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 3 times every week when he’s in Nebraska; he likes it further crispy and, if attainable, ready at dwelling. “In the event you ask me for my favourite bacon, it’s Angie Bacon,” he instructed 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 quite a few causes. One is that if he’s dwelling, she’s much less prone to sleep with a gun—one thing she resorted to when harassment and dying threats bought actually intense just a few years in the past. These menaces have grow to be progressively worse lately. 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. Finally, the Bacons moved to a different home, in a extra distant location. But it surely 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 stated. 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 likely one of the final remaining Home Republicans who usually are not thrilled—and prepared to say they don’t seem to be thrilled—by the route their occasion has taken since Donald Trump took it over. Bacon has been a uncommon GOP lawmaker prepared to criticize Trump throughout a second presidential time period that has in any other case been marked by acquiescence. After the Signalgate scandal, Bacon steered that Trump ought to hearth Secretary of Protection Pete Hegseth, whom Bacon dismissed as “an novice.” He has additionally known as Trump “very weak” in his method to Russia.
None of which makes for a savvy profession transfer when you’re a Republican in these Trump-dominated occasions. For the likes of Don Bacon, quitting in disappointment has grow to be a well-recognized endgame.
We’ve seen this miniseries earlier than: A Republican who considers themselves to be a conventional 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 sophisticated—and sometimes disagreeable. Your occasion threatens to recruit a main 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-about one thing of a wild-card vote on the One Massive Lovely Invoice Act, the domestic-policy package deal that the president signed into regulation 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 stated. He appreciated 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 incorrect, 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 contemplate 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 title solely,” apostasies, akin 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 believed it was dumb,” he instructed me.) Democrats, in the meantime, have been eyeing Bacon’s district since he was first elected, in 2016. “Weak Home Republican” has successfully grow to be a part of his job title. After a three-term GOP mayor of Omaha was defeated in Might by a Democrat, Home Minority Chief Hakeem Jeffries declared that the “Don Bacon retirement watch” had formally begun.
Bacon instructed 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 stated. “They hate Trump a lot, they don’t suppose straight.” However these days, threats have come extra from the “darkish MAGA guys.” As Bacon put it, “In the event 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 individuals on social media, they usually have one million followers,” Bacon instructed me. “And they’re thugs.” He obtained 31,000 cellphone calls to his workplace through the speakership brawl, he stated, plus texts and emails.
Bacon continues to consider that “we’re simply in a section proper now.” He’s among the many newest in an extended 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 stated. “Proper now, what I believe America needs is just a little little bit of normalcy.”
Bacon instructed me that one in every of his objectives after leaving Congress will probably be to “battle for the soul of the occasion,” that 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 suitable with restoring a soul. Neither is serving in Washington. “I’ve bought to fret about being reelected if I wish to be a congressman,” he stated. “I’d moderately be extra vocal about what I consider 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 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 just a little little bit of weight off my shoulders,” Bacon stated. He’s attempting to revive his personal sense of normalcy.
He just lately had his grandsons over and cooked for them. “They’re undecided they like my eggs,” he instructed me, “however they like my bacon.”
