Maria Salazar

As Donald Trump was swept back into power in 2024, there were few politicians who embodied the new era of MAGA more than María Elvira Salazar, the Cuban American representative from Miami.

A proud Republican who derided socialism and lavished praise on Trump, she first flipped her seat in 2020, which knocked out Donna Shalala, who had spent decades in the highest reaches of the Clinton orbit. Salazar’s triumph was narrow, but her margins of victory only widened in 2022 and 2024, when she crushed her Democratic rival by more than 20 points. Salazar represented the new Miami, the red Miami. Here was the hard-right swing for Spanish-speaking voters the Republican Party hoped to cement in the second Trump term.

Now that project is on the verge of collapsing altogether. Trump’s approval rating is cratering with Latino voters as it is with most Americans. They are restless about the economy — persistent inflation, the softer job market — and alienated by his savage immigration policies, which have gone far beyond mere border enforcement and even led to the deaths of two Americans in Minneapolis. Democrats are not guaranteed to win all these voters back, but it is obvious now the Trump GOP will not be solidifying any sort of realignment. Latinos are free agents.

Salazar, a former Telemundo anchor, currently finds herself scrambling to save her seat — Democrats see it as a prime pickup opportunity — and fend off the wrath of MAGA, which is probably well past its peak and on a terminal decline nationwide. Salazar is the architect of the bipartisan DIGNIDAD Act, or Dignity Act, one of the only immigration-reform bills in Congress. The act would not establish a pathway to citizenship, but it would create an opportunity for millions of immigrants who entered the country unlawfully to secure work permits and remain legally. “If you are a gangster, they may kick you out. If you are a coyote, they may just burn you at the stake — I don’t care,” Salazar told Politico. “I’m talking about those people who are in construction, hospitality, and agriculture … Let’s give them dignity, not amnesty.”

For this, MAGA wants her gone. She has received death threats, been denounced by her Republican colleagues, and been called a “RINO bitch.” She has been attacked by Laura Loomer and other immigration hard-liners, who view her bill as a form of amnesty and a betrayal of America First. As much as the left has been accused of devouring its own and imposing litmus tests, it is the Trumpian right that has become, over the past few years, most intolerant of dissent, most willing to perpetrate a new sort of cancel culture that drives out anyone who dares to offer any critique within the MAGA movement. “Hispanic voters shifted more than 35 percent to the LEFT. That’s not spin, that’s reality and it hasn’t reversed,” Salazar posted on X recently, responding to an attack she received from Brandon Gill, a MAGA representative from Texas. “PRESIDENT TRUMP didn’t win by shrinking the tent. He EXPANDED it. That’s how you build a coalition.”

She is not wrong. She represents a district that includes a large chunk of Miami-Dade County, which a Republican presidential candidate, until Trump, had not carried in decades. A large majority of the voters there are Latino. They were drawn to Trump’s economic message — his promise to combat inflation and create jobs — and his vow to target the migrants who had committed violent crimes. The Stephen Miller approach to immigration, however, calls for mass deportations, wanton enforcement, and plenty of racial profiling. The Latinos who voted for Trump are not especially safe, not when ICE agents can still harass and even detain them. Salazar understands that Latino support for Trump, in this environment, is fragile.

The reality for her and MAGA broadly is that they are both, this fall at least, probably going to lose. The 2026 midterm environment might resemble 2018’s, when a blue wave lifted Shalala to a comfortable victory over Salazar. Democrats have overperformed in just about every down-ballot election since Trump took office last year. The party is still not overwhelmingly exciting to voters, but in a zero-sum two-party system, sometimes all you have to do is be the alternative. To survive as a movement, MAGA needs Republicans like Salazar — plenty loyal to Trump but responsive to the realities of their districts — and it is clear, at this point, they have no interest in keeping her or anyone like her around. What they do not care to understand is that when a politician like Salazar is defeated, it means the governing majority goes with it.

Trump has been enough of a failure as president that he has given the Democrats a fighting chance at flipping all of Congress, not just the House. If the Senate and House are held by Democrats, Trump will be a deeply unpopular lame-duck president with no ability to legislate. He can still wage war and do damage to the country and world, of course. He is still a danger. But without Latino Republicans, he will be permanently diminished.