Politics

Senate Republicans face challenges as they aim to keep their majority

Published

1 year ago

May 6, 2025

Brian Kemp’s decision not to run for Senate isn’t just a setback for Republicans in Georgia. It is the latest sign that the GOP’s prospects across the Senate map are far less certain than just a few months ago.

It could turn worse, too, as President Donald Trump’s tariffs cause global market chaos ahead of next year’s midterms and a cloudy economic picture comes into fuller view.

Republicans are still widely expected to keep the Senate. But after Kemp and former New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu rejected GOP recruitment efforts — and with hardline conservative Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton primarying the establishment Sen. John Cornyn — the GOP is bracing for a more turbulent cycle than once expected.

That’s not to mention other brewing challenges in Louisiana and North Carolina, where MAGA figures are threatening primaries against longtime incumbents.

“Midterm elections [are] generally tough for the party in power,” Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said in a brief interview. “I’m always worried.”

There is cause for Johnson’s heartburn. A senior Senate GOP campaign official, granted anonymity like others in this story to discuss the situation candidly, acknowledged he would have loved for both Kemp and Sununu run — and for Paxton to have sat out a Cornyn challenge. But this person and others involved in GOP recruitment efforts argued the party hadn’t been counting on either of the governors — and had considered them longshot recruits even amid heavy efforts to court them.

In Texas, the senior Senate GOP campaign hand said there will be a “serious effort” to ensure Cornyn is the nominee. The senator recently brought on former Trump pollster Tony Fabrizio to burnish his MAGA credentials, according to two people familiar with the decision. GOP senators wanted to keep Paxton out of the race, maneuvering to undercut him before his launch and urging Trump to endorse Cornyn, a close ally of leadership and former chair of the Senate’s campaign arm.

It remains unclear if Trump or the White House will ask Paxton to stand down. Advisers in the White House are aware he’s a political liability — and that Texas is an expensive state to campaign in.

Republicans could have another unwanted primary on their hands in Michigan, where Rep. Bill Huizenga is mulling whether to join former Rep. Mike Rogers in seeking retiring Sen. Gary Peters’ seat.

As for Georgia, Republicans are deemphasizing any despair over Kemp by pointing to the growing field of potential candidates emerging from both the House and state government.

Democrats are salivating over the possibility that Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) could mount the bid she was already flirting with before Kemp announced his plans. But GOP senators continued on Tuesday to downplay concerns that the MAGA firebrand could tank their chances.

“I’m encouraged by the fact there’s a lot of interest,” Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Tuesday in response to a question about whether the GOP could flip the seat if Greene is the nominee. “I expect Georgia will be a competitive race. We’ll be close to the end. But I think it’s a race that we can win.”

Democrats see Republicans’ failure to recruit Kemp and Sununu as evidence that even quality GOP candidates do not want to spend a grueling cycle answering for Trump’s policies — particularly surrounding the economic fallout from his tariffs.

Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesperson Maeve Coyle said in a statement that “every GOP candidate will be forced to answer for Trump’s harmful agenda” in 2026, and the party’s “disastrous start to the year” puts Democrats on the offensive, even as they face a tough map.

“Senate Democrats are positioned to win seats in 2026,” she said.

But Democrats have long been facing a bleak outlook at retaking the Senate — one made even darker by a series of retirements. The party has limited pickup opportunities: Just one seat up next year is held by a Republican in a state that former Vice President Kamala Harris won in 2024. And Democrats have four open seats to defend between battleground Michigan and a trio of bluer states.

National Republican Senatorial Committee spokesperson Joanna Rodriguez said in a statement that Republicans broadly “must hold every red seat and chase opportunities in toss-up states like Georgia, Michigan and New Hampshire.” And in Georgia, which Trump won in 2024, “we remain confident a Republican will beat pro-impeachment Democrat Jon Ossoff in 2026.”

Some senators, including former NRSC chair Rick Scott of Florida, suggested Republicans’ recruitment misfires were more telling of how prospective candidates sized up the job in Washington compared to their executive roles back home.

“I don’t think it’s about chances, I think it’s about: they know how difficult this job is,” the former Florida governor said in an interview. Governors “get to be the executive and lead the state. The legislative process is a lot harder, especially up here. I think it probably reflects more how difficult it is to get a result up here.”

And GOP senators defaulted to arguing that Democrats still face a more challenging map.

“I would much rather have the Republican side of this map than the Democrat side of this map,” Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said in an interview, while acknowledging that it was “unfortunate” Kemp and Sununu passed and that they would have “been very strong candidates.” (Cruz, who won an upset against former Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2012, is so far declining to endorse in the primary in his state.)

Still, multiple Republican senators and operatives acknowledge their overall efforts hinge on the economy as they wait to see how Trump’s tariffs land.

“I don’t think there’s going to be a problem — it depends on the economy, obviously,” Sen. Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who has been considering a run for governor rather than seek reelection next year, said in an interview. “It depends on how President Trump does in the next 12 months.”

Jay Williams, an Alpharetta, Georgia-based GOP strategist, said his party could face a further darkening outlook.

“I think ultimately it’s going to come down to the economy and at that time, and how scared Republicans are,” Williams said. “If things economically are going well, you’ll get to the social issues [playing more a deciding factor]. If things are really bad economically, I think it’s gonna be tough for Republicans. Like, I don’t know how you slice it any other way.”

Williams added, “Never underestimate Republicans’ ability to pull defeat from the jaws of victory.”

Brakkton Booker and Andrew Howard contributed to this report.

Politics

The clock is ticking on an Iran talks. Here’s what still has to get done.

Published

1 hour ago

June 19, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

As talks loom between the U.S. and Iran, negotiators face a simple and daunting task: turning a 14-point memorandum of understanding into a comprehensive nuclear deal within 60 days.

The ticking clock was set in motion on Thursday, according to Vice President JD Vance, following the signing of the MOU one day earlier. That signing brought an official end to military hostilities. What it did not do is resolve the conflict that caused them.

Some agreements took effect immediately upon signing: a cessation of hostilities, the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, the lifting of the U.S. naval blockade, the issuing of oil waivers and initial steps to unfreeze billions of dollars in Iranian assets.

But those were the easy parts.

What remains are the metaphorical landmines — the unresolved questions the MOU largely deferred rather than decided, each with the potential to blow up any prospect for a nuclear deal. On Thursday evening, the White House announced that Vice President JD Vance will not attend talks in Switzerland that had been planned for Friday — a decision that may well be read as a signal of just how far apart the two sides are. A White House spokesperson acknowledged in a statement that while the U.S. delegation has been prepared to depart at the first available opportunity, “the logistics of these negotiations have never been simple or predictable.”

Here is what the negotiators will actually have to solve:

The future of the Strait of Hormuz

The MOU ensures safe passage of commercial vessels through the Strait of Hormuz “with no charge for 60 days only,” and outsources the negotiating responsibility for ensuring long-term toll-free passage to Gulf allies — ceding responsibility for a key outstanding issue.

“We don’t ever want this to happen again — that’s not about tolling, that’s about ensuring that the Straits are never used as a choke point for the global economy ever again,” Vance said at the White House on Thursday. “If that’s not reflected in the final deal, there’s not going to be a final deal.”

Recognizing the Iranians will “assert their rights as aggressively as they can,” a senior U.S. official was confident Gulf states would preserve their own self-interests and press Iran to allow toll-free passage.

There’s also the matter of demining the waterway. Iran has 30 days for “removing the technical and military obstacles and demining,” but mine removal could take weeks or even months — potentially testing U.S. patience if ship traffic doesn’t recover quickly.

In a joint statement following this week’s G7 summit in France, leaders said a defensive initiative led by France and the UK could help by “protecting merchant vessels, reassuring commercial shipping operators, and supporting verification that all mines are removed.”

Sanctions and frozen assets

Senior U.S. officials have said sanctions relief for Iran would be tied to its performance — but haven’t yet indicated what those benchmarks will be.

“As they dial up their good behavior, we can dial up the economic relief,” Vance said in broad terms on Thursday at the White House. “If they dial down their good behavior, we can turn it off.”

The MOU commits the U.S. to ending all Iranian sanctions — including those imposed by the U.N. Security Council and the International Atomic Energy Agency — “in an agreed-upon schedule as part of the final deal.” How quickly the U.S. is willing to provide this economic relief could become a sticking point.

Complicating matters further: whether lifting of sanctions would require congressional action, and how the State Department’s designation of Iran as a State Sponsor of Terrorism factors in.

Then there’s the unfreezing of billions of dollars of Iranian assets. Though the Trump administration insists any release would be tied to Iran’s performance, the MOU’s own text undercuts that: Paragraph 13 says the process of releasing assets must begin before negotiations even start, handing Iran an upfront incentive rather than one to earn.

“It’s clearly a huge loophole and a potential for disagreement,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East advisor and negotiator for the State Department, calling the text’s language “destructive ambiguity.”

The Lebanon front

The MOU calls for “the immediate and permanent termination of military operations on all fronts, including in Lebanon.”

“We expect Hezbollah is not going to be firing rockets and firing drones at the Israelis, and we also expect that the Israelis are not going to be going wild in Lebanon, right? Both sides have to honor their end of the deal,” Vance said at the White House on Thursday.

Yet Israel did not sign the aforementioned “deal.”

Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Yechiel Leiter said it’s “unnecessary” for Lebanon to have been included in an agreement between the U.S. and Iran, pouring cold water on the idea that Israel would cease its offensive against Hezbollah and occupation of southern Lebanon — even if Iran says that’s a dealbreaker for negotiations.

“This is something that we simply can’t live with,” Leiter told NPR on Tuesday. “We can’t have jihadi terrorists on our border. … We’re not going to withdraw from South Lebanon, and the mad men of Tehran have no business poking their nose into Lebanon.”

A U.S. official confirmed that U.S.-brokered peace talks between Israel and Lebanon will continue as planned next week at the State Department. Whether the Lebanon provision holds will depend on Iran keeping Hezbollah in check and Trump keeping Netanyahu in line.

Iran’s reconstruction

The MOU promises that within 60 days, the U.S. would work “with regional partners” to develop a plan guaranteeing at least $300 billion for Iran’s “reconstruction and economic development.”

Trump has insisted that there “is no 300 Billion Dollar payment to Iran by the U.S.” using taxpayer money. That may technically be true, but the U.S. has still committed to delivering that sum in the form of investment. That means convincing private corporations and Gulf allies — many of which are dealing with economic disruption and rebuilding costs after facing strikes from Iran — to invest in a country the Trump administration is still threatening to attack again if Iran reneges on its end of the deal.

Vance said there is a “great desire from the Arab world and from outside the Arab world to actually get involved in Iran if they behave properly.” Pressed by MS NOW whether private money would be included, Vance said he assumes countries like the United Arab Emirates would be part of the picture.

But Gulf leaders expressed concern to MS NOW about the agreement’s financial provisions that could strengthen Iran economically at a time when many Gulf states believe pressure should have been maintained.

Iran’s highly enriched uranium and nuclear program

For the duration of negotiations, Iran will “maintain the current status quo of its nuclear program,” per the MOU. What happens after that is the central outstanding question — the one that led to war in the first place.

The MOU provides no consensus on what to do with Iran’s existing stockpile of enriched uranium, only an agreement to “resolve” the matter. It doesn’t distinguish between the roughly 900 pounds of highly enriched uranium — material close to bomb-grade — and the 11 tons enriched to various levels above the 3.67% threshold set by the JCPOA, which Trump withdrew from during his first term.

A senior U.S. official said downblending the stockpile would be the minimum standard, with Washington pushing for “more than that” during negotiations. Vance alluded to “gentlemen’s agreements,” noting that Iran has “promised that they would allow inspectors in to destroy that highly enriched stockpile, and then, of course, it’s not usable anymore, you take it somewhere else.” Iran has not formally agreed to anything beyond a general promise to resolve the issue.

Whether Iran will be permitted to enrich in the future, and to what extent, remains an open question. The MOU commits the two countries to discussing “the issue of enrichment and other mutually agreed matters,” promising a “satisfactory framework” related to Iran’s “nuclear needs” in a final deal.

Notably, the U.S. has already backed down from one of its previous red lines, dropping Trump’s earlier demand for zero enrichment forever in favor of allowing Iran to maintain a civilian nuclear program.

“We’re not bothered at all by the idea of civilian power plants in Iran,” a senior U.S. official said. “What we’re bothered by is the type of infrastructure that would allow them to jump from civilian power generation to nuclear weapons development. … We feel quite confident that if they meet their obligations under this agreement, they’re not going to have that infrastructure to build a nuclear weapon.”

A senior administration official insisted Iran has committed to dismantling its nuclear weapons program, including its nuclear site, noting that the countries would “figure out how to do that in the technical negotiations that will follow.” But abandoning its nuclear program will be a tough domestic sell for the Islamic Republic to make.

Inspections and implementation

Trump has repeatedly hammered the Obama-era JCPOA for not having a strong enough verification and inspections system. But his own MOU offers little clarity on what will replace it, only a vague commitment that “an executive mechanism will be established to monitor the successful implementation of this MOU and the future compliance of the final deal.”

Given that Iran blocked IAEA inspectors from accessing its nuclear facilities under the JCPOA, a stronger inspection system represents perhaps the most important potential U.S. win in final deal talks — if Washington can secure one.

“If we feel comfortable with the inspection and enforcement regime, that is when they will get some of the benefits of negotiation,” a senior administration official told reporters last week, without providing specifics of what that verification regime would entail nor confirming the role of the UN or IAEA.

Miller, the former State Department negotiator, compared the MOU to Trump’s 20-point Gaza plan — a document that pushed the conflict out of the headlines but left unsolved problems on the humanitarian, disarmament and reconstruction fronts.

“I see very little chance, without significant flexibility on the part of both sides, that 60 days is going to be enough” to bridge the “Grand Canyon-like gaps that separate Tehran and Washington,” Miller said.

And though the MOU’s 60-day deadline allows for extension “with mutual consent,” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the military is “prepared to restart if we need to” if Iran does not show progress in complying with U.S. demands.

Trump, speaking at the G7, was blunter still.

“If it doesn’t get done in 60 days, that’s all right,” Trump said. “We go back to bombing.”