President-elect Donald Trump’s rapid-fire cabinet appointments have made clear what he values: loyalty to Donald Trump and a demonstrated ability to articulate that loyalty on television.
The response to The Trump Show’s casting call will be even more clarifying. In short: Will the Senate remain the Senate?
While much of the GOP has become a Trump subsidiary, there are still some Senate Republicans who consider themselves members of a co-equal branch of government and take their Advise and Consent duty seriously.
Not that this is the Hollywood version of the Senate. Most of the 53 Republican lawmakers in the incoming Senate want to support their party’s president, who just won a decisive victory and enjoys diehard support from the bulk of their voters. They’d much rather air their concerns about Trump’s picks privately and avoid having to cast a vote in opposition to any of them. No need to do any “Mr. Smith Goes to Washington” impressions on the Senate floor when the oppo research can work its will.
Yet it’s that lack of appetite for a public showdown with Trump that will make the first months of the new Congress so telling. The fates of the fringe appointees who come up for a confirmation vote will reveal one of the most important new power centers in Washington, and perhaps one of the few checks on Trump II: the lame duck caucus.
Yes, it’s those senators who may never have to face Republican primary voters again and are therefore immune from Trump’s greatest power — his control of the GOP base.
These are the lawmakers for which freedom — to borrow from the great and recently departed Kris Kristofferson — is just another word for nothing left to lose.
This is not to say that every Republican senator who opposes a Trump appointment is headed for the exits. Some are independent minded, and their political strength flows partly from that identity (looking at you, senior senators from Maine and Alaska).
However, to examine those GOP senators whose terms are up in 2026 and 2028 is to grasp how some of Trump’s most provocative picks could be blocked, provided the 47 Democrats and independents vote in unified opposition.
The challenge will not just be how willing they are to thwart Trump, but whether they will be willing to do so with more than one nominee. It’s one thing to rise up with safety in numbers and block, say, Matt Gaetz’s nomination as attorney general should it reach the floor. It’s quite another to torpedo Gaetz and then take down another, let alone two or three, more Trump appointees.
It’s worth watching, though, because this same bloc of Republican lawmakers would also be the most likely to reemerge later in Trump’s term to selectively challenge him on issues (tariffs or foreign policy come to mind) or an inevitable power grab.
So who’s in this latest Senate gang, one most would deny being part of?
Let’s begin with those senators who are up in 2026.
Sen. Mitch McConnell (Ky.): The longest-serving Senate leader in American history tops the list because he is the most likely retiree. McConnell is the consummate partisan — look no further than his return to Trump after prematurely consigning him to history’s ash heap. He’s also a team player who will not want to make life unduly difficult for his successor as leader, Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.).
However, McConnell has also made clear he wants to use the end of his 40-plus years in the Senate to steer his party away from isolationism. How committed he is to that task could be determined early next year should he have to consider Pete Hegseth as Defense Secretary and Tulsi Gabbard as intelligence chief.
Sen. John Cornyn (Texas): Equally liberated could be the man who fell a few votes short of becoming McConnell’s successor. In the immediate wake of his defeat, Cornyn, who turns 73 in February, said he still planned to run for reelection. Yet after not realizing his years-long goal of becoming Senate GOP leader, does Cornyn really want to spend the next 16 months racing between Texas and Washington to fend off a right-wing primary so he can serve in the rank-and-file until he’s 80? If not, he’s free to act, and vote, like the Bush Republican he is.
Sen. Susan Collins (Maine): Finally poised to claim the Appropriations gavel she’s long coveted, Collins has also indicated she intends to run for reelection in two years. I don’t doubt it. But what sort of a primary and general election could loom in her bifurcated state? There’s a reason why the dexterous Collins is the last sitting GOP senator to carry a state that her party’s presidential nominee lost. Striking that balance of keeping core Republicans from her native rural Maine happy without angering moderate Mainers closer to Portland will be on her mind with every contentious vote.
Sen. Bill Cassidy (La.): Like Collins, Cassidy voted to convict Trump of impeachment charges nearly four years ago. Unlike Collins, Cassidy hails from a deeply pro-Trump state. Even more ominous for the Louisiana lawmaker, his state’s famous jungle primary — in which all candidates for office appear on a single ballot open to all voters — is no more for federal races. Now chairing the HELP Committee, Cassidy, a physician, may not want to walk away. But if he concludes he will lose a Republican primary, he’ll be free to vote as boldly as he did when he was one of only seven Senate Republicans to convict Trump.
Sen. Thom Tillis (N.C.): Tillis’ most vexing potential primary opponent, Lt. Gov. Mark Robinson, is no more thanks to, well, you know what. But like Collins, Tillis is staring at the prospect of more conservative Republicans eager to pounce should he break from Trump. And Tillis could have one of the most hard-fought general elections in the country should outgoing Gov. Roy Cooper be tempted to run. (Expect Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer to have memorized Cooper’s number by the first of the year.)
More than the hassle of an expensive primary and general election two years on may be the more immediate question of whether a dealmaker like Tillis can find satisfaction in the Senate during another time of Trump. Will he make his peace with MAGA, as he did under Trump I? Or will he follow the course of his neighbor to the west, former Senator Bob Corker, and decide after two terms he’s had quite enough of the “adult day care center” that is the Trump White House.
Sen. Joni Ernst (Iowa): Ernst has been sounding Trumpier lately. Perhaps she’ll be tapped for an administration post. Army Secretary or Defense Secretary, if Hegseth is derailed, could be alluring for a military veteran like Ernst. But, as with Cornyn, she lost a leadership race and is now something of a free agent. And like McConnell, she doesn’t hide her more hawkish national security views.
I’m tempted to include Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.V.), a pre-Trump Republican if there ever was one. Capito turns 71 next week and may not want to spend most of her 70s in the Senate. Yet she’ll be mindful of voting in a way that, in a state where the primary is now tantamount to election, won’t undermine her son or nephew from becoming the third generation of Moores elected statewide.
Okay, onto those up in 2028.
Sen. Lisa Murkowski (Ark.): Murkowski is the other remaining GOP senator who voted to convict Trump of impeachment charges in the aftermath of the attack on the Capitol. She has already won one primary as a write-in candidate. And she may prevail again should she run again in four years if Alaska’s ranked-choice system survives repeal efforts. But that Anchorage to D.C. commute doesn’t get any shorter. Regardless of her ultimate plans, there may be no more liberated Republican senator in the body next year.
Sen. Charles Grassley (Iowa): Grassley has been in elected office since the Eisenhower administration and I’m reluctant to ever assume he’s on the verge of retirement. But at 91, perhaps the Iowan will start considering his retirement years. Seriously, though, the Judiciary Committee chair has not shown much interest in challenging Trump previously. But if ever there was a GOP lawmaker without political considerations to weigh, it’s the hog farmer and Twitter maven from New Hartford, Iowa.
Sen. Todd Young (Ind.): It got remarkably little attention, but Young didn’t endorse Trump’s candidacy this year. Which puts him in league with Collins and Murkowski. That’s no small thing for a 52-year-old from deep-red (crimson?) Indiana with years ahead of him in elected office. If he wants as much. That may depend on the state of party.
Regardless, Young, a Naval Academy graduate and Marine, is in the internationalist tradition of his long-ago boss, Sen. Richard Lugar. And his deafening silence this year toward Trump’s candidacy suggests he’s not afraid to go his own way.
Sen. Jerry Moran (Kansas): The low-key former House member — he and Thune arrived in the same class to that chamber — has avoided tangling with Trump. But Moran is a Republican traditionalist who could be in his last term. He’s 70 and, like Cornyn, may not want to remain in the Senate until he’s 80.
Sen. To Be Named Later (Ohio): The successor to Vice-President-elect JD Vance is a mystery but the person who will decide who fills the seat is not. It’s Gov. Mike DeWine, an old school Republican nearing, presumably, his final two years in elected office. Will DeWine pick a placeholder in his image, somebody who may defy Trump, or a more MAGA-friendly figure who can survive a primary?
That’s it for the 2028 class. I’ll resist the temptation to scout those GOP senators up in 2030 — except to note this may be Armed Services Chair and national security hawk Sen. Roger Wicker’s (R-Miss.) last term.
Not that he or most any other GOP senator will want to break from Trump. But as the once and future president has proven for nearly a decade, and is proving anew since the election, the only thing more vexing than being a Trump critic is being a Trump ally.
