Trump News

Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), the former Democrat-turned-Trump loyalist, may finally be vulnerable. New Jersey Republican leadership is growing alarmed that Donald Trump's collapsing approval ratings could cost the party what was supposed to be a safe House seat for the party.

According to Politico's Matt Friedman, Van Drew has long been considered "untouchable" — but Trump's plummeting popularity, combined with sharp Democratic gains in special elections nationwide and an unpopular artificial intelligence data center in his district, is changing the political calculus.

"Even Van Drew's race is going to be competitive," said Chris Venis, a New Jersey Republican who just launched a super PAC called the National Policy Action Committee to boost Van Drew's reelection. "This year even R-leaning districts must be prepared."

The math shows how dire the situation has become. Van Drew's 2nd District in South Jersey voted for Trump in 2024 by almost 13 points — deep MAGA territory. Van Drew himself won by 17 points. For Democrats to flip such a district would require a "cataclysmic year for Republicans."

But 2026 may be shaping up to be exactly that, the report states. Special elections across the country are showing Democratic swings that match or exceed Van Drew's margin of victory. In Georgia's special election to replace Marjorie Taylor Greene in a deeply Republican district, Republican Clay Fuller beat Democrat Shawn Harris by just 12 points — a stunning 17-point swing toward Democrats from Greene's 2024 performance.

Meanwhile, New Jersey itself is trending Democratic. Gov. Mikie Sherrill won reelection in a landslide in 2025, and Trump lost the state to Kamala Harris by just 6 points — exceptionally close for heavily Democratic New Jersey.

Democrats are mobilizing aggressively. Four candidates — Tim Alexander, Zack Mullock, Terri Reese, and Bayly Winder — are competing in the district's June primary to challenge Van Drew.

Tim Alexander, who lost to Van Drew by 19 points in 2022, believes this cycle is fundamentally different.

"The situation we're in as a nation is significantly different in the concerns that people have with the management of our country and those who support the president like Van Drew," Alexander said.

Donald Trump's public tough-guy posturing on China masks a stunning capitulation to Beijing. When Pentagon officials presented a draft National Defense Strategy last fall that characterized China as the top U.S. security threat — the same assessment his own first administration endorsed — Trump ordered it rewritten in friendlier terms.

According to the Wall Street Journal's Heather Somerville, Alexander Ward, and Gavin Bade, Trump "balked" at the Pentagon assessment and commanded his deputy to soften the language. The revised National Defense Strategy published in January struck an entirely different tone.

"President Trump seeks a stable peace, fair trade, and respectful relations with China," the document now declares — a stunning reversal from the bipartisan consensus that characterized China as the most consequential U.S. adversary.

The shift represents a seismic policy reversal. Trump's own first-term defense strategy took the same hardline approach the Pentagon recommended. Now Trump 2.0 is discarding that bipartisan framework in favor of a new mantra: "Don't rock the boat."

The capitulation goes far deeper than rhetoric. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick has imposed a stranglehold on China policy, requiring his personal sign-off for any China-related actions. The result is Kafkaesque: senior Commerce officials sit waiting by Lutnick's office or watch for his car outside the building before pursuing routine China policy actions.

Other agencies have resorted to workarounds, pursuing a ban on a China-linked router maker by strategically avoiding naming either the company or China in the official order — essentially hiding policy from public view.

The reversal has alarmed Trump's own national security aides. China hawks in the administration have adopted gallows humor, calling the shift the "Busan Freeze," referencing the South Korea meeting between Trump and Xi that produced a fragile trade detente.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and other officials appealed to Trump to walk back tariffs and dial down the trade war so minerals could flow from China again — an apparent capitulation to economic pressure over strategic security.

The pivot was deliberate and premeditated. Trump initially asked national security advisers to develop a harder line on China's technological encroachment. But the president later abandoned the restrictions, and in April, Trump fired Douglas Feith and other China hawks from the National Security Council, dismantling the directorate that had coordinated administration actions on tech and China.

Against a president who fancies himself a master dealmaker, China is clearly winning, the Journal is reporting.