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

11-13 July
McConnell says a fall led to his hospitalization, breaking weeks of silence about health condition
McConnell’s statement came on the heels of the unexpected death of his fellow Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina. McConnell said he cannot return to the Senate “quite yet.”
Coupled with Graham’s passing, that will temporarily whittle the GOP majority in that chamber down by two, to 51-47, as Republicans try to increase military funding, advance President Donald Trump’s agenda and confirm Trump’s nominees.
Darline Graham Nordone, sister of Lindsey Graham, chosen to fulfill remainder of his US Senate term
South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster announced at a news conference at the Statehouse on Monday that Nordone would serve the remaining months on Graham’s current term, which expires in January. She will be sworn in Tuesday, according to a person familiar with the Senate schedule who requested anonymity ahead of an announcement.
Nordone will be the first woman to represent the state in the Senate.
Sen. Lindsey Graham likely died after aorta tear, medical examiner says
U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham, one of President Donald Trump’s closest allies in Congress who traveled the globe to advocate for a more muscular U.S. foreign policy abroad, died Saturday evening after a “brief and sudden illness,” his office said in a statement on social media. He was 71
(AP) A noted foreign policy hawk, Graham was one of the most influential figures in Washington on international affairs and he advised Trump on matters such as the Iran war and Russia. On Friday, Graham had announced an agreement with the Trump administration to move forward on a package of Russia sanctions.

7 June
The women who could make or break MAGA
There’s an overlooked niche in the historic coalition Republicans must defend in November that could prove pivotal to the party’s future: young conservative women. And some, like Christian conservative influencer Savanna Faith Stone, say “promises that were made have not been delivered on at all.”
Now just months out from the midterms — with the young female right taking center stage at Turning Point USA’s Women’s Leadership Summit this weekend — some of the movement’s biggest female voices say they’re “not really identifying with the MAGA party anymore,” Stone told Playbook.
the Republican Party made the mistake before of not messaging directly to women, Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders told Playbook. “Women want a lot of those same things. We want safe neighborhoods. We want the opportunity to make decisions about how we raise our families,” she said.
There’s skepticism about whether the GOP will take these concerns seriously, Marjorie Taylor Greene texted Playbook. “I think about all the single mothers and women out there trying to make it, and it is extremely difficult, with inflation continuing to rise and overall cost of living continuing to rise.” She called Trump’s tone and language “a major turn off to women.”

10 May
Could Tucker Carlson hijack the GOP — and take the White House?
by John Mac Ghlionn, opinion contributor
(The Hill) Earlier this month, Tucker Carlson reached his highest perch yet on the prediction markets, climbing to 7 percent on Polymarket to win the 2028 Republican presidential nomination. By Wall Street standards, that figure is small. By the standards of a man with no campaign, no committee, and no party apparatus, one-in-14-odds are enormous.
n a recent interview with Piers Morgan, Carlson refused to rule out a presidential run, saying the chance to debate and dismantle Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who has reportedly expressed presidential aspirations of his own — might be reason enough to jump in. If he goes through with it, don’t bet against him.

18 April
‘Empty-hall embarrassment’ is swamping Trump and Vance as TPUSA falls apart: report
Tom Boggioni
(Raw Story) According to a report from the New York Times’ Richard Fausset, TPUSA is undergoing a massive fracturing as chapters strike out on their own under new names, and the remaining members balk at the president’s war on Iran.
The developing schism within Turning Point USA after the death of founder Charlie Kirk and the ascension of his wife, Erika Kirk as the new CEO is making life much more difficult for Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance as they try to keep their agenda alive.
The attendance collapse at recent TPUSA rallies is stark and a warning to the Trump administration.
When Vice President JD Vance headlined a Turning Point event at the University of Georgia in Athens earlier this week, the numbers told a story of organizational decay: “In an arena that accommodates 6,500 people, roughly 1,300 attended, according to city officials,” the Times reported.

1 April
Trump’s Coalition May Not Survive 2028
Takeaways by Bloomberg AI
– The Republican party’s coalition, carried by President Donald Trump to a second White House term in 2024, is unlikely to transfer to the GOP’s next presidential nominee.
– Trump has consolidated conservative hawks and right-wing populists under one Republican roof, but grumbling about the Iran war from the far right signals a challenge ahead for the next GOP nominee.
– The Trump coalition is likely headed for a breakup in 2028 because Republicans will have a hard time finding another leader capable of being so many things to so many people, like Trump.
The Republican crack-up is coming — not over the Iran war and not today. But the ongoing conflict in the Middle East is a harbinger of what’s to come for the GOP in 2028.

22 February
Supreme Court’s tariff decision may have dealt GOP a midterm death blow: report
The Supreme Court’s stunning ruling Friday that President Donald Trump’s tariffs were unlawful may very well have set the Republican Party up for failure in the upcoming midterm elections, a Wall Street Journal report published on Saturday suggested.
…while Trump has yet to provide full details as to what those “alternatives” may look like, the Journal noted that all options available to him would set his trade policy “on a collision course with the midterm campaign season.”
“Some of the new tariffs Trump wants to impose require congressional approval to extend beyond five months. Others require months of investigations before they can be put into place,” wrote Journal trade and economic policy reporter Gavin Bade.

2025

12 December
Republican lawmakers tell Trump something he’s not used to hearing: No
In a pair of nearly simultaneous votes this week in the Indiana legislature and in Congress, GOP lawmakers issued unusual displays of defiance against Trump.
(WaPo) The pockets of resistance were evident at both the state and federal levels this week. Most glaring, a narrow majority of Republican state senators in Indiana voted Thursday to reject Trump’s pressure to redraw their congressional map. The same afternoon, 20 GOP U.S. House members broke ranks and voted to overturn Trump’s executive order ending union rights at many federal agencies.
Similar dissent flared last month when four conservative House members joined Democrats to force a vote on releasing government files on deceased sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, overcoming months of resistance from the president.

20 November
Congressional Republicans Begin to Look Beyond Trump
Election defeats earlier this month and the approach of 2026 have G.O.P. lawmakers cautiously asserting themselves.
(NYT) The willingness of congressional Republicans to defy Mr. Trump and back legislation requiring the disclosure of federal files on Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted sex offender and one-time Trump friend, was the clearest evidence yet that G.O.P. lawmakers are starting to look beyond Mr. Trump’s tenure to their self-preservation in midterm elections next year.
There are other signs as well, notably the refusal by Senate Republicans to bow to Mr. Trump’s demand to gut the filibuster during the shutdown fight, and resistance in some states to his intense push to redraw House district maps to cement the G.O.P.’s hold and prevent a Democratic takeover that would imperil the president.

Cheney Remembered for Transforming National Security and Standing Against Trump
As the former vice president is honored at Washington National Cathedral on Thursday, many eyes are focused on who came — and who did not.
(NYT) An unlikely mix of Republicans and Democrats came together on Thursday to pay tribute to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who helped shape the nation’s aggressive response to terrorism after Sept. 11, 2001, and transformed his office into a powerful platform to drive policy.
Led by former President George W. Bush, the mourners who gathered in the grand and cavernous Washington National Cathedral included an array of veterans of their administration as well as a number of Democrats who once despised Mr. Cheney but came to admire him late in life for his outspoken opposition to President Trump.
In a sign of how much politics has changed in recent years, Mr. Trump and Vice President JD Vance, the stewards of the current Republican administration, were not invited, but Rachel Maddow, the liberal television host who used to skewer Mr. Cheney for his support of the Iraq war, was on hand as a guest of the family.
Cheney’s funeral draws Bush, mix of Democrats and Republicans. Not Trump.
The former vice president, who served in the George W. Bush administration, was honored Thursday at Washington National Cathedral.
(WaPo) Dick Cheney, the former vice president and a consummate Washington insider across four decades, was remembered at his funeral Thursday as a shrewd and steady tactician whom three Republican presidents relied on to help lead the country through several wars and crises, including the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The throng of mourners who assembled at the funeral was led by former president George W. Bush and a bipartisan mix that included former president Joe Biden, four former vice presidents, and Republicans who held power in the nation’s capital nearly a generation ago.

15 November
The Nick Fuentes Spiral
The reckoning with the white-nationalist influencer’s rise is only getting messier.
By Ali Breland
(The Atlantic) In the rush to distance themselves from Fuentes, MAGA conservatives can easily downplay the extent to which Fuentes’s racist, trollish ideology has already embedded itself in the movement. It’s most apparent in younger groups, yet Groyper-speak also commonly seeps beyond those circles. Even Fuentes’s loudest critics on the right sometimes say things that sound as though they were ripped out of one of Fuentes’s notorious livestreams. Last summer, Senator Ted Cruz was among the many conservatives who amplified the claim that Haitian immigrants were eating cats—an unfounded notion that appears to have originated on a far-right social-media platform. At the Republican Jewish Coalition conference earlier this month, Fine called for New York City Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani to be deported—“the only thing I want to see him running for is his gate at JFK on the deportation flight to Uganda,” he said—and claimed that Mamdani is leading a “modern-day Hitler Youth.” In July, Fine implied that Representative Ilhan Omar was a “Muslim terrorist.”

Letters from an American November 13, 2025
Heather Cox Richardson
We are watching the ideology of the far-right MAGAs smash against reality, with President Donald J. Trump and his cronies madly trying to convince voters to believe in their false world rather than the real one.

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.