A newspaper owned by Rupert Murdoch delivered a sharp warning to President Donald Trump after a high-profile Republican loss.
In a new editorial, The Wall Street Journal warned Trump that a hardline immigration strategy promoted by top aide Stephen Miller is fueling voter backlash.
It comes after a Trump-endorsed candidate for the Texas state senate lost to a Democrat over the weekend.
“How does a Republican lose by 14 points in a safe conservative Texas state Senate seat that President Trump carried by 17 points in 2024? Answer: When there’s a voter backlash against the Trump Administration, notably its mass deportation debacles,” the Journal wrote, describing the special election in Tarrant County.
Democrat Taylor Rehmet, a labor union leader and veteran, easily defeated Republican Leigh Wambsganss, who had Trump’s endorsement on Truth Social and vastly outspent her opponent.
Rehment is the first Democrat to hold the seat in decades.
The paper noted the timing was disastrous for Republicans, coming after the high-profile Minneapolis killings by federal immigration agents. “The 31-point vote swing in a little more than 14 months can only be explained as part of a rising tide of opposition to Mr. Trump’s first year and a sour public mood,” the Journal observed.
The White House has faced mounting national backlash after federal immigration agents fatally shot two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis—Renee Good in early January and Alex Pretti later that month—as part of aggressive enforcement operations in the state.
Both cases sparked controversy over conflicting official narratives. In Pretti’s case, Homeland Security officials and White House aides initially claimed he approached agents with a gun and posed a threat, while bystander videos show him holding only a cellphone before being pinned down and shot.
Similarly, authorities initially suggested that Good tried to ram agents with her vehicle before she was fatally shot, a claim contradicted by eyewitness footage and reporting. Critics argue these early statements painted both victims as dangerous to justify the shootings, fueling accusations that the administration misrepresented the events.
The killings came after Trump deployed thousands of federal immigration agents to Minneapolis as part of an aggressive immigration strategy masterminded by Miller.
Miller’s immigration strategy under Trump has pushed aggressive mass arrests and deportations, with ICE agents pressured to meet high daily quotas, even targeting non-criminal undocumented immigrants.
The Wall Street Journal critiqued Miller’s hardline tactics, including a daily quota of 3,000 migrant arrests that it says “was bound to result in agent intrusions into homes and businesses.”
While immigration has historically been a winning issue for Republicans, the Journal cautioned that enforcement “that turns ugly in the streets is turning off the swing voters who will determine who wins the race for Congress this year.”
Polls have recently shown Americans turning on Trump and his immigration strategy ahead of the 2026 Midterms. A YouGov poll conducted on January 25 showed that about half (48 percent) of respondents do not think the shooting of Pretti in Minneapolis was justified.
Another YouGov poll showed that 52 percent of Americans think the Trump administration’s efforts to restrict immigration to the U.S. have gone too far.
As a result, the paper concluded that even as Trump signals a desire to “dial back the confrontations on the street,” he must also reconsider Miller’s influence. “The Miller strategy isn’t likely to fare better this year,” the editorial warned.
The Wall Street Journal is not the first Murdoch-owned newspaper to publicly condemn Trump’s immigration strategy.
In an op-ed published last week, the New York Post argued that the Trump administration’s aggressive immigration enforcement in Minneapolis is backfiring politically.
“These enforcement tactics won’t turn the tide, instead they are backfiring,” the Post wrote.
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