U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA) attends a press conference to unveil the official Trump Accounts website, at the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C., U.S., December 17, 2025. REUTERS/Aaron Schwartz
House and Senate Republicans are sounding the alarm that they're facing a massive uphill battle when it comes to getting their message out for the 2026 election year, according to a new report in Notus.
The timing couldn't be worse as millions of Americans brace to get hit with soaring health insurance premiums this month when COVID-era Affordable Care Act subsidies expire. Meanwhile, Capitol Hill is in complete gridlock, lawmakers are fleeing in droves, and morale is tanking fast. Instead of hyping up President Trump's policy wins, Republicans are tearing each other apart over health care and the Epstein files.
House Majority Leader Steve Scalise is desperately trying to get the troops motivated.
“We’ll be getting with our members to remind them,” he said, “there’s so many, like, just in the ‘Working Families Tax Cut,’ there’s so many things that are in that bill that you could talk about that nobody’s ever heard about.”
“Obviously, as we’re doing all these things, you got to go back home and talk about them,” Scalise added.
Rep. Kevin Hern, chair of the House Republican Policy Committee, acknowledged his party is falling short.
“We’ve had this discussion a couple of times now in leadership meetings about, how do we lead the story?” Hern asked.
Moderate Republicans are freaking out and calling out leadership over what they see as messaging failures. Rep. Kevin Kiley of California ripped their strategy and said the GOP reconciliation bill was "mishandled, sort of from the beginning."
"It should have been framed in a way that communicated what we were trying to do, which is to prevent a massive tax increase to provide targeted tax relief in a way that will stimulate economic growth and increase wages and purchasing power for American families," Kiley said.
Rep. Tim Burchett blasted the party's efforts: “The best friend the Democrats have right now is the Republicans’ messaging, because we do a terrible job of messaging,” Burchett told CNN’s Manu Raju in December.
Sen. Jim Justice warned: "If you’re not concerned then you’re living in a cave. We’re not good at our messaging a lot of times as Republicans. The Democrats are professionals at it.”