By Molly Ball

President Trump managed to tolerate his congressional critics -- until he didn't. After months of playing nice with Sen. Thom Tillis (R., N.C.), the president finally went after the recalcitrant lawmaker, who promptly announced he would not run for re-election.

Within a day, another swing-seat Republican, Rep. Don Bacon (R., Neb.) had also decided there was no place for him in Trump's GOP -- the latest casualties of the president's insistence on unstinting loyalty as the party looks ahead to a potentially difficult midterm election next year.

Trump didn't exactly mourn their departures. "I didn't get along with Tillis, and he resigned," Trump told reporters on Air Force One en route back to Washington from Florida on Tuesday. "Which I was happy about. He did us all a favor."

Tillis, 64 years old, and Bacon, 61, couched their respective retirement announcements in personal terms. But both also frankly acknowledged the difficulty of life in Washington for anyone who isn't in lockstep with Trump, who has spent his decadelong political career reshaping the GOP in his image -- a familiar dynamic by now, but one that took on added import as Congress finished wrestling with a budget bill that few find inspiring and that polls show to be starkly unpopular.

Now, the two lawmakers' departures stand to further decrease the slim ranks of congressional Republicans willing to stand up to Trump.

"The choice is between spending another six years navigating the political theatre and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with [my family]," Tillis wrote in his re-election announcement, shortly after casting his first vote against Trump's megabill. "It's not a hard choice, and I will not be seeking re-election." He proceeded to give a fiery floor speech against the legislation wearing a giant bolo tie with an image of the Senate seal that was given to him by North Carolina's Lumbee Indian tribe.

Bacon, who ultimately voted for the bill despite raising concerns about it, has tangled with Trump for years. In announcing his retirement on Monday, he said he hoped to use his time out of office to promote traditional Republican positions that have fallen out of favor in the Trumpified GOP. "I think there's a lot of Republicans who feel like me: We're divided and we're becoming increasingly more protectionist and isolationist, and Republicans learned in the 1930s that doesn't work," he told The Wall Street Journal.

Such sentiments feel deeply familiar to the many Republicans cast out of Trump's GOP for sticking to their principles over the years. "For me it became clear, just as I think it became clear to Thom Tillis, that if he were to be able to win a primary, he would have to change who he was completely," said former Sen. Jeff Flake, an Arizona Republican who went on to serve in the Biden administration and campaign for former Vice President Kamala Harris. "He would have to completely acquiesce, say 'Those principles I believed in, I no longer do; that behavior I criticized, I no longer have a problem with.' "

Flake noted that his seat has been occupied by a Democrat ever since he left office in 2019. "The president doesn't care about that -- he doesn't care about the party," Flake said. (Speaking to reporters on Sunday, Tillis rejected the comparison with Flake on the grounds that Tillis considered himself a reluctant senator. "I like going home," he said.)

Trump has said that Republicans can't win without him.

Departures like Flake's were a common feature of Trump's first term as Republicans with traditional values couldn't bring themselves to change their ways and endorse Trump's shifting whims. Many left office voluntarily, while others lost primaries to Trump-backed challengers. In today's Trumpist party, such departures have become rare because there are fewer dissenters left. There have also been fewer occasions for Republicans to defy him and spark his wrath thus far, with Congress spending most of the year on a single piece of legislation.

"In 2017 there was a larger resistance within the party," said Marc Short, who served as Trump's first director of legislative affairs. "Now he's solidified the party. Whereas in 2017 there were differences on policy, it feels today like the battles are more about personality."

Tillis had been trying Trump's patience for months, yet there was no public blowup between the two until the past weekend. In January, the senator informed the White House he intended to vote against the nomination of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Rather than blast him publicly, Trump summoned him to the White House and changed his mind. In May, Tillis's opposition to Ed Martin's nomination as D.C.'s U.S. attorney prompted the administration to pull the appointment. Yet once again Trump refrained from going after him.

Bacon has differed from Trump in the past, particularly on foreign policy; he staunchly supports Ukraine and opposes Trump's economic war on Canada. In 2023, after former Speaker Kevin McCarthy was ousted, Bacon worked to block Trump's endorsee Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio) from winning the post, resulting in a wave of anonymous threats and harassment that he said prompted his wife to sleep with her gun.

To be sure, Trump's enthusiasm for publicly attacking his fellow Republicans hasn't totally waned. He has peppered the libertarian Republicans Sen. Rand Paul and Rep. Thomas Massie, both of whom staunchly opposed the tax bill on the grounds that it permits too much spending, with insults. Yet he has also worked closely with congressional leaders to shepherd the tax legislation through the House and Senate, and some Republicans dared to hope he had become more politically savvy and more of a team player the second time around.

Driving out Bacon and Tillis will make it harder for Republicans to hold on to the narrowly divided House and Senate in what is expected to be a difficult midterm cycle. Bacon is one of just three Republicans to occupy a seat Harris won. Trump won North Carolina last year, but Democrats won statewide races downballot and are expected to make the state a top Senate target.

The party's legislative victory on Thursday was clouded by what many saw as darkening political prospects. Trump's former ally Elon Musk said Republicans should hang their heads in shame for adding trillions to the deficit and vowed to primary them all. The president's party typically loses seats in a midterm election, and Republicans under Trump have struggled to win when he isn't on the ballot. In one scholar's analysis, the megabill is the most unpopular piece of major legislation passed by either party in at least 35 years.

But it isn't only Republican pragmatists who are an endangered species. Democrats, too, have seen their centrist and independent ranks shrink in today's polarized politics. During Joe Biden's presidency, both Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin -- dealmakers renowned in Washington for their effectiveness but viscerally loathed outside it by the party base -- first left the Democratic Party and then the Senate.

"The center isn't holding. It's just kind of miserable to be in Congress if you're somebody who is reasonable and wants to get things done," said former Rep. Barbara Comstock (R., Va.), who lost her suburban seat to a Democrat in the 2018 midterms and has since become a vocal anti-Trumper. Members, she said, fear not only for their political lives but also for their physical safety. "Don Bacon's seat is gone without Don in it, and I predict you're going to see more Republican retirements," she said.

Write to Molly Ball at molly.ball@wsj.com

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

July 04, 2025 05:00 ET (09:00 GMT)

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