How Georgia voters feel about the Trump-MTG spat: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, Peter Nicholas goes down to Georgia to see how Republican voters are reacting to the spat between President Donald Trump and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene. Plus, we report on the fallout from Trump’s social media threats against Democratic lawmakers. And Jonathan Allen explains why Congress isn’t likely to get much more done before the midterms.

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— Adam Wollner

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s voters say they’re sticking with her, despite the Trump feud

By Peter Nicholas

ROME, Ga. — Not many Republican politicians have dared criticize President Donald Trump — and a few bold souls who’ve tried have seen their careers collapse.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., is now facing the president’s wrath, but in a sign of broader fissures within the MAGA movement, she just may survive the blowback, interviews with about 20 of her constituents suggest.

Greene’s 14th Congressional District likes Trump, but it likes her, too. Trump won her district in the 2024 presidential race with 68% of the vote; Greene won re-election with 64%. Virtually everyone interviewed has heard about the feud between the president and the congresswoman.

“Some people are struggling with it. Some are choosing Team Marjorie, and some are Team Trump,” said Angela Dollar, a local Republican official in Floyd County, part of Greene’s district.

As for Dollar: “I can like two people who don’t like each other. My hope is they’ll reconcile.”

Susan Cooper, 60, a Republican who along with Dollar came to a food donation center in Rome on Tuesday night to pack supplies for schoolchildren, said: “I feel like what she’s doing is she’s just standing up for what she personally has a belief in. And you know, it takes a lot to stand up against the president, or any president for that matter.”

Though she said she still supports the president, Cooper rejected the idea that Greene is a “traitor,” as Trump has called her.

“I would much prefer him not say that,” she said.

Read more from Peter →

Trump accuses Democrats of ‘seditious behavior, punishable by death,’ for urging military to ignore illegal orders

For today at least, Trump’s ire was focused not on Greene, but on Democratic lawmakers. On Truth Social, he accused several of them of “seditious behavior,” calling for them to “be arrested and put on trial” for behavior that, he said, could be “punishable by death,” Alexandra Marquez, Megan Lebowitz and Allan Smith report.

The lawmakers, many of whom were veterans, had posted a video telling military and intelligence officers to refuse illegal orders.

At a press briefing, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said “no” when asked if Trump wants to execute members of Congress.

The targeted group of Democratic lawmakers released a statement calling on Americans to “unite and condemn the President’s calls for our murder and political violence.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said that he has asked the U.S. Capitol Police to provide “special protection and keep an eye on” Sens. Elissa Slotkin, D-Mich., and Mark Kelly, D-Ariz., who appeared in the video.

Rep. Chris Deluzio, D-Pa., who also appeared in the video, told NBC News this afternoon that he has received threats since the president posted his message this morning.

“We have to end this scourge. And yet Donald Trump is the person with the most power who can bring the temperature down, and instead, he threatens to have us killed,” he said. “So for me, it’s not about me, it’s not about my colleagues. This is about the country, whether we’re going to have a Constitution that means something, and I’m not going to be intimidated.”

The president’s posts come amid increasing concerns over political violence. NBC News polling indicates that a growing number of Americans view extreme political rhetoric as an important contributor to high-profile political attacks.

Read more on the fallout from Trump’s posts →

Tensions have also been rising on Capitol Hill in other ways this week.

As Scott Wong and Melanie Zanona report, members of the House have tried to force votes to formally censure individual colleagues four times in recent days. Resolutions like that used to be rare, but they’ve become a symbol of the bad blood flowing through this toxic Congress.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., wants to take things a step further: He said today he will push to expel Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick, D-Fla., who was indicted on charges alleging she stole and laundered $5 million in federal relief funds and used the money for her congressional campaign. Such a vote would require two-thirds support in the House.

More from the Hill:

• A week before he voted to significantly cut Medicaid, Rep. Rob Bresnahan, R-Pa., dumped six figures’ worth of stock in a quartet of companies that manage nearly half of all Medicaid enrollees in the country, according to public disclosure documents reviewed by NBC News.
• The House voted unanimously to strip a provision in the government funding bill that allows senators to sue the federal government for $500,000 if their phone data was searched without their knowledge.
• A New Jersey woman who worked as a staffer for Rep. Jeff Van Drew, R-N.J., has been charged in connection with staging a fake political attack that included writing and scarring on her body.

Congress has a light to-do list before the midterms

Analysis by Jonathan Allen

Peace out to Congress, at least for the next year or so.

Sure, lawmakers will be in session — and the government will shut down if they don’t pass at least one law in 2026 — but the legislative season is all but over until after the midterms. If past is prologue, it will be replaced by a lot of shouting and political maneuvering in advance of those elections.

That seems to be just fine with the White House. President Donald Trump, who signed a bill last night that requires the release of the Justice Department’s Jeffrey Epstein files, has little to speak of in the way of a remaining legislative agenda. Maybe he’ll get Congress to pass a Russia sanctions bill to send a message to Vladimir Putin that lawmakers have his back; maybe not.

Trump’s fellow Republicans in Congress will have to hope the changes they made in the “big, beautiful bill” — with its mix of tax cuts, big spending on homeland security and reductions to domestic programs like Medicaid — provide them the right record to run on in next year’s midterms.

It was one of the few significant laws enacted so far this year and one of just 38 overall. By comparison, at this point in Trump’s first term, he and Congress had combined to enact 84 laws, not including the five that were added to the pile on Nov. 21 of that year.

Democrats have the ability to block legislation in the Senate because Republicans do not hold a filibuster-proof majority, and Trump, like many modern presidents, has not been big on bipartisanship in his second term. None of that is particularly new, and it’s a reason that midterm election years can be ho-hum on Capitol Hill in terms of actual policymaking.

But in this case, Trump’s preference to use the powers of the executive branch — undiluted by compromise with his political opposition in Congress — further erodes the relevance of the legislative branch. While some of his unilateral policies have been blocked by courts, most have not. In other words, courts are more friendly to him, or at least less hostile, than Democratic lawmakers.

He has even less reason to tinker with the laws given his assessment of how things are going 10 months into the term.

“Under the Trump administration, America is back and America is open for business and America is actually stronger than it’s ever been before,” he said yesterday.

America may be open for business, but Congress figures to be effectively closed for most of next year.

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.

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