Takeaways from CPAC 2026 : NPR

Members of the Republican faithful are gathering in Dallas on Saturday for the final day of the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC, the annual event known for high-profile appearances from the most prominent figures in the MAGA movement. This year’s conference is notable for the absence of President Trump, who skipped CPAC for the first time in a decade.

His absence comes at a tense moment in his second term, one month after the U.S. began strikes against Iran — a move that has caused divides within the president’s historically loyal base.

The war in Iran looms over CPAC

While polling shows most Americans may be against the war, CPAC remains focused on President Trump. “I think a lot of people feel more confident in [Trump] doing it than a lifelong politician that wants to follow the rules of their party,” argued Jeff Hadley, who drove from Raleigh, N.C., to attend CPAC.

A recent survey by Pew Research Center found nearly eight in 10 Republicans approve of Trump’s handling of the war. However, support drops when looking solely at younger Republicans and conservative-leaning independents.

“I feel betrayed because he’s promised no new wars,” said 30-year-old attendee Joseph Bolick, an Army and Marine Corp. veteran from Tyler, Texas, who has voted for Trump since 2016 and now says he no longer supports him. “Why aren’t we helping Americans? The economy’s suffering,” he added. “Why can’t we focus on our own people instead of foreign governments?”

Former Florida congressman Matt Gaetz was one of the few speakers to criticize the war from the stage. “A ground invasion of Iran will make our country poorer and less safe,” Gaetz said. “It will mean higher gas prices, higher food prices, and I’m not sure we would end up killing more terrorists than we would create.”

Midterm conversations largely took a backseat

CPAC has long been a destination for conservative voters to network and for popular voices within the GOP to rally their base. However, fewer candidates treated it as a campaign stop this year, with just a handful of Senate and House candidates speaking at the event.

Former Republican National Committee chairman Michael Whatley, a candidate for Senate in North Carolina, argued that the midterms will be crucial to deciding the direction of Trump’s remaining time in office, because if Democrats take back the House or Senate, they will stall the GOP agenda. “We will make absolutely sure that Donald Trump is going to get a four-year term, not a two-year term,” he said. “We cannot let the left win this election cycle and take away this agenda that we’re fighting for every single day.”

MAGA without Trump?

CPAC chairman Matt Schlapp led a discussion titled, “Can’t We All Just Get Along,” where he argued that conservatives should acknowledge and welcome differences in opinion. “How boring would CPAC be if it was all: unity, agreement, vanilla, right?” he said. “We wouldn’t want that.”

“One of the reasons why, essentially, there is this collaboration and this coalition that stays together is because people embraced Trump and Trumpism,” Schlapp added. But as 2028 inches closer, Trump’s absence at CPAC this year is a reminder that he may be the only figure that holds large parts of the party together, and when he’s not there, it’s unclear who fills that role.

On Thursday, the final speaking slot of the evening went to Nick Shirley, the 23-year-old content creator who went viral for alleging fraud in Minneapolis day-care centers run by Somali immigrants. Other prominent speaking slots went to conservative activists from around the world, such as former British Prime Minister Liz Struss and Eduardo Bolsonaro, son of former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro. Their appearances reflected CPAC’s broadening ambitions to take MAGA conservatism abroad.

That said, while the speakers list did look different, much of the program still revolved around Trump’s key policy priorities, and leaned heavily on culture war issues and concerns about illegal immigration.