President Donald Trump, conflating his own 80 th birthday and the nation’s 250 th , organized a $60 million circus-like celebration at the White House with a 92-foot-tall cage called “the claw” for a “human cock-fight” and motorcycles flying through the air. All plastered with corporate advertising. The event perfectly symbolized Trump’s “ l’état c’est moi ” mentality, his corruption, and the decadence of American culture under his quasi-monarchical reign. At the same time he announced the end of the war on Iran, which was not yet over. There, they were all smiles. Not so much elsewhere.
There is a profound malaise in America. There is a widespread feeling that things have gone wrong. That we as a country have gone off track. That the government is not doing what it should. That one doesn’t know what to expect tomorrow. There is much disappointment, broad vague feelings of disorientation. The new imperial adventure in Venezuela and the wars in the Middle East worry us. The deployment in our cities of troops and of thousands of violent, masked agents of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in our streets represents an unaccustomed menace, a new threat. So, we have anxiety and fear. And now we are going to have an election.
The electorate is uneasy, doubtful. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans too are dissatisfied. A plurality now considers themselves to be Independents, 45 percent, while 27 percent consider themselves to be Democrats and 27 percent Republicans. And among Independents, a majority lean toward the Democrats. The rising number of Independents suggests that given the right circumstances and some political initiative our political system might be capable of change.
The November 3 midterm election will be a referendum on democracy. President Donald Trump has concentrated in his hands enormous power over the Republican Party and therefore over Congress, and he has by and large been supported by the Supreme Court. He has ignored the Constitution and the country’s laws, creating the most authoritarian government in our nation’s modern history. He has broken with traditions and attacked governmental and private institutions that protected us, enhanced our lives, and provided us with economic security, from the Centers for Disease Control and National Institutes of Health to the Department of Education and Social Security, the National Labor Relations Board, and others. He has ripped up government policies that protected racial and gender minorities and that worked to create a more equal society. At the same time, he has used his power to force universities to change their policies and curricula and attacked the independence of the media.
His government is rife with nepotism and cronyism. He has engaged in an orgy of corruption, accepting bribes, engaging in graft, extorting money, and using his office to expand his and his family’s business interests. He has lowered the taxes for himself and his billionaire class, the “Epstein class” as some now call it, while cutting the health and education programs of working people and the poor. He has sent U.S. troops and ICE agents into U.S. cities, with the ICE agents violently attacking and murdering immigrants and U.S. citizens alike. His dealings with our country’s people are callous and cruel, as are his interventions abroad.
Trump has engaged in imperial adventures aimed at expanding control over the Western Hemisphere, from his seizure of Nicolás Maduro, the president of Venezuela, to his strangulation of Cuba by cutting off its oil supplies. At the same time, he has threatened to take Greenland from Denmark and even to incorporate Canada into the United States. He tacitly supports Vladimir Putin in his war with Ukraine, cutting off U.S. funds and arms for the besieged victim of Russian imperialism. Like former president Joe Biden, Trump has remained aligned with Israel in its genocidal war in Gaza and its ethnic cleansing in the West Bank and permits Israel’s continuing war on Lebanon and attacks on Syria. Finally, there is his joint war with Israel on Iran, killing thousands and violating international law. Trump, who said he would be “the president of peace,” has become the president of wars, taking the lives of tens of thousands, many civilians, including many children.
The Iran war, which led to the blocking of the Strait of Hormuz, has not only brought death and destruction to Iranians, Americans, and people of other nations in the Middle East, but by cutting off the shipping of 20 percent of the world’s petroleum, along with much of its fertilizer, it has disrupted economies around the world. Several nations of the region have been drawn into the war and military aid to Iran from Russia and China raises the risk of wider war.
The election will be the culmination of two years of mass protest in the form of the No Kings demonstrations, this year’s May Day, and the Fighting Oligarchy rallies of senator Bernie Sanders, which altogether saw millions of Americans marching in over 3,500 locations. No Kings became omnibus protests against every aspect of Trump’s policies, from his undermining of democracy to his tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the rest of us, from his support for Israel’s genocide in Gaza to his joint war with Israel against Iran, from his violent and inhumane attacks on immigrants to his support for oil and coal when they are causing global warming and leading to violent weather events.
Most of those protesting at No Kings and joining the “Fighting Oligarchy” rallies have been looking forward to this November as the opportunity to elect a majority of Democrats to Congress and hopefully begin to put the brakes on Trump and the Republicans. And this is so even though many view the Democrats as weak and ineffective and devoid of useful, much less inspiring, ideas. There is now a broad, active resistance to Trump throughout the country.
Is Trump Losing his Grip on the Republican Party?
There are at the same time signs that Trump—despite his ability to take vengeance on his opponents in the Republican primary elections—is losing his hold on both the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and the Republican Party. The America First, no-more-endless-wars wing of the movement and its influencers—former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and former congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene (both of whom have actually left the Republican Party), to media personality Candace Owens, and podcaster Megyn Kelly—didn’t like the Iran war from the beginning. Vice president J.D. Vance can be considered a silent partner in this company. And these people, as well as others like senator Ted Cruz and New York Times columnist Bret Stephens , are obviously not happy that despite the war’s enormous cost, now estimated at more than $132 billion, the United States has clearly lost the war, achieving none of its objectives.
People didn’t like the war and they don’t like the so-called peace either. Democrats hate Trump’s “peace deal” and Republican politicians don’t like it either, the latter saying the deal gives too much to Iran: ending all sanctions and agreeing to pay $300 billion to Iran, while postponing the negotiation of an agreement to end Iran’s nuclear program. Republican senator Bill Cassidy called the deal the “worst foreign policy blunder in decades.”
At the same time, some Republican senators are breaking with Trump over his White House ballroom, first estimated at $200 million to be paid for by private donors and then priced at $400 million to be paid for by taxpayers. Senate Republicans removed from the immigration enforcement funding bill the $1 billion Secret Service funding request that would help pay for his ballroom, a rare GOP break with him.
And they also dislike Trump’s Justice Department’s creation of a so-called anti-weaponization fund to pay people—Trump’s people—who were supposedly persecuted by the DOJ under Biden. Money from this deal could go to the Jan