Ryan Costello came to Washington the old-fashioned way. Growing up in Chester County, Pennsylvania, in a family of educators, he imagined government service to be like the Norman Rockwell painting of a farmer standing up at a town-hall meeting: a noble calling. By the time Costello turned twenty-one, in 1997, he wanted to be a congressman. He was elected the township supervisor of West Chester, Pennsylvania, while he was at Villanova law school; then he became the Chester County recorder of deeds, then a county commissioner, and then a commission chairman. This was the kind of solid ladder that an ambitious young Republican, in the tidy suburbs west of Philadelphia, climbed in order to reach for bigger things. In 2014, after the Republican incumbent in Pennsylvania’s Sixth Congressional District announced his retirement, Costello—at thirty-seven, the heir apparent—ran for his seat, and coasted to victory.

Costello is tall and slim, with a prominent nose and slick black hair, easygoing and conscientious. When he smiles, he looks about twenty-five years old. Upon entering Congress, he focussed not on publicizing himself but on mastering policy and raising money for colleagues. He played shortstop on the Republican congressional baseball team. He became a member of the Tuesday Group, fifty or so moderate Republicans who meet weekly, and later joined the Problem Solvers Caucus—a few dozen centrists, evenly drawn from both parties, who work together on legislation. Costello supported stronger background checks for gun purchases and voted against a Republican bill that would require states to recognize concealed-carry permits issued by any other state. He made environmental protection a top priority and, among other things, championed the Paris climate accord. He was rated the ninth most bipartisan member of Congress.

At the same time, he was a loyal part of the House Republican majority, in good standing with the Party’s leaders, especially the Speaker, Paul Ryan, whom he admired for his optimism and for his ability to express disagreement respectfully. Costello wasn’t a hard-core libertarian like Ryan, but he believed that prosperity and opportunity sprang from limited government. He spent his first term doing everything necessary to get a seat on the Energy and Commerce Committee. In time, he hoped to become a committee chairman.

During the 2016 campaign, he promised to support his party’s Presidential nominee. None of the candidates he endorsed—first Jeb Bush, then Marco Rubio, and finally John Kasich—could figure out how to defeat Donald Trump. When the “Access Hollywood” tape was released, Costello said that Trump’s comments were “atrocious, disrespectful towards women,” and “incredibly inappropriate for someone who wants to lead our country.” In November, he cast a reluctant vote for him anyway.

“And then Trump gets elected,” Costello said recently, at a coffee shop in West Chester. “And the norms of politics all just blow up, and you’re trying to figure out how to orient yourself when the rules don’t apply anymore, and you’re allowed to say and do things which used to be disqualifying.” At first, Costello expected the President to temper his behavior and allow the experienced professionals in the White House—like the chief of staff, Reince Priebus—to guide the Administration. Now that Costello was on the Energy and Commerce Committee, he wanted to work on helping government policy catch up with advances in renewable energy, technology, and health-care delivery. Instead, he found himself swamped with questions about Stormy Daniels and “very fine people on both sides.” He didn’t know how to navigate the Trump era, in which rage constantly emanated from both the left and the right. Being a moderate Republican put him squarely in everyone’s sights.

The protests began immediately. Two Saturdays after Trump’s Inauguration, Costello spent the day at home, playing with his young son, and it wasn’t until late that he heard about Trump’s ban on travellers from seven Muslim-majority countries. On Costello’s Facebook page, angry comments against the ban were piling up. He issued a split-the-difference statement that recommended both tighter screening and exceptions for green-card holders. He was a moderate on social issues having to do with race, gender, and religion—he voted to prohibit federal contractors from discriminating against gay people—but these weren’t the subjects that he wanted to focus on in Washington. Trump’s Muslim ban and the intense reaction to it caught him completely by surprise.

In the spring of 2017, hundreds of demonstrators besieged Costello’s West Chester office to protest the Republican effort to repeal Obamacare, an effort that he opposed; later that year, there were more protests over the tax bill, which he supported. (“This is going to kill his kids!” one demonstrator shouted about the tax bill; then, hearing her own words, she added, “The debt, the debt.”) Costello realized that moderates like him were being targeted by the progressive organization Indivisible and other groups that had risen up in opposition to Trump. “These groups don’t go to the red parts of Alabama or even Pennsylvania,” Costello told me. “They’re going to purple, and they’re going to beat up on people like me, ’cause we’re the vulnerable ones, and that’s how you take back the House.”

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When he posted a statement on Facebook about cybersecurity provisions that he’d added to a bill on driverless cars, a constituent named Ernie Tokay, who identified himself as a Vietnam veteran, wrote, “Congressman. I know you believe it’s 1994 or something or you’re some kind of middle manager. But you don’t get credit for routine business when you and your party do nothing to stop your Russian agents at the head of your party.” Costello believed that the investigation, led by Robert Mueller, into Russian subversion of the 2016 elections should proceed without congressional interference. Tokay continued, “I expect you to defend the constitution as I did and you must sacrifice your career as a republican and go against your party if you want to be doing this job in 18 months.”

As Democrats berated him for complicity, Republicans attacked him for disloyalty. After Costello condemned Trump for his comments on the neo-Nazis in Charlottesville—in a Pennsylvania newspaper, he wrote of “how unbelievably poorly our President has failed”—a constituent at a town-hall meeting stood up and called him a coward for bashing a President from his own party. “What about the fact that I’m an elected member of Congress?” Costello replied. “I represent seven hundred and five thousand people. All of you sent me to Washington. Even if you don’t vote for me, I’m still there to represent you. I should get your input on how I’m going to vote, I should get your feedback, I should hear all sides of an issue. But once I vote, or when I’m asked for my opinion, I should give my honest opinion—and if you don’t like it that’s fine, you can criticize me for it, but I also shouldn’t not offer my honest opinion because I’m afraid that some political party or some person is not going to like what I have to say, right? You want me to be honest with you so that you can honestly evaluate me as your member of Congress.”