What is Political Courage?

Peter Meijer was one of ten House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump for “incitement of insurrection” for his actions and inactions related to the January 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol. A Michigan moderate little known outside his district, the then-33-year-old had been a member of Congress for just ten days when he cast his vote.  

Meijer saw his impeachment vote as a moral imperative, yet knew that by casting it, he may have doomed his political career. When ABC News’s George Stephanopoulos asked as much, he replied, “I may very well have.”  

He was right. He didn’t survive his next party primary. 

Many lauded Meijer for his political bravery—the quality that Senator John F. Kennedy described in his 1956 book, Profiles in Courage. “In no other occupation but politics,” the future 35th president wrote, “is it expected that a man will sacrifice honors, prestige, and his chosen career on a single issue.” 

But in Congress, courage like Meijer’s is often ephemeral, as we’ve seen. The night of the insurrection, after the Senate had reconvened to certify Joe Biden’s election as president, Mitch McConnell and Lindsey Graham spoke forcefully from the Senate floor, pillorying President Donald Trump for what he had done to encourage the rioters and for arguing that he had won the 2020 election long after a slew of courts had concluded otherwise. Soon after, though, McConnell traveled to Mar-a-Lago to make peace with Trump, and Graham, who died this summer, emerged as one of his most vocal supporters. 

To understand true political courage and why it is in short supply today, I asked four current and former House members—Republican and Democrat—for guidance. They agree on little. But on this matter, they’re aligned with Trey Gowdy, a Fox News host and former four-term House Republican from South Carolina: “The number of Sir Thomas More moments that happened in Congress [while I was there], I don’t remember them.” 

Tom Suozzi is a fourth-term U.S. representative from a New York swing district who describes himself as “a Democrat, a true-blue Democrat, but also a true-blue American.” He was one of six House Democrats to cross party lines and vote with Republicans in November to end the 43-day federal government shutdown. Suozzi said he did it because the two parties were stalemated over health care, the Democrats’ position on the issue was already clear to voters, and his constituents were suffering. “The best thing to do, that would help me sleep best,” he said, “was to vote to reopen the government.”  

One might not describe Suozzi’s vote as courageous or determinative. Unlike the late Senator John McCain’s dramatic, decisive 2017 vote that saved the Affordable Care Act, House Republicans could have reopened the federal government without his support. But he did face considerable pressure from senior Democratic colleagues for his decision, some challenging his party loyalty on the House floor.  

Breaking ranks with one’s party on a major vote comes with considerable risk. “Take gun-safety legislation,” Suozzi told me. “I think most members of Congress support background checks. But whenever there’s a bill to be sponsored, no Republicans will sponsor it. They’re, ‘Oh Tom, I know, I know, I agree, you’re right. But I just can’t. I would lose the primary.’”  

So, yours was a vote of pure conscience? I asked.  

There was more to it, Suozzi conceded.  

To win reelection, Suozzi must thread a tiny needle. Unlike most Democratic incumbents, he doesn’t have the benefit of a large, reliable base of Democratic support. Trump carried Suozzi’s Long Island/Queens, New York, district by some 19,000 votes in 2024. His House seat is one of just 37 that The Cook Report with Amy Walter considers a “toss up.” He survived a June Democratic primary challenge from the left. In November, he’ll face a competitive race from Mike LiPetri, a former state legislator, who was the Republican nominee two years ago and came within 3 percent of winning. So his vote to reopen the federal government was complicated. It needed to be principled, while demonstrating that he was open to compromise. He is banking, he said, that come November his vote will play to the independent image he tries to project to his constituents: “People see me as a fighter on behalf of them, not for just the party.” 

Representative Don Bacon, a fifth-term Nebraska Reagan Republican, admits he is out of step with the MAGA element of his party. “I have an old-school, conservative philosophy,” he told me, “and if you call yourself a Republican but you are weak on Russia, or you’re pro tariffs, that doesn’t jibe with the philosophy I believe in.” Still, he generally votes with his caucus. He voted to acquit Trump in both of the president’s impeachment hearings, and helped pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act.  

In recent years, Bacon’s seat in Congress has turned precarious. Like Suozzi, he represents a swing district; Kamala Harris won his Omaha-based district by 5 points in the 2024 presidential election, and he knew he’d need the full support of the Republican base to win his own race that year. That wasn’t going to be so easy. Occasionally, Bacon crossed party lines on key votes, angering Trump and the MAGA base, and in those instances he has paid a price. His wife received threatening phone calls at home when he opposed Representative Jim Jordan’s campaign to become Speaker of the House. (Afterward, she slept with a loaded gun by her bed.) 

When Bacon voted to certify President Joe Biden’s election, to maintain Ukraine’s funding for its war against Russia and to pass Biden’s infrastructure bill, party reaction was swift. Republican colleagues tarred him as disloyal.  

But it was Trump himself who emerged as Bacon’s chief tormentor. In 2022, Trump endorsed his primary opponent, even flying to Omaha to campaign against him. “He called me a bad man, a real wise guy,” said Bacon, who served 29 years in the Air Force, retiring as a brigadier general, before his first election to the House, in 2016.  

In 2024, knowing he’d need Trump’s support to survive, he swallowed hard and made an uncomfortable but practical choice: Before Nebraska’s 2024 presidential primary, he endorsed Trump’s presidential comeback bid. Still, Trump withheld his support. Then, seven weeks before the general election, Trump reversed course. Party leaders had convinced the 45th president that without his backing, Bacon could lose his seat, jeopardizing Republican control of the House. Only then did Trump post on Truth Social, “Don Bacon has my Complete and Total Endorsement – HE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN!” 

Sidelining conscience proved a winning formula for both. Bacon won by 1.8 percent of the vote, helping Republicans retain control of the House. The congressman wrote on X that he was “thankful” for Trump’s support. Sometimes in politics, Suozzi had told me, you have to go along to get along.  

The Bacon-Trump détente didn’t last. Trump resumed his trolling, and by June 2025, Bacon had had enough. “Would it be easier if I had a president that I agreed with a lot more? Yes,” he told me. He announced that he will not seek reelection this November.  

Which brings us back to Meijer, and the often-fleeting nature of courage in Congress. In November 2023, less than a year after losing his Michigan House seat, Meijer announced he was running for the U.S. Senate. By then, Trump had regained full control of the Republican Party as he planned his comeback bid for the White House. How should the young Meijer play it? 

Earlier that year, when asked whether he would support Trump if he became the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, Meijer told Rolling Stone, “I have no idea how I would do that.” Once he entered the race, though, the principled politician seemed to abandon his principles. In a radio interview, he vowed to support the Republican presidential nominee, even if it were Trump. In fact, he said, he’d joined a court brief opposing efforts to remove Trump’s name from Michigan’s ballot.  

“I’ll say it, January 6 was wrong,” Meijer declared, but added a caveat. “That was also one day. We have a lot greater issues that are facing us.” 

His new stance complicated matters in Michigan. It soon became clear that the state’s independents and moderate Democrats, whose support he had counted on—the ones who had applauded his vote to impeach Trump—wouldn’t cross party lines to vote for him in Michigan’s open primary, now that he was amenable to endorsing Trump. And the Republican base, who remembered his impeachment vote, still considered him a traitor. Trump wouldn’t support him, either. By then, the former president had embarked on his revenge tour. He endorsed another Republican. Meijer abandoned his senate bid, and Trump celebrated. “Peter Meijer, one of the 10 [Republican] Impeachers of your Favorite President, ME, and someone thought to have a very good political future, has just withdrawn from the Senate Race in the Great State of Michigan,” he wrote on Truth Social. “Once he raised his very little and delicate hand to Impeach President Trump, his Political Career was OVER!” 

I turned to Jamie Raskin, the fifth-term Maryland Democrat and ranking member of the House Judiciary Committee, for his thoughts on political courage, and the paths his colleagues Suozzi, Bacon, and Meijer had chosen. He had taught constitutional law at American University before entering Congress. On January 6, while sheltering in the Capitol, he and two fellow Democrats began work on the “incitement of insurrection” impeachment charge against Trump. “There were ten [House] Republicans who joined us to vote to impeach on the floor, but there were many more who told us they just could not bring themselves to do it,” he recalled. 

“Is there such a thing in Congress as a vote of pure courage?” I asked.  

It’s complicated, he replied. “Your question,” he said, “seems to imply that conscience is some kind of separate category that’s apart from the general push and pull of politics, and I don’t know that it is.” He mentioned Jeff Van Drew, a U.S. representative from New Jersey who switched from Democrat to Republican after voting to acquit Trump in his first impeachment hearing in 2019, and has carried his district ever since.  

“The Democrats all consider him a defector and a traitor, but you could say he acted with courage,” Raskin reflected. He paused, then continued. “Courage and betrayal are complex concepts, because they’re usually in the eye of the beholder. I mean, there’s nobody more reviled or detested on the Republican side than Liz Cheney, because of what she did. But we [Democrats] admire her for her courage and for standing up for the Constitution. 

“I wish it was clear. We know what the moral/courage vote is in any situation. But sometimes that feels right, and sometimes it doesn’t. You’re dealing with competing moral and political considerations. We do the best we can.”  

One could argue that Suozzi, Bacon and Meijer did exactly that. The votes that placed each of them—Republican and Democrat—in political jeopardy were not only principled, but brave. Shouldn’t that be enough to win our gratitude, our respect?  

“Perhaps if the American people more fully comprehended the terrible pressures which discourage acts of political courage, which drive a [congressperson] to abandon or subdue his conscience,” wrote Kennedy in Profiles in Courage, “then they might be less critical of those who take the easier road—and more appreciative of those still able to follow the path of courage.”

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