Ideally, this interview would have been over breakfast at a diner in Omaha, and the native congressman, Don Bacon, would have ordered his namesake. He says he eats bacon two or thrice every week when he’s in Nebraska; he likes it additional crispy and, if attainable, ready at dwelling. “Should you ask me for my favourite bacon, it’s Angie Bacon,” he advised me this week, referring to his spouse of 41 years. (Sadly, the congressman and I have been talking not over breakfast however by telephone.)
Angie enjoys having her husband in Nebraska for numerous causes. One is that if he’s dwelling, she’s much less more likely to sleep with a gun—one thing she resorted to when harassment and dying threats acquired actually intense a number of years in the past. These menaces have turn out to be progressively worse in recent times. Protesters confirmed up on the Bacon home throughout an Easter-egg hunt that he placed on for his grandkids two years in the past. County police have been parked within the driveway. Finally, the Bacons moved to a different home, in a extra distant location. Nevertheless it all can get exhausting. The congressman was working 12- to 14-hour days, bouncing between Washington, D.C., and Omaha. “After the final election, I used to be on E. I had no fuel within the tank,” he mentioned. Bacon introduced final week that he wouldn’t run for reelection in 2026.
This was not an enormous shock. Bacon, who had spent 30 years within the Air Pressure earlier than coming to Congress, in 2017, is among the final remaining Home Republicans who will not be thrilled—and keen to say they don’t seem to be thrilled—by the course their social gathering has taken since Donald Trump took it over. Bacon has been a uncommon GOP lawmaker keen to criticize Trump throughout a second presidential time period that has in any other case been marked by acquiescence. After the Signalgate scandal, Bacon advised that Trump ought to fireplace Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth, whom Bacon dismissed as “an newbie.” He has additionally known as Trump “very weak” in his strategy to Russia.
None of which makes for a savvy profession transfer in the event you’re a Republican in these Trump-dominated occasions. For the likes of Don Bacon, quitting in disappointment has turn out to be a well-recognized endgame.
We’ve seen this miniseries earlier than: A Republican who considers themselves to be a standard Reagan conservative vows to struggle for his or her ideas and beliefs. However when these ideas and beliefs battle with what Trump desires, issues get sophisticated—and sometimes disagreeable. Your social gathering threatens to recruit a major challenger. The president doesn’t take kindly to you. His supporters say nasty issues. And all of it takes a toll.
Bacon, 61, is coming off of an particularly high-stress interval. He was thought of one thing of a wild-card vote on the One Huge Stunning Invoice Act, the domestic-policy package deal that the president signed into legislation on July 4. It was not universally seen as lovely, even amongst some who wound up voting for it, together with Bacon. “To me, this invoice was an 80–20–kind invoice,” Bacon mentioned. He preferred that the invoice bolsters the navy and protects the tax cuts that had handed throughout Trump’s first time period. He didn’t like how the invoice will explode the deficit and result in Medicaid cuts. Finally, Bacon swallowed his reservations, voted sure, and determined to move dwelling.
Either you want bacon otherwise you’re mistaken, reads an indication within the consultant’s Washington workplace, displayed not removed from a outstanding mannequin pig. For essentially the most half, Home members from each events appear to love Bacon, the colleague. They describe him as one of many few Republicans left in Washington who don’t take into account average or bipartisan soiled phrases. This has proved a successful place in Bacon’s swingy Second Congressional District of Nebraska. (Kamala Harris carried it by 4.6 factors in 2024, making this the bluest district {that a} Home Republican represents.)
Nonetheless, Bacon’s relative independence has made him a bipartisan goal. The MAGA contingent derides his RINO, or “Republican in identify solely,” apostasies, resembling when he was the one GOP Home member to vote towards a invoice to rechristen the Gulf of Mexico because the “Gulf of America.” (“I believed it was dumb,” he advised me.) Democrats, in the meantime, have been eyeing Bacon’s district since he was first elected, in 2016. “Susceptible Home Republican” has successfully turn out to be a part of his job title. After a three-term GOP mayor of Omaha was defeated in Could by a Democrat, Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries declared that the “Don Bacon retirement watch” had formally begun.
Bacon advised me that the character of the threats he has acquired has modified. He used to get the toughest time from the far left, “the Bernie Sanders crowd,” he mentioned. “They hate Trump a lot, they don’t suppose straight.” However recently, threats have come extra from the “darkish MAGA guys.” As Bacon put it, “Should you present any disagreement in any respect with Trump, you’re a traitor. It’s form of unusual.”
Issues turned actually ugly in late 2023, in the course of the race to elect a brand new Republican Home speaker. Consultant Jim Jordan, the choleric conservative from Ohio, was the clear favourite of Trump and his Home acolytes; Bacon was not kosher with this, and the abuse adopted. “There’s, like, 4 individuals on social media, and so they have one million followers,” Bacon advised me. “And they’re thugs.” He acquired 31,000 telephone calls to his workplace in the course of the speakership brawl, he mentioned, plus texts and emails.
Bacon continues to imagine that “we’re simply in a section proper now.” He’s among the many newest in a protracted line of departing Republicans who appear to suppose that the Reagan-vintage GOP will magically return when the section—which has lasted a few decade—lastly ends. “Possibly when President Trump’s time period is over, we’ll see a readjustment,” he mentioned. “Proper now, what I believe America desires is slightly little bit of normalcy.”
Bacon advised me that one in all his targets after leaving Congress can be to “struggle for the soul of the social gathering,” which means the GOP. This struck me as typical of the tortured logic that many politicians depend on to justify their departures—the concept they’re pursuing a struggle simply as they exit the sector. Bacon countered with the concept representing a district shouldn’t be essentially suitable with restoring a soul. Neither is serving in Washington. “I’ve acquired to fret about being reelected if I need to be a congressman,” he mentioned. “I’d moderately be extra vocal about what I imagine in.”
Bacon doesn’t rule out working for Nebraska governor, and even for the presidency, in 2028—though the latter looks like one thing that Republican-primary voters would rule out pretty rapidly. No matter he winds up doing, he has extra speedy priorities. He has 11 grandchildren who dwell inside a 10-minute drive from his dwelling in Papillion, south of Omaha. “I do really feel like there’s slightly little bit of weight off my shoulders,” Bacon mentioned. He’s attempting to revive his personal sense of normalcy.
He lately had his grandsons over and cooked for them. “They’re unsure they like my eggs,” he advised me, “however they like my bacon.”
