MAGA Wants to Run on Immigration, Even If It Kills Them - New York Magazine

Virtually every Republican political strategist agrees that the economy, and particularly the cost of living, will be the dominant issue in the 2026 midterms. Convincing swing voters that Donald Trump is decisively bringing back the best-ever economy and lowering the price of essential goods and services — which he promised to do a thousand times during his 2024 campaign — is the key to the Republican Party’s hopes of defying the odds and hanging on to control of Congress in November. It’s reinforced by many polls that show the economy is the No. 1 concern for voters, and that there’s a great deal of anxiety, some of it generated by the rise of AI and the immense power of billionaires on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley, that goes beyond prices at the gas pump and the grocery store.

But just as the midterm campaign season begins in earnest, Trump’s MAGA movement, and perhaps Trump himself, are showing signs that they really don’t want to dwell on the economy beyond braying that it’s better than ever, blaming Democrats for every problem, and implying that unhappy Americans are ingrates.

Immigration has always been the favorite issue of Trump’s base. What made Trump’s 2024 comeback magical to his most loyal supporters was that he finally stopped dillydallying around with border walls and travel bans and pledged to deport every single undocumented immigrant in the country, and maybe some documented immigrants as well, as part of an effort to purify a country cursed by diversity.

A year ago, the immigration issue was a net positive for Trump as border crossings plunged. But it soon became obvious that his mass-deportation program would go far beyond the “worst of the worst,” or the violent criminals Trump and J.D. Vance liked to talk about, to encompass millions of peaceful, productive people working in farms and factories and hospitals. Many were legally in the country under refugee protections the administration soon revoked. Some were small children, others even citizens, including bystanders who had the temerity to get in the way. And the whole enterprise was being supervised by the cartoon villains Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem, deploying a huge army of hastily assembled and poorly trained masked thugs. When immigration agents killed two U.S. citizens in Minnesota and virtually the entire administration lied about it, the issue turned sharply negative for Trump and the GOP. Hence the demand in Republican ranks for an “affordability pivot” that would displace images of blood in the streets with hopes of relief from high prices and poor job security.

Then came the president’s State of the Union address, in which he churned through the affordability passages in a sleep-inducing manner and only came to life when he could return to savaging immigrants and the Democrats who defended them. And now a reenergized MAGA movement is waging a two-front war to keep immigration front and center in the national political discourse.

First, Trump supporters are running ads capitalizing on the Trump SOTU stunt in which he demanded that Democrats (who had agreed to a strategy of seated, “silent defiance” during the speech) stand up to validate a contrived choice between protecting “American citizens, not illegal aliens”:

We will see these images again and again in individual and partywide GOP campaigns between now and November, suggesting that Democratic protests over ICE tactics and mass-deportation overreach are just a veil for a fundamental disloyalty to the country. This was a big part of Trump’s 2024 campaign narrative, and it’s back with a vengeance now.

Second, MAGA influencers are joining Trump in insisting that congressional Republicans make promoting the SAVE Act, their top, and perhaps only, priority this year. The bill would deny voter registration to anyone who cannot produce very specific documents proving citizenship. Democrats universally oppose this legislation, partly because it addresses a completely imaginary noncitizen-voting plague and partly because up to 21 million U.S. citizens don’t have ready access to the documentation it requires. If imposed in the brief period prior to the midterms, the legislation would upturn voter rolls and suppress millions of valid votes.

SAVE Act proponents understand perfectly well that it will never see the light of day in the Senate. But they are nonetheless insisting that Senate Republicans keep it on the floor for weeks, maybe even months, in an effort to force Democrats to stop it via a “talking filibuster” that would have to go on and on. Senate Republican leader John Thune is beside himself about these demands, Punchbowl News reports:

[House Speaker Mike] Johnson has met with and boosted MAGA influencers like Scott Presler, who are leading the charge.

The online vitriol has become so heated that all of Thune’s social media posts — even one

[congratulating]a Korean War hero awarded the Medal of Honor — are regularly spammed with calls to pass the SAVE America Act, some using threatening language.

Thune has also been on the receiving end of public and private lobbying from Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), both

[on X]and during senators-only GOP Conference meetings.

Advocates for the SAVE Act invariably cite polls showing strong bipartisan support for some sort of voter ID (which most states require anyway prior to voter registration or initial voting) that’s far short of what this legislation would demand. It’s likely that if Republicans insist on a monthslong national debate on the subject, support for this specific kind of voter ID would steadily shrink. But any way you slice it, a day spent ventilating about the completely made-up noncitizen-voting scourge (and all the attendant conspiracy theories and election denials justified by this myth) is a day when Republicans are not addressing affordability. That might be fine with MAGA activists, but GOP candidates in purple states or marginal districts will surely think otherwise. Aside from the peril associated with ceding economic issues to Democrats, a nation riveted on immigration is going to be reminded again and again that the Trump administration is carrying out mass deportation in a manner that large majorities of Americans are rejecting as cruel and unnecessary. It’s a lose-lose proposition for the GOP, but MAGA does not care.

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