The next few installments of Congressional Cowards—a weekly
series highlighting the worst Donald Trump defenders on Capitol
Hill—will focus on the midterm elections as Republicans grow
desperate and despondent about their odds of maintaining their
congressional majorities.
The midterm elections are just two days away, and by all measures Republicans are set to have a terrible night—with their control of the House gone and their Senate majority hanging on by a thread.
After all is said and done, there will unquestionably be a lot of finger-pointing as Republicans fight over who’s to blame for the mess they are soon going to find themselves in.
But ultimately what they should be doing is looking in the mirror, as it’s their own cowardice and refusal to stand up to President Donald Trump that’s to blame for why they will find themselves out of power when the new Congress is sworn in.
Indeed, this installment of Congressional Cowards—the final one before the midterms take place—is a look down memory lane at how Republicans caved to Trump at every turn over the past two years, paving the way for their own electoral demise.
Let’s roll the tape, shall we?
Republicans cheered Trump’s cruel mass deportation agenda, giving his Immigration and Customs Enforcement goons a de facto blank check and carte blanche to round up and deport anyone who merely looked Hispanic. They continued defending the conduct of Trump’s immigration goons even after they began killing Americans who dared to stand up to agents’ behavior.
Indeed, Trump’s deportation actions were so draconian and evil that it turned immigration from an issue that benefitted Republicans at the ballot box to a massive liability. It caused Hispanic voters to turn away from the GOP and erased any gains the party made with the critical voting bloc in 2024—a shift that is imperiling Republicans in states like Texas and Florida, where Republicans could lose races they have no business losing based on 2024’s results.
Meanwhile, for virtually all of 2025, Republicans ran cover for Trump on the Epstein files, blocking efforts to force the release of the government’s documents on the now-deceased pedophile because Trump didn’t want them to see the light of day (for good reason).
Ultimately, Republicans did vote to require Trump to release the files—but only when one of their own lawmakers successfully maneuvered a bill to the floor that forced their hand.
Their work to shield Trump from having to release the Epstein files has been a major line of attack from Democrats both on the campaign trail and in attack ads. And voters are bringing it up as they heckle Trump at his rallies over the last few weeks in otherwise deep red areas—showing that too has been a drag on their midterm chances.
Meanwhile, Republicans abandoned their GOP’s long-held trade positions to allow Trump to levy idiotic tariffs on our own allies and largest trading partners. Those tariffs hit the rural communities that backed Trump by large margins especially hard, as countries like China refused to buy crops from American producers.
What’s more, the tariffs raised input costs on everything from fertilizer to farming equipment, hurting farmers so badly that farm bankruptcies are spiking under the Trump-induced economic pressure.
It’s why Republicans are now struggling in agricultural heavy states like Kansas, Iowa, Ohio, Texas, and South Carolina—states the GOP has no business losing but very well could on Tuesday night.
But of all the GOP’s actions, it was their rolling over to allow Trump to wage war in Iran without congressional approval that was the nail in their proverbial coffin this election cycle.
Republicans let Trump launch attacks on Iran without justifying his plan to Congress, letting Trump entangle the U.S. in yet another foreign conflict despite a pledge not to start new forever wars. And then, once it became clear the war was damaging the global economy as well as the United States’ standing in the world, they still refused to stop him.
Eight months later, Americans are not any safer than they were before the war began, and instead are now paying a steep economic price for Trump’s bloodlust and ineptitude.
Only a handful of Republicans ever broke with their party to vote for a war powers resolution—and by then it was too late. They were already on record defending the war, which has spiked gas prices and the cost of living here at home, so angering the GOP base that many of their voters may just stay home or even defect and vote for Democrats.
Ultimately, when this midterm election cycle started, all Republicans had to do was keep the economy humming along and I’d probably be sitting here writing today that the GOP was likely going to keep its House majority and that the Senate was never in reach for team blue.
Instead, Republicans are now staring down a cresting tsunami that will sweep them out of power and cause Trump and the GOP headaches for the next two years.
