Less than a decade ago, all but a few Republicans in Congress would have taken the title of “Reagan Republican” as a badge of honor.
The 40th president’s “peace through strength” mantra guided decades of GOP philosophy on foreign affairs, with generations of Republicans emulating Ronald Reagan’s vision for modernizing the military and investing in alliances abroad.
But these days, as the GOP remakes itself in the image of Donald Trump, the moniker of “Reagan Republican” is no longer the proud distinction it once was.
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It’s more like a MAGA epithet.
For over a year now, Congress has struggled to pass new aid for Ukraine, the war-torn nation dismantling the military of one of the United States’ most hostile enemies. Israel, long considered one of the U.S.’s most important allies, hasn’t received congressionally approved aid in the wake of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack either. And Taiwan, staring down surging Chinese aggression, is also waiting on help from Congress.
Not lending a hand to these countries would have once been unthinkable to Reagan’s party. But the growing sect of “America First” Republicans are actively standing in the way. And as that faction stalls aid and U.S. allies suffer, Democrats and the dwindling camp of more hawkish Republicans are watching in disbelief.
“It’s not my father’s Republican Party,” said Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL)—the co-chair of the Congressional Ukraine Caucus. “My father’s Republican Party was pro-trade, pro-military, and pro-business.”
“You knew where they stood on this,” he continued. “Not the least of which was the foundation, the Reagan Doctrine—that we will forever stand with our allies against Soviet aggression.”
Quigley had a blunt assessment encapsulating the thoughts of many in Congress, from either side of the issue: “The Reagan Doctrine is dead.”
While Ukraine aid is not the only example of America First Republicans getting in the way of a policy that would once have been a no-brainer for the GOP, it’s perhaps the starkest.
Congress has not approved new funding to assist Ukraine in its defense against Russia since last December, when it signed off on a $45 billion tranche. That U.S. assistance is basically gone, and the Pentagon is reporting that Ukrainian soldiers will soon run out of ammunition without Congress’ intervention. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has implored Congress to pass more aid via personal trips to Capitol Hill, but his pleas have fallen on deaf ears in the GOP.
With the help of media personalities like former Fox News anchor Tucker Carlson, Ukraine aid has become a highly charged political lightning rod. Conservatives argue that any funding for Ukraine would be better spent domestically—never mind that the vast majority of Ukraine aid goes to U.S. defense companies rebuilding Pentagon weapon stockpiles.
The Republican critics of Ukraine aid are so substantial that, in September, 93 GOP lawmakers supported an amendment, led by conservative Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-FL), to prohibit security aid to Ukraine. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) has even vowed to introduce a motion to remove the speaker if he puts Ukraine aid on the floor for a vote.
With a House majority of just 219 Republicans—and the conservative penchant for ousting leaders when they step out of line alive and well—the Ukraine detractors demand to be taken seriously.
Even the Biden administration appears to acknowledge the tricky political reality. In October, they requested a $105 billion national security bill with money for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan. But, as a carrot to Republicans, the White House and lead Democratic negotiators also included money to bolster security at the U.S.-Mexico border. Democrats were willing to give up what was once their bargaining chip for a pathway to citizenship in immigration reform—now in exchange for military assistance that Republicans would have, until recently, fought strenuously to approve.
Amazingly, the offer still wasn’t good enough. House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) swore he wouldn’t give the bill a vote, and Republican senators—despite knowing it was the deal of the century—quickly came out against it.
The Republicans who had assured reporters for weeks that they would need to read the bill before expressing an opinion on it almost immediately were able to discern that the deal was no good.
Miraculously, the Senate GOP’s answer to the deal falling apart was simply to pass the foreign aid without the border provisions—an agreement Democrats were happy to accept the whole time.
Still, less than half of the Senate GOP conference voted yes on the aid. And so desperate were the America Firsters to block the bill that Trump-devotees like Sens. Mike Lee (R-UT), Rand Paul (R-KY), and J.D. Vance (R-OH) filibustered the deal through Super Bowl Sunday.
That bill is now stalled in the House, and Speaker Johnson once again appears in no rush to bring it to a vote. He’s now calling for more extreme border security measures, after shooting down the first deal because of the border security provisions.
Before ascending to the speakership, Johnson was sympathetic to Ukraine’s struggle against Russia. As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, he seemed to understand that Ukraine aid was a pennies-on-the-dollar strategy for constraining Vladimir Putin’s global ambitions. But now, as speaker, Johnson appears acutely aware that even allowing the House to work its will on Ukraine could cost him his job.
The role of the speaker used to be putting bills on the floor that could pass; it’s now the speaker’s job, under this new GOP world order, to make sure that you don’t put bills on the floor that could pass—at least not the ones where the right Republicans (or, perhaps, the wrong ones) are opposed.
There are, of course, Republicans who aren’t ready give up the ghost of Reagan. And they’re most often the ones who aren’t ready to take no for an answer on Ukraine.
“I’m kind of a Reagan guy,” said Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul (R-TX). “And I always ask, ‘What would Reagan do?’”
McCaul noted that Reagan felt very strongly that the U.S. was the leader of the free world, that we couldn’t abandon our allies or be isolationists.
“If we abandon our allies in Ukraine—like we did in Afghanistan—and surrender to Putin and allow him to take over Ukraine, he’ll go into Moldova, Georgia. He'll threaten the Baltics. And where are we then?” McCaul said, raising the prospect that isolationism now could very well result in U.S. boots on the ground later.
“It’s kind of like 1939,” he said.
While McCaul searches for a path forward on Ukraine, he no longer has fierce foreign aid hawks like Reps. Adam Kinzinger (R-IL) and Liz Cheney (R-WY). Both were practically expelled from their own party over their opposition to Trump—and both see the current iteration of the GOP as problematic.
On Sunday, Cheney told CNN that Johnson should be willing to give up the speaker’s gavel in the name of passing Ukraine aid.
“You got to understand that we are at a turning point in the history not just of this nation, but of the world,” she said.
Cheney has long been explicit about the need to pass Ukraine aid, warning about “this rising isolationist tendency” in the GOP.
“We’ve begun to hear Republicans talking about America’s role in the world and they sound more like Jane Fonda than Ronald Reagan,” she said on a podcast late last year.
Kinzinger has also been highly critical of his former colleagues and their pivot to isolationism.
Kinzinger has practically transformed his personal Twitter account into a pro-Ukraine aid campaign. And he’s taken particular aim at the Republicans trying to ignore the besieged country.
“If the GOP abandons Ukraine, they will NEVER be able to criticize any president for a weak foreign policy. EVER,” he tweeted just before Christmas.
Inside of Congress—and in good standing with the MAGA movement—there are still Republicans who are fighting against the isolationist pivot.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC)—famous for shouting “You lie!” during then-President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address before taunts and shouts were standard GOP fare for those addresses—told The Daily Beast that isolationism is a “really sad development” for the party of Barry Goldwater.
(“I’m earlier than Reagan,” Wilson explained.)
“To me, the Republican tradition is strong national defense, but we have isolationists, and you’d have to ask them what their thought process is,” he said.
“We need to learn from history and the way to avoid conflict is to be strong,” Wilson added.
But Wilson, 76, who has served in Congress for over two decades, certainly isn’t the norm—the MAGA firebrands overtaking the GOP are.
After voting against the Senate foreign aid package last week, Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) noted on X that nearly every Republican younger than 55 voted against the bill, with 15 of the 17 senators elected since 2018 also voting no.
Freshman Rep. Eric Burlison (R-MO)—a 47-year-old conservative member of the House Freedom Caucus—said that the America First movement’s popularity with younger lawmakers, in part, comes from their media habits. Younger members, Burlison said, consume more Carlson, Ben Shapiro, and Tim Pool than the old Republican guard.
“We listen and digest things that are different than what some members that have been here for a long time,” Burlison said. “They just get their news from a different place.”
Media personalities like Carlson have been spouting Ukraine skepticism—and, at points, outright pro-Russian sympathies—for years.
Since getting the boot from Fox, Carlson has blasted additional U.S. aid to Ukraine. Just last week, he released a lengthy interview with Putin loaded with soft-ball questions. So frivolous was the interview that Putin asked if Carlson was there for a “talk show or serious conversation?”
While Carlson and his cronies clearly have sway over the GOP, Trump’s influence on the party regarding foreign affairs remains paramount. Even staunch foreign aid hawks have changed their tune on Ukraine to align closer with Trump.
The most notable such hawk, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), ditched his long-held support for Ukraine last week, voting against the Senate’s foreign assistance package after Trump told him that any aid should be a “loan” rather than a “gift.”
As for the 22 Republican lawmakers who didn’t fold to Trump and approved the Senate’s foreign aid package, the former president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., and other Trump allies are making them pay.
Since the Senate vote, Trump Jr. has advocated for Matthew Whitaker—the former acting attorney general under Trump—to primary the GOP’s No. 4 senator, Joni Ernst (R-IA). He’s also targeted Republican Moore Capito—the son of Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV)—in his West Virginia gubernatorial race.
During Trump’s first term in office, his foreign policy decisions raised eyebrows, and at times, stoked sharp condemnation from his fellow Republicans.
At the 2018 Helsinki Summit, Trump sided with Putin over U.S. intelligence that Russia had interfered with the 2016 presidential election. In 2019, Congress impeached Trump the first time for abusing his power to pressure Ukraine to do him political favors.
But Trump’s extreme foreign affairs rhetoric has ramped up as he runs for a second term as president, sending the GOP somewhere it perhaps isn’t prepared to go.
Last weekend, Trump admitted to telling a NATO ally as president that he “would encourage” Russia “to do whatever the hell they want” to countries that didn’t pay their share of NATO membership dues.
Despite such a statement being anathema to the old Reagan Republicans, Trump’s sycophants in Congress have, reliably, backed him up.
“We never, in my view, want to encourage any foreign power or Russia to be unduly aggressive in a region,” Trump ally Rep. Chuck Fleishmann told The Daily Beast. “But I do think, under a Trump presidency, European funding of NATO will have to step up and be stronger. And it should be.”
Regarding Ukraine aid, Trump has proposed attaching strings to the assistance.
In a recent Truth Social rant he said “WE SHOULD NEVER GIVE MONEY ANYMORE WITHOUT THE HOPE OF A PAYBACK, OR WITHOUT “STRINGS” ATTACHED. THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA SHOULD BE “STUPID” NO LONGER!”
That reluctance to help Ukraine—and the failure to see an investment in Ukrainian defense as a step to counter Russian aggression and therefore bolster U.S. security—has festered. Those turning tides are frustrating some powerful Republican lawmakers, but apparently, not enough.
“Honestly, I think Ronald Reagan would turn over in his grave if he saw we were not going to help Ukraine,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) told the Associated Press in a November interview.
Moderate Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) has a personal connection to Ukraine—it’s where he served his last assignment as an FBI agent. He’s been one of the more vocal Republicans trying to find a solution for Ukraine aid. Last week he proposed a bipartisan bill that would cut billions of humanitarian and economic aid from the Senate’s package with the hope that focusing on defense-only funding would persuade his Ukraine-skeptical colleagues.
“They are really down to the bare bones in terms of defensive equipment,” Fitzpatrick told reporters Thursday. “We can't wait.”
But no matter what Fitzpatrick does to move the needle on foreign aid within his party, as long as his bill includes aid for Ukraine, lawmakers like conservative Rep. Tim Burchett (R-TN) will more than likely oppose it.
Burchett has opposed aid for Ukraine dating back to May 2022, just months after Russia first invaded the sovereign nation.
And yet, true to form, Burchett told The Daily Beast—without a shred of irony—that he still considers himself a student of Ronald Reagan.
“I’m a Reagan Republican,” Burchett said. “I believe in American strength.”
Asked how he squares Reagan’s legacy with his resistance to Ukraine aid, Burchett said America had “slipped a lot more” since the 1980s. Then he bemoaned illegal border crossings and an alphabet soup of agencies overrun with “left-leaning folk” and “sickening” woke policies.
“We're in a different time. We're in a different world. Our morals have changed for the worse, and so it's a different time,” Burchett said. “It's all not as applicable as it was back then.”
Burchett acknowledged that, “back then, Russia was the enemy and everybody knew it, and both parties knew it.”
“Now we've created multiple enemies all over the globe,” he said.
But if last week was any indication, Russia remains a severe threat to U.S. security. On Wednesday, House Intelligence Committee Chair Mike Turner (R-OH) called on President Joe Biden to declassify information regarding a “serious national security threat” that might warrant help from allies. CNN has since reported that the U.S. has intelligence about a Russian plan to deploy a nuclear anti-satellite system in space.
On Friday, world leaders—including Biden—blamed Putin for killing opposition leader Alexei Navalny, who was serving a 19-year prison sentence on politically motivated extremism charges above the Arctic Circle.
For Democrats, it’s concerning to watch the GOP become overrun with, if not Russian sympathizers, then Republicans unprepared to do anything about Russian aggression—particularly if it runs counter to Trump. Many Democrats are ringing alarm bells.
“They’re all scared to death of one man, Donald Trump,” McGovern told The Daily Beast. “Privately, Republicans will tell me—they probably tell you—that we have to help Ukraine. But they’re all afraid to go against Trump.”
Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-OH) has been in Congress since 1983 when Reagan was president.
Now, in her 21st term, she has watched a long arch of Republican evolution on foreign policy and was somewhat more optimistic than McGovern.
“It’s a temporary blip,” Kaptur said. “But if someone believes that they can ignore foreign affairs, I can guarantee them foreign affairs will find them.”
Asked why she described this period of growing isolationism in the GOP as a “blip,” Kaptur said she hopes Republicans will “come to their senses.” In the meantime, though, she called their opposition to foreign aid a “dangerous” position.
“I don’t know why they have the positions they do,” Kaptur told The Daily Beast. “But to say America First, to put that behind your name and say you’re an America First, that takes us back to the Nazi era of the 1930s. I don’t want to go back there.”
