Is this the dawning of a new brand of anti-Trump Republican?
With Donald Trump now publicly warring with four members of his party’s House Republican caucus, it seems as if the “Make America Great Again” coalition is finally breaking apart.
The reality is probably a bit less dramatic.
But with a massive divide evident on the right over support for Israel and its response to October 7 attacks, it’s clear that the MAGA coalition is evolving, with an eye on the future as Americans collectively gear up for the first presidential election cycle in a decade without Trump on the ballot.
If MAGA isn’t splintering, it is at the very least becoming factional, as various conservative figures maneuver for the movement’s mantle.
One dynamic accelerating this evolution is the weakening of Trump himself. With nearly a full year as president under his belt, Trump is battling a public perception that he is doing little to nothing to bring down prices for Americans, while economists blame his tariffs agenda for hiking many of those costs even further.
With approval polls showing his overall averages sinking, Trump is now mired in unpopularity as the swing voters who went red in 2024 desert him in droves. Driving that flight: Views of his ability to handle the economy, which have plunged over 2025, and the response to his refusal to release the so-called Jeffrey Epstein files.
Epstein is proving to have a salience with Americans that very few other issues have, defying many so-called political experts who once dissuaded Democrats from focusing time and attention on the late sex offender and his alleged ties to powerful figures.
The Trump administration’s refusal to release documents surrounding the Epstein investigations drew instant accusations of a cover-up from within the broader MAGA sphere almost instantly.
Months later and the administration’s stonewalling, evolving excuses and furious attacks targeting Trump’s own voters for their interest in the files has only caused that problem to grow exponentially.
Now, in the famously unruly House Republican caucus, the first signs of real resistance to Trump’s pressure and influence campaigns are coming into focus.
Four Republican members of Congress signed on to a discharge petition backed by every Democratic member of the chamber aimed at forcing the administration to release its files on the Epstein investigation. Withstanding Trump’s entreaties and outright threats, Reps. Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nancy Mace and Lauren Boebert have vowed that they will not buckle under any calls from House leadership — or the president — to stop seeking justice for Epstein’s victims.
If this sounds weirdly familiar, it should: Congress has a rich history of card-carrying Democrats and Republicans who form their entire political brands around being independents within the system, often bucking leadership as often or more than real independents like Sens. Bernie Sanders and Angus King in the Senate.
Throughout Joe Biden’s administration, Democrats fumed as two of their own — Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema — sunk the Build Back Better agenda while vowing to rein in their party when they thought it mattered. Among Republicans there are still figures like former Maryland Governor Larry Hogan, who won re-election in 2018 and lost a Senate campaign in 2024, both times running on a platform of staunch opposition to Trump and Trumpism’s effects withing the GOP.
But in the GOP, those voices largely died out before the end of the first Trump era. They’ve been even less prevalent in the present day, as Trump and allies like Laura Loomer have furiously purged disloyal administration appointees, nominees and staffers while the president cultivates a record for punishing his enemies and richly rewarding those who bend the knee, even former enemies.
A new kind of independent Republican voice could be emerging, though, with its roots in the cracks in the MAGA base caused by Trump’s response to calls to release the Epstein files. Those calls were re-energized this past week as the House returned to Washington, the discharge petition to release the files hit the required 218 signatures for a vote, and a new batch of emails were released from Jeffrey Epstein’s estate where the convicted pedophile claims that Trump “knew about the girls.”
Trump and the White House denied claims made by Epstein.
Trump’s hemorrhaging on the Epstein issue creates an opening for resistance to blossom once again within the GOP. But Greene has made it clear there is growing daylight between herself and the president to whom she was once unquestioningly loyal.
"What the American people voted for with MAGA was to put the American people first,” said Greene Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union.
“Stop sending foreign aid, and stop being involved in foreign wars... they very much deserve to be put first. Cost of living is far too high. Health insurance is completely out of control,” she said. “Those are two issues I’ve been very vocal on for months and months now, long before Republicans were shocked when those big losses came on this past Tuesday’s election.”
CNN’s Dana Bash responded: "Sounds like you are saying that he is not representing the MAGA movement that he started?"
"Promoting H-1B visas to replace American jobs, bringing in 600,000 Chinese students to replace American students’ opportunities in American colleges and universities; those are not America first positions,” said Greene. “Continuing to, really, travel all over the world doesn’t help Americans back at home.”
Greene added that Trump should “park” Air Force One back in Washington., D.C., and drill down on domestic issues like inflation and health care costs.
“Nothing but a constant focus in the White House on a domestic agenda,” she said.
With Trump now a lame duck president, the Republican Party is quickly going to have to become accustomed to a new reality: Trump will never be at the top of a presidential ticket again, and there are signs that his influence is no longer translating into GOP turnout in off-year elections.
Republicans had a dismal showing in the 2022 midterm season, with an expected “red wave” never materializing. The gains made by the party amid Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s collapse last year could be erased in cycles to come.
And if his poll numbers continue to sag past some of their lowest recorded points in the Trump era, the president may end up seeing an early succession battle for the face of America First.
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