Republican lawmaker reveals colleagues privately cheered his defiance of Trump

A Republican congressman who broke with President Donald Trump over the war in Iran says several GOP colleagues privately told him they supported his vote but did not feel free to join him.

Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI), a freshman in a battleground district, told The Washington Sun that colleagues privately congratulated him soon after he voted to limit Trump's war powers in Iran.

"I had a number of conversations afterward with members who told me they agreed with or really respected my vote, but didn't feel like they could vote that way," Barrett said. "They were worried about, I think, political factors."

Barrett was among the first Republicans to oppose the president on the issue. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn of Iowa later cast similar votes, and in June the president attacked all four lawmakers on Truth Social, calling them "bad Republicans" and "unpatriotic."

Barrett told the Sun that Trump's "team was very, very vocal" and disclosed that he met with the White House Counsel's office, where lawyers argued the conflict "wasn't war in the sense that the Constitution prescribes." Barrett, however, said he was not persuaded.

The 22-year Army veteran, who served in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, said his position came from his military experience, not political calculation.

"It sounds convenient now, however many months later, with the war in Iran being such an unpopular thing, but that was not the frame of mind that I was looking at," he said.

The political ground has since shifted as gas prices now average $4.43 a gallon, and Barrett said his opposition to the war has given him "a crack in the door" with voters angry about costs.

Barrett won his district by just under 4 points in 2024, while Trump carried it by about 1 point. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found Democrats leading the generic ballot in Michigan by 10 points, and Trump's approval rating in the state is about 36 percent.

The lawmaker has not fully separated himself from the president. He appeared with Trump during a July visit to his district and attended a Rose Garden dinner for battleground Republicans in September, although he skipped the party's midterm convention in Dallas.

"I think that we are a party that can handle, you know, differences of opinion," Barrett said.

Whether voters will see him as independent of Trump remains unclear.

"That's the big question of the cycle," said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard. "But the party and Trump are so synonymous that they may not be able to do it."

Barrett faces Democrat William Lawrence, a Sunrise Movement co-founder, on Nov. 3.