Travis Gettys

A Republican congressman who broke with President Donald Trump over the war in Iran says several GOP colleagues privately told him they supported his vote but did not feel free to join him.

Rep. Tom Barrett (R-MI), a freshman in a battleground district, told The Washington Sun that colleagues privately congratulated him soon after he voted to limit Trump's war powers in Iran.

"I had a number of conversations afterward with members who told me they agreed with or really respected my vote, but didn't feel like they could vote that way," Barrett said. "They were worried about, I think, political factors."

Barrett was among the first Republicans to oppose the president on the issue. Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick of Pennsylvania and Mariannette Miller-Meeks and Zach Nunn of Iowa later cast similar votes, and in June the president attacked all four lawmakers on Truth Social, calling them "bad Republicans" and "unpatriotic."

Barrett told the Sun that Trump's "team was very, very vocal" and disclosed that he met with the White House Counsel's office, where lawyers argued the conflict "wasn't war in the sense that the Constitution prescribes." Barrett, however, said he was not persuaded.

The 22-year Army veteran, who served in Afghanistan and at Guantánamo Bay, said his position came from his military experience, not political calculation.

"It sounds convenient now, however many months later, with the war in Iran being such an unpopular thing, but that was not the frame of mind that I was looking at," he said.

The political ground has since shifted as gas prices now average $4.43 a gallon, and Barrett said his opposition to the war has given him "a crack in the door" with voters angry about costs.

Barrett won his district by just under 4 points in 2024, while Trump carried it by about 1 point. A recent New York Times/Siena poll found Democrats leading the generic ballot in Michigan by 10 points, and Trump's approval rating in the state is about 36 percent.

The lawmaker has not fully separated himself from the president. He appeared with Trump during a July visit to his district and attended a Rose Garden dinner for battleground Republicans in September, although he skipped the party's midterm convention in Dallas.

"I think that we are a party that can handle, you know, differences of opinion," Barrett said.

Whether voters will see him as independent of Trump remains unclear.

"That's the big question of the cycle," said Republican pollster Robert Blizzard. "But the party and Trump are so synonymous that they may not be able to do it."

Barrett faces Democrat William Lawrence, a Sunrise Movement co-founder, on Nov. 3.

President Donald Trump's aides are preparing to shield senior White House officials from congressional investigations as concern grows inside the administration that Republicans could lose control of Congress.

Wired reported that the White House has begun to consider, for the first time, the possibility of losing both the House and the Senate as aides privately acknowledge that national polling for the president is dire.

"Oh, yeah, we're going to get creamed," a longtime Trumpworld operative told Wired. That same operative had predicted weeks before the 2024 election that Trump would carry every battleground state – which he did.

Trump's approval rating fell to 37 percent in a recent Wall Street Journal poll, the lowest rating for any president heading into a midterm since the survey began in 1990. Trump has told aides he believes Republicans can still beat expectations, in part because of internal polling that shows GOP candidates trailing by smaller margins in individual House races.

Even so, sources told Wired that Trump's team is increasingly focused on what could follow a Democratic takeover – a rapid wave of subpoenas aimed at the administration.

The White House's expected response rests on two legal protections – executive privilege, and attorney-client privilege covering conversations with government lawyers. The second could carry extra weight after the Supreme Court's 2024 immunity decision, which limited courts' ability to examine deliberations central to the presidency.

Trump has also placed several of his former personal lawyers in top government legal posts, creating overlapping layers of protection. Todd Blanche, who represented Trump personally during his criminal cases, is now attorney general. Stanley Woodward, the Justice Department's third-ranking official, was a Trump campaign lawyer and previously represented many of the president's aides. Will Scharf, Trump's former appellate lawyer, recently became White House counsel.

Aides hope the arrangement will slow Democratic investigations for years. They point to Trump's first term, when former White House counsel Don McGahn did not testify to Congress about the Robert Mueller investigation until after Trump left office.

White House spokesperson Davis Ingle said Trump "has created one of the most robust coalitions in political history with the MAGA movement" and that voters face a clear choice between the president's agenda and "the Democrats' extreme liberal policies and obstruction."

The Republican senator in charge of keeping the party's Senate majority acknowledged this week that one GOP incumbent is in a tighter race than expected in one of the country's most reliably red states.

Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who chairs the National Republican Senatorial Committee, told Semafor that Kansas has become "more competitive than I'd like to see it," although he still predicted that Sen. Roger Marshall would beat Democrat Adam Hamilton on Nov. 3.

"The fact of the matter is that we're going to win in Kansas," Scott said. "It'll be closer than I want it to be."

A Democratic win would break a long losing streak for the party in the state. Kansas has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 1932 and has not backed a Democratic presidential nominee since 1964.

A Wedgewood poll released last week showed Hamilton with 50 percent support to Marshall's 48 percent, a margin that suggests a close race. The Cook Political Report recently moved the contest from "likely Republican" to "lean Republican."

Democrats see Kansas as one of several red states they can contest this year. They point to Trump's low approval ratings and to voter frustration over rising fuel prices tied to the war in Iran. Picking up the seat would boost the party's chances of retaking the Senate.

Marshall has appeared to adjust his tone on immigration enforcement. After federal agents carried out operations in Kansas in September, including at meatpacking plants, the senator called for closer cooperation with local authorities.

"When ICE operates in Kansas, it needs to coordinate with our local law enforcement," Marshall wrote on X.

He has also faced scrutiny over reports that he sued more than 700 patients over unpaid medical bills during his career as an obstetrician-gynecologist.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer told Semafor he welcomes Trump campaigning in competitive states.

"When Trump travels, he hurts people," Schumer said. "When he comes to town, that itself helps us."

A Justice Department task force created to prosecute threats against election workers has apparently gone dormant under the Trump administration as federal prosecutors pursue a growing number of cases against noncitizens accused of voting illegally.

From 2021 to 2024, the department's election threats task force received more than 2,000 reports of threats, opened more than 100 investigations and prosecuted 21 cases, reported The Guardian. One defendant was Solomon Peña, a failed candidate for the New Mexico statehouse who organized shootings at the homes of election officials.

Nikki Fisher, the former chief election security officer for the Oregon secretary of state, said both Democrats and Republicans faced prosecution for harassing and threatening election workers. That work, she said, has since stopped.

"While officials are being trained to handle threats, the federal deterrent meant to punish the people making them appears to have gone quiet," Fisher said. "To date, no new cases have been prosecuted, and the DoJ's election threats task force appears to be defunct in practice."

When The Guardian asked about the task force's status, the Justice Department did not address it directly and instead pointed to nine press releases from the past five weeks announcing indictments of foreign nationals on election fraud and identity theft charges.

Attorney General Todd Blanche said Wednesday that the department has charged more than 90 people with voter-related fraud offenses, including 50 noncitizens in the last five weeks. He compared that with 13 such cases brought under the Biden administration.

"What we do at Department of Homeland Security is not controversial; we're enforcing our nation's laws," Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin said at the same event.

The shift comes after the administration dismantled several election security operations early in Trump's second term.

On her first day as attorney general, Pam Bondi eliminated the FBI's foreign influence task force, which investigated election meddling by China, Russia and other adversaries.

Staff at the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency who worked on foreign interference were fired or reassigned. A CISA program that helped local officials share information about threats lost its funding.

Former officials warn that the cuts leave local election offices exposed with the midterms weeks away.

"This administration … has dismantled the entire apparatus that is responsible for detecting and holding these bad actors accountable," said Caitlin Durkovich, a former deputy homeland security adviser on the National Security Council.

Geoff Hale, a former CISA director, said the loss of coordination means local agencies may be unable to spot threats that span multiple jurisdictions.

Some Republicans in competitive races are so wary of appearing with President Donald Trump that one GOP strategist joked his candidates would fake an illness if the president came to town, according to a new report.

Politico asked a Republican operative working on midterm races what would happen if the 80-year-old president campaigned in a battleground state where his candidates were running, and he joked that his candidate would probably fake illness to stay away from him.

"I suspect my candidates would come down with COVID," that operative said.

Candidates in close contests are worried that campaigning with Trump could alienate undecided voters who are frustrated by high gas prices, ongoing economic worries and the prolonged war in Iran. But keeping the president at a distance could make it harder to turn out low-propensity base voters, who have reliably shown up only for Trump.

"These guys are in a pickle," a national GOP operative told Politico. "They may not want Trump to come to the district, but there are still things that Trump can do to help."

Trump has stepped up his travel in the closing stretch before the Nov. 3 election, with stops planned in Ohio, Oklahoma, Alabama, Nebraska and Alaska. He has also repeatedly urged voters to "pretend" he is on the ballot.

Two people with direct knowledge of the matter said some Republicans have urged Trump's team not to send him to a blue-leaning district in Omaha, Nebraska, or to other key districts where his approval rating is underwater.

Brinker Harding is the GOP candidate for the Omaha seat being vacated by retiring Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE). His campaign did not respond when asked whether he would attend Trump's upcoming rally in Grand Island, about two hours away.

A senior Republican involved in a House battleground race said the president's team had repeatedly offered a visit, even though Trump comfortably won the district in 2024.

"They've called me four times now to see if we want him to come, and I've said no," the Republican said.

Outgoing Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) also said he did not think a Trump visit would help in North Carolina. Former RNC Chair Michael Whatley is struggling there to close the gap with former Gov. Roy Cooper in the Senate race.

"I don't think he's the one who's going to get them out," Tillis said of independent voters.

Whatley's campaign disagreed. "Who drives R turnout right now in NC — Trump or Tillis? We would welcome Trump back to NC," senior adviser Jonathan Felts said.

Trump's base may be a tough sell as well. In an August Politico poll, a 44 percent plurality of MAGA Trump voters said the Iran war had made things more expensive for them.

The White House pushed back, calling Trump the "unequivocal leader, best messenger, and unmatched motivator for the Republican Party." The Republican National Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee said their candidates are eager to campaign with the president.

The Federal Reserve's inspector general concluded Wednesday that the multibillion-dollar renovation of the central bank's headquarters did not violate federal law.

The project had been attacked by President Donald Trump and his allies, and it was the basis for a criminal investigation of former Fed Chair Jerome Powell, and the inspector general also reviewed Powell's June 2025 testimony to the Senate Banking Committee about the project and found no criminal wrongdoing, reported CBS News.

"At no point during our evaluation did we find reasonable grounds to believe that a violation of federal criminal law had occurred," the 121-page report said. Inspector General Michael Horowitz also wrote that his office "did not identify administrative misconduct."

Powell's congressional testimony had been the focus of grand jury subpoenas issued by Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, earlier this year. A federal court later quashed those subpoenas, finding they were a pretext to pressure Powell into cutting interest rates or resigning.

Pirro dropped the investigation in April, and she told CBS News on Wednesday that she would review the IG report.

Russell Vought, director of the Office of Management and Budget, had objected to features he called ostentatious, and Trump called the $2.5 billion price tag "disgraceful," but Horowitz found that the chair's private elevator, the extensive marble, a garden terrace and skylights "did not materially contribute to the construction cost increases."

The watchdog did find serious management failures, however. The Fed never got a construction cost estimate from its general contractor or told the contractor its budget limit at the outset. As of July, four years after construction began, the Fed still had not set a guaranteed maximum price, and the IG called the project's internal oversight "insufficient."

Fed officials pointed to inflation as the main cause of the rising costs. The IG agreed inflation played a part but found the overruns went beyond it. The project's estimated cost has grown from $1.9 billion to nearly $2.5 billion.

The inspector general made seven recommendations. Kevin Warsh, who succeeded Powell as Fed chair, told Horowitz on Tuesday that the General Services Administration will take over management of the project. He said the Fed will also run a full audit and seek reimbursement for any work it paid for but didn't receive.

Powell requested the review in July 2025. The renovation was approved in 2017 and is expected to be finished in 2027.

President Donald Trump insisted everything's fine as his poll numbers sink amid rising fuel costs associated with his ongoing war in Iran.

The 80-year-old president's disapproval rating matched his post-Jan. 6, 2021, high of 61 percent with the midterm elections just weeks away, but he posted Wednesday afternoon on Truth Social that voters just hadn't been informed about how good they had it.

"Our Nation is doing really well, in many ways, better than ever before, but the Public just doesn’t know how well we’re doing," Trump posted. "The Fake News Media refuses to disseminate our Record Setting Numbers, so I’m doing the best I can to do it myself!"

Trump signed off on the post with his own name, but the jotted-off message probably won't be enough to convince the growing share of voters who want to hand control of Congress back to Democrats.

With just 34 days left before the midterm elections, new polling shows Democrats lead their Republican rivals by an average of 9 points on the generic congressional ballot, and that number has been steadily rising all year.

Democrats have held a lead of at least 9 points in national congressional polling this late in the cycle 15 times since 1942, and they went on to win the House all 15 times.

Both parties remain unpopular – just 22 percent approve of how Democrats are handling their job in Congress, while 26 percent approve of Republicans – but more voters say Democrats would do a better job on all seven issues polled by Quinnipiac, including healthcare, the cost of living, immigration, corruption in government and artificial intelligence.

A Republican senator has filed a formal complaint asking Tennessee's attorney disciplinary board to investigate former special counsel Jack Smith and pursue his disbarment.

Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) sent a four-page letter dated Wednesday to R. Culver Schmid, chairman of the Board of Professional Responsibility of the Supreme Court of Tennessee, accusing Smith of "serious misconduct" when he obtained senators' phone records during his investigation of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

Hagerty wrote that Smith subpoenaed Verizon for non-content records of calls made by Hagerty and other sitting senators. Along with the subpoena came a nondisclosure order barring Verizon from telling anyone about it, including the senators themselves. Chief U.S. District Judge James Boasberg of Washington, D.C., issued the order.

The GOP senator argues that Smith's request to the judge left out the fact that the records belonged to members of Congress. He says it also left out the Constitution's Speech or Debate Clause and a federal law that allows Senate service providers to notify the Senate of legal demands for its data.

As a result, Hagerty wrote, he never had a chance to challenge the subpoena, and he also claimed the order was "apparently also written by Smith, and rubber-stamped by the judge."

"Smith's actions have set a precedent that a legislator should think twice before answering the phone," Hagerty wrote.

The senator alleges that Smith violated rules requiring lawyers to be candid with courts in one-sided proceedings and he asked the board to seek "the most serious remedy possible — disbarment." He cited Smith's "lack of remorse" and a "chilling effect on legislative communications."

The letter says that when senators questioned Smith before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday, he stated that "we submitted these nondisclosure orders consistent with the law and department policy."

Smith holds a Tennessee law license, worked as a federal prosecutor in Nashville and served as acting U.S. attorney for the Middle District of Tennessee in 2017.

A disciplinary ruling in Tennessee could matter beyond the state. Courts in other jurisdictions and federal courts where a lawyer is licensed typically consider imposing matching discipline, known as reciprocal discipline, when a lawyer is sanctioned elsewhere.

Hagerty indicated in a social media post sharing the complaint that Verizon would be "next up" for scrutiny.

A glaring mistake in President Donald Trump's agreement on "super intelligence" signed with tech leaders astonished onlookers.

The president reached an accord Tuesday laying out standards for regulations and other safeguards on artificial technology, but Trump's signature was applied above text identifying him as “President of the Unites States.”

The agreement accompanied an executive order by Trump declaring that “artificial intelligence” should be referred to as “super intelligence,” which he had said he would do during a speech last week before the United Nations General Assembly.

However, critics couldn't get over the gaffe underneath the president's signature.

"The non-binding document on super intelligence says Trump is president of the 'Unites' States," reported Bloomberg's Erik Wasson.

"'Super intelligence' but then misspelling the name of one's own country...," observed historian Matthäus Wehowski.

"Super Spelling," groaned Marek Magierowski, former Polish ambassador to the U.S.

"The clown car that wants to use AI to run the world is unable to use spellcheck," muttered historian Judith Flanders.

"I remember covfefe, so I'm excited for all the sidekicks to humiliate themselves on an international scale by telling us that this was on purpose and that their C--- in chief Unites the States," sneered writer JM Seaborn.

" White House reposting their Unites Stares typo. Beautiful lol," snarked attorney Hailey Lennon.

"Copy editors are important," noted public relations specialist Kate Bennett.

"Alright — I love the Trump administration more than my own children, but even I can admit that it’s lazy not to fix the 'Unites States' typo after half a day," deadpanned satirical account Dr. Hank Desmond. "And again — I love the Trump administration more than my own children. Well, seven of them."

"If only they'd used spellcheck... If only a human had checked it before publishing," sighed journalist Jarrod Watt. "If only they had a sub-editor."

“'President of the Unites States' is the second most pathetic feature of this artifact," opined writer Dave Troy. "The bootlicking and illegality, it hurts."

"If you can’t spell “UniteD States,” maybe you shouldn’t be president," suggested the Bad Fox Graphics account.

"'White House' and 'Super Intelligence' go together like oil and water," quipped the Governor Hochul Press Office.

"Between misspelling 'United States' here and the debacle with Sen Schmitt yesterday, it’s been a bad week for DC GOP staffers," pointed out communications specialist Jackson Peel.

Republicans see governor's race in a western swing state as a warning light for the whole party.

Politico Playbook reported Wednesday that some Republicans said a loss by Gov. Joe Lombardo in Nevada would probably mean the GOP has lost "pretty much everywhere else."

Lombardo is running for a second term against Democratic Attorney General Aaron Ford, and polling has mostly shown the race anywhere from tied to slightly in the Republican's favor. Nevada Democrats privately concede that the Republican incumbent has kept a political identity separate from President Donald Trump.

Democrats see a chance to win anyway, and the party's possible 2028 presidential candidates are pouring in money and time. Playbook reported that they have given or raised more than $1 million to help Ford, much of it over the past month:

• Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker gave $400,000 to a PAC affiliated with the Democratic Governors Association.
• Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear's PAC donated $250,000.
• California Gov. Gavin Newsom raised more than $160,000.
• Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro pledged to raise $100,000.
• Maryland Gov. Wes Moore campaigned in Las Vegas last weekend.

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, former Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and others are expected in the state in the coming weeks. Former Vice President Kamala Harris will host a Ford fundraiser next week.

"We're talking about states that we weren't 18 months ago," said Democratic consultant Emmy Ruiz, a former Biden White House political director. But "Nevada is an incredibly difficult state that you have to fight for."

Nevada votes second in the Democrats' presidential nominating calendar and will be a key battleground in 2028.

Ford has had damaging headlines of his own. He sponsored a pardon board application for a man convicted of killing a pregnant woman, though he has said he would have voted against clemency.

The Trump administration appears to have changed its new artificial intelligence chatbot so that it no longer corrects the president's false claims, according to a new fact check.

President Donald Trump launched the America.gov chatbot Tuesday and touted it as "damn good," but CNN's Daniel Dale reported soon after that the tool was contradicting many of the president's claims about elections, the economy, immigration and foreign affairs with answers based on official federal information.

On Wednesday, Dale said on social media that the chatbot had stopped answering such questions.

"The Trump administration appears to have changed its AI chatbot so that it no longer debunks Trump lies," Dale wrote.

He said the tool had stated on Tuesday that Joe Biden won the 2020 election and that there was no sign of widespread fraud. By Wednesday, the chatbot said it couldn't answer those questions.

The same thing happened with inflation, Dale said. On Tuesday, the chatbot said it wasn't true that Trump had inherited the worst inflation in history, noting that 12-month inflation was 3 percent when he took office in January 2025. On Wednesday, the bot said it couldn't answer that question either.

"It's the same for numerous other topics," Dale wrote. "Notably, its accurate answers yesterday relied on official federal information."

Dale's original fact check listed other corrections the chatbot made on Tuesday:

• 2020 election: It cited the certified result, Biden 306 electoral votes to Trump's 232.
• Grocery prices: It said grocery prices have not fallen since January 2025.
• Investment: It said official data do not support Trump's claim of $21 trillion in investment.
• South Korea: It said South Korea did not stop paying its share of the cost of U.S. troops under Biden.
• Presidential salary: It noted that Herbert Hoover and John F. Kennedy also declined their presidential pay.

Asked about the corrections, the White House said in an unsigned email that America.gov "will continue to be updated to provide more features, resources, and the most accurate information from the federal government."

Republicans have bet big on a reliable playbook in the final weeks of the midterms, smearing Democrats as soft on crime – but they're running into a major problem.

According to The New York Times, the GOP has spent $105 million on crime-themed ads in federal general election races. That's more than a quarter of its total ad spending, and about three times the $35.5 million Democrats have spent on the issue, according to the media tracking firm AdImpact.

But one analysis found that the national murder rate last year was the lowest since 1900, and violent crime has kept dropping this year, and even veteran Republicans concede the message isn't landing.

"This is the first election really in my lifetime where I have felt that it's not an issue," said Holly Harris, a longtime GOP strategist who now works at the criminal justice philanthropy Arnold Ventures. "I remember when I was at the Republican Party years ago, every ad that we wrote was focused on crime, and it's just not hitting the same mark."

Republicans have spent $18.5 million in North Carolina on ads about murder and lawlessness to attack former Gov. Roy Cooper, the Democratic Senate candidate, but several of the ads have backfired.

One blamed Cooper for a killing that happened in South Carolina, while another falsely claimed he gave an early release to the man charged with fatally stabbing a Ukrainian woman on a Charlotte light rail train.

A third featured a man whose son was murdered that implied Cooper's policies were responsible, but the father, a Democrat, later complained he had been “swindled, hoodwinked” about the ad's topic, which he had been told was about gun violence.

Cooper still leads Republican Michael Whatley consistently in the polls.

Violent crime in North Carolina is down 22 percent so far this year compared with 2024, according to the Crime Index. The national drop is 14 percent.

"It really does not seem to be having much traction at this point," said Mitch Kokai, a senior political analyst at the conservative John Locke Foundation.

President Donald Trump has struggled with the same contradiction, including an appearance at a recent rally in Gastonia, where he blamed Cooper for North Carolina's "blood-soaked killing fields." Within half an hour, he was praising his own record: "Last year, we achieved the largest drop in violent crime ever recorded."

Democrats have gone on offense by pointing to the Jeffrey Epstein scandal and to Trump's pardons of drug traffickers, fraudsters and Jan. 6 rioters.

In North Carolina, a Democratic PAC spent more than $2 million on ads about a convicted child sex offender who rose through the state GOP while Whatley was party chairman, although his campaign said he never hired the man for a paid position.

"Especially when voters feel that they're getting robbed at the gas station every day," soft-on-crime attacks seem out of step with voters' concerns, said Jim Kessler of the centrist Democratic group Third Way.

Democrats' advantage in national congressional polling has climbed to its highest point of the 2026 cycle, and CNN's Harry Enten says history suggests Republicans should be alarmed.

With just 34 days left before the midterm elections, the network's chief data analayst said Democrats now lead by an average of 9 points on the generic congressional ballot, which asks voters which party they plan to support for Congress.

"The Democratic wave ain't going away," Enten said. "If anything it seems to be building at this particular moment."

Democrats have steadily climbed in public support, leading by 3 points a year ago, 5 points six months ago and 7 points a month ago. Because the figure is an average of many polls rather than a single survey, Enten said, the trend is clearly moving in Democrats' favor.

The current margin is the party's largest at this stage of a campaign since 2008, when Democrats won their biggest House and Senate majorities of the century so far.

"When you see the Democrats ahead by 9, sirens should be going off at any of the National Republican Senatorial Committee or Congressional Committee headquarters," Enten said. "These are numbers that Democrats should be salivating over and should strike real fear into Republicans nationwide."

Since 1942, he said, Democrats have held a lead of at least 9 points in national congressional polling this late in the cycle 15 times, and they went on to win the House all 15 times.

"That is really, really good news for Democrats because it means that at least historically speaking, they are on their way to at least a House majority, maybe a Senate majority," he said. "I believe that that is 100 percent of the time."

However, he cautioned that this year could still break the pattern.

"Look, 2026 may be different, but based upon history, you really have to like where you are," Enten said. "You're definitely in the catbird seat if you are a Democrat running for Congress or want Democrats to win."

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Not long ago, caravans of pickup trucks flying Trump flags rolled through the Rio Grande Valley. Those "Trump trains" are gone now – and so is much of the Hispanic support that helped Republicans make history in the region two years ago.

In 2024, Hispanic voters in the valley gave the GOP majority support for the first time in modern history. According to more than two dozen interviews by The New York Times, many of those voters are now furious over President Donald Trump's immigration crackdown and an economy they say has only gotten worse.

Luis Cabrera, a pastor who chairs the faith initiative committee of the Cameron County GOP, said he spent years urging working-class Hispanic voters to back Republicans, but he told the Times that he now tells national GOP figures the party is losing its new converts.

"So many people, for the first time ever, shifted parties to vote for you," Cabrera said. "They are baby Republicans — they just came to the party — and if you don't take care of what you promised people, they're going to turn on you."

Jessica Cantu Vuittonet, a San Benito coffee shop owner, cast her first-ever ballot for Trump and cheered on the Trump trains. She said she expected deportations to target "true hardcore criminals," but then her brother was detained earlier this year, days after a scheduled check-in with immigration officials.

"They betrayed me, they turned their backs on us," Vuittonet said. She doesn't plan to vote this year.

The crackdown has also hit the region's construction industry, which has relied on immigrant labor for decades.

McAllen builder Ariel Salinas said workers began disappearing once ICE agents started showing up at job sites, and builders now put fences around developments to protect their crews, and demand was so high that it caused a fence shortage this summer.

"Now you put the fence up because ICE is stealing the workers," Salinas said. "My circle, my family, we feel betrayed by this."

Not every Trump voter has soured. Jerry Hernandez, 60, said people who haven't broken the law "have nothing to be afraid of."

Recent polls show Democrats leading Republicans among likely Hispanic voters by about 35 percentage points on the generic congressional ballot.

Texas Republicans redrew several House districts last year assuming the Hispanic shift would last, but GOP candidates now face uphill races in the 15th, 28th and 34th districts, even though Trump won those areas by double digits.

The trend could also help Democrat James Talarico in his Senate race against Republican Ken Paxton.

Vice President JD Vance is traveling to the region Wednesday to rally voters, but it may already be too late to turn things around.

“At this point with the way things went, it’s hard to trust now — that has been broken,” Vuittonet said. “We see that red and blue are just two colors. They’re both after the same thing and don’t care about people here.”

CNN panelists piled on to a conservative commentator who defended a Republican senator's failed ambush of former special counsel Jack Smith.

Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-MO) attempted to link Smith to a conspiracy to take down Donald Trump with a Georgia prosecutor by placing him at an Atlanta Hawks game in February 2024, but that scheme immediately fell apart when it came to light he had actually been at an Iowa Hawkeyes women's basketball game at the University of Maryland.

"I mean, I would guess that a white man basketball fan is a fan of Caitlin Clark," said "CNN This Morning" host Audie Cornish. "I don't think that's such a stretch. But that's not an apology, and if you step on a rake, own it."

Anti-trans activist Terry Schilling praised Schmitt for handling his flop with good humor, but he argued that Smith had been spying on Joe Biden's political enemies, and Cornish asked why Republicans were unable to provide evidence of wrongdoing.

"This is the thing that people are struggling with, are you not able to criminally charge Jack Smith because you do not have facts to support it and the ones that you are using are not true?" Cornish said.

Schilling argued the hearing had accomplished Republicans' goal of gathering new information, and both Cornish and Democratic strategist Antjuan Seawright asked what had been revealed.

"What's one thing you didn't know yesterday that you know now?" Cornish asked.

Schilling said he was surprised by how many lawmakers had their phone records subpoenaed as Smith investigated Trump's effort to overturn his 2020 election loss, and Seawright said no evidence of a crime has been uncovered.

"If Jack Smith had done something wrong, Donald Trump's DOJ or FBI or whoever would have fully prosecuted him," Seawright said.

Schilling was dubious and asked who was the Jack Smith of the Trump administration, and Cornish pointed out all the indictments and attempted prosecutions the Department of Justice has brought against the president's enemies in his second term.

"Terry, you're not being serious," Seawright said.

Schilling pointed out that Trump campaigned in 2016 on "lock her up" – meaning his Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton – but argued that he had actually not targeted her or other foes with prosecution, and Seawright again pounced.

"Terry, you're being unserious this morning," Seawright said. "All I'm saying to you is, in this iteration of Trump, if Jack Smith did anything close to being wrong, they would have taken him to the coals by now."

Schilling disagreed, saying that Trump has angered his base by failing to take action against his enemies.

"Okay, so why hasn't Trump taken any action on the autopen?" Schilling said. "Look, this is one of the criticisms of the Trump administration by the base, because there haven't been the prosecutions that they all expected."

Seawright argued the president cannot prosecute Biden for using the autopen because he does so himself, and Schilling agreed that had set a bad precedent.

"You don't even make sense what you're saying, Terry," Seawright said.

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