Aug. 6, 2026, 4:03 a.m. ET
Donald Trump is unpopular. Just 39% of Americans have a favorable view of the president a year and a half into his second term.
Worse yet, Republicans are poised to lose big in the November midterm elections. Trump seems more interested in fighting with Senate leadership than in helping Republicans hold their majorities, and that fight is leaving some in his own party open to moving away from him.
Trump still has a strong grip on the Republican voter base, but the party needs a plan for what happens after he leaves office in 2028. There’s no better time to start building it than heading into a likely November beatdown.
Republican lawmakers are starting to question Trump
In early August, an anonymous Republican senator told The Hill that some of his colleagues increasingly see Trump as a liability. Trump’s low popularity, combined with how energized he’s made Democratic voters, threatens to seriously hurt Republicans in the midterms.
Republican Senate candidates are even or trailing in the polls in a number of states Trump won in 2024, including Alaska, Iowa, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas.
Even Nebraska, which Trump won by nearly 20 points, is shaping up to be a dead heat between incumbent Sen. Pete Ricketts and independent challenger Dan Osborn.
Other elected Republicans have seen this coming for a while.
“He’d be the outlier if it didn’t happen,” Sen. Kevin Cramer told The New York Times last November, referring to the near-certainty that a president’s party loses ground at midterms. “The closer you get to the midterms and then beyond, everybody is measuring their own state or congressional district, and maybe people are a little more independent.”
The public conflict between Trump and Senate Majority Leader John Thune is also eroding trust in Trump’s political instincts. The president has repeatedly and publicly pushed the Senate to pass the SAVE America Act, his proposed package of election security measures. The Senate hasn’t been able to reach the 60-vote threshold needed to overcome the filibuster, and the president has aimed his anger at Senate Republicans.
“John Thune should not allow the United States Senate to ‘leave town’ until it passes The Save America Act or, far better still, TERMINATES THE FILIBUSTER,” Trump posted to Truth Social on July 27.
Trump is also insisting the Senate use the budget process to bypass the filibuster and pass much of his agenda by a simple majority. That agenda would include the SAVE America Act and funding for the Iran war, a controversial issue many lawmakers would rather avoid.
“I’m not sure that a late-night vote-a-rama with a lot of political hot buttons is what a lot of members who are up this year are really looking forward to,” said Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. “So, I question the political wisdom as well.”
Trump is looking more and more likely to be a lame duck after the midterms. And given how unlikely Congress is to pass any of his remaining legislative priorities, he may already be one in practice.
GOP voters approve of Trump – for now
Some Senate Republicans are starting to imagine a world after Trump, but so far the only ones willing to say so publicly are those already on their way out, such as Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina.
Trump’s favorability among Republican voters, though declining, remains high at 81%. Nearly half of Republicans say they’d back an unconstitutional third Trump term.
Clearly, Republican voters still hold him in very high esteem, and his endorsement still carries enormous weight in primary races – which means elected Republicans have every reason to stay cautious about crossing him.
However, as 2028 approaches, Republicans need to imagine a world beyond Trump. The toughest part of that process is redirecting the political winds that elevated him in the first place, behind a different kind of candidate and a new style of Republican Party.
The more Trump hurts Republican electoral chances in 2026 and beyond, the easier time establishment Republicans will have moving away from Trumpism. History suggests as much: The only noticeable dip in Trump’s approval among Republicans came after the disastrous 2022 midterms, when his poor endorsements turned what was supposed to be a red wave into a much weaker performance.
Elected Republicans need to seriously weigh whether staying beholden to Trump is worth losing elections over. Primary voters may have no problem backing weaker general election candidates, but Republicans in office need to recognize when it’s time to break. They won’t get a better opening this term than the upcoming midterms.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.
