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.
“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.”
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, have 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, which the president had promised would not be paid for by taxpayers.
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.
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.
Mr. Trump himself seems unbothered and confident in his actions, and is threatening to go even further, warning other Republicans against crossing him even as he needs their votes on key issues.
On Wednesday, he singled out Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Pennsylvania Republican who is running for re-election in a competitive district and who joined Democrats last week in voting for a resolution to limit the war in Iran.
“He likes voting against Trump,” the president told reporters. “You know what happens with that? It doesn’t work out well.”
Mr. Fitzpatrick, whose vote will most likely be needed to push through the party-line immigration measure, has also raised alarms about including the ballroom funding in that bill, as well as Mr. Trump’s plan to use the federal settlement money to pay people who claim to be victims of government persecution.
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.”
Yet Mr. Trump has not appeared to be interested in fostering unity within his party in recent weeks, and particularly not on Capitol Hill, where his move against Mr. Cornyn was seen as a slap at Mr. Thune and the other Senate institutionalists whom he and his supporters have characterized as weak and ineffectual.
Both Mr. Cornyn and Mr. Cassidy had made concessions to try to stay in the president’s good graces. Mr. Cassidy put aside grave reservations and voted to confirm Robert F. Kennedy Jr. as health secretary. Mr. Cornyn embraced eliminating the filibuster as demanded by the president.
But neither could overcome what the president considered personal slights, including Mr. Cassidy’s vote to convict him on charges arising out of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and Mr. Cornyn’s lukewarm reaction to Mr. Trump’s return as a presidential candidate after his defeat in 2020.
Vice President JD Vance, their former Senate colleague, threw gas on the simmering Senate fire on Tuesday when he said during the White House briefing that Mr. Trump thought Mr. Paxton was “going to be a better senator” than Mr. Cornyn.
Mr. Vance, who served a brief fellowship with Mr. Cornyn’s office on the Judiciary Committee in 2011, also said that Mr. Trump prefers “people who can’t be bought by corporate lobbyists, who can’t be bought by Wall Street, who can’t be bought by special interests.”
That was too much for Ms. Murkowski, who called the scandal-singed Mr. Paxton “corrupt.”
“That is so disappointing,” she said of the vice president’s comments. “John Cornyn, oh my goodness, in terms of an upstanding individual — a lawmaker, a former judge — I can’t think of anyone who is just, again, more upstanding.”
Michael Gold and Megan Mineiro contributed reporting.
Carl Hulse is the chief Washington correspondent for The Times, primarily writing about Congress and national political races and issues. He has nearly four decades of experience reporting in the nation’s capital.
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