Are Republicans Growing a Little Uneasy About the ICE Raids?
JD Vance’s careful remarks, polls, and conversations with voters all indicate some skepticism. I recently returned from Louisiana, where I consumed an excessive amount of beignets while chatting with Republican voters about the state’s wild Senate primary contest. (Above, more about that race.) One thing that struck me as I talked to voters in the Baton Rouge area was that even in Louisiana, which is very conservative, there were hints of discontent with the immigration crackdown implemented by the Trump administration.
Wayles Bradley, 69, said, “He thinks he’s picking up criminals, but he’s picking up too many U.S. citizens, as far as I’m concerned.” He said he had voted for President Trump but didn’t think of himself as “far right.” A man who went by the name “Craig T.”, 61, said, “I wasn’t excited about the fact that the previous administration let so many people in illegally, and that was a very big concern of mine,” and he described himself as a “die-hard Republican.” However, he went on to say that “it just seems like we’ve kind of gone 180 degrees in the opposite direction.”
I was fine with that, but there just seems to be a lot of — maybe a little bit of — overreach. Turns out, that sentiment is not merely anecdotal. A new poll from The New York Times and Siena University found that 61 percent of voters overall said the tactics used by Immigration and Customs Enforcement had “gone too far,” including nearly one in five Republicans, as my colleagues Jennifer Medina and Ruth Igielnik reported today. The same was said by seventy-one percent of independents. It is possible the backlash may grow as the Trump administration expands its immigration operations, pushing this week into Maine — a critical Senate battleground state.
Images like the one of a 5-year-old boy wearing an enormous blue hat who was detained with his father this week by immigration authorities in the Minneapolis area have already left an indelible mark. With Vice President JD Vance stating on Thursday that the administration was attempting to “turn down the temperature” in Minneapolis, some Republicans appear to be making an effort to tread a little bit more cautiously. In an interview with Reuters, Maine Republican Senator Susan Collins expressed concerns regarding what she referred to as “excessive” ICE tactics. Editors’ Picks
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In Belle Burden’s Own Words: Inside an Exploding Marriage And other Republicans, including Senator Jim Justice of West Virginia, have called for more training for ICE, Politico reported recently, even as they often stop short of criticizing the agency.
“They need to show more balance in enforcement and more compassion and empathy in enforcement,” Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Pennsylvania Republican, told the outlet.
Naturally, very few Republican legislators are eager to oppose Trump’s crackdown. And immigration — especially how to talk about enforcement — remains a challenging and divisive topic for Democrats.
The subject more broadly divides the country, too. According to the Times/Siena poll, roughly half of voters support Trump’s deportations and border management strategies. Protest politics can also be complicated for Democrats to navigate.
As usual, it will be interesting to see how troubled lawmakers in tough seats talk about these topics, if they talk about them at all. In the meantime, for those in the path of the storm, stay warm!
Today’s quote Trump appeals to me. He frequently votes against Trump.
That was Christy Meyer, a retiree from Bayou Blue, La., on Senator Bill Cassidy. I looked at how the Republican senator, who is in the midst of a primary against a challenger who is backed by Trump, is being squeezed from every direction today. His predicament is a familiar and cautionary tale of what can happen when Republicans cross President Trump and then try to backpedal: It often ends badly.
A test for Democrats in Texas
What does it take for a Democrat to win statewide in Texas? First of all, a lot of luck. Aside from that, however, Representative Jasmine Crockett and James Talarico, two candidates for the Senate from that state, have drastically different strategies for achieving success in a state that has repeatedly dashed the hopes of their party. J, my colleague, is here. David Goodman on a race that, he writes, has become “a kind of high-octane referendum on what direction the party should take, not only in a deeply red state but in swing states the party lost in 2024.”
Activists opposed to abortion become disenchanted with Trump.
As abortion opponents descended on the National Mall on Friday, many were “carrying a gnawing sense of frustration” toward President Trump, my colleague Elizabeth Dias writes. His messages regarding abortion have been inconsistent, and conservative activists believe that he has not restricted the procedure sufficiently. “This is not the direction that we were hoping for,” said Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America is a leading organization against abortion.
