Inside a bitter Republican feud about to erupt as Trump pushes GOP unity

WASHINGTON — Don’t let celebratory rallies, fawning tweets on X or glitzy inaugural balls fool you. Today’s Republicans are warring with their fellow Republicans. That GOP civil war’s about to be on full display in the nation’s capital.

Senior Republicans on Capitol Hill are prepared to follow Donald Trump’s lead on most anything, but that’s not good enough for newly empowered MAGA mavericks. They say their mandate is to upend business as usual in Washington, including the Republican Party itself.

“We're not going to be quiet, no,” Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) — a former chair of the far-right Freedom Caucus — told Raw Story. “We're going to participate.”

Robust participation is one thing, rabble-rousing quite another. And veteran Republicans don’t trust their Freedom Caucus counterparts on Capitol Hill to be good faith actors, especially after a mere eight Republicans ingloriously dethroned former Speaker Kevin McCarthy in 2023.

GOP leaders may exude optimism in front of the cameras, but in private, party elders are bracing for an array of bloody brawls they sense just over the horizon.

Unless Trump whips up a miracle, this new, GOP-controlled Congress is set on a collision course with itself.

“They’re not conservatives. They're celebrities.”

The MAGA movement in Congress has mastered the politics of disruption, but that’s a fairly useless tool for a majority party tasked with actually governing.

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Without a foil like President Joe Biden in the White House in this new, 119th Congress, veteran Republicans fear self-righteous Freedom Caucus antics will derail the party’s agenda. The old guard’s frustration with the party’s bomb-throwing newbies is becoming increasingly palpable at the Capitol as the full weight of being in charge of all of Washington is slowly sinking in.

“They’ll demand things they’ll never vote for — whatever they demand — because they’re not conservatives, they're celebrities,” a senior Republican lawmaker complained to Raw Story on the condition of anonymity to avoid retribution.

With the GOP maintaining a slim, few-seat majority in the House, many Republicans expect Speaker Mike Johnson to have to once again reach across the aisle just to fund the government, which many Republicans blame on the Freedom Caucus.

“What they consistently do is, they force us to the left,” the veteran GOP lawmaker continued. “Some of them may not know it — they’re just useful idiots — but there’s a few that are pretty smart there and they know it. They’re not conservatives, they know they force us to the left.”

That kind of talk is sacrilegious to Freedom Caucus faithful. They accuse many senior Republicans of colluding with Democrats to maintain the status quo.

“You still have a uniparty here in Washington, D.C., and we've been pushing back on that since before I got into Congress,” Biggs said.

“Do you feel like you’re making progress?” Raw Story pressed.

“Yeah. So you’re talking about a MAGA-type of revolution and you got a mandate,” Biggs said. “[Republicans] have told me, ‘well, I insist on amnesty’ — what? ‘I can’t make cuts to spending’ — okay? But, you know, the mandates are there.”

Old-school Republicans may have hopped aboard the Trump train late, but they argue they’re better situated to advance Trump’s priorities than his far-right allies.

"Look, there's a small group here who are the self-proclaimed, you know, 'conservatives' that are always looking at ways to get clicks and to raise money. They do so by just being critical of the Republican Party," Rep. Mario Diaz-Balart (R-FL) told Raw Story. "That's not gonna change."

“They feel like their mandate is to upend the Republican Party,” Raw Story pressed.

“The Republican Party won the election,” Diaz-Balart said. “We're gonna have to stick together, and nobody gets 100% of what they want. So we'll see what that small group of people does.”

They may be a small group, but the speaker can only afford a few GOP defections to pass any bill these days. So they’re also a supremely empowered group.

GOP civil war not lost on Dems

Since November’s bruising losses, Democrats haven’t been smiling much.

As they self-reflect, many have been studying up on today’s far-right. And they sense Trump’s already making critical mistakes, like replacing his populist campaign promises with a gang of wealthy elitists.

"Right now, I'm listening to Steve Bannon, who seems much more connected to the populist message and the notion of taking care of the Americans who have been left behind,” Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA) told Raw Story.

So far, Trump’s tapped an unprecedented 16 billionaires to either Senate-confirmed posts—from Education Secretary-nominee Linda McMahon to Commerce Secretary-nominee Howard Lutnick—or to be his unconfirmed brain trust—think Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy.

They’re not representative of Trump's base, even if they’re similar to Trump himself.

“I always thought that the populism was a campaign ploy — not real for a billionaire from New York City who inherited an enormous amount of wealth,” Beyer said. “I've never thought that his personal values matched the values of the American people. Most people don't cheat on their spouses. Most people pay their bills. Most people pay their taxes. Most people are not felons. None of that is very populist, right?"

Beyer isn’t alone. Other Democrats, like Rep. Veronica Escobnar (D-TX), also sense a Trump-sized disconnect between the incoming administration and the voters who propelled the GOP back into power.

Besides Bannon, Escobar noticed the digital rants of fringe-right provocateur Laura Loomer, who’s been blowing up her X feed with anti-Musk and anti-Mark Zuckerberg diatribes.

“The Loomer and Bannon stuff tells me that the coalition is far more fragile than I think many of us understand. You can try to be all things to everyone, but that doesn’t last very long,” Escobnar told Raw Story.

“So at some point, Trump and MAGA will have to decide whether, you know, they support the oligarchy or not,” Escobar continued. “You can't say you are going to help regular, everyday Americans deal with rising costs and be beholden to billionaires. It's impossible.”

“He wouldn't allow most of them within 1,000 feet of Mar-a-Lago”

To other Democrats, the staggering net worth of Trump’s new team — estimated to be upwards of $450 billion — is revealing.

“It exposes the core fraud of Trump — a guy who talks a big populist game, but at the end of the day is someone who is most comfortable living and hanging out at Mar-a-Lago with fellow billionaires,” Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-PA) told Raw Story. “The irony is, for all the people that go to his rallies, he wouldn't allow most of them within 1,000 feet of Mar-a-Lago.”

It’s more than just the commas. The access and power corporations and business leaders are being granted is new and disturbing to Boyle. But, at the end of the day, he’s most alarmed by Musk’s control of social media juggernaut X.

“The fact that some super wealthy oligarch can then control the media, that is truly disturbing at a time in which there are few responsible gatekeepers to accurate information,” Boyle said. “This is really unprecedented, because Carnegie and the robber barons, they didn't have power in the Grover Cleveland administration or the William McKinley administration, so this is quite unique and quite dangerous.”

Others, like Rep. Ami Bera (D-CA), fear Trump’s surrounding himself with immature adults.

“So there also is a California kind of, this tech bro culture. Really relatively young folks that became wildly successful, wildly wealthy, but, I would argue, sometimes seem to be stuck in adolescence in this echo chamber,” Bera told Raw Story. “How are they going to be able to relate to the steelworker in Ohio? I don't know. We'll see.”

That said, Bera says Democrats would be foolish to obstruct like the party did back in 2017 merely. He says his party has a lot of listening to do.

"It's a different Republican Party, and, I think, shame on us as Democrats if we don't actually try to understand it, understand what's happening in America and then try to meet that party," Bera said.

Bera’s already looking for common ground. He supports some of the ideas United Nations Secretary-nominee Elise Stefanik is proposing to modernize the decades-old organization. Bera argues Democrats should welcome ideas to streamline government that may come out of the (unofficial) Department of Government Efficiency—or DOGE—and its leader, Elon Musk.

"Obviously, incredibly brilliant, successful, disruptive innovator. So there are places if they're willing to meet us — I won't even say the 50-yard line, but the 40-yard line, right? They’re in the majority — where we could find areas of agreement," Bera said. "So I do think there's ways to improve government efficiency. There's ways to disrupt government, to make it more accessible to the average American.”

And Republicans surely are set on disruption in Trump’s second term, and they’re eager to follow the lead of their party’s standard bearer.

While different factions of the Republican Party are battling over which direction the party should go in, party leaders say their differences are overblown.

And, publicly at least, GOP leaders laugh off fears of an entrenched oligarchy and “tech industrial complex” like outgoing President Joe Biden warned the nation of in his farewell address to the nation.

“Well, the greatest change agent of this generation is a billionaire from Manhattan named Donald Trump,” Rep. Richard Hudson (R-NC) told Raw Story. “So, no. I'm not worried.”

“But there is tension?” Raw Story asked.

“There’s always tension,” Hudson, who chairs the National Republican Congressional Committee (or NRCC), said. “Tension gets you good policy.”

“Yeah?” Raw Story pressed. “Tell that to [fmr. Speaker Kevin] McCarthy.”

“That was more than tension,” Hudson said through a hearty laugh.

“But the party is still torn between, say, isolationism and [neo-cons]?” Raw Story asked. “Or do you think this past election settled a lot of those differences?”

“Divergent views, I think that’s healthy. And the Republican Party’s always been like that,” Hudson contended. “We're not a lockstep party, and it's frustrating at times. It takes longer to get there. But, I mean — and I'm serious — I think you get to better policy in the end. So I'm not worried about it.”

But the American people are worried. At least when it comes to their grocery prices, which is a debate expected to test Republicans early in the new administration.

Republicans already running from Trump’s tariffs

Most Republicans are wary of Trump’s repeated promises to slap stiff tariffs on goods coming into the U.S. But, at least for now, most aren’t airing those grievances too loudly as they wait to see what Trump’s actual tariffs are.

Republicans in Congress shouldn’t get too worked up over tariffs — which economists warn will increase the cost of consumer goods — because, ultimately, it’s not their decision to make, according to Rep. Ryan Zinke (R-MT).

"There's a lot of strong positions on tariffs, but it's not — and I mentioned this to my colleagues — it's not the purview of Congress," Zinke — who served as Trump’s first secretary of the Interior in his last administration — told Raw Story. “That would be the president.”

While Zinke coaches his congressional colleagues to let Trump take charge on international tariff policies, he knows clashes between Congress and the White House are inevitable, especially when it comes to the federal budget.

With Musk and Ramaswamy looking to slash some $2 trillion from federal spending, Zinke predicts their recommendations will ruffle many Republican feathers on Capitol Hill.

"If there is a battleground, it's really, quite frankly, fiscal policy," Zinke said. "All the Republicans are united on the border, but the fiscal side, you know, how much do you add to spending? It's really not about the debt. The debt is what we have spent, right? It's about the debts — like, you get a credit card bill, but that's the debt. We gotta look at the spending side, and that's what the concern is."

The former cabinet secretary expects a GOP clash early in this new Congress when Trump and his team try to cut corporate taxes even further than they did in his first administration.

“Rigging the system”

Democrats may be needed to help the Republican majorities fund the government and raise the debt ceiling. And if GOP leaders need them, Democratic leaders are vowing to extract some wins in exchange.

But in recent years, the two parties’ agendas have grown increasingly further apart, even as both party’s bases have gotten louder and less forgiving if their leaders in Washington work across the aisle.

That’s why instead of protesting Trump at every turn like they did in 2017, this go round, as much as possible, Democrats are preparing to keep their distance and watch all these GOP battles play out in real-time.

Democrats are already dusting off their old income inequality playbook and are just waiting for the right moment to pounce after the GOP stumbles.

With so many billionaires in and around Trump’s White House, they expect early opportunities to woo back the working and middle-class voters who abandoned them in 2024.

“We have nothing against people becoming wealthy on good ideas, hard work and innovation in this country,” House Democratic Whip Katherine Clark (D-MA) told Raw Story. “That is part of the American success story, but rigging the system against hard-working Americans is not.”

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