Category: Politics

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz dropped out of the Minnesota governor’s race on Monday, and Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) is considering jumping in to replace him.

Walz’s decision to not seek a historic third term upends the race and shocked the Minnesota political world. The two-term governor, who served as the Democrats’ 2024 vice presidential nominee, was facing a potentially tough reelection fight as Republicans sought to tie him to a federal probe into a massive welfare fraud scandal in the state.

Walz acknowledged that the scandal played a role in his choice.

“Every minute I spend defending my own political interests would be a minute I can’t spend defending the people of Minnesota against the criminals who prey on our generosity and the cynics who prey on our differences,” he said in a Monday statement.

Dozens of people have been charged with felonies for stealing hundreds of millions of dollars from Covid-era government programs intended to help feed children. Republicans were eager to tie Walz to the scheme, though he is not accused of any wrongdoing.

It’s a remarkable turn of events for the governor, who was elevated to national status by Kamala Harris in her 2024 sprint of a campaign and who until recently had left the door open to a 2028 presidential run of his own. 

“Many Democrats don’t want him to run, including me,” said one senior Minnesota Democratic lawmaker, granted anonymity to speak candidly. “He is certainly not corrupt, but he has not handled the fraud problem well and we worry about his electability.”

Walz met with Klobuchar on Sunday to discuss the campaign, according to two people familiar with the meeting. A person close to Klobuchar, granted anonymity to describe the senator’s private thinking, said the Minnesota senator is receiving encouragement to run and she’s seriously considering it but has not decided on her plans. That development might be a boon to Democrats in the competitive state, as she has run well ahead of others in her party — including Walz — in past statewide campaigns.

Republicans face a crowded primary for governor, including MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, state Rep. Kristin Robbins and Minneapolis attorney Chris Madel.

The Republican Governors’ Association crowed over Walz’s exit, adding in a statement on Monday: “After presiding over one of the biggest fraud scandals in history it’s no wonder that Tim Walz is being forced to drop his re-election bid. Walz’s failed leadership is emblematic of Minnesota Democrats’ agenda and whoever Democrats choose to replace Walz with at the top of the ticket will need to defend years of mismanagement and misplaced priorities.

Meredith Lee Hill contributed reporting. 

​Politics

An image circulated over media the weekend of Jan. 3 and 4 was meant to convey dominance: Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, blindfolded and handcuffed aboard a U.S. naval vessel. Shortly after the operation that seized Maduro and his wife, Cilia Flores, President Donald Trump announced that the United States would now “run” Venezuela until a “safe, proper and judicious transition” could be arranged.

The Trump administration’s move is not an aberration; it reflects a broader trend in U.S. foreign policy I described here some six years ago as “America the Bully.”

Washington increasingly relies on coercion – military, economic and political – not only to deter adversaries but to compel compliance from weaker nations. This may deliver short-term obedience, but it is counterproductive as a strategy for building durable power, which depends on legitimacy and capacity. When coercion is applied to governance, it can harden resistance, narrow diplomatic options and transform local political failures into contests of national pride.

There is no dispute that Maduro’s dictatorship led to Venezuela’s catastrophic collapse. Under his rule, Venezuela’s economy imploded, democratic institutions were hollowed out, criminal networks fused with the state, and millions fled the country – many for the United States.

But removing a leader – even a brutal and incompetent one – is not the same as advancing a legitimate political order.

Force doesn’t equal legitimacy

By declaring its intent to govern Venezuela, the United States is creating a governance trap of its own making – one in which external force is mistakenly treated as a substitute for domestic legitimacy.

I write as a scholar of international security, civil wars and U.S. foreign policy, and as author of “Dying by the Sword,” which examines why states repeatedly reach for military solutions, and why such interventions rarely produce durable peace.

The core finding of that research is straightforward: Force can topple rulers, but it cannot generate political authority.

When violence and what I have described elsewhere as “kinetic diplomacy” become a substitute for full spectrum action – which includes diplomacy, economics and what the late political scientist Joseph Nye called “soft power” – it tends to deepen instability rather than resolve it.

More force, less statecraft

The Venezuela episode reflects this broader shift in how the United States uses its power. My co-author Sidita Kushi and I document this by analyzing detailed data from the new Military Intervention Project. We show that since the end of the Cold War, the United States has sharply increased the frequency of military interventions while systematically underinvesting in diplomacy and other tools of statecraft.

One striking feature of the trends we uncover is that if Americans tended to justify excessive military intervention during the Cold War between 1945–1989 due to the perception that the Soviet Union was an existential threat, what we would expect is far fewer military interventions following the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse. That has not happened.

Even more striking, the mission profile has changed. Interventions that once aimed at short-term stabilization now routinely expand into prolonged governance and security management, as they did in both Iraq after 2003 and Afghanistan after 2001.

This pattern is reinforced by institutional imbalance. In 2026, for every single dollar the United States invests in the diplomatic “scalpel” of the State Department to prevent conflict, it allocates US$28 to the military “hammer” of the Department of Defense, effectively ensuring that force becomes a first rather than last resort.

“Kinetic diplomacy” – in the Venezuela case, regime change by force – becomes the default not because it is more effective, but because it is the only tool of statecraft immediately available. On Jan. 4, Trump told the Atlantic magazine that if Delcy Rodríguez, the acting leader of Venezuela, “doesn’t do what’s right, she is going to pay a very big price, probably bigger than Maduro.”

Lessons from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya

The consequences of this imbalance are visible across the past quarter-century.

In Afghanistan, the U.S.-led attempt to engineer authority built on external force alone proved brittle by its very nature. The U.S. had invaded Afghanistan in 2001 to topple the Taliban regime, deemed responsible for the 9/11 terrorist attacks. But the subsequent two decades of foreign-backed state-building collapsed almost instantly once U.S. forces withdrew in 2021. No amount of reconstruction spending could compensate for the absence of a political order rooted in domestic consent.

Following the invasion by the U.S. and surrender of Iraq’s armed forces in 2003, both the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Defense proposed plans for Iraq’s transition to a stable democratic nation. President George W. Bush gave the nod to the Defense Department’s plan.

That plan, unlike the State Department’s, ignored key cultural, social and historical conditions. Instead, it proposed an approach that assumed a credible threat to use coercion, supplemented by private contractors, would prove sufficient to lead to a rapid and effective transition to a democratic Iraq. The United States became responsible not only for security, but also for electricity, water, jobs and political reconciliation – tasks no foreign power can perform without becoming, as the United States did, an object of resistance.

Libya demonstrated a different failure mode. There, intervention by a U.S.-backed NATO force in 2011 and removal of dictator Moammar Gadhafi and his regime were not followed by governance at all. The result was civil war, fragmentation, militia rule and a prolonged struggle over sovereignty and economic development that continues today.

The common thread across all three cases is hubris: the belief that American management – either limited or oppressive – could replace political legitimacy.

Venezuela’s infrastructure is already in ruins. If the United States assumes responsibility for governance, it will be blamed for every blackout, every food shortage and every bureaucratic failure. The liberator will quickly become the occupier.

Costs of ‘running’ a country

Taking on governance in Venezuela would also carry broader strategic costs, even if those costs are not the primary reason the strategy would fail.

A military attack followed by foreign administration is a combination that undermines the principles of sovereignty and nonintervention that underpin the international order the United States claims to support. It complicates alliance diplomacy by forcing partners to reconcile U.S. actions with the very rules they are trying to defend elsewhere.

The United States has historically been strongest when it anchored an open sphere built on collaboration with allies, shared rules and voluntary alignment. Launching a military operation and then assuming responsibility for governance shifts Washington toward a closed, coercive model of power – one that relies on force to establish authority and is prohibitively costly to sustain over time.

These signals are read not only in Berlin, London and Paris. They are watched closely in Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul — and just as carefully in Beijing and Moscow.

When the United States attacks a sovereign state and then claims the right to administer it, it weakens its ability to contest rival arguments that force alone, rather than legitimacy, determines political authority.

Beijing needs only to point to U.S. behavior to argue that great powers rule as they please where they can – an argument that can justify the takeover of Taiwan. Moscow, likewise, can cite such precedent to justify the use of force in its near abroad and not just in Ukraine.

This matters in practice, not theory. The more the United States normalizes unilateral governance, the easier it becomes for rivals to dismiss American appeals to sovereignty as selective and self-serving, and the more difficult it becomes for allies to justify their ties to the U.S.

That erosion of credibility does not produce dramatic rupture, but it steadily narrows the space for cooperation over time and the advancement of U.S. interests and capabilities.

Force is fast. Legitimacy is slow. But legitimacy is the only currency that buys durable peace and stability – both of which remain enduring U.S. interests.

If Washington governs by force in Venezuela, it will repeat the failures of Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya: Power can topple regimes, but it cannot create political authority. Outside rule invites resistance, not stability.

Monica Duffy Toft does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

Americans woke up on Jan. 3, 2025, to blaring headlines: “US CAPTURES MADURO, TRUMP SAYS,” declared The New York Times, using all capital letters. The U.S. had mounted an overnight military raid in Venezuela that immediately raised questions of procedure and legality. Prime among them was what role Congress had – or should have had – in the operation.

Politics editor Naomi Schalit interviewed political scientist Sarah Burns, author of the book “The Politics of War Powers” and an expert at Rochester Institute of Technology on the historical struggle between Congress and U.S. presidents over who has the power to authorize military action.

Is this a war?

I wouldn’t call it a war. This is regime change, and whether or not it has a positive impact on the United States, whether or not it has a positive impact on Venezuela, I think the likelihood is very low for both of those things being true.

How does Congress see its role in terms of military action initiated by the United States?

Congress has been, in my view, incredibly supine. But that’s not just my word. Having said that, it is true that Congress – in the House, predominantly – tried to pass a war powers act recently, saying that President Donald Trump was not allowed to do any action against Venezuela, and that failed on very close votes.

So you see some effort on the part of Congress to assert itself in the realm of war. But it failed predominantly on party lines, with Democrats saying we really don’t want to go into Venezuela. We really don’t want to have this action. Republicans predominantly were supporting the president and whatever it happens to be that he would like to do. Moderate Republicans and Republicans who are in less safe districts were and are more likely to at least stand up a little bit to the president, but there’s a very small number of them.

So there may be an institutional role for Congress, a constitutional role, a role that has been confirmed by legal opinion, but politics takes over in Congress when it comes to asserting its power in this realm?

That’s a perfect way of putting it. They have a legal, constitutional, one might even say moral, responsibility to assert themselves as a branch, right? This is from Federalist 51 where James Madison says “Ambition must be made to counteract ambition.” So it should be that as a branch, they assert themselves against the president and say, “We have a role here.”

In the 1940s, presidential scholar Edward Corwin said that in the realm of foreign policy, it is an invitation for Congress and the president to struggle. So it should be that Congress and the president are struggling against each other to assert, “I’m in charge.” “No, I’m in charge.” “No, I’m in charge,” in an effort to create a balance between the two branches and between the two things that each of the branches does well. What you want from Congress is slow deliberation and a variety of opinions. What you want from the president is energy and dispatch.

So certainly, if we have an attack like 9/11, you would want the president to be able to act quickly. And you know, conversely, in situations like the questions around what the U.S. is doing in Venezuela, you want slow deliberation because there is no emergency that requires energy and dispatch and speed. So the president shouldn’t be entirely in the driver’s seat here, and Congress should very much be trying very hard to restrain him.

What power does Congress have to restrain him?

They have to pass legislation. They aren’t particularly well suited right now to passing legislation, so effectively there is not a very clear way for them to restrain the president.

One of the things that members of Congress have attempted to do several times, with very little positive impact, is go to the courts and say, “Can you restrain the president?” And political scientist Jasmine Farrier has written that the courts have regularly said to members of Congress: “You have the power to stop the president, and you are ineffective at that. And so if you want to stop the president, you shouldn’t turn to us. You should work together to create legislation that would restrain the president.”

What would such legislation do? Cut off money for troops? Is it finger-wagging, or is it something really concrete?

There are a few different tiers. Joint resolutions are finger-wagging. They just say, “Bad, Mr. President, don’t do that.” But they have no effect in law.

The War Powers Resolution, first passed in 1973, is a legitimate way of trying to restrain the president. Congress intended to say to presidents, “You cannot start a war and continue a war without our authorization.” But what they said instead was “You could have a small war or a short war – of 60 to 90 days – without our authorization, and then you have to tell us about it.” That just sort of said to presidents the opposite of what they intended. So President Barack Obama took advantage of that with the military engagement in Libya, as well as Trump in his first administration.

This is not a partisan issue. It’s not Republican presidents who do it. It’s not Democratic presidents who do it. It’s every president since the War Powers Resolution was passed, and the only time that Congress has drawn down troops or drawn down money was the Vietnam War.

Other than that disastrous war, we have not seen Congress willing to put themselves on the politically negative side, which is taking money away from the troops. Because if you take away money right now, they’re going to be harmed.

What is the War Powers Resolution?

The War Powers Resolution from 1973, also known as the War Powers Act, was Congress – during the Vietnam War – saying definitively to President Richard Nixon, “You have overstepped your bounds.” They had explicitly said in law, you cannot go into Cambodia. And Nixon went into Cambodia.

So that was their way of trying to reassert themselves very aggressively; as I mentioned before, it didn’t work effectively. It worked insofar as presidents don’t unilaterally start wars that are large scale, the way that World War II was large scale. But they do have these smaller actions at varying levels.

Then we get to 9/11 and we see the 2001 authorization for the use of military force, and the 2002 authorization for the use of military force. The 2001 law authorized going after anyone in al-Qaida and associated with 9/11. The 2002 authorization was directly related to Iraq, saying “There is a problem with Iraq, we have to do something.” Both of them were extremely vague and broad, and that’s why we’ve seen four presidents, including Trump, using the 2001 and 2002 authorizations to carry out all sorts of operations that had very little to do with Saddam Hussein or al-Qaida.

In 2021, senators Mike Lee, Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy collectively got together and tried to create a national security document that would restrain presidential unilateralism. It was a good effort on the part of members of Congress from a variety of different ideological views to attempt to restrain the president. It did not even sort-of pass – it barely got out on the floor.

Since that time, we haven’t seen a lot of efforts from members of Congress. They haven’t really reasserted themselves since the war in Korea, which began in 1950. It’s very clear that ambition is no longer checking ambition the way that it was meant to by the founders.

When you woke up this morning and saw the news, what was your first thought?

Here we go again. This is not a Republican or a Democratic issue. Lots of presidents have made this error, which is that they think if you do this smaller-scale action, you are going to get a positive result for the nation, for the region, for international stability. And very rarely is that the case.

Sarah Burns does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

NEW YORK — Zohran Mamdani rode the digital slipstream to success in New York. Now millennials and Gen Zers are banking on a similar wave to boost their political dreams.

The mayor-elect energized New York City’s youth vote, earning the support of nearly 70 percent of voters aged 18 to 44 in the general election. His publicity strategy — complete with shareable graphics, collaborations with content creators and local artists’ animations — appealed to a new trove of young voters, people who primarily get their information in short-form TikTok videos and social media posts rather than legacy media.

A wave of millennial and Gen Z Democratic hopefuls across the country are looking to follow that lead in shaking up an aging party — from a 25-year-old political influencer in Arizona, to a 35-year-old congressional candidate in Idaho, to a 24-year-old mayoral candidate in Georgia.

“The theme that we have seen this year, different from years past, is ‘I’m done waiting around. I’m sick of being told it’s not my turn,’” said Amanda Litman, CEO of Run for Something, a candidate recruitment company focused on electing progressives under 40.

The surge has rippled far beyond New York, touching races in red and purple states alike as younger Democrats test whether digital-first campaigns can compensate for limited funding, party support and name recognition.

It also has reopened a debate inside the Democratic Party over what it takes to build a viable campaign — and whether traditional gatekeepers are misreading how younger voters engage with politics. While Gen Z and millennials span different age groups, both are entering politics with similar digital fluency — and similar distance from the party’s traditional power structures.

The effects are already visible in candidate recruitment. Run for Something reported a surge of 10,000 young Democrats across the country expressing interest in launching a campaign immediately after Mamdani’s primary win. Another 1,616 potential candidates signed up within one day of the shutdown-ending deal to reopen the government, the group said.

“We’re building a party of fighters, not folders,” Litman posted on X in November along with a graph of the sign-up splurge.

The push for younger candidates comes as Democratic leadership skews older than the electorate it represents. The average age in the House and the Senate is roughly 58 and 65, respectively, and the median school board member is 59, according to Pew Research Center. The median age in the United States is 39.

More than 20 progressives under the age of 40 have announced a congressional campaign for this election cycle, nearly half of whom are looking to unseat a member of their own party. And with the Democratic Party having no clear leader, the younger generation is looking to add new faces into the mix.

For inexperienced candidates who don’t have the money or institutional support to run a competitive campaign, social media offers a cost-free solution. The ease of building an online following has lowered the perceived barrier to running for office, even as the fundamentals of winning — fundraising, turnout and organization — remain unchanged.

Take Sam Foster, a 24-year-old from Marietta, Georgia. He rode his bike to the first video shoot for his mayoral campaign against incumbent Steve Tumlin, who is 78. Social media, he said, isn’t as much a strategy for Gen Z and millennial candidates as it is a native mode of communication.

“I hate when people call it a social media campaign,” Foster said. “I went into [making content] with the intention of just showing people who I was. We built a strategy off of that, but it wasn’t essentially the intention.”

Mamdani, a democratic socialist who polled at under 1 percent in February, soft-launched his campaign in July with videos asking New Yorkers why they voted for Trump. His later videos on “halalflation,” a fully suited polar plunge to “freeze” the rent and a Valentine’s Day voter registration proposal kept him prevalent on social feeds.

And the more he posted, the more users — even those well outside of New York City — responded.

“If done well, [social media] allows you to raise lots of small dollars from lots of different places,” said Chris Coffey, a longtime political consultant and CEO of Tusk Strategies.

One Mamdani video asked supporters to donate to his transition team. The comment section was flooded with promises of donations from people as far away as Europe — with in-country support from Texas, California and Florida as well. From July to the election in November, Mamdani raised over $750,000 from over 8,500 contributors outside of New York City, according to data from the Campaign Finance Board. 

Coffey drew a comparison to Andrew Yang, who also had a strong social media presence and made history by raising $750,000 in just one day for his 2020 presidential campaign, with an average donation of $41.

“Both Yang and Mamdani were able to use their social media and digital media platforms to get lots and lots and lots of small donors, which then powered their campaign, de-emphasized big dollars and allowed them to play on a level playing field with all these other candidates that were going after bigger dollars,” said Coffey, who helped manage Yang’s 2021 bid for New York City mayor.

Mamdani’s messaging inspired more than 100,000 volunteers to be visible daily on New York streets throughout the mayoral race.

His messaging also maintained an appearance of authenticity, focusing on issues that disproportionately affect young and working class New Yorkers, like housing, childcare, and affordability.

For young voters, authenticity is a major problem in the Democratic Party. And younger candidates are proving adept at conveying a message “from the heart,” according to Deja Foxx, a grassroots organizer and digital strategist who previously ran for Arizona’s 7th Congressional District.

“People have a different expectation of how they should be engaging with public figures [than they did 10 years ago],” Foxx said. “We are consuming so much on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, where videos from our Congress person are mixed in with life updates from our best friend from middle school. It demands a different level of vulnerability that frankly a lot of our older electives aren’t comfortable with.”

The embrace of online-first campaigning has also blurred the line between political organizing and performance. Jack Schlossberg, the 32-year-old grandson of John F. Kennedy who’s running for Rep. Jerry Nadler’s congressional seat, is a provocative social media personality, sometimes offering raunchy and offensive political commentary to his 860,000 followers.

Schlossberg shares random, quotidian tidbits, like being called an “incel Frankenstein looking mother—” by a random passerby. He impersonated Melania Trump — wig and all — as he read a letter of support to Vladimir Putin, trolled his uncle Robert F. Kennedy Jr. ‘s health policies — insinuating his uncle’s claims of autism being linked to circumcision came from personal experience — and gave crass explanations of political news like the release of the Epstein files, New York Attorney General Letitia James’ indictment (since tossed) and the government shutdown.

While his videos drive an audience, and have certainly got voters talking, they lack what other candidates are hinging on — promises and policies.

For those who aren’t Kennedys — like Kaylee Peterson, a 35-year-old Idaho candidate in the historically Republican 1st District — social media is their pathway into the otherwise pay-to-play world of campaigning.

“Social media is the only real affordable tool we have to reach disenfranchised Gen Z and millennial voters,” said Peterson. “Seeing [Mamdani] be successful and the massive national support he received gave us hope.”

Like many other progressive candidates in rural republican areas, Peterson said, she did not receive support — or even a call back — from the Democratic National Committee. Instead, she found her support, strategists and community on social media groups where other young candidates virtually congregated — like TikTok Live, Instagram and messaging apps.

Peterson ran a losing campaign against Republican incumbent Rep. Russell Mark Fulcher in 2022 with only $70,000. She focused on getting her message out and mobilizing progressives in her district. In her third campaign cycle, though still unsuccessful at claiming the seat, she raised just under $250,000.

Mamdani may ultimately prove to be the exception rather than the rule. His online success amplified preexisting strengths and allowed his reach to go beyond the five boroughs.

“Social media is an important part of [the campaign],” Coffey said. “But so is the messaging, and so is the staff, and so was their press apparatus, and so was their candidate’s ability to do really hard and tedious work.”

​Politics

President Donald Trump’s primary super PAC raised over $102 million in the second half of 2025, carrying a war chest stocked with hundreds of millions of dollars into the midterms.

That massive sum, combined with even greater fundraising in the first half of the year and minimal spending throughout 2025, leaves the PAC with approximately $300 million cash on hand, positioning the president’s allies to wield massive influence over the midterms.

The disclosure, which which was reported in a filing submitted to the Federal Election Commission this week and goes through Dec. 22, shows MAGA Inc. with $294 million cash on hand. In a statement, a MAGA Inc. spokesperson said the PAC ended the year with $304 million cash on hand.

“Thanks to President Trump’s leadership, MAGA Inc will have the resources to help candidates who support President Trump’s America First agenda of securing our border, keeping our streets safe, supercharging our economy, and making life more affordable for all Americans,” the organization said.

The enormous sum of money doesn’t represent the entire war chest at Trump’s disposal; several affiliated PACs have continued to raise money in support of the president, adding to the growing stockpile of cash that Republicans around the country will hope to tap into as they seek to maintain majorities in Congress in November.

MAGA Inc. made its first independent expenditures of the year in support of Rep. Matt Van Epps, who won a hard-fought special election in Tennessee’s 7th District in December. The super PAC spent $1.6 million to help boost Van Epps over Democrat Aftyn Behn in a district Trump won by 22 points in 2024.

The super PAC, which does not face donation limits, drew contributions from regular GOP donors and from leaders in the artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency industries.

OpenAI President Greg Brockman gave $25 million and Foris DAX Inc., the U.S.-based arm of the company that operates Crypto.com, contributed $20 million on top of an additional $10 million it gave at the beginning of 2025.

Private equity investor Konstantin Sokolov donated $11 million, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, who was confirmed in December despite Trump withdrawing his nomination in May before renominating him, contributed $2 million to the PAC last year, including $1 million in the second half of the year.

​Politics

Democrats are accustomed to losing in rural America — especially to Donald Trump. Now they’re hoping the president’s own policies might prove to be the leverage they need going into next year’s midterms.

The party faces immense challenges in farm country that have overwhelmingly voted Republican for decades and turned out in droves on the president’s behalf three times. But over the past year, those same communities have borne the brunt of his tariff agenda, health care center closures, lingering inflation and cuts to public lands programs.

Where Trump sees an “A++++++” economy, large percentages of both Republican and Democratic voters blame his decisions for stubbornly high prices for groceries and housing, according to recent polling from POLITICO and Public First.

Democrats have a long way to go in rebuilding trust with rural voters. But conversations with more than a dozen current and former Democratic lawmakers, party officials and political strategists suggest they also feel the urgency of tapping into the discontent being generated by Trump’s agenda.

The party is trying to replace wishful thinking with a new shoe-leather strategy in rural communities where it has long lacked a presence and is deploying unhappy farmers in media campaigns. If Democrats mean to retake Congress in the midterms or have a shot at the White House in 2028, their candidates don’t necessarily need to sweep rural counties — they just need to eat into the margins Trump was getting, which were frequently north of 80 percent of the vote.

“We have a unique opening because of all that’s happening with this administration,” said Rep. Nikki Budzinski (D-Ill.), whose district includes significant rural and farming interests. Farmers and rural voters “might be listening in a more unique way than they maybe have ever in the past. And we need to walk through that door.”

Democrats have previously dedicated relatively modest amounts of money, staff and advertising to rural counties and districts outside of swing states. But after a string of off-year victories last month, House Democrats have launched their first-ever rural outreach program, an eight-figure campaign that will fund efforts to hire staffers for candidates, mobilize voters and run ads focusing on the cost of living.

Even some Republicans acknowledge the GOP can’t take rural communities for granted.

“Right now, the farm community is with [Trump]. I think the thing that Republicans should worry about is enthusiasm, in getting out and actually voting,” Senate Agriculture Committee Chair John Boozman (R-Ark.) said. “It’s one thing to be supportive, it’s another thing to actually go vote on Election Day.”

Joe Manchin, a Democrat-turned-independent former senator and governor, won six statewide races running as a Democrat in solid-red West Virginia. He said the party needs to focus on finding candidates who can relate to rural Americans by focusing on key issues — “common sense shit,” he explained, like fiscal responsibility and affordability.

For example, candidates like Abigail Spanberger and Mikie Sherrill won their gubernatorial elections last month by distancing themselves from the Democratic Party’s brand and zeroing in on high prices.

“They’re the kind of the centrist Democrats you need,” Manchin said. “They’re the only ones who are going to win in these tough areas.”

The tariff play

The politics that defines much of the division between urban and rural voters emerged in the late 1980s, as post-Carter Democrats pushed policies that the latter saw as detrimental to agricultural and manufacturing sectors. That left rural voters especially primed for Trump’s brand of economic populism: He won 64 percent of them in 2024, the best performance of any presidential candidate in decades and beating his own 2016 margin.

“One of the reasons we were in such a negative place with rural voters is we sort of ceded that ground, stopped showing up, stopped talking to these folks, and really relied on the urban centers,” Libby Schneider, deputy executive director of the Democratic National Committee, said. “And we saw how that gamble failed in 2024 when folks in urban centers stayed home.”

Then, in April, Trump began his chaotic tariff rollout.

While farmers had stomached Trump’s tariffs in the first term — and voted to bring him back in 2024 — their economic position is weaker and the tariffs are much higher and more expansive this time around.

Farmers and businesses experienced whiplash as tariff deadlines came and went, confusing people throughout the food supply chain about how they would be impacted. Fertilizer and fuel costs rose and markets for exports like soybeans dried up. Some groups, including cattle ranchers who have long allied with Trump, publicly broke with the president’s trade agenda when he suggested importing Argentinian beef to lower food prices.

While most rural voters are not farmers, agriculture is a critical piece of the rural economy, making farm policy one of the primary ways federal policymaking affects those communities. Some voters may support tariffs in theory in the hopes they could revitalize the labor market and prompt fairer trade terms for farm goods, but polling suggests they view Trump’s plans as too arbitrary to achieve those goals.

A majority of people surveyed in an October POLITICO poll (53 percent) supported avoiding tariffs on imports if that meant keeping costs low for consumers.

Spanberger, the Virginia governor-elect, won in part by focusing her messaging in rural counties on tariffs and tying the economic discomfort voters were feeling to Trump and the Republican Party. She outperformed Kamala Harris in 48 of Virginia’s 52 rural localities.

National Democrats, excited by Spanberger’s success, have made their own moves: Beyond the DCCC’s eight-figure investment into rural voters and voters of color and the new farmer-focused ad campaigns, a caucus of more than 100 moderate Democratic lawmakers recently released a policy agenda that includes passing a farm bill, expanding rural broadband funding and federal funding for local food purchases.

White House spokesperson Kush Desai defended the Trump administration’s policies and said “supporting rural Americans has been a key focus,” which is why the administration has sought to use tariffs to open up new export markets for farmers.

The RNC isn’t fazed either.

“Rural America won’t suddenly be tricked into thinking elite Democrats stand for their beliefs and values. The DNC spending a few bucks won’t fool rural Americans into thinking Democrats have touched grass,” RNC spokesperson Delanie Bomar said.

One Big Beautiful Mess

Trump’s signature tax-and-spending law provides Democrats with another opening to contrast their pitch against Republicans.

Rural health care centers across the country have already shuttered in response to the law’s Medicaid cuts, which will disproportionately hit communities where hospitals are few and often primary employers. Low-income Americans are quickly learning they may no longer qualify for federal food aid — even as most of the tax breaks the GOP has touted will benefit the wealthy.

Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who chairs the Democratic Governors Association and represents a ruby red state, recently called the law “a slap in the face to rural America.”

And POLITICO’s November poll revealed that voters are more likely to rely on Democrats when it comes to health care policy. More than 40 percent of those surveyed said they trusted Democrats to bring down health care costs for ordinary Americans, compared with 33 percent who said they trusted the GOP.

The message for Democrats is “wrapped up and with a nice, tidy bow on it in the Big, Beautiful Bill,” said Christopher Borick, a political science professor who runs the Muhlenberg College Institute of Public Opinion. “It’s cuts to your health care, it’s cuts to rural hospitals. It’s cuts to SNAP benefits, and it’s just so tidy and neat for Democrats to go there.”

The strategy seems to be working. In a heavily Republican congressional district in Tennessee, Democrat Aftyn Behn beat expectations and outperformed Harris’ 2024 margins in a bid to unseat GOP Rep. Matt Van Epps this month.

Behn’s ads largely focused on affordability and the fallout from the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which she called the “one big BS bill.”

That tactic resonated with voters in an off-cycle election and will only gain steam: Americans’ health care premiums are set to skyrocket ahead of the 2026 midterms after Republicans declined to extend Covid-era “enhanced” subsidies of Affordable Care Act plans in their big bill.

Will history repeat itself?

Still, some political experts question how much Democrats can loosen the GOP’s hold on rural America.

The president’s first-term tariff war also hammered farmers, but their political ties to Republicans hardly wavered at the time. Democrats in 2024 used roughly the same playbook they’re seeking to capitalize on now, arguing that Trump’s proposed policies would increase the cost of living and that his tariffs would impose a new tax on the middle class — but they failed to gain enough ground with rural voters, enabling Republicans to win a trifecta.

Many voters are wary of Democrats’ support for free trade agreements over the last 30 years, which hollowed out rural job opportunities and allowed the unchecked growth of corporate power, said Anthony Flaccavento, executive director of the Rural Urban Bridge initiative, a progressive rural organizing group.

“Both parties have really betrayed rural America, but the Republican Party got very, very good at seeing people and expressing solidarity and saying, ‘You’re right to be angry,’” he explained.

Part of winning is showing up and listening, say Democrats like Rep. Shontel Brown of Ohio, who is weighing a bid for the top spot on the House Agriculture Committee. Brown, who hails from a wholly urban district, has traveled to other parts of her state and to Florida on a listening tour to hear directly from farmers.

“We’ve lost a lot of trust in rural America, so showing up and listening is half the battle, but then we have to be able to present an alternative,” she said in a recent interview. “We as Democrats have a real opportunity to make the case for policies that lower costs and make it easier for farmers, families and the entire food supply chain producers as well.”

​Politics

Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia, announced in November 2025 that he will relaunch the group after it disbanded following his prison sentence in 2023.

Rhodes was sentenced to 18 years in prison for seditious conspiracy and other crimes committed during the U.S. Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.

In January 2025, President Donald Trump granted clemency to the over 1,500 defendants convicted of crimes connected to the storming of the Capitol.

Trump did not pardon Rhodes – or some others found guilty of the most serious crimes on Jan. 6. He instead commuted Rhodes’ sentence to time served. Commutation only reduces the punishment for a crime, whereas a full pardon erases a conviction.

As a political anthropologist I study the Patriot movement, a collection of anti-government right-wing groups that include the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers and Moms for Liberty. I specialize in alt-right beliefs, and I have interviewed people active in groups that participated in the Capitol riot.

Rhodes’ plans to relaunch the Oath Keepers, largely composed of current and former military veterans and law enforcement officers, is important because it will serve as an outlet for those who have felt lost since his imprisonment. The group claimed it had over 40,000 dues-paying members at the height of its membership during Barack Obama’s presidency. I believe that many of these people will return to the group, empowered by the lack of any substantial punishment resulting from the pardons for crimes committed on Jan. 6.

In my interviews, I’ve found that military veterans are treated as privileged members of the Patriot movement. They are honored for their service and military training. And that’s why I believe many former Oath Keepers will rejoin the group – they are considered integral members.

Their oaths to serving the Constitution and the people of the United States are treated as sacred, binding members to an ideology that leads to action. This action includes supporting people in conflicts against federal agencies, organizing citizen-led disaster relief efforts, and protesting election results like on Jan. 6. The members’ strength results from their shared oath and the reverence they feel toward keeping it.

Who are the Oath Keepers?

Rhodes joined the Army after high school and served for three years before being honorably discharged after a parachuting accident in 1986. He then attended the University of Nevada and later graduated from Yale Law School in 2004. He founded the Oath Keepers in 2009.

Oath Keepers takes its name from the U.S military Oath of Enlistment, which states:

“I, , do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States …”

Informed by his law background, Rhodes places a particular emphasis on the part of the oath that states they will defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic.

He developed a legal theory that justifies ignoring what he refers to as “unlawful orders” after witnessing the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Following the natural disaster, local law enforcement was assigned the task of confiscating guns, many of which officers say were stolen or found in abandoned homes.

Rhodes was alarmed, believing that the Second Amendment rights of citizens were being violated. Because of this, he argued that people who had military or law enforcement backgrounds had a legal duty to refuse what the group considers unlawful orders, including any that violated constitutionally protected rights, such as the right to bear arms.

In the Oath Keepers’ philosophy, anyone who violates these rights are domestic enemies to the Constitution. And if you follow the orders, you’ve violated your oath.

Explaining the origin of the group on the right-wing website “The Gateway Pundit” in November 2025, Rhodes said: “… we were attacked out of the gate, labeled anti-government, which is absurd because we’re defending the Constitution that established the federal government. We were labeled anti-government extremists, all kinds of nonsense because the elites want blind obedience in the police and military.”

Rebuilding and restructuring

In 2022, the nonprofit whistleblower site Distributed Denial of Secrets leaked more than 38,000 names on the Oath Keepers’ membership list.

The Anti-Defamation League estimated that nearly 400 of the names were active law enforcement officers, and that over 100 were serving in the military. Some of these members were investigated by their workplaces but never disciplined for their involvement with the group.

Some members who were not military or law enforcement did lose their jobs over their affiliation. But they held government-related positions, such as a Wisconsin alderman who resigned after he was identified as a member.

This breach of privacy, paired with the dissolution of the organization after Rhodes’ sentencing, will help shape the group going forward.

In his interview with “The Gateway Pundit,” where he announced the group’s relaunch, Rhodes said: “I want to make it clear, like I said, my goal would be to make it more cancel-proof than before. We’ll have resilient, redundant IT that makes it really difficult to take down. … And I want to make sure I get – put people in charge and leadership everywhere in the country so that, you know, down the road, if I’m taken out again, that it can still live on under good leadership without me being there.”

There was a similar shift in organizational structure with the Proud Boys in 2018. That’s when their founder, Gavin McInnes, stepped away from the organization. His departure came after a group of Proud Boys members were involved in a fight with anti-fascists in New York.

Prosecutors wanted to try the group as a gang. McInnes, therefore, distanced himself to support their defense that they weren’t in a gang or criminal organization. Ultimately, two of the members were sentenced to four years in prison for attempted gang assault charges.

Some Proud Boys members have told me they have since focused on creating local chapters, with in-person recruitment, that communicate on private messaging apps. They aim to protect themselves from legal classification as a gang. It also makes it harder for investigators or activist journalists to monitor them.

This is referred to as a cell style of organization, which is popular with insurgency groups. These groups are organized to rebel against authority and overthrow government structures. The cell organizational style does not have a robust hierarchy but instead produces smaller groups. They all adhere to the same ideology but may not be directly associated.

They may have a leader, but it’s often acknowledged that they are merely a figurehead, not someone giving direct orders. For the Proud Boys, this would be former leader Enrique Tarrio. Proud Boys members I’ve spoken to have referred to him as a “mascot” and not their leader.

Looking ahead

So what does the Rhodes interview indicate about the future of Oath Keepers?

Members will continue supporting Trump while also recruiting more retired military and law enforcement officers. They will create an organizational structure designed to outlive Rhodes. And based on my interactions with the far-right, I believe it’s likely they will create an organizational structure similar to that of the cell style for organizing.

Beyond that, they are going to try to own their IT, which includes hosting their websites and also using trusted online revenue generators.

This will likely provide added security, protecting their membership rolls while making it more difficult for law enforcement agencies to investigate them in the future.

Alexander Lowie does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation

The midterm elections for Congress won’t take place until November, but already a record number of members have declared their intention not to run – a total of 43 in the House, plus 10 senators. Perhaps the most high-profile person to depart, Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, announced her intention in November not just to retire but to resign from Congress entirely on Jan. 5 – a full year before her term was set to expire.

There are political dynamics that explain this rush to the exits, including frustrations with gridlock and President Donald Trump’s lackluster approval ratings, which could hurt Republicans at the ballot box.

Rather than get swept away by a prospective “blue wave” favoring Democrats – or possibly daunted by the monumental effort it would take to survive – many Republicans have decided to fold up the beach chair and head home before the wave crashes.

As of now, two dozen Republican House members have either resigned from the House or announced their intent to not run for reelection in 2026. With only two exceptions – Republicans in 2018 and 2020 – this is more departures from either party at this point in the election calendar than any other cycle over the past 20 years.

There is also growing concern within the House Republican caucus that Greene’s announcement is a canary in the coal mine and that multiple resignations will follow.

As a political scientist who studies Congress and politicians’ reelection strategies, I’m not surprised to see many House members leaving ahead of what’s shaping up to be a difficult midterm for the GOP. Still, the sheer numbers of people not running tells us something about broader dissatisfaction with Washington.

Why do members leave Congress?

Many planned departures are true retirements involving older and more experienced members.

For example, 78-year-old Democratic congressman Jerry Nadler is retiring after 34 years, following mounting pressure from upstart challengers and a growing consensus among Democrats that it’s time for older politicians to step aside. Nancy Pelosi, the former speaker who will turn 86 in March, is also retiring.

Sometimes, members of Congress depart for the same reasons other workers might leave any job. Like many Americans, members of Congress might find something more attractive elsewhere. Retiring members are attractive hires for lobbying firms and corporations, thanks to their insider knowledge and connections within the institution. These firms usually offer much higher salaries than members are used to in Congress, which may explain why more than half of all living former members are lobbyists of some kind.

Other members remain ambitious for elective office and decide to use their position in Congress as a springboard for another position. Members of the House regularly retire to run for a Senate seat, such as, in this cycle, Democratic Rep. Haley Stevens of Michigan. Others run for executive offices, including governor, such as Republican Rep. Nancy Mace of South Carolina.

But some are leaving Congress due to growing frustration with the job and an inability to get things done. Specifically, many retiring members cite growing dysfunction within their own party, or in Congress as a whole, as the reason they’re moving on.

In a statement announcing his departure in June, Sen. Thom Tillis, R-N.C., mused that “between spending another six years navigating the political theater and partisan gridlock in Washington or spending that time with my family,” it was “not a hard choice” to leave the Senate.

What’s unique about 2026?

In addition, there are a few other factors that can help explain why so many Republicans in particular are heading for the exits leading up to 2026.

The shifting of boundaries that has come with the mid-decade redistricting process in several states this year has scrambled members’ priorities. Unfamiliar districts can drive incumbents to early retirement by severing their connection with well-established constituencies.

In Texas, six Republicans and three Democrats – nearly a quarter of the state’s entire House delegation – are either retiring or running for other offices, due in part to that state’s new gerrymander for 2026.

All decisions about retirement and reelection are sifted through the filter of electoral and partisan considerations. A phenomenon called “thermostatic politics” predicts that parties currently in power, particularly in the White House, tend to face a backlash from voters in the following election. In other words, the president’s party nearly always loses seats in midterms.

In 2006 and 2018, for example, Republican members of Congress were weighed down by the reputations of unpopular Republican Presidents George W. Bush and Trump. Republicans had arguably even greater success in midterm elections during Barack Obama’s presidency.

Currently, 2026 looks like it will present a poor national environment for Republicans. Trump remains highly unpopular, according to polls, and Democrats are opening up a consistent lead in the “generic ballot” question, which asks respondents which party they intend to support in the 2026 midterms without reference to individual candidates.

Democrats have already been overperforming in special elections, as well as the general election in November in states such as New Jersey and Virginia, which held elections for governor. Democrats are on average running 13 points ahead of Kamala Harris’ performance in the 2024 election.

As a result, even Republicans in districts thought to be safe for their party may see themselves in enough potential danger to abandon the fight in advance.

Retirement vs. resignation

One final, unique aspect of this election cycle with major consequences is not an electoral but an institutional one.

House conservatives are quietly revolting against Speaker Mike Johnson’s leadership style. That members may be frustrated enough not just to retire but resign in advance, leaving their seats temporarily vacant, is a notable sign of dysfunction in the U.S. House.

This also could have a major impact on policy, given how slim the Republicans’ majority in the lower chamber is already. Whatever the outcome of the midterms in November, these departures clearly matter in Washington and offer important signals about the chaos in Congress.

Charlie Hunt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

​Politics + Society – The Conversation