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House Republicans are ditching Donald Trump’s midterm convention one by one, with some even calling it a “waste of time.” GOP leaders in Congress have all but given up on passing Trump’s agenda before November, punting on everything from government funding, money for the Iran war and mass surveillance into what’s shaping up to be a chaotic lame-duck session. Multiple state election officials are now saying the Trump administration’s restrictive new mail-in voting rules are impossible to put in place in time for the midterms. And while the Trump White House is publicly proclaiming Republicans will keep their majorities, behind closed doors they’re bracing for Democrats to sweep back into power and lawyering up for future investigations.
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Republicans Bailing on Trump’s ‘Waste of Time’ Midterm Convention
This month in Dallas, President Donald Trump is headlining a midterm convention that’s being referred to as “Trumpapalooza,” which he’s hoping will fire up Republicans before November. However, it seems to be having the opposite effect.
At least 45 Republican candidates and incumbent GOP lawmakers say they’re skipping the event. Dozens more haven’t indicated one way or another if they’ll attend. Some are claiming campaign scheduling conflicts, while others are balking at the $25,000 entrance fee that candidates would rather spend on their own campaigns.
One unnamed House Republican confided that trying to rally the GOP base this late in the campaign cycle doesn’t make sense. They say what matters now is turning out independent voters — many of whom aren’t exactly thrilled about the job Trump is doing.
Republican Congressman Tom Barrett of Michigan, who’s running for another term in a competitive House seat, said he prefers to be back home with his family and his constituents than in Texas. He added that while he can’t control what Trump says onstage, he can at least control where he spends his time between now and Election Day.
The House Republican Conference has real concerns that Trump will use his keynote speech to ramble about vanity projects like the $400 million White House ballroom, rather than focus on rising prices for basic needs like groceries and gas. Republicans are also keenly aware that voters aren’t feeling Trump’s war with Iran, and they know it’s a near-certainty that Trump won’t stay on message.
House Speaker Mike Johnson continues to insist that turnout will be decent, though even he admitted that early voting means many lawmakers will be back in their districts battling to keep their seats. Additionally, Republicans seem to have forgotten that both nights of the midterm convention are competing with the highly anticipated first games of the NFL season. A University of Texas researcher said the timing of the convention was ill-conceived and added this half-cocked convention seems more like a panicked response to what is shaping up to be a Democratic wave election rather than a genuine effort to excite Republican voters.
In 1912, Republicans gathered in Chicago and tore their own convention to pieces, and what looked like a squabble over delegate credentials was really a fight over whether the party belonged to its voters or to one man. When a party's own candidates start calculating they're safer at home than standing on a stage with their leader, that isn't a scheduling problem, that's an answer.
Republicans Give Up on Passing Trump’s Agenda Before Election
Republicans in Congress have all but conceded the fight to pass Trump’s agenda before the midterms.
While the House passed a short-term funding bill to keep the government funded until December, they’re punting on much bigger fights like funding for Trump’s war with Iran up until the holidays.
An anonymous senior Senate Republican staffer told the Hill that there’s a lot being shoved into the post-election window. Senate Democrats have already rejected the White House’s request for $1.5 trillion for the Pentagon, rightly calling the ratio compared to non-defense spending wildly out of balance.
Congress also failed to pass drought relief for farmers, much-needed disaster aid requested months ago, a farm bill that couldn’t even get out of the Agriculture Committee because of Kentucky Republican Senator Mitch McConnell’s lengthy absence and a stalled bill on regulating college athletics. Additionally, FISA surveillance authority has expired, and the Defense Department spending bill remains in limbo after Democrats blocked it Congress is looking at six or seven weeks after the election to somehow get all of this across the finish line before the Christmas recess.
Republicans are also still trying to pass a budget reconciliation package to fund Trump’s Iran war, though that process is still incredibly time-consuming, with all-night vote-a-rama sessions likely with any reconciliation effort. Vulnerable Republican senators in tight reelection races like Susan Collins of Maine don’t want to go anywhere near that before Election Day, as it gives Democrats a chance to force uncomfortable votes that could be ammunition for campaign ads. Republican aides now predict nothing serious will happen in Congress until January of 2027.
We ratified the Twentieth Amendment in 1933 for exactly this reason, because George Norris and the reformers of his generation thought it was indecent for lawmakers the voters had already fired to keep writing the nation's laws for months afterward. Congress shrank that window on purpose, and now it's cramming a year's worth of governing right back into it.
Election Officials Say Trump’s New Mail Ballot Rules Impossible to Enforce
State election officials are now warning that the Trump administration’s new rules for the U.S. Postal Service governing mail ballots are impossible to enforce by November.
The rule would require every outbound and inbound ballot envelope to carry a unique tracking barcode. Vendors say there simply isn’t enough time or even paper to reprint the millions of envelopes that would need the redesign. Washington state alone estimates it would cost roughly $2 million just to replace more than a million envelopes. None of the state’s typical vendors say they could get the job done in time.
The U.S.P.S. portal election offices are supposed to use to upload voter lists that change until Election Day also remain untested. Colorado estimates the process will require tens of thousands of hours of time for election workers. Arizona’s Democratic secretary of state warned the system can’t even handle a bulk upload from Maricopa County’s 2.5 million voters without crashing.
The county clerk in Jefferson County, Colorado said U.S.P.S. officials can’t even give basic answers to questions about how any of this will function with ballots going out in just a few weeks. A national association of election officials says they were caught off guard when the final rule was announced due to running primary elections, and that they’re used to having warnings of changes months in advance so they can adequately prepare to adapt to new systems.
The White House predictably blamed the confusion on lawsuits from Democratic officials challenging the rule. But one election expert told CNN that the administration’s goal in all of this seems to be confusion itself.
The rules are currently on hold in federal court, and the Trump administration is expected to appeal all the way to the MAGA majority Supreme Court if necessary.
In 1966 the Supreme Court struck down Virginia's poll tax in Harper, and Justice Douglas wrote that a state can't make wealth or the paying of a fee the standard for who gets to cast a ballot. Nobody's calling this a poll tax, but when the price of admission is two million dollars in reprinted envelopes and tens of thousands of staff hours that nobody has, the citizen waiting on that ballot loses the vote just the same.
Trump White House Quietly Planning for Democrats to Take Back Congress
Even as the president publicly insists Republicans will hold Congress, his White House is quietly preparing for a Democratic takeover.
Behind closed doors, the administration has been contacting lawyers, reviewing investigations from Trump’s first term and getting political appointees prepared for Democratic investigations and subpoenas. According to Politico, the office of the White House Counsel has told staff it’s prepared to represent them in an official capacity if Congress wants to drag them before a committee, though that protection doesn’t always extend to people who have already left their jobs.
Todd Blanche’s Justice Department has also rolled out a new legal opinion arguing for an expansion of executive privilege to cover Trump’s communications with outside advisers — while it previously only applied to just official staff — provided those talks remain confidential and relate specifically to presidential decision-making. It’s not a blanket shield, and Congress could still overcome it by showing the information is critical. But paired with an existing Supreme Court ruling limiting congressional subpoena power, legal experts say it hands the White House a much bigger toolbox for stonewalling investigators, and it could put company executives who’ve talked to Trump in an awkward legal bind of their own.
Democrats, for their part, already have a list of officials they want to question, from chief of staff Susie Wiles to deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller. One Democratic strategist said the whole approach is about tying corruption directly to the cost-of-living story, connecting self-enrichment and favoritism to the prices families are paying right now.
The White House has also installed a new counsel, Will Scharf, months earlier than past administrations typically made that switch, a sign this team isn’t planning to be caught flat-footed the way it was back in 2019.
The first congressional investigation in American history came in 1792, when the House demanded the papers on the St. Clair disaster and George Washington's own cabinet concluded he should hand over whatever the public interest allowed, which he did. Two hundred and thirty-four years later, the argument coming out of this White House is that even a president's private conversations with people who don't work for the government are none of Congress's business.
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