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Wednesday night, after President Donald J. Trump refused to sign a landmark bipartisan housing bill into law and melted down at a midday lunch at which he shouted at senators, Senate Republicans appeared to try to mollify him by voting against advancing a war powers resolution the Senate passed the day before.
The Republican senators’ apology for their brief flash of independence was not enough for House MAGA loyalists. Trump said he would not sign any more legislation until the Senate passed the so-called Safeguard American Voter Eligibility Act, known as the SAVE or SAVE America Act, to limit voting before the 2026 election. According to Representative Melanie Stansbury (D-NM), members of the far-right Freedom Caucus said that if Trump wasn’t going to sign any measures into law, there was no reason to debate any more. They voted against procedural measures to enable the House to conduct business. Unable to accomplish anything, Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent House members home on Thursday.
Stansbury noted: “[N]obody has ever seen a Congress like this before. It is truly a bizarre time here in Washington, DC…. This is not good. This is not good for our country. It is not good for our communities. It’s not good for our democracy. It’s not good, just for basic common sense and basic human dignity. Like, these guys need to get it together.”
The turmoil in Washington, D.C., reflects the changing world of American politics as the Republicans become a far-right party that embraces white nationalism while those Americans standing firm on the nation’s historic democratic principles jockey to create a political system that will represent their movement.
On June 25 the Supreme Court allowed Trump and his administration to end the legal status of more than 350,000 people who are in the United States under temporary protected status, or TPS, after fleeing wars and violence in Syria and Haiti. The six right-wing justices cited procedural reasons for their decision, but Trump loyalists read it as an endorsement of their white nationalism.
White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller told reporters: “This country doesn’t have a future if we don’t end birthright citizenship…. One way or another, this nation has to end birthright citizenship.”
Yesterday, at a Faith and Freedom Coalition town hall in Washington, D.C., Representative Tom Emmer (R-MN), the third-ranking Republican in the House, made the white nationalism of the Republican Party clear. He said: “Minnesotans are so afraid that you’re gonna call us a racist, you’re gonna call us an Islamophobe…. You know what? I would argue that I never did care, but I’m done being careful, even the least bit careful…. [Somalis] don’t assimilate. And if they don’t assimilate, then they should go the hell back to where they came from.”
Eric Henderson of CBS News notes that Emmer has moved dramatically rightward in the past decade. In 2016, Emmer told NPR that the Somali community in Minnesota was among “the fastest-assimilating populations that we’ve had.” “I’m going to say it out loud,” he said, “when you move to a community, as long as you are here legally, I am very sorry, but you don’t get to slam the gate behind you and tell nobody else that they’re welcome. That’s not the way this country works.”
The once grand Republican Party has become a party of radical extremists, coalescing around white nationalism.
Meanwhile, voters in Tuesday’s Democratic primaries in New York rejected two established Democrats in favor of newcomers with more progressive policies. In response, as Isaac Arnsdorf and Natalie Allison of the Washington Post reported, Trump is trying out midterm messaging that calls Democrats “hard core, godless communists.” “They’re animals,” Trump said of his political opponents today in a speech to Christian conservatives at a convention of the Faith & Freedom Coalition in Washington. “We have to stop this, this horrible thread of cancer that’s permeating our country called communism.”
Trump’s rhetoric shows just how far to the right American politics have slid.
Communism is a political ideology that calls for public ownership of major resources as well as the means of production, so that the state, rather than private individuals or corporations, owns factories, farms, mines, and so on. In theory, although seldom in practice, the state then redistributes wealth according to need.
Communism has never been popular in the United States, and the only politician calling for state takeover of private industries is Trump, under whom the government has taken stakes in at least nine companies involved in steel, minerals, nuclear energy, and semiconductors, costing at least $10 billion in taxpayer money.
Unlike communism, the sort of government both Democrats and Republicans embraced from 1933 to 1981 was very popular, and those opposed to the Trump administration appear to be starting to demand such a government again.
Their views are a response to the extremes of wealth in today’s United States. Mary Cunningham of CBS News reported in January that the third quarter of 2025 showed the top 1% of households in the U.S. owning 31.7% of all U.S. wealth. That’s the highest share they’ve had since the Federal Reserve started tracking household wealth in 1989. That means the wealthiest 1% held roughly as much in assets as the bottom 90% of Americans combined: about $55 trillion.
At the same time, according to a Gallup poll released earlier this month, fewer than half of Americans say they can afford health care. Since the Republicans cut Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) funds in last July’s so-called One Big Beautiful Bill Act, 4.7 million Americans have lost food assistance, about 11% of those previously enrolled in the program.
“People are really unhappy,” former senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), who is running for the Senate seat J.D. Vance vacated when he became vice president, told Scott MacFarlane of MacFarlane News today. “They believe the system’s rigged. They see corporations making more and more money,… corporate executives taking more and more of those dollars for themselves, stock buybacks, bonuses, compensation of all kinds. They know they’re working harder than ever…and they know that…more money’s going out than coming in.”
A Brennan Center survey released in early June showed that 92% of Americans worry about corruption in government. That number includes 90% of Republicans, 93% of Democrats, and 93% of Independents. Seventy-nine percent of those polled want a constitutional amendment to restore limits on money in elections. Sixty-six percent of Americans think the government has a responsibility to make sure all Americans have health care versus 33% who say it does not.
The Democratic candidates Trump is railing against as “communists” actually argue that robust private enterprise cannot survive unless the government combats dramatic wealth inequality through regulation and taxation, and operates the segments of society that people need to survive, like transportation, utilities, and health care.
Across the country we are seeing Democratic candidates calling for an end to government corruption; the breaking up of monopolies that hurt workers, farmers, and consumers and shut entrepreneurs out of markets; protection for workers and consumers; universal health care; and an end to big money in politics. These policy demands are not radical; they are firmly within the political tradition not just of the Democrats, but also of the Republicans.
In 1956 the Republican Party platform approvingly quoted “the great truth first spoken by Abraham Lincoln” that “[t]he legitimate object of Government is to do for a community of people whatever they need to have done but cannot do at all, or cannot so well do, for themselves in their separate and individual capacities. But in all that people can individually do as well for themselves, Government ought not to interfere.”
The platform went on to affirm the party’s determination “that our children and their children, without distinction because of race, creed or color, may know the blessings of our free land.”
It called for “unimpeachable ethical standards and irreproachable personal conduct by all people in government.” Honesty was “an indispensable requirement of public service,” party officials said.
The Republicans of 1956 also said they were “proud of and shall continue our far-reaching and sound advances in matters of basic human needs—expansion of social security—broadened coverage in unemployment insurance—improved housing—and better health protection for all our people. We are determined that our government remain warmly responsive to the urgent social and economic problems of our people.”
They called for helping foreign countries strengthen their economies and supported “U.S. participation in an international fund for economic development.” “We shall continue,” they said, “vigorously to support the United Nations” and to maintain U.S. military strength “as a deterrent to aggression and as a guardian of the peace…for these objectives only.”
Then the Republican Party platform addressed the needs of workers. Quoting President Dwight D. Eisenhower, it said: “Labor is the United States. The men and women, who with their minds, their hearts and hands, create the wealth that is shared in this country—they are America.”
The platform noted that Republicans had worked to raise the minimum wage and to expand Social Security and unemployment, workers’ compensation, and retirement benefits. They supported the growth of labor unions, and collective bargaining.
They would, they said, “continue to fight for dynamic and progressive programs which, among other things, will: [s]timulate improved job safety of our workers; [c]ontinue and further perfect its programs of assistance to the millions of workers with special employment problems, such as older workers, handicapped workers, members of minority groups, and migratory workers;...improve the effectiveness of the unemployment insurance system;...[a]ssure equal pay for equal work regardless of Sex;” extend minimum wage laws; [c]ontinue to fight for the elimination of discrimination in employment because of race, creed, color, national origin, ancestry or sex;” and “[p]rovide assistance to improve the economic conditions of areas faced with persistent and substantial unemployment.”
“The Republican Party believes that the physical, mental, and spiritual well-being of the people is as important as their economic health,” the platform said. “It will continue to support this conviction with vigorous action.”
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2026/06/25/supreme-court-temporary-protected-status-ruling-00975658
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/us-wealth-gap-widest-in-three-decades-federal-reserve/
https://abcnews.com/Health/fewer-half-americans-afford-healthcare-gallup/story?id=133967735
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/25/us/politics/trump-intel-steel-minerals-china.html
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