Republicans are 'giving up' the midterms for this reason

U.S. Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) speaks to reporters during a press conference, following the Republicans' weekly policy lunch, on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., U.S. June 9, 2026. REUTERS/Annabelle Gordon

According to longtime Intelligencer political columnist Ed Kilgore, there are “alarming” signs that Republican lawmakers are “giving” up on winning the midterms in favor of jamming through as much of their agenda as possible before losing power. Evidence, he suggests, is in the fact that they are now focusing on passing unpopular safety net cuts to fund President Donald Trump’s unpopular war.

As Kilgore explains, you can see this trend emerging in Trump and the Republicans’ multiple budget reconciliation bills. They’ve just passed their second, which was kept “skinny” compared to last year’s One Big Beautiful Bill, which itself was, asserts Kilgore, “a vast smorgasbord of conservative policy initiatives and attempted voter bribes.” Republicans managed to keep reconciliation 2.0 narrowed to a few key priorities and thereby ensured its passage by promising to tackle all the other wide-ranging concerns held by different factions in a third bill before the midterms.

But while Kilgore says those promises have included grandiose conservative dreams like replacing taxes with tariffs and killing Obamacare once and for all, “the bill will likely boil down to two essentials: paying for Trump’s Iran War and the massive defense buildup he’s demanded, and then offsetting those incredible costs by going after alleged ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ in federal safety-net programs, particularly Medicaid.”

As Kilgore explains, “waste, fraud, and abuse” are often Republican euphemisms for social programs they don’t like, and such talk comes straight from party leadership. As he quotes Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) in the Hill:

“Thune told reporters Tuesday that a third budget reconciliation package to fund defense is on the table but he cautioned that the new spending would need to be offset with spending cuts or revenue raisers to lessen the impact on the federal deficit. ‘You would also have to have offsets in place,’ Thune said. ‘There’s some discussion around waste, fraud and abuse savings that could be achieved through another recon bill.’”

This sort of legislative action is wildly disliked, notes Kilgore, writing, “Republicans took one whack at alleged waste, fraud, and abuse in the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, and it was by far the most unpopular feature of the generally unpopular legislation. Democrats are still campaigning on it every single day. So it’s not exactly smart for Republicans to come back to the well so soon for additional safety-net cuts, particularly if their purpose is to finance unpopular wars … It will be a simple transfer of vast amounts of money from butter to guns, which is never especially advisable politically unless the war involved is strongly supported by voters.”

As Kilgore notes, the war is supported by a mere 37 percent of voters, and the Republican Party seems perfectly willing to go along with it, a few notable defections aside. At the same time, GOP lawmakers are pushing social cuts that are only going to hurt them electorally. According to Kilgore, the fact that they’re doing all this regardless of the looming midterms raises a troubling conclusion.

“If it does appear that congressional Republicans are going full bore into reconciliation 3.0 this summer, it may represent an alarming sign that the GOP is giving up on winning the midterms and wants to enact as much party-line legislation as possible before Democrats take away House or even Senate gavels,” writes Kilgore. “Behaving like a thief making one more grab before disappearing into the night is a bad look for a major political party. But Republicans do love defense spending and have hated the safety net since the New Deal, so the temptation to smash and grab could be overpowering.”

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