Is Don Bacon a ‘Rebel Republican’?

Is Nebraska Rep. Don Bacon a throwback to the 1980s, a disappearing breed of Republican, or a swing-district moderate swimming against the tide of his party? He might be all three. 

Having held his seat since 2017 in an Omaha-based district that Kamala Harris carried in 2024 after Joe Biden won it in 2020, Bacon can hardly help but stick to the center. But does he see himself as a moderate?

“So-called right-wing people call me that, but they’re the ones who are isolationist and like protectionism. And I think, ‘Well, that’s not very conservative,’” he told The Dispatch in an interview. “It’s funny, people call themselves conservative or liberal. I’m a Reagan Republican.”

Bacon has been one of the few congressional Republicans to publicly criticize Trump since the GOP claimed a governing trifecta, taking issue with the administration’s handling of the scandal stemming from a group chat involving national security officials on the Signal app, imposition of a sweeping tariff regime, and its posture toward the war in Ukraine. The Signal controversy is more about competence than ideology, but trade and foreign policy represent two areas where Bacon exhibits substantive disagreements with Trump—and voices them. But even then, it’s not so much that he’s a moderate. After all, he has broken with Trump before, having voted to certify the results of the 2020 election and saying the president displayed “negligence” during the January 6 riot. But Bacon’s belief in the principles of free trade and defense of allies leads Bacon to hew to the Republican philosophy of the 1980s. 

As Trump changes the Republican Party and moves it in a more populist direction, punctuated by heavier tariffs and lighter support for American allies, those like Bacon who hold to the old Reaganite philosophy that guided the GOP for decades now find themselves in a distinct minority, making them appear more centrist.

After Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs were announced, Bacon—who has said he supports some of the tariffs “because they are reciprocal”—introduced a bill that would limit the president’s power to impose import duties. Similar to legislation proposed by GOP Sen. Chuck Grassley and Democratic Sen. Maria Cantwell, the bill would compel the president to give Congress 48 hours notice before implementing new tariffs and force them to sunset after 60 days if Congress does not approve them. In response, Trump appeared to single out Bacon at the National Republican Congressional Committee dinner last week. “These countries are calling us up, kissing my ass. They are dying to make a deal. … And then I’ll see some rebel Republican, some guy that wants to grandstand say, ‘I think that Congress should take over negotiations.’ Let me tell you, you don’t negotiate like I negotiate. [If] Congress takes over negotiating, sell America fast because you’re going to go busted,” he said.

While Bacon has said the bill, which faces very long odds of making it to the House floor, is not necessarily about reining in Trump’s specific actions earlier this month, he told The Dispatch he does not believe tariffs are a conservative policy. “Free markets provide the best quality products at the best price and deliver it in the most efficient manner possible, and it helps everybody be more competitive and provide better value to their citizens. That is the conservative position,” he said.

At the same time, he said he was open to combating “unfair trade.”

“If somebody’s not allowing our products in, but we’re taking their products in our country, then we need to deal with that just out of defense of our citizens and our manufacturers and our agriculture producers. So, I’m not opposed to playing hardball with somebody that’s not being fair to us,” he said. “But the conservative goal should be free trade.”

That doesn’t sound too unlike the 1984 Republican Party Platform, crafted in advance of President Ronald Reagan’s landslide reelection victory that November. “We are committed to a free and open international trading system,” its section on trade stated. “All Americans benefit from the free flow of goods, services and capital, and the efficiencies of a vigorous international market. We will work with all of our international trading partners to eliminate barriers to trade, both tariff and non-tariff.” While warning of the dangers of a “protectionist sentiment,” that platform also contended that “free trade must be fair trade” and that it “works only when all trading partners accept open markets for goods, services, and investments.” 

Few of Bacon’s Republican colleagues have been willing to criticize Trump’s tariffs agenda as forcefully, but he has more company in his views on the administration’s foreign policy. Bacon, a retired Air Force brigadier general, has been a staunch supporter of U.S. aid to Ukraine, questioning the president’s approach to reaching a peace deal. 

“I embrace wanting peace, but it’s got to be a just peace. And I was critical when the president or his administration sounded sort of like a moral ambiguity,” Bacon told The Dispatch. “Who’s the invader? Who’s the victim? Who’s the dictator? Who’s the duly elected president? To me, it’s very clear: Russia is on the wrong side. They’re the ones doing the invading. They’re the dictator. Putin’s a guy who’s killed all of his rivals. They’re murdering POWs. They’re bombing cities. They’re raping and pillaging in [Ukrainian] areas they control.”

As with trade, Trump’s view of who is responsible for Russia’s war in Ukraine differs from Bacon’s—which aligns with the Reagan-era GOP’s statements about the Soviet Union. Reagan espoused a policy of “peace through strength.” While Trump also uses this phrase to describe his foreign policy, Reagan’s version, as described in the 1984 platform, was clear about the threat from the Soviet Union: “Its globalist ideology and its leadership obsessed with military power make it a threat to freedom and peace on every continent.” 

Bacon, therefore, is not so much a moderate as he is a Reagan Republican who has not marched with Trump as the president has shifted the party’s center of gravity. For his part, Bacon—who endorsed Trump for the general election the same day former U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley ended her primary campaign—recognizes the gap in the GOP between his Reaganites and Trump’s populists, especially on the issue of foreign policy.

“Our party … is divided on this,” he told The Dispatch. “Some people are isolationist. You got the Tucker Carlsons, the Steve Bannons of this world, which I don’t align with at all. You got nutjobs like Laura Loomer out there that represent that wing of the party,” Bacon said. “But you got people like me. I would say I haven’t changed. We got a little bit of a tug of war going on. Which part of the party is going to be ascendant in the long run? Right now, obviously President Trump, he won the primary, and he’s been ascendant. But we’ll have this debate, I think, for the next two or three elections.”

Bacon will feel the effects of those political battles as he attempts to hold on to his seat in Nebraska’s 2nd District, which went for Harris by 4.6 points. Nevertheless, the congressman prevailed over then-state Sen. Tony Vargas by just under 2 points. He did so despite the Trump campaign spending hardly any money there, basically surrendering the electoral vote to Harris due to the way Nebraska apportions its electors. Bacon has also proven formidable in the past even when political headwinds were against him, winning in 2018 and 2020. He’ll have to defeat a Democratic opponent (and possibly a Republican primary challenger) again in 2026, a year in which the GOP could face heavy midterm losses if Trump’s trade war causes the economy to sour.

Bacon’s willingness to defy Trump could work in his favor, if recent history is any indication. A major attack from the Vargas campaign in 2024 was its charge that Bacon—against whom Trump had unsuccessfully tried to recruit a primary challenger in 2022—was in lockstep with the president, something Bacon laughed at. “It cracks me up,” he told The Dispatch in October. “I got a primary where I’m a Commie Democrat RINO, and now I’m a super MAGA guy from the Democrats. I don’t think anybody buys it.”

Bacon has a long term in the House ahead of him where he will need to choose how close he wants to align himself with Trump without falling victim to attacks from the right or the left. How will he approach it?

“My thinking is to do what I believe is right, and to try to have a moral compass. I don’t try to do something just because the leader of my party says to do it, or the majority says to do it. I try to think, ‘Well, is this right or wrong? What is the right answer?’ If I can come to that conclusion, I can sell it pretty easily, too, because I believe it.”