There is a little something brewing that has me quite concerned as we head into the 2026 midterm election cycle.
If you read my reports regularly, you know I have been warning about how badly the party that has retaken the White House historically does during its first midterm election, and I want everyone to treat this as an urgent situation.
Indeed, reality just hit after the GOP lost its supermajority in Iowa’s state senate.
Donald Trump and Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) have been openly beefing for weeks.
This all started over the judicial blue slip tradition, which Grassley is determined to uphold.
Trump went after Grassley with personal insults and false claims, and for the first time I can recall, Grassley went after the president.
Grassley was very upset over the president's comments and openly called him out over the attacks.
I warned about this because I knew that Grassley was not going to cave to pressure, and he didn’t. In fact, I think he dug in deeper.
So, Trump went after him again, demanding that the blue slip practice of allowing a senatorial veto of judicial nominees be ended, even threatening a lawsuit to block its use.
Again, Grassley pushed back, even stating that he was trying to help Trump, because if a judiciary nominee did not have a blue slip, the nominee was likely to fail to get enough support to pass through the broader confirmation process.
The other problem with all of this is that Trump may be turning off voters who are very loyal to Grassley, not to mention his fellow Senate Republicans, all of whom have immense respect for the longtime lawmaker.
The last two seats in the Iowa state Senate have been flipped by Democrats, and yes, that is very concerning to me.
For the last three years, the GOP has enjoyed a supermajority in the state senate, but that just ended after Iowa Democrat Catelin Drey on Tuesday defeated Republican Christopher Prosch with 55% of the vote, a rather convincing win.
Democratic National Committee chair Ken Martin gloated, "Iowans are seeing Republicans for who they are: self-serving liars who will throw their constituents under the bus to rubber stamp Donald Trump’s disastrous agenda -- and they’re ready for change.”
I don’t want to be all gloom and doom over this, but this is a real problem if we are losing stronghold seats. I hope everyone is paying attention, including Donald Trump, as we'd better make a pivot if we expect to defeat history and hold the House in 2026.
