总统的忠诚和自身长期政治定位开始出现冲突，”他说。
挑战”恐吓因素”
尽管特朗普的一些优先事项在共和党内部都不受欢迎，但近几周只有少数共和党人愿意主动反对总统。美国企业研究所（AEI）研究国会失灵的菲利普·沃拉赫将党内多数人对总统的忠诚归因于”恐吓因素”。
“大多数议员仍感到强烈压力要保持一致，尤其是在初选之前，”沃拉赫告诉CBS新闻，”近年来，没有哪个总统的政党像这样完全围绕对总统个人领导的服从组织起来。”
已经在某些问题上与特朗普疏远的人”与他的关系中没什么可失去的”，沃拉赫说。
事实上，对于一些共和党叛逃者来说，由于他们决定不再寻求连任，这种计算变得更容易。在支持关税决议的共和党人中，华盛顿州众议员丹·纽豪斯和内布拉斯加州众议员唐·培根已宣布退休。加州众议员凯文·凯利（其席位因加州重新划分而受到威胁）尚未宣布计划。
当被问及特朗普是否正在失去对众议院共和党人的控制力时，培根表示：”我不这么认为。”
但培根在反对总统时毫不畏惧，称威胁不会吓倒他。
“你必须坚持正确的立场，不管你的政党领导层怎么说，”培根告诉CBS新闻，”如果你威胁我，我往往会坚持自己的立场。”
私下里，培根表示，共和党同僚批评特朗普的关税和对乌克兰战争的处理，但他们犹豫于公开反对总统。
“我发现，在一些领域，他要求我们做违背常识或传统保守价值观的事情，”培根谈到与总统分歧时说。
培根最近还联合发起了一项限制总统赦免权的宪法修正案，称”赦免权已被滥用”。
还有肯塔基州共和党众议员托马斯·马西，他一直是反抗特朗普的主要煽动者。
马西与加利福尼亚州民主党众议员罗·科哈尼合作，推动就爱泼斯坦档案进行投票，这在过去一年中一直是特朗普政府的一大难题。上周，马西宣布再次与科哈尼合作，推动就战争权力决议进行投票，要求总统在对伊朗采取军事行动前获得国会授权。
这位肯塔基州共和党人的频繁叛逃招致总统多次不满，并引发了特朗普支持的初选挑战。他反对立法的倾向意味着共和党领袖（以及特朗普）几乎无法容忍其他反对声音。
众议院共和党人以一票优势接近中期选举
路易斯安那州共和党人、众议院议长迈克·约翰逊仅以一票优势领导党内，这让他保持党内团结的容错空间极小。下个月将举行特别选举填补格林的空缺，8月将举行填补加州共和党议员道格·拉马尔法（1月去世）的空缺，这两个席位预计仍将由共和党掌控。
但民主党可能在4月的特别选举中再获一个席位，填补新泽西州州长米基·谢里尔留下的空缺，使共和党优势岌岌可危。
共和党人的主要焦点是在11月选举后保持众议院控制权。传统政治智慧认为，执政党的国会下议院通常在中期选举中失去席位。
卡马克表示，对特朗普及其政党而言，”现在是时候削减损失了。”
“民主党会大胜（如30个席位），还是只获得5-10个席位？这取决于政府的具体行动。他们在移民问题上做出了正确的退缩，但在经济政策上没有看到正确举措。”
如果共和党失去众议院控制权，总统的立法议程可能停滞，其任期最后两年可能被民主党新多数派发起的调查和传票淹没。
处于少数派的前景意味着脆弱的共和党人可能更倾向于在未来几个月批评总统。共和党初选后，议员们将目光投向没有初选威胁的大选，可能出现更多叛逃。
周二国情咨文演讲后，反对总统的空间可能进一步扩大。
贝尔特说：”你不会想在国情咨文前就把总统推出去，之后情况会更棘手。”
As Trump gears up for State of the Union, hints of frustration begin to emerge among House GOP
2026-02-24T06:00:10-0500 / CBS News
Washington — When President Trump heads to the Capitol to deliver his State of the Union address before a joint session of Congress on Tuesday night, he will be greeted by raucous applause from his fellow Republicans on a host of different policy matters.
But that reception will mask signs of discontent among some GOP lawmakers, who have become more willing to cross the president in recent months.
House Republicans have rebuked Mr. Trump in votes on tariffs, war powers and the Epstein files. And with members’ own reelection hopes beginning to clash with some politically unpopular policies coming from the White House, the number of Republicans defectors could grow as the midterm elections approach.
“He was bound to be a lame duck at some time,” said Elaine Kamarck, a senior fellow in Governance Studies at Brookings. “Now, usually it happens after the midterms.”
After the “sugar high”
The dynamic is a shift from a year ago, when Mr. Trump addressed a joint session of Congress on the heels of his return to the White House. Republicans from all factions of the conference touted a GOP mandate — and a deep sense of unity.
At the time, the GOP was “riding the wave” of the president’s electoral victory and a slew of executive orders he ordered once back in office, said Todd Belt, the director of the political management program at George Washington University. He said there was a “sugar high” among the GOP conference in the early days of Mr. Trump’s term.
President Trump addresses a joint session of Congress as Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson listen in the Capitol building’s House chamber on March 4, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images
“It’s different now because we’ve had a year in and you’re seeing a break with some of the America-firsters in the MAGA movement, who have been frustrated with the fact that Donald Trump has been focusing a lot of his attention on other places than the United States,” he said.
Belt noted that some of the president’s supporters have been put off by aspects of the administration’s economic and immigration agendas, and what they see as violation of “core precepts” of constitutional principles in both areas. That has prompted some members to “exert their voices in some of these votes.”
“Sometimes those votes won’t make a difference, and it makes it easier to cast that vote as a little bit of a protest vote,” Belt said. “But for some of them, they’re seeing a weakened president in terms of his poll numbers, so it’s easier for them to speak out against him.”
The latest House GOP rebuke of the president came when six Republicans joined Democrats in voting to rescind the president’s tariffs against Canada. GOP leaders tried to prevent the vote from moving forward. Mr. Trump pledged that Republicans would “seriously suffer the consequences come Election time.”
After the Supreme Court invalidated many of Mr. Trump’s tariffs last week, Mr. Trump followed through on his threat. The president withdrew his support from one of the six GOP defectors, Rep. Jeff Hurd of Colorado, and endorsed his opponent. The president derided Hurd as “one of a small number of Legislators who have let me and our Country down.”
Mr. Trump nearly suffered another vote of disapproval in January when two Republicans supported a Democrat-led resolution to block the president from putting troops in Venezuela after the U.S. captured former Venezuela President Nicolás Maduro. Lawmakers are expected to force another vote on a war powers resolution in the coming days, this time involving Iran.
But arguably the most embarrassing defeat for Mr. Trump came in the effort to force the Justice Department to release all the files related to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, a push that Mr. Trump strongly opposed until the last minute. Four Republicans helped force a floor vote on the issue, and all but one GOP lawmaker ultimately voted for the files’ release. The episode was also at the center of a public falling out between the president and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, once one of the president’s fiercest allies in Congress, who became a vocal detractor — and then the latest member to retire.
Mike Ricci, a former aide to House speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan, said it’s “typical to have some restlessness” in the second year of a president’s term.
“You’ve sprinted for a year, you’ve gotten as much done as you can, and you’re staring down a midterm election where it’s entirely a referendum on you and your policies. And obviously, in a time of economic anxiety, that’s even more complicated,” Ricci told CBS News.
Ricci added that members are “more and more peeking over the horizon into what may feel to them like a vast nothingness that is life beyond Trump.”
“Some may want no part of that. Some may want to be on the front lines. But members are beginning to navigate this moment where that loyalty to him and that long-term positioning for themselves is starting to overlap,” he said.
Defying the “intimidation factor”
Though some of Mr. Trump’s priorities have been widely unpopular even among the GOP, only a handful of Republicans in recent weeks have been willing to actively go against the president. Philip Wallach, who studies congressional dysfunction at the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, attributed the loyalty of the majority of the conference to the “intimidation factor.”
“I’d say most members still feel a pretty strong pressure to stay in line, especially until they get past their primary elections,” Wallach told CBS News. “In recent times, there really has not been a president with a party that is organized so dominantly around obedience to the personal leadership of the president.”
Those who have already distanced themselves from Mr. Trump on some issues “don’t really have much to lose in their relationship with” him, Wallach said.
Indeed, for some of the GOP defectors, the calculus is made much easier due to their decision not to seek reelection. Two of the Republicans who voted in favor of the tariff resolution, Reps. Dan Newhouse of Washington and Rep. Don Bacon of Nebraska, are retiring. Rep. Kevin Kiley of California, whose seat was targeted in California’s redistricting push, has yet to announce his plans.
When asked by CBS News whether Mr. Trump is losing his grip on House Republicans, Bacon said, “that’s not how I look at it.”
But Bacon has been unafraid to speak out when he disagrees with the president, saying the threats don’t intimidate him.
“You got to stand for what’s right despite where your party leadership is at,” Bacon told CBS News. “If you threaten me, I tend to dig my heels in.”
In private, Bacon said his Republican colleagues have criticized Mr. Trump’s tariffs and his handling of the war in Ukraine. Yet those colleagues have been hesitant to speak out or vote against the president.
“I find that in a few areas, he is asking us to do things that defy common sense or what is traditionally conservative,” Bacon said of the instances he’s broken with the president.
Bacon also recently cosponsored a constitutional amendment to limit the president’s pardon authority, saying in a statement it’s clear “the pardon authority has been abused.”
Then there’s GOP Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, who’s been a main instigator in the rebellion against Mr. Trump.
Massie led the push with Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California to force a vote on the Epstein files, which became a huge thorn in the Trump administration’s side in the last year. Then last week, Massie announced that he and Khanna were teaming up again to force a vote on a war powers resolution to require the president to get authorization from Congress before taking military action against Iran.
The Kentucky Republican’s frequent defections from his party have drawn the president’s repeated ire and prompted a primary challenge backed by Mr. Trump. And his inclination to oppose legislation means GOP leaders, and by extension Mr. Trump, can afford little other opposition.
A narrow House GOP majority approaches the midterms
House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican, is working with a one-vote margin, leaving him with little margin for error in keeping his conference united. A special election to replace Greene is set for next month, while a special election to replace Doug LaMalfa, a GOP member from California who died in January, will be held in August. Both should remain in GOP hands.
But Democrats are likely to pick up another seat in April, when a special election will be held to fill the seat left vacant by New Jersey Gov. Mikie Sherill, keeping the GOP margin on a knife’s edge.
The larger focus for Republicans will be on maintaining control of the House after November’s elections. Traditional political wisdom holds that the party controlling the White House typically loses seats in the lower chamber in the midterm elections.
For Mr. Trump and his party, Kamarck said, “at this point, it’s a matter of sort of cutting his losses.”
“Do the Democrats have a huge victory, like 30 seats, or do they get, you know, five or 10 seats?” Kamarck said. “It depends on really what the administration does. They made the right pull-back on immigration, but I don’t see them making the right moves on the economy.”
If Republicans lose control of the House, the president’s legislative agenda would likely grind to a halt, and his final two years in office could be consumed by a flurry of investigations and subpoenas from a newly empowered Democratic majority.
The prospect of languishing in the minority means vulnerable GOP members may be more inclined to rebuke the president in the coming months. More defections could be possible after the GOP primaries, when members turn an eye toward the general election without the threat of a primary challenge.
There may be more room yet for pushback against the president after he addresses the joint session of Congress on Tuesday.
“You don’t want to throw your president under the bus right before the State of the Union,” Belt said. “Things will get a little stickier afterwards.”