The Republicans/MAGA 2025

MAGA Isn’t Stupid
It’s difficult, but essential, to distinguish this authoritarian cult from “stupidity.”
MAGA is endlessly exasperating. It’s cruel. It’s performative. It’s hypocritical to the point of nihilism. It’s antisocial. It’s thuggish. But it’s also the most successful authoritarian movement of the 21st century. Consider its dramatic accomplishments in the single disastrous decade from 2015-2025: Reducing the United States from a leading democratic nation to a prominent member of the authoritarian “axis of evil.” Reversing not just the accomplishments of the Obama Administration, but rolling back American progress in Civil and Voting Rights going back to the 1960s, blunting the global movement for climate remediation and destroying nearly a century of rising prosperity based on the growth of world trade. – ExoProphet: Notes from the Algorithmic Age

7-8 November
Far-right provocateur Nick Fuentes is triggering a MAGA civil war
The far-right influencer’s return to X has fueled a resurgence that is driving a wedge through the right.
(WaPo) The resurgence of the 27-year-old Fuentes, who has argued that immigrants and “organized Jewry” are conspiring to extinguish the white race, has set off bitter infighting among conservative influencers over whether he should be tolerated or denounced. For President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement, which has decried what they say is the overzealous policing of speech, Fuentes’s newfound prominence presents a tough question: Is there such a thing as “too extreme” anymore?
Fuentes, whose followers call themselves “groypers” after a frog meme they have adopted, makes no bones about where he stands. In a March episode of his podcast, streamed on the conservative site Rumble, he boiled down some of his core views: “Jews are running society, women need to shut the [expletive] up, Blacks need to be imprisoned for the most part, and we would live in paradise. It’s that simple.”
A welcome consequence of the Tucker Carlson fiasco
The conservative podcaster forces a reckoning on the right after his Nick Fuentes interview.
Kathleen Parker
(WaPo opinion) …So, when Carlson engages in tropes to describe Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, as “ratlike,” “shifty” and “dead-eyed,” or inexplicably uses his eulogy for Kirk, whom he compared to Jesus, to remind people that the Jews killed Jesus, he is winking at neo-Nazis And when Carlson invites someone such as Fuentes, a 27-year-old Holocaust denier who has praised Hitler, for a congenial chat, he deserves the wrath he’s receiving. And more. In fairness, Carlson did challenge Fuentes for his antisemitism once, an interjection that was lost amid the two-hour interview.

6 November
The great GOP migration has begun
The midterms promise a reality check — and growing defections from disastrous MAGA orthodoxy.
By Jeff Flake, Republican from Arizona, former U.S. senator and representative
(WaPo opinion) In politics, migrations rarely happen all at once. They start quietly — one or two members of a herd moving toward safer ground while the rest pretend not to notice. But once the wind really changes, the movement becomes unmistakable. I believe that a migration has begun within the Republican Party.
The first signs are visible. A few Republican members of Congress — some of them proud standard-bearers of the MAGA movement — have begun to distance themselves from President Donald Trump. Senators are resisting his dangerous push to end the filibuster. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul has taken a stand against the president’s tariffs. Outspoken Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent break with President Trump on several issues may not last, but even a temporary defection signals to others that it can be done. It gives cover to those who have privately questioned the direction of the party but have been unwilling to say so aloud.
The political climate that once rewarded absolute loyalty to the president is shifting. The Democratic landslide in Tuesday’s off-year elections will only add momentum to that. The midterms, now less than a year away, clearly favor the Democrats — particularly in the House, where they are poised to take the majority. And if that happens, it will not be because Democrats have suddenly found the perfect message. It will be because the president’s economic policies are fundamentally misaligned with both conservative principles and economic reality.

How Tucker Carlson instigated an inevitable war within MAGA
Finally, the battle lines are being drawn as conservatives grapple over a bigotry in their midst.
(WaPo) The inevitable fracturing of President Donald Trump’s MAGA movement is in sight, the instigator of its rupture that most narcissistic and destructive of media personalities: Tucker Carlson.
Since his firing from Fox News two years ago, Carlson has turned his podcast into a weekly circus featuring guests such as rancid conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, Russian despot Vladimir Putin and Darryl Cooper, a Holocaust denier who claims Winston Churchill was the villain of World War II and whom Carlson praises as “the most important historian in the United States.” Carlson’s approach with his guests is not that of a skeptical interlocutor, prodding their arguments for weaknesses, but rather that of a reputation-launderer making reprehensible ideas respectable for mainstream conservative consumption. Even Trump calls Carlson “kooky.”
Carlson’s fascination with conspiracy theories has ineluctably drawn him toward the most ancient of them all: the perfidious power of the Jews. Among countless other examples of his unhealthy obsession, Carlson has described Ukraine’s Jewish President Volodymyr Zelensky as “rat-like,” “shifty” and a “persecutor of Christians”; denounced “the farce of Nuremberg”; and attacked Jewish conservatives for having dual loyalties. His career is an exemplar of the sinister leading the credulous.
Nick Fuentes’s Rise Puts MAGA Movement in a ‘Time of Choosing’
After Mr. Fuentes’s interview with Tucker Carlson, Republicans are considering just how far his views are from the nationalism embraced by President Trump’s followers.
(NYT) … Mainstream Republicans have described Mr. Fuentes’s ascendance as a sudden surprise. But others — including some on the right — see it as a natural evolution within the movement that has come to be known as “national conservatism,” whose adherents embrace an American identity based not on the ideals of the nation’s founders but on the centrality of Christianity and familial ties to the land.
National conservatism adheres to a belief that American society lost its moorings when it drifted from a core power structure centered on the Christian white men who founded the nation and instead embraced diversity, multiculturalism and feminism. The movement’s statement of principles eschews the racist ideology espoused by Mr. Fuentes. It also rejects “globalism” and believes immigration has weakened the country.
… The interview on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” in which Mr. Fuentes called for an exclusive, “pro-white,” Christian movement and said that “organized Jewry” undermines American cohesion, was denounced by high-profile elected Republicans including Senators Ted Cruz of Texas, Josh Hawley of Missouri and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and Representative Mike Johnson of Louisiana, the House speaker.
But while prominent voices in the national conservatism orbit, such as Vice President JD Vance, have never embraced Mr. Fuentes, some of the ideas they have espoused have similarities to Mr. Fuentes’s ruminations on splintering societal cohesion.
… Mr. Fuentes and his explicit bigotry have been causing the Republican Party heartburn for years, including when Mr. Trump dined with him and the rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, at Mar-a-Lago in 2022. Now, as Mr. Cruz put it, the G.O.P. faces a time of choosing.

September 11, 2025 – Charlie Kirk shooting
• At large: A manhunt is still underway for the person who killed conservative political activist Charlie Kirk more than a day after his shooting stunned the US.
• New footage: Urging the public to help find the shooter, authorities shared a video they say shows the suspect jumping off a roof after the killing. And in footage obtained by CNN, geolocated to a neighborhood near the crime scene, a person matching the suspect’s description was seen walking down a street before the shooting. …
Analysis: An entire way of doing politics is at risk
America may be getting too dangerous for politics.
The assassination of Charlie Kirk, President Donald Trump’s ambassador to youthful conservatives, has stirred such a sense of shock that some lawmakers are now rethinking the kind of freewheeling, outdoor campaigning that his barnstorming college tours were meant to preserve.
The risks courted by those who mount a public pedestal were laid bare a day after Kirk’s murder in Utah, a sickening capstone on 12 months of political violence.
The balance between political free association and security that every candidate must assess now risks being tilted toward restricted indoor gatherings, smaller audiences and less interaction with voters.

28 July
JD Vance’s tricky sales tour
By Ian Ward
(Politico) Earlier today, the VP ventured to his home state of Ohio to deliver a speech boosting Republicans’ One Big Beautiful Bill Act — or the “megabill,” as the law has come to be known around Washington. It’s the second appearance Vance has made in recent weeks to sell the bill in the Rust Belt, with his first sales trip having taken him to the small manufacturing town of West Pittston, Pa., earlier this month.
It is, to say the least, a challenging assignment for the vice president. Vance has pitched himself to voters as the face of a more populist GOP, one that champions the interests of blue-collar Americans, stands up to powerful corporations and questions Republican economic orthodoxy on tax cuts and welfare reform. Yet the megabill — which delivered a massive tax cut to high earners, curtailed Medicaid and food stamps programs for low-income Americans and handed out a slew of business-friendly tax perks to large corporations — is a minimally adulterated expression of the old conservative orthodoxy that he and his allies claim to oppose.

25 May
MAGA showdown looming as conservative senators rage at parts of Trump bill: ‘It’s immoral, it’s wrong, it has to stop’
Senate Republicans can afford just three defections in budget reconciliation process

15 May
How many Americans are MAGA?
(YouGov) Between September 2022 and January 2024, less than half of Republicans said they identified with MAGA. A large share weren’t sure about their attachment to MAGA. Identification as MAGA has risen for most of 2024 and 2025, remaining mostly above 50% this year and reaching a peak of 60% in mid-March. But Republican identification as MAGA dropped again after that, including falling below 50% several times in recent weeks. In the latest Economist/YouGov Poll, it has gone up a bit. 53% of Republicans now describe themselves as MAGA Republicans, 35% do not, and 12% are unsure. Among the entire population of adult citizens, the share of MAGA supporters has never risen above 20%.

9 April
Senate Republicans express relief after Trump pauses tariff plans
(AP) — As news that President Donald Trump was backing down on most of his tariffs reached a luncheon of Senate Republicans Wednesday, the room reacted with relief, cheers and smiles.
It capped an extraordinary 24 hours in Washington in which GOP senators had increasingly confronted the Trump administration with worries about the economic impacts of the president’s sweeping tariff strategy. In Senate hearings and interviews with reporters, GOP skepticism of Trump’s policies had run unusually high, amounting to a rare break with a president they have otherwise championed.
Republicans are going public with their growing worries about Trump’s tariffs
(AP) — Manufacturers struggling to make long-term plans. Farmers facing retaliation from Chinese buyers. U.S. households burdened with higher prices.
Republican senators are confronting the Trump administration with those worries and many more as they fret about the economic impact of the president’s sweeping tariff strategy that went into effect Wednesday.
In a Senate hearing and interviews with reporters this week, Republican skepticism of President Donald Trump’s policies ran unusually high. While GOP lawmakers made sure to direct their concern at Trump’s aides and advisers — particularly U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer, who appeared before the Senate Finance Committee Tuesday — it still amounted to a rare Republican break from a president they have otherwise championed.
Ever wary of crossing Trump, Republicans engaged in a delicate two-step of criticizing the rollout of the tariffs then shifting to praise for the president’s economic vision. In the afternoon, Tillis in a Senate floor speech said that the “president is right in challenging other nations who have for decades abused their relationship with the United States,” yet went on to question who in the White House was thinking through the long-term economic effects of the sweeping tariffs.

5 April
US Senate Republicans pass measure to move forward on Trump’s tax cuts
Plunging stock market hovers over fiscal outlook
House Republicans now must weigh Senate’s work
Democrats warn that Medicaid under threat
(Reuters) – The U.S. Senate approved a Republican budget blueprint early on Saturday that aims to extend trillions of dollars worth of President Donald Trump’s 2017 tax cuts and sharply reduce government spending.
Senate Republicans adopted a fiscal blueprint Saturday for President Donald Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill.” –What comes next is anyone’s guess.
(Politico) The Senate voted 51-48 on a budget resolution that unlocks their ability to pass a party-line bill later this year that will combine an overhaul of the tax code with border, energy and defense policies. GOP Sens. Susan Collins of Maine and Rand Paul of Kentucky joined all Democrats and independent in opposing the resolution — though other Republicans still have concerns that will need to be addressed before passing the final bill.

Ted Cruz warns of midterm ‘bloodbath’ if Trump tariffs cause a recession
Texas senator’s comments another sign of Republican unease over ‘reciprocal tariffs’ and stock market plunge
(The Guardian) Ted Cruz, the US senator from Texas, has warned that his fellow Republicans risk a “bloodbath” in the 2026 midterm elections if Donald Trump’s “liberation day” tariffs cause a recession.
Cruz also warned that the president’s tariffs, if they stay in place for long and are met by global retaliation on American goods, could trigger a full-blown trade war that “would destroy jobs here at home, and do real damage to the US economy”.
“A hundred years ago, the US economy didn’t have the leverage to have the kind of impact we do now. But I worry, there are voices within the administration that want to see these tariffs continue for ever and ever,” he added.
A scary quote for the GOP on Trump and tariffs
What if Trump is willing to go down with the tariff ship — and take his party with him?
(WaPo) Perhaps the most infamous quote Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-South Carolina) ever offered about Donald Trump came in May 2016.
“If we nominate Trump, we will get destroyed,” Graham said, “and we will deserve it.” The Twitter post remains live to this day, nearly nine years later.
Despite Graham’s warning, this marriage of convenience has more or less worked out for him and his fellow Republicans. Trump is now a two-term president, and Republicans control both chambers of Congress.
… Republicans might want to start asking themselves what they do if and when it all blows up — and if Graham’s admonition might ultimately prove right. Because right now Trump is effectively threatening them with potential destruction, with little to no sign that he cares what they think about that.

Trump turmoil renews Jeffries’s hopes for Democrats winning ‘comfortably’
(WaPo) After a rough start for Democrats this year, the minority leader says actions by Trump and Elon Musk are creating an “expanded battlefield” into GOP districts in the 2026 midterms.

1 April
G.O.P. Bolsters House Majority by Retaining Two Seats in Florida
(NYT) The Republicans who were elected on Tuesday to fill seats left empty by Matt Gaetz and Michael Waltz had President Trump’s backing.
Democrats Show a Pulse: 6 Takeaways From Tuesday’s Elections
Energized against the new Trump era, and against Elon Musk, Democrats pulled off a crucial judicial victory in Wisconsin and cut into Republican margins in two Florida congressional races.
On the same night that Judge Susan Crawford, the liberal candidate, was delivering a thumping to Judge Brad Schimel, the Trump-backed conservative, Democrats saw a silver lining in losses in two special congressional elections in Florida. In both races, they were able to cut sharply into the much wider Republican victory margins from November.
In all, the night’s results demonstrated what Democratic officials have been saying in recent weeks: that their voters are fired up to fight back against a Trump administration set on tearing down large chunks of the federal government.