All posts tagged "republican party"

'Unmotivated donors' plague Republicans in pivotal southern state

Georgia Insurance Commissioner John King is sounding the alarm on party donations heading into the mid-terms.

“The usually low-key King posted a lengthy statement to social media, almost a manifesto, after Democrats managed to flip a Republican state House seat in Oconee and Clarke counties,” wrote Atlanta Journal Constitution Senior Political columnist Patricia Murphy. “That unexpected special election loss followed two 26-point Democratic routs in November for a pair of statewide Public Service Commission seats, which Georgia Republicans have dominated for decades.”

Murphy reports the PSC upsets came after another September special election to fill former state GOP Sen. Brandon Beach’s deep-red seat finished with the Republican contender winning 10 percentage points behind what the Republican incumbent won the year before.

“Georgia Republicans, we have a problem,” King wrote, before describing unmotivated GOP donors, unmotivated Republican base voters and a muddled party message that put other issues ahead of people’s difficult economic realities.

“Unless the party changes course,” he warned, Republicans will be outraised, outspent and defeated next year, too.

“Everyone behind the scenes knows it, even if hardly anyone is willing to say it publicly,” King wrote.

“As his statement ricocheted around GOP circles this week,” fellow Republicans reached out to thank him for speaking up, said Murphy.

“Somebody had to say something,” one said.

Georgia GOP Chairman Josh McKoon denies the party has a problem, chalking the PSC losses as the result of the timing of the races, which overlapped with off-year city elections that typically turn out more Democrats.

“These elections don’t have any predictive value,” McKoon said, but other party team players aren’t buying it.

Murphy reports “a communications vacuum” at the state level as Gov. Brian Kemp enters his last year in office and the state’s next top three Republicans — Lt. Gov. Burt Jones, Attorney General Chris Carr and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger — face off in a primary race to replace Kemp. Each one is trying to put affordability at the top of their list of issues, but they’re all competing against each other, including on messaging. And President Donald Trump’s own message operation in Washington isn’t helping, with Trump dismissing Americans’ affordability issues as a “Democrat hoax.”

“You’re doing better than you’ve ever done!” Trump said at a recent rally in Pennsylvania, but Georgia Democratic Party Chair Charlie Bailey called Trump’s comments “insulting and idiotic.”

“This isn’t rocket science,” said Bailey. “If you do things that hurt folks and make it harder for people to achieve the American dream, they might have a bad reaction to that. And that’s what we’re seeing in Georgia.”

Murphy said King had sought to run for Senate in 2026 but dropped out when he learned Trump was not giving him an endorsement in the GOP primary. Murphy said that snub has given King the freedom to be the Republicans’ very own Paul Revere, warning the GOP, “The midterms are coming!”

“Only Republicans can decide if they’re willing to listen,” said Murphy.

Read the AJC report at this link.

'Scumbags': GOP digital team in epic collapse following party's humiliating remarks

Bulwark editors Sam Stein and Andrew Egger took on the epic collapse of the RNC social media team after humiliating remarks from RNC Chair Joe Gruters threatened to diminish donations and curb GOP voter turnout.

Gruters said out loud this week that the Republican Party is likely headed to “almost certain defeat” in the upcoming mid-terms, which sent the RNC’s digital team into an obscenity-laced panic with accounts insulting and name-calling critics about the claims.

The reason this sort of matters is because it can deflate your donors,” Stein told Egger. “It can deflate members of your own party.”

Stein then cited Obama White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs telling Sunday show, “Meet the Press,” that “no doubt there are enough seats in play that could cause Republicans to gain control.”

“It caused a multi-day crisis for Democrats,” said Stein. “Nancy Pelosi was p------. … Members were hot, hot, hot about it. He had to backtrack it. It was just bad. Again, this is not a normal utterance from a committee chairman.”

“But the funnier part of the story,” said Stein, “is how the RNC's digital team has handled it, which is not well.”

“You're a lying piece of s——,” RNC Research told Democrat influencer Harry Sisson. “Here's the full quote: ‘I LIKE OUR CHANCES IN THE MIDTERMS but let me put in perspective only three times in the last hundred years has the incumbent party been successful winning a midterm. We're facing almost certain defeat. The only person who can bring the nose up and help us win is the President of the United States Donald J. Trump.’ F—— loser.”

The same account then attacked the Democratic Party X account, beginning with: “Here’s the full quote you, (sic) scumbags … ”, and they responded to Stein’s own post about Gruters’ statement, starting with “Hey, Jack--- …,” before citing Gruter’s full quote, which Stein says was not a denial.

Then they went after CNN political reporter Aaron Blake, saying “This is fake news — here’s the full quote, scumbag.”

“They really like ‘scumbag,’” Stein added. “Oh, Bill Kristol. They went after Kristol. This is a good one: ‘How much does Harvard charge these days to learn how to report b——? Is Bill being paid by Harvard still? He's a graduate.’”

“I liked what Town Hall did,” said Stein, referring to another Trump subsidiary on X that went into defense mode after Gruters’ admission. “They accused you (Egger) of misstating or misgiving no context to chairman Joe Grutter's quotes, but then they mangled the quote.”

“Yeah, they themselves actually then did mangle the quote,” said Egger.

See the Bulwark podcast at this link.

Republicans in populous state can't find candidates to run in midterms

The New York and New Jersey-based outlet Gothamist reports Democratic candidates in the Garden State are clamoring to run in what both parties see as competitive races in next year’s midterm elections. But the same cannot be said for the GOP.

“In a cycle when both parties have their eyes on the House majority, up to a dozen candidates are lining up to run on the Democratic side in key New Jersey congressional races, compared to just one or two from the GOP,” Gothamist reports, as Republicans anticipate “a wave election, and not in their favor.”

“When you have a party that has lots of really good candidates jumping out of the gate and chomping at the bit, that's usually an indication that they think the party has good chances,” said Micah Rasmussen, director of Rider University's Rebovich Institute for New Jersey Politics. “When you don't see people coming out of the woodwork, that's an indication that the candidates believe that the party is not going to have as good a shot.”

While there’s still time to file for the midterm elections, political experts say that any serious candidate from both parties should have at least hinted at running by now, but the sound is muted over on the GOP team. It’s conventional wisdom to expect the president’s party to struggle in the midterms, but races in the swingy 7th, 9th and 11th congressional districts in North Jersey have few Republican contenders.

In the 9th District, Democratic Rep. Nellie Pou is considered vulnerable, yet Pou has just two Republicans running against her. One has raised just $16,000, according to campaign finance records. The other’s grassroots organization endorsed Pou in the last election. Similarly, New Jersey’s 11th Congressional District is anything but safe for Democrats. Nevertheless, there are 13 Democratic candidates running, and only one Republican. Even New Jersey’s 7th Congressional District — a district Trump won by two points — has nine Democrats challenging its single Republican incumbent.

Dan Cassino, professor of government and politics at Fairleigh Dickinson University, said qualified Republican candidates “are going to bide their time and wait for an election in ‘28 or ‘30 when they think they've got a better chance.”

Kristopher Shields, director of the Eagleton Center on the American Governor at Rutgers University, said putting off a run until a future race can spare Republican candidates from having to align with President Donald Trump.

“… [T]here may be individual candidates who say, 'You know what, I'm comfortable with where I am for now. Let's see where this is all going,'” Shields said.

Read the Gothamist report at this link.

Indiana's rejection of 'ingrate president' proves Trump has lost Republicans: conservative

Jeffrey Blehar — a staff writer for the conservative National Review — praised Indiana Republicans for holding firm on Thursday and refusing President Donald Trump’s mid-decade gerrymander that would have given Indiana Republicans a clean sweep of all nine of its seats in the U.S. House of Representatives.

“… [A]s a conservative of the older school, I … want to salute the men and women of the Indiana State Senate for finding the steel in their spines today,” said Blehar, adding that Republican’s refusal did not come without cost and threat.

Donald Trump Jr. announced on X that he would be campaigning against disloyal Indiana legislators in their primaries next year. And mere minutes before the final Thursday vote in the Indiana senate, Blehar said Heritage Action — the lobbying arm of the Heritage Foundation — tweeted: ‘President Trump has made it clear to Indiana leaders: if the Indiana Senate fails to pass the map, all federal funding will be stripped from the state. Roads will not be paved. Guard bases will close. Major projects will stop. These are the stakes and every NO vote will be to blame.’

“The Trump administration turned the screws,” said Blehar, but the November elections had “provided the entire political world — and elected Republicans especially — with an electrical shock of voter feedback.”

“After ten months of the economic chaos of The Trump Show (and three months of the redistricting circus), the lopsided Democratic margins in every race hit a bit like an uppercut from reality, knocking Republicans out of their confident daze and forcing them to reckon with both the massive unpopularity of Trump’s economic agenda as well as their own political mortality,” said Blehar. “If the pro-Democratic shift in November 2026 tracks with that of November 2025 in any way, the GOP is going to lose its House majority by a margin well beyond the ability of redistricting to save.”

“Why,” asked Blehar, “should Indiana Republicans fritter away a well-balanced map to gain two House seats — and in so doing deny the state any sort of seat at the table in an upcoming Democratic administration?”

Blehar called it “a sucker’s bargain” that would have hurt both Indiana and the GOP in the near future, “and all … for the ephemeral political needs of an ingrate president whose power will inevitably be broken after the midterms regardless.”

“I credit the Indiana GOP for having more wisdom and foresight than that, and for looking after their state’s interests — and the likely shape of the political world a mere few years from now — rather than the panicked desires of a president whose sole need for a Republican Congress is as armor-plating to protect him from pushback to his executive overreach.”

Read Blehar's full National Review article at this link (subscription required).

Trump's 'monumental ego' responsible for GOP's downfall ex-Republican official says

Former Illinois Lt. Gov. Bob Kustra (R) says he is surprised President Donald Trump is mulling naming the Republican Party after himself at a time when the party should be going out of its way to avoid him.

“Some will write off Trump’s ruminations about changing the name to ‘Tpublican’ ... as another of his egomaniacal rants to distract the media from learning about playboy Trump’s earlier years with Jeffrey Epstein,” said Kustra. “Yet, few believed Trump would tear down the entire East Wing of the White House to create a Mar-a-Lago North."

“This is the American president who has plastered the Oval Office with gold, now converted to the Trump family cash register with real estate deals and crypto scams ringing up sales for the billionaire family,” Kustra added.

“Most Americans would not expect a sitting president to approve a new dollar coin with his portrait on it, but it is in the planning stages. There seems no end to Trump disgracing the office of the presidency with his monumental ego and tacky taste.”

Instead, Kustra argued Trump’s latest attempt to stamp his name on the party ought to be the spark that finally “ignites a serious reconsideration of just what the Republican Party stands for and what the future holds for” the GOP.

There’s good reason to disavow the president now that the latest Gallup poll shows Trump and his party in trouble, with only 36 percent of Americans approving of his job performance. “Fair-weather Republicans” and independents who voted for Trump in 2024 are already turning to Democrats as of the recent off-year elections.

And now Kustra said Republicans are in danger of losing control of Congress in the 2026 midterm elections. “Once the law-and-order party, Republicans are now led by a president who just pardoned a Honduran ex-president serving a 45-year term for receiving millions in bribes and partnering with narcotics traffickers,” said Kustra.

“Trump also commuted the sentence of a private equity executive who just began a seven-year sentence for a $1.6 billion scheme that defrauded thousands of investors. But Trump had no problem calling for the execution of U.S. Sen. Mark Kelly, a war hero, who reminded our military forces they did not have to follow orders that broke the law.”

Kustra said some Republicans are already catching on, with Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) stiffing Trump on killing the filibuster and Republican Armed Services Committee Chair Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.) joining his Democratic counterpart to investigate allegations that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth ordered survivors killed in recent U.S. strikes on boats off South America. The House Committee followed suit assuring bipartisan oversight in both chambers.

Meanwhile, Kustra said Trump is being outfoxed by Chinese President Xi Jinping on tariffs and “played for a fool” by war criminal Vladimir Putin.

“With an increasingly self-absorbed and unhinged president losing ground with some Republicans in Congress, it hardly seems the moment to attach any semblance of the Trump surname to their party,” Kustra added. “Now is the time to rebuild the Republican Party with Trump as a mere footnote of times gone bad.”

Read Kustra's Kansas City Star column at this link.

GOP insiders warn huge debate threatens to tear ranks apart: 'We don't really care'

The Republican Party is pulling itself apart over a looming healthcare deadline as a clear plan for the future is yet to appear.

GOP representatives are still figuring out a plan for millions of Americans, though expanded subsidies for the Affordable Care Act will end at the end of this year whether a new plan is presented or not. One Republican representative, speaking to The Hill, called the situation a "recipe for disaster" — as few in the party are on the same page.

Republican Senator Josh Hawley said, "If they can’t figure out a plan, then maybe you got to do some kind of short-term extension until we figure out a plan. They should get together here and hammer something out... sitting back and saying, ‘There’s nothing we can do, we’re just going to let it all expire, we don’t have a substitute, we don’t have an alternative,’ that I think is really a recipe for disaster for people trying to buy health care.”

He went on, “What signal would that send if Republicans say, ‘Yeah, we’re going to say no to the Democrats’ plan, but we’re not going to offer anything? The message that will send is, good luck to the American people, and we don’t really care.”

An unnamed Senate Republican said there is an "ongoing discussion" over what to do with the healthcare proposals but that, as of now, there is no definite route for the party. They said, "We’re having an ongoing discussion. We need a side-by-side. A lot of in-cycle members would like a side-by-side."

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer has since suggested the GOP is at an impasse over what to do with the looming health care deadline. He said, "They're stuck. They can't get their caucus to agree on a bill."

The in-fighting and unclear route through to a new healthcare plan to replace the ACA has even prompted some Democrats to offer their help to their opponents to find a suitable plan.

Democratic whip Dick Durbin says a bipartisan deal could be struck with the foundations of the Moreno-Collins plan, which calls for a two-year extension of subsidies. Durbin said, "I want to sit down with them. I don't think that's a bad place to start. I'm encouraged by the fact that they want to talk."

Republican Senators Bernie Moreno and Susan Collins shared their plan to extend the enhanced ACA rates for a further two years. A separate plan from Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chair Bill Cassidy and Senate Finance Committee Chair Mike Crapo would see federal funding converted into advanced subsidies.

GOP 'putting lipstick on a pig' to hide calamity — but it's not fooling voters: pollsters

Pollsters believe the GOP is "putting lipstick on a pig" ahead of what could be a complete blowout in the 2026 midterms.

With the election cycle just under a year away, Republican Party officials are scrambling to figure out a way through the midterms. It could be a blowout for the GOP, with recent mayoral and governor elections in New York and Tennessee showing the gap between the Democrats and Republicans is closing in some states, and has been completely overwhelmed in others.

Pollsters Douglas E. Schoen and Carly Cooperman, writing in The Hill, explained how the Tennessee election results, despite being positive for Republicans, could spell disaster for the GOP next year.

The pair wrote, "That a candidate such as Behn came within single digits in this dark red district should set off alarm bells for the GOP. It is not unreasonable to think a centrist Democrat could have won."

"The overarching takeaways are that Trump’s declining approval ratings, along with policy and messaging failures are weighing on Republicans, and Democrats stand a good chance to retake the House by tying GOP candidates to the president."

While Tennessee incumbent Matt Van Epps would praise Donald Trump in his victory speech, the 22 point gap won in the area last year was reduced to single digits. Further trouble is brewing for the president too, with his approval rating in freefall because voters know the GOP is trying to dress up the disaster of Trump's presidency.

The pair added, "Put another way, voters recognize Trump’s attempts to 'put lipstick on a pig.' With the power of his words increasingly losing effectiveness, if he cannot show genuine progress, voters will continue turning away from the Republicans."

"Taken together, Tennessee’s results raise an interesting point surrounding next year’s midterms. Whether Trump can arrest his declining numbers, particularly on the economy and affordability, remains to be seen. So far, he has shown little-to-no willingness, but the looming consequences of a Democratic-controlled House may force a course correction."

A former Democrat representative has warned, however, that Trump and the GOP do have it in their jurisdiction to refuse a majority turnover in the House, should midterm results fall that way.

The ex-Dem rep Steve Israel wrote, "It would be craven, but shockingly constitutional. And it would be hard for the courts to reverse. The possible hijacking of a Democratic majority would rest on these words: 'Each House shall be the Judge of the Elections, Returns and Qualifications of its own Members, and a Majority of each shall constitute a Quorum to do Business."

Power struggle erupts as establishment GOP struggles to 'expel the lunatics': analysis

“There was never that much distance between the Establishment and the extremists of the right, even in [William F.] Buckley’s era; now they are even closer,” reports Intelligencer Senior writer Sarah Jones.

In October, Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts publicly cast his lot in with entertainer Tucker Carlson hours after Carlson had a cozy, normalizing interview with influencer Nick Fuentes, king of the white nationalist groyper army, without pressing him on his radical claims about the merits of Adolf Hitler and killing “perfidious Jews.” Roberts disavowed Fuentes in his video, but Jones said he was also careful to make a “big tent” argument in favor of including even bigoted elements in the conservative movement. “Canceling” Fuentes, he argued, “is not the answer either.”

Now a simmering civil war within Heritage — and the conservative movement itself — has spilled out into public view, said Jones.

“One faction, led by Jewish conservatives and Christian Zionists like Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, accuses Roberts of coddling an antisemite. Another prefers a ‘no enemies to the right’ approach, which mirrors the language that Roberts used in his video,” reports Jones. “There have been prominent resignations, a contentious town hall at Heritage, and denunciations of various sorts. Throughout it all, the groypers cavort. The Establishment right, which they despise, may be ripe for implosion at last.”

Jones said the Roberts video arrived at a contentious moment for American conservatives. The post-Trump trajectory of the right “is not yet assured, and the movement is consumed by questions of succession, ideology, and strategy.”

“To many, like Roberts, the furthest-right fringe is more palatable than liberalism or the neoconservatism that preceded the Obama years. Only an alliance of the most radical tendencies on the right can transform the nation for decades to come, or so the logic goes,” she wrote.

Jones also notes that Roberts often says he knows ‘what time it is in America,’ which is a popular phrase inside extremist circles, according to political theorist Laura K. Field.

“If you know what time it is, you know that the hour is late, and it is time for radical action in America,” Field said in her new book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right.

Jones said the right has no immune system against hatemongers and grifters, and this is obvious in the rise of Fuentes — who President Donald Trump saw fit to meet and entertain. It’s also clear in the rise of Roberts’s career.

“Roberts may not be a groyper, but he volunteered for Pat Buchanan’s 1992 presidential campaign,” said Jones, adding that Buchanan “is an antisemite who wrote for VDARE, a white-nationalist website, from 2006 until his retirement in 2023. Roberts calls him a ‘Cassandra’ in Dawn’s Early Light, published last year, for which J.D. Vance wrote the foreword.”

At a Heritage town hall, convened by Roberts in a bid to salvage his power after his controversial endorsement, conservative scholar Robert Rector invoked Buckley.

“The boundaries that he set forth, William Buckley, in the early 1960s, were twofold,” Rector said. “You have to expunge all antisemitism, all of it. But that’s just part of it … the other is you have to expel the lunatics.”

“... Yet the right’s eternal patience with antisemitism, and all other forms of racism and misogyny and queer hatred, are precisely what brought us here,” said Jones. “And so, despite all the heat, the board of Heritage is siding with Roberts for now.”

It’s a risky calculation, Jones added.

“If they continue to support him and his allies, they might further marginalize the institution with the public. Groypers are not popular. Nor are Roberts’s political views. Even Trump is deep underwater with voters. To the most extreme factions of the right, however, popularity doesn’t matter — not when you know what time it is. Their goal is to save America, even if that means saving it from Americans themselves. Roberts is digging in for a war.”

Read the Intelligencer report at this link.

Republicans are 'making fools of themselves' facing existential threat: journalist

John Harwood says the Republican Party’s current opposition to popular “Obamacare” subsidies for millions of Americans is on track with the party’s stubborn grip on the wrong side of arguments throughout history.

“They said Washington lacked the competence to run [the Social Security System], that the nation couldn’t afford it, that it would impoverish the working class,” Harwood tells Zeteo. “A ‘cruel hoax,’ declared the Republican Party’s leader.”

But in 90 years of operation, Social Security has cut the poverty rate among senior citizens by four-fifths, and it never failed to deliver promised benefits. That didn’t stop the party from using the same “swing-and-miss hysteria” against the creation of medical insurance for the elderly, with conservatives describing Medicare as a “step toward totalitarianism.”

“Their pattern repeats again and again,” said Harwood. “The party that loathes government decries programs to solve social problems as dangerous, costly, and futile. Which leaves cutting taxes as its prescription for any ailment — a prescription that consistently fails to deliver.”

Research from Co-Equal pertaining to Social Security, the Affordable Care Act, and the Reagan and Trump tax cuts was consistent in that doomsaying about major new programs, and cheerleading about reducing tax rates, did not pan out.

Republicans dealt the Affordable Care Act the same predictable “Chicken Little” treatment, said Harwood, and they also “put on their fright wigs” about Wall Street regulation, claiming tougher oversight would harm the economy, increase market volatility, inhibit borrowing, institutionalize bailouts, and create a "super-bureaucracy."

But what followed the passage of the Democratic Dodd-Frank financial industry regulation bill was the longest streak of monthly job growth in American history, as well as expanded small business lending and consumer credit, and reduced bank failures. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) obtained $21 billion in compensation for 200 million Americans preyed upon by financial firms.

Such successes have not stopped hysterical conservatives from “making fools of themselves,” said Harwood. “Before bipartisan opposition intervened, Elon Musk’s reckless “Department of Government Efficiency” sought to slash PEPFAR funding. It crippled the CFPB, which assisted so many in the GOP’s working-class base. At a Cabinet meeting this week, Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins even declared that she feels "gratitude and joy" from cutting food stamp benefits.

The truth, according to Harwood, is that the modern GOP relentlessly seeks to reduce the tax burden on the most affluent Americans because the affluent run the GOP. Admitting this doesn’t win votes, however, so Republicans use better-sounding pitches, like “tax cuts will lift average families, create well-paying jobs, and boost economic growth — enough to increase, rather than decrease, government revenues.”

But the tax cut claims keep falling flat, with the strongest sustained growth of recent decades occurring in the late 1990s after Democratic President Bill Clinton raised taxes, said Harwood. Job creation under Democratic administrations has far outpaced that of Republican administrations. For the last half-century, every Democratic president left office with a lower deficit than he inherited as a share of the economy; every Republican president departed with a higher deficit.

“These facts don’t move Republicans now in power,” said Harwood. “Their patrons are too demanding, their ideology too calcified, their MAGA faithful too compliant, their information sources too detached from reality.”

“But reality can shove them out of power,” added Harwood. “Americans outside the MAGA bubble know that Trump, while enriching himself in office, has not reduced the prices they pay. They know that jobs have grown less plentiful. They know his deportation thugs keep brutalizing peaceable immigrants because they see the videos. They know he isn’t focused on them.”

Read the Zeteo substack at this link with a subscription.

‘Sharks can smell blood’: MAGA said to be ‘eating its own’ in battle over Trump succession

An analyst Wednesday described the MAGA battle unfolding over President Donald Trump's succession as infighting has ensued within the Republican party.

The Guardian's Moira Donegan wrote in an opinion piece that cracks have emerged in the Trump administration and MAGA as the president's influence has begun to lessen.

"The sharks can smell blood in the water. After a decade in eerie command of the Republican party, with primary voters in his cult-like thrall and down-ballot elected officials feeling they have no choice – and often no inclination – to diverge from him, Donald Trump suddenly seems not quite in control of his own political machine," Donegan wrote.

Trump appears to show signs of his age, snoozing during a cabinet meeting and looking pale. His tariffs are unpopular and expected to be struck down by the Supreme Court. His past associations with late financier and convicted child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including details of their interactions and social connections during the early 2000s, have continued to plague him, reigniting scrutiny of Trump's relationship with Epstein. New questions have raised about the extent of their friendship during a period when Epstein was known to be engaging in inappropriate behavior with underage girls.

Republicans have begun to look to the future without Trump at the helm.

"The old man won’t be around forever; Republicans are beginning to imagine what the country – and more importantly, their own careers – will look like without him," Donegan wrote.

Signs that the Trump era has neared its end have surfaced, including Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and her public split with the president, according to the analyst. And she won't be the only Republican to break with him.

"As Republicans continue to face strong headwinds from anti-Trump sentiment going into 2026, and as Trump himself dwindles in popularity, accumulates liabilities, and proves unwilling to compromise on his demands or reward loyal Republicans, it is likely that more and more GOP representatives will be looking for the exits," Donegan explained.

"Meanwhile, Maga has begun to eat its own, with infighting over Epstein, antisemitism and economics slowly beginning to turn Trump’s operatives against each other as they jockey for position. The Trump era is not over – far from it – but we may be seeing the beginning of its next phase: what is likely to be a bleak, bloody, and belligerent battle of succession," Donegan added.