House Republicans on Thursday passed a bill to provide aid to Ukraine and impose new sanctions on Russia, the latest sign that Donald Trump is losing some of his grip on the Republican Party in Congress. The vote came after multiple Republican factions in the House and Senate broke with him over the past week on separate fights, including his war against Iran, his White House ballroom funding and his push for a new anti-weaponization fund.
The bill now appears headed for a veto, putting Trump on a collision course with lawmakers in his own party even as the election year tightens. The same week, Republicans forced a retreat on his $1.8 billion anti-weaponization fund, blocked his legislation on domestic spying and rejected $1 billion in funding tied to the ballroom project, a string of setbacks that goes well beyond one foreign policy vote.
The moment matters because it lands after years in which Republican lawmakers repeatedly backed Trump’s cabinet picks, executive orders and signature legislation despite private doubts about deficits and Medicaid cuts. This time, however, the resistance is arriving alongside rising frustration over Trump’s attacks on the reelection bids of Senators Bill Cassidy and John Cornyn and over announcements that disrupted congressional plans, feeding the sense that his demands are no longer automatically translating into votes.
Still, the break with Trump may not amount to a full-scale revolt. Republicans and Democrats alike are skeptical that he faces one, and some of the lawmakers now crossing him have already been pushed out of his orbit. Senator Thom Tillis, who announced his retirement last year after opposing Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill, said people get closer to election day and vote the way they think their constituents want them to. Senator John Fetterman was blunter, saying the lawmakers breaking with Trump were the ones he had already put out.
White House officials are trying to downplay the setbacks as ordinary election-year politics. A White House official called the dissent a matter of timing, while spokeswoman Abigail Jackson said the administration looked forward to continuing its close relationship with Republicans to keep advancing Trump’s agenda. The next test is whether the growing coalition against him keeps expanding or whether, as in earlier fights, enough Republicans fall back in line to spare him from deeper losses before Election Day.
