The GOP Does Not Have a Lock on the Senate

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

The Iran war and the resulting economic turmoil have made a Democratic House very likely and made Senate Republicans nervous about holding their majority.

Nate Cohn at NYT:

In recent polls, Democrats appear tied or ahead in four Republican-controlled seats — the number they would need to take the Senate. These include Maine and North Carolina, where the likely Democratic nominees hold clear leads, as well as Ohio and Alaska, where Democrats have recruited strong candidates in states Mr. Trump won by double digits in 2024. There are also signs that Republicans could be in danger in two more states where Mr. Trump won by double digits: Iowa and Texas.

...

In the Trump era, Democratic Senate candidates haven’t had much success at winning in red states. They failed to flip vigorously contested seats in Texas, Tennessee and Montana in 2018 and 2020. And most Democratic red-state incumbents — including those in Florida, Indiana, North Dakota and Missouri — lost re-election. Today, every Democrat in the Senate represents a state that voted for Joe Biden in 2020.

Looking even further back, no party has managed to flip two states that leaned so much toward the other party since 2008. Only one such seat (Illinois in 2010) was flipped in a regularly scheduled election; two more flipped in memorable special elections (Massachusetts 2010 and Alabama 2017). Most of these victories took extraordinary circumstances, like a criminal conviction, a child molestation allegation or a bank seizure.

This time, Democrats aren’t benefiting from anything as unusual as a criminal conviction.

Instead, they’re counting on a favorable national political environment, strong candidates and the possibility that several of these states may not be quite as Republican-leaning as they seem.

Erin Doherty, Lisa Kashinsky, Liz Crampton, Aaron Pellish and Myah Ward at POLITICO:

Republicans were seeing some cracks in their best-case-scenario map even before the war began.

Party operatives were originally bullish about holding North Carolina and Ohio and flipping Georgia. Then, Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) announced his retirement, leaving an open seat in a key battleground state. Republicans nominated former RNC Chair Michael Whatley, and Democrats countered with former Gov. Roy Cooper, who has wide name recognition and strong fundraising chops.

“This is a pretty close state, and it’s a close race,” said a GOP operative in the state. “But with the national environment looking as tough as it is right now for Republicans, and you already have an established governor like Roy Cooper, that’s why I think he’s got the advantage.”

Democrats scored another recruiting win in former Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown, another prolific fundraiser. Early public polling shows the three-term former senator running neck and neck with GOP Sen. Jon Husted, who was appointed to fill the vacancy left by JD Vance’s ascension to the vice presidency and suffers from lower name recognition than is typical for an incumbent.

“I think we’re back in 2018 where the headwinds were against Republicans,” said former Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Renacci, who unsuccessfully challenged Brown that year. “I mean, I ran against Sherrod Brown in 2018 and the national electorate was about a D plus 6 to 8. I think we’re getting about that same place in Ohio.”

In Georgia, a messy three-way GOP primary has Republicans increasingly uneasy about their prospects against Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff, who has amassed a massive war chest.

House Retirements 2026

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

 Abby Ward and Molly E. Reynolds at Brookings:

Just over halfway through the 119th Congress, 56 House members have announced their retirement plans, marking the highest number in over 30 years. (An additional five have resigned before completing their terms.) Out of the 56 members retiring this year, 35 (63%) are Republicans, meaning that around 16% of the party’s 217-member conference is stepping down. This group includes 18 subcommittee chairs and three committee chairs.

While retirements generally have consequences for the House as an institution, there are reasons to pay particular attention to the career choices of majority-party members, as they may send signals about party morale heading into an election season.

For instance, the last time Congress saw close to this many retirements was in 2018, and a similarly high share (65%) was from the Republican majority. At the time, some observers saw the large number of retirements as evidence of an anxious Republican Party, and subsequent analyses would eventually connect the number of seat vacancies to the blue wave that followed in that year’s midterms.

The number of retirements is not the only feature that makes this cycle consequential. In addition to being large in number, this year’s class of retirees—and particularly those from the majority—are notable for two additional reasons. First, many are early in their congressional tenures. Second, many are leaving to run for other offices, including at the state level. Both of these dynamics suggest there may be something bigger than midterm anxiety at play, perhaps reflecting broader frustration with Congress as an institution and workplace.

Democrats Cool on Israel

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Andrew Solender and Justin Green at Axios:

Zoom in: Every Senate Democrat who's eyeing a 2028 presidential run voted against arms sales to Israel in votes earlier this week.40 Senate Dems voted on a resolution to block arms sales to Israel, up from just 15 on a similar vote last April. Netanyahu is "destroying the bipartisan nature in terms of support for Israel," Sen. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) told Punchbowl News.

Over in the House, some Democrats are turning against defensive support, including funding for Israel's Iron Dome missile defense system.That was "seen as insanely fringe four years ago," Rep. Maxwell Frost (D-Fla.) told Axios. But multiple Democrats who voted for Iron Dome in 2021 told Axios they're done providing financial aid.The big picture: Older Republicans and white Evangelicals are the last groups to hold majority favorable views of Israel, according to recent Pew polling. For every other group, Israel's favorability has collapsed since 2022.

⬇️ Down 31 percentage points among older Democrats (ages 50+).
⬇️ Down 22 percentage points among both younger Republicans/GOP leaners and younger Dems/Dem leaners.
⬇️ Down 14 percentage points among Protestants, 23 among Catholics and 20 among the religiously unaffiliated.
⬇️ Even white Evangelical support, which was at 80% in 2022, has slid by 15 points.

Swalwell Scandal

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Seema Mehta,  Dakota Smith and Nicole Nixon at LAT:

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a Democratic front-runner in the hotly contested California governor’s race, is facing mounting calls to drop out of the contest after he was accused of sexual assault and misconduct by a former staff member and other women in reports published on Friday.

A woman who worked for the Northern California congressman said they had a consensual relationship at times, but that he sexually assaulted her twice when she was too inebriated to consent, according to a report by the San Francisco Chronicle. Three other women also have accused Swalwell of sexual misconduct, including sending unsolicited nude photos, according to CNN.

The allegations have Swalwell’s campaign teetering on collapse, with powerful labor organizations and other major supporters pulling their endorsements and canceling political ads promoting the once-promising candidate. Prominent Democrats — including U.S. Sens. Adam Schiff and Alex Padilla, House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra and former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter — are among the politicians who called on him to rdrop out of the race.

Riley Rogerson at Politico:

The situation presents a predicament for the sitting House Democratic leaders, who have insisted on letting a full Ethics Committee investigation play out before supporting formal discipline against another House Democrat accused of misconduct, Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick (D-Fla.).

Jeffries, Minority Whip Katherine Clark of Massachusetts and Democratic Caucus Chair Pete Aguilar of California did not speak directly to consequences in the House in a joint statement.

But House Republicans were already discussing by Friday evening the likely scenario that one of their own members will bring a censure effort against Swalwell, according to three people granted anonymity to describe private conversations.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) said in an interview that she was weighing a censure and other action against Swalwell based on the reports of sexual assault allegations against him.

Luna said she would act “if there is evidence brought forward.”

 

Bizarro GOP Plan: Cut Health Spending to Pay for an Unpopular War

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments -- now including a war in the Middle East.

In early February, a YouGov poll found majorities of Americans supported increasing government spending on veterans (74%), Social Security (69%), Medicare (67%), aid to the poor (64%), Medicaid (59%), and the environment (52%).   Only 34% wanted to increase defense spending -- that that was before the Iran war, which is unpopular.  Last week, Pew found 61% disapproved of Trump's handling of the war, and 59% said that US made the wrong decision to use military force in Iran.

In that light, the House GOP's spending plans sound politically insane.  Peter Sullivan at Axios:

Republicans are considering reductions in federal health spending to help pay for a budget bill containing as much as $200 billion to fund the Iran war and immigration enforcement.

Why it matters: New efforts to rein in health programs are sure to be controversial and open the GOP up to election-year attacks that they're cutting health care to pay for an unpopular war.

Driving the news: Top House Republicans are looking at health care offsets addressing fraud in federal programs, as they did during last year's debate over the budget law that made deep cuts to federal Medicaid spending and imposed first-time work requirements.

Another Midterm Omen: Retirements

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Olivia Beavers at WSJ:

[Sam] Graves [R-TN] is among a wave of lawmakers leaving Congress after this term, with more than 50 House members announcing they won’t seek another term—recently hitting a record for a midterm election. About half of those members are seeking a different elected office.

As of this morning, 36 of 57 House retirees are Republicans. 

Some of the GOP retirees are retiring because of the prospect of losing their seats (e.g., Issa, a casualty of the CA gerrymander). But Graves and others have safe seats.  Why are they in the departure lounge?  One reason is that they expect their party to lose the majority, and they know it is unpleasant to serve in the House minority.

Texas Primary 2026

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Mia McCarthy at POLITICO:

While the outcome wasn’t shocking, the confirmation of a May 26 runoff between Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) and state Attorney General Ken Paxton confirmed the fears of many Republicans who now face a likely scorched-earth campaign that could seriously hobble the victor in November’s general election and drain resources from tough races in places like North Carolina and Maine.


Democrats, meanwhile, are seeing their dream scenario play out: State Rep. James Talarico has defeated Rep. Jasmine Crockett outright in the Democratic primary, giving the candidate many strategists see as the party’s best chance to finally turn the Lone Star State blue a clear path to November.

Tuesday’s results showed some surprising strength for Cornyn after he trailed Paxton, a MAGA firebrand, in most polls. The veteran senator is about a point ahead of the AG in the latest returns.

But for national Republicans, keeping Cornyn afloat will be expensive and will risk damaging Paxton if he ends up being their nominee. In the absence of a Trump endorsement for any candidate, Cornyn and his allies have already spent more than $100 million to take out Paxton.

The Akin Ploy does not always work: Republicans tried to boost Crockett but failed.

Megan Lebowitz and Ben Kamisar at NBC:

Texas state Rep. Steve Toth defeated Rep. Dan Crenshaw in a Republican primary in Texas, NBC News projects, unseating Crenshaw after a race that centered on which candidate more closely aligned with President Donald Trump.

Crenshaw becomes the first member of Congress to lose renomination in the 2026 midterm election cycle.

Toth challenged Crenshaw — the lone GOP House member running for re-election in Tuesday’s primaries who didn’t have Trump’s endorsement — from the right, arguing that his foreign policy and immigration views did not sufficiently align with those of the MAGA movement. Toth, an ordained pastor, also secured a late endorsement from Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas.

Crenshaw, who is in his fourth term, has at times bucked his party by backing aid for Ukraine and criticizing Trump allies for their claims that the 2020 election was stolen. But he sought to tie himself closely to Trump throughout the campaign in the solidly Republican 2nd District

 

Nationalization of Congressional Elections and Midterm Swings

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

 Alan Abramowitz at The Center for Politics documents how House and Senate elections have become more nationalized and polarized.  But significant seat swings are possible if the national vote margin is big enough.    

The results in Table 5 suggest that a large Democratic seat swing is possible in both the House and Senate, although we have much more confidence in the House predictions. The national popular vote results will not be known until after the election, but we can use recent generic ballot polling, averaging the results of pre-election polls asking voters which party they would support in the congressional election, to estimate the likely outcome of the national popular vote. However, the generic ballot is a much more accurate predictor of the national House popular vote than of the national Senate popular vote since not all states hold Senate elections in a given year. The correlation between the generic ballot and the national House popular vote is .89 while the correlation between the generic ballot and the national Senate popular vote margin is a much weaker .75.

A Democratic vote margin of 5-6 points, roughly what recent generic ballot polls have been averaging, would result in an expected Democratic gain of about 20-25 seats in the House and 6-7 seats in the Senate, more than enough to shift control of both chambers. However, the group of states holding Senate elections in 2026 is considerably more Republican than the nation. In 2020, the last year in which this Senate class was up for election, Democrats won the national popular vote for the House by 3.1 percentage points but lost the national popular vote for the Senate by 2.3 percentage points. A 5-6 point popular vote margin in the House elections might predict a less than one-point popular vote margin in the Senate elections and a gain of only about four seats—barely enough to shift control of the upper chamber. These results suggest that the battle for control of the Senate is likely to go down to the wire even if Democrats easily win a majority of seats in the House. Once again, we see that the peculiar make-up of the Senate, with its vast overrepresentation of sparsely populated rural states, poses a serious potential obstacle to electoral accountability in the 21st century.

 

A Day of Setbacks for Trump

Our most recent book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. The first year of the second Trump administration has been full of ominous developments.   But there are some green shoots, too.

 Olivia M. Bridges and Valerie Yurk at Roll Call:

Three House Republicans helped thwart a White House push to block lawmakers from moving to terminate President Donald Trump’s emergency tariffs until July 31, by which time the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the duties’ legality.

The 214-217 vote Tuesday evening to reject a rule that would bar use of a fast-track disapproval resolution for the tariffs came after House leaders delayed a floor vote scheduled for early afternoon while they tried to pressure Republicans to switch votes.

After the rule’s defeat, which GOP leaders expected after their whip effort fell short, the Rules Committee met again to report out a revised rule minus the tariff provision.

That would allow several unrelated bills to come to the floor this week if adopted, but also opens the door to an onslaught of Democratic tariff disapproval resolutions — starting as soon as Wednesday with an attempt to overturn Trump’s tariffs levied on Canadian goods.

GOP Reps. Kevin Kiley of California, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Don Bacon of Nebraska, who declared their opposition early, remained firm and voted against the rule, joining all Democrats.

Perry Stein and Salvador Rizzo at WP:

A federal grand jury in D.C. refused the Justice Department’s attempts to indict six Democratic lawmakers over their comments to military service members — the latest rebuke of the Trump administration’s push to prosecute the president’s foes, according to two people familiar with the matter.

Federal prosecutors last year launched an investigation into the lawmakers — all of whom served in the military or with intelligence agencies — after they released a short video advising current military members to reject “illegal orders.”

The lawmakers include Sen. Mark Kelly, a retired Navy captain and astronaut from Arizona, and Sen. Elissa Slotkin, a former CIA analyst from Michigan, both of whom sit on the Senate Armed Services Committee. They have criticized the administration’s attempts to deploy the National Guard to cities run by Democratic officials and conduct strikes on alleged drug traffickers’ boats in the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean.

It is exceedingly rare for grand juries to reject indictments, in part because prosecutors only need to convince a majority of grand jurors that there is a probable cause that a crime was committed — a relatively low threshold. But the Justice Department’s campaign to target President Donald Trump’s perceived adversaries has repeatedly been rebuffed by grand juries and judges, including in its efforts to prosecute former FBI director James B. Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James (D).

Jeremy Roebuck and Patrick Marley at WP:

The FBI relied heavily on previously debunked claims of widespread election irregularities in Georgia as it persuaded a federal judge last month to sign off on plans to seize 2020 voting records from the state’s most populous county, court documents unsealed Tuesday show.

In a pair of Jan. 28 search warrant affidavits, authorities said they were seeking evidence that would determine whether “deficiencies” in the vote tabulation in Fulton County, home to Atlanta, were the result of intentional wrongdoing that could constitute a crime.

But many of the issues they cited — including claims of duplicate ballots and missing ballot images — have been previously explained by county officials as the types of routine errors that frequently occur, are typically corrected in the moment, and are not significant enough to sway the outcome of an election. Independent reviews have backed up that conclusion.

 

The House Map and the Aggregate Vote

 Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  

Hans Nichols and Kavya Beheraj at Axios:

House Democrats will need to overperform Vice President Harris by roughly three percentage points in swing districts to capture the majority in 2026, according to an Axios analysis of presidential margins in congressional districts.

Why it matters: In special elections over the last year, Democrats have been surpassing Harris' 2024 margins by double digits, putting the majority clearly in reach.

But the universe of competitive House seats is historically small, meaning that even an unambiguous national move toward the Democrats will result in a relatively narrow Democratic majority.

Flashback: The 2018 midterms saw a 6.5 percentage point swing in Democrats' favor compared to President Trump's 2016 margins, giving them 41 new seats for a 235 -199 majority, according to the Cook Political Report. A similar shift in 2026 would translate into 12 additional Democratic seats, giving them a 227-208 majority, according to the data, which includes redistricted maps, according to The Downballot and Sabato's Crystal Ball.

The other side: If GOP candidates fare just 1% better than Trump did last cycle, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) could add another 12 seats to his majority, putting him at a comfortable 232-204 margin.

Zoom out: Democrats are banking that the electorate will look a lot less Trumpy when the president's name is not on the ballot. Their voters, Democrats argue, are highly motivated and engaged when Trump is in office.

...

Zoom in: Presidential performance in a congressional district doesn't guarantee a predetermined outcome, but in the Trump era, the number of crossover districts is at a historic low.Thirteen House Democrats prevailed in seats that Trump carried in 2024. A total of three Republicans held on in Harris districts.

n 2008, after President Obama's first election, there were 83 crossover districts.Two of the best lawmakers at convincing voters to split their ticket — Rep. Don Bacon (R-Neb.), who won in a Harris +4.6 district, and Rep. Jared Golden (D-Maine), who won in a Trump +9 district — are both retiring.

What we're watching: After tit-for-tat redistricting in six states, Republicans appear to have drawn themselves another three seats.Democrats on Thursday proposed adding another four in Virginia (pending judicial review), but Republicans are plotting to equalize in Florida.

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

Vacancies and Margins

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

MIA MCCARTHY, CALEN RAZOR and BENJAMIN GUGGENHEIM at POLITICO:

First, the GOP Conference’s long-planned, day-long policy retreat Tuesday at the Kennedy Center — intended to build unity around a legislative agenda in a midterm election year — was shaken by news of Rep. Doug LaMalfa’s unexpected death and Rep. Jim Baird’s hospitalization from a car accident.

It brought into stark relief the major math challenges House Republicans now face. LaMalfa’s passing brings the balance of the House to 218-213. And as long as Baird is out recovering, Speaker Mike Johnson can only afford to lose a single GOP vote on party-line legislative business on the chamber floor.

“We keep saying we are one breath away from the minority — that’s more true today than ever,” one House Republican told Meredith Lee Hill.

Lindsey Holden at Politico:

Newsom has 14 days to schedule a special election, which would take place by mid-May unless the governor holds off until the June 2 primary.

The new congressional boundaries California voters approved in November don’t kick in until that primary. This creates a scenario in which a short-timer elected by LaMalfa’s current constituents could serve out the end of his term, followed by a representative running in the newly drawn, more Democratic, district.

Or, one candidate could thread the needle of both districts and serve the two terms back to back. However, that situation is fairly unlikely, considering the sharp red-to-blue swing Prop 50 will initiate.

California elections expert Paul Mitchell, who was involved in drawing the new maps, predicted in an X post that Newsom will schedule the special election in March, with a June runoff, or align it with the midterm primary with an August runoff.

The Shrinking House Battlefield

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. The off-year elections were good for Democrats, but...

 Yasmeen Abutaleb at WP:

Of the 39 seats Democrats are competing for, 28 are in districts that Trump won by five or more percentage points.

A gerrymandering spree instigated by Trump has narrowed the number of truly competitive seats, furthering a trend that was already underway in recent elections as the nation has become more polarized. That has not affected the race for the Senate, which Republicans are favored to hold.

Just 36 races in this year’s election are rated competitive by the Cook Political Report, compared with 49 races at the same point in the 2018 cycle. Half of the seats rated competitive by Cook this year are already held by Democrats, leaving the party even less room to gain ground.

“Democrats will have a very narrow but viable path to the majority. That’s a different scenario than 2006 or 2018, when Democrats put a ton of Republican-held seats in play,” said David Wasserman, senior editor and elections analyst at the Cook Political Report. “There’s so little elasticity in U.S. House elections these days compared to prior eras.”

...

Democrats believe they have effectively neutralized Republican efforts to pick up additional seats through gerrymandering in Texas, Ohio and North Carolina by gaining seats of their own in California and Utah. The Indiana Senate rejected a partisan gerrymander last month, and Democrats are still exploring whether they could pick up seats in Virginia, Illinois and Maryland. Wasserman said the post-gerrymandering landscape remains “pretty equitable to both parties.”

 

The 2026 Departure Lounge

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.

Annie Grayer, Molly English, and Alex Leeds Matthews at CNN:

Congressional Republicans have yet to break the record for most retirements in a single year, but some say it’s only a matter of time before widespread frustration with the current state of Washington leads to a tipping point as many in the party head for the exits.

...

Eleven House lawmakers – 10 Republicans and one Democrat – are currently running for governor, surpassing the previous record of nine lawmakers in 2018

Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York also announced plans to run for governor this year, but her run was short-lived: she suspended her campaign in late December and said she would not run for reelection to the House.

This year, three senators have announced they are running for governor – with two taking the unusual step of potentially leaving their Senate terms early for a chance at winning the governor’s mansion in their home states.

More are expected to put their hats in the ring. The field is so crowded that in two states – South Carolina and Arizona – two GOP lawmakers are running against each other for governor.

Many say their decisions to leave Congress are unique or the result of opportunities arising in their states. But frequent partisan stalemate in Washington this term has contributed to the allure of becoming a state executive, particularly in states that are considered Republican strongholds.

Sen. Tommy Tuberville has decided that he could be more effective implementing Trump’s agenda by returning to his home state of Alabama

 

Moses Supposes Erroneously

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections. He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm -- and not just because of his low approval ratings.

Congressional Republicans are in a tough spot. On the one hand, anything bearing Obama's name is toxic to GOP activists. On the other hand, the general public now favors the Affordable Care Act by nearly a two-to-one margin. And about half of those who receive ACA premium subsidies are either self-employed or work for a small business — exactly the kind of voters that marginal Republicans need in a general election.

Emily Brooks at The Hill:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) on Wednesday insisted that he has not lost control of the lower chamber of Congress in the wake of four Republican moderates mounting a major rebellion by joining with Democrats to force a vote on extending expiring ObamaCare subsidies.

“I have not lost control of the House, no,” Johnson said when asked about his grip on the chamber following the GOP rebellion.

“We have the smallest majority in U.S. history. These are not normal times,” Johnson said. “There are processes and procedures in the house that are less frequently used when there are larger majorities.”

His comments came shortly after four Republican moderates in swing districts — Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (Pa.), Mike Lawler (N.Y.), Rob Bresnahan (Pa.) and Ryan Mackenzie (Pa.) — signed a petition led by House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) to extend the expiring enhanced ObamaCare subsidies for three years. That brought the petition to 218 signatures, enough to force a vote on the matter.

That, in turn, came after negotiations between moderates and GOP leaders on a compromise amendment vote to extend the subsidies as part of a separate House GOP health care bill fell apart over the weekend and on Tuesday.

World War .G: Status at the End of 2025

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  The passage of Prop 50 in CA will offset the Texas gerrymander.  The D victory in VA will partly offset GOP gerrymanders elsewhere.

Jason Lalljee at Axios:

Indiana lawmakers' rejection of a plan to create two more Republican congressional seats Thursday delivered a blow to the White House's scramble to redistrict ahead of midterm elections, but the state isn't the only egg in President Trump's basket.

The big picture: Six states have already implemented new congressional maps, and more could follow.

Republicans hold only a narrow lead in the House of Representatives, 220 seats to Democrats' 213, and the sitting president's party tends to lose seats in midterm elections.

That means that control of the House could come down to just a few races.

Projections for the six states that have essentially locked in their efforts — Texas, California, Ohio, Missouri, North Carolina and Utah — show Republicans set to gain a net one to four seats in November and any gains from Democrats likely cancelled out by Republican wins.

Between the lines: Of the six, California and Utah were the only states where Republicans weren't favored in redistricting efforts.Democrat-led states are enacting their own redistricting in contrast to what the GOP is doing — and California did it successfully — but several Democratic leaders find their hands tied by independent redistricting commissions they had once championed.

Mike Johnson's Bad Week

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections. 

Annie Karni at NYT:

Representative Elise Stefanik of New York called Speaker Mike Johnson a habitual liar.

Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina has told people she is so frustrated with the Louisiana Republican and sick of the way he has run the House — particularly how women are treated there — that she is planning to huddle with Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia next week to discuss following her lead and retiring early from Congress.

Representative Anna Paulina Luna of Florida has gone around Mr. Johnson in a bid to force a vote he has declined to schedule on a bill to ban members of Congress from stock trading.

Less than a year out from midterm elections in which Republicans’ vanishingly small majority is at stake, Mr. Johnson’s grasp on his gavel appears weaker than ever, as members from all corners of his conference openly complain about his leadership. Some predict that he may not last as the speaker for the rest of this term.

...

Ms. Stefanik told The Wall Street Journal in an interview that Mr. Johnson would not have the support to remain speaker if a vote were held tomorrow, adding that disaffection with him among Republicans was “that widespread.”

Ms. Stefanik declined to speak on the record for this article.

Mr. Johnson declined to comment, as well. But a senior Republican congressional aide, who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of prolonging an intraparty feud, said that after Mr. Johnson had provided Ms. Stefanik with office space and a budget for what the aide described as “a fake job and a fake title,” he would have expected her to be more gracious.

 Kate Santaliz and Hans Nichols at Axios:

President Trump didn't tell Speaker Mike Johnson that he was granting a "full and unconditional PARDON" to Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) before announcing it on Truth Social this morning, Johnson told Axios.

Why it matters: Trump's pardon boosts one of House Republicans' top political targets — and could hamper GOP efforts to protect their razor-thin majority in next year's midterms.

"I didn't know anything about it," Johnson told Axios Wednesday afternoon.
Asked if he was surprised by Trump's pardon, Johnson said: "I think he had talked about that since last spring. It shouldn't be a huge surprise to anyone. But no, I didn't discuss it with him."

National Republican Congressional Committee Chairman Richard Hudson (N.C.) told Axios that he found out about Trump's pardon on X.The pardon "certainly makes it tougher" for the GOP to flip Cuellar's South Texas seat, Hudson said.


Driving the news: Trump not only pardoned Cuellar — he praised him, calling the Texas Democrat "highly respected" and "beloved."

Shane Goldmacher at NYT:

President Trump and Republicans got a win on Tuesday night — and it set off alarm bells for the party.

Just like every other congressional contest held this year, the Tennessee special election for the House tilted sharply in the Democratic Party’s direction compared with the 2024 election. The Trump-backed Republican candidate, Matt Van Epps, won by nine percentage points in a ruby-red seat that Mr. Trump had romped through a year earlier by 22 points.

That 13-point swing to the left — if it continues into 2026 — threatens to be an undertow strong enough to subsume a range of Republicans in less lopsidedly red seats and deliver Democrats a comfortable House majority next year.

Note: the D candidate was too liberal for the district.  A moderate would have done even better.

 

The Very Unhappy House Republicans

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections.  He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm -- and not just because of his low approval ratings.  He is effectively pushing Republicans out the door.

MTG explaining her decision to resign:

Loyalty should be a two way street and we should be able to vote our conscience and represent our district's interest because our job title is literally, "Representative."

America First should mean America First and only Americans First, with no other foreign country ever being attached to America First in our halls of government.

 Standing up for American women who were raped at 14, trafficked and used by rich powerful men, should not result in me being called a traitor and threatened by the President of the United States, whom I fought for.

Jake Sherman at X:

A few other GOP members messaged us over the weekend saying that they, too, are considering retiring in the middle of the term.

Here’s one particularly exercised senior House Republican:

“This entire White House team has treated ALL members like garbage. ALL. And Mike Johnson has let it happen because he wanted it to happen. That is the sentiment of nearly all — appropriators, authorizers, hawks, doves, rank and file. The arrogance of this White House team is off putting to members who are run roughshod and threatened. They don’t even allow little wins like announcing small grants or even responding from agencies. Not even the high profile, the regular rank and file random members are more upset than ever. Members know they are going into the minority after the midterms. “More explosive early resignations are coming. It’s a tinder box. Morale has never been lower. Mike Johnson will be stripped of his gavel and they will lose the majority before this term is out.”

Epstein Stonewalling: Perverse Effects

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

At Politico, Jack Blanchard and Dash Burns report:

The House of Representatives will vote today to release the Epstein files, and the outcome is already a dead cert. After Donald Trump’s dramatic U-turn on Sunday, Republicans are expected to support the effort from Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) and Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) en masse. And as Dasha revealed last night, the White House now expects this bill to become law. What a world.

But because there are still ways for the administration to withhold or redact files, suspicions will not go away.

How different the summer and autumn could have been for Trump if he’d picked a different approach. On the podcast this morning, Dasha characterizes this as the “double-edged sword” of the president’s “attack, attack, attack” mentality: It is, after all, this same aggressive resilience that propelled him back into the White House for a second term. But it doesn’t always serve him well in the day to day.

After months of high-profile political rows, the Epstein files are now a mainstream cause — witness the survivors’ ad that aired during Monday Night Football last night; paid for by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. These things don’t come cheap.

And what we’ve seen so far has already been damaging for Trump. There’s been no smoking gun, but that image in Epstein’s birthday book — the one Trump still insists he had nothing to do with — will not fade from public memory. And people now believe Trump knew about Epstein’s crimes. A new Morning Consult poll shared with Playbook shows 60 percent of Americans think Trump knew what Epstein was up to, compared to just 15 percent who believe he did not. It’s not a great look.

Nationalization of Elections

Our new book is The Comeback: The 2024 Elections and American Politics. It includes a chapter on congressional and state elections.  Trump was a liability for Republicans in the 2025 off-year elections.  He could be a bigger liability in the 2026 midterm.

At CNN, Ron Brownstein points to the increasingly important role of presidential approval/disapproval in deciding downballot elections:

From the 1970s through the 1990s, House candidates still won competitive shares (around 25% to 40%) of voters who approved of a president from the other party. But that number plummeted after 2000: Under George W. Bush and Obama, only 12 to 15% of voters who approved of the president supported House candidates of the other party.
...
As with many things, Trump intensified these trends. Widespread disapproval of his performance during his first two years powered the blue wave that swept Democrats to control of the House in 2018: 90% of voters who disapproved of Trump supported Democratic House candidates that year, the exit polls found.

Though Senate candidates have much more of an independent identity for voters than House members, the relationship was just as powerful in races for the upper chamber under Trump. Across the 2018 and 2020 elections combined, every Republican Senate candidate lost at least 89% of voters who disapproved of Trump, with only one exception — Susan Collins of Maine was the only Republican Senate candidate to hold their Democratic opponent to less than 89% support among voters who disapproved of Trump, or to carry more than 8% of those disapprovers, according to the exit polls in states and races where such polls were conducted. (Collins won fully 23% of voters who said they disapproved of Trump, en route to her surprisingly easy 2020 reelection on the same day he lost her state decisively.)

Even in governors’ races — which were long thought to be more insulated from national currents than Congressional contests — Gov. Scott Walker in Wisconsin, in his 2018 defeat, was the only GOP candidate during Trump’s term who carried even 10% of voters who disapproved of the president, according to exit polls.

Trump is uniquely polarizing.

Whatever the causes, the results of this month’s elections suggested that Trump’s impact on other contests remains uniquely intense. Significant majorities of voters in each of the major contests said they disapproved of his performance as president and overwhelming majorities of those disapprovers backed the Democrats: 93% of voters who disapproved of Trump voted for Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, and 92% of them supported Democrat Abigail Spanberger in Virginia, according to the Voter Poll conducted by SRSS for a consortium of media organizations including CNN.

Maybe most telling, 89% of voters — there’s that number again — who disapproved of Trump supported Jay Jones, the Democratic Attorney General candidate in Virginia who had been battered by a scandal over text messages in which he had mused about shooting political rivals. The Republican candidates drew a comparable level of support among the much smaller share of voters who approved of Trump.