The contours of the midterms are coming into focus and there appears to be strategic daylight between the administration and Congressional Republicans on what to run on.

The midterms are shaping up. After today, just 19 states remain to pick their party nominees for November's vote. Affordability remains a key issue, says the Pew Research Center, while immigration has faded somewhat for Republican voters, down 18 points over the last two years to 60% now. While on the Democratic side, it's 10 points down to 17%. We're joined now by NPR senior national political correspondent Mara Liasson. Good morning, Mara.

MARA LIASSON, BYLINE: Good morning, Ayesha.

RASCOE: Let's start on immigration because the Supreme Court handed the president a big victory in his push to limit who's in the country and why.

LIASSON: The Supreme Court affirmed the fact that the Constitution gives the executive a lot of power over immigration, and Donald Trump is using it. The Supreme Court is now letting him revoke what's called temporary protected status for possibly up to a million immigrants from Haiti, Syria and other countries. These are people who are here legally. And what I'm interested in is watching the politics of this because when Donald Trump came into office, he said he was going to focus on immigrants who are in this country undocumented and who had committed crimes. That stand was very popular. So was securing the border.

But as time went on, Donald Trump did some other things that proved to be unpopular, so he started focusing on deporting people with green cards. Some American citizens got killed in protests about immigration and the implementation of his immigration policies became very unpopular. So we'll see how people react when their home health aid or the people who work in their meatpacking plant are deported. Some of these Haitians and Syrians who have TPS status have been here for decades. They're very integrated into their communities.

RASCOE: Meanwhile, Congress does make a move on affordability with a federal housing bill designed to ease regulations and prod local governments to permit more construction. But the president didn't take the win.

LIASSON: No. Congress finally did exactly what voters have been saying they want Congress to do. They worked across the aisle. They came up with a big bipartisan solution to a problem that a majority of voters say they want solved - which is how hard it is to buy a home. The bills passed by very big margins, but then Donald Trump made a show of canceling a signing ceremony, even though we hadn't heard any real policy objections from him or the White House about this bill. And it reminds us that this is a very personalist presidency. It's governed by what Donald Trump wants at a given moment. He said he didn't want to sign the housing bill. He wanted to sign a different bill, the SAVE America Act, but that bill doesn't have the votes to pass.

LIASSON: It's a Republican election-overhaul voting bill requiring voter ID for all voters across the country to vote. Voters who want to register to vote need to provide documentary proof of citizenship, which might not sound like a big deal, but millions of Americans do not easily have access to those documents. Only about half of Americans have a passport. And in terms of birth certificates, there are many women in this country who got married and changed their names and their names are no longer the same as on their birth certificate. The president also wants no more mail-in voting, and his critics say that he's laying the groundwork to say that the 2026 and 2028 elections have been rigged if they go against him and his party, just like he did on January 6, 2021.

RASCOE: Why take the housing bill, which passed, and hold it hostage to the SAVE Act, which does not even have enough Republican support to pass?

LIASSON: Well, that's a mystery. I think it's an expression of how frustrated Donald Trump is about the limits of his power because he sees his power as unlimited. That's how he's described it. Whether it's his own Republicans in the Senate, who, although they are pretty loyal to him, don't do every single thing he wants when he wants it. And he was hoping to pass this bill, and he has said, if we pass this bill, we win the midterms. If we don't pass the SAVE Act, we won't. Now, Republicans think holding up the Housing bill could hurt them in the midterms. Democrats certainly will take advantage of it. I can imagine them starting to run ads that say, you know, Congress voted to help you buy a home. Donald Trump is not on your side.

RASCOE: Trump is campaigning on some newly minted Democratic congressional nominees from New York. Three people backed by New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, two of whom identify as democratic socialists. Trump seems to be thinking that these personalities - they're not going to play in Peoria, as the saying goes.

LIASSON: That's right. He has now taken to calling Democrats communists. Both parties have a long history of trying to define their opponents by tying them to the most extreme people in their party. I don't know how many people actually know what a communist is or the difference between a communist and a socialist.

RASCOE: That's NPR's Mara Liasson. Mara, thank you so much.

Copyright © 2026 NPR. All rights reserved. Visit our website terms of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for further information.

Accuracy and availability of NPR transcripts may vary. Transcript text may be revised to correct errors or match updates to audio. Audio on npr.org may be edited after its original broadcast or publication. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.