Welcome back to House Party, our column looking at the 2018 House of Representative races as midterms approach.

Paul Ryan, America’s good boy of starving the poor, has given up. Last week he announced that he was retiring from Congress, ostensibly to spend more time with his kids. But nobody’s ignoring the subtext: Paul Ryan is retiring from Congress because appeasing right-wing billionaire donors isn’t as fun as it used to be.

It also was one more sign that Republican House members running for reelection are in a lot of trouble. Ryan is just the latest and most famous Republican congressman to decide to retire rather than face a rough midterm season. The GOP has a good chance of retaining the Senate thanks to a favorable map, which would mean the party can continue to confirm Trump’s pro-segregation judicial nominees. But in the House, incumbents need to figure out how to persuade what's likely going to be a more-liberal-than-normal midterm electorate that they aren’t just stooges for our big wet president.

It’s a bit late in the cycle for a wave of more congressmen to call it quits, but it’s not out of the question. Thanks to Geoffrey Skelley’s excellent work, we know that few members of the president’s party retire after filing deadlines—Representative Ryan Costello was only the seventh congressman to do so since 1974 when he peaced last month. So I suspect that those already running for reelection in the 33 states where those deadlines have passed are going to ride out the storm. But there are 44 Republican congressmen who haven’t called it quits yet but still have time to do so. (The head of the Republicans’ House campaign arm predicted there wouldn’t be any more than ten future retirements.)

Considering our 2016 experience I’m loath to say seventh months before the election that Democrats will retake the House, though I do think that if the election were held today Republicans would lose the House. Ryan’s retirement means that dark money groups on both sides will focus on the Senate—Republicans sound like they’ll shift their spending there, and Democrats will likely follow suit lest they lose the arms race. That could in turn make the House playing field a little more unpredictable as races will increasingly hinge on local candidate quality, which tends to be obviated by millions of dollars in outside spending. So that’s why we’re going to keep updating you on key House races weekly through November; things are going to get weird.

Sign up for our newsletter to get the best of VICE delivered to your inbox daily.