Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, a newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.
In today’s edition, we bring you the latest from across NBC News on immigration enforcement out of Minneapolis, Washington and beyond. Plus, Steve Kornacki joins us to preview the all-important battle for the House in the midterm elections, including what’s the same and what’s different from past election cycles.
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— Scott Bland
How the midterms are shaping up compared to previous years
Analysis by Steve Kornacki
The midterm political atmosphere hasn’t offered much encouragement to Republicans lately.
President Donald Trump’s approval rating remains at about the lowest level it has been during his second term. His party’s mid-decade redistricting push has been largely neutralized by a Democratic counteroffensive. Last November’s off-year elections turned into a rout for Democrats.
The most positive (or maybe least negative) indicator Republicans can point to right now: the generic congressional ballot. Here, on the question of which party voters would like to see control Congress after the next election, Democrats do enjoy a clear advantage — but one that’s smaller than you might expect given all of the other political conditions.
Per the RealClearPolitics average, Democrats’ 4.8-point edge isn’t nearly as wide as it was at the same point in 2018, when they posted a 40-seat gain and flipped the House in Trump’s first midterm. It’s much closer to the margin Republicans enjoyed at this point in 2022, when they scored a far more modest nine-seat gain and wrested back the House during President Joe Biden’s midterm.
That 2022 midterm is notable because Biden’s approval rating was just as low as Trump’s is now, and yet it didn’t translate into a wave for the opposition party. Republicans, obviously, hope a similar dynamic could play out this year.
One reason Democrats were able to prevent a GOP landslide in 2022 is that they managed to win independent voters by 2 points, 49% to 47% — a far cry from the historical midterm norm, in which independents usually break decisively from the party of an unpopular president.
The reason this happened in 2022 is still a matter of debate, but the numbers look different this time around: Last week’s New York Times/Siena College poll gave Democrats a 15-point lead among independents.
The other reason 2022 didn’t produce a 2018-like wave: The battlefield was smaller. As the Trump era has progressed, voters have continued to sort themselves and district lines have been aggressively redrawn by each party.
The trend has continued into this year. A total of 23 Republican House seats are in districts that Trump either lost in 2024 or carried by less than 7.5 points. That’s less than half the number of similarly imperiled seats Republicans held in 2018.
This is the solace Republicans can take for now. Even if Trump’s standing remains where it is, partisan sorting and gerrymandering should insulate them from the scale of loss they suffered eight years ago.
That having been said, their majority is tiny right now, and a net loss of three seats would cost them the House. If they want to prevent that from happening, Trump’s popularity can’t stay where it is.
⚠️ DEVELOPING: A Virginia court issued a ruling that, if it is upheld on appeal, would block state Democrats’ redistricting plan from moving forward this year. Read more →
The latest updates after Alex Pretti’s death
- Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz and White House border “czar” Tom Homan met today, and they “agreed on the need for an ongoing dialogue and will continue working toward those goals,” according to the governor’s office. Homan and Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey were also set to meet. Read more →
- A growing number of Republican senators are calling for an investigation into the killing of Alex Pretti in Minneapolis as many Trump administration officials defend federal officers’ actions. Read more →
- A person was shot in an incident involving U.S. Border Patrol in Arizona today, a Pima County sheriff’s spokesperson said. Read more →
- FBI Director Kash Patel said yesterday that he had opened an investigation into the Signal group text chats that Minnesota residents are using to share information about federal immigration agents’ movements. Read more →
- A man was released from immigration detention in Minnesota, his attorney said today, after a federal judge threatened to hold acting ICE Director Todd Lyons in contempt for flouting court orders related to the man’s case. Read more →
🗞️ Today's other top stories
- ⚕️ ACA update: Many Obamacare enrollees are switching to bronze plans with cheaper premiums, but high out-of-pocket costs could be dangerous if they need care later. Read more →
- 🔎 Political probes: Trump promised to end the “weaponization” of the Justice Department, but his administration’s Justice Department is investigating a growing number of his political adversaries, including one of his opponents in the 2024 election, the head of the Federal Reserve and a former cable TV critic. Read more →
- 🔵 Battle for the Senate: Army veteran Alex Vindman, a key witness during Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2019, is running for the Senate in Florida as a Democrat. Read more →
- ⚖️ In the courts: A federal judge dismissed a Justice Department lawsuit seeking Oregon’s unredacted voter rolls in a setback for the Trump administration’s effort to get detailed voter data from the states. Read more →
That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Scott Bland and Owen Auston-Babcock.
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