The Briefing, Vol. XIV, Issue 6
Feb. 9, 2026
This week:
- MAGA still dominates the GOP, and immigration is still Trump’s best issue
- With Trump backing his challenger, Cassidy may be doomed
- Talarico’s slur against Allred could cost him
Outlook
There has been a great deal of left-wing concern-trolling about MAGA voters supposedly regretting their votes for President Trump.
Is it true? In a word, no. As CNN’s Harry Enten pointed out on air last week, the share of Republicans who view Trump’s movement favorably was 74 percent at this point two years ago. At that time, it was already evident that there would be no serious competition for the 2024 nomination. This was also an inflection point in the vast lawfare campaign Trump was facing at the time — including potentially at least four criminal and two civil trials, all intended (and no, it was clearly not coincidence) to overwhelm him and prevent him from running a campaign.
Today, the MAGA movement’s favorability within the Republican Party has actually improved since then to 78 percent. Not only that, but Trump’s heir apparent, Vice President JD Vance (R), has seen his stature improve, from 81 percent favorable to 84 percent.
This all suggests that Trump’s grip on the Republican Party isn’t going anywhere. So the MAGA base is largely satisfied — the question for Trump is the broader electorate, of which MAGA is a majority of the national Republican minority.
Immigration: One concern for Trump has been that two recent shootings of anti-ICE street vigilantes by immigration enforcement would dim public support for what has been his best issue from day one of his involvement in political life.
First of all, there hasn’t been much work directly exploring the public’s perception of what will likely prove Trump’s greatest accomplishment when historians look back — his imposing total operational control at the Southern border. Not only is this completely unprecedented in U.S. political history, but it is also something everyone insisted was impossible, right up until it was accomplished. Trump will aggressively take credit for this at the State of the Union address Feb. 24, if his speechwriters have any sense at all.
Meanwhile, as recent surveys have shown, public support for mass deportations remains strong, thanks in large part to the border chaos that dominated the news in the Biden era.
In a recent AP poll, for example, 82 percent support “deporting all immigrants living in the United States illegally who have been convicted of a violent crime.” Sixty-eight percent also support deporting all immigrants legally living in the U.S. if they are convicted of a violent crime.
This AP poll showed that a smaller plurality (43 to 37 percent) supports deporting all illegal immigrants, full stop. But another, by Ipsos/Axios, showed 66 percent support for the same proposition.
A separate survey by the Wall Street Journal showed 74 percent supported deporting all immigrants convicted of any crime (drunk driving, for example), not just a violent one.
Indeed, Trump will use his upcoming State of the Union address this month to highlight how these policies, in conjunction with a surge of federal law enforcement to enforce other federal laws, are driving crime rates to historic lows.
Republican hopes in 2026: What, then, to make of recent special elections where Republicans have woefully underperformed, and polls showing Trump flailing, even doing worse than former President Joe Biden?
This is part of politics. The voting public is fickle. It likes to elect presidents and then take away their majorities. The task of building a permanent majority in modern America is Sisyphean — a mirage that can never be attained. On the day your party wins its biggest victory, you need to remember that a corresponding defeat is in your future — and vice-versa. Things are never as good or as bad as they seem.
The only thing Trump and the Republicans can do over the next eight months is to govern well and hope for a bit of luck. If they preside over maximum economic growth and minimum unemployment, raise money effectively and then spend it disseminating effective campaign messages, they will be able to mitigate the anticipated election losses. Using similar tactics, and a bit of trickery with gasoline reserves, Biden and his Democrats managed to stem their losses to some extent in 2022. (They still lost their House majority anyway.) This is all the more reason for Trump to stick to his guns on issues like immigration, even as Congress heads toward a partial government shutdown over it on Feb. 13 — not to be completely inflexible, but rather to keep enforcing the law to the maximum extent possible.
But things never look good for a president’s party in a midterm year, even if they have good employment and economic data to show voters — as Trump did in 2018, frankly, and even that didn’t save his majorities.
Senate 2026
Kentucky: Perhaps all is not well with the favorite for the Republican nomination, former Attorney General Daniel Cameron (R). The staunchly conservative protege of retiring Sen. Mitch McConnell (R) trails Rep. Andy Barr (R-Ky.) in a new poll from Emerson College that was released last week. Businessman Nate Morris took a respectably close third place with 14 percent support. Nor is this the only recent poll giving Barr a narrow lead.
On the Democratic side, the Emerson survey has left-wing progressive former state Sen. Charles Booker (D) leading veteran and frequent unsuccessful candidate Amy McGrath (D), 30 to 19 percent.
Primary day is May 19, and there are no runoffs — it will be a strictly first-past-the-post winner-take-all primary.
President Trump has a 53 percent approval rating in the Emerson survey, but Gov. Andy Beshear (D) has a 52 percent approval rating — a reminder that Kentucky still has many trappings of a Democratic state, not unlike Louisiana.
Louisiana: President Trump’s involvement and endorsement in this primary seems to be making all the difference. Incumbent Sen. Bill Cassidy (R) suddenly trails Rep. Julia Letlow (R) in the latest survey. In the state’s new closed party primary, which will take place May 16, Letlow leads Cassidy, 27 to 21 percent. In a hypothetical June 27 runoff between the two, Letlow tops Cassidy with 57 percent.
Cassidy aroused Trump’s ire when he voted to convic in his second impeachment.
Texas: Could Rep. Wesley Hunt (R) make the Republican primary runoff for Senate, to the exclusion of incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R)? This scenario may be the only one in which Republicans avoid nominating Attorney General Ken Paxton (R)
A new survey from Cygnal has Hunt in a dead heat with Paxton at about 25 percent, with Cornyn just a few points behind. The result is credible if only because Hunt now finds himself the object of negative campaign spending by both of his competitors.
Although he won re-election to his current office by ten points in 2022, Paxton’s ever-growing collection of baggage (including not only an affair and a securities fraud indictment but also now a divorce) worries Republicans with respect to how he would perform in another statewide general election.
Another new poll from the University of Houston, instead points, like others, to a Paxton-Cornyn runoff. One thing to beware of — this poll was taken over twelve days at the end of January, a very unusual methodology.
All polls agree that neither Hunt, nor Paxton, nor Cornyn can reach 50 percent in the first round of voting next month. But Cornyn appears uniquely unable to reach 50 percent in any runoff. If Hunt and Paxton advance to the May runoff, Hunt would have a fighting chance of defeating Paxton for the nomination. That is probably not true of Cornyn.
It should be added here that if Cornyn were to advance to the runoff and then be appointed quickly enough to the federal bench by President Trump, he could withdraw. That would also result in a Paxton-Hunt runoff.
Meanwhile, the Democratic side of this race is getting far more interesting. Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D) is making her move against state Rep. James Talarico (D), attempting to weaponize race to determine the nomination. Talarico has been credibly accused of calling the more moderate former Rep. Colin Allred (D) (a failed former U.S. Senate candidate, now running for U.S. House again) a “mediocre Black man.”
Allred has responded to the controversy by going nuclear and endorsing Crockett. This reveals some fissures in Texas Democratic politics under the surface that perhaps had not been evident previously.
The University of Houston poll referenced above shows Crockett leading Talarico, 47 to 39 percent. Talarico might have a chance against Paxton, at least. A Crockett nomination, on the other hand, would probably put this seat out of reach for Democrats, if they ever had a shot at it in the first place.
