GOP Woes

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.   The early signs in the 2026 midterms do not favor Republicans.

 Ariel Edwards-Levy, Jennifer Agiesta, and Edward Wu at CNN:

Public opinion on nearly every aspect of President Donald Trump’s first year back in the White House is negative, a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS finds, with a majority of Americans saying Trump is focused on the wrong priorities and doing too little to address cost of living.

A majority, 58%, calls the first year of Trump’s term a failure.

There’s hardly any good news in the poll for Trump or the Republican Party entering a critical midterm year, with the president’s handling of the economy looming as the defining issue in key House and Senate races.

Asked to choose the country’s top issue, Americans pick the economy by a nearly two-to-one margin over any other topic. The poll suggests Trump is struggling to prove that he’s addressing it. And it finds broad concerns over Trump’s use of presidential power and his efforts to put his stamp on American culture.

Cook changes 18 House ratings, all in favor of Democrats, including four districts in New York. https://t.co/yb4pRTK73L pic.twitter.com/dUFwI4pi0Z

— Michael Li 李之樸 (@mcpli) January 15, 2026

Trump: "We Shouldn't Even Have an Election"

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

James Oliphant reports on a Reuters interview with Trump:

The president expressed frustration that his Republican Party could lose control of the U.S. House of Representatives or the Senate in this year’s midterm elections, citing historical trends that have seen the party in power lose seats in the second year of a presidency.

“It's some deep psychological thing,              but when you win the presidency, you don't win the midterms,” Trump said. He boasted that he had accomplished so much that “when you think of it, we shouldn't even have an election.”

 Richard Fausset and Danny Hakim at NYT:

Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina found President Trump’s claims of election fraud in 2020 “unnerving.” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia described Mr. Trump’s efforts to get his state’s lawmakers to intervene a “fruitless exercise.” David Ralston, a former speaker of the Georgia House of Representatives, called the plan to create slates of fake pro-Trump electors in states he had lost “the craziest thing I’ve heard.”

Transcripts of secret grand jury testimony from the Georgia election interference case against Mr. Trump and his allies, obtained this week by The New York Times, show just how alarmed and exasperated a number of senior Republicans felt about the president’s efforts to overturn an American presidential election. The testimony, given in 2022, is emerging at a time when Mr. Trump is again raising complaints about his 2020 defeat and voicing regret that he did not order the National Guard to seize voting machines after the election.

He has also said he wanted to “lead a movement” to ban voting machines and mail-in ballots in time for the midterm elections this year.

...

Senator Graham, the veteran South Carolina lawmaker, recently called Mr. Trump “the greatest president of all time.” But his 2022 testimony came at a time when Mr. Trump’s political future was uncertain. At that time, Mr. Graham expressed exasperation over the president’s baseless 2020 election fraud claims, telling the grand jurors, “I have told him more times than we can count that he fell short,” and that “if you told him Martians came and stole votes, he’d be inclined to believe it.”

Taking Greenland Would Be Unpopular

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

Avery Lotz at Axios:

Americans are divided on the merits of President Trump's recent foreign incursions and threats and remain especially skeptical of acquiring Greenland, new polling has found.

The big picture: While the U.S. operation to capture Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro has gained support in its aftermath, Trump's Greenland gambit remains deeply unpopular, underscoring the political riskiness of a key piece of his so-called "Donroe Doctrine."

By the numbers: A plurality of Americans say Trump's use of military force against Venezuela was not justified, but a growing share back it, including a majority of Republicans, per polling from The Economist and YouGov.Meanwhile, 17% of U.S. adults said they approve of the president's push to acquire Greenland, according to a Reuters-Ipsos survey conducted between Jan. 12-13. Two out of five Republicans say they support doing so.

However, only 4% of those surveyed — and 8% of Republicans — said using military force to take Greenland is a good idea, per the Reuters-Ipsos poll.

A separate poll released by the Economist-YouGov found broad opposition to seizing ownership of Greenland, either by force or monetary incentives.Just 8% of U.S. adults — and 18% of Republicans — backed taking control of the self-governing territory of longtime U.S. ally Denmark by force.

Jennifer Agiesta and Ariel Edwards-Levy at CNN:

Three-quarters of Americans say they oppose the United States attempting to take control of Greenland, according to a new CNN poll conducted by SSRS, indicating that President Donald Trump’s push to expand America’s territory faces stiff headwinds with the public.

The survey finds just 25% of Americans favor the US attempting to take control of the Danish territory. Even the president’s partisans are about evenly divided, with 50% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents saying they support it and 50% opposed. Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents are deeply against the move, with 94% opposed overall, including 80% who say they strongly oppose it. About 8 in 10 independents who don’t lean toward either party are also opposed.

Trump said Wednesday on his social media website Truth Social that “anything less” than US control of Greenland is “unacceptable.” The message came ahead of a meeting at the White House between Danish officials, Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of State Marco Rubio that appeared to do little to bring the two sides any closer to an agreement.

 

The Public Cools on ICE

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

GOP consultant Rob Stutzman: " Really is stunning that Trump Admin has taken their greatest asset, immigration enforcement, and turned into a negative with performative BS that Americans have grown weary of."

Andrew Romano, at Yahoo:

In the days since Renee Nicole Good was shot and killed in Minneapolis by an Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent, federal officials have argued that Good’s death was “a tragedy of her own making,” as Vice President JD Vance put it.

"The woman driving the car was very disorderly, obstructing and resisting,” President Trump claimed on social media. “Then [she] violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE Officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense.”

But most Americans disagree, according to a new Yahoo/YouGov poll.

The survey of 1,709 U.S. adults, which was conducted from Jan. 8 to Jan. 12, finds that only slightly more than a quarter (27%) think last week’s shooting was “justified.” Nearly twice as many Americans — a 52% majority — say the shooting was not justified.

 A release from Quinnipiac:

Days after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent fatally shot a Minneapolis woman in an incident that was captured on video, voters 82 - 18 percent say they have seen a video of the shooting and a majority (53 percent) think the shooting was not justified, 35 percent think it was justified, and 12 percent did not offer an opinion, according to a Quinnipiac (KWIN-uh-pea-ack) University national poll of registered voters released today.

There are differences based on political party and gender.

Republicans (77 - 10 percent) think the shooting was justified, while Democrats (92 - 4 percent) and independents (59 - 28 percent) think the shooting was not justified.

Men are divided with 42 percent thinking the shooting was justified, while 44 percent of men think the shooting was not justified. Thirty percent of women think the shooting was justified, while 61 percent of women think the shooting was not justified.
"More than eight in ten American voters say they've seen the video. But should the shooting have happened? The majority say the shots should not have been fired by the ICE agent, while more than one third believe the shooting was justified,"said Quinnipiac University Polling Analyst Tim Malloy.

Forty percent of voters approve of the way U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, known as ICE, is enforcing immigration laws, while 57 percent disapprove. This is largely unchanged since Quinnipiac University's July 16, 2025 poll.

In today's poll, Republicans (84 - 12 percent) approve of the way ICE is enforcing immigration laws, while Democrats (94 - 4 percent) and independents (64 - 33 percent) disapprove.

Thirty-six percent of voters approve of the way Kristi Noem is handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while 52 percent disapprove, and 12 percent did not offer an opinion.

In Quinnipiac University's July 16, 2025 poll, 39 percent approved, 50 percent disapproved, and 11 percent did not offer an opinion.

In today's poll, Republicans (77 - 12 percent) approve of the way Noem is handling her job as Secretary of Homeland Security, while Democrats (85 - 4 percent) and independents (57 - 30 percent) disapprove.

1,133 self-identified registered voters nationwide were surveyed from January 8th - 12th with a margin of error of +/- 3.7 percentage points, including the design effect.

Trump's Threat to Voting

 Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.

 Patrick Marley and Yvonne Wingett Sanchez at WP:

Trump, openly fearful that a Congress controlled by Democrats could investigate him, impeach him and stymie his agenda, is using every tool he can find to try to influence the 2026 midterm elections and, if his party loses, sow doubt in their validity. Many of these endeavors go far beyond typical political persuasion, challenging long-established democratic norms.

They include unprecedented demands that Republican state lawmakers redraw congressional districts before the constitutionally required 10-year schedule, the prosecution of political opponents, a push to toughen voter registration rules and attempts to end the use of voting machines and mail ballots.

The administration has gutted the role of the nation’s cybersecurity agency in protecting elections; stocked the Justice Department, Homeland Security Department and FBI from top to bottom with officials who have denied the legitimacy of the 2020 election; given a White House audience to people who, like the president, promote the lie that he won the 2020 election; sued over state and local election policies that Trump opposes; and called for a new census that excludes noncitizens. The wide-ranging efforts seek to expand on some of the strategies he and his advisers and allies used to try to reverse the 2020 results that culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

...

Trump issued an executive order in March that sought to prevent election officials from accepting mail ballots they received after Election Day, even if voters sent them before then. A court has blocked the provision, but the Supreme Court in November agreed to hear a Mississippi case addressing the same issue. Its ruling is expected to govern whether the late-arriving ballots can be counted in all states. Complicating the issue is a new U.S. Postal Service guideline that says some mail won’t be postmarked until days after it is placed in a mailbox.

NYT interview with Trump:

President Trump: Well, I’d love to stop mail-in ballots. It takes two to tango. Think of it. The Democrats will not approve voter ID. There’s only one reason they won’t approve it, because they cheat, and if they didn’t cheat, they couldn’t win. Here’s the thing: They have policy that’s so bad. The Democrats’ policy is so bad that if they didn’t cheat, they could never win an election.

David E. Sanger: You once threatened, I think, during the 2020 election, to use the National Guard to seize election boxes. You may remember that. You didn’t, in the end, do it.

President Trump: Well, I should have.

David E. Sanger: Would that have been, would that be an option?

President Trump: I don’t know that they are sophisticated enough. You know, they’re good warriors. I’m not sure that they’re sophisticated enough in the ways of crooked Democrats and the way they cheat, to figure that out.

David E. Sanger: OK, would you think of using them?

President Trump: But many, many things took place in the 2020 — and it’s coming out already — the 2020 election. And by the way, the 2024 election, there was a lot of cheating, too, but I won by a lot because it was too big to rig.

 Alan Feuer and Ashley Ahn at NYT:

The remarks by Mr. Trump in the interview last week harked back to one of the most perilous moments from his first term in office, when he was urged by some advisers to order his national security agencies to take control of machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems in an effort to find evidence that they had been hacked to rig the election against him.

The statement also came as he has continued his attacks on digital voting machines, saying that he wants to “lead a movement” to get rid of them altogether in advance of this year’s midterm elections.

...
Mr. Trump’s expression of regret, while somewhat vaguely worded, was nonetheless a warning sign that he had not given up on the idea that voting machines were dangerous or that they could be seized in an effort to curb fraud.

Just last week, he reposted several social media messages that continued to push the claim that Dominion machines had been rigged against him. And last month, he sought to pardon Tina Peters, a former Colorado county clerk who is serving a nine-year prison sentence on state charges of tampering with Dominion machines in an effort to prove that they were used in a plot against Mr. Trump.

Powell Pushes Back

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments

Nick Timiraos at WSJ:

For years, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell has responded to President Trump’s broadsides in ways that generally avoided escalation.

That changed on Sunday night. In an extraordinary two-minute video message, Powell accused the administration of using the threat of criminal prosecution to pressure the Fed into lowering rates. He framed the Justice Department investigation as nothing less than a head-on challenge to the Fed’s ability to operate free of political control.

The subpoenas arrived late Friday. Powell, a lawyer by training, spent the weekend huddled with advisers, weighing how to respond. Powell made clear by releasing the video statement that he wasn’t going to let this play out in the shadows.

A criminal investigation of a sitting chair is without precedent. And Powell’s message was, too. It was wrapped in a directness that he had spent years avoiding. Powell often chooses his words carefully, and Sunday’s unusually stern delivery lacked the diplomatic off-ramp and studied neutrality of his past comments about the White House.

“The threat of criminal charges is a consequence of the Federal Reserve setting interest rates based on our best assessment of what will serve the public, rather than following the preferences of the president,” Powell said.

The Killing of Renee Good

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments

Myah Ward at Politico:

The Trump administration’s rapid and aggressive response to the Minnesota shooting has prompted quiet concern among some administration allies, as well as former and current Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials.

Particular anguish centers around how quickly Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, in public remarks from Brownsville, Texas, on Wednesday insisted that Renee Good, the 37-year old woman killed by an ICE officer, had committed an act of “domestic terrorism” and tried to “ram them with her vehicle.”

...

Just hours after the shooting in Minneapolis, DHS declared on X that the woman’s actions were an act of “domestic terrorism.” Noem gave live remarks soon after echoing this conclusion. White House officials argued the same, all before an investigation had really begun.

“Whatever outcome this investigation produces, I don’t see how anyone’s gonna believe it when the secretary already is firmly — and doubled down on — a conclusion without knowing all the facts,” said John Sandweg, who led ICE from 2013 to 2014 under the Obama administration.

Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa shreds the administration's story:

To me, the relevant window of time in assessing whether Ross reasonably believed that Good posed an imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury can only begin from the moment Good accelerates. It could not be while she is reversing the vehicle, because we know that he voluntarily moves in front of her while she is doing that. And, as noted above, at the point where Good does accelerate, Ross has already 1) switched his phone to leave his shooting hand free; 2) moved in front of the vehicle; and 3) has his hand on the weapon in the holster. All of these are anticipatory, not reactive, movements.

The relevant window ends the moment Good drives away. There is no reason to believe Good poses a threat to anyone at that point (leaving aside that she has been shot) — she is not armed and dangerous, or fleeing from the scene of a violent crime, etc. And yet, Ross 1) continues to fire at her; 2) yells an expletive at her; and 3) continues filming. These are the actions of someone who is pissed off, not someone who believes their life has just been threatened.

 Josephine Walker at Axios:

Americans now disapprove of ICE and support protests against the agency, according to a new poll conducted the same day a federal officer fatally shot a 37-year-old mother in Minneapolis.

Why it matters: President Trump's immigration crackdown is a cornerstone of his agenda, but ICE and Homeland Security tactics have repeatedly sparked protests and legal challenges. The agency's net approval fell 30 percentage points in a year.

Driving the news: A YouGov poll of over 2,600 U.S. adults on Jan. 7, found people don't like the way ICE operates.About 52% either somewhat or strongly disapproved of how ICE was handling its job, compared to 39% who somewhat or strongly approved.

Just 27% said the agency's tactics were "about right" compared to 51% who called them "too forceful". Another 10% said they were "not forceful enough."

A 44% plurality of adults approved of recent ICE protests, while 42% disapproved.

By the numbers: ICE had a +16 net approval rating last February at the start of Trump's second term, according to YouGov.