OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — U.S. Rep. Don Bacon, a Republican from Nebraska, announced Monday he will not seek reelection next year amid an increasingly polarized political climate.
Bacon, 61, said at a news conference at Omaha’s airport that he would not seek a sixth term representing Nebraska’s second district with its so-called blue dot that includes many progressive voters around Omaha.
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Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. announces his retirement during a press conference at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. on Monday, June 30, 2025. (Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP)
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. announces his retirement during a press conference at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. on Monday, June 30, 2025. (Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP)
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. announces his retirement during a press conference at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. on Monday, June 30, 2025. (Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP)
FILE - Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., heads to a closed-door GOP meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., speaks with reporters before joining a closed-door Republican strategy session at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
Bacon has had to navigate an ever-thinning line between staying in his party’s and President Donald Trump’s good graces without alienating his increasingly Democratic district. He said he is proud of his bipartisan approach in the face of bitter partisanship in Washington.
“It is disconcerting to get attacked from the right,” Bacon said.
Bacon said he believes he could win the district again, but wants to spend more time with his family in Omaha.
″I think it’s time for a new Republican to be your nominee that can do 12-14 hours a day and hold this seat," Bacon said.
Bacon said in “this district, you got to win swing voters. It’s just a fact of life.” But Republicans will have a good shot at keeping the seat in 2026, he said, because he believes Democrats in the race so far appeal mainly to the hard left.
An Air Force veteran first elected in 2016, he won reelection in 2024. He serves on the House Armed Services Committee and has been at the center of many debates in Congress. He has also been chairman of the conservative-centrist Republican Main Street Caucus in the House. He plans to finish his term.
Bacon has earned a reputation as a centrist — an increasingly rare designation among Republicans as the party has moved farther to the right. But he has long acknowledged that moderation is a necessary attribute for anyone seeking to represent the Omaha-centered district, which is closely divided between Republican and Democratic voters.
Nebraska is one of two states that doesn’t follow a winner-take-all system of awarding Electoral College votes. Instead, Nebraska and Maine allow presidential electoral votes to be split by congressional district. Bacon’s district has seen its electoral vote go to a Democratic presidential candidate three times — to Barack Obama in 2008, to Joe Biden in 2020 and to Kamala Harris in 2024.
The political climate is rapidly changing in Omaha, where voters recently rejected a fourth term for Republican Mayor Jean Stothert in favor of her Democratic opponent, John Ewing.
Seeing an opportunity to flip a vulnerable seat in the U.S. House where Republicans hold a razor-thin margin, several Democrats have already announced their candidacies. The most widely recognized is John Cavanaugh, a state senator from Omaha who’s father, John J. Cavanaugh III, represented the 2nd District in Congress from 1977 to 1981.
Bacon has managed to survive the district’s swing to the left by staying squarely in the middle. In his most recent campaigns, he touted his bipartisan credentials in political ads and cited his willingness to buck his party to support measures such as the Biden administration’s popular 2021 infrastructure investment bill.
Despite Bacon’s willingness to rebuke both his party and the Trump administration, he has consistently voted with most of their agenda. But his criticism has been enough to draw the growing ire of his party. Bacon faced a primary challenger in 2024 endorsed by the Nebraska Republican Party, which is led by Trump loyalists.
Even so, Bacon has grown more vocal in his criticism. That includes Trump's chaotic tariff policies, with Bacon going so far as to introduce a bill to return tariff-issuing authority to Congress.
Bacon said he won't decide whether to vote for Trump's tax cut and spending bill until he sees the final form. The House bill that focused on adding work requirements to Medicaid and auditing the program would do good things, he said, but he's wary of changes made in the Senate.
“Are we better off keeping the tax credits and increased spending for military we have in there?” Bacon pondered. “There’s a lot of great stuff in this legislation, too, so we’ve got to weigh it out.”
On Sunday, Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina also decided to not seek reelection next year. He had held to his opposition of President Donald Trump’s tax breaks and spending cuts package because of its reductions to health care programs.
Associated Press writer Josh Funk contributed to this report from Omaha.
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. announces his retirement during a press conference at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. on Monday, June 30, 2025. (Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP)
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. announces his retirement during a press conference at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. on Monday, June 30, 2025. (Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP)
Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb. announces his retirement during a press conference at Eppley Airfield in Omaha, Neb. on Monday, June 30, 2025. (Chris Machian/Omaha World-Herald via AP)
FILE - Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., heads to a closed-door GOP meeting at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 19, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
FILE - Rep. Don Bacon, R-Neb., speaks with reporters before joining a closed-door Republican strategy session at the Capitol in Washington, Sept. 27, 2023. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — A day after the audacious U.S. military operation in Venezuela, President Donald Trump on Sunday renewed his calls for an American takeover of the Danish territory of Greenland for the sake of U.S. security interests, while his top diplomat declared the communist government in Cuba is “in a lot of trouble.”
The comments from Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the ouster of Venezuela's Nicolás Maduro underscore that the U.S. administration is serious about taking a more expansive role in the Western Hemisphere.
With thinly veiled threats, Trump is rattling hemispheric friends and foes alike, spurring a pointed question around the globe: Who's next?
“It’s so strategic right now. Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place," Trump told reporters as he flew back to Washington from his home in Florida. "We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security, and Denmark is not going to be able to do it.”
Asked during an interview with The Atlantic earlier on Sunday what the U.S.-military action in Venezuela could portend for Greenland, Trump replied: “They are going to have to view it themselves. I really don’t know.”
Trump, in his administration's National Security Strategy published last month, laid out restoring “American preeminence in the Western Hemisphere” as a central guidepost for his second go-around in the White House.
Trump has also pointed to the 19th century Monroe Doctrine, which rejects European colonialism, as well as the Roosevelt Corollary — a justification invoked by the U.S. in supporting Panama’s secession from Colombia, which helped secure the Panama Canal Zone for the U.S. — as he's made his case for an assertive approach to American neighbors and beyond.
Trump has even quipped that some now refer to the fifth U.S. president's foundational document as the “Don-roe Doctrine.”
Saturday's dead-of-night operation by U.S. forces in Caracas and Trump’s comments on Sunday heightened concerns in Denmark, which has jurisdiction over the vast mineral-rich island of Greenland.
Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen in a statement that Trump has "no right to annex" the territory. She also reminded Trump that Denmark already provides the United States, a fellow member of NATO, broad access to Greenland through existing security agreements.
“I would therefore strongly urge the U.S. to stop threatening a historically close ally and another country and people who have made it very clear that they are not for sale,” Frederiksen said.
Denmark on Sunday also signed onto a European Union statement underscoring that “the right of the Venezuelan people to determine their future must be respected” as Trump has vowed to “run” Venezuela and pressed the acting president, Delcy Rodriguez, to get in line.
Trump on Sunday mocked Denmark’s efforts at boosting Greenland’s national security posture, saying the Danes have added “one more dog sled” to the Arctic territory’s arsenal.
Greenlanders and Danes were further rankled by a social media post following the raid by a former Trump administration official turned podcaster, Katie Miller. The post shows an illustrated map of Greenland in the colors of the Stars and Stripes accompanied by the caption: “SOON."
“And yes, we expect full respect for the territorial integrity of the Kingdom of Denmark,” Amb. Jesper Møller Sørensen, Denmark's chief envoy to Washington, said in a post responding to Miller, who is married to Trump's influential deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller.
During his presidential transition and in the early months of his return to the White House, Trump repeatedly called for U.S. jurisdiction over Greenland, and has pointedly not ruled out military force to take control of the mineral-rich, strategically located Arctic island that belongs to an ally.
The issue had largely drifted out of the headlines in recent months. Then Trump put the spotlight back on Greenland less than two weeks ago when he said he would appoint Republican Gov. Jeff Landry as his special envoy to Greenland.
The Louisiana governor said in his volunteer position he would help Trump “make Greenland a part of the U.S.”
Meanwhile, concern simmered in Cuba, one of Venezuela’s most important allies and trading partners, as Rubio issued a new stern warning to the Cuban government. U.S.-Cuba relations have been hostile since the 1959 Cuban revolution.
Rubio, in an appearance on NBC's “Meet the Press,” said Cuban officials were with Maduro in Venezuela ahead of his capture.
“It was Cubans that guarded Maduro,” Rubio said. “He was not guarded by Venezuelan bodyguards. He had Cuban bodyguards.” The secretary of state added that Cuban bodyguards were also in charge of “internal intelligence” in Maduro’s government, including “who spies on who inside, to make sure there are no traitors.”
Trump said that “a lot” of Cuban guards tasked with protecting Maduro were killed in the operation. The Cuban government said in a statement read on state television on Sunday evening that 32 officers were killed in the U.S. military operation.
Trump also said that the Cuban economy, battered by years of a U.S. embargo, is in tatters and will slide further now with the ouster of Maduro, who provided the Caribbean island subsidized oil.
“It's going down,” Trump said of Cuba. “It's going down for the count.”
Cuban authorities called a rally in support of Venezuela’s government and railed against the U.S. military operation, writing in a statement: “All the nations of the region must remain alert, because the threat hangs over all of us.”
Rubio, a former Florida senator and son of Cuban immigrants, has long maintained Cuba is a dictatorship repressing its people.
“This is the Western Hemisphere. This is where we live — and we’re not going to allow the Western Hemisphere to be a base of operation for adversaries, competitors, and rivals of the United States," Rubio said.
Cubans like 55-year-old biochemical laboratory worker Bárbara Rodríguez were following developments in Venezuela. She said she worried about what she described as an “aggression against a sovereign state.”
“It can happen in any country, it can happen right here. We have always been in the crosshairs,” Rodríguez said.
AP writers Andrea Rodriguez in Havana, Cuba, and Darlene Superville traveling aboard Air Force One contributed reporting.
In this photo released by the White House, President Donald Trump monitors U.S. military operations in Venezuela, with Secretary of State Marco Rubio at Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., Saturday, Jan. 3, 2026. (Molly Riley/The White House via AP)
