The Republican-controlled House and Senate have not done much to stand in the way of President Trump — even when his actions have encroached on terrain the Constitution reserved for them.
But there are signs that some Republican lawmakers are trying to reassert their independence.
When news broke last week that the Pentagon carried out a second strike on two individuals on a largely-destroyed alleged drug boat in the Caribbean Sea, even some Republicans expressed alarm.
"Somebody made a horrible decision," Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., told reporters in the Capitol. "Somebody needs to be held accountable. This is our job. This is part of oversight. That's pretty straightforward."
The strikes are not the only actions that have spurred a handful of Republicans to stake out a bit of daylight with the Trump administration. Some have criticized Trump's tariffs, like Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.
"Our lobsterman, our blueberry growers, our potato farmers will pay the price," Collins said in October, before a vote to roll back tariffs on Canada.
Ahead of the upcoming expiration date for enhanced health care subsidies, which Trump has signaled indifference to renewing, Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., warned last month of a "massive crisis unless Congress acts."
Nebraska Congressman Don Bacon has been one of the most consistent critics of Trump's approach to Russian President Vladimir Putin's incursion into Ukraine. Bacon consistently calls it a soft touch, particularly in contrast to Trump's approach to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
"The velvet glove, red carpet treatment for Putin and then the condescending, boorish behavior that the president and the vice president has done towards Zelenskyy — it's a contrast," Bacon told Nebraska Public Media earlier this year.
Senators have also pushed back on Trump's intermittent calls to end the filibuster. "You'd have to be smoking wizard weed to vote for that," Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., told reporters during the 43-day government shutdown that ended last month.
And Trump's reluctance to release the investigative files into convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein spurred a break between the president and one of his closest allies, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
"He called me a traitor for standing with these women," she said.
Moments of GOP resistance or a growing trend?
After months of the White House steamrolling Congress on tariffs, appropriations and military intervention, even this careful pushback is a departure, says former Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Ariz.
Flake says the shift is accelerating with Trump's declining approval rating. The pushback also grew following Republicans' poor performance in off-year elections last month.
"There was a lot of fear about what he could do to you electorally," Flake said. "That's diminishing."
Flake, who did not run for reelection in 2018 in part because he refused to unconditionally back Trump, says some lawmakers are now more willing to say aloud what they long expressed behind closed doors.
"Obviously behind the scenes, it's a whole different ballgame," he said. "This migration is happening and when Republicans get there, they'll get to a new-old place where they were on some of these threshold issues that have animated conservatives for decades."
But this is not the first time observers have declared a new era, only for Trump to firm up his grip on congressional Republicans, including the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.
"A lot of us have been wrong on how long this has endured," he said.
Most of the Republicans vocalizing their disagreements are retiring, represent competitive districts or are perennial centrists. And some of the splits with Trump have not been over traditional Republican values, but urging him to follow through on the populist platform he ran on.
Alaska Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski said Congress has made some recent attempts to push back on the White House, like resolutions rebuking the tariffs and boat strikes, but they have not been very successful or sufficient.
"I'd like to see more, and I believe that if we don't stand up for our powers under the Constitution, nobody else will," Murkowski told NPR in an interview.
Constitutional role of Congress
The framers gave the Congress the power to appropriate funds, to declare war and levy taxes, like tariffs.
Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., says it is unfair to say this Congress has relinquished its authority as an independent, coequal branch.
"I don't know how much different this one is," Thune told NPR. "A lot of times if I have differences with the administration, I don't litigate it in public. But we do have a responsibility as partners to try to get an agenda done for the American people that they voted for."
Molly Reynolds, a Brookings Institution expert on Congress, says it's true this is not just a Trump-era phenomenon. Congress has been ceding power to the executive and judicial branches for decades.
"And in some cases, Congress has been a willing and eager participant in sacrificing its own power to the other branches," she said.
Reynolds said this did not start with Trump's willingness to act more unilaterally in his second term, but it did escalate the trend. House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., recently told The Katie Miller Podcast that, "We have this joke that I'm not really a speaker of the House."
Reynolds, who jokingly calls herself a partisan of the first branch, says it is no accident the legislative branch is established in Article 1 of the Constitution. She said the framers saw the legislative branch as the closest to the people. The separation of powers and checks and balances are foundational concepts of the American form of government.
Reynolds said there is precedent for Congress taking steps to reassert its power, like the Watergate-era reforms to rein in the power of the president.
"It was in a really different political moment than the one we're living in now," Reynolds said, noting that politics is more polarized today. "Which is part of what makes it challenging to see the prospects for a similar burst of institutional patriotism."
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