22 Time October 21–28, 2019
after five straight election victories, Amash’s re-
election campaign is a toss-up. It’s a race that will
test the price of principle in Trump’s America.By AmAsh’s own telling, he’s matured during
his time in Congress. On the late-August day that
we met, he reflected on his past partisanship. “I
just think if President Obama were saying the kinds
of things President Trump is saying, and this were
several years ago, I would have been a lot harder on
Obama,” he says. “And I don’t think there’s anyone
in either party for whom that’s not true.”
Trained as a lawyer, Amash worked for a Michi-
gan law firm before joining his family’s tool busi-
ness. At 28, he was elected to the state legislature,
where he earned the nickname Mr. No: he’s anti-
abortion, pro–Second Amendment and a commit-
ted fiscal hawk (though he voted for the Republi-
can tax bill in 2017). Two years later, he won his
seat in Washington as a freshman member of the
House, where he continued to ruffle feathers. In
2012, he was ousted from the House Budget Com-
mittee after voting against fellow Republican Paul
Ryan’s proposed budget.
In the 2014 cycle, Amash’s habit of defying the
Republican establishment earned him a primary
challenger, Brian Ellis, who was backed by a pack
of heavy hitters, including the U.S. Chamber of
Commerce and Right to Life of Michigan. Ellis
ran an ad calling Amash, whose father is a Pales-
tinian refugee and mother is a Syrian immigrant,
“al-Qaeda’s best friend in Congress.” Amash won
handily, let Ellis’ concession call go to voice mail
and demanded an apology. Later, Amash and the
Freedom Caucus were instrumental in pushing
Speaker of the House John Boehner into early
retirement.
When Trump came around, Amash expected
that he and his conservative colleagues would con-
tinue to act as an independent faction in Congress,
keeping both their party and their President in
check. Instead he watched as his peers fell in line
behind the President. Last year, after former Repre-
sentative Mark Sanford, another Trump critic, lost
his congressional primary, Trump insulted Sanford
in a closed-door meeting with Republicans on Capi-
tol Hill. At a dinner later that night, Amash pleaded
with the Freedom Caucus to defend Sanford, the
Washington Post first reported. But no one wanted
to confront Trump. Sanford recalls his fellow mem-
bers “sheepishly looking the other way.”
“I think that [Amash] has represented some-
thing of the conscience of the conservative move-
ment within the Republican Party,” Sanford told
me. “He always stood for true north, whether that
meant he was fighting alone or with a group of oth-
ers. I think he’s ahead of his time.” In June, Amash
quit the Freedom Caucus.JusTin AmAsh is sipping wATer AT A movie-
theater bar in Grand Rapids, Mich. It smells
like popcorn, there are neon lights everywhere,
and Remember the Titans is playing silently on
wall-mounted TVs. A steady trickle of people pass
by, but none seem to recognize their Congressman,
a thin guy in a polo shirt, khakis and wiry glasses
topped with a pair of Eugene Levy eyebrows.
If the Congressman keeps a low profile, it’s not
because of his decisions. In May, after reading
the Mueller report, he became the only Republi-
can in the House to say President Donald Trump
had engaged in behavior that met “the threshold
for impeachment,” and in July, he announced he
was leaving the Republican Party and running
for re-election in his Michigan district as an inde-
pendent. As national Republicans continue to de-
fend Trump, Amash has become something of a
unicorn —and is risking his seat along the way.
“I want people to see that I was a Congressman
who followed a consistent set of principles, upheld
the Constitution and didn’t bow to pressure,” he
says. “That I stuck by what I thought was right, re-
gardless of how difficult it would make anything.”
His decision to leave his party on July 4
came months before the biggest news story in
American politics broke. In September, House
Democrats formally announced they would
pursue an impeachment inquiry into Trump,
centered on whether the President asked a
foreign government to investigate one of his top
political rivals. As congressional Republicans
have circled the wagons around Trump, Amash
has spoken out critically. He called the summary
of the call between Trump and the President of
Ukraine “highly incriminating,” and indicted most
Republican attempts to defend Trump as “an
effort to gaslight America.”
Amash’s moves aren’t necessarily surprising
to those familiar with his tenure in Congress. A
pugnacious conservative who drafted the original
mission statement for the House Freedom Cau-
cus, Amash has long had a reputation for being the
Lego beneath the foot of Republican leadership.
But being the dissident is also risky. Loathed
by the GOP establishment and estranged from his
former allies in the Freedom Caucus, Amash now
must reintroduce himself to his constituents in a
district that went for Trump in 2016. Suddenly,
AMASH
QUICK
FACTS
A thorn in
the side
A former
House
Freedom
Caucus
member,
Amash has
long had a
reputation for
refusing to fall
in line behind
leadership.Gaslighting
Amash
tweeted in
September
that most
Republican
efforts to
defend Trump
amounted
to “an effort
to gaslight
America.”WhatÕs next?
Amash won’t
rule out a
presidential
bid, but for
now he is
running for
re-election in
his district.TheBrief TIME with ...
In Donald Trump’s
America, Justin Amash
sets an independent
course
By Lissandra Villa/Grand Rapids, Mich.