Utah Republican Sen. John Curtis took to a Substack newsletter to accuse his own party of abandoning its core principles, just as Republicans were projected to lose control of Congress following Tuesday’s midterms. Curtis pointed to a hastily planned war, ballooning debt and unpredictable tariffs as forces that alienated voters — even though his Senate voting record has aligned with several of those same policies.
Curtis Says GOP Has Lost Its Way
In the newsletter, Curtis wrote that the GOP has “abandoned the conservative principles that once defined us,” according to The Salt Lake Tribune. He identified those core values as limited government, free trade, resolute diplomacy and global leadership, and fiscal responsibility. The Tribune reported that his post came before any Utah election results were posted, but after a string of significant Democratic victories nationally as Republicans braced for a loss of congressional control.
Curtis wrote that voters watched a hastily planned war disrupt oil markets while public debt ballooned past $40 trillion, leading to volatile markets, per the same Tribune report. He also posted that unpredictable tariffs had alienated the electorate, according to Axios, which reported that Curtis blamed his party’s support for the Iran war, debt spending and tariffs for the GOP’s massive midterm losses.
A Voting Record That Tells a Different Story
Axios reported that Curtis voted for Trump’s so-called big, beautiful bill, even as he now criticizes the debt spiral that followed. The outlet’s seed reporting put the bill’s debt-limit increase at $5 billion, while Roll Call reported the legislation would raise the nation’s $36.1 trillion debt limit by $5 trillion — a figure Roll Call said came alongside deficits projected to increase by $3.25 trillion over 10 years under the CBO’s traditional scoring method. The Senate passed its version of the bill 51-50, with Vice President JD Vance breaking the tie, according to Roll Call.
Axios also reported that Curtis voted against Democrat-led Senate measures calling for military withdrawal from Iran, and against multiple measures opposing Trump’s tariffs, even as he has spoken warily of the war. Curtis’s office did not respond to Axios’s query by Wednesday, the outlet reported.
Curtis Draws a Line on Iran
Curtis has staked out a specific limit on the Iran conflict. “I will not support ongoing military action beyond a 60-day window without congressional approval,” he said, according to The Hill. The war has become a flashpoint well beyond Utah: Vice President JD Vance blamed Republicans’ midterm losses on Americans’ frustration over the Iran war, which he said had driven up oil prices, while Trump said “Iran was a piece of it” in defending his decision to launch the conflict, according to NBC News.
Tariffs, a Court Ruling, and a Gap in the Record
Curtis also praised the Supreme Court’s ruling that Trump unlawfully used an emergency statute to impose sweeping tariffs, the Hill reported. Yet the same report noted Curtis was not among the Republican legislators who voted for a bipartisan resolution to condemn the tariffs and push for their repeal — a measure that passed the Senate with support from four Republican legislators. The Hill also cited a Kiel Institute finding that U.S. consumers and importers are bearing 96 percent of the costs resulting from the tariff policies.
Allies and Critics React
Some Trump-reluctant and self-styled moderate Republicans signed onto Curtis’s criticism, Axios reported, while conservatives condemned him as an establishment shill and progressives called him a hypocrite. Brian King, chair of the Utah Democratic Party, characterized Curtis as “the definition of a Trump enabler” whose exceptions “can be numbered on one hand,” according to the same Axios report.
Axios also reported that Curtis has cited scandals and corruption as factors driving voters away from the GOP, and that he has urged the Senate Judiciary Committee to subpoena Donald Trump Jr. and Hunter Biden as part of an effort to investigate whether presidential family ties had been used for private family gain. Curtis cited a ProPublica report that Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars toward Donald Trump Jr.’s three-day wedding celebration in the Bahamas, including a private-island rental, per the Axios account.
