Republican leaders at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s three-day conference urged their evangelical base to stay engaged ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, warning that complacency could cost the GOP its narrow majorities in Congress and derail President Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.
Republican National Committee Chairman Michael Whatley didn’t mince words, calling 2026 “the most important midterm of our lifetime.”
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“We’re either going to have a Congress in the Senate that [is] going to work with President Trump for four years or for two years,” Whatley warned.
“Look what happened in 2018. Democrats took control of the House, the next day it was investigations, it was hoaxes, it was impeachment. It was his agenda being driven off the rails,” he added.
Border czar Tom Homan gets the loudest reception today at the Faith and Freedom Coalition summit in DC. Entire audience gives him a standing ovation. pic.twitter.com/BibbHP0CoX
— Samantha-Jo Roth (@SamanthaJoRoth) June 27, 2025
The stakes are high. Democrats need to flip four Senate seats to retake the majority, a steep climb given that most of the 22 GOP-held seats up for grabs are in safe red states. In the House, the path is more plausible: just a three-seat pickup could shift control, with dozens of districts in play.
Echoing the urgency, Sebastian Gorka, deputy assistant to Trump and senior director for counterterrorism, cautioned against “victory-itus,” a dangerous assumption that the conservative movement has already won.
“You have a deadly condition. Your deadly condition is victory-itus. Why? Because you think we are good. Since Nov. 5, you think we are good. We are not, we are not good,” Gorka told the crowd on Saturday.
He told attendees of the conference that they needed to fully understand what Trump represents and to match his relentless energy, cautioning that without that level of commitment, core conservative priorities, from parental rights and border security to protections for unborn children, could be lost for good.
“If we don’t all act like Donald Trump for the next 18 months, you will lose it all forever,” he said. “Don’t listen to me, listen to the Democrats. We just elected not a crypto communist, an avowed communist running to be mayor of New York, a man who says we will own the grocery stores, the government will own them,” Gorka said, referencing state Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani’s win in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary.
Attendance at this year’s conservative political advocacy conference was noticeably lighter than during last year’s presidential election cycle. Trump, who has addressed the gathering nine times before, did not appear, a move not uncommon in the year following a national election.
Leaders hailed the president for keeping his campaign promises, pointing to his record on abortion, immigration, and moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem, as well as his pledge to “bring back Christianity.” In addition to the Supreme Court’s 2022 decision overturning Roe v. Wade, speakers highlighted more recent rulings this term, including the court’s support for a Republican-backed ban on transgender procedures for minors in Tennessee and its approval of South Carolina’s effort to cut public funding to Planned Parenthood.
Ralph Reed, the chairman of the Faith & Freedom Coalition, said evangelicals are fully mobilized to help pass Trump’s One Big Beautiful Bill Act, the major tax cut and spending legislation he described as advancing long-standing conservative and faith-based priorities.
“We have a defunding of taxpayer-funded abortion in this bill. It’s something we’ve been seeking for a quarter of a century, and we need to get it,” he explained, speaking with reporters on Friday afternoon. “We want to increase the child tax credit.”
Reed continued, “We have this extraordinary provision that creates a tax credit for the entire nation for contributions for K-12 school choice programs.”
He expressed confidence in the bill’s passage, framing it as both a legislative win and a political weapon heading into the next election cycle.
“This bill will pass. This will get done, and when it does, it’s going to be a huge victory, and it’s going to help us turn the vote out in 2026,” he predicted.
The group ran a $62 million ground game operation in 2024 and has long been active in grassroots efforts to drive religious conservatives to the polls.
“What we did in 2024 is, without question, the largest get-out-the-vote and voter mobilization effort by an outside organization in the modern history of the party,” he said. “We will do it in 2026.”
Historically, the president’s party almost always loses congressional seats in midterm elections, typically a result of voter backlash, lower turnout, and public frustration with those in power. But Reed argued 2026 may defy that pattern. With the political landscape sharply divided and most battleground races decided by razor-thin margins, he said that he believes traditional midterm dynamics no longer apply.
He cited factors like redistricting precision, stronger GOP candidates, and a highly sophisticated, data-driven ground game as reasons Republicans could hold, or even gain, ground.
“Those [big wave] elections are gone,” Reed said, predicting the midterm elections will hinge on just a few thousand votes in key states.
“We think the House is a jump ball. We think the Senate is on the bubble, but you’d probably favor us 51-49, 52-48,” he added. “You’ve got a primary in Texas that could really impact the map. We assume [Sen. Thom Tillis] is going to run again — that’s going to be a 1% race.”
Reed also pointed to Georgia, calling Sen. Jon Ossoff (D-GA) “the most vulnerable Democrat in the country” and predicting a tight contest in his home state: “We don’t have a candidate, but we will have one. It will be a 1% race.”
On immigration, Reed downplayed the political risk of aggressive deportation policies under the administration, even among evangelical voters. While he acknowledged there could be some concern, particularly in cases where families are separated, he said the overall issue remains a political “winner” for Republicans.
“If they have to do some calibrations or turn a screw as they move forward,” Reed said, referring to potential fallout in areas like the service industry, “I think they’ll be able to calibrate that and respond accordingly.”
Asked whether trade policy and tariffs could be a wildcard issue in the midterm elections, Reed acknowledged he’s “not a big fan of tariffs” but defended their strategic use as leverage. He pointed to his experience under President George W. Bush dealing with Canadian softwood lumber disputes, noting that tariffs were the only effective way to bring trade partners to the table.
“Most of the issues aren’t tariffs, they’re content regulations, labor rules, environmental standards,” Reed said. “We’ve got to use our tariffs to force them to negotiate … and I think it’s going to be a winner for us.”
Turning to foreign policy, Reed said Democrats are in a “real pickle” on Israel, noting that while the party’s leadership, like Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), largely supports the U.S.-Israel alliance, the base has shifted sharply away and “is not coming back.”
He said this growing divide poses long-term political risks, particularly in battleground states like Michigan. Reed pointed to backlash in cities like Dearborn during the 2024 election and accused Democrats of sending conflicting messages to different audiences, a strategy he said is doomed to fail in the digital age.
“They were saying one thing in Pennsylvania and something else in Michigan,” Reed said, holding up his phone. “That doesn’t work when everybody’s got one of these.”
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That divide, he suggested, is just one of many factors shaping what he sees as an exceptionally tight and unpredictable electoral landscape heading into 2026.
“I think the country is very evenly divided. I think it’s a highly competitive political environment out there,” Reed said. “I just think it’s going to be really close and really hard fought.”