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President Trump has always defied the laws of political gravity, seemingly impervious to setbacks that would sink any other figure and immune from the traditional ebb and flow of campaign cycles.
But his capitulation in the fight over releasing the Epstein files, and other recent developments, suggest that, when it comes to Congress, the president is subject to at least some of the same currents as his predecessors, as the first signs of his lame duck status emerge.
The willingness of congressional Republicans to defy Mr. Trump and back legislation requiring the disclosure of federal files on Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and one-time Trump friend, was the clearest evidence yet that G.O.P. lawmakers are starting to look beyond Mr. Trump’s tenure to their self-preservation in midterm elections next year.
There are other signs as well, notably the refusal by Senate Republicans to bow to Mr. Trump’s demand to gut the filibuster during the shutdown fight, and resistance in some states to his intense push to redraw House district maps to cement the G.O.P.’s hold and prevent a Democratic takeover that would imperil the president.
Mr. Trump’s previously ironclad grip on the Republican Congress might even be weakening earlier than usual, before the more typical loss of power by a sitting president following midterm elections. Republicans are reacting in real time to the drubbing their party took in off-year elections earlier this month, defeats that were much worse than anticipated.
Polling also shows Mr. Trump and his party in a weakened state on a number of fronts headed into a 2026 election cycle that will determine control of Congress, with Americans citing rising costs and a dour view of the economy that Mr. Trump had pledged to fix to their benefit.
The president continues to hold an outsized grip on his party given his massive popularity with his far-right base, and observers are quick to caution that his political strength has survived through many episodes when it had appeared to be waning.
But even Republicans concede that there is a shift underway that was probably inevitable, given the history of presidential power and the rapidity with which it can dissipate.
“He’d be the outlier if it didn’t happen,” said Senator Kevin Cramer, Republican of North Dakota. “The closer you get to the midterms and then beyond, everybody is measuring their own state or congressional district, and maybe people are a little more independent.”
Representative Thomas Massie, the Kentucky Republican who forced the Epstein vote in the face of political threats and caustic personal attacks from the president, perhaps said it most succinctly as he warned his colleagues about the risks of standing with the president at all costs.
“The record of this vote will last longer than Donald Trump’s presidency,” Mr. Massie said on ABC’s “This Week,” reminding his colleagues that they should avoid putting themselves in the posture of agreeing “to protect pedophiles,” as he put it, because Mr. Trump insisted they do so.
Scores of them took heed as approval of Mr. Massie’s Epstein legislation became a certainty, and Mr. Trump found himself forced to back the legislation at the last minute rather than suffer a mortifying defeat and look even weaker.
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Tierney L. Cross/The New York Times
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