Congress is officially in recess.
After a long slog to pass President Donald Trump’s “One Big, Beautiful Bill,” a drawn-out fight about nominees and an impasse on how to handle the Jeffrey Epstein scandal, House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune cut the House and Senate loose to go back to their homes and constituents.
August recesses are incredibly useful times for lawmakers because they allow them to not only sell their legislative accomplishments, but gauge what the vibe will be like in the upcoming midterm election.
But Republicans have their work cut out for them. Midterms are always a referendum on the president and how unhappy voters are with him. Just ask Bill Clinton after 1994, George W. Bush after 2006, Barack Obama after 2010 and 2014 and, well, Trump after 2018.
Each time, the party outside of the White House flipped at least one chamber.
Trump knows this, which is why he wanted Texas Republicans to redraw their congressional districts, which led Democrats in the state house to decamp to blue states like Illinois and New York.
But Democrats have a harder time flipping the Senate. For one, they have to defend Senate seats in states that Trump won in 2024, such as Michigan and Georgia. On top of that, their best shot at flipping a Senate seat is in North Carolina, which has not elected a Democrat to the Senate since 2008.
A few months ago, The Independent ranked the Senate seats most likely to flip. Since then, plenty has changed.
Democrats have coalesced around Chris Pappas in New Hampshire, while Republicans have gotten behind Scott Brown, who only won a fluke race in 2010 in Massachusetts. As a result, we’re taking the Granite State off the list and replacing it with Texas, which has a chance to flip thanks to an intra-GOP blood feud.
Here are the five Senate seats most likely to turn:
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1. North Carolina
Trump’s feud with Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) about the One Big, Beautiful Bill’s cuts to Medicaid ended in the worst way possible for Republicans: Tillis deciding to not seek re-election in a super-swingy state.
In response, Democrats got their dream candidate: former governor Roy Cooper, a popular two-term governor, who won races in 2016 and 2020 when Trump was at the top of the ticket.
The fact he also expanded Medicaid as governor with the help of Republicans offers a contrast after Trump signed steep cuts to the health care program. He’s already proven to be a prolific fundraiser.
On the GOP side, Lara Trump, the president’s daughter-in-law who grew up in Wilmington, passed on running. Now, Michael Whatley, the former state GOP chairman and Republican National Committee chairman, is the presumptive nominee. So far, an Emerson College poll shows Cooper up by six points.
But as is the case in college basketball, North Carolina loves tight races.
2. Georgia
Sen. Jon Ossoff is the youngest senator and the most vulnerable incumbent Democrat, not least because he represents a state Trump won.
Republicans have put a massive target on his back. But so far, they also have a crowded primary to replace him.
Rep. Buddy Carter has jumped in, as has Rep. Mike Collins, who will occupy the more MAGA lane of the GOP, though he notably misspelled the name of his state in his announcement ad.
Derek Dooley, the former University of Tennessee head football coach and the son of University of Georgia head coach Vince Dooley, also announced his run on Monday.
And a crowded primary could risk disaster if the three men spend their time attacking each other instead of the Democrat. Ossoff has a fairly prodigious war chest, raising $9.1 million last fundraising quarter.
Expect Republicans to also attack him on immigration and Israel. Ossoff voted for the Laken Riley Act, named for a University of Georgia student killed in Athens, that Collins wrote. But last week, he voted with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) on one of his resolutions to withhold arms sales to Israel.
3. Maine
On paper, Susan Collins should be the most vulnerable incumbent senator. She is the only Republican from a state Kamala Harris won. She’s 72 and has voted for many of Trump’s most controversial nominees like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard.
And Trump attacked her last week.
But there’s just one problem: Collins’s universal name recognition in Maine and the fact she has pulled off a miracle win in 2020 means few big-name Democrats have stepped up to run against her. Collins has also proven to be deft at her job.
She is chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, meaning she can bring money back to her state, voted against confirming Pete Hegseth to lead the Pentagon and opposed the One Big, Beautiful Bill while also beefing up its rural hospital fund. Jordan Wood, a former House chief of staff, has raised a large amount of money. But for now, it’s still an uphill climb for Democrats.
4. Michigan
On the Republican side, Michigan Republicans have essentially agreed to nominate former congressman Mike Rogers, who barely lost to Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich,). The real fight will be on the Democratic primary side.
Michigan, which has a large concentration of Arab-American voters, became a source of heartburn for Democrats during the war in Gaza because of Joe Biden’s vocal, diplomatic and military support for Israel. Plenty of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents simply chose to sit out the race, which likely cost them the race.
Expect Israel to play a big role. Rep. Haley Stevens would start out as the establishment favorite, with the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee quietly saying she’d be the best candidate, CNN reported. But some progressives worry that she has received a large amount from the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
By contrast, Mallory McMorrow, the Democratic whip in the state senate, who occupies the lane of suburban well-educated white voters. Abdul El-Sayed, who ran for governor in 2018, will represent the progressive wing .
As is the case with Georgia, Democrats risk a primary where they cannibalize each other and risk losing a seat in a state they where a Republican hasn’t won a Senate race since 1994.
5. Texas
Texas is causing the biggest headaches for Republicans.
Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas) should be a shoe-in to win re-election. But Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general, announced he would run. Paxton has been under federal indictment almost as soon as he became attorney general in 2015. The Texas state house impeached him and last month, his wife, state senator Angela Paxton, announced she would divorce him on “bibilical grounds.”
But MAGA loves him, particularly for his attempts to overturn the 2020 presidential election results.
Conservatives also don’t like that Cornyn negotiated a gun bill with Democrats immediately after the shooting in Uvalde in 2022. Republicans fear a Paxton victory would risk Democrats flipping a Senate seat in a place they haven’t won a Senate seat since 1988.
Everything has to go right for Democrats in the Lone Star State. Whether it be Colin Allred, who lost to Ted Cruz and is deciding to run it back, or Terry Virts, a retired astronaut. But occasionally, miracles happen, even in Texas.
