Republican lawmakers are closing out the year with unusual displays of defiance, telling President Donald Trump something he’s not used to hearing from his own party: no.
The pockets of resistance were on display at both the state and federal levels this week. Most glaring, a narrow majority of Republican state senators in Indiana voted Thursday to reject Trump’s pressure to redraw their congressional map. The same afternoon, 20 GOP U.S. House members broke ranks and voted to overturn Trump’s executive order ending union rights at many federal agencies.
Similar dissent flared last month when four conservative House members joined Democrats to force a vote on releasing government files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, overcoming months of resistance from the president.
The pushback is scattered but striking in a second Trump term marked mostly by Republican deference to the president. Lawmakers wary of crossing Trump have fallen in line behind contentious Cabinet picks, ceded much of their authority to the White House and often stifled objections to his most controversial moves.
Now a smattering of GOP officials spanning the ideological spectrum are sending a message that Trump does not have complete command of the party as his aggressive agenda runs up against public backlash and dipping approval ratings. Some Republicans suggested that the intensity of the White House’s pressure has started to backfire and that lawmakers are looking ahead to a future where Trump, term-limited, is no longer on the ballot.
“There is a group of Republicans who are maybe going, ‘I’ve got to stand on my own,’ and that ranges from the Indiana state legislators to Marjorie Taylor Greene,” said Pat McCrory, the former Republican governor of North Carolina. “Who would have imagined?”
McCrory cautioned against underestimating Trump’s grip on the party: He saw it firsthand when Trump helped sink his 2022 bid for Senate, even as Trump was viewed as politically diminished in the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol by a mob of supporters.
What remains to be seen, McCrory said, is whether lawmakers who defy Trump will pay the same price others have in the past. “This is not the first time people have stood up,” he said. “The question will be, is the power still there to kill their political career?”
The White House did not respond to a request for comment. A White House official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal strategy, called those dissenting from the president “extreme outliers” and scoffed at the idea his influence is waning. On the union rights bill, the official noted, Trump’s team did not issue a policy statement and did not push Republican lawmakers, recognizing the bill will eventually fail in the Senate.
Trump still wields enormous power in his party, and he has frequently threatened retribution against Republicans who cross him. The vast majority of Republicans approve of Trump, though some recent polls have shown his ratings falling below his typical 90 percent level. Greene, a longtime ally of Trump and his Make America Great Again movement who grew increasingly critical, said she would resign from her U.S. House seat in Georgia a week after Trump withdrew his endorsement.
In Indiana, Trump and his allies have promised primary challenges against the GOP lawmakers who refused to redraw the state’s congressional map to add two red-leaning House seats. The conservative group Turning Point Action said it will join with other pro-Trump groups to spend $10 million or more on unseating state senators running in 2026 and 2028 who had blocked redistricting. The White House official said some of the Indiana Senate’s biggest donors called allies Thursday night to commit money for primary challenges.
Despite that threat, a majority of Indiana GOP state senators voted against redistricting on Thursday. The new map failed on a 31-19 vote, with 21 out of 40 Republicans joining all 10 Democrats to oppose it. Republicans currently hold seven of the state’s U.S. House seats; the new map was meant to give them all nine.
The vote followed an aggressive effort by Trump’s team to push through the more favorable map. Trump held a conference call with GOP state senators and called them individually. He invited them to the White House. He sent Vice President JD Vance to the state twice. And he called them out by name on his Truth Social platform.
Trump allies also said the administration communicated that Indiana could lose federal funding if lawmakers declined to redistrict. Indiana Lt. Gov Micah Beckwith (R) wrote in a now-deleted social media post Thursday that the “Trump admin was VERY clear about this” and “told many lawmakers, cabinet members and the Gov and I that this would happen.” (A representative for Beckwith did not immediately respond to a request for comment Friday.) Heritage Action, a conservative group backing redistricting, warned on social media Thursday that if Indiana leaders declined to pass a new map, “all federal funding will be stripped from the state.”
The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the claims about threats to federal funding.
Trump and his allies had been bracing for defeat before Thursday’s vote. Trump downplayed his involvement in Indiana after the redistricting push failed. “I wasn’t working on it very hard,” he told reporters.
The Republicans who voted against Trump’s wishes minimized their criticism of him. On the floor of the state Senate and in an interview, state Sen. Greg Goode (R) noted his support for the president before voting against the new map.
“As one who has voted for President Trump three times, his opinion is very important,” Goode said in the interview. “But so are the voices of my constituents.”
Other Republicans concluded that the pressure eventually backfired and hardened lawmakers’ resolve. “Hoosiers are very thoughtful, calm people who want to get along, and they’re just not accustomed to Washington-style politics,” said state Sen. Travis Holdman (R), who also opposed the Trump-backed map.
The atmosphere in the state grew tense in the lead-up to Thursday’s vote. Goode was the victim of a false report that led law enforcement to kick in the door of his home. Many of his colleagues on both sides of the debate received threats to their safety, including Holdman.
“It doesn’t help the cause for the redistricting when people do things like that,” Holdman said.
Trump’s push in Indiana was part of a nationwide effort to redraw maps ahead of the 2026 midterms. So far, four other states have redrawn districts that could give Republicans up to nine more seats. Democrats in California have responded by drawing five more seats in their favor. Officials in other states are considering new maps. Florida Republicans appear likely to redraw in the GOP’s favor, and Trump’s team is waiting to see how redistricting plays out while weighing whether to get involved in other states such as Kansas, the White House official said.
The goal on both sides is to win control of the House.
Currently, Republicans hold a narrow House majority that has put them in tough spots on some votes. On Thursday, the chamber voted 231-195 to repeal Trump’s March executive order abolishing union rights at more than two dozen federal agencies.
The bill is unlikely to pass in the Senate because of GOP opposition. But the House delivered an unusual bipartisan rebuke of Trump. The coalition included many of Republicans’ most vulnerable incumbents, who noted the federal workers in their districts.
Lawmakers forced on a vote on the issue with a discharge petition, which allows them to bypass party leadership if they gain a critical mass of signatures. They used the same tactic last month to force a vote on releasing more of the government’s files on Epstein — another moment when a small group of Republican lawmakers bucked the president.
Four GOP House members, including Greene, signed on to the petition for a vote, despite pushback from the White House. The quest for more information on Epstein is a longtime cause on the right, but Trump had for months dismissed the issue as a distraction promoted by Democrats. Once a vote was inevitable, however, the president reversed course and said Republicans should back the release of the files.
Marley reported from Indianapolis. Scott Clement in Washington contributed to this report.
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