A coalition of campus Republican clubs laid Tuesday's midterm losses on President Donald Trump and his party Wednesday evening, charging that both "betrayed" the young voters who helped elect him.
"On all fronts, the Republican Party and the Trump administration in particular has betrayed us," the College Republican Patriot Coalition wrote in a statement posted on X at 6:12 p.m. EST. The coalition laid the blame for "the greatest Republican defeat by Democrats since 1974 at the feet of the Trump administration and the Republican Party."
The coalition describes itself as "a movement of bold, young Americans dedicated to restoring our country's founding principles," rooted in "the unapologetic America First vision." The statement carried 31 signatories: seven statewide groups, from the District of Columbia, Georgia, Maryland, Minnesota, New York, Tennessee and Virginia, and 24 campus chapters, among them the Catholic University of America, Clemson, Florida State, Penn State, Rutgers, New York University, the University of Virginia, the College of William & Mary and Iowa State.
The statement's case is a list of broken promises. "Millions of us young Americans knocked on doors, made calls, and cast first-time ballots for a movement that promised affordability, mass deportations, reindustrialization, and an end to foreign wars," it reads. "Instead, we received a war on behalf of Israel, stunted deportations, and a flailing economy."
The coalition called the Iran war "this administration's greatest betrayal" and "the disastrous and unintelligible war with Iran." "President Trump promised 'no new wars,' and millions of us believed him," it wrote. "We did not send Republicans to Washington to support Israel's wars. We did not send Republicans to Washington to deport only a fraction of the millions of the illegal immigrants in this country. We did not send Republicans to Washington to saddle Americans with 50 year mortgages and $5-a-gallon gas."
It closed with demands. The coalition called on Trump "to purge his administration of those who have not and will not deliver on the mandate voters gave him in 2024," to "immediately end the war with Iran," and to make "affordability for young Americans this administration's top priority." It "demands a revolution within the Republican Party," the statement said, and insisted the defeat "is not the fault of the Republican base."
The young men moved. Fifty-nine percent of men under 30 voted for a Democrat for the House, CIRCLE, the Tufts University youth-research center, reported from the NORC Civic Health & Elections Project. "That is a major shift for young men: in 2024, according to that year's AP VoteCast data, 56% of young men supported President Trump," CIRCLE wrote. Voters under 30 went Democratic 73% to 25%, the AP Voter Poll found, in results published by NBC News. "Most young voters — those under 30 — said their vote was cast to express opposition to Trump," PBS NewsHour reported from the same poll.
The war weighed on the whole electorate. Sixty-three percent of voters said the United States made the wrong decision in taking military action against Iran, and 51% said U.S. support for Israel is too strong, against 12% who said it is not strong enough, the Voter Poll found. Sixty-three percent said higher prices come more from Trump's policies than from factors outside his control.
The vice president drew the same line. "The reason we lost is the war. The president himself said so last night," JD Vance wrote on X Wednesday, CBS News reported. "Our voters showed up," Vance wrote, adding that "many people who voted for Trump/Vance in 2024 voted for Democrats in 2026."
Trump has not conceded the point, and is now saying he will work with Democrats on immigration. "Iran was a piece of it," he told The Wall Street Journal, NBC News reported. "I did the right thing. I would have done it again."
On deportations, the administration answered the same day. "Deportations will continue," Homeland Security Secretary Markwayne Mullin posted Wednesday afternoon. The Iowa State chapter, a signatory, replied Thursday: "Not enough. They need to accelerate."
The statement drew support on the right. "Great statement," former Florida Gubernatorial hopeful James Fishback wrote minutes after it posted. The College Republican National Committee, the party's chartered national student organization, had made no public statement as of Thursday afternoon.
A promise is a debt. A man who promises does not lie when he means it, St. Thomas Aquinas taught, "but if he does not keep his promise, he seems to act without faith in changing his mind." Scripture is even more blunt. "Like clouds and wind without rain is a man who boasts of a gift he does not give," Proverbs warns (Prv 25:14). The young men who knocked doors in 2024 were promised rain. On Tuesday they voted on the drought.
