A major Democratic group announced Friday it plans to target 17 House Republicans representing solidly red districts, a sign of how Democratic confidence is growing ahead of November’s midterm elections as President Donald Trump’s popularity slumps.

American Bridge, a super PAC focused on generating opposition research, is launching the “Shaky Eights” program — so named because all of the candidates they’re targeting represent seats with a score of at least R+8 in the Cook Partisan Voter Index, a measure of a district’s partisanship. Among their targets are the chair of the National Republican Congressional Committee and a congressman who is set to appear with President Donald Trump in Arizona on Friday.

“As we’ve watched this cycle trend — with the administration’s decisions, the data we’re getting in on economic sentiment, on health care, on all these issues — we basically decided to change our strategy a little bit,” Pat Dennis, the president of American Bridge 21st Century, told HuffPost in an interview. “Basically, our theory of the case is that there are a lot of House seats right now that are not getting enough attention, because they’re considered safe for Republicans. We are putting our chips on the table and saying this is where the frontier of the fight is.”

“We can win a lot of seats from folks who consider themselves safe,” Dennis added.

The effort reflects Democrats’ sentiment about their chances in the midterm election amid Trump’s slide in popularity, battered by both an unpopular decision to launch a war in Iran and Americans’ ongoing affordability crisis. In special elections, the party has won solidly red seats, and Democrats are increasingly hopeful they can deliver similar performances in November.

But actually putting many of these solidly Republican seats in play will be difficult: Since they weren’t targets early on in the cycle, Democrats did not focus their recruiting efforts there and may not have top-flight candidates. And while American Bridge is confident, convincing other Democratic groups and donors to invest in bright-red territory could be difficult.

The GOP has a slender 217-213 majority in the House, and Democrats are now seen as strong favorites to take control of the chamber in November. Republicans have scoffed at Democratic suggestions that they can put conservative-leaning seats in play.

“I mean, I’ve read fiction my whole life, and I recognize it when I see it,” NRCC chair Rep. Richard Hudson (R-N.C.) told Fox News in February.

American Bridge is optimistic it can dig up and disseminate damaging information about the candidates because many of them have gone years without intense scrutiny, focusing only on defending their right flank from primary challenges. Many of the targeted candidates have a history of trailing GOP presidential candidates in their districts.

Among them is Rep. Abe Hamadeh (R-Ariz.), who is expected to appear with Trump on Friday at the Turning Point USA-sponsored “Build The Red Wall” rally in Phoenix. The group believes Hamadeh, a freshman member who ran three points behind Trump in 2024 in the 8th District, is vulnerable because of his long history of election denial, reliance on his wealthy brother to fund his campaigns and his false insistence that the GOP budget law he supported contained zero cuts to Medicaid.

“The way he has funded his campaign, the way he has behaved, reeks of the worst of D.C. insiderism that people hate,” Dennis said. “He’s a really untalented candidate.”

But the 8th District will not be easy to flip. The seat, which covers portions of the northern and western suburbs of Phoenix, is filled with high-income retirees — and older citizens have moved against Trump far less than younger and more economically precarious groups. Hamadeh has two Democratic opponents, each with less than $20,000 in their campaign accounts.

The most ambitious target on the list is almost certainly Hudson, the aforementioned NRCC chair. Both parties have a long history of targeting the chair of the opposing campaign committee, often at least in part to troll the other party. But Dennis notes that Hudson has consistently trailed GOP presidential candidates in his district.

“Given the generic ballot we’re looking at, the depression of the Trump base, I think he could have real problems depending on what turnout looks like,” Dennis said.

Hudson also has a unique opponent: former West Virginia State Sen. Richard Ojeda, who nearly flipped a bright-red GOP seat when running in 2018. The Army veteran has since moved to North Carolina.

Hudson is not the only powerful House Republican that the group thinks could be vulnerable. It’s also targeting Rep. French Hill of Arkansas, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee.

One of the group’s other targets is already on the radar of national Democrats: The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee is targeting scandal-plagued Rep. Andy Ogles in Tennessee and is supporting Columbia Mayor Chaz Molder in the race. Others have long been lightning rods, including Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, Freedom Caucus Chair Andy Harris of Maryland, Rep. Virginia Foxx of North Carolina and Rep. Victoria Spartz of Indiana.

But many of the others are comparatively obscure, including Reps. Brad Knott, Tim Moore, Addison McDowell of North Carolina; Reps. Tony Wied and Glenn Grothman of Wisconsin; Rep. Stephanie Bice of Oklahoma; Rep. Daniel Webster of Florida; and Reps. Jay Obernolte and Tom McClintock of California.

Right now, American Bridge is focusing on researching these candidates, but Dennis said it was likely they would eventually launch paid advertising against at least some of them.

“Once the oppo starts to land and percolate and we see these narratives that in a focus group can move numbers, we will start looking at ’Hey, do we give this a paid boost?” Dennis said. “I think there’s a strong chance some of these will get that.”

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