WASHINGTON — House Republicans have used a slim majority to push through some of President Donald Trump’s biggest priorities — and shield him from political and legal trouble — since Trump returned to the White House last year.

But as Trump’s approval ratings slide and the federal government faces a partial shutdown this weekend, their united front is showing hairline cracks.

Republicans hold a 218-214 majority in the House, with three vacant seats. Such a narrow margin means only a handful of disgruntled GOP members are needed to deal a defeat to their party leadership.

Republican House members bucked Trump and U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson repeatedly in recent weeks. They forced a vote to repeal Trump’s Canadian tariffs, mandated the release of the files related to notorious pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and criticized the aggressive tactics of immigration agents in Minnesota.

Each of those issues is likely to command significant time in Congress in the days and weeks ahead.

The rules governing agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Border Patrol are at the center of a funding fight that could result in a partial government shutdown starting this weekend, even after the Trump administration announced Thursday it would wind down operations in Minnesota. Opponents of Trump’s tariffs, meanwhile, have vowed to force more House votes on taxes on goods from Mexico and other U.S. allies in the weeks to come. And outrage over Epstein on Capitol Hill has only grown as more details have been released.

That could force Illinois’ three House Republicans — all loyal Trump supporters from deep-red districts who reliably vote with the president — to recalibrate how they show their loyalty to Trump as they weigh in on many of his increasingly unpopular positions.

There are signs that may already be happening.

The day after Border Patrol agents shot and killed Alex Pretti in Minneapolis, U.S. Rep. Darin LaHood of Peoria called for a “comprehensive and transparent investigation” into the death. LaHood, a former prosecutor, said the investigation should involve federal, state and local law enforcement. He issued a similar statement after an ICE agent shot Renee Good in her car in early January.

Those statements came as federal officials blocked state and local officers from conducting normal criminal investigations into the shootings.

That has become a significant issue in Congress, too. Senate Democrats on Thursday blocked long-term funding for the Department of Homeland Security, which includes ICE and Border Patrol, to add more accountability measures for those agencies. Now, Democratic leaders want to ensure federal agencies share evidence with local authorities as part of a list of demands they shared with Republicans.

In an interview with the Tribune, LaHood said his concern was less about who did the investigations and more about how they were done.

“I don’t think Congress should be in the business of dictating who should do the investigation,” he said. “There needs to be, obviously, an independent, thorough investigation that’s done with proper law enforcement and a full vetting of the facts and evidence, and then ultimately, once that’s done …  a prosecutorial body will make a decision on whether there should be any charges.”

But LaHood said he didn’t think federal agents automatically had immunity from state and local prosecution.

“If you’re asking whether there’s some prohibition on that, I don’t think there is,” LaHood said. “If they have the facts and evidence and a good case and can bring it to a grand jury and get an indictment, I don’t think that’s out of the realm of possibility.”

Vice President JD Vance suggested federal officers have “absolute immunity” when doing their jobs, although he later clarified he thought they should only be subject to federal investigations.

As negotiations over DHS funding continue, LaHood said he supports one proposal advanced by Democrats that would require ICE and CBP agents to wear body cameras, a practice the Trump administration has begun rolling out on its own.

He also supported clarifying when agents must obtain judicial warrants before entering private property.

“If you’re an ICE agent and you determine someone is illegal — maybe they committed criminal offenses — and they run into a house, does that give (the agent) the exigent circumstances to avoid a warrant and go in and arrest them because they’re illegal or they just committed a crime? I think that’s justifiable,” LaHood explained.

“But if you don’t know that they’re illegal and you don’t know that they’re involved with criminal activity, should you go seek a warrant like you normally would with any other criminal case? I think that, yes, they should be abiding by the Fourth Amendment and the warrant requirement,” he added.

But LaHood objected to demands that immigration agents not wear masks, arguing that ICE opponents have been “going after (agents’) families, exposing them, doxing them, all of those things that have been put on social media.”

The Peoria lawmaker told the Tribune he opposed the Trump administration’s tariff policies, but hours later voted against rescinding Trump’s tariffs on Canada. LaHood said he objected to the broad taxes Trump imposed on foreign goods “from an affordability standpoint, from an inflation standpoint and an open market standpoint.”

“When you get into a trade war, which these tariffs have caused us to do, in many ways, the first pawn in the trade war is agriculture,” he said. “So I have concerns about blanket tariffs, particularly on many of our allies, and the economic effect that it’s had on my farmers and my manufacturers.”

The House measure on taxes on Canadian goods now returns to the Senate. If it passes there, Trump can still veto it. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court is considering a challenge to the legal authority Trump relied on to unilaterally change tariffs for dozens of countries.

“I think the Supreme Court, in all likelihood, will rule that the predicate the president used will be found unconstitutional. I think this is an opportunity for the administration to pivot and have a transition on tariffs,” LaHood said.

“It’s a bit of a head scratcher on why we’re putting tariffs on a number of our allies, Japan, South Korea, Canada, Mexico, the EU (European Union),” he added. “I am perfectly supportive of tariffs on countries that don’t play by the same rules and standards that we do — China, for instance, and obviously Russia,” he said.

LaHood’s comments come as public opinion has shifted away from the Trump administration on many of those topics.

Six in 10 voters disapprove of the way Trump is handling immigration, according to a new AP-NORC poll, while a majority of voters in separate surveys indicated they disapprove of how the Trump administration has handled the release of files related to Epstein. Trump’s tariff policies are also widely unpopular, with 60% of voters disapproving of the increases he ordered, according to the Pew Research Center.

U.S. Rep. Mary Miller of Hindsboro, meanwhile, has continued to push a hard line on immigration and shown little light between her beliefs and Trump’s. 

“The Democrats were the ones that facilitated the invasion of our country for votes and they are not going to, without a fight, allow us to remove these criminal illegal aliens,” she said during an interview with Newsmax.

House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, she said, “and the rest of the Democrats are going to sabotage American safety in order to keep their status quo and keep their power.”

U.S. Rep. Mike Bost of Murphysboro could not be reached for comment.

Still, it’s unlikely any of the three Illinois Republican House members will veer too far from the party line. “They’re in a tight spot,” said Mark Hansen, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

“The major danger to them still is probably a Trump-sponsored primary challenge,” Hansen said. “They’re still in a place where they need to be pretty attentive to what Trump is up to.”

This year, though, both LaHood and Bost are running unopposed in the March 17 GOP primary and Miller’s facing only nominal opposition.

Collin Corbett, a Republican strategist from Palatine and a founder of Cor Strategies, said he appreciated LaHood and other Republicans who have spoken out about the deaths in Minnesota.

“He put out a statement that maybe you wouldn’t typically see from a conservative Republican who’s allied with Trump and who has worked with Trump,” Corbett said. “I appreciate (his) backbone in doing that, and I can tell you I’ve privately heard from more Republicans than I can count saying, ‘They screwed up on this one, we’re going to need to make some changes.’”

He said other Republicans in Illinois have also kept their concerns about the shootings in Minnesota — and ICE’s operations in the Chicago area — to themselves because of political considerations.

“During a primary season, you can’t be seen as going against your own team, otherwise you might be kicked off that team,” Corbett said. “In (the) Trump era of Republican Party politics, if you’re perceived — you don’t even have to actually be anti-Trump — if you’re perceived to be anti-Trump, that’s going to seriously damage you with the ballot box in the primary.”

“Right now, the public is angry about ICE, and Democrats smell blood in the water, so they’re going to make as much of it as they absolutely can,” he added. “Republicans are going to have to show that they’re going to be the adults in the room and do some governing here.”

Hansen, the University of Chicago political scientist, said the Republican caucus has held up well over the last year, considering its knife-edge majority. “They have managed to keep it together pretty well, and they’ve been aided in that, in particular, by Trump’s willingness to bully people,” he said.

But those considerations could change if Republican lawmakers hear growing unease about people being deported from their communities or the economic consequences of Trump’s policies.

“Politicians are always looking at what reaction they’re getting from their constituents,” Hansen said. “In the end, Donald Trump does not elect them to Congress, their constituents do.”