For the most part, President Trump hasn’t had to worry too much about the loyalty of his fellow Republicans on Capitol Hill. Sure, he needed to make a trip to the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue to pressure a few Republican holdouts to support his “big, beautiful” package of tax cuts and spending cuts, but the rank-and-file has tended to blindly follow whatever the White House wants.
Yet over the last several days, a slight divide has emerged between Trump and Republicans – or more specifically, Trump and Senate Republicans – on Ukraine and Russia policy. The ongoing war in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s maximalist demands and the cumbersome nature of Trump’s diplomatic initiative have driven some of the GOP’s more hawkish elements to press the administration into hitting the Russian economy with additional sanctions. Patience in Congress is wearing thin – and although Republican lawmakers won’t officially declare Trump’s negotiating efforts dead, it’s becoming abundantly clear that fewer and fewer members view the effort as a process worth banking on.
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