Six Republican senators are now heading for the exits before the 2026 midterms, and the latest one is a full-blown MAGA loyalist from deep-red Montana.

Sen. Steve Daines dropped out of his re-election bid Wednesday night, withdrawing just before Montana’s 5 p.m. filing deadline. His office confirmed the news to the Daily Beast before Daines posted a video announcement saying he was “energized” and “ready for whatever comes next.”

Translation: he’s getting out while the getting’s good.

Daines joins a growing list of Republican senators who’ve decided they’d rather not face voters in November: Mitch McConnell, Thom Tillis, Tommy Tuberville, Joni Ernst, and Cynthia Lummis. That’s six GOP senators bailing on what was supposed to be a comfortable majority.

The timing is notable. Republicans are increasingly worried about a 2026 rout as Trump’s second term drags the party’s approval numbers down. Daines isn’t some moderate who got squeezed out—he’s a Trump ally, first elected in 2014, who served 13 years in Congress and was apparently happy to keep calling Trump a partner right up until the moment he decided to stop running.

Trump, for his part, wasted approximately zero seconds turning the retirement announcement into an endorsement opportunity. He posted on Truth Social calling Daines “one of our truly Great United States Senators” before pivoting to plug Kurt Alme, the federal prosecutor Trump appointed as U.S. Attorney for Montana during both of his terms.

“He did a job like few others are capable of doing but, sadly for our Country, Steve’s Term is up,” Trump wrote, which is a creative way to describe a senator choosing to quit.

Alme filed to run for the seat shortly after Daines withdrew, just before the deadline—suggesting this wasn’t exactly a spontaneous decision on anyone’s part.

Montana is reliably red, but an open seat is always harder to hold than an incumbent’s seat. And there’s already competition: former University of Montana President Seth Bodnar filed to run as an independent, positioning himself as an alternative for a state that has a stubborn streak of electing Democrats to statewide office (the governor’s mansion went blue as recently as 2020).

“Montanans are an independent people, and we deserve an independent voice in Washington fighting to lower costs and protect our values,” Bodnar, a U.S. Army veteran, wrote on Twitter.

The broader picture is grim for the GOP. Every retirement is another seat where Republicans have to spend money, recruit candidates, and defend ground they thought was safe. Six retirements is a pattern, and the pattern says Republican senators are looking at the political landscape under Trump and deciding they’d rather be anywhere else.

Daines said in his video he was excited to spend more time in Montana with his family—the classic political exit line that tells you absolutely nothing about why someone is actually leaving.