President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort on February 18, 2025. | Joe Raedle/Getty ImagesIs the right’s era of good feelings and unity coming to an end?For the past year, the many factions of the GOP have been united around the cause of restoring Donald Trump to the White House. But now that they’ve done that, tensions are spilling out into the open on several different issues.The most intense criticism has come on Ukraine. In the past week, administration officials have made major concessions to Russian demands, while publicly berating Ukrainian President Volodmyr Zelenskyy, cutting him out of negotiations, trying to strong-arm him into handing over mineral rights to the US, and even absurdly claiming Ukraine started the war.Many of the right’s more traditional internationalists or hawks on the right are utterly appalled by this, viewing it as Trump throwing Ukraine to the wolves. Criticism has poured in from leading figures at National Review, the Free Press, and the Murdoch-owned entities Fox News, the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post — criticism that has spurred Vice President JD Vance to respond in long-form X posts defending the administration’s approach.Others on the right have felt uneasy about Trump’s handling of the Justice Department. The attempt to dismiss the corruption case against New York City Mayor Eric Adams was condemned by some longtime stalwarts of the conservative legal movement, who view it as blatantly political. Activist Ed Whelan even said Trump’s Acting Deputy Attorney General Emil Bove should resign over it.Finally, there’s a broader concern among some more moderate factions of the right that the movement’s worst elements have been unleashed — and should be resisted. The Free Press was founded in 2021 as a protest to what ex-New York Times editor Bari Weiss saw as groupthink and overreach in the mainstream media and among progressives most broadly. But in a recent speech, Weiss signaled a potential shift in focus, worrying that “the far right” may well devour “what remains of the center-right.”It’s important not to overstate the importance of these tensions. The right overall remains deeply invested in Trump, congressional Republicans are doing little to check him, and the president remains very popular among GOP voters. Many of these outlets, such as National Review, have criticized Trump in the past to little apparent impact. Don’t expect Trump’s GOP support to collapse anytime soon — or probably ever.Still, this does amount to a vibe shift of sorts, as parts of the right’s intelligentsia who spent years mainly fired up about the terrible things Democrats and the “woke” were doing are shifting more of their attention to things they don’t like about Trump’s governance. And he’s only been back in office one month.Trump and Vance are doing MAGA foreign policy – and making traditional Republican hawks unhappyOn Wednesday, after Trump posted a Truth Social tirade trashing Zelenskyy as a “modestly successful comedian” and “A Dictator without Elections,” Vance reposted it on X, and added: “I just wanted to make sure no one missed it.”The message was clear — it was about which faction within the GOP was calling the shots on foreign policy now. That is: The MAGA America Firsters (who loathe American involvement in Ukraine’s war) were running the show, and the GOP’s traditional internationalist hawks (who view that war as righteous and Russia as a dangerous aggressor) were out.This wasn’t inevitable. Last year, the internationalists thought they still had a good shot at influence in the Trump administration, with the hawkish Marco Rubio, Trump’s secretary of state pick, and some believing Mike Pompeo to be the frontrunner for defense secretary.But a crucial shift happened near the end of last year — Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump Jr., and Vance intervened to shift Trump’s thinking on future appointments, arguing that he should avoid empowering disloyal “neocons” again. This appears to have been decisive — Pompeo got no appointment (and in fact Trump revoked his security detail in apparent punishment), while America First supporters scored key gigs.The hawks had little to complain about at first, but Trump’s hard shift against Ukraine in the past week has horrified them. Historian Niall Ferguson wondered on X why a Republican president had stopped clearly condemning “the invasion of a sovereign state by a dictator.”Vance then responded with a lengthy post calling Ferguson’s statement “moralistic garbage,” adding that was “unfortunately the rhetorical currency of the globalists because they have nothing else to say.” Like cheering Trump’s humiliation of Zelenskyy, this is factional behavior, designed to insult critics and dismiss their concerns, while thrilling the hardcore MAGA faithful.But the reality is that the internationalist hawks remain a significant part of Republicans’ coalition, with strong support in Congress (especially the Senate) and in parts of conservative media. So by spurning them so blatantly — by not even pretending to take their concerns seriously — Trump and Vance are dividing the right.Other sources of tension on the right relate to ethics and the rule of lawTensions on the right are simmering about other topics as well.Most on the right had converged around the belief that Trump was within his rights to make major changes at the Department of Justice, deeming the investigations and prosecutions of Trump politically biased and improper.But at least some still have ethical standards against blatant corruption, as shown in the saga of Trump’s appointees acting to dismiss the case against Mayor Adams. Notably, two of the DOJ officials who resigned over this — Danielle Sassoon and Hagan Scotten — had clerked for conservative Supreme Court justices. When their resignation letters were published, Whelan cheered them on, harshly criticizing acting deputy attorney general Emil Bove and suggesting it is Bove who should resign next. Fox News analyst Andy McCarthy also criticized Bove and called his claims “ridiculous.” Then, on Friday, the judge handling Adams’s case announced that he’d asked former US solicitor general Paul Clement to present arguments against the Trump DOJ’s position. Clement is a pillar of the conservative legal establishment, so his agreement to do this is in itself a message to the Trump administration.There are broader fears as well. Weiss warned in her recent speech that “if a political movement does not police its ranks” and “defend its sacred values, it cannot long endure.” Those values, she continued, included “the rule of law” and “a rejection of mob violence” — but, she worried that “online these days,” “power is celebrated instead of principle,” and it is “quickly becoming the only principle.”Weiss continued: “If that continues without being challenged, we may wind up spending the next few years watching the same story we just lived through on the other side, as the far right (not the one defined by cable news, which includes most of us here today) devours what remains of the center-right.”The MAGA faithful did not respond well. “It seems like this entire crew—most of whom joined ‘the right’ like 5 minutes ago—have launched a full-scale containment/gatekeeping op,’” right-wing activist Nate Hochman posted on X. “Really bizarre.”None of this in the near term is too much of a problem for Trump. He and his appointees can run the executive branch as they see fit, the GOP Congress will likely do little to check him, and he retains solid approval from the MAGA base.But the bigger picture takeaway is that his honeymoon already appears to be over — and the vibes, which famously shifted in Trump’s favor in 2024, appear to be shifting again.