Trump Suffers Day of Significant Republican Defections on House and Senate Votes

The Washington Post

13:23 JST, January 9, 2026

Significant numbers of Republicans joined with Democrats in voting against President Donald Trump’s interests on high-profile pieces of legislation Thursday, suggesting his party’s unyielding loyalty to this point in his term has started to splinter.

Earlier in the day, the Senate advanced a bipartisan measure intended to block the Trump administration from conducting further military action in Venezuela. Five Republicans joined every Democratic senator in advancing the resolution, following the White House’s capture of Venezuela’s president, without explicit permission from Congress.

The resolution is expected to get a chilly reception in the House if it passes the Senate, with Speaker Mike Johnson (R-Louisiana) unlikely to bring it to the floor. But it gave Senate Republicans an opportunity to come out against continued military action in Venezuela – which Trump and some administration officials have refused to rule out – without congressional approval.

Trump survived House votes to overturn two of his vetoes, which requires two-thirds of the chamber, but at least two dozen Republicans voted with Democrats to defy his will, demonstrating a greater willingness than seen last year to buck their party’s president. Thirty-five Republican lawmakers voted to override Trump’s veto of the Arkansas Valley Conduit Act, a bill meant to aid a decades-old Colorado water project, while 24 Republicans voted to negate Trump’s veto of the Miccosukee Reserved Area Amendments Act, which codifies tribal land rights in Florida.

After those votes, House Democrats, with help from Republicans, passed a bill to extend expired enhanced Affordable Care Act subsidies, a measure opposed by both Trump and Johnson. Seventeen Republicans supported the measure, which would need to pass the Senate before becoming law.

Lawmakers voting against their party’s president is common in midterm election years, particularly for vulnerable lawmakers who represent swing districts. Yet the repeated rebukes of the president, and the number of lawmakers defecting, are unusual. And they represent a continued challenge for GOP leaders with limited majorities, who are struggling to corral their colleagues behind the president’s agenda.

Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-New York) said the five Republican senators who joined with Democrats to advance the war powers resolution Thursday were part of a broader trend.

“Public sentiment – in terms of how Trump is behaving as president, what he’s doing as president – keeps sinking and sinking and sinking, and our Republican colleagues realize that,” Schumer told reporters after the vote. “So I think on this issue and other issues you’re going to find our Republican colleagues saying, ‘You know, maybe following Trump is like Thelma and Louise – right over the cliff.’”

Trump responded to the vote by posting on Truth Social that “Republicans should be ashamed of the Senators that just voted with Democrats in attempting to take away our Powers to fight and defend the United States of America” and that the Republicans who voted in support of the resolution “should never be elected to office again.”

Thursday’s vote to extend the subsidies is the first significant rebuke this year of Speaker Johnson, who refused to hold votes on bipartisan health care measures proposed by moderate lawmakers, spurring them to join the cause of Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York). The House’s narrow two-vote margin has emboldened Democrats to continue forcing votes on measures that could earn bipartisan support and override Johnson’s wishes.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-North Carolina) said the votes on Thursday should not be viewed as part of any broader anti-Trump trend, noting that the president has endorsed passing health care legislation (though the bill that House Republicans supported is not along the lines of what Trump proposed).

“It may be that the [House Republicans] who voted with the Democrats broke with leadership, but I don’t think they broke with President Trump,” Tillis told reporters.

Ahead of Thursday’s votes, several points of contention have arisen between the president and GOP lawmakers.

Longtime Trump ally Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), who sponsored the Colorado water project, soundly criticized the president for vetoing the measure on social media last week and expressed frustration with the veto override vote.

“I am disappointed to see the lack of leadership, the amount of people that will fold, that will cave, that will not take a stand,” Boebert said. “This is a bill that in policy, no one in that chamber disagreed with. This was purely political, and it’s very unfortunate, but I’m not taking it out personally on anybody.”

Rep. Jeff Hurd (R-Colorado), who co-sponsored the bill with Boebert, also said he was “disappointed” but added that he’s “committed to working with the administration to make sure the project is built.”

Ahead of the vote, Boebert said she hoped Trump’s decision to thwart a project affecting her district “has nothing to do with political retaliation.”

Boebert was one of four Republicans who signed a petition to force the release of federal files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Despite Trump repeatedly pillorying the initiative, nearly every House Republican ultimately voted to mandate the release. The Senate rapidly sent the Epstein bill to Trump’s desk.

After that vote, another longtime Trump ally who has been open about her anger with her party, former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Georgia), resigned from Congress.

Despite these frictions, the congressional GOP caucus has yet to show signs of outright rebellion and has broadly supported Trump’s positions even on contentious issues, such as the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and the administration’s immigration efforts.

House Republicans voting for the veto override measures largely said their votes had little to do with the president, citing instead concerns over upholding bipartisanship and providing access to natural resources.

“This is a project that we passed unanimously,” Hurd said, noting that the bill originally left the House with bipartisan support. “It’s good policy. It’s important for rural Colorado, rural America; President Trump’s supporters are affected by this in southeast Colorado.”

“We can agree to disagree,” said Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-Montana) when asked whether he was concerned about retribution due to his support for the override. “I’m never disagreeable with [Trump]. It’s not the first time I’ve disagreed with the president. I never make it personal; I work with him, but this is just about water.”

Rep. Carlos A. Gimenez (R- Florida), who sponsored the Florida legislation, told reporters he supported the veto override but was not “actively seeking” to overturn the legislation, because the project it approves – adding a small village to a protected part of the Florida Everglades, and compelling the federal government to address flooding issues – has the permits and funding needed to proceed.

“A lot of the things that we wanted to do for that bill have already been done,” Gimenez said.

Some Republicans who were against the overrides said they wanted to signal support for Trump in their votes, while others cited concerns over fiscal responsibility.

“I’m with the POTUS,” said Rep. Greg Steube (R-Florida), who was against overriding the Florida measure. “They’re not working with our federal law enforcement officers as it relates to immigration and enforcement.” (When explaining his veto, Trump cited the Miccosukee Tribe’s stance on the administration’s immigration policies as a factor in his denial.)

“I believe that projects that exclusively benefit local communities should be paid for exclusively by those local communities,” Rep. Tom McClintock (R-California) said. “We’ve got to stop robbing St. Petersburg to pay St. Paul.”

The White House contacted members in the Colorado and Florida delegations to pressure them against voting yes on the override measures, according to three sources familiar with the conversations who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak on the topic.

White House spokesperson Charyssa Parent was dismissive of the effort to override the vetoes, casting it as a normal part of the veto process, given that presidents are constitutionally required to return vetoed bills to Congress, allowing lawmakers the opportunity to make a vetoed bill law.

“Once a veto message is received, Congress must act,” Parent said. “This exercise is standard and should not be mistaken or over-sensationalized by the press as a test of party unity.”