U.S. President Donald Trump on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, D.C., U.S., November 18, 2025 REUTERS
Time is counting down to the November midterms and some Republicans are choosing self-preservation over loyalty, reports NBC News.
President Donald Trump has urged Republican voters to pretend he’s on the midterm ballot. But a handful of GOP candidates in tough races are keeping their distance,” writes NBC News reporter Alexandra Marquez. “This week, House candidates running in districts that Trump carried in the 2024 election have broken with him on key issues including immigration and the Iran war, underscoring the increasingly difficult political environment Republicans face less than seven weeks out from Election Day.”
The latest example happened Thursday in Florida, where GOP Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar —a staunch Trump ally — began airing a direct-to-camera TV ad criticizing Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.
“Mr. President, some of your immigration enforcement efforts have gone too far,” Salazar declared. “In July, 50 percent of the 50,000 people that were detained had no criminal record. Be careful what your advisers are telling you about immigration policy. The same Hispanics who helped you get to the White House in 2024 feel betrayed today.”
The commercial comes as a surprise because Trump actually won Salazar’s district in 2024 by 15 points, and Cook Political Report has rated her race as “likely Republican.” However, A New York Times/Siena poll released this week revealed that 55 percent of registered voters disapproved of Trump’s aggressive immigration policies — but also that voters trusted Democrats more than Republicans on the issue by a 51 percent-to-45 percent margin.
Earlier this week, NBC News reports GOP Reps. Zach Nunn and Mariannette Miller-Meeks of Iowa voted “for the first time in favor of a resolution directing the president to halt military action in Iran without congressional approval.” Nunn argued on X that two Iowa service members died as a result of Trump’s unprompted war with Iran.
Miller-Meeks, who served in the Army for 24 years, echoed Nunn’s sentiment in her own post on X, saying “I will not vote to keep our soldiers in an open-ended war, with Iowans paying too much at the pump. … The President needs to present a plan to Congress and the American people for how this ends so we can focus on bringing our soldiers home and lowering prices.”
But both Miller-Meeks and Nunn know that The Cook Political Report now rates both their races as “toss ups” due to Trump extreme unpopularity across the nation. Trump won Miller-Meeks’ district by 8 points and Nunn’s district by 4 points in 2024.
Meanwhile, Rep. Ashley Hinson (R-Iowa) is running for Senate this year in a competitive race against Democratic state Rep. Josh Turek in a state that Trump won by 13 points only two years ago, reports NBC News.
That may explain why Hinson doesn’t plan to attend a campaign rally in Iowa that Vice President JD Vance will headline Friday — citing schedule conflicts. She has also broken with the president on his tariff policies on ground beef imports.
“I want to lower prices but this is a bad idea,” Hinson recently wrote in a post on X. “… We should be focused on cutting red tape for cattle producers, lowering the cost of production, and supporting market-based solutions to support Iowa producers and lower costs for consumers.”