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While Donald Trump hailed the victory of Matt Van Epps (R) in Tennessee’s special election on Tuesday as a “great night for the Republican Party,” it certainly wasn’t that. When all the votes are counted, he will likely be up by about 9 points, which doesn’t look all that competitive on paper, but, in reality, it is way too close for comfort for the GOP.

Yes, Van Epps got the job done by winning the district and preserving the slim Republican majority in the House of Representatives (and, since he won’t be signing any Epstein discharge petitions, we imagine that he will be sworn in rather quickly).

But the result still spells trouble for the GOP. After all, Trump had carried the district by 22 points just over a year ago. In addition, that 9-point margin of victory was hard-earned. Republicans ended up spending millions of dollars on a race they should have won easily.

Of course, to be fair, Democrats also invested heavily in the district, hoping that their candidate, Aftyn Behn, might be able to steal the seat.

Still, the fact that House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) was forced to campaign for Van Epps this week is a troubling sign for the GOP.

Coupled with the outcome of last month’s gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey (as well as a smattering of other races from across the country), what Tuesday’s result shows is that Republicans face considerable headwinds going into 2026.

Sure, the midterm elections are still 11 months away (and the Trump administration has shown that it is eager to put a thumb on the scales of democracy to make them as unfair as possible), but that timeline is a bit misleading.

Because GOP incumbents, especially in the House, have to decide very soon whether they want to run again in an environment in which no Republican who won last year by 15 points or less is safe… and whether they want to continue serving in Congress under a Democratic majority.

We suspect that, after spending Christmas with their families and exploring their options, many of them will reach the conclusion that neither sounds like fun, and some may even follow Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s (R-GA) example and call it quits before then.

This would open up another can of worms for Johnson and Trump because we have seen that Republicans who have announced that they will not stand for reelection suddenly become much more outspoken about the president’s agenda.

Retiring Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC) and Rep. Don Bacon (R-NE) are great examples of lawmakers who seem to have found their consciences and are now speaking out about some of Trump’s excesses.

More than anything, the results of the past few weeks have shown how unpopular the president and his policies are.

But Republican lawmakers would be fooling themselves if they thought it is just Trump who should be worried, especially because they are too afraid to distance themselves from him.

There are 65 GOP incumbents in the House who won their races by fewer than 20 points last year.

In the current political environment, none of them can feel that their jobs are safe… and their options are extremely limited.

They can occasionally break with Trump and incur the president’s wrath, which means they might get primaried and will likely see an uptick in threats against them. They can hope that, miraculously, things will get better for non-billionaires. Or they can realize that they want to spend more time with their families and call it quits.

If we had to guess right now what they will choose to do, we’d say that zero of them will pick Option A. Instead, most of the Republicans who entered Congress since 2016 and are fully aligned with MAGA will stick around, while the majority of GOP lawmakers who have served longer than that will see the writing on the wall and retire.

This will then lead to another rightward shift of Republican candidates, which means that, win or lose, the GOP lawmakers serving in the next Congress will be even more radical.

While that may be an exciting prospect for those who think that things are going great in the US, it should fill all other Americans with dread.

Fortunately, as Tuesday’s result and the recent elections have shown, they seem to grasp the gravity of the situation and are turning out and voting accordingly.