--- title: GOP Freshmen Fight to Survive the Midterms description: From ICE to Iran, House Republicans in toss-up districts are caught between a President they’re wary of crossing and increasingly unpopular policies canonical: https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/gop-freshmen-midterms/ author: Julia Terruso article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2026-03-12T11:00:00.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-05-19T07:44:53.415Z article:section: Politics og:title: How Three GOP Freshmen Are Trying to Survive the Midterms og:description: From ICE to Iran, House Republicans in toss-up districts are caught between a President they’re wary of crossing and increasingly unpopular policies og:url: https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/gop-freshmen-midterms/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe19e609c69e284d/69b190701b001068c8a44e4f/GOP-Reps-Reelection-2026.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: GOP-Reps-Reelection-2026.png og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: How Three GOP Freshmen Are Trying to Survive the Midterms twitter:description: From ICE to Iran, House Republicans in toss-up districts are caught between a President they’re wary of crossing and increasingly unpopular policies twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe19e609c69e284d/69b190701b001068c8a44e4f/GOP-Reps-Reelection-2026.png?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # How Three GOP Freshmen Are Trying to Survive the Midterms  by [Julia Terruso](https://time.com/author/julia-terruso/)  ## Julia Terruso Senior Correspondent Mar 12, 2026 11:00 AM UTC  Tom Williams—CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images (3)  by [Julia Terruso](https://time.com/author/julia-terruso/)  ## Julia Terruso Senior Correspondent Mar 12, 2026 11:00 AM UTC U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans still hasn’t met Donald Trump a year into his first term in the House, but the President looms large over the Colorado Republican’s re-election campaign. Back home in his toss-up district in Denver’s northern suburbs, Evans faces questions from constituents about the economy, fears immigration enforcement, and now, a war in Iran. He’s a former police officer who still wears his police boots every day in Washington, and a U.S. Army veteran. Self-assured and a bit of a data nerd, he’s careful about where he pushes back on his party, which, like most of his GOP colleagues, isn’t often. But as Americans sour on some of the Administration’s flagship policies, the path to re-election feels steeper for a freshman who narrowly won his seat in 2024. “You know, for me, it's the same fight, just a different foxhole,” Evans told me in his Washington office last month, brushing off the political headwinds that could be coming his way. Prognosticators in both parties are predicting a difficult election in November for Republicans. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries has mocked the president’s poll numbers as “an extinction-level event” for Republicans this fall. Historically, the party controlling the White House takes a beating two years in, and early generic ballots show Democrats up about five points. In 2018, two years into Trump’s first term, 30 House Republican incumbents lost their seats. This year there are about three dozen competitive House races, according to The [Cook Political Report’s ratings](https://www.cookpolitical.com/ratings/house-race-ratings). Evans is one of three GOP freshmen in a toss-up district, making him a target for Democrats, who need to flip just three seats to reclaim the House majority. Freshmen are especially vulnerable in this political environment. Newly settled in their Capitol offices, they don’t yet have the name recognition or personal brands of long-timers, and the constituent favors and ribbon-cuttings of a first term only go so far against a national tide. In districts that could break either way, voters are still getting to know them at the same time opponents are racing to define them. With the midterms eight months away, these GOP members are caught between a president they’re wary of crossing and policies growing unpopular in their districts. The three most vulnerable freshmen are testing how much room there is for pushback in a party still defined by Trump and a House majority hanging on by a single seat. They’re carefully carving out minimal distance on flashpoints like ICE raids and healthcare, through pointed letters, quiet pressure on the Administration, and the occasional vote. Nuance is tricky in a loud and relentlessly partisan political climate, but it’s the gamble on which they’re betting their return tickets to Washington. “I try not to be the guy that is instigating a reaction to get the president’s attention,” U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett, a freshman from a toss-up Michigan district, told TIME. He’s not alone. Opposing Trump hasn’t proven to be a winning solution. The question, looking ahead to November, is what will be? “The headwinds are always tough for the president’s party in midterms and a lot tougher when the president is polling under 50% approval,” says Whit Ayres, a Republican strategist and pollster. “But they have got to continue to campaign in support of President Trump — I don’t think they have an option to do otherwise, so you find those areas where you agree with the president and you emphasize those areas and try to make the case that he’s making the lives of constituents better.” --- ## **‘Gangsters, not grandmas’** In February, Todd Lyons, the acting director of ICE, testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security following months of reports of agents rounding up immigrants without criminal backgrounds, and in some cases detaining people who were in the country legally. Two killings of protesters in Minneapolis heightened public concern about the tactics being deployed to fulfill the president’s plan to deport one million people. Evans, 39, represents a 40% Hispanic district. He had signaled in an interview with CBS that he would grill the director. But under the lights of the committee room, he probed politely. He asked Lyons if it was still ICE policy to prioritize criminal non-citizens over people in the U.S. illegally without records, saying he wanted the focus on “gangsters, not grandmas.” He questioned the immigration official about the dangers of “sanctuary cities,” which limit cooperation with immigration enforcement. Evans’ sharpest inquiry was about an ICE policy that authorizes agents to enter homes and private areas without a judicial search warrant. Evans said the practice concerns him as a former officer assigned to the riot squad and asked for more information on the policy. When we spoke in his office two weeks later, on the morning of Trump’s State of the Union address, Evans told me he was still awaiting written answers. Pressed on whether ICE needs reform, he argued the bigger problem is Democrats “sowing fear for political gain.” The Administration’s success in sealing the border, Evans argued, and low crime rates, were assets for Republicans to run on. Evans says he’s seen no evidence of large-scale immigration raids in his district, or in churches or workplaces, which he had urged the administration to avoid. “To the best of our knowledge, it's not happening, at least in my district,” he says. “It's targeted enforcement on the bad guys.” There have been anecdotal incidents of ICE detaining noncriminals in Colorado—including Jeannette Vizguerra-Ramirez, a grandmother and prominent immigrant-rights activist**.** Only about 14% of immigrants arrested by ICE nationally in the last year had violent criminal records, according to [an internal DHS document reported on by CBS](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/ice-arrests-violent-criminal-records-trump-first-year/). But Evans says he looked into department data and thinks the figure misrepresents the full picture, noting that about half of arrests involve non-violent crimes, including charges like possession of child pornography or drug distribution. The remaining one-third of cases involve people with no criminal record but often with existing deportation orders. When he talks about ICE, Evans often invokes his maternal grandfather, Cuauhtemoc Chavez, who immigrated from Mexico in 1929, served in WWII and earned two Purple Hearts. “Of course, if you're doing bad things and not complying with our laws, there's no tolerance for that,” he says. “But if you want to do things the right way, if you want to be like my grandfather, come to this country willing to shed your own blood before you're even a citizen, in defense of what's your new adopted homeland, we have to have pathways forward for those folks.” What he doesn’t volunteer is that his grandfather’s arrival was not techncially legal, [as detailed in a 2025 Colorado Newsline investigation](https://coloradonewsline.com/2025/07/22/u-s-rep-gabe-evans-misrepresented-familys-immigration-history/). Evans called the focus on that history an election season smear. Since coming to Congress, Evans has voted almost unanimously with his party, with some exceptions. He supported the Protect America’s Workforce Act to restore collective bargaining rights for federalized workers. That was important to him, he said, given Colorado National Guardsmen rely on those union protections. He also voted for a bill to provide federal funding for a water pipeline in southeastern Colorado, which the president vetoed. And he signed onto a letter in October urging Trump to reconsider increased importation of Argentine beef as the supply here has waned. The largest beef producer in the country is in his district. “Within 24 hours of the president making that statement, I was one of the first seven Republicans to go publicly sign my name to a letter saying, pump the brakes here,” Evans said. It appears to have done little. Last month, Trump signed a proclamation temporarily quadrupling the import quota for beef from Argentina in response to high U.S. prices. Taken together, Evans’ approach is a careful play: stand with Trump on the big fights, press for tweaks around the edges, and hope voters at home see a cop-turned-congressman trying to civilize, not confront, the president’s agenda. --- ## **‘You can’t force people to seek freedom’** U.S. Rep. Tom Barrett has been thinking a lot about the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan, which coincided with the end of his military career. Barrett, 44, joined the Army at 19, and over two decades in uniform his view shifted on what U.S. military power can realistically accomplish. “You can’t force people to seek freedom,” the Michigan Republican explains during a recent interview. He doesn’t want to see the country pulled into an extended war in Iran, he emphasized. Still, the freshman representative thinks the offensive that began there needs to continue, and two days later he joined all but three House Republicans in voting against congressional moves to immediately halt it. Barrett’s position has already sparked attacks from Democrats in Michigan hoping to unseat him in November; some have accused him of supporting a war to distract from high costs and domestic problems. A week into the war, a majority of Americans oppose U.S. military action in Iran, [according to a Marist/PBS/NPR poll](https://maristpoll.marist.edu/polls/war-with-iran-march-2026/). Gas prices are up about 20% since the conflict started at a moment when public sentiment about the economy is already sour. Barrett, 44, says his strategy for returning to Washington is touting Republican policies that, he argues, have lowered taxes for seniors and families, and leaning into an anti-corruption message. He’s signed onto legislation that would ban some congressional stock trading and he voted to release the Jeffrey Epstein files. He also cosponsored a bill to bring down housing costs by preventing large investment corporations from building single-family homes. “We have to be able to walk and chew gum,” says Barrett. Lately it’s less walking, more sprinting, as he campaigns in Michigan’s 7th Congressional District, which covers a mid-Michigan region including the capital, Lansing. While Barrett won by four percentage points in 2024, Trump won it by one point. Like Evans, Barrett insists the impact of Trump’s policies on his constituents does not match the outrage expressed by Democrats. He stood by Trump’s tariffs, which he called necessary to even the playing field with auto-makers in Japan, even as Michigan automakers warned of the fallout. “Nobody likes paying more for this widget or that thing. I get all of that, and it’s not something I minimize,” he says. “But I think we can find ways to maintain affordability while leveraging fair-trade negotiations.” As he looks ahead to the general election, he’s also stressing the hands-on work of a congressman. He flew to Mexico to help secure the release of a couple detained for more than a month following a timeshare dispute. He intervened on behalf of a Hmong refugee arrested by ICE, and helped get him released. “I wouldn’t say that’s a contrast with the Administration, but they were critical of his release afterward,” Barrett says. “And I stand firmly on the side that Lue Yang was not a threat to the community.” --- ## **A rift on healthcare** Ryan Mackenzie opened his tele–town hall on the night of March 4 with a rundown of money headed back to his district: $2 million for the Carbon County Sheriff’s office to buy new equipment; $2 million for new escalators and a parking deck at Lehigh Valley International Airport; $47 million for Mack Trucks, a major local employer, to keep producing the heavy-duty dump trucks used by the U.S. military. The 43-year-old freshman from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley won his seat in the state’s 7th Congressional District by a single point last year. Now, as the clock ticks toward November, he’s trying to make the most of what he’s done in a short time. When the line was opened to callers, a 19-year-old college student came on first. “What would you say to people like me who don’t want to see another forever war in the Middle East?” he asked. Mackenzie said he shared that concern, but that he planned to vote against the War Powers measure the next day, backing the President’s right to use military force in Iran without congressional authorization. At least for now. “If this proceeds beyond a couple of weeks, and certainly if it starts to bump up against 60 days,” McKenzie said, “that is where we have the obligation to step in as Congress and exercise our voice.” He told subsequent callers he thinks ICE agents need more training and agrees more money should be set aside for legal representation for immigrants caught up in an overloaded system. He also stressed his support for voter ID and the Republican-backed SAVE Act, which Trump has argued is what his party should focus on in the coming weeks. Mackenzie is undertaking the same balancing act as many vulnerable Republicans: stay close enough to Trump to secure his base and avoid retaliation, but not so close that he can’t win at home. A young father of two, he broke with GOP leadership to support a push for remote voting for new parents in Congress and he held hearings on paid parental leave. He sponsored a working families tax package billthat would have upped child tax credits and instituted a credit for families who go through IVF. A slimmed down version of the child tax credit made it into the GOP reconciliation bill that became law. “I think we definitely need to be doing more to be helping working families,” Mackenzie said. “These aren’t always traditional Republican issues but they’re very important for people across our community.” In January, Mackenzie was also one of just four Republicans to join Democrats on a discharge petition to extend enhanced Obamacare tax credits. He’s not loud about drawing differences between his policies and the President’s, but squint and they’re there. When word circulated the administration was considering eliminating funding for the pre-K program Head Start, Mackenzie was among a small group of Republicans who successfully pushed to maintain the program. He brought a Head Start teacher as his guest to the State of the Union. “We’ve campaigned together and support many of the same policies and parameters,” Mackenzie said of himself and the Administration. “But then when you’re legislating there are always nuanced differences to policy positions …when there are times we disagree, we let them know.” One silver lining for the three freshmen is that they are waiting on their competition. Both Mackenzie and Barrett have districts that feature crowded Democratic primaries. Those contests could get costly and messy in ways that might damage the eventual winner. Both the House Republican campaign arm and Trump’s MAGA PAC have boatloads of cash to support incumbents in key races. There’s still time for the political picture to shift—for the domestic impact of the war in Iran to become clearer, for the economy to feel less fragile. But in an unforgiving midterm season, the members are navigating a precarious political moment, knowing the recently hung sports pennants and district-specific decor on their office walls are only as permanent as the voters back home decide. Asked whether he feels like he’s running into an unforgiving political climate, Mackenzie shrugged off the question. “I think we’re doing all the things we can, that are in our control.” ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/gop-freshmen-midterms/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/gop-freshmen-midterms/"},"headline":"How Three GOP Freshmen Are Trying to Survive the Midterms","datePublished":"2026-03-12T11:00:00.000Z","dateModified":"2026-05-19T07:44:53.415Z","description":"House Republicans in toss-up districts are caught between a President they’re wary of crossing and increasingly unpopular policies","url":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/gop-freshmen-midterms/","keywords":["politics","elections"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe19e609c69e284d/69b190701b001068c8a44e4f/GOP-Reps-Reelection-2026.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Julia Terruso","jobTitle":"Senior Correspondent","url":"https://time.com/author/julia-terruso/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltfe19e609c69e284d/69b190701b001068c8a44e4f/GOP-Reps-Reelection-2026.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"GOP-Reps-Reelection-2026.png","caption":"","creditText":"Tom Williams—CQ-Roll Call, Inc/Getty Images (3)","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/politics/","name":"politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/article/2026/03/11/gop-freshmen-midterms/","name":"How Three GOP Freshmen Are Trying to Survive the Midterms"}}]}] ```