Rep. Ileana Garcia
We have finally found the thing that gets Republicans to speak up against Donald Trump: fear of losing their own power.
Two Latino Republicans on Tuesday issued a stark warning to their Dear Leader: If immigration agents don't stop brutalizing and killing Americans in the streets as his goons carry out their ham-handed immigrant roundups to meet some arbitrary deportation quota set by ghoulish White House aide Stephen Miller, then the GOP is going to lose the 2026 midterms.
GOP Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida told Newsmax on Tuesday that when it comes to immigration enforcement, "there has to be a better way to do this."
"I'm not comfortable with what's happening in Minneapolis at this time," Gimenez said, adding that Trump's immigration goons targeting "grandmothers, somebody taking care of kids that's been here 10 or 15 years" is "hurting our chances at the midterms."
He wasn't the only Latino Republican who spoke out.
Florida state Sen. Ileana Garcia, who founded the Latinas for Trump group, told The New York Times that immigration agents' "abhorrent" killings of two citizens is going to be catastrophic for her party in November.
“It’s gone too far,” she told the Times of the immigration raids, later adding, “I do think that he will lose the midterms because of Stephen Miller."
Of course, Republicans were already likely to lose the midterms thanks to Trump's poor handling of the economy, which voters overwhelmingly disapprove of.
However, Gimenez and Garcia are unquestionably correct that Immigration and Customs Enforcement's violent behavior has only made things worse for the GOP.
Immigration—one of Trump's strongest issues when he took office—is now a liability as Americans turn against the brutality he has unleashed.
A plurality of Americans now support abolishing ICE in the wake of immigration agents killing two U.S. citizens who were merely exercising their First Amendment right to observe and record agents' lawless and chaotic behavior.Majorities now disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration, as well as ICE agents’ actions, which overwhelming majorities say have gone too far.
And polls show Latino voters—who moved heavily toward Republicans in 2024 and whom GOP operatives crowed were in the process of realigning away from Democrats—have now snapped back to their pre-2024 political alignment as Trump has terrorized their communities with his ICE raids.
An Economist/YouGov poll released Tuesday found that Hispanics disapprove of the job Trump is doing by a stunning 41-point margin. That’s a massive slide from February 2025, when Hispanics disapproved of Trump by a 10-point spread in the Economist/YouGov poll.
“Hispanic voters have completely reverted to 2016 trend line. All GOP gains here have been lost,” Mike Madrid, a Hispanic GOP operative, wrote in a post on X. “The ‘Racial Realignment’ theory can officially be declared dead”
Trump seems to understand the political peril he’s in, as he pulled Greg Bovino, the Nazi-looking Border Patrol thug who had been in charge of the disgusting deportation surge in Minneapolis, from his role on Monday.
However, Trump and his administration are not backing down off their targeting of Democratic-controlled states for immigration enforcement. ICE and Customs and Border Patrol are set to remain in Minneapolis and are now surging in Maine, where they recently landed to carry out their reign of terror.
And Trump and his aides have continued to blame the two Americans murdered for exercising their First and Second Amendment rights—Renee Good and Alex Pretti—for their deaths, calling both of them “domestic terrorists.”
In fact, Trump blamed Pretti for being shot to death because Pretti was carrying a firearm—something Pretti was licensed and legally allowed to do, thanks to the Second Amendment Trump once extolled.
"You can't have guns. You can't walk in with guns. You can't do that. You can't walk in with guns, but, it's a very unfortunate thing," Trump said Tuesday of Pretti.
While Trump's violent immigration agenda is mobilizing Democrats and turning independents against him, it's the president’s refusal to acknowledge Pretti's Second Amendment rights that could turn Republicans against him too.
"It's unbelievably stupid that they've chosen to alienate the gun lobby. The NRA and the gun lobby have basically been a bedrock constituency of the Republican Party for 50 years," Florida Republican strategist Jacob Perry told Reuters.
If the base turns against Trump, then the bottom really falls out for the GOP.
We’ll have our popcorn at the ready when that happens.
Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos
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