In a blatant display of disloyalty, three Senate Republicans contradicted the rest of the party’s senators in a vote that almost derailed President Trump’s tariff strategy, with the ruling coming in at 49-49 and Republicans narrowly avoiding contradicting the president.

For context, on April 30, 2025, the Senate responded to President Trump’s recently introduced global tariff strategy with a vote that would have reversed the tariffs imposed on Canada, which several Senate Republicans — Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), and Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY), favored, going against the rest of their party and the president himself in a move that attracted criticism from fellow senators.

Before the vote, Sen. Murkowski asserted in an April 10, 2025, speech that she sided with the Democrats on tariffs and wanted to counteract President Trump, saying, “I think it’s time for Congress to reassert itself, whether it’s on tariffs, whether it’s on the power of appropriation, whether it’s overseeing the bodies, the agencies that we as a body have authorized.”