Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks with reporters following the Senate Republicans' weekly policy lunch on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S., February 25, 2025.
Alaska’s Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski has issued a challenge to fellow Republicans concerned about what Trump and his regime are doing but who haven’t been willing to say so.
“It requires speaking out. It requires saying, ‘That violates the law,’ ‘That violates the authorities of the executive’ … So it requires speaking out and standing up. And that requires, again, more than just one or two Republicans.”
But apart from Murkowski, Maine’s Susan Collins, and Utah’s John Curtis, who have all spoken out, and a small handful of Republican representatives in the House who have done so as well, the Republican Party in Congress has remained a zombie cult.
I’m not suggesting congressional Democrats have been a fighting force. James Carville’s call for them to “play dead” is unnecessary, because they’re already dead.
But Republicans are in the driver’s seat in both chambers. If just two or three more Republican senators and four or five Republican representatives had the guts to stand up to Trump, he couldn’t get away with what he’s doing.
Which has mades me wonder: When Republican members of Congress look at themselves in the mirror in the morning (as I assume they do, at least to comb their hair or brush their teeth), what do they say to themselves to justify their supine allegiance to Trump?
How do they rationalize their fealty to a man who lies that Ukraine started the war with Russia, that Ukraine President Zelensky is a dictator, and that half the money the U.S. has provided Ukraine is “missing?” A man who has put America on the same side as Russia and North Korea in the United Nations? A man who’s aligning the United States with a ruthless dictator, Vladimir Putin, against America’s democratic allies around the world ?
What do they say to themselves to justify their diffidence toward the man who pardoned the attackers on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 — the people who went after Capitol Hill police officers with guns and clubs, causing several deaths, and who continue to be dangerous?
How do they explain away their continued backing of the man who is appointing people to his Cabinet and the White House who don’t believe in democracy but who believe in conspiracy theories — people with records of sexual assault and harassment, who know nothing whatever about the agencies they’re tasked with running, and whose only qualification is utter loyalty to Trump?
What do they say to themselves as Trump repeatedly tramples on Congress’s authority? As he fires inspectors general and agency heads whom Congress has designated as independent, and shuttered independent agencies? As he defies federal court orders?
How do they defend their passivity in the face of such a blatant coup?
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Robert Reich is a professor of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com/.
