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House Republicans gathered in Orlando for their annual retreat hoping to devise a strategy to preserve their fragile majority and focus on upcoming policy battles. However, ex-President Donald Trump’s announcement that he expects to be arrested has put him in the center of the conversation, and Republicans find themselves playing defense for him. Trump’s potential arrest has forced Republicans to publicly rally to his side, even some GOP lawmakers who have called for the party to move on from Trump. Speaker Kevin McCarthy has instructed GOP-led committees to investigate whether the Manhattan District Attorney’s office used federal funds to probe a payment made by Trump’s then-personal attorney days before the 2016 presidential election. McCarthy carefully broke with Trump’s calls to protest and “take our nation back” if he is arrested, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has defended the call for protests, saying it’s Americans’ constitutional right. Aside from a potentially bruising GOP primary contest, House Republicans have other major internal battles on the horizon, including lifting the nation’s borrowing limit, funding the government, reauthorizing federal food stamp programs, and deciding whether to continue aid for Ukraine.
