On the menu today: The Republican exodus on Capitol Hill continues, as New York GOP Representative Elise Stefanik ends her bid for governor. A whole lot of Republicans who spent 2024 telling us they couldn’t wait to represent us are suddenly announcing their intention to be somewhere besides Capitol Hill in 2027. Meanwhile, President Trump declares who he wants to be the GOP nominee for governor of Minnesota in 2026, ensuring that Democratic incumbent Tim Walz can sleep easily in the coming year. Finally, all the reasons we are extremely unlikely to invade Venezuela.
The Republican Exodus on Capitol Hill Continues
In a genuinely surprising move, Elise Stefanik announced Friday that she was suspending her campaign for governor and will not seek reelection to Congress. This ends a tumultuous year for Stefanik, who in January had already been voted out of committee to be the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, when President Trump decided to withdraw her nomination in order to keep her vote in the House.
Apparently, Stefanik believed she had been a loyal soldier to Trump and would have his backing in her effort to defeat incumbent Democrat Kathy Hochul. Trump, apparently, felt otherwise, expressing support for a bid from Nassau County Executive Bruce Blakeman.
A second GOP operative who had backed Stefanik said the six-term lawmaker was “not happy with how the White House handled this” and that her failing to get explicit support counted as a win for Blakeman.
“Every passing day there was increasing frustration. . . . I’m sensing frustration both with being in Congress in DC politics in general, and if he’s not going to clear the field then this hurts my chances at winning then why am I doing this? This is the second time I’m being stabbed by the White House.”
Between Stefanik and Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, we see a pattern of female House Republicans who thought they were sufficiently loyal to the president to remain in his good graces but found to their surprise that the president felt otherwise, and are now abruptly retiring from the House, and perhaps politics entirely.
A major problem for the Republican Party at this moment is that it functions as a cult of personality where loyalty to the president is the preeminent quality for advancement, but the president himself is mercurial and erratic.
I can’t help but notice a lot of Republicans in Congress are deciding they want to do something else with their lives rather than run for reelection in their current seat.
GOP House members David Schweikert and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Byron Donalds of Florida, John James of Michigan, Randy Feenstra of Iowa, Ralph Norman and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, Dusty Johnson of South Dakota, John Rose of Tennessee, and Tom Tiffany of Wisconsin are all leaving their seats to run for governor.
Don Bacon of Nebraska, Jodey Arrington, Morgan Luttrell, Michael McCaul, and Troy Nehls of Texas and Dan Newhouse of Washington are retiring.
Some GOP open seats will be the result of House members who want to run for Senate.
Barry Moore of Alabama, Earl “Buddy” Carter and Mike Collins of Georgia, Andy Barr of Kentucky, Ashley Hinson of Iowa, and Wesley Hunt of Texas are all leaving their current seats to run for a U.S. Senate seat in their states.
Among GOP senators, Alabama’s Tommy Tuberville and Tennessee’s Marsha Blackburn are leaving their seats to run for governor. Senators Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, Joni Ernst of Iowa, Thom Tillis of North Carolina, and Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming are retiring.
Some, like Greene or Tiffany, represent districts that are just about certain to elect the GOP primary winner. Some, like Stefanik or Bacon, represent districts that are much better targets for a Democratic takeover. But as we enter the sixth year of Donald Trump being president and the eleventh year of him being the center of our national political life, a significant number of Republicans who campaigned to represent their constituents as recently as November 2024 suddenly aren’t so interested in being in Washington anymore.
To be sure, Democrats will have their share of open seat races as well — Jasmine Crockett is running for Senate in Texas, Eric Swalwell is running for governor in California, and Mikie Sherrill won her governor’s race in New Jersey.
But open seat races are tougher to defend than an incumbent, adding one more complication to GOP efforts to keep control of the House in 2026.
Overall, as of December 17, 2025, a record ten senators and 44 House members have already announced they don’t plan to run for reelection in their current seats in 2026.
President Trump Decides to Make Life Easier for Tim Walz
As you probably know, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz is running for a rare third consecutive term. His polling numbers are not all that great for a Democratic incumbent, and voter anger over the fraud scandals is real and bipartisan. The right Republican would have a decent shot, perhaps even better than a decent shot, in next year’s gubernatorial race.
Lisa Demuth, the Republican speaker of the state House, has already announced a bid for governor, and is hitting Walz because he “let fraud run wild.”
But that doesn’t matter, my friends. It doesn’t matter, because President Trump knows better about who should take on Walz, and at a rally Friday night in North Carolina he revealed his choice:
Everybody knew what was going on. But what nobody knew is over nine billion dollars? And the people of Minnesota are not happy. And you know who’s running for governor?
Mike Lindell. Do we like Mike Lindell? That man suffered. That man suffered. He, what he did, what he went through because he knew the election was rigged. And he did it. He didn’t, I mean, he just did it as a citizen. Mike Lindell, I’ll tell you what, every time I introduced him, he got the biggest hand.
I hope he does great. He deserves to do great. That man suffered. These people went after him. They went after his company. They did that with me, too, but at least I knew what I was getting into. He was just a guy that said, “. . . This election was so crooked. It was so rigged.” He fought like hell. That guy deserves to be governor of Minnesota, I’ll tell you right now.
Mike Lindell is the “My Pillow Guy” who has been found liable for defamation when he called an executive at Dominion Voting Systems a “traitor,” and was ordered to pay $2.3 million in damages. Lindell’s lawyers were later fined $6,000 after using artificial intelligence in a brief that was riddled with misquotes and citations to fictional cases.
For about a decade now, sensible voices on the right have begged Republican primary voters to pick their nominees based upon criteria other than “who is most loyal to President Trump?” and “who does President Trump like best?” And in many cases, Republican primary voters have not listened. We have watched Josh Shapiro beat Doug Mastriano by 15 percentage points in Pennsylvania and Wes Moore beat Dan Cox in Maryland by 32 points and Kari Lake lose to a pile of mashed potatoes in the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial race.
Nominating Lindell to take on Walz would be a form of surrender, and a national declaration that the Republican Party is not seriously interested in addressing the state’s problems.
We’re Extremely Unlikely to Invade Venezuela
As discussed on recent editions of The Editors, I am skeptical that President Trump will launch major military action, or a full-scale invasion, of Venezuela.
Perhaps at some point, fed up with dictator Nicolás Maduro’s defiance, President Trump will authorize a limited air campaign, along the lines of the airstrikes on the Iranian nuclear facilities, hitting key targets associated with Maduro’s regime. But this would likely be a strike that was symbolic, not a wholesale effort to destroy the current regime and its ability to enforce its will over the Venezuelan people.
The known buildup of U.S. forces in the region is considerable — “warships, surveillance craft, elite Special Forces units and the Navy’s largest aircraft carrier,” and probably 10,000 troops and 6,000 sailors. But a Center for Strategic and International Studies review concluded, “The current deployed assets are inadequate for larger and riskier operations, such as a ground invasion or raids against drug cartels or the Maduro regime. Doctrinal guidelines and past campaigns suggest that nearly 50,000 troops, at a minimum, would be required for an invasion.”
Furthermore, Trump doesn’t seem like the sort of guy who’s itching to launch a major war of regime change. It would be particularly ironic decision from the man who once called the invasion of Iraq “the worst decision ever made.”
Keep in mind, the Maduro regime is awful and illegitimate, with a human rights record that reads like a demon’s resume. The Venezuelan people, the American people, and the world would be better off if Maduro decided to retire and take that flight to Belarus. (Perhaps Russia’s Vladimir Putin could arrange for him to move into the same apartment as Syria’s former dictator, Bashar al-Assad. To reuse a joke from last year, “two bedrooms, one Baath.”)
Are the military forces of Maduro’s regime any match for the U.S. military? No, but that doesn’t mean that they will be a pushover or turn around and flee at the first sign of conflict.
Over at War on the Rocks, Orlando J. Pérez summarizes the initial military challenges to a U.S.-led regime change war:
Venezuela fields more than 100,000 military and paramilitary personnel and sits behind one of the densest integrated air defense networks in the hemisphere. Its S-300VM and Buk-M2 surface-to-air systems, paired with Su-30MK2 fighters, would make the early phases of any intervention — especially the fight for air superiority — slow, costly, and politically fraught. Even optimistic planners estimate that a minimally viable invasion and stabilization force would require upwards of 50,000 troops. Securing Caracas, sealing porous borders, and guarding key infrastructure would demand far more.
With no U.S. basing rights in Venezuela, every sortie, surveillance mission, medevac, and resupply run would have to launch from ships offshore or from reluctant third countries. And “reluctant” may be generous — no Latin American state is likely to support a ground invasion.
Now, keep in mind, the Venezuelan forces would face their own share of significant challenges in any conflict. “James Story, the American ambassador to Venezuela from 2018 to 2023,” told the New York Times “that Venezuela’s military is plagued with problems including poorly maintained weaponry, lack of training and desertions.” Even the relatively isolationist Quincy Institute concludes, “There is no real chance that the impoverished and corrupt Venezuelan armed forces can put up a serious fight against the American military.”
That’s the good news, but the bad news is what comes next. As Americans have learned from Iraq and Afghanistan, toppling the hostile regime is the comparably easy part.
How would the Venezuelan people respond to a U.S. invasion? Would U.S. forces be “greeted as liberators,” to use a phrase from not-so-faraway history, or would they encounter crowds of civilians chanting, “Yankee, go home”?
How prepared is the Trump administration to establish a new government to replace the Maduro regime? Would Venezuela need a new constitution, or could it keep the old one? Would the new Venezuelan government, at the national, state, and local levels, need a “de-Maduro-fication” comparable to the attempted “De-Baathification” in Iraq? Who would decide which Venezuelan government employees would need to be relieved of their duties? What happens to Maduro loyalists?
How does the administration plan to get the new regime recognized as legitimate in the eyes of Venezuelans and the country’s neighbors?
One other reason why a full-scale invasion seems unlikely — at least anytime soon — is that the administration, for all its bellicose rhetoric about Maduro’s regime, has not yet even begun to make a case to the American public for a war in Venezuela to topple Maduro from power. As noted above, while the Venezuelan forces would be unlikely to win a conflict with the United States military, they could and likely would inflict casualties. A lot of Americans who are currently fine with bombing drug-running boats and seizing oil tankers would likely not be supportive of operations that led to a lot of flag-draped coffins returning to Dover Air Force base in Delaware.
Many Americans would rightfully ask why a mission of interdicting drug shipments had suddenly escalated to a large-scale invasion and, presumably, occupation.
On the campaign trail in 2024, President Trump was critical of Maduro and his regime, but hardly sounded like a man who expected to launch a military invasion of Venezuela. One of the reasons some folks in MAGA like Trump is because he seems less inclined to use military force than, say, either preceding president with the surname “Bush.”
ADDENDA: Morning Jolts will be written and published today, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Next week, we will publish Monday the 29th and Tuesday the 30th, and then return Friday, January 2, 2026.
. . . It is December 22, and if you’ve forgotten to get someone a Christmas gift, you’re up a creek, pal. Even the great logistics operations at Amazon might not get your last-minute gift there in time. But a new subscription to NRPlus processes very quickly! And it costs just a buck a week!
. . . One of my favorite jokes in recent weeks has been, “Heritage American” is the term we use to refer to the demographic of Americans who have resigned from the Heritage Foundation in recent months. Hey, look, there’s another one!
Josh Blackman, the former senior editor of the Heritage Guide to the Constitution, writing to Dr. Kevin Roberts, president of the Heritage Foundation:
Judges who have spoken at Heritage told me they would no longer affiliate with Heritage, and would no longer recommend their clerks attend the Clerkship Academy. Scholars who won prizes from Heritage told me they would no longer contribute to any Heritage publications. Public interest litigators have tweeted that they will no longer attend the Legal Strategy Forum.
The Heritage Foundation is greater than any single President. But one President has done what was once unthinkable. The Meese Center cannot survive under Heritage’s current leadership, and the damage to the Meese Center brand has been irreparable.
What, exactly, does Kevin Roberts do that makes him so valuable to the institution that they can afford to keep him in place, considering reputational damage like this?