New Yorker: “Trump’s ability to gin up fears about illegal immigration, more than perhaps any other issue, won him the White House. Headed into a midterm election that will be won by the political party that can better rally its base, Trump has remained determined to talk about immigration, even when others in his party have resisted. Indeed, Republican leaders on Capitol Hill were furious with Trump as the immigration controversy spiraled out of control this week—a time they had planned to spend celebrating the G.O.P. tax cut, along with the general strength of the economy, which they hope to make the centerpiece of their fall campaign.”

“On Monday, as the political pressure on Trump was escalating, I met with Kristen Soltis Anderson, a Republican pollster who has advised G.O.P. leaders about this fall’s elections at a couple of recent retreats. Trump, she told me, had a ‘freakishly stable’ approval rating; in such a polarized moment, people know where they stand on the President. She said that, unlike in previous midterm elections in which the incumbent President’s party has done poorly, voter enthusiasm for Trump has remained strong among Republican voters, even as a blue wave of Trump-hating Democrats has been building.”

Said Anderson: “The question is, if the blue wave is coming, have Republicans built a large enough wall to stop it?”

Cook Political Report: “For much of 2017 and early 2018, GOP consultants of a certain age would tell us that this election had the same look, feel and smell of 2006; the last time Republicans had a terrible midterm election… Today, however, there are plenty of signs that 2018 isn’t like 2006.”

Earlier for members: Don’t Compare This Midterm Election to Previous Ones

Rep. Mark Sanford (R-SC): “I wasn’t Trump enough in the age of Trump — and so indeed I lost. As one of 435 members of the House, this shouldn’t matter to someone living in Fairfax or Cleveland, but, based on what I saw on election night, I think it will.”

“We should all be alarmed when dissenting voices are quashed. President Trump is not the first executive to want compliance from a legislative body, but he has taken it to a new level. This is more than a problem; it’s a challenge to one of the most basic of American tenets — that we can agree to disagree.”

George Will: “Amid the carnage of Republican misrule in Washington, there is this glimmer of good news: The family-shredding policy along the southern border, the most telegenic recent example of misrule, clarified something. Occurring less than 140 days before elections that can reshape Congress, the policy has given independents and temperate Republicans — these are probably expanding and contracting cohorts, respectively — fresh if redundant evidence for the principle by which they should vote.”

Fortune reports Will has left the Republican Party.