Follow our live updates on the Trump administration and federal agency cuts.
As President Trump makes an abrupt pivot toward Russia, upending generations of American foreign policy, he is also defying members of his own party in Congress, many of whom have spent their careers arguing for a hawkish stance against Moscow and strong backing for allies in Europe facing its most immediate threats.
But the response from Republicans on Capitol Hill has been muted, in some cases to the point of silence. There has been little G.O.P. pushback on Mr. Trump’s efforts to draw closer to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia or blame Ukraine as he seeks to bring a quick end to the war that began when Russia invaded the country.
While some Republicans have expressed dismay at Mr. Trump’s moves and statements, there has been no concerted effort to challenge him from G.O.P. leaders or senators who play pivotal roles in overseeing military and foreign policy in Congress.
“Right now, you have got to give him some space,” Senator John Thune, the South Dakota Republican and majority leader, said at a news conference on Capitol Hill Wednesday after a closed-door Senate lunch with Vice President JD Vance.
The weekly meeting often provides senators an opportunity to iron out internal disputes. A few senators expressed a desire to use at least part of the time to press Mr. Vance about Mr. Trump’s apparent willingness to abandon American allies, draw nearer to Mr. Putin and denounce President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine as a “dictator.”
But when the time came, the topic did not come up, according to several attendees.
“What I’m in support of is a peaceful outcome and result in Ukraine,” Mr. Thune told reporters after the meeting, “and I think right now the administration, the president and his team are working to achieve that.” Of Mr. Trump’s labeling of Mr. Zelensky as a dictator, he said only: “The president speaks for himself.”
Mr. Thune was among the sizable contingent of Republican senators who spent the past three years backing legislation to send tens of billions of dollars in aid to Ukraine for its war effort. Now that Mr. Trump is in the White House, they are putting up little fight as he turns against Kyiv.
Even Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the former party leader who worked to establish himself as a principal Republican voice in support of Ukraine and a counterweight to Mr. Trump’s “America First” approach to foreign policy, has remained publicly silent in the face of the president’s move toward Russia.
It is a striking turn for Republicans, who for decades defined themselves as the party of a strong defense and argued that the United States had a pivotal role to play as a beacon of freedom and defender of democracies around the globe.
Some G.O.P. lawmakers have made clear they do not agree with Mr. Trump’s approach, but most have done so taking pains not to criticize the president. Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi and the chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said he disagreed with the idea of an in-person meeting with Mr. Putin.
“My advice to the president, if he asked me, would be not to give Vladimir Putin the benefit of sitting with a democratically elected head of state,” said Mr. Wicker, calling the Russian leader “an international scofflaw and a war criminal of the worst kind.”
But though he leads the Senate committee that oversees national security, Mr. Wicker made it clear that Mr. Trump has not consulted him.
A year ago, nearly two dozen Republican senators defied Mr. Trump’s wishes and voted in favor of continuing to send tens of billions of dollars in military and other aid to Ukraine to fight off Russia. Few of those lawmakers have spoken out against his current stance, and those who have mostly offered carefully worded criticism aimed at Mr. Putin — but not Mr. Trump.
“Well, it sounds like that’s the direction they are headed,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, said of the Trump administration’s push to reset diplomatic ties with Russia.
Ms. Murkowski, appearing to speak carefully to avoid directly criticizing Mr. Trump, said that she hoped that the country would not “lose sight of the fact that Russia, Putin just brazenly and without regard to life or borders invaded Ukraine.”
“I think we need to be very careful,” she added.
Mr. Trump has said in recent days Ukraine is to blame for the start of the war, telling reporters from his Mar-a-Lago estate that Ukrainian leaders “could have made a deal.” On Wednesday, he sharpened his criticism, calling Mr. Zelensky a “dictator without elections.”
Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, who recently returned from a trip to Kyiv where he and two other senators reaffirmed their support for Ukraine, balked at the “dictator” remark.
“It’s not a word I would use,” he told reporters on Wednesday.
“There is no moral equivalency between Vladimir Putin and President Zelensky,” Mr. Tillis said of the comments Mr. Trump made in a post on his social media site.
But Mr. Tillis, who recently considered and then retreated from a confrontation with Mr. Trump over his defense secretary, was also careful to avoid directly criticizing the president’s approach. Mr. Tillis said he believed Mr. Trump would ultimately listen to his advisers and take note of the discomfort from Republicans on Capitol Hill, who may be privately urging him to avoid appeasing Mr. Putin.
When asked if she supported the idea of Mr. Trump holding an in-person meeting with the Russian president, Senator Joni Ernst, Republican of Iowa, simply shrugged her shoulders.
Last year, Ms. Ernst was among the contingent of Republicans who voted in favor of sending billions of dollars in military aid to Ukraine. At the time, she said her support was to project American strength on the world stage, something she said President Joseph R. Biden Jr. was not doing.
“By strengthening and equipping America to push back against our adversaries’ aggression, Congress has stepped up to do the job this president will not,” Ms. Ernst said in a statement then.
Now that Mr. Trump is in office, many Republicans have dropped their most hawkish positions on Russia and Mr. Putin to support Mr. Trump’s push to end the war.
Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, once called Mr. Putin a “thug” and a war criminal, saying he “needs to be dealt with.” But shortly after Mr. Trump announced that Mr. Putin had extended an invitation for the president to travel to Moscow, Mr. Graham changed his tune substantially.
“I don’t care if they meet Putin in Cleveland,” he said in recent days of plans to hold high-level talks between the White House and the Kremlin. “I don’t care if they talk, I don’t care if they go on vacation. It doesn’t matter to me what you do as long as you get it right.”
On Wednesday, Mr. Graham wrote on social media that Mr. Trump “is Ukraine’s best hope to end this war honorably and justly,” adding that he believes the president “will be successful and he will achieve this goal in the Trump way.”
