WASHINGTON, D.C. — With the 2026 midterm elections on the horizon amid increasing strife over problems facing the nation, Republican lawmakers issued an urgent warning that passing a national voter ID law could ruin their plan to hand Congress to the Democrats in November.
While President Trump and his administration continued to apply pressure to congressional GOP leaders and stress the importance of passing voter ID legislation, Republicans expressed concern that such a move could potentially spell doom for their goal of losing both the House and the Senate to Democrats this fall.
"There's a real danger that this could keep us in power," House Speaker Mike Johnson told reporters on Capitol Hill. "We've put a lot of effort into laying the groundwork to hand the Democrats full control of the legislative branch in November, and passing a law that would require voters to show a valid ID could completely derail those plans. We know the president has very strong feelings on the topic, but we're doing our best to avoid making any moves that could prevent us from losing both chambers of Congress."
Johnson's GOP colleagues agreed that now was not the time to bolster election integrity. "We can't worry about this right now," said Senate Majority Leader John Thune. "It would be best to wait until we lose the House and Senate to the Democrats, when we could all use passing a voter ID law as a campaign platform to convince people to vote us back into power in 2028 so we can go back to not really doing anything."
At publishing time, Republican leadership had also warned the White House that continuing to deport illegal aliens could negatively impact Democrats' vote totals.
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