Sabrina Rodriguez

Overwhelmingly in the speeches, there's a focus on really hyping up the administration.

But in conversations with attendees, especially younger attendees, something that I've consistently heard is frustrations and anxiety over the state of the economy, the fact that the administration is focusing so much on foreign affairs,

particularly when it comes to the war in Iran.

Some are supportive of the president's initial actions, but even those are worried about this dragging on and really want to see this resolved quickly.

Beyond CPAC being one of the most prominent gatherings for conservative activists, it's an opportunity for Republican elected officials, Republican candidates to get to test out material, get to, you know, hone in on what are some of the themes that we're going to be seeing in the upcoming elections.

Even with Trump not being present, so much of the message coming from speakers is really praise on Trump, focus on Trump, alignment with Trump.

One speaker, for example, was Michael Whatley, who's the Republican candidate running for the competitive U.S.

Senate seat in North Carolina.

And he said he's going to be aligning himself with President Trump and that that's hugely important to him in his candidacy.

So Salazar is a product of the community that she's representing.

She's Cuban-American, Republican, and for decades she was a Spanish-language broadcast journalist.

She was a big household name for folks in her district, and it was in 2018 that she launched her first bid to be a congresswoman.

She lost that race, but when she ran in 2020, she won and has really made inroads in the community since then.

She is still a big supporter of the president, but she's very concerned because of the way that the deportations are being carried out.

She felt that his promise was he'd focus on criminals.

And she's seeing in her community and across the country the way that this administration is focusing on all people who are in the country illegally and not just people who have necessarily committed crimes.

crimes in the country and just seeing folks in the community who are starting to get turned off to the president and turned off to the party because of what they're seeing.

What's in it?

So she has a piece of legislation.

It's bipartisan.