Outside the Beltway

Trump’s Revenge Tour Comes With a Price

The Republican Honey Badger Caucus is getting bigger.

James Joyner · Thursday, May 21, 2026 · 5 comments

In “Trump Gets His Payback, but It Comes at a Cost in Congress,” veteran NYT chief political correspondent Carl Hulse reinforces a point I’ve been making here for a while.

Republican senators, boiling mad over President Trump’s intervention in G.O.P. primaries that has cost one incumbent his seat and left another hanging by a thread, say Mr. Trump has chosen personal revenge over governing.

Six months out from a midterm election in which their majority is at stake, Senate Republicans face a difficult legislative path with a rising number of restless lame-duck senators and a growing sense that the president cares much less about accomplishments that could boost them in November than about protecting himself and settling his political scores.

It comes as Republicans already face a grim political environment made worse by Mr. Trump’s decisions to pursue a war in Iran that has driven up gas prices and impose tariffs that have led to higher costs for companies and consumers — all while continuing to demand loyalty from lawmakers whose political survival may depend on distancing themselves from him.

The tradeoff has always seemed obvious. Granting that many of the Republican incumbents whom Trump has helped oust are in “safe” seats, it’s a huge waste of resources. Any President in my lifetime holding a razor-thin margin in both Houses would be laser-focused on protecting Republican incumbents and nominating the Republican most likely to be able to defeat Democrats in winnable contests. But, of course, most Presidents care mostly about enacting their policies into law. Trump has done almost none of that this go-round.

Further, as was also obvious, he’s done himself harm in the short term, creating bitter enemies who have nothing to lose the rest of this Congress.

“I’d say the mood is pretty sour,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said as she digested Mr. Trump’s late-stage decision to snub Senator John Cornyn, the veteran Texas Republican and former member of the party leadership who faces a challenging primary on Tuesday, and endorse his opponent.

Ms. Murkowski, who herself has broken from the president in the past, noted that Mr. Cornyn and Senator Bill Cassidy, the Louisiana Republican defeated in Saturday’s primary at the president’s behest, will remain senators until Jan. 3 no matter what. That means the White House must still contend with the current Senate, not the more MAGA-infused Republican conference that Mr. Trump hopes to see seated next year.

“There are still many, many weeks, many months, before the election, and this president is going to have to continue to deal with and partner with or battle with this group of lawmakers,” Ms. Murkowski said of herself and her fellow Republicans. “The president may have just opened some opportunities for people.”

Indeed, it’s already happening.

The first evidence of such a change in course emerged immediately on Tuesday when Mr. Cassidy — who had drawn Mr. Trump’s ire with his 2021 vote to convict him at his impeachment trial — for the first time voted with Democrats challenging the president’s power to wage war against Iran without congressional approval.

Numerous Senate Republicans, including Mr. Cassidy, also raised objections to the $1 billion in federal funding sought by the White House to secure Mr. Trump’s pet White House ballroom project, prompting leaders to drop it from their major immigration crackdown bill in a defeat for the president.

Some Republicans are also questioning the Justice Department’s plan for a special fund to compensate Mr. Trump’s allies, people whom the president claims were unfairly punished for participating in the 2021 assault on the Capitol and pushing election denialism.

This is often the fate of lame ducks, which Trump officially becomes after the midterms. But he’s sped up the process.

Top Republicans called Mr. Trump’s moves particularly ham-handed considering he needs his party almost entirely unified in the coming weeks to accomplish the bulk of what Senate Republicans are trying to do: muscle through contentious immigration enforcement spending on party-line votes as well as confirm executive branch and judicial nominees without Democratic help.

They say he is getting his retribution at the risk of legislative success.

But, again, he doesn’t seem especially interested in passing laws. With the notable exception of the “Big Beautiful Bill,” he’s largely governed as though Congress doesn’t exist.

Should Mr. Cornyn lose on Tuesday, he would join the informal free-agent Republican caucus with Mr. Cassidy and Senator Thom Tillis, the North Carolina Republican who decided not to seek re-election last year after coming under withering assault from Mr. Trump. He has been a thorn in the president’s legislative side ever since.

Other charter members of the group include Senator Susan Collins, the Maine Republican who is in a difficult re-election fight and, like Ms. Murkowski, frequently weighs breaking from her party. It remains to be seen whether the unrest with the president within the G.O.P., where lawmakers have often expressed discomfort with Mr. Trump only to accede to his wishes, is enough to cause a rash of dissent. But in the Senate, four defections on any party-line issue are enough to defeat it.

Senators said they would have to see how Mr. Cornyn’s primary plays out next week, as well as the willingness of senators to defy the president, to gauge the true ramifications of his intervention.

But they said Mr. Trump could carry the day in checking names off his enemies list only to see his victory backfire when it comes to getting his way on Capitol Hill.

“It goes back to the old ‘be careful what you wish for,’” Mr. Tillis said.

He predicted that those no longer encumbered by the need to placate the president could alter their voting patterns.

“I think there will be fewer political calculations going into people’s decision-making process,” he said. “Look, we want to support the president every time it is good policy and good politics and never when it is either bad policy or bad politics or both.”

Allies say that Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader who sought to persuade Mr. Trump to either endorse Mr. Cornyn or stay out of the race, was steamed by the turn of events given that a primary win by Mr. Cornyn’s opponent, Attorney General Ken Paxton, could put the Texas seat in danger.

Still, Mr. Thune said he hoped to hold Republicans together in their common cause.

“We are a team and you win as a team, you lose as a team,” he said. “And the sooner you figure that out, the better off you are.”

That, of course, works both ways. The President needs every Republican vote to continue his policies. Many of them, including the war and the various vanity projects, are wildly unpopular.