Unpopular as he is (The New York Times’s average of 910 polls shows that only 38 percent of Americans approve of his overall job performance and other polls show that only 24% approve of his handling of the economy and inflation), Donald Trump has been trying every strategy he can think of to keep Republicans in charge of Congress this year. Lately, he’s adopted one of the most historically disreputable: McCarthyism.
“The danger within” being worse than any from foreign adversaries is a long-standing Trump scare construction and “far left radicals” has been a specific label for Democrats of all stripes. But recently, with the rise of Democratic Socialists (both in some state primaries and especially in the media), he’s been branding the Democratic Party as “Communist” and has said “they will kill you” and “they will take away your churches.”
It’s doubtful that Trump can make Communism the dominant political issue in America that it was in in the 1950s, when Sen. Joseph McCarthy falsely charged that the US Government was deeply penetrated by agents of the Soviet Union.
Most Americans don’t know what Democratic Socialists advocate—and there is a considerable disparity among them. Some favor defunding the police, abolishing most immigration limits, allowing trans females to compete in girls’ and women’s’ sports, are anti-Semitic and try to silence dissenters from hard-left ideas. Most others merely favor higher taxes on the rich, a more generous welfare state and admire the demonstrated high happiness levels in Scandinavia.
What Trump seems to be trying is to identify the entire Democratic Party as far left (“Communist”) and produce TV ads as he did successfully exploiting Kamala Harris’s pro-trans views in 2024. (“Harris is for they-them, Trump is for you.”)
This is in addition to his attempted federal takeover of elections, which the Constitution vests control of in state governments. The Justice Department is demanding voter rolls, voting machines, election management records and highly detailed personal data on voters and files lawsuits against non-compliant states.
The DOJ says it wants the data to be sure that voters are all citizens (even though evidence shows that only a few cases of non-citizen voting ever occurs). But a DOJ document shows it would use the data to purge the rolls of persons it does not think should be voting for any reason. DOJ has lost all 11 federal court cases so far adjudicated on the policy, but the Department has indicated it will appeal.
Trump continues to press hard—though probably unsuccessfully— for Congress to pass the so-called SAVE America Act, which would require voters to present physical proof of US citizenship (a birth certificate or passport) to register and a valid ID to vote. It also establishes criminal penalties for election officials who fail to follow the law. The bill is clearly designed to discourage voting by Democratic groups who lack birth certificates or passports or find it difficult to travel to present their documents—young people, married women who’ve changed their names, the elderly, the poor and minorities.
The bill is deeply unpopular and has nearly zero chances of passage: Republican leaders say it lacks 60 votes in the Senate and the Senate’s parliamentarian has ruled it can’t be attached to a must-pass bill on a different subject—Speaker Mike Johnson’s ploy to pass it as a no-filibuster budget reconciliation bill. Yet Trump says it is his highest priority measure and has refused to sign a bipartisan bill to make housing more affordable until SAVE is passed. (Housing became law without his signature, though.)
But Trump doubtless has other anti-democratic schemes in his head—possibly including declaring an emergency on some concocted grounds to call off the November election or sending ICE agents and soldiers to intimidate voters at polling sites. It’s also possible that Trump, using a tactic he accuses Democrats of, will try to program voting machines to maximize GOP votes.
Other Outrages
Trump Gets Richer
In 2024, Forbes and Reuters estimated Trump’s net worth at $2.6 billion to $3.1 billion. In 2026, Forbes and other independent sources estimated that his wealth had increased to $6.5 billion, a gain of $3 to $4 billion. Trump’s 927-page Office of Government Ethics financial disclosure document reported his income for 2025 as $2.2 billion.
Crypto currency ventures accounted for 65% of the gain reported in the OGE document, $1.2 – $1.4 billion. Two troublesome issues arise from this disclosure: first, crypto sales and purchases are all secret so no one knows the extent that buyers were seeking influence with Trump or, also problematically, were foreign governments. The US Constitution bars government officials, including the President, from accepting money from foreign governments.
The second problem—a political one, not a legal one—is that buyers of crypto currencies sold by Trump companies lost $2 billion to $3 billion because the value of the currencies crashed. Trump kept his profits because he and his companies were guaranteed their fees. The losers included foreign governments and rich influence-seekers who did not buy the currencies to make money. But thousands of ordinary Trump supporters also lost and some may feel cheated.
The government report does not include Trump’s 2026 income gains or foreign government gifts such as the $400 million Boeing 747-8 jumbo jet given to the US Government sometimes now used as Air Force One (but evidently security-deficient after a $100 million Air Force refitting), which Trump eventually wants to put in his presidential library.
Additionally, House Oversight Committee Democrats investigated high-value gifts to Trump from foreign governments and private individuals and found dozens that were not reported in his financial disclosure document.
ICE. Again.
The Trump administration and Congressional Republicans continue to refuse to reform the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency as its agents kill yet another innocent person.
The victim was Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a 52-year-old Mexican citizen resident in the US for 35 years who had no criminal record. Though ICE ultimately revealed he was not the target of their operation, two unmarked ICE cars chased down his work van. At a traffic stop, Salgado Araujo was shot in the abdomen through his vehicle’s window and died later in a Houston hospital. As has happened in other cases (ICE and Border Patrol agents have each shot and killed five persons during Trump’s second term), ICE and the Department of Homeland Security claim its agents acted in self-defense when the victim tried to ram them with his vehicle. Eyewitnesses dispute that account, asserting that the victim did not try to ram the agents. ICE had no body cams or dash cams. ICE and the Department of Homeland Security have refused to co-operate with Texas authorities trying to investigate the case.
Usually masked and exhibiting no personal identification, ICE and the Border Patrol have frequently resorted to violence in apprehending suspected illegal migrants as part of Trump’s Mass Deportation Program. Stephen Miller, Trump’s chief White House deportation czar, has been pressuring ICE and the Border Patrol to increase apprehensions so that a million immigrants can be deported a year. But actual deportations in 2025 numbered 234,980 and deportations in 2026 are on track to number 430,000. Eighty percent of deportations occur without any judicial hearings, The administration has claimed it is prioritizing apprehensions of gang members and other violent criminals, but as of April 2026, 70.8 percent of detainees had no criminal record at all and only 14 percent had charges or convictions of serious crimes.
In another immigration outrage, the administration abruptly canceled Temporary Protective Status for 350,000 Haitians and 6,100 Syrians, and the US Supreme Court voted 6-3 to ratify the action. TPS is awarded to persons facing highly dangerous conditions at home. The Haitians are said to be in a panic because their country is mired in gang violence that threatens the refugees’ lives.
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