These GOP Senators Are Standing Up to Trump (for Now)

 Personnel is policy. But from his Cabinet picks to his tariff proposals, Senate Republicans aren't yet in lockstep with the president-elect.

Sen. John Thune, newly elected Senate majority leader for the upcoming 119th Congress, speaks at the Capitol on Nov.13.

President Donald Trump has won the White House. Republicans also hold the Senate and the House of Representatives. (They also have whatever comes after a “trifecta,” in that conservatives control the Supreme Court). Democrats are (cue music) in disarray.

But a funny thing is happening on Trump’s way to his Jan. 20, 2025, inauguration: A handful of Republican senators are challenging some of his Cabinet picks, his plans to impose sweeping tariffs on imports, and the logistics of his mass deportation plans.

Let’s not overstate what’s going on. The GOP is still Trump’s party – he has rewritten its DNA. This is not a full-fledged uprising by any means.

But it’s also not a party falling in lockstep behind its leader. At least not yet.

• We won’t know for a while whether the narrow Senate majority will line up behind Trump’s more … offbeat nominees. The old adage is “personnel is policy,” and confirming, say, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to run Health and Human Services won’t have the same effect on public health as installing someone who lines up squarely behind vaccines and doesn’t oppose fluoride in drinking water. 
• We also won’t know for a while how Congress treats Trump’s oft-repeated threats to impose sweeping tariffs – a policy with the potential to hike prices for American consumers already ticked off about the surge in the cost of living under President Joe Biden and still feeling that pain.
• But Trump’s team is worried enough about internal GOP resistance that it has threatened to mount primary challenges to lawmakers who don’t fall in line behind his Cabinet picks (to be funded by Elon Musk, per ABC).

Here are some of the ways Senate Republicans are bucking MAGA authority.

Early Defeats

In the immediate aftermath of Election Day, Trump suffered three early defeats.

• He raged at Republicans to block Biden judge nominees. Instead, they reached a compromise with Senate Democrats under which more will get seated, but four of the Democrat’s appeals court picks won’t get a vote.

• MAGA wanted Sen. Rick Scott of Florida to be the next Senate majority leader. He came in third behind Sen. John Cornyn of Texas and the eventual winner, Sen. John Thune of South Dakota. (This was a misreading of Senate leadership elections, which are about practical things, not ideology: Can you raise money? Can you enlarge our ranks? Can you manage the floor proceedings?)

And of course Trump’s first choice for attorney general, Rep. Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination under a cloud of accusations of sexual misconduct.

Grumbling About Top Nominees

If Republican senators hang together, their 53-47 majority ensures Cabinet confirmations. If three of them defect, and Democrats stay united, then Vice President JD Vance breaks the 50-50 tie: Presto, confirmed.

• That still requires Trump’s more controversial nominees to court senators and careful vote counting.

So far, the easiest prediction is that Republican Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida will coast to confirmation as secretary of state. Sure, he’ll get grilled on Trump’s foreign policy plans, but there’s no serious argument that he’s unqualified for the job after years spent in foreign relations and intelligence roles in Congress.
But how will conservative Republicans feel about GOP Rep. Lori Chavez-DeRemer, a pro-union lawmaker who lost her reelection bid on Nov. 5 and now stands as Trump’s labor secretary nominee?

• Sen. Bill Cassidy, a Louisiana Republican who’s on track to chair the Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee in the next Congress, has openly questioned her nomination due to her support for the Protecting the Right to Organize Act.

• Fox News personality Pete Hegseth, a veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan and Trump’s pick for defense secretary, faces his own allegations of sexual misconduct (which he has denied). Hegseth has been courting senators assiduously in an apparent attempt to avoid Gaetz’s fate. Will four GOP senators defect?

  Sen. James Lankford, an Oklahoma Republican, has served notice that the Senate Intelligence Committee on which he sits will ask “lots of questions” about former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, Trump’s pick for director of national intelligence, including about her 2017 trip to Syria to meet with dictator Bashar al-Assad.

  Policy Disagreement

  Republican Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky stands out as one of the GOP senators who seems prepared to challenge Trump on policy issues. He recently said he opposes using the military as part of the president’s mass deportation operation, something Trump has publicly envisioned.
  

  • Paul has also come out against Trump’s promises to impose sweeping tariffs, calling import duties “a tax on the consumer.”
    
    Congressional Independence
    Trump has demanded the Senate open a path for him to install his preferred nominees through recess appointments, bypassing Congress entirely. That has not landed well in the upper chamber.
  • • “The separation of powers doctrine is pretty fundamental: three coequal branches of government. One branch can’t commandeer the other two. I think that would be the outcome,” Cornyn, a senior member of the Judiciary Committee, has said.

    Republican Sen. Mike Rounds of South Dakota traveled to the annual Halifax International Security Forum, where he assured allies the Senate would remain independent from the incoming White House, Politico reported.

    And my colleague Laura Mannweiler noted recently how Republican Sen.-elect John Curtis of Utah “firmly believes” in the Senate’s ability to confirm or reject nominees.

    Whether this turns into serious conflict, rather than sniping by press release, will turn in part on what Trump prioritizes when he takes office. And forecasting that would be a Beltway superpower.
    

    Tags: Donald Trump, government, Senate, Republican Party, John Thune, Rick Scott, John Cornyn, Congress