In just three weeks, President Donald Trump has exploded long-standing U.S. foreign policy and sided with Russia against Ukraine and the rest of NATO. He sent American diplomats to open negotiations with Russian counterparts—without inviting Kyiv to participate. He falsely blamed Ukraine for starting the war with Russia, and echoed the Kremlin line by calling Ukrainian President Zelensky a “dictator.” Then, in a press conference on Monday, Trump declined to say the same of Putin. “I don’t use those words lightly,” he told a reporter.

Most Republicans strongly condemned Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and have voted on multiple occasions to send the country military aid. But with their party’s leader back in the White House, many of them have grown quiet. Are any GOP lawmakers willing to say, in plain terms, what is true?

I reached out to all 271 Republican members of the House and Senate to find out, asking each of them two straightforward questions: Did Russia invade Ukraine? And is Putin a dictator? So far, I have received 19 responses.

Some members were unambiguous: “Yes and yes,” a spokesperson for Senator Susan Collins of Maine replied in an email. “Vladimir is undisputedly an enemy of America and a dictator,” read part of the statement from the office of Representative Jeff Hurd of Colorado.

Others chose to send excerpts of previous non-answer statements or links to past TV interviews rather than answer either “yes” or “no.” A spokesperson for the GOP’s House leader, Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana, replied only with a readout of Johnson’s praise for Trump’s deal-making prowess. A spokesperson for Senator Ted Cruz of Texas replied with a link to an interaction with ChatGPT in which the chatbot noted that Cruz had in 2022 acknowledged Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and did in 2020 call Putin a dictator. (Still, no straightforward “yes” from Cruz today.)

The House Foreign Affairs Committee, chaired by Representative Brian Mast of Florida, opted to stake out a position that seemed different from Trump’s: The panel posted a screenshot of our questions on X, with the caption: “ON THE RECORD: Russia invaded Ukraine & Putin is a dictator. But that doesn’t mean our European allies shouldn’t match Russian military spending & recruitment.” (Another post referred to our questions as “BS.”) The Atlantic followed up to ask whether this statement represented Mast’s personal view, but received no further response.

Others refused to answer entirely: “Does the Atlantic believe we’re here to answer gotcha questions to advance narrow opinion journalism?” Jonathan Wilcox, communications director for Representative Darrell Issa of California, said in an email.

In fact, it is clearly in the public interest to know how elected officials, particularly those who make decisions about national security, regard foreign powers that have long positioned themselves against the United States. And it is also clearly in the public interest for citizens to know if their representatives’ views have shifted on who is—or is not—a foreign adversary.

What follows is the full list of responses from every Republican member of Congress. It will be regularly updated with any additional responses.

Lawmakers Who Answered the Questions

Representative Don Bacon of Nebraska: A spokesperson pointed to a statement on X from Bacon on February 19, in which he said: “Putin started this war. Putin committed war crimes. Putin is the dictator who murdered his opponents. The EU nations have contributed more to Ukraine. Zelensky polls over 50%. Ukraine wants to be part of the West, Putin hates the West. I don’t accept George Orwell’s doublethink.”

Representative Michael Baumgartner of Washington: “The Congressman expressed all his thoughts on the Russia-Ukraine War to the Spokane-Review on February 19. He was very clear that Russia and Vladimir Putin were the aggressors of the war in Ukraine,” a spokesman said, adding this link.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine: “As Senator Collins has said multiple times, yes and yes,” a spokesperson said.

Senator Ted Cruz of Texas: A spokesperson shared this link, pointing to earlier statements the senator had made about Putin and the Ukraine war.

Senator John Curtis of Utah: A spokesperson pointed to Curtis’s bipartisan resolution supporting Ukraine and a February 25 interview on KSL NewsRadio, in which Curtis said, “Ukraine was invaded by a dictator.”

Representative Julie Fedorchak of North Dakota: “Yes, Vladimir Putin and Russia invaded Ukraine and yes, he is a dictator,” the representative told me. “This war has cost countless lives and destabilized the world. I believe President Trump has the strength and leadership to bring peace and restore stability in a way that puts America’s interests first.”

Representative Jeff Hurd of Colorado: “Did Russia invade Ukraine? Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was an unprovoked act of war. Russian President Vladimir Putin is a dictator? Vladimir is undisputedly an enemy of America and a dictator. It is dishonorable and wrong not to stand up against the tyranny of Putin,” a spokesperson said.

Representative Young Kim of California: “Yes to both,” a spokesperson said.

Representative Brian Mast of Florida: A spokesperson for Mast sent a link to a post on X from the House Foreign Affairs Committee calling The Atlantic’s inquiry “BS” and declaring it would cancel its subscription to our magazine. “ON THE RECORD: Russia invaded Ukraine & Putin is a dictator. But that doesn’t mean our European allies shouldn’t match Russian military spending & recruitment. Europe must realize that for our alliance to be the strongest in history, America needs a Europe that can hold its own.”

Senator Lisa Murkowski of Alaska: A spokesperson sent a link to a statement in which the senator said that Russia launched an “unprovoked war on Ukraine.” The spokesperson added: “And yes, she does believe that Vladimir Putin is a dictator.”

Representative Austin Scott of Georgia: “Russia invaded Ukraine and is the aggressor in this war,” the representative told me. “Putin is a dictator who has invaded Ukraine multiple times—this war would end today if he would pull his troops back into Russia.”

Senator Todd Young of Indiana: “Yes and yes,” a spokesperson said.

Lawmakers Who Responded But Did Not Directly Answer the Questions

Representative Dan Crenshaw of Texas: A spokesman provided a link to an interview with Piers Morgan in which Crenshaw cautioned against returning to a pre-World War II order allowing “dictators to conquer other countries and take their stuff.”

Representative Warren Davidson of Ohio: A spokesperson said the representative declined to comment.

Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa: “Like all Americans, Ernst wants to see an end to Putin’s unjust war that has cost far too many lives,” a spokesperson said

Representative French Hill of Arkansas: A spokesperson did not address the question of whether Putin is a dictator, but sent a link to an Arkansas PBS interview in which the representative said, “this war was started by Vladimir Putin,” and that “Ukraine has to be at the table” for any peace deal

Representative Darrell Issa of California: A spokesperson said, “Does the Atlantic believe we’re here to answer gotcha questions to advance narrow opinion journalism?”

Speaker Mike Johnson of Louisiana: A spokesperson sent over Johnson’s recent comments during this week’s GOP leadership press conference about Trump’s dealmaking skills and his desire for peace in Ukraine, but did not answer either question directly.

Senator Tommy Tuberville of Alabama: A spokesperson did not answer directly but sent a link to an interview with Newsmax, in which the senator said, “President Trump is not a Putin apologist. He just wants to get the war over with.”

Senate Republicans Who Have Not Responded

Jim Banks
John Barrasso
Marsha Blackburn
John Boozman
Katie Britt
Ted Budd
Shelley Moore Capito
Bill Cassidy
John Cornyn
Tom Cotton
Kevin Cramer
Mike Crapo
Steve Daines
Deb Fischer
Lindsay Graham
Charles Grassley
Bill Hagerty
Josh Hawley
John Hoeven
Jon Husted
Cindy Hyde-Smith
Ron Johnson
Jim Justice
John Neely Kennedy
James Lankford
Mike Lee
Cynthia Lummis
Roger Marshall
Mitch McConnell
Dave McCormick
Ashley Moody
Jerry Moran
Bernie Moreno
Markwayne Mullin
Rand Paul
Pete Ricketts
James Risch
Mike Rounds
Eric Schmitt
Rick Scott
Tim Scott
Tim Sheehy
Dan Sullivan
John Thune
Thom Tillis
Roger Wicker

House Republicans Who Have Not Responded

Robert Aderholt
Mark Alford
Rick Allen
Mark Amodei
Jodey Arrington
Brian Babin
James Baird
Troy Balderson
Andy Barr
Tom Barrett
Aaron Bean
Nick Begich
Cliff Bentz
Jack Bergman
Stephanie Bice
Andy Biggs
Sheri Biggs
Gus Bilirakis
Lauren Boebert
Mike Bost
Josh Brecheen
Rob Bresnahan
Vern Buchanan
Tim Burchett
Eric Burlison
Ken Calvert
Kat Cammack
Mike Carey
John Carter
Earl Buddy Carter
Juan Ciscomani
Ben Cline
Michael Cloud
Andrew Clyde
Tom Cole
Mike Collins
James Comer
Eli Crane
Jeff Crank
Eric Rick Crawford
Monica De La Cruz
Scott DesJarlais
Mario Diaz-Balart
Byron Donalds
Troy Downing
Neal Dunn
Beth Van Duyne
Chuck Edwards
Jake Ellzey
Tom Emmer
Ron Estes
Gabe Evans
Mike Ezell
Pat Fallon
Randy Feenstra
Brad Finstad
Michelle Fischbach
Scott Fitzgerald
Brian Fitzpatrick
Charles Chuck Fleischmann
Mike Flood
Vince Fong
Virginia Foxx
Scott Franklin
Russell Fry
Russ Fulcher
Andrew Garbarino
Brandon Gill
Carlos Gimenez
Craig Goldman
Tony Gonzales
Lance Gooden
Paul Gosar
Sam Graves
Mark Green
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Morgan Griffith
Glenn Grothman
Michael Guest
Brett Guthrie
Harriet Hageman
Abe Hamadeh
Mike Haridopolos
Pat Harrigan
Andy Harris
Mark Harris
Diana Harshbarger
Kevin Hern
Clay Higgins
Ashley Hinson
Erin Houchin
Richard Hudson
Bill Huizenga
Wesley Hunt
Brian Jack
Ronny Jackson
John James
Dusty Johnson
Jim Jordan
David Joyce
John Joyce
Thomas Kean
Mike Kelly
Trent Kelly
Mike Kennedy
Jennifer Kiggans
Kevin Kiley
Brad Knott
David Kustoff
Darin LaHood
Nick LaLota
Doug LaMalfa
Nicholas Langworthy
Robert Latta
Michael Lawler
Laurel Lee
Julia Letlow
Barry Loudermilk
Frank Lucas
Anna Paulina Luna
Morgan Luttrell
Nancy Mace
Ryan Mackenzie
Nicole Malliotakis
Celeste Maloy
Tracey Mann
Thomas Massie
Michael McCaul
Lisa McClain
Tom McClintock
Richard McCormick
Addison McDowell
John McGuire
Mark Messmer
Daniel Meuser
Carol Miller
Mary Miller
Max Miller
Mariannette Miller-Meeks
Cory Mills
John Moolenaar
Barry Moore
Blake Moore
Riley Moore
Tim Moore
Nathaniel Moran
Greg Murphy
Troy Nehls
Dan Newhouse
Ralph Norman
Zach Nunn
Jay Obernolte
Andrew Ogles
Bob Onder
Burgess Owens
Gary Palmer
Scott Perry
August Pfluger
Guy Reschenthaler
Hal Rogers
Mike Rogers
John Rose
David Rouzer
Chip Roy
Michael Rulli
John Rutherford
Maria Elvira Salazar
Steve Scalise
Derek Schmidt
David Schweikert
Keith Self
Pete Sessions
Jefferson Shreve
Michael Simpson
Adrian Smith
Christopher Smith
Jason Smith
Lloyd Smucker
Victoria Spartz
Pete Stauber
Elise Stefanik
Bryan Steil
Greg Steube
Dale Strong
Marlin Stutzman
Dave Taylor
Claudia Tenney
Glenn GT Thompson
Thomas Tiffany
William Timmons
Mike Turner
David Valadao
Jefferson Van Drew
Derrick Van Orden
Ann Wagner
Tim Walberg
Randy Weber
Daniel Webster
Bruce Westerman
Roger Williams
Joe Wilson
Tony Wied
Robert Wittman
Steve Womack
Rudy Yakym
Ryan Zinke

With additional research and reporting by Amogh Dimri, Marc Novicoff, Gisela Salim-Peyer, and Annie Joy Williams.

When Brenda Andrew was on trial for murder in 2004 in Oklahoma, a prosecutor named Fern Smith turned to the jury and held up Andrew's thong and lace bra.

“The grieving widow packs this to run off with her boyfriend,” Smith told the jury sarcastically. “The grieving widow packs this in her appropriate act of grief.”

Andrew’s lawyers would later say they were too stunned by the presentation of the underwear to even object. But by then, it likely wouldn’t have mattered; Smith had devoted a significant amount of time to outlining Andrew’s sex life, questioning former lovers of hers on the stand. Andrew was ostensibly on trial for the murder of her husband, Rob Andrew, but Smith wasn’t content to prove her guilt. The prosecutor also wanted to convince the jury that Andrew was, in Smith’s words, a “slut puppy.”

Attacking women on trial for criminal offenses with further accusations of immoral conduct is a common phenomenon, historically and currently, locally and globally. In 1994, a California woman named Mary Ellen Samuels was convicted of murdering her husband and the hit man she’d hired to kill him, after prosecutors introduced portions of erotic letters sent to Samuels over the years as well as a nude photograph of the defendant. More recently, Italian officials seemed eager to advance evidence that Amanda Knox’s behavior following her roommate’s notorious murder wasn’t what one would expect from a woman in her position: instead of weeping and wailing, Knox seemed unaffected, and went on to buy red underwear and kiss a boyfriend afterward. When women are accused of wrongdoing, their womanhood is often brought into question as well. Andrew and her lawyers have argued since 2007 that her case is an example of that exact phenomenon—and on January 21, the Supreme Court agreed, reversing a lower court’s ruling against Andrew, whose case will now return to the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals for reconsideration.

[Read: My last trial]

Capital punishment as an institution in some ways goes easy on women: Perhaps because women are viewed as relatively weak and passive, male killers are sentenced to death at a higher rate than female killers. Since 1976, only 18 women have been executed in the United States, compared with 1,589 men. Today, 51 women are on death row, compared with more than 2,000 men.

But for those women who do face capital sentencing, a particular kind of disadvantage based on their sex can arise: Although men are rarely sentenced to death based on their deviation from masculine gender norms, many female defendants facing capital trials are derided by prosecutors for failures of femininity.

Andrew was convicted of luring her estranged husband into their garage under the false pretense of restarting her furnace’s pilot light in November 2001, then participating in his fatal shooting with her lover James Pavatt in hopes of claiming a life-insurance payout. Andrew steadfastly contends that she is innocent, but immediately after the killing, Pavatt and Andrew fled to Mexico with Andrew’s two children; they were apprehended upon their return to the United States, where both were charged with murder. Pavatt’s trial came six months ahead of Andrew’s, and, according to the capital-defense attorney and author Marc Bookman’s book, A Descending Spiral, it “previewed the trial against her. Indeed, the evidence against him was in many ways identical to that facing his co-defendant.” An Oklahoma jury sentenced Pavatt to death, and then it was Andrew’s turn.

The prosecution presented two of Andrew’s former lovers as witnesses early on. The first man, James Higgins, had had an affair with Andrew after meeting at the local Price Mart, where Higgins was an assistant manager. When Smith prompted Higgins to explain the circumstances of his affair with Andrew, Higgins replied that Andrew had initiated the relationship by “coming in dressed sexy”—wearing short skirts and low-cut tops; in his telling, Andrew would “come in, talk, and kind of rub up against me and touch, and I mean, just flirting …” As Higgins’s testimony progressed, Smith continued to ask questions that elicited evidence implying that Andrew was sexually aggressive and adulterous. Higgins stated, for instance, that when the two began sleeping together, Andrew almost always paid for their motel rooms, and invited him to have sex in her car (as opposed to his) several times. Their relationship had ended years before Andrew’s alleged crime. A former babysitter for Andrew’s kids further testified that Andrew went out for groceries on one occasion wearing “a leather outfit” with her hair “really, really big.”

[Read: Debating women and the death penalty]

Later, the prosecution called Rick Nunley, a more recent lover of Andrew’s, to the stand. “Does a good mother take their children and flee to Mexico, take them out of school and flee to Mexico, when their father is lying in a coffin in a funeral home?” Smith asked him. “Not usually,” Nunley conceded. “Does a good mother invite her boyfriends over to the house with the children in the home when they’re still married to their father?” Smith then asked, as though her point hadn’t yet been made. Along with her marital infidelity, Andrew’s performance as a mother was presented as evidence that she was a failure as a woman.

And if there was any doubt that Andrew’s sentencing was in some sense about her femininity, Smith made the point explicit in her closing statements: Andrew “sits over here today, and has for the last five weeks, all meek and quiet and pretty. She’s a pretty woman. And she’s been on her best behavior. But that’s not the real Brenda Andrew.”

Capital trials by nature produce starkly opposing narratives about their subject. The juries are instructed to weigh statutorily defined aggravating factors associated with the murder against mitigating factors related to the defendant’s qualities as a person or the circumstances of the crime. Aggravating factors can include, for instance, special cruelty or atrocity, motives related to pecuniary gain, and the number of victims; mitigating factors could include diagnoses of mental illness or intellectual disability, or evidence that the defendant’s role in the homicide was minimal relative to a more culpable party. It is in the prosecution’s interest to present the worst version of the defendant to a jury—a sort of perverse incentive that can lead to appeals to jurors’ deep-seated notions of what constitutes bad conduct in society, regardless of whether those notions are fair. Given these conditions, it would be shocking if capital punishment did not speak to elemental prejudices—and the Supreme Court was able to see in Andrew’s case a troubling example of that phenomenon. Andrew may still lose in the long run, but her victory at the Supreme Court is a win for all American women facing the death penalty.

Juli Gittinger keeps a bag packed with iodine pills and a machete. “It’s good for getting through brush,” she explained to me recently. Gittinger’s mind churns with images of a future in which she might have to flee her home with just a backpack, bushwhacking her way through rural Georgia to safety. She has enough water in her house to last 30 days, and enough food to last 100 days.

Gittinger, a religious-studies professor at Georgia College, is a prepper, but unlike the stereotype that term commonly conjures—a bunker-bound, right-wing conspiracist—Gittinger is liberal. She began prepping after Donald Trump was elected in 2016. Among her prepping supplies are Plan B emergency contraceptive pills that she’s bought ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, in case his administration introduces new restrictions on reproductive health care.

Gittinger is representative of a small number of preppers who oppose Trump and who are gearing up for whatever disasters the next four years might bring. Across Reddit boards and Facebook groups, they are stocking up on and freeze-drying food—and say that others should be too.

[Read: Why liberals struggle to cope with epochal change]

Precise numbers on prepping are hard to come by, but the United States has likely millions of preppers of all political persuasions, says Michael Mills, a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University, in the United Kingdom. Liberals make up a small percentage—about 15 percent, according to Mills. Like their conservative counterparts, liberal preppers are worried about the stability of the economy and the power grid, but unlike the conservatives, they also worry about climate-change-induced disasters and the potential that Trump will weaken America’s security through foreign-policy snafus. Mills is skeptical that the number of liberal preppers has dramatically increased, but the moderators of several liberal-prepping forums told me they’ve seen a spike in interest and activity since Trump’s reelection, in November. Several preppers I interviewed mentioned getting current on their vaccines, in case the new administration alters the rules for vaccine insurance coverage, or updating their passports, in case they feel they have to leave the country.

In addition to being a prepper herself, Gittinger has studied prepper groups and written about them in an academic book, American Apocalyptic. Starting in 2018, Gittinger surveyed several hundred liberal preppers (and a few conservatives) on Facebook. When she asked what got them into prepping, 31 of the 300-some respondents mentioned the election of Trump, and 35 mentioned “political anxieties.” Among the calamities they feared would strike were both the politically driven—economic and societal collapse, an attack from a foreign power—and the completely random: a pandemic, a natural disaster. “The country is so divided that anything could ignite riots like we haven’t seen before,” one respondent told her.

Lots of Americans are doing some version of prepping for Trump’s second term, even if they don’t call it that. Some providers of Plan B and abortion pills say they noticed an increase in orders immediately after the election. The election prompted many to rush to buy electronics, cars, and other goods ahead of Trump’s promised tariffs. Spending on vehicles, auto parts, and appliances rose in November, The Washington Post reported. Along with stocking up on food and water in anticipation of tariffs, Gittinger recently bought a new phone, and Zoe Higgins, another liberal prepper, bought a new car.

Genevra Hsu, a moderator of the Leftist Preppers subreddit, grew up learning survivalist techniques from her father, but she began prepping in earnest around 2013, when she moved to a rural area of Virginia. Some of her friends got into gardening, and she would give them tips. She now has six months of meals on hand—she does her own pressure-canning, dehydrating, and freezing. She’s at high risk of complications from COVID, so when the pandemic started, the stores provided an “animal comfort that comes from knowing there’s enough on the shelf that I don’t have to go anywhere,” she told me. Recently, she has started dehydrating and freezing powdered eggs in case of a bird-flu pandemic. On the subreddit, preppers discuss stocking up on toothpaste with fluoride, which Trump’s chosen health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., opposes adding to tap water. They’re buying up birth control and medical textbooks for treating vaccine-preventable diseases.

[Read: What going ‘wild on health’ looks like]

The line between prepping and emergency readiness is hazy. Indeed, some of the liberal preppers I interviewed seem more worried about act-of-God disasters such as hurricanes than a Handmaid’s Tale–type dystopia. KC Davis, the author of How to Keep House While Drowning, moved to Houston after 2017’s Hurricane Harvey and became concerned about flooding and losses of power. Now she keeps canned water, headlamps, thermal blankets, life jackets, rechargeable lanterns, and 30 days of emergency food on metal racks in her garage. She also has a generator, which fired up while we were talking.

In New Orleans, Higgins has a month’s worth of freeze-dried spaghetti, beef stroganoff, chicken alfredo, and other meals. She’s procured flashlights, headlamps, waterproof matches, fire starters, water-purification tablets, camping stoves, and propane tanks, along with something she calls a “bug-out binder” containing 400 pages of emergency checklists and instructions. Some preppers admit that the gear they’ve accumulated is less a preparation for a specific, Trump-related emergency and more a consequence of prepping gradually becoming a hobby, with ever more complicated gadgets for ever more outlandish scenarios. Among Gittinger’s prep is a Faraday bag—a backpack that blocks electromagnetic signals, in which Gittinger keeps a spare phone and a computer—to be used in case of an extreme solar flare.

Over and over, liberal preppers told me that they differ from their conservative counterparts because they are less conspiracy-minded and more concerned with helping their community rather than only their immediate family. (Gittinger wouldn’t need Plan B herself, but she bought it for other young women who might.) But like their right-wing counterparts, liberal preppers do tend to own guns, according to Gittinger: 121 of the 198 people who answered her survey question about weapons said they owned a firearm. Whom, exactly, they would use them against is less clear. “I think a lot of that is just out of a response to general uncertainty,” Hsu told me.

Another major commonality between liberal and conservative preppers is a distrust of the government, a feeling that institutions won’t help you if the worst comes to pass. For liberal preppers, this feeling has grown only more pronounced since the first Trump presidency. The rise of Trump, the fall of Roe v. Wade, and Republican victories in the states have given liberals the sense that they are on the ropes. “My general feeling, especially about Texas, is that there’s not a lot of community safety-netting when it comes to emergencies,” Davis says. “It feels like sort of every man for himself.”

Her sentiment fits with what the pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson calls a “cross-partisan rise in distrust” of institutions. Republicans and Democrats now share similar levels of distrust of Congress and big business. Americans on both the left and the right feel unsupported; preppers are just doing something about it. “There’s this common thread that I think unites preppers of all political persuasions, which is a lack of faith in political progress as a whole and a skepticism towards political leadership,” Mills told me. Conservative preppers were once worried about Barack Obama, and liberals are most worried about climate disasters, but they both worry that the government doesn’t have your back.

[Jonathan Chait: How liberal America came to its senses]

Some of my conversations with liberal preppers served as good reminders to buy bottled water and flashlights in case of a natural disaster, but some of them had an air of paranoia. Many of their worst-case scenarios seemed unlikely to ever take place. What are the odds that American citizens would actually be banned from international travel? What is the likelihood that Republicans would outlaw not just Plan B, but also birth control, which is used by 82 percent of reproductive-age women?

Then again, we live in outrageous times, during which a reality-TV host can become president, for the second time, after a failed coup attempt. That president picked another TV host to be in charge of the nation’s defense. His chosen health secretary has urged parents to ignore the CDC guidelines for childhood vaccinations. Abortion is completely banned in 12 states. There really has been a global pandemic that shut down much of the world for years. There’s a sense that literally anything can happen, so you’d better be prepared.

Gittinger pointed out that when the coronavirus pandemic broke out, she had N95 masks on hand. Who’s too paranoid now?