Here’s a potentially momentous development for you: The electoral map appears to have deteriorated so badly for Republicans that a number of MAGA’s biggest personalities in the House may be on the verge of a loss. This even includes a couple of House Republicans who were involved in Trump’s insurrection on January 6, 2021.
If Democrats can take down even a handful of these MAGA personalities, it would be a big prize indeed. And numerous MAGA-aligned House Republicans do appear to be in serious trouble.
Let’s start with Representative Scott Perry in Pennsylvania’s 10th district, who is facing a very tough challenge from local anchor Janelle Stelson. Perry is ultra-MAGA, having played a big role in Trump’s insurrection. Perry helped marshal fake voter-fraud allegations to create a pretext for overturning the election, tried to install a pliant attorney general who’d assist in the plot, and pushed fellow Republicans not to certify the outcome.
Perry is in serious danger of defeat despite representing a district that Trump carried by five points. His seat is ranked “lean Democratic” by the Cook Political Report, and public polls show him trailing by a small margin. Beating him would take down one of the most prominent Trump insurrectionists in Congress.
Then there’s Representative Anna Paulina Luna. A major Trump-aligned super PAC just quietly shifted some $750,000 in TV ad spending into Florida’s 13th district. Tellingly, the money was moved away from the district of a Florida Democrat—Representative Kathy Castor—and into Luna’s, a surprise defensive move illustrating the GOP’s worsening map. That comes even as the PAC has poured around $2 million more into the race.
“That tells me they’re panicking,” Leela Gray, Luna’s Democratic challenger, a military veteran and small-business advisor, tells me. Gray’s challenge is a stiff one, with Democrats releasing their own polling showing Luna in trouble.
Luna is as MAGA as they come. She led a Trump-fueled rebellion against House GOP leaders to try to force through his vote-suppressing SAVE Act. She also regularly goes viral with MAGA tropes and conspiracy theories forged deep in the white-hot furnace of the MAGA hive mind.
To be clear, Luna will still be hard to beat. The race is rated “lean Republican.” But even if she does survive, the shifting of major GOP defensive reinforcements on her behalf itself suggests serious MAGA enfeeblement: Trump carried her district by 13 points in 2024, and she’s a high-profile ally of the president. She shouldn’t be in any danger, and the huge infusion of cash shows she very much is.
Then there’s Representative Max Miller, who is seen as so critical to the MAGA universe—one reporter described him as “young MAGA royalty”—that he’s been able to weather serious domestic abuse allegations without severe recriminations within the GOP. For good measure, Miller even aggressively abuses reporters—he called one “disgusting”—in monkey-see-monkey-do homage to the MAGA master himself.
Trump won Ohio’s 7th district by 11 points, yet here Miller is facing a very spirited challenge from union ironworker Brian Poindexter that’s ranked a “toss-up.” Defeating him in this part of northeast Ohio, which is deep in Trump country, would be akin to taking down an apparent poster boy for MAGA impunity—for violent, consequences-free MAGA misogyny and all-around snarling abusiveness.
Or what about Representative Derrick Van Orden, in Wisconsin’s 3rd district? His Democratic challenger, Rebecca Cooke, grew up on a dairy farm and is a good fit for this rural district, which Trump won by seven points, leading the race to be ranked “lean Democratic.”
At a time when other vulnerable Republicans are fleeing Trump, Van Orden has aggressively hugged him while running an unabashedly pro-MAGA campaign, betting heavily on the Trump base to carry him through. Before getting elected in 2022, Van Orden attended Trump’s “Save America” rally on January 6, marching toward the Capitol and enthusiastically backing the insurrectionists’ aims. Also potentially vulnerable: Representative Bryan Steil of Wisconsin’s 1st district, a big proponent of Trump’s “election integrity” nonsense.
Make no mistake: All these races are still dog fights. But as of now, Democrats feel confident about beating Perry, Miller, and Van Orden. Though defeating Luna is still a steeper climb, it may be within reach on a very good night for Democrats. If not, knocking off the three others (and possibly Steil too) is still very doable on a merely good night.
I’ve argued that an underappreciated factor in this election is the public’s rejection of all three major pillars of the MAGA vision: tariffs, white-nationalist ethnic cleansing, and “America First” foreign policy. As Paul Krugman explains, it isn’t just that the tariffs are serious abuses of power and that the deportations are profoundly cruel. It’s also that both have spectacularly failed even to achieve the material goals that MAGA economics promised: There’s no major manufacturing rebound, and the decline in immigrant labor isn’t unleashing an explosion of blue-collar work for native-born Americans.
On top of that, “America First”—which is not “isolationism” but rather unchecked jingoistic militarism combined with reckless disregard for international commitments and alliances—has gotten us mired in yet another disastrous quagmire in the Middle East. On all three—tariffs, deportations, and war—Trump is deeply, deeply underwater. The result: He has thrown away the GOP’s frequent advantages on the economy, immigration, and national security. MAGA nationalism has brought the country to ruin and pushed the GOP toward the electoral abyss.
Add to all that the unseating of people like Perry, Miller, and Van Orden, which would knock off a big chunk of MAGA Nation’s highest-profile representation in the House. It all would reinforce the sense that MAGA as a movement is inexorably entering into its twilight—along with the visible sunsetting, needless to say, of the MAGA God King himself.
