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Just as Republicans caught a break on affordability this month, President Donald Trump undid it twice over.
Gas prices jumped back above $4 a gallon as the Iran war escalated again, and sweeping new tariffs landed on dozens of countries, all in the span of a week. Polling shows a growing share of Republican voters now blame Trump for the high prices, with this year's midterms just over three months away.
Gas crossed the $4-per-gallon average nationally on Monday for the first time in more than a month, up 3 percent in a week, according to AAA. Fighting between the United States and Iran intensified and oil was climbing toward $100 a barrel, wiping out weeks of relief that followed a June ceasefire.
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Then, hours after Trump's temporary 10 percent global tariff expired at midnight Friday, the administration replaced it with new tariffs of 10 percent to 12.5 percent on 60 trading partners. The countries affected account for more than 99 percent of U.S. imports.
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The White House Pushes Back
The White House rejected the idea that any of it is a liability.
"As the U.S. military degrades the terrorist Iranian regime's ability to attack commercial vessels and disrupt the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will plummet back to pre-conflict levels," White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers said in a statement.
Trump has waved off any connection to the midterms.
"I can't think about that having to do with this," he said this week when asked whether the elections would shape his approach to the war. "I think people are very impressed."
Even some Republicans who have defended the war publicaly are starting to voice doubts about it.
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"I do think that the American public's growing weary," West Virginia Senator Shelley Moore Capito, a Republican who chairs the Senate Republican Policy Committee, said this week on NewsNation.
Fellow West Virginia Senator Jim Justice, also a Republican, put it more bluntly: "There's got to be an off-ramp."
GOP Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky told CNN he believes the war "has not been a success" and that the country is "worse off than we were before."
One Republican senator, speaking to The Hill on condition of anonymity, said gas prices are "a big worry" heading into November, and that colleagues privately share the concern even if they are not saying so publicly. Pennsylvania Representative Brian Fitzpatrick, a Republican in a swing district, has criticized the administration's spending priorities as costs climb, arguing that Republicans "should always be focused on affordability."
The war has also cost Trump some Republican votes in Congress. Four House Republicans crossed the aisle this week to back a nonbinding resolution urging him to end the war. Even House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Louisiana Republican who has defended the campaign's objectives, wants it to end: "We got to wrap it up."
Newsweek reached out to the White House for comment on Friday morning.
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The Numbers Behind the Nerves
A July Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that 65 percent of adults disapprove of Trump's handling of the economy, and 66 percent call groceries "unaffordable." A separate Pew-based survey found that 28 percent of Republican voters now say his economic policies have made things worse, up from 18 percent in January.
Republican strategist Alex Patton doesn't see much room for the party to maneuver around any of it.
"This week's events just increase the headwinds facing GOP candidates across the nation," Patton said.
He was skeptical Republicans have a workable affordability message at all.
"Affordability is affordability, and voters get frequent reminders of how affordable things are or are not, gas, food, electricity bill, etc.," he said, adding that the only line that might still land is going after Democrats rather than defending the party's own record.
Tariffs are a subtler problem. Republican voters still back them more than the country as a whole, but the coalition isn't solid. A February Pew survey put GOP approval of the tariff hikes at 71 percent, yet that falls to 43 percent among self-described non-MAGA Republicans, according to ABC News/Washington Post/Ipsos polling. Even within the party, 47 percent said they expect the tariffs to make inflation worse.
The political exposure may be even bigger than the price tag itself. A Politico poll analysis found three in five Americans believe gas prices in their area have risen by more than they actually have, and that gap in perception was wider among voters who backed Vice President Kamala Harris than those who backed Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
Roughly 46 percent of Americans said the change in gas prices would affect how they vote in November, and among Republicans specifically, non-MAGA voters were more likely than MAGA voters to say so.
"It is a particularly tough dance that many Republican candidates will have to endure for the next three months," Arizona Republican strategist Barrett Marson said. "How do you feel the pain of your voters without feeling the wrath of Donald Trump?"
Battleground Districts Feel It First
The exposure is concentrated where Republicans can least afford it. Of the 13 most competitive House districts where gas prices have risen faster than the national average, nine are held by Republicans, according to Politico.
In California's 22nd District, prices are up $1.17 a gallon since Trump took office, the third-highest increase of any competitive district in the country, as Republican Representative David Valadao faces a challenge from Democrat Randy Villegas. In Colorado's 8th District, where prices have risen 73 cents, Republican Representative Gabe Evans has instead pointed to state-level policy, saying high gas prices are "a direct result of the local economic policies" of Colorado Democrats. Roughly 63 percent of Americans polled said the Iran war, not state policy, is the primary reason gas prices have risen.
Every collapse of the truce between Iran and the U.S. has dragged down Trump's numbers. Every time it has held, they have climbed back. Data from Nate Silver's Silver Bulletin average shows that the swings have tracked the ceasefire's status almost exactly since the war began in February.
Mike Madrid, a GOP strategist, has spent months watching what he calls real cracks form in a base that rarely showed them. The Iran war, he said, is a big reason why.
"This is the first time you're seeing very measurable cracks in that MAGA base," Madrid told Newsweek, pointing to the open dissent from lawmakers like Paul.
"I've never seen the fundamentals of an election cycle as bad for an incumbent party as I am right now," Madrid said, estimating that Trump has lost 15 percent to 16 percent of his own party's support, a decline he called "very real."
Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson said that dynamic plays to his party's advantage.
"Three-quarters of the country is confronting higher gas prices and feeling it," Ferguson said. "That leaves them...very vulnerable to the economic pain and very vulnerable to the economic argument the Democrats are going to make."
A Wave Crashing Into a Levee
Those fundamentals show up on the generic ballot. Emerson College Polling's latest survey has Democrats ahead 53 percent to 42 percent, an 11-point lead, with Trump's approval at just 39 percent. Other pollsters see it tighter: Morning Consult puts the Democratic edge at 3 to 4 points, and Silver's average runs Democrats +2 to +5.
Even so, forecasters are wary of calling it a wave. Decision Desk HQ's seat-level model currently has Democrats narrowly favored to flip the House, 224 to 211, while Republicans remain favored to hold a 50-50 Senate with Vice President JD Vance as the tiebreaker.
Patton thinks that gap between the polling and the likely outcome is the real story.
"It's a Democratic wave crashing against a structural wall, a GOP levee," he said. "Everything indicates, polling, fundamentals, that the Democrats should absolutely be crushing the incumbent party, but mid-term redistricting, gerrymandering and the Democrats' penchant for infighting establish a bit of a firewall for the GOP."
That firewall is about to be tested again. With gas prices again climbing and new tariffs kicking in, Republicans have roughly 100 days to change the story before voters render their own verdicts in November.
Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Jason Lemon and Dave Siminoff.
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