President Donald Trump’s iron-fisted grip on his party appears to be slipping in ways unseen since the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Back then, he quickly reasserted himself as the singular, dominant force within the Republican Party, and he may do so again.

But the extraordinary rebukes and headwinds the president is now facing — much of it from within his own party — are revealing a GOP beginning to reckon with a post-Trump future. That dynamic crystallized after voters surged to the polls to support Democratic candidates for statewide races in New Jersey, Virginia, Georgia and Pennsylvania, shattering expectations of close contests and signaling that even Trump can’t defy political gravity forever.

Trump has spent the days since recycling old grievances, berating members of his own party and choosing sides in a burgeoning intra-MAGA debate about antisemitism and bigotry within the GOP coalition.

Asked about the momentum shift, a White House spokesperson said Trump had “delivered on many of the promises he was elected to enact” — from border security to ending taxes on tips to “affordability issues.”

“As the architect of the MAGA movement, President Trump will always put America First. Every single day he’s working hard to continue fulfilling the many promises he made and he will continue delivering,” spokesperson Abigail Jackson said.

In addition to the election romp, here’s a look at some recent brush-offs, brushbacks and breakups that have threatened Trump’s aura of invincibility.

Republicans refuse to back down on Epstein vote

A year ago, the idea that a Republican-led Congress would vote overwhelmingly in favor of anything Trump opposed would have been fanciful. Enter the Epstein files.

Trump’s coalition has long viewed the FBI’s trove of records related to the late convicted sex offender and disgraced international power broker to be a holy grail of sorts, one that could shed light on a grander sex trafficking conspiracy implicating world leaders and politicians. But Trump, a longtime associate of Epstein’s until they fell out more than a decade ago, spent the summer leaning on congressional Republicans to cease their search for records. Trump has denied wrongdoing and no evidence has suggested he took part in Epstein’s trafficking operation.

What happened next was perhaps the most stinging intra-party rebuke of Trump’s presidency. Trump tried and failed to pressure Republican lawmakers to pull the plug on a vote demanding the Justice Department turn over the full library of Epstein files. An intense pressure campaign against Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) in particular went nowhere.

The fallout also claimed the relationship of Trump and Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, whose refusal to flinch led Trump to brand her a “traitor” and attempt to turn his coalition against her. Greene has responded by saying Trump’s attacks have endangered her life.

As a full House vote expected to overwhelming support the release of the Epstein files was just hours away, Trump reversed himself and encouraged Republicans to back the measure, avoiding what looked to be an inevitable black eye. Now White House officials say Trump should get credit for transparency and seeking the release of the files.

Indiana GOP lawmakers don’t bite on redistricting

Trump’s inability to cajole Congress into his preferred course of action on the Epstein files came at virtually the same time the president and his allies failed to move Indiana Republicans to redraw their congressional boundaries to net Republicans another seat in the 2026 midterms.

Trump had been pressing for a Hoosier redistricting measure for months, but state GOP leaders signaled they simply lacked the votes to make it a reality, drawing a threat from Trump to endorse some Republicans’ primary challengers. Countermeasures by Democrats in Virginia and California could make Trump’s nationwide push a wash.

Warning signs appear for tariffs at the Supreme Court

Trump has long proclaimed that wielding tariffs against foreign governments is the key to negotiating favorable trade deals. Never mind that business and Republican orthodoxy has long considered tariffs as a backdoor tax on Americans.

But the Supreme Court appeared skeptical of Trump’s approach, with justices he appointed sharply questioning whether the president can leverage emergency powers to tariff foreign governments at will. By all accounts, the argument was a drubbing for Trump’s side. And the president seemed to discover that reality when he vented at the court in a pair of Truth Social posts last week.

It’s folly to predict how the high court will rule, even when the justices send clear signals during the arguments. But Trump appears to be bracing for defeat that could have devastating consequences for his economic agenda. His administration has repeatedly emphasized the centrality of tariffs to the recent spate of trade deals he’s made around the world.

No luck on the filibuster or the blue slip, either

Trump has never had much luck telling the Senate how to run itself. But his recent incursions into Senate procedure have underscored his relative powerlessness in this arena.

Trump spent the bulk of the record-setting government shutdown pressuring Senate Republicans to abolish the filibuster, the Senate rule requiring 60 votes to pass most legislation. That threshold has vexed presidents for generations but has long been defended by institutional leaders as a way to prevent national whiplash every time the chamber changes. And Senate Majority Leader John Thune made clear quickly that Trump wasn’t going to get his way.

Trump fared no better leaning on Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) to scrap the Senate’s 100-year-old tradition of honoring “blue slips,” the power of home-state senators to veto nominees for judgeships and U.S. attorneys they find unacceptable. Grassley has been Trump’s loudest champion on claims that the Justice Department was weaponized against him and has helped unearth records related to those allegations, but Trump has still bristled at Grassley’s refusal to cave on blue slips. Trump has struggled to get some of his preferred nominees across the finish line.

Trump gets a one-two punch after pardoning 2020 allies

Trump announced last week a sweeping pardon of dozens of allies who played roles in his bid to subvert the 2020 election. Though none on the list actually faced federal criminal charges, many had been charged at the state level with seeking to defraud voters or corrupt the election results.

Presidents can’t pardon state-level crimes, and within hours of Trump’s sweeping clemency he got a stark reminder. In Nevada, the state Supreme Court revived a criminal case against six of Trump’s pardon recipients who falsely claimed to be legitimate presidential electors. And in Georgia, a supervisory prosecutor reupped the criminal case against Trump himself for seeking to overturn the state’s election results.

MAGA rebukes Trump on 50-year mortgages, H1B visas

Trump’s feel for his MAGA base has been unerring for most of his decade in presidential politics. And their ardent support has sustained the president through his darkest moments: two impeachments, a slew of criminal indictments and a conviction making him the first former-president-turned-felon to retake the White House.

So when his core allies twice sound the alarm that he’s missed the mark on economic policy proposals, it’s worth taking note.

That was the case when Trump recently pitched a 50-year mortgage for homeowners, one that was roundly panned by a wide-range of MAGA influencers and created friction between the White House and Trump’s housing czar Bill Pulte.

And the reaction from the base was similar when Trump defended issuing H1B visas to foreign workers and proclaimed that U.S. citizens lack “certain talents.” The uproar was swift among some of Trump’s most reliable allies. The administration says Trump’s broader economic agenda has disproportionately benefited U.S.-born workers and is working to weed out abuses in the H1B system.