Rod Blagojevich has a new job: representing the interests of an ultranationalist politician known as the “Bosnian Bear” who has ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The former Illinois governor, who was pardoned in February by President Donald Trump, has agreed to lobby on behalf of the Republic of Srpska, a Serb-majority territory in Bosnia and Herzegovina long mired in the bitter ethnic tensions of the region.

RRB Strategies, Blagojevich’s firm, “will provide communications and public affairs support on behalf of the Republic of Srpska,” according to the registration statement he was required to file under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

Bosnia and Herzegovina is held together by the Dayton Accords, a 1995 agreement that ended the Bosnian War and unified the country. Blagojevich told Blue Light News on Wednesday that he hopes to “use whatever ability I have to persuade the decision-makers that we need to take another look at the Dayton Agreement and bring it in line with the realities of today.”

As he begins the role, Blagojevich is seeking to cast himself as one in a long line of populist leaders thwarted by “unelected bureaucrats who have exceeded their constitutional power,” from Trump to Marine Le Pen in France and Milorad Dodik, Srpska’s president

“I believe the weaponization that’s going on in Europe right now by the European Union against certain populist political leaders they don’t like started with me as a left of center Democratic governor in Illinois,” Blagojevich said. “I just know this. And then they took it to the next level and did it to President Trump.”

Dodik has long pushed for the Republic of Srpska, to secede from Bosnia and Herzegovina and join nearby Serbia. In February, he was sentenced to a year in prison for defying the country’s Constitutional Court. Dubbed “the Bosnian Bear,” for his physique and crude antics, Dodik has since fled to Moscow.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio in March condemned Dodik for “undermining Bosnia and Herzegovina’s institutions and threatening its security and stability” in a post on X.

Blagojevich was pardoned by Trump in February after being convicted in 2011 on charges of extortion and for trying to sell or trade the appointment of the Senate seat that had been held by Barack Obama. Acquainted from their days on The Celebrity Apprentice, Trump commuted Blagojevich’s sentence in 2020.

Trump weighed tapping Blagojevich to serve as U.S. ambassador to Serbia before picking former Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich for the post.

Blagojevich, whose parents were Serbian, touted to Blue Light News his long experience working in Balkan politics. As a Democratic House representative in 1999, he traveled to Belgrade with the Rev. Jesse Jackson to clinch a deal that freed three American prisoners of war.

“I believe the Republic of Serbia and the Republic of Srpska can be bastions of Judea-Christian values in the Balkans just like Israel is in the Middle East,” he said. “And I’d like to be able to play a role in that and am fortunate to have been brought on and be hired to do just that.”

After Tuesday night’s elections, Republicans are starting to worry that the shock and awe of President Donald Trump’s second term will haunt them in the 2026 midterms.

Inside the GOP, there is a growing sense that the party should get back to basics and focus on the pocketbook issues that many voters sent them to Washington to address. There’s internal disagreement about the effects of Trump’s new tariffs announced on Wednesday. Some say they will ultimately lead to reviving American manufacturing — but even many of the president’s allies fear they could drive up prices and potentially crash the economy.

The Republican anxiety comes in the wake of a landslide defeat in a Wisconsin Supreme Court race and double-digit underperformance in two Florida special elections. Both reverberated across the party on Wednesday, as some Republican elected officials and strategists called for Trump and his billionaire adviser Elon Musk to adopt a more cautious approach to governing.

Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), one of the most vulnerable GOP senators facing reelection next year, said in an interview that Republicans must be “smart and measured” otherwise they risk a major backlash at the polls. Tillis pointed to the early opposition against then-President Barack Obama, which led to a 2010 wave election where Democrats lost a number of seats in the House, Senate and state legislatures, including the North Carolina House where Tillis was subsequently elected speaker by the new GOP majority.

“What we don’t want to do is overreach,” said Tillis. “We’ve got to be careful not to do the same thing. And I think that these elections are going to be proxies, or almost like weather devices for figuring out what kind of storm we’re going to be up against next year.”

Brian Reisinger, a former GOP strategist and rural policy expert, said Republicans running in battleground races next year must pay attention to Tuesday’s disappointing results and zero in on bread-and-butter issues.

“This is as clear a sign as you’re going to get — ringing like a bell — that they have to talk about addressing economic frustration and they have to show they have a plan for it,” he said. “There’s a lot of support in these communities for getting tough on trade, for cutting government spending, but if tariffs spin out of control, and there’s no results on trade deals, then rural communities are really going to be hit by that.”

Inside the White House, however, officials have been shaking off the margins of the Tuesday night election. In the view of Trump’s team, the Wisconsin state Supreme Court race was never close, Republican Rep.-elect Randy Fine was a weak candidate who won against a strong Democrat in Josh Weil, and the other Florida seat previously held by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) was never in jeopardy, according to two people close to the White House who were granted anonymity to share private conversations.

“President Trump is the only Republican in nearly 40 years to destroy the Democrats’ blue wall and it’s embarrassing to see them spike the football after their massive defeat in November,” said White House spokesperson Harrison Fields.

It’s a conclusion some outside Trump allies are reaching, too.

“I’m not freaked out about it. Republicans were somewhat panicked that they’d lose a House seat, and they didn’t,” said Matt Schlapp, chair of the American Conservative Union. “A win is a win in a special election, especially when all this crazy outside money is spent.”

And the White House remains unafraid to wade into even more politically sensitive waters, with Trump announcing a new set of sweeping levies on U.S. global trading partners on Wednesday afternoon.

While many of the president’s allies are sympathetic to his argument that the tariffs will encourage companies to invest in domestic manufacturing and production, they fear that imposing new trade barriers will cause short-term economic harm, drive up prices, potentially throw the U.S. into a recession, and jeopardize Republicans’ chances of hanging onto control of Congress in the midterms.

Just four in 10 voters view Trump’s handling the economy and trade favorably, according to an AP-NORC poll conducted in late March.

“The thing that’s probably holding Trump back from having a 50 to 55 percent job approval rating is still this overwhelming fatigue about rising costs,” said GOP pollster Robert Blizzard. “Most voters, Republicans included, at the end of the day, aren’t exactly sure about what the positive impact for them is when it comes to tariffs.”

Democrats need to flip only a few seats to win the majority in the House. Their overperformance in Florida — and the Democratic apparatus’ success running an anti-Musk campaign in Wisconsin — left Democratic operatives increasingly bullish about using Musk as a midterm-messaging bogeyman.

“As long as he’s there using a chainsaw to all the programs that people back home rely on and need to make ends meet, of course we’re going to make him a central character,” Rep. Lori Trahan (D-Mass.), a member of House leadership, said in an interview.

Democratic leadership sees an opportunity to hone in on Musk as part of a winning message.

“The Republicans are going to try to distance themselves from Elon Musk. It’s not going to work. It’s too late. You’re attached at the hip, and you’re going to feel the consequences of it, just like you did in Wisconsin last night,” House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries told reporters.

But some Republican House members said they were not shocked by the Tuesday results. And there was little consensus within the party on whether Musk was uniquely to blame. Trump has even told his inner circle that the tech billionaire’s role will be stepping back soon.

Rep. Mike Kelly (R-Pa.) said Tuesday’s outcomes “were not surprising.” Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wis.), who represents a top battleground district, said Musk is a “shiny object” and that Republicans failed to turn out Trump voters in an off-election year.

“I think the results are fairly indicative of what we normally see in special elections when it comes to the party of a newly elected president,” said Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), another swing-seat Republican. “I expected to see an uptick in Dem turnout and some inattention by the GOP” after a November victory.

In a sign of how much some GOP lawmakers would prefer to change the subject, Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) said he was watching the Yankees instead of the results roll in.

But many in the party are still concerned. Whit Ayres, a GOP pollster, saw Wisconsin results as more of a referendum on Musk, who made himself a central character in the race, than on Trump himself.

“Elon Musk is hurting Donald Trump, there’s no question about that,” Ayres said, noting a survey his firm released last week showing more public support for federal workers than the Tesla and SpaceX CEO who’s been tasked with slashing the federal government.

Republicans, Ayres said, should “take his money and tell him to go to Mars.”

With reporting from Ally Mutnick, Lisa Kashinsky and Nicholas Wu.