Republicans Are Losing the Populist Moment

Donald Trump returned to the White House in 2025 with a second chance to remake American politics. His victory was more than a repudiation of the Biden administration’s four years of economic and political dysfunction. It was a powerful vindication of a man and a populist message that much of the political establishment, including members of his own party, had spent nearly a decade trying to defeat. For the second time, Trump achieved electoral victory by assembling an unlikely and diverse coalition of voters around a nationalist, anti-establishment agenda that challenged the prevailing political consensus on immigration, foreign policy, trade, and the progressive ideological capture of the administrative state and major institutions of American society. And this time, unlike in 2017, he entered Washington with an administration staffed by people who shared his vision and with Republican majorities in both chambers of Congress. The opportunity was enormous.

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