Sen. Bill Cassidy, R-Louisiana, is the most recent example. He has just lost the primaries, after having voted five years ago in favor of Trump’s impeachment in his impeachment trial, after the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021. —Senators serve six-year terms, so this was the first time Cassidy ran for office since then. But this senator also hinted that he was not going to end his term in silence. And he is not the only one who regularly speaks out against Trump, who faces dismal approval ratings ahead of the November midterm elections, in which Republican control of Congress is at stake.
Bill Cassidy
He was one of seven Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump after the Jan. 6 insurrection, and played a key role in a historic rebuke from the ruler’s own party. Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives, but was acquitted after a trial in which 57 senators They voted to find him guilty of inciting the insurrection.although they did not reach the 67 votes necessary to condemn him. “Our Constitution and our country are more important than any one person,” Cassidy said at the time.
“I voted to convict President Trump because he is guilty.” When he returned to power, Cassidy was once again in the spotlight. A doctor by profession, he was hesitant to cast the decisive vote to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr.. as the country’s top health official. He ultimately voted, but as Kennedy has systematically rolled back vaccination recommendations, he has warned that vaccines will become less available and more children will get sick.
Losing the primary last weekend, Cassidy gave a concession speech that illustrated an alternative vision of the Republican Party. “When you participate in democracy, sometimes things don’t go the way you expect,” he said. “But you don’t get angry. You don’t complain. You don’t claim the election was stolen from you,” he said.
Thom Tillis: “I’m sick of stupidity”
He is a senator from North Carolina who announced last summer that he would not run for re-election and then opposed Trump’s tax bill because of the cuts it imposed on Medicaid. Since then he has harshly criticized Trump’s Cabinet secretaries — “The United States is not a warmonger,” he told NBC News, referring to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — and lat the Government’s proposal to invade Greenland —“I’m tired of so much stupidity,” he stated—. He blocked Trump’s nominee to chair the Federal Reserve until he obtained assurances that the Justice Department would drop the criminal investigation against the current Fed chair.
Tillis also opposes the president’s attempt to eliminate the filibuster in the Senate so Republicans can pass a bill to change the way Americans vote, calling it “a stupid and lazy idea.” Like Cassidy, Tillis is quite direct in criticizing how Trump has transformed American politics to make it more tribal. “It is becoming increasingly clear,” he said in announcing his retirement from Congress, “that leaders willing to embrace bipartisanship, compromise, and demonstrate independent thinking are becoming an endangered species.”
Mitch McConnell: “What’s going on?”
During Trump’s first term, Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), then Senate leader, He played a key role in helping the president transform the Supreme Court into a markedly conservative court. But then the January 6 attack happened. “There is no doubt that President Trump is practically and morally responsible for provoking the events of that day,” McConnell declared in the Senate, after the attack. “There is no doubt about it.” But he did not vote in favor of Trump’s conviction, which contributed to his return to power four years later.
McConnell has since resigned from his position as senator and will retire next year. He has voted against confirming some of the president’s most controversial Cabinet appointments, something unthinkable during Trump’s first term. He is also fervently pressing the administration to fund Ukraine so it can defend itself against the Russian invasion, pointing out that the Defense Department has not spent the millions that Congress approved for the battlefield. “What is happening?” he wrote on TI have Washington Post last month. The Republican primary to succeed McConnell takes place next Tuesday, and his reputation is taking a hard hit among Republicans trying to pass the baton to him.
That’s also true for two House lawmakers who have come out publicly against Trump: Rep. Don Bacon, Nebraska, who is retiring, and former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Georgia, who abruptly announced she was leaving Congress last year and has since called on the Cabinet to remove Trump from office through the 25th Amendment. That, almost certainly, will not happen. Mike Madrid, leader of the “Never Trump” movement, stated that, after so many years of opposition to the president, he does not perceive an organized Republican resistance against Trump. “Very few of those who oppose Trump consider themselves Republicans today,” he recently told The Washington Post, “or continue to fight for conservatism, and that is very significant,” he emphasized.