Don Bacon, House Republican Who Often Criticizes Trump, Won’t Seek Re-election

Representative Don Bacon, the five-term Nebraska Republican who represents a centrist district in a deeply red state, will not seek re-election, according to a person familiar with his plans, handing Democrats a prime opportunity to pick up a seat in the closely divided House.

Mr. Bacon’s official announcement is expected on Monday, and his departure is not unexpected. His willingness to publicly disagree with President Trump has made him an anomaly in the tribal House Republican Conference, where members tend to fall in line behind the president’s agenda and rarely criticize him in the open. Democrats and Republicans alike had suspected that Mr. Bacon was heading for the exits.

But the upcoming announcement, which was reported earlier by Punchbowl News, marked a major break for Democrats hoping to win control of the House next year, and with it a foothold for pushing back against Mr. Trump. Republicans control the House with a slim three-vote majority.

The political terrain in Mr. Bacon’s district has been trending to the left, making a re-election more difficult even for a Republican who managed to win a district that both former President Joseph R. Biden Jr. and former Vice President Kamala Harris won by more than four points. Democrats are hoping it will be impossible for a Republican newcomer without Mr. Bacon’s reputation and unique electoral strength in his district.

In May, a Democrat unseated a three-term Republican in the Omaha mayor’s race. The morning after that race was called, Representative Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, told the House Democratic Caucus that it was officially on “Don Bacon retirement watch,” a statement that was greeted with cheers.

“The writing has been on the wall for months,” said Madison Andrus, a spokeswoman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. “Don Bacon’s decision to not seek re-election in 2026 is the latest vote of no-confidence for House Republicans and their electoral prospects.”

A mild-mannered Midwesterner with friends and defenders on both sides of the aisle, Mr. Bacon is an old-school conservative who despite his criticisms of Mr. Trump generally votes with his party. But he has become more disillusioned with his life in Congress over the past few years.

In 2023, when Mr. Bacon did not want to back Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio for speaker, he and his wife received threatening texts and phone calls from Mr. Jordan’s supporters that were so alarming that Mr. Bacon said his wife began sleeping with a gun on the pillow next to her.

In a recent interview with The New York Times, Mr. Bacon said he did not plan to leave his party or politics for good. But he criticized the direction that Mr. Trump was leading it in.

“I’d like to fight for the soul of our party,” he said. “I don’t want to be the guy who follows the flute player off the cliff. I think that’s what’s going on right now.”

Mr. Bacon, a former brigadier general in the Air Force, has publicly accused Mr. Trump of treating Russia with “velvet gloves,” criticized him for gutting AmeriCorps and questioned his power to impose tariffs without congressional approval.

But he has also fallen in line and voted for Mr. Trump’s agenda when House Republican leadership has needed him to.

After telling the White House that he would not vote for a bill that included more than $500 billion in Medicaid cuts, Mr. Bacon ultimately voted “yes” for legislation carrying Mr. Trump’s domestic agenda that included far more.

And after telling The Times and House Republican leaders that he was a firm “no” on any cuts to a global anti-AIDS program, he ultimately voted “yes” on a package that would claw back $9 billion in spending already approved by Congress and targeted by the Department of Government Efficiency for cuts, including to the AIDS initiative.

Still, House Democrats often held him out as an example of who you might want to have serving in Congress with you in the opposing party.

“When people ask me what hope is there for finding common ground, one person I reference is @RepDonBacon,” Representative Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, wrote on social media, adding, “He is a patriot, independent minded, and exudes decency.”

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