'Careful': Republicans brace for midterm 'storm' in 2026 as Trump policies take hold

Senator Thom Tillis (R-N.C.), who benefited from the backlash against former President Barack Obama during the 2010 and 2014 midterms, cautioned that Republicans could face a similar outcome in 2026, the year he is due for re-election.

In an interview with Politico published Thursday, Tillis said the GOP may be up against a "storm" next year due to President Donald Trump's decision to impose sweeping tariffs on United States imports.

“What we don’t want to do is overreach,” he said.

“We’ve got to be careful not to do the same thing. And I think that these elections are going to be proxies, or almost like weather devices for figuring out what kind of storm we’re going to be up against next year," Tillis added.

Some of Tillis' fellow Republicans are drawing comparisons to even earlier historical events, expressing concern that voters, who are already unsettled by Trump's reductions in essential government services, may hold the GOP accountable for the consequences of the tariffs.

They fear this may cause the party to suffer electoral losses of a scale not experienced since the Great Depression.

Sen. Rand Paul (R-K.Y.) told reporters on Wednesday that when President William McKinley imposed tariffs in 1890, Republicans lost 50 percent of their seats in the next election.

“When Smoot and Hawley put on their tariff in the early 1930s, we lost the House and the Senate for 60 years. So they’re not only bad economically, they’re bad politically," he added.

In an interview with The Hill, Paul said the tariffs imposed by the administration are counterproductive. "Tariffs are a tax, and if you tax trade or if you tax anything, you’ll get less of it," he said.

Trump has strongly reacted to this criticism from Paul, Tillis and two other Republican senators, saying that they are suffering from "Trump Derangement Syndrome."

"What is wrong with them, other than suffering from Trump Derangement Syndrome, commonly known as TDS? Who can want this to happen to our beautiful families, and why?" he wrote in a post on his social platform Truth Social Wednesday.

"To the people of the Great States of Kentucky, Alaska, and Maine, please contact these Senators and get them to FINALLY adhere to Republican Values and Ideals," the president added.

Still, the four senators held firm in their resistance to the tariffs, and Paul aligned with the Democrats to support a bill aimed at overturning Trump's emergency declaration that authorized the imposition of tariffs on Canada.

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