Welcome to At the Races! Each week we bring you news and analysis from the CQ Roll Call campaign team. Know someone who’d like to get this newsletter? They can subscribe here.

By Daniela Altimari, Mary Ellen McIntire and Niels Lesniewski

DALLAS – Recent national polls show President Donald Trump’s job approval rating sinking to historic lows, driven by deep dissatisfaction over rising prices, including gas topping $4 a gallon, fueled by an unpopular conflict with Iran and his tariffs policy.

But if any of that has the Republican faithful feeling down about the party’s prospects in the midterm elections, they aren’t saying.

“I feel good about our candidates,’’ said Scott Martin, a state senator from Lancaster, Pa., in town for this week’s Republican mini-convention. 

“And obviously, Pennsylvania is not only just critically important for presidential elections,’’ he added. “It’s also critically important to where the numbers end up in the U.S. Congress.”

Admittedly, the target audience for the two-day gathering isn’t politically independent voters who will decide key races in purple districts: Many of those voters have soured on Trump and might be tuning out the “Trumpapalooza convention” — which might explain why some swing district Republican candidates opted to skip the trip to Dallas altogether.

Instead, the emphasis here was on firing up MAGA voters who tend to sit out elections when Trump isn’t on the ballot.

“This historic midterm convention is rallying Republicans at the perfect time because so much is on the line this November,’’ House Majority Leader Steve Scalise told the crowd at the American Airlines Center. “President Trump’s America First agenda is at stake.”

The party in the White House typically loses seats in a midterm election, and Trump acknowledged Wednesday that history is not on his side. That might explain the scattershot approach his nearly two-hour keynote speech took, from painting Democratic candidates as dangerous and “crazed lunatics” and communists whose agenda would jeopardize the American way of life to his audacious pledge to pay every American $5,000 if the GOP holds the House and the Senate this fall.

But above all, he staked the election on his own personal appeal. 

“A president, Democrat or Republican, almost never wins the midterms,’’ he told the audience. “We’ve got to change that because we have something going that’s so good. We can’t let that string be broken.”

“So I’m asking you to pretend that I’m on the ballot.”

Starting gate

More from Dallas: Day One of Republicans’ midterm spectacular saw a stream of lawmakers and candidates taking the stage at the American Airlines Center, and Roll Call photo editor Bill Clark was there to capture the best moments. And our colleague John T. Bennett runs down how Trump tried to tether himself to his party’s quest to retain its majorities in Congress. 

#NHSEN: New Hampshire’s Senate matchup between Democratic Rep. Chris Pappas and Republican former Sen. John E. Sununu is set after both handily won their respective primaries Tuesday. Further down the ballot, Stefany Shaheen, the daughter of retiring Sen. Jeanne Shaheen, won the Democratic nomination for Pappas’ 1st District seat, emerging from a bitter primary fight against Maura Sullivan.

Missouri’s mess, resolved? The Supreme Court appeared to confirm Thursday that Missouri will use a congressional map approved in 2022 for this year’s midterm elections, our colleague Michael Macagnone reports. The justices paused an order from a federal trial court judge that had directed the state to use a map the Republican-led legislature passed last year. Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver II, whose district was targeted by Republicans, should face an easier path to reelection under the 2022 map, a boost for Democrats in the fight for the House.  

New targets: The NRCC added five candidates to its “MAGA Majority” program for strong challengers, including four running in Florida districts that were redrawn to favor the GOP. The additions come after the committee dropped New York state Sen. Peter Oberacker, who is challenging freshman Democrat Josh Riley in the 19th District, from the program. 

25 years later: A quarter century after the 9/11 attacks, advocates for contingency plans on Capitol Hill in case of a mass-casualty catastrophe say lawmakers haven’t done enough to ensure continuity of Congress, Roll Call’s Nina Heller reports. 

Census changes: The Trump administration proposed a rule to exclude undocumented and temporary immigrants from the data used to determine the number of congressional seats allotted to each state after the 2030 census, Macagnone writes. The effort, an extension of a push from Trump’s first term, is likely to draw legal challenges and fights in Congress over its implementation.

ICYMI

#RIGOV: Helena Foulkes, a former CVS executive, defeated Rhode Island Gov. Dan McKee in Wednesday’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, making McKee the first sitting governor to lose a primary since Kansas’ Jeff Colyer in 2018. Rhode Island Sen. Jack Reed, meanwhile, easily beat two primary opponents as the Democrat seeks a sixth term.

Staying put: Democratic Sen. John Fetterman, already estranged from some members of his party, made headlines Wednesday for a video message he recorded to introduce his fellow Pennsylvanian, Republican Sen. Dave McCormick, at the GOP midterm convention. But Fetterman insisted in a statement that he remained a “lifelong Democrat who votes overwhelmingly with my party — and should the Senate flip in November, I will still be the 51st vote that I ran on.”

Ad watch: Virginia prosecutor Shannon Taylor, who’s challenging GOP Rep. Rob Wittman, released an ad touting her role in prosecuting a state senator who served jail time for his relationship with a teenage girl. “I didn’t care that he was a Democrat or the pressure that I got to make it go away,” she says in the spot. In Pennsylvania’s 7th District, Democrat Bob Brooks, a retired firefighter taking on Republican freshman Ryan Mackenzie, launched his first general election ad, which features a literal dumpster fire. “I’ll cut off the fuel. Smoke out the billionaires and their lobbyists,” Brooks says on camera. Meanwhile, a super PAC supporting Republican Mike Rogers in Michigan’s Senate race released an ad tied to the 25th anniversary of 9/11 that includes footage of the attack and progressive streamer Hasan Piker saying that “America deserved 9/11” – a remark he later walked back. Rogers, a former House Intelligence chairman, faces Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who campaigned with Piker during the primary.

Rebuffing Buffett: Brinker Harding, the Republican nominee in Nebraska’s “blue dot” 2nd District, is running a campaign ad that features the “Oracle of Omaha,’’ investor and philanthropist Warren Buffett, despite a request from Buffett’s family to take it down. “It implies that my dad endorses him. He did not have permission to use it,” Buffett’s daughter, Susie Buffett, told KETV in Omaha. Harding faces Democrat Denise Powell in the race to succeed retiring GOP Rep. Don Bacon. 

There’s always tweets: Democrat Will Lawrence, who is challenging GOP Rep. Tom Barrett in Michigan’s battleground 7th District, is the latest candidate whose past social media posts earned a review by CNN’s KFILE. Lawrence’s deleted posts included embraces of the “defund the police” movement and abolishing prisons and attacks on the nuclear family home.

Democratic endorsements: The Congressional Black Caucus PAC has endorsed Abdul El-Sayed, the Democrat running for Michigan’s open Senate seat. The group backed Rep. Haley Stevens during the Democratic primary. In Texas, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico picked up the backing of nearly two dozen current and former Republican officials, including former Dallas Mayor Steve Bartlett and former Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Tom Phillips. And in Kansas, Democrat Adam Hamilton won the support of Republican former Gov. Bill Graves in his challenge to GOP Sen. Roger Marshall. 

Not in Dallas: Former congressional aide Sydney Gruters, the Republican nominee for Florida’s 16th District and wife of RNC Chairman Joe Gruters, is among the House GOP candidates who didn’t travel to Dallas for the party’s midterm convention. Gruters faces Democrat Kelly Kirschner, a former Sarasota mayor, in the race to succeed retiring Republican Rep. Vern Buchanan.

Nathan’s notes

Inside Elections with Nathan L. Gonzales announced more race rating changes last week, 10 in Democrats’ direction. The lone race that moved Republicans’ way was New Hampshire’s Senate contest, which is now rated a Toss-up. 

Contests once seen as solid for the GOP that moved to “Likely Republican” include the Senate race in Kansas and Florida’s gubernatorial election. 

“For now, the battleground continues to shift incrementally toward Democrats as we wait to see if Republicans will bounce back or if the bottom falls out from under them and an unpopular president in the White House,” Nathan writes.

What we’re reading

MAGA’s millions: The pro-Trump MAGA, Inc. super PAC has begun doling out its $400 million war chest in six battleground Senate races and one competitive House race, The New York Times reports. The spending comes via a new group, No Going Back PAC Inc., which, with $49 million in reservations early this week, quickly became one of the cycle’s top spenders. 

Tit for tat: The Washington Post reports that the trade war with Canada, which escalated this week, could have outsize effects in midterm battleground states such as Michigan, Pennsylvania and Maine, where tariffs on some steel and iron products and on logging equipment could spike costs. 

Tennessee appointment: Axios Nashville looks at the sweepstakes for the Senate seat currently held by Republican Marsha Blackburn, who would be able to appoint her successor should she prevail, as expected, in the governor’s race in November.

#MESEN: The newly renamed Washington Sun reports on the high-stakes Senate race in Maine, where GOP Sen. Susan Collins is trying to overcome the Trump administration’s ICE and trade policies as Democrat Troy Jackson is essentially running a 100-day race seeking to capitalize on frustrations with Collins. The incumbent called it “the strangest race I’ve ever seen.”

The count: 15 percent

That’s how many registered voters say they plan to return their ballots by mail or drop them off at the post office this year, according to the latest Economist/YouGov poll.

Those plans could be complicated by the Trump administration’s push, in coordination with the U.S. Postal Service, to institute new rules that would make voting by mail dramatically more difficult. Two dozen states have objected to the rules on both constitutional and logistical grounds, and have argued in court that the changes would be impossible to implement, with the process already underway.

Already this week – days after the administration petitioned the Supreme Court to intervene and allow the currently blocked rules to take effect – state election officials have begun taking actions ranging from sending out ballots early to considering how to cut the USPS out of their process.

While Trump often votes by mail himself, he has consistently attacked the process, which he feels advantages Democrats.

Conservative elections lawyer Ben Ginsburg said recently that Republicans could be hurt by the restrictions, though the Economist/YouGov poll found that just 10 percent of Trump 2024 voters were planning to cast their ballots by mail. More than 20 percent of Kamala Harris voters said the same.

–by Roll Call’s Ryan Kelly

Key race: #IA02

Candidates: Republican Sen. Joni Ernst’s retirement sparked a political chain reaction in the Hawkeye State. Rep. Ashley Hinson is running for Senate, leaving behind the open 2nd District. Vying to succeed her are Republican Joe Mitchell, a former state representative and housing developer who launched Run Gen Z, which encourages young conservatives to run for office; and Presbyterian minister and Democratic state Rep. Lindsay James.

Why it matters; Democrats are increasingly bullish on Iowa, a onetime swing state that has become solidly Republican in the Trump era. Trump’s policies on tariffs and the ongoing conflict in Iran have spiked costs overall, and farmers, who rely on diesel fuel and fertilizer, have been hard hit. Last month, Inside Elections shifted the race rating from Likely Republican to Lean Republican.

Cash dash: James reported raising $1.6 million through June 30, while Mitchell brought in $1.9 million, including a $100,000 candidate loan, over that same period.

Backers: Mitchell, who considered Charlie Kirk as a mentor, has the backing of Turning Point Action, the organization Kirk founded. He also has Trump’s endorsement, although The Washington Post reported that he recently toned down references to the president on his campaign website. The DCCC has included James on its “Red to Blue” list, which provides extra resources and support to top recruits. She also has the backing of EMILY’s List and gun safety groups Giffords PAC and Everytown for Gun Safety.

What they’re saying: James has highlighted cost of living concerns, asserting that elected officials have a “moral obligation“ to address systemic injustices. Mitchell has called for new ethical standards for members of Congress. He touts an anti-corruption message that includes term limits, a ban on insider trading and prohibiting campaigns from taking contributions from corporate PACs, the Iowa Capital Dispatch reported.

Terrain: The district covers the state’s northeastern corner, bordering Wisconsin and Minnesota, and includes the cities of Cedar Rapids and Dubuque. Trump carried the district by 10 points in 2024. 

Wild card: Top-of-the-ticket dynamics. Iowa Democrats are hopeful that a strong showing by their nominees for governor, state Auditor Rob Sand, and for Ernst’s open Senate seat, state Rep. Josh Turek, will boost Democratic candidates down ballot, including James and other House hopefuls.

Coming up

The House and Senate are scheduled to return to Washington on Monday. A day later, the regular primary season officially wraps up, with intraparty elections in Delaware. But Louisiana will be holding all-party jungle primaries for their House seats on Nov. 3 as a consequence of redistricting earlier this year.

Photo finish

Subscribe now using this link so you don’t miss out on the best news and analysis from our team.