Trump's war, redistricting setbacks fan Republican midterm angst

For Republicans, this was the week midterm anxiety went from a smolder to a wildfire.

A botched redistricting effort, coming amid the standoff in the war with Iran, has left Republican operatives and lawmakers casting around for blame and their ire has increasingly focused on President Donald Trump’s political operation.

There’s particular frustration with White House deputy chief of staff James Blair, who is soon departing to take over Trump’s outside political operation. The architect of the Republican redistricting play has come under renewed criticism after voters in Virginia approved a plan to redraw the state’s congressional districts to heavily favor Democrats, according to people familiar with the dynamics who requested anonymity to discuss private deliberations.

The Trump team set off the redistricting fight last year when it demanded that GOP-run states redraw their congressional maps to improve their midterm chances. Some Republicans who see the effort as counterproductive have sarcastically referred to it as “Blairy-mandering,” the people said.

The Virginia ballot initiative has only deepened Republicans’ sense of doom about the November elections. Trump’s inability to secure a peace deal with Iran - and the war’s corresponding energy shock - has made it all but impossible to run the playbook Republicans developed before the year began: to highlight the pocketbook effects of the president’s signature tax cuts.

Now, numerous party advisers have all but conceded they’ll lose the House in November, and have begun focusing on warding off Democrats’ long-shot hopes of retaking the Senate. 

White House aides describe the concern as overblown. The Virginia map may be struck down by courts, and only passed by a narrow margin despite heavy Democratic spending. Negotiators are headed this weekend to Pakistan for another round of talks that may lead to a breakthrough in efforts to end the war.

“This story is embarrassing nonsense fueled by anonymous quotes from irrelevant people,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a spokesman for MAGA Inc., the president’s main super political action committee. “Democrats started this and they’ll regret it. The GOP is going into the midterms with a massive money advantage and we’re poised to kick ass.” 

Blair predicted on CNN this week that as redistricting continues, “there will be a narrow advantage for Republicans.”

“James Blair is one of the most shrewd operatives in politics, and he’s played an integral role in helping execute the most successful start to a presidency in modern American history,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in an emailed statement.

Yet the impact of the war is poised to continue reverberating through oil markets for months. And Trump has often appeared more interested in revenge, retribution and pet projects than helping his party succeed. 

The president’s political allies appeared to devote as much - if not more - attention and money to punishing Republican state lawmakers in Indiana who bucked a redistricting effort there than winning the Virginia fight. The result has been millions of donor dollars diverted to a revenge tour that will have little impact on the balance of power in the U.S. Congress.

“The White House and its congressional allies have to come to terms with the fact that the environment right now is creating a lot of headwinds,” said Kevin Madden, a longtime Republican strategist. “Six months is a lifetime in politics, but that means the clock is already ticking and there’s not really a whole lot of room for error.” 

Even as some figures inside the White House concede they have a problem, escaping the political morass isn’t proving easy.

Reprimands, recriminations

The president and his allies know any chance of a GOP victory in November is contingent on the war in Iran ending and the economy improving as a result, according to Republicans in touch with the White House who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

There have been signs frustration is building. When Blair, White House chief of staff Susie Wiles and Trump adviser Chris LaCivita held a meeting earlier this week at Washington’s Waldorf Astoria hotel with attendees linked to the president’s political operation, news of the gathering leaked to journalists ahead of time.

That prompted Blair and LaCivita to spend the first several minutes of their remarks berating attendees for leaking information. Then, they made them sign nondisclosure agreements, according to two Republicans briefed on the meeting.

Despite sounding pessimistic about his party’s chances, Trump has signaled that keeping control of Congress is a near-existential requirement for his presidency. MAGA Inc. has amassed more than $300 million ahead of the midterms, helping the GOP gain a cash advantage over the Democrats. 

But it’s unclear to what extent Trump will deploy its resources to help Republicans running in crucial races, and the uncertainty has angered some in the party, according to a GOP strategist.

Trump whiplash

The president has paid lip service to voters’ economic anxieties in recent days, staging events designed to highlight the benefits of his signature tax law and a push to negotiate lower prescription drug prices.

On Friday, the Justice Department announced it was dropping a probe into construction spending at the Federal Reserve, which was largely seen as a bid to punish and pressure Chair Jerome Powell. Doing so could ease the path to confirmation for Trump’s nominee, Kevin Warsh, who is expected to pursue interest rate cuts.

In a bid to shore up some of the low-propensity voters who helped return Trump to the White House, he eased access to psychedelic drugs to treat mental illness and his administration reclassified state-regulated marijuana as a less-dangerous substance. The Oval Office ceremony on psychedelics was attended by Joe Rogan, the influential podcaster, who holds sway over young men but has been critical of the war in Iran.

Yet Trump has often swayed off topic. He devoted significant time at his drug-pricing event to briefing the press on plans to replace stone pavers outside the Oval Office with black granite - a flame-finished “charcoal” color imported from Africa and carved in Italy.

On Thursday, he explained to reporters that he had asked the pool contractor from one of his golf clubs to take a look at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool. The pair agreed to spray over the existing stonework with an “American flag blue” pool surface.

While Republicans fear the war in Iran has undercut the party’s affordability message, as the conflict has spiked the cost of fuel, Trump has insisted publicly that oil and gasoline prices aren’t as high as he anticipated. 

“I thought oil would go up to maybe $200 a barrel. And oil is at a very different number,” Trump said Thursday. 

“Once the Iran conflict is fully resolved, gas prices will plummet back to the multi-year lows American drivers enjoyed before these short-term disruptions,” White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales said in an emailed statement. “President Trump is the unequivocal leader of the Republican Party, and he is committed to maintaining Republicans’ majority in Congress to continue delivering wins for the American people.”

Trump has also made grandiose claims about his negotiating prowess, even with the war mired in a stalemate. He insisted Iran agreed not to execute eight women as a sign of respect to him, while officials in Tehran denied the executions had ever been planned. In a CNBC interview, Trump asserted that if he had been president, he “would have won Vietnam very quickly” - referring to the mid-20th century war the U.S. lost.

Republican officials speaking on the condition of anonymity say that behind closed doors, Trump largely wants to move on from the war he started alongside Israel. And it’s not only whom the White House calls “panicans” within his party expressing alarm.

Oil industry executives have been privately warning the administration that the disruption to energy supplies created by the Iran conflict is likely to lead to even higher prices for crude oil, gasoline, jet fuel and other vital products, and that the surge could last beyond the war’s end.

“People in the districts are tying the high cost of gas to what’s happening in the Middle East,” GOP strategist Lisa Camooso Miller said. “The cost of gasoline alone is going to be the kind of thing that people point to and say, ‘we shouldn’t have gone to the Middle East because now my fuel prices are higher and now my grocery prices are higher.’”

A Quinnipiac University poll released earlier this month found two-thirds of voters blame Trump for the recent surge in gasoline prices.

The administration has sought to counter the supply disruptions and higher prices by temporarily waiving some domestic fuel specifications and sanctions for some waterborne Russian crude. As part of that effort, the administration extended a shipping waiver that allows foreign tankers to move fuel around the U.S.

But time is running out. 

Some Republicans are concerned a midterm convention planned for mid-September is too late, giving the party too short of a window to make the case for their economic message, according to one GOP operative. 

History may agree, according to Doug Sosnik, a former longtime adviser to President Bill Clinton. He said most Americans traditionally decide their vote by midsummer.

“The summer has been historically about the time people settle on where they are economically, how they feel about the midterm election and who they’re going to vote for,” Sosnik said. 

Early voting has accelerated that timeline, he added, since people begin casting ballots in September. “It’s a far shorter period of time now.” 

---

(With assistance from John Harney.)

Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.

This story was originally published April 25, 2026 at 1:53 PM.