Meanwhile, a special election in the lone star state further erodes Republicans' margin in the U.S. House of Representatives.

That, as the federal government partially shuts down again.

For more, we turn to our Politics Monday duo.

That is Amy Walter of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter and Tamara Keith of NPR.

Great to see you both.

Good to be here.

Let's talk about Texas.

Two races I want to ask you

about. One, not a surprise. The 18th Congressional District there, a Democrat. Christian Menifee, won a special election to fill a seat that's been vacant since a member passed over a year ago. The other, Amy, for a state Senate seat in Fort Worth where Democrat Taylor Ramette won in a district that Trump won by 17 points last year. What happened

there? Well, I think it's easy to look at this and think, well, we're living through a time

right now where Trump, the backlash to ICE, his approval ratings going down, thinking that

this is directly connected to that. But if you look overall, look at all the special elections that have been taking place since 2025,

this fits into the pattern that we've seen, which is Democrats outperforming what Kamala Harris got in those districts in 2024 by an average 13 points.

So it is part of the headwinds that continue to batter Republicans

right now. You know, you could look at 2025 and say, well, maybe these will ease up as we get

into 2026. Obviously, this race in Texas shows that there's absolutely none of that happening right now.

Concerns for Republicans in the midterms. What are we hearing from the White House?

Yeah, and special elections are special. So, you know, you can't take one election and say, wow, this is how everyone is going to be in the fall.

But, you know, a fascinating case with this race, President Trump did endorse that candidate.

He did go on social media and say, you got to get out there, you got to vote.

And then when asked about him losing by a really significant margin, the president was like,

I'm just learning about this right now.

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