President Donald Trump's political operation is now pouring tens of millions of dollars into competitive House and Senate races, but Republican strategists and lawmakers say the cash may be arriving too late to make a difference.

Early and mail voting is underway in nearly half the country this week, and GOP officials say the next two weeks will determine how much of the damage can still be contained now that voter attitudes about the cost of living and the war have been hardening since Labor Day, reported Politico.

"If there's movement by the second week of October, we'll know we're in good shape," said Rep. Mike Lawler (R-NY), who is running in one of the tightest House races in the country. "Republicans always outperform their polling."

GOP strategists are waiting to see whether the late infusion of super PAC spending can offset weeks of eroding support tied to gas prices, which have climbed to a national average of $4.48 a gallon, and to fatigue with Trump's focus on matters far removed from household budgets.

One House Republican from a solidly Republican district, granted anonymity to speak candidly about internal party dynamics, said the financial advantage may not be enough to overcome the political headwinds facing the party.

"The bottom’s beginning to fall out," that GOP lawmaker said.

"We have money that we've never had before, but they have every strategic advantage in their direction, and the president's made it worse — nobody in my district cares about the Kennedy Center, arches or the Reflecting Pool, all this nonsense," the lawmaker added.

The spending is concentrated in states Republicans believe still offer a realistic path to holding their majorities, including Michigan and New Hampshire, while some GOP operatives are privately weighing pulling back resources from tougher terrain in Georgia and North Carolina, according to people familiar with the party's internal deliberations.

Republican officials say the money can still make a difference in races where the fight remains close, but only if it arrives in time to shift persuadable voters before they cast ballots – but with those already going out, the party's window to prove that its financial advantage can outweigh the political environment is narrowing by the day.

The coming two weeks, lawmakers and strategists say, will likely determine not whether Republicans lose seats in November, but how many.

Far-right activist Laura Loomer is leading a wing of the MAGA base in turning on Fox News, accusing the network of betraying President Donald Trump by joining a rare five-network boycott of White House television coverage.

"Fox News betrayed the President by joining the boycott," Loomer wrote on X, before predicting the network's hosts "will come groveling back to President Trump begging him to promote their crappy books on Truth Social."

She was reacting to an extraordinary show of media solidarity with Fox News, ABC, CBS, NBC and CNN all pulling their cameras from White House pool duty Monday after Trump banned CNN, MS NOW and Politico from the press corps. In a joint statement, the networks said no administration should punish an outlet over its reporting.

Loomer wasn't alone, with conservative radio host Todd Starnes fuming that there was "absolutely no difference between the newsrooms at Fox and CNN," and posts branding Fox a "Traitor Network" spread across the MAGA right.

The backlash exposed a deep fracture on the right, as some prominent conservatives aimed their fire at Trump rather thanFox.

The network's own Brit Hume warned that if Trump "thinks this will lead to more favorable coverage, I think he's dreaming." Conservative legal scholar Jonathan Turley, a frequent Trump defender, called the ban an "assault on long-honored principles of a free press." Former George W. Bush press secretary Ari Fleischer chimed in: "Don't ban them. Or one day they'll ban us."

Loomer, for her part, argued the episode proved a pattern of impunity. "There's never any consequences for any of these people," she wrote. "The worst people are always rewarded."

She traced the grudge to election night 2020, when Fox's early call of Arizona for Joe Biden enraged Trump and briefly ruptured his bond with his favorite channel. "We should have all learned our lesson with Fox News on election night, 2020," she wrote.

New York Times chief White House correspondent Peter Baker underscored the political sting of the blackout, posting on X that the boycott "will leave the most TV-addicted president in our history without major network cameras recording his every utterance and movement."

And New York Times media reporter Ben Mullin called the joint action almost unheard of in the modern era of press coverage.

"This kind of joint response from the major networks, combined with the suspension of the TV pool, is very unusual," he wrote online. "An extraordinary show of solidarity from the press."

President Donald Trump's presumed heir holds a commanding lead in early polling for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, but a growing lineup of Senate Republicans is already laying the groundwork to challenge him.

A Bowling Green State University/YouGov poll found 44 percent of Republican likely voters would back Vice President JD Vance for the nomination, but that hasn't stopped Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX), John Kennedy (R-LA) and Rick Scott (R-FL) or Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) from lining up their own campaigns, reported the Washington Post.

Vance's polling lead is more than double the 21 percent who prefer Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who has said he won't run and would support Vance instead. Cruz and Paul trailed far behind, at 3 percent and 1 percent respectively, but the poll didn't ask about the others.

The vice president's would-be rivals are making the kinds of moves — early-state visits, policy rollouts, pointed criticism of the administration — that typically precede a campaign launch, a sign that his path to the nomination may be far less clear than the numbers suggest.

"I think the Republican primary electorate's probably more with me than with the rest of them," Paul told MS NOW, adding that he would oppose tariffs, foreign military intervention and government stakes in private companies if he entered the race.

Cruz, who has criticized Vance's handling of Iran and his ties to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson, previewed the coming primary as a referendum on the party's identity.

"Are we a small-government, free-market conservative party, or are we a big-government nanny-state party?" Cruz said in an interview on the "Pod Force One" podcast, previewing what he called a "discussion" the party still needs to have about who succeeds Trump.

Massie, who lost his House primary in May to a Trump-backed challenger, has gone further, suggesting Vance and other administration officials have already undermined their own chances.

He cautioned against reading too much into current polling, pointing to how Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida rose in stature after the 2022 midterms only to fade before the 2024 race.

"Maybe we lose the majority, everybody's down on Trump, then he gets impeached three times and everybody likes him again," Massie said. "Who knows?"

Vance has moved to shore up support among skeptical factions of the party, including hawkish and Jewish Republicans uneasy about his association with Carlson, making appearances at the Republican Jewish Coalition summit and hosting a Shabbat dinner at the Naval Observatory.

Sen. Jim Banks (R-IN) has become the first sitting senator to formally endorse him.

The shape of the field is expected to come into sharper focus after November's midterm elections, which will test Trump's standing and, by extension, Vance's.