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 per week when he’s in Nebraska; he likes it further crispy and, if potential, ready at residence. “When 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 had been talking not over breakfast however by cellphone.)
Angie enjoys having her husband in Nebraska for a variety of causes. One is that if he’s residence, 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 develop into 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 had been parked within the driveway. Ultimately, the Bacons moved to a different home, in a extra distant location. However 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 Power 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 path 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 prompt that Trump ought to hearth Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth, whom Bacon dismissed as “an beginner.” He has additionally known as Trump “very weak” in his strategy to Russia.
None of which makes for a savvy profession transfer should you’re a Republican in these Trump-dominated instances. For the likes of Don Bacon, quitting in disappointment has develop into a well-known endgame.
We’ve seen this miniseries earlier than: A Republican who considers themselves to be a standard Reagan conservative vows to battle for his or her rules and beliefs. However when these rules and beliefs battle with what Trump needs, issues get difficult—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 regulation on July 4. It was not universally seen as stunning, 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 favored that the invoice bolsters the army 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. In the end, Bacon swallowed his reservations, voted sure, and determined to move residence.
Either you want bacon otherwise you’re flawedreads an indication within the consultant’s Washington workplace, displayed not removed from a distinguished 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 contemplate reasonable or bipartisan soiled phrases. This has proved a profitable 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, equivalent to when he was the one GOP Home member to vote in opposition to a invoice to rechristen the Gulf of Mexico because the “Gulf of America.” (“I assumed it was dumb,” he advised me.) Democrats, in the meantime, have been eyeing Bacon’s district since he was first elected, in 2016. “Weak Home Republican” has successfully develop into 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 obtained 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 assume straight.” However these days, threats have come extra from the “darkish MAGA guys.” As Bacon put it, “When you present any disagreement in any respect with Trump, you’re a traitor. It’s type of unusual.”
Issues turned actually ugly in late 2023, through 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 folks on social media, and so they have one million followers,” Bacon advised me. “And they’re thugs.” He obtained 31,000 cellphone calls to his workplace through the speakership brawl, he mentioned, plus texts and emails.
Bacon continues to imagine that “we’re simply in a part proper now.” He’s among the many newest in an extended line of departing Republicans who appear to assume that the Reagan-vintage GOP will magically return when the part—which has lasted a couple of decade—lastly ends. “Perhaps when President Trump’s time period is over, we’ll see a readjustment,” he mentioned. “Proper now, what I believe America needs is just a little little bit of normalcy.”
Bacon advised me that one among his targets after leaving Congress shall be to “battle 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 that they’re pursuing a battle simply as they exit the sector. Bacon countered with the concept that representing a district shouldn’t be essentially appropriate with restoring a soul. Neither is serving in Washington. “I’ve acquired to fret about being reelected if I wish to be a congressman,” he mentioned. “I’d relatively 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 as if one thing that Republican-primary voters would rule out pretty shortly. No matter he winds up doing, he has extra quick priorities. He has 11 grandchildren who dwell inside a 10-minute drive from his residence in Papillion, south of Omaha. “I do really feel like there’s just a little little bit of weight off my shoulders,” Bacon mentioned. He’s making an attempt to revive his personal sense of normalcy.
He lately had his grandsons over and cooked for them. “They’re undecided they like my eggs,” he advised me, “however they like my bacon.”
