“No Enthusiasm”: Republicans Have a Big Problem With Voters

Republicans canvassing voters before November’s midterms are finding that nobody is thrilled to vote for GOP candidates.

“When they go to those doors, they are telling me that there is just no enthusiasm there,” CNN’s Kristen Holmes reported on the network’s Erin Burnett OutFront Thursday night. “It’s really hard to sell this administration, trying to get people excited—Republicans to come out and vote, and that may be one of their greatest hurdles ahead of November.”

Holmes said that Republican political staffers, including those close to Donald Trump, have told her that they are “frustrated” and “annoyed” that some Republicans in tight races are trying to distance themselves from the president. Even Representative Maria Elvira Salazar, whose district voted for Trump by 15 percentage points in 2024, put out an ad earlier this week criticizing Trump’s immigration policies.

“For some of them, as you saw there with Salazar, separating herself or separating themselves from President Trump is the way to go,” Holmes said.

Many political races are won with volunteers, and if Republican volunteers are knocking on doors without any results, that’s a bad omen for November. Trump and the GOP are polling abysmally thanks to the negative economic impact of Trump’s whimsical tariffs, the Iran war, and violent ICE agents.

On top of that, some GOP canvassers aren’t doing themselves any favors: one canvasser with conservative nonprofit Stronger America in Maine who was knocking on doors for Republican Senator Susan Collins was caught on camera stealing a package from a person’s doorstep. That won’t help Republicans on top of everything else.

President Donald Trump on Thursday abruptly pulled his nominee to run Immigration and Customs Enforcement, Lance Schroyer, after selecting him in June.

The president didn’t offer any reason for the move, which was reported by The Washington Post. Schroyer, a former Oklahoma Highway Patrol major and Marine, currently serves as an adviser to Secretary of Homeland Security Markwayne Mullin.

Despite Trump announcing Schroyer’s nomination three months ago, Senate Homeland Security Committee Chair Rand Paul had yet to schedule Schroyer’s confirmation hearings. Politico reports that the nomination stalled after Paul, a longtime enemy of Mullin’s, asked the Department of Homeland Security last month to send more information about its investigation into the federal agents who allegedly killed Alex Pretti and Renee Good, two U.S. citizens, in Minneapolis earlier this year.

Schroyer, who has never headed a law enforcement agency and was once in charge of Mullin’s security detail, would essentially be walking into a hornet’s nest by taking the job. He’d not only face tough confirmation hearings, but also would have to deal with ICE’s unpopularity due to the Trump administration’s violent mass deportation effort. Former acting Director Todd Lyons was the first person to head the agency in Trump’s second term, and he narrowly avoided being hauled into court on contempt charges.

Lyons was also accused of lying to Congress about the amount of training ICE agents receive, cutting corners while hiring more and more agents. He was also under the Trump administration’s microscope, with White House adviser Stephen Miller frequently yelling at him for failing to meet high deportation quotas. This contributed to Lyons being hospitalized multiple times for stress-related issues.

Maybe Schroyer doesn’t need that in his life, or maybe director of ICE is the worst administration job one could have. The Senate hasn’t confirmed a single one of them since 2014, and that will continue through the end of this year and at least several months after that.

A federal judge ordered the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts to give at least 30 days’ notice before beginning any construction on the prestigious national theater—including its demolition.

In a brief order Thursday, Judge Christopher Cooper said the Donald Trump–appointed Board of Trustees needed to provide written notice to Democratic Representative Joyce Beatty, the plaintiff in the court case against the venue’s closure, more than 30 days before “any changes to the scope of the project plans … including but not limited to any ‘demolition’ of the Center’s main building.”

The order comes after Trump was spotted through the window of Air Force One looking at a large posterboard emblazoned with the words “KENNEDY CENTER DEMOLISH,” and a legal observer said in court filings Wednesday night that she had seen a “forklift run into and hit the pillars on the building several times.”

Speaking to reporters on the tarmac earlier that evening, Trump made it clear that he couldn’t be bothered to renovate a former president’s memorial because he hadn’t been allowed to plaster his name on it.

“I’d like to be able to save it, but it’s going to take a lot of subsidy into the future and for us as an administration to want to do that, I think the Trump administration should be recognized,” he said.

It’s not clear what the legal recourse would be for the president’s handpicked board if they skirt the judge’s order—and it wouldn’t be the first time Trump or one of his allies tried to ignore a court decision.

The board voted Tuesday to immediately close the famed venue for renovations, shortly after a federal court blocked Trump’s attempt to put his name on the building. Two days later, Matt Floca, the Kennedy Center’s executive director and chief operating officer, announced the center would close immediately for at least seven days due to “acute risks to public safety resulting from continued structural deterioration.”

In his order Thursday, Cooper denied Beatty’s request for an emergency hearing to challenge the sudden closure.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE, which has sent observers to monitor every U.S. federal election for the past two decades, has yet to receive an invitation from the Trump administration, the group told Democracy Docket Thursday.

The group typically plans a “needs assessment mission” in order to evaluate the environment, preparations, and electoral processes ahead of an upcoming federal election in the United States. With less than a month before early voting begins in some states, the organization says it’s still waiting for a call.

“The Office sends a needs assessment mission upon receiving an invitation from the OSCE participating State where the elections are occurring,” a spokesperson for the OSCE’s Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights said in a statement. “We are currently waiting on that invitation from the United States.”

The group’s website indicates that it has no current plans to send a mission ahead of the November midterms. While the size and scope of its missions have varied over the years, the United States has consistently extended an invitation to OSCE observers since 2002.

The exclusion of election watchdogs is a troubling escalation of the Trump administration’s continued efforts to undermine the credibility of our nation’s elections.

Eric Bjornlund, president of Democracy International, told Democracy Docket that the exclusion of the election watchdogs was par for the course when it came to the Trump administration.

“It seems to be just another data point in this mess where the executive branch of our national government seems to be trying to sow confusion about whether elections are going to be well-run and credible or not,” he said. “And it just seems to be more evidence that they don’t have the commitment to fair elections that past U.S. governments have shown.”

For years, President Donald Trump has pushed conspiracy theories that undermine the safety and security of federal elections—theories he’s attempted to turn into policy since entering office for the second time. Earlier this week, the president threw a massive temper tantrum because the Supreme Court curbed his last-minute effort to gut mail-in voting.

Secretary of State Marco Rubio and President Trump are trying to bring down Cuba’s government, and their friends and allies are looking to profit from it. 

The Guardian reports that Republican donors, Cuban exiles, and even Trump Organization executives are all eyeing business opportunities from the U.S. pressure campaign against Cuba. Many are charging high sums to help business clients work around the Trump administration’s new sanctions and set themselves up to make even more money if the Communist regime falls. 

Among them are Ray Washburne, who organized the Republican midterm convention in Dallas last week and was the vice chair of Trump’s 2016 Victory Committee, and Albert Huddleston, an oil executive with his own ties to Trump. Both are trying to take over a nickel and cobalt mining joint venture with the Cuban government after a Canadian firm, Sherritt International, was driven out by a Trump executive order in May.  

An Australian firm, Antilles Gold Ltd., also had to end its Cuba operations in June thanks to the Trump administration’s sanctions. That company just received approval from the White House to transfer its stake in a copper-gold mine in Cuba to New York–based investment fund Global Emerging Markets, according to the newspaper. 

Executives in the Trump Organization have recently traveled to the island, as well, sources told The Guardian. They did so under a new moniker, Dominari Holdings, and met with people like Raúl Guillermo Rodríguez Castro, the grandson of former Cuban President Raúl Castro, to discuss business opportunities. Two major Spanish hotels, Meliá and Iberostar, recently left the island, and these executives, who have visited the country before and even registered the Trump trademark there in 2008, now may be looking to fill the void.

A shipping line based in Florida, Crowley Maritime, is also benefiting from the Trump administration’s sanctions, with all of Cuba’s imports now being routed through Florida. The company is a major donor to Florida Republican Representatives Mario Díaz-Balart and María Elvira-Salazar, both Cuban Americans. 

“If I had done during the Biden administration what Trump’s friends have done now, I’d have been put in jail,” one expert in Cuba policy told The Guardian.

Meanwhile, the Cuban people are increasingly suffering under the U.S. sanctions and fuel blockade. So far, Trump’s efforts have only benefited wealthy interests outside of Cuba—the very reason behind the island’s political revolution in the 1950s. It seems that Trump, Rubio, and their wealthy friends want to control Cuba so they can profit from it at the expense of its people.