Republicans are finally waking up to 'a world of hurt'

U.S. Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) speak at the Republican National Midterm Convention in Dallas, Texas, U.S., September 10, 2026.

It’s astounding how the GOP is waking up in a world of hurt, seemingly only now realizing how much trouble they are in. All year long, the numbers told the story, as did the special elections and the anger about tariffs and the war. But now Republicans suddenly seem to realize it’s all for real, defying Trump and criticizing him. It’s all too late as conditions have deteriorated rapidly, with polls showing the Senate very much in play and MAGA operatives and podcasters fretting about big losses in the House…

The Supreme Court, in good news, ruled for a third and final time that Missouri could not use its new gerrymandered maps. But this week the Supreme Court handed down a bad ruling allowing the federal government to let states use a database that shares personal information to check if noncitizens are voting—a database with a bad track record. While it’s something to be concerned about, legal advocates have been cautioning against alarm right now and reassuring people that it will have limited, if any, impact on the upcoming midterms. But the Trump administration has other plans in place, and we have to be alert…

The ban against CNN, MS NOW and Politico has been on-again, off-again, as the Trump administration for hours appeared to defy a judge’s ruling, only to let the outlets back into the White House—but then attempted to ban some of their journalists from the state dinner with the Chinese leader. And now Trump has banned CNN from Air Force One. This is all a vile attack on the press and a brazen challenge to the judge’s order. But Trump is also hurting himself by not having cameras on him because the other TV networks that share pool footage have shown solidarity and refused to participate in the pool. Trump has actually seemed jarred by this, wondering out loud why the cameras weren’t there after he banned the outlets…

This week we saw a real turning of the tide in the numbers as we are 38 days from the election, and it only confirmed where things have been going: toward the Democrats. The GOP has been delusional about this for months, but now Republicans are beginning to panic.

Axios—a Beltway favorite of conventional wisdom and, in my view, often pro-GOP framing—reports, “GOP election outlook goes from bad to ‘craptastic’”:

President Trump told voters to pretend he’s on the ballot. Apparently they’re listening: Republicans coast to coast are getting pulled under by a violent undertow fueled by Trump’s unpopularity.
Why it matters: It’s looked bad for Republicans all year, but this week felt different — like the political environment was disintegrating in real time, one ominous data point after another.
Most worrisome for the GOP, there’s virtually no chance the war ends, inflation cools, interest rates fall, consumer confidence rises, and economic optimism surges before the Nov. 3 election.
That’s why Republicans fear the undertow imperils so many candidates once deemed safe.
“The numbers are somewhere between s---abulous and c---tastic,” a top Republican advising several federal races across the country told Axios. “It looks worse than 2018 now. Trump is heading to Bush 2006 levels.”

Trump’s poll numbers are sinking further, now down to an all-time low of 32% approval in the Reuters/Ipsos poll and 32% in a Quinnipiac poll.

All of it is happening as economic conditions deteriorate rapidly, which is causing those polls to crater for Republicans and rise for Democrats. From The New York Times:

For Americans stung by years of persistently high prices, the end of September brought little obvious relief, as a long unresolved war with Iran continued to ripple across the U.S. economy in ways that made the nation’s battle with inflation all the more vexing.
Oil prices whipsawed around $100 per barrel while costs at the pump remained high, with a gallon of gasoline reaching an average of nearly $4.50 nationally by Friday, according to AAA. The more concerning spike occurred in diesel, which topped $6.50 per gallon, raising the possibility that high transportation and shipping costs could make groceries and other goods more expensive soon, too.

Mortgage rates passed 7% after the Fed raised interest rates in recent weeks. And there’s talk of mortgage rates even going to 8%. The Fed is due to meet at the end of October, and after the stress on the bond market in recent days, it’s expected that officials could increase rates again—days before the election.

MAGA podcaster Steve Deace was among those finally going public about how bad it is, posting on X:

Yesterday, Iowa House Republicans were informed by their own pollsters that if you are in a +15 district you’re within the margin for error, if you’re in a +10 district you’re underwater, and that this might end being an even worse midterm environment than 2006.
I slept on whether to share this publicly, because I don’t want to cause anyone to black pill. But this morning I ultimately decided the truth should be shared while there is still six weeks left to do something about it for the good of the country.
Because if the environment is this bad in my home state, where Trump has been the most popular political figure over the last decade, I can’t imagine where it is everywhere else.

VoteHub now puts the Democrats’ chances of winning the Senate at 59%, something that would have seemed unthinkable just a year ago. As The Washington Post notes:

Democrats have been favored to seize control of the House, which has a narrow Republican majority. The math in the Senate is more daunting: Democrats control 47 seats to Republicans’ 53.
The clearest path to a majority requires Democrats to retain all of their seats and win four GOP-controlled seats, including at least two in states President Donald Trump won by double digits in 2024. That path, which once felt like a long shot, now seems feasible.

But not only should none of us get overconfident; Trump’s determination to control elections, challenge results and sow doubt about them is something we have to take seriously. While the Supreme Court dealt a huge blow to his attempt to control mail-in ballots and this week finally stopped Missouri Republicans from using a gerrymandered map, the Court also handed down a troubling ruling. It will allow states to use a database that’s been in place for a long time, with access to voters’ personal information, to check whether they are noncitizens—even though the system has produced false positives.

It should be pointed out that this applies only to states that voluntarily use the database—27 states have used it in the past—for elections. Blue states are not required to use it. Texas uses it and is being sued because there were so many false positives.

Legal advocates, however, caution that while we have to focus on it in the future, it has limited, if any, power to affect the upcoming midterms:

Friday’s Supreme Court ruling clearing the way for states to use a sweeping online system to identify ineligible voters is a victory for the Trump administration, which has routinely promoted unfounded claims of widespread illegal voting by noncitizens. But the impact of the decision on the November midterm elections is likely to be limited, according to election law experts.
That is largely because federal law establishes a 90-day “quiet period” before elections, in which wide-scale changes to state voter rolls cannot be made. The provision is meant to avoid last-minute chaos in elections, and is likely to prevent major changes ahead of the Nov. 3 midterms, experts said.

But that might not stop the Trump administration from trying to use it after the election regarding individual voters it suspects, as The Wall Street Journal reports, and the administration is doing everything it can to exert influence over the election:

The Civil Rights Division has also written to the chief elections officers in all 50 states warning them officials face prosecution if they knowingly have noncitizens registered to vote.
The Justice Department is spotlighting prosecutions of noncitizens who voted or registered to do so. Prosecutors have announced several batches of cases in recent weeks, with more on the way. The department has charged more than 70 people with unlawful voting and registration offenses since the start of the administration.
And on Election Day, federal officials will be out in force. The department has historically sent staff from the Civil Rights Division to monitor elections in areas where they have sued to enforce voting-rights laws. This year, it is preparing to send up to 1,000 election monitors—from across the department and potentially other agencies as well—to a broader swath of states.

So none of us should be resting, because numbers can be overblown and, even if they’re not, Trump will try every way he can to affect the election. It’s why we have to support legal advocates as much as we can, and be ready.

After a judge ruled that the Trump administration had improperly banned Politico, MS NOW and CNN from the White House and ordered their credentials restored, the White House continued to deny them access for hours. The White House TV press pool—which includes the major networks, including Fox News—had joined together, effectively denying Trump television pool coverage during the visit of Chinese dictator, President Xi Jinping.

But after the outlets were reinstated, the White House later denied some MS NOW and CNN journalists access to cover the state dinner for the Chinese leader. They were later allowed in.

But then, on Friday, CNN was banned from Air Force One, where it was to provide pool coverage on a trip to Tennessee. It’s not clear how the Air Force One decision interacts with the judge’s order restoring White House access.

Trump, who said he would campaign in 35 of the most competitive districts for the midterms, was going to see the game between the University of Texas and Tennessee—with only 38 days before the election. He so far has planned campaign rallies in Durant, Oklahoma, and Mobile, Alabama—neither in a state with a major competitive Senate race and both in a place where he will have big, adoring crowds.

But I digress.

Trump seems confused about his media ban. He hates the reporters and their coverage, but he loves the attention and being on TV. That’s why he’s responding to it in a confusing and haphazard way, complaining about the media blackout his own actions helped create. The New Republic notes:

In the topsy-turvy MAGA world, some of America’s most prominent media outlets are choosing not to cover Donald Trump. In reality, they’re still under the Trump administration’s ban.
The president claimed on Truth Social Thursday afternoon that MS NOW and CNN “refused to cover” the arrival of Chinese President Xi Jinping at the White House.
“The event was magnificent—Actually made for Television but, because they’re Fake News, and because they knew how good it would be, they didn’t want credit to be given to ‘TRUMP,’ they refused to be there,” Trump wrote. “That’s why they have such poor Ratings.”
But that was far from the truth. Reporters from those two networks, as well as many others, refused to cover Xi’s arrival in protest of Trump’s attempt to ban CNN, MS NOW, and Politico from the White House grounds. What’s more, just hours after Trump’s post, CNN and MS NOW were blocked from covering the state dinner at the White House Thursday night.

Trump’s love-hate relationship with the press will likely cause further conflict. I think he did all of this as a distraction from things that made him feel powerless—like the war in Iran, the Supreme Court mail-in-ballot decision and the Fed raising rates—to something that made him feel powerful.

But how powerful is he if he is effectively not on television screens much of the time? So much of his perceived power is garnered from being constantly in the media. The fact that the media finally joined together—and maybe the on-again, off-again strategy has been designed to force them to break with one another—has been kryptonite to the attention-obsessed president.

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