Trump takes a beating from GOP amid Epstein files and tariffs rebuke

President Donald Trump‘s iron grip on the Republican Party might be starting to loosen, just a bit.

The few elected Republicans who regularly cross him — including Kentucky Rep. Thomas Massie and Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina — are more vocal than ever. And in recent days, daylight has emerged between the president and a handful of his top supporters in Congress.

The apparent shift is underway as Trump, the Republican Party’s undisputed leader, grapples with stubbornly low approval ratings — especially on the economy, a perennial issue on which he was elected that has only grown more important to Americans chafing under high prices.

Six U.S. House Republicans voted this week to overturn Trump’s tariffs on Canada. Tillis remained resolute in holding up the president’s Fed chair nomination in protest over a Justice Department investigation of the current one. The administration pulled back the sustained anti-immigration law enforcement push in Minnesota. And fallout from the Epstein files — in which Trump and allies are mentioned — is roiling the world and its most powerful players.

Democrats are jumping on the opening, with some pushing a narrative that “the tide is turning” on Trump. Their perceived momentum follows big wins in last fall’s off-year elections after hammering an affordability message, and as prediction markets favor them to win control of the House in the midterms.

“Trump’s grip on power is slipping,” Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., said Thursday in a gloating social media post. “Nobody is taking his bulls— that somehow he’s lowering prices for families.”

The administration’s efforts this week to wrest the affordability narrative — by drawing attention to Trump’s drug-pricing initiatives, or to gains in the stock market, or to projections that Americans’ tax refunds will rise this season — have been muddied by the deluge of political setbacks and controversies. Trump on Friday gave a passing glance to curbing price increases when he spoke to troops in North Carolina hours after the release of January consumer price index figures that showed slowing inflation.

He’s had fewer public appearances since a racist social media post last Friday, a shift from his recent cadence of Oval Office appearances in front of reporters with supporters from the political ranks and business community. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a frequent press conference partner of Trump, but his visit to the White House this week yielded no public remarks.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, when asked about challenges to Trump from the Republican Party, said the party will stay together with the president as its leader.

“Under President Trump’s leadership, Republicans will remain united together against the…