After a notable absence, an antiwar movement has emerged against President Donald Trump’s unpopular conflict in Iran. It is appearing less in the streets than in campaign ads and statements from Republicans staring at potentially doomed election campaigns.

“The war with Iran needs to end and end quickly,” Michigan Senate candidate Mike Rogers said in a digital ad. Sen. Jon Husted of Ohio made nearly the same statement to Politico, while Michael Whatley acknowledged that fuel and fertilizer prices tied to the conflict were hurting farmers.

Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Rep. Tom Tiffany also said, “I just believe we should be exiting Iran, that it’s time to move on.” Yet Tiffany was absent for a vote to end the war when he had the chance to act last week.

Republican Iowa Reps. Mariannette Miller Meeks and Zach Nunn supported the war powers resolution, becoming two of seven Republicans who helped it pass the House. Rep. Ashley Hinson, an Iowa Senate candidate, demanded a “successful and immediate end” after voting against that resolution days earlier, her sixth such vote this year.

The Senate version failed Thursday. Husted and every other Republican concerned about reelection voted against stopping the war, with the exception of Susan Collins, who has previously supported war powers resolutions.

That gap between campaign rhetoric and congressional action is the point. On the decisions that actually matter, Trump and congressional Republicans remain fully aligned, no matter how desperately vulnerable candidates now try to wriggle away from the consequences.

The national media has spent years awaiting a Republican fever break. With fewer than 40 days before an election shaping up as an epochal GOP disaster, Republicans are suddenly condemning, debating, and rejecting policies they tolerated for nearly two years.

The shift comes almost 700 days late and about $3 trillion short. For 99.9% of the past two years, Republicans followed Trump’s maneuvers and utterances or pretended not to hear them, only discovering independent thought when voters approached with an accountability hammer.

Paul LePage, running in a northern Maine seat that Trump carried by 9 points, has criticized the deportation of his son in law’s father. Yet LePage also has a history of anti immigrant and racist remarks and released an ad this week celebrating his record of facilitating deportations as governor.

Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar is running an ad arguing that Trump’s deportation policies have gone too far, despite voting to establish and finance the current mass deportation structure. Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall, who also supported that structure, has criticized ICE for failing to work with local law enforcement.

The White House is making its own frantic adjustments. The Domestic Policy Council is considering cutting Trump’s foreign beef imports after ranchers attacked the policy, although the White House denied that a change was coming.

The Senate could remain in session next week for a vote on Husted’s Ratepayer Protection Act, which he coauthored. The bill would create a framework for states to make data center developers pay for utility upgrades, but it would not require states to impose those rules.

Trump’s favorable position on data centers has not changed, despite public opposition and the placement of new facilities on public lands. A largely voluntary legislative framework, piled atop a voluntary White House pledge from utilities, does not erase that record.

The scramble over record diesel prices offers perhaps the most farcical example of election season policymaking. Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska demanded a temporary ban on diesel exports, and Trump moved toward a 90 day ban even though his own energy secretary said it would not work.

Diesel is largely refined along the Gulf Coast, with no easy means of moving it to other parts of the country. Higher global prices could raise costs in regions relying on imported diesel, while refiners are not guaranteed to pass along savings and storage demands could slow gasoline refining.

Republicans could have used existing mechanisms to stop tariffs after January 20, 2025. They also could have withheld funding for wars, responded to defiance of appropriations laws by cutting the presidential travel budget, or pursued impeachment and removal with Democratic support.

Instead, congressional Republicans supported Trump in nearly perfect lockstep. Their last minute conversions amount to meek acknowledgments of pain they helped inflict, without evidence that they would preserve this supposed independence once the election passes.

Republicans may fear losing their offices and the trappings of authority they declined to exercise. Whether a Democratic Congress would use countermeasures to halt Trump’s agenda remains uncertain, particularly after its conduct concerning the Paramount merger, leaving the question of why Trump appears concerned at all.