National Review is already describing a reckoning for the president’s party. A Minnesota Senate race is closer than expected, and Trump has publicly knocked three of his own Supreme Court justices.
Trouble in Minnesota
National Review’s midterm coverage this week used the language of a drop-off: familiar signs of trouble for the party in power, and a separate note that the president’s party should expect to get crushed in a midterm year. The same section flagged a tighter-than-expected Minnesota Senate race. The last three polls cited there between Democrat Peggy Flanagan and Republican Michele Tafoya were all close.
The fracture argument on the right is not only about those polls. Restraint writers at The American Conservative tied weak numbers to the Iran war, fuel prices, and the Epstein files, and argued that positions associated with Rep. Thomas Massie — less war, more transparency — now poll better than the White House line. One piece there said an Economist/YouGov survey found 51 percent backing Massie’s move to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the war. That is a single poll, not a trend line.
A Supreme letdown
Trump added a court fight of his own. He publicly expressed disappointment in Justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett over recent decisions. Coverage on the right treated that as a break with his own nominees, not as a change in the Court’s membership.
What is solid is the split in emphasis. Establishment conservative outlets are writing the standard midterm warning and pointing to a competitive Minnesota race. America First and restraint outlets are reading the same calendar as payback for the war and for prices. Trump’s criticism of three sitting justices is on the record. None of that is an election result.