President Donald Trump has spent the run-up to the midterms making examples of Republicans he considers disloyal. He endorsed primary challengers against Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-LA), Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX) and Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), and in each case the challenge was the punishment.
Now a growing number of Republicans in competitive races are putting daylight between themselves and the administration — and the president is letting it ride. The Washington Examiner, which first reported the pattern, noted that Trump has refrained from social media diatribes against those defectors as November approaches.
The breaks are not subtle. Trump-endorsed Florida gubernatorial nominee Byron Donalds has stripped prominent mentions of the president from his website, per reporting from the Associated Press. Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar, also of Florida, has criticized the administration's aggressive deportation push. In Iowa, Senate candidate Ashley Hinson is calling for an end to the Iran war. So is Mike Rogers in Michigan. In Kansas, a state Trump carried comfortably in 2020 and 2024, Sen. Roger Marshall is raising concerns about Immigration and Customs Enforcement operations.
THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE SILENCE
There is an obvious reason Trump's team may be picking its fights carefully. A Reuters/Ipsos poll released this week put the president's approval rating at 32 percent — a historic low for his second term — with Republicans slipping on the economy and the Iran war. An earlier survey circulated by Democratic-leaning outlets gave Democrats an edge in Michigan and New Hampshire, while finding tougher odds for them in Maine.
Republican pollster Brent Buchanan told the AP what every GOP strategist in a swing district already knows: candidates have to show voters they are different from an unpopular president, even while holding onto his base.
"You've got to show that you're different," Buchanan said of GOP candidates appealing to Trump voters who have soured on the president.
Gas prices tied to the Iran conflict have put Republican congressional candidates in a bind. The administration's tariff policy is another drag — voters tell pollsters they feel it at the grocery store and the pump more than they see it in trade numbers. And the White House's push for AI data centers has generated backlash in the same rural, heavily Republican counties the party cannot afford to lose, while an effort to expand foreign beef imports to lower prices has angered ranchers across western states.
MISSOURI MAP FIGHT GRINDS ON
The president's broader midterm headaches extend beyond candidate discipline. The Supreme Court on Friday rejected a Republican-drawn congressional map in Missouri for the third time, according to the Associated Press — a decision that lands while absentee voting is already underway in the state. Missouri Republicans have now lost three rounds in the same fight.
Separately, the high court allowed the Trump administration to keep using a revamped federal voter eligibility database for now, a ruling that keeps a key piece of the administration's election-integrity machinery running through November.
On the foreign policy front, Trump told reporters that he and Chinese President Xi Jinping discussed the war in Iran during their summit, and the White House said the two leaders raised the possibility of future visits. Iran has reportedly dangled a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz ahead of the US midterms — a development that could reshape gas prices and, with them, the closing weeks of the campaign.
The president's approach to party discipline has been consistent when he chooses to use it. Cassidy, Cornyn and Massie all drew primaries after breaking with him; the message to the rest of the conference was that disloyalty carries a price. Whether that price gets charged this cycle, or whether the White House has decided that swing-district Republicans need room to run, is the question Republicans in Washington are asking.
What is not in dispute is that the calendar is short. Absentee ballots are already moving in Missouri. Every week Trump spends not attacking a defector is a week that defector gets to campaign as something other than an ally of an unpopular president.
Our Take
Trump's silence is not weakness — it is math. Every Republican the president torches in a purple district is a seat the GOP hands to the Democrats, and the party cannot afford many of those with control of Congress on the line. The base will still show up for Trump. The suburban swing voter who is furious about gas prices and grocery bills is the one who decides who runs the House next January.
That is the same reason Cassidy, Cornyn and Massie got primaried: those were safe seats or lost causes, and a point needed to be made. The defectors this fall are in the districts where a point cannot be made without paying for it.
The real test comes after the votes are counted. If Republicans hold the House, the breakers will be welcomed home. If they lose it, expect a very different conversation about who was loyal and who was not.
Patriots, watch your mailbox — absentee ballots are out in Missouri, and the map the Supreme Court keeps striking down is not going to save anyone. The only thing that counts now is turnout. Are you registered? Is your neighbor?
