Donald Trump, despite his most recent tweets, is as unpopular as ever, even among his own supporters. After 200 days in office, the president has little to boast about, and a major F.B.I. investigation hanging over his head. And Republican lawmakers, back in their home districts for the August recess, are facing tough questions about why, with complete control of Congress, they have mostly failed to pass any meaningful legislation. “This is the third time in 100 years we’ve had this alignment of government that we’ve got to get it done or else I [am] really worried our country will continue down a bad path,” House Speaker Paul Ryan warned in Wisconsin this week.

With September’s debt-ceiling vote looming over Congress, things may get worse before they get better. But for the White House, the honeymoon is already over. Senate Republicans—many of whom are not up for reelection until 2020, or even 2022—are growing more defiant of the president with every passing week, with at least a half-dozen lawmakers actively thwarting his agenda. Last month, Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski both defied the administration’s numerous attempts to pass a health-care bill through Congress, citing the effect repealing Obamacare would have on their constituents. “I didn’t come here to represent the Republican Party. I am representing my constituents and the state of Alaska,” Murkowski reportedly said to Trump’s face. In the final minutes of Mitch McConnell’s dramatic, last-ditch attempt to pass a “skinny” repeal bill, Senator John McCain joined them, crushing the administration’s hopes with a simple thumbs-down sign.

The president’s insistence that Congress return to the drawing board have mostly fallen on deaf ears. Other admonishments have been rejected entirely. “As far as I’m concerned, they shot their wad on health care and that’s the way it is,” Utah Senator Orrin Hatch—one of the chamber’s oldest members and third in line to the presidency—recently told Politico. On Fox News Sunday, he groused that it would be “miraculous” if the administration could achieve any of the lower tax rates they are promising. And on Twitter he blasted Trump for banning transgender people from the U.S. military.

As the president finds himself increasingly isolated, several outspoken Republicans have grown bolder. Nebraska’s Ben Sasse, a longtime Trump critic since before the election, frequently denounces Trump’s Twitter habits and once, when asked to describe Trump in a word, could only manage “current president.” Jeff Flake has gone further, publishing a book calling Trump’s platform “free of significant thought” and condemning his politics as xenophobic. Much of the grandstanding can be chalked up to early 2020 jockeying, with a handful of potential candidates preparing themselves for the possibility that Trump may not run again—or may not even be president at all—when the next election rolls around.

The path to impeachment runs through the House, still a more Trump-friendly stronghold. But if he does find himself forced out over scandal, it will be in large part because Senate Republicans decided to stop giving the president cover. Senator Richard Burr, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, has already signaled his growing impatience with the Trump White House’s frequent delays in handing over pertinent information. (Special counsel Robert Mueller’s own investigation, which is running parallel to Burr’s, recently impaneled a grand jury.) And then there is Senator Chuck Grassley, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a three-decade veteran of Congress, who surprised his colleagues by ramping up his own committee’s efforts to investigate and subpoena the Trumpworld denizens involved in the Russia investigation, as well as the firing of former F.B.I. director James Comey. Grassley has already gone after high-profile members of Trump’s inner circle, promising to summon Donald Trump Jr. and Paul Manafort to probe their connections to Russian agents. “They may be new to town, but they surely recognize what Chuck Grassley’s reputation is,” the senator told, referring himself in the third person. “And if they don’t know it, they’ve been told, I bet, a hundred times,” he added. “I think I’ve got a pretty good reputation for being what I call an equal-opportunity overseer.”

Even the president’s defenders seem to be distancing themselves of late. “Honestly, I enjoy the fact that Congress, the Senate in particular, is charting a course and developing legislation and, let’s face it, leading on all of these issues,” Senator Bob Corker told CNN on Monday, “When my members in the committee say, ‘Well, we have no one here from the administration to weigh in on this,’ I say, ‘Be careful what you ask for. It’s pretty nice the way things are.’”