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The United States and Canada spent decades building a relationship so close that much of it became easy to overlook. Cars crossed the border several times during production, Canadian metals fed American factories, and families, tourists and businesses moved back and forth with little thought that the political ground beneath them might shift.

That ground has now shifted. The latest tariffs may eventually be negotiated down, but the larger damage will be harder to reverse because Canada is no longer treating the dispute as another rough round of bargaining. It is beginning to treat dependence on the United States as a national risk.

The immediate fight involves new U.S. tariffs of 50% on C$27.6 billion, about US$20 billion, in Canadian goods. Canada plans to answer on September 8 with tariffs of 15%, 25% and 50% on the same value of U.S. products. The list includes steel, dairy products, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics, according to Canada’s Department of Finance.

The numbers matter, but they do not fully explain the anger. President Donald Trump has repeatedly spoken of Canada as a country exploiting the United States, coupled tariffs with threats against Canadian sovereignty and treated concessions as something Ottawa owes Washington. The result is a trade dispute that Canadians increasingly see as a test of whether their country can still act independently.

Pressure Creates Resistance

Trump’s method assumes that Canada’s economic dependence will force Prime Minister Mark Carney to yield. The United States remains by far Canada’s most important market, and no speech or tariff can change that quickly. Yet the pressure has also given Carney political room to resist because compromise now risks looking like surrender.

“Canadians are outraged at the way the president is treating them,” said Josh Wingrove, a Bloomberg News White House reporter and a Canadian, during Washington Week with The Atlantic on PBS. The anger reaches beyond tariffs to Trump’s repeated suggestions that Canada should become the 51st state.

That distinction matters. Governments can bargain over tariff rates, quotas and the fine print of an auto agreement. It is much harder to bargain once voters believe the argument concerns their country’s dignity and right to make its own decisions.

David Brooks of The Atlantic put the damage in simpler terms during during the PBS NewsHour. “Friends don’t humiliate and try to intimidate their friends.”

Washington may have grounds to challenge some Canadian trade restrictions. Canada protects its dairy market, while several provinces have restricted American alcohol sales and retaliatory tariffs and quotas have limited U.S.-made vehicles. Those disagreements belong in serious negotiations, but the recent alcohol and vehicle measures were adopted in response to earlier U.S. tariffs and do not explain why trade pressure became mixed with language questioning Canada’s sovereignty.

The approach has produced the opposite of what economic coercion was supposed to achieve. Rather than isolating Carney, it has strengthened the demand that he refuse a deal seen as one-sided. Rather than making Canada more dependent, it has given Ottawa a political reason to search for alternatives.

Dependence Becomes a Risk

Finding alternatives will not be simple. U.S. goods trade with Canada totaled $715.5 billion in 2025, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. American companies sold $333.6 billion in goods to Canada and bought $381.9 billion, making the relationship too large and too integrated for either country to replace without considerable cost.

Canada is nevertheless beginning to move in that direction. Carney used his January speech at the World Economic Forum to argue that middle powers could no longer assume close economic ties would protect them. He warned that economic integration itself could be used as a weapon and called for Canada to build greater strength at home while developing new partnerships abroad.

The collapsed negotiations have added urgency to projects that once seemed optional. Trans Mountain chief executive Mark Maki said the dispute increased the need for another oil pipeline to Canada’s west coast, which would allow more crude to reach Asian buyers. The United States receives about 90% of Canadian oil exports, according to Reuters, making energy both a source of Canadian wealth and a major point of exposure.

Canada is reviewing its plan to buy 88 American-made F-35 fighters even as preparations continue for the first 16 aircraft. A complete break with the program would carry military and industrial costs, since Canadian companies participate in the F-35 supply chain. The fact that Ottawa is reconsidering the purchase at all shows how far doubts about the United States have spread.

Ottawa reported that Canada reached NATO’s 2% defense-spending target during the 2025-26 fiscal year after years of falling short. That history gave Washington a valid complaint, but Canada’s recent increase also weakens the case for treating it as a country unwilling to contribute.

Idrees Kahloon of The Atlantic widened the issue beyond Canada during Washington Week with The Atlantic. Allied governments, he said, now “have to be planning for America not to come through.” That does not mean Canada is about to leave the North American defense system, but it does mean decisions once based on assumed U.S. reliability are being reconsidered.

Ordinary Canadians have also changed their behavior. Canadian-resident return trips from the United States fell 25.4% in 2025, according to Statistics Canada. Travel began recovering during 2026, but June trips still remained 24.6% below their June 2024 level. American alcohol has disappeared from government-controlled shelves in most provinces, while Saskatchewan reported that sales had fallen 40% even before it imposed a new 50% tariff.

These choices will not bring the U.S. economy to its knees. They do show that the dispute has reached households and consumers, where political habits can outlast the policy that created them. Once Canadians find other vacation destinations, suppliers or brands, not all of that business will automatically return after a new agreement is signed.

Trust Does Not Snap Back

Canada remains more exposed to a prolonged trade war than the United States. Its economy is smaller, its export routes are more limited and many Canadian industries were built around dependable access to American customers.

Carney therefore has strong reasons to seek a workable agreement rather than turn resistance into a permanent campaign.

The United States also has reasons to compromise. Canada is a major customer for American goods and an essential supplier of crude oil, aluminum, potash, electricity and automotive parts. A policy intended to protect American industry can raise costs for the same manufacturers it was meant to help, while Canadian retaliation strikes U.S. exporters that had no role in starting the fight.

The most likely outcome is not a complete economic divorce. Geography will still be there after Trump and Carney are gone, and the two countries will continue to need one another. The deeper change is that Canada is preparing for the relationship to become less automatic, less trusting and less central to its future.

A later president may lower tariffs, stop making annexation threats and speak warmly about the alliance. That would improve the atmosphere, but it would not erase the lesson Canada is now absorbing. A close relationship can be repaired by policy, while lost confidence must be rebuilt over time.

The Tariff Bill Comes Home

Tariffs are often described as a charge placed on another country, which makes them sound cleaner than they are. The government collects the money at the border, but the bill moves through supply chains, factory budgets and store prices until much of it reaches companies and consumers at home.

The escalating fight with Canada makes that process unusually easy to see. The two economies do not simply sell finished products to one another. They share energy networks, auto plants, metals markets, farms and transportation routes that were built over decades of continental trade.

The United States imposed new 50% tariffs on C$27.6 billion, about US$20 billion, in Canadian goods after negotiations collapsed. Canada plans to answer on September 8 with tariffs of 15%, 25% and 50% on the same value of American products. Its list targets steel, dairy products, appliances, agricultural equipment, pulp and paper, plastics and electronics.

The first American casualties will not necessarily be companies competing with Canadian imports. They will include manufacturers that rely on Canadian materials or operate plants on both sides of the border. A tariff that raises the price of aluminum may help an American aluminum producer, but it also raises costs for automakers, appliance companies, builders and packaging manufacturers.

Canada is especially important because the United States cannot quickly replace everything it buys there. Canada supplies roughly 4 million barrels of crude oil a day, close to 20% of total U.S. petroleum consumption, according to The Associated Press. It is also a central source of aluminum, potash, electricity and automotive parts.

The auto industry shows how quickly protection can become self-inflicted damage. General Motors expects tariffs to cost it between $2.5 billion and $3.5 billion this year, potentially consuming more than 20% of operating profit. Ford has estimated a net tariff cost of about $1 billion, according to Reuters.

Those costs do not come only from Canada, but another round of Canadian tariffs and retaliation adds pressure to a system already carrying a heavy load. Trump has also threatened to raise tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks and parts to 50% on January 1, 2027. That would place more strain on plants that divide production across the border.

Ford builds heavy-duty pickups in Ontario, while General Motors produces Silverado trucks there. The failed trade proposal would have lowered duties on Canadian cars and light trucks, but disagreements remained over medium-duty and heavy-duty models.

Keeping high tariffs on those vehicles may protect some U.S. production, but it could also make North American trucks more expensive and weaken companies competing with foreign automakers facing lower rates.

Canada’s retaliation travels in the other direction. In 2025, American companies exported $333.6 billion in goods to Canada, according to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative. In June 2026 alone, U.S. Census Bureau data show that American goods exports to Canada were more than three times exports to China.

The political geography matters. Canada buys farm products, machinery, manufactured goods and consumer products from states across the Midwest, Northeast and Pacific Northwest. Retaliatory tariffs can therefore reach factories and farms in Michigan, Ohio, Iowa, Maine and other states whose voters will help decide control of Congress.

Border communities face another cost that tariff tables do not show. Canadian travel to the United States dropped sharply in 2025 and has not returned to its earlier level. Statistics Canada reported that June 2026 trips were still 24.6% below June 2024, despite recent improvement. Hotels, restaurants, shops and tourist attractions in border states and popular winter destinations lose revenue when Canadians stay home or travel elsewhere.

The United States may have legitimate reasons to challenge some Canadian trade restrictions. Canada protects its dairy market, several provinces have limited sales of American alcohol, and Washington argues that Canadian tariffs and quotas disadvantage U.S.-made vehicles. A durable agreement requires both countries to address those complaints, while recognizing that the recent alcohol restrictions and vehicle measures were adopted in response to earlier U.S. tariffs.

The problem is that broad tariffs are blunt instruments. They can protect one producer while raising costs for several others, and retaliation spreads the damage into industries that had nothing to do with the original complaint. Smaller manufacturers with less cash and less bargaining power may feel the pressure first. The longer tariffs remain, the more companies redesign supply chains, delay investment or pass higher costs to customers.

Canada would suffer more in a full trade rupture because it depends more heavily on the American market. That does not make the United States immune. In a relationship this integrated, a tariff can cross the border twice, first as a tax on an import and then as a cost returned through retaliation, lost sales or higher prices.

Why Dolly Parton Belonged to Everyone

Dolly Parton managed something modern public life rarely allows. She became famous without making every admirer pass a political test, and she held strong values without using them as a weapon.

Her death at 80 has prompted grief that reaches far beyond country music because people around the world saw something of themselves in her.

Parton wrote songs that could be playful, wounded, ambitious and proud, then delivered them with a voice no one could mistake. Yet plenty of gifted entertainers become symbols for one generation or one political tribe. Parton belonged to grandmothers, teenagers, churchgoers, drag performers, rural families and city audiences at the same time.

Ashley Parker of The Atlantic recalled hearing the news in a political meeting while her 15-year-old daughter heard it at school, evidence that Parton had crossed not only partisan lines but generational ones.

Parton spoke openly about faith, grew up poor in rural Tennessee and kept working-class dignity at the center of her public identity. Her gift was to present conviction as an invitation rather than a demand for conformity. People who disagreed with one another could recognize the same warmth, humor and decency without pretending their differences had vanished.

Her generosity gave those qualities practical weight. Launched in 1995, Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library has sent more than 300 million free books to young children in the United States, Canada, Britain, Australia and Ireland. Families did not encounter her generosity as a slogan or gala announcement. They found it in a book addressed to their child and delivered to the mailbox month after month.

Faith was also central to how Parton understood service, but she refused to turn belief into exclusion. During PBS NewsHour’s Brooks and Capehart, Jonathan Capehart said, “She did not shy away from people because they were different. She actually moved toward people who were being victimized simply because of who they are.” David Brooks offered an equally direct judgment, saying, “Dolly Parton was a transparently wonderful human being.”

Those observations point to a rare form of cultural authority. Parton could be unmistakably herself without insisting that everyone else become more like her. She understood that kindness gains force when it crosses boundaries and that faith becomes credible through conduct. Even her carefully constructed glamour carried a wink that welcomed the audience into the joke.

Parton did not solve the divisions running through North American life, and no entertainer could. She did show that conviction need not require cruelty, that success can remain connected to humble origins and that generosity can be personal as well as large. The grief surrounding her death is therefore about more than a beloved singer. It is also grief for a kind of public figure who made nearly everyone feel that there was room for them.

American colleges have long relied on a simple exchange. Families accepted years of tuition and sacrifice because a degree usually opened the door to stable work and a place in the middle class. That exchange is becoming harder to defend just as many colleges are entering their own financial squeeze.

The degree has not become worthless. In the second quarter of 2026, full-time wage and salary workers age 25 and older with at least a bachelor’s degree had median weekly earnings of $1,768, compared with $994 for high school graduates.

The problem is that a diploma no longer provides the same dependable start for everyone, while families are being asked to pay heavily for an outcome that has become less predictable.

Colleges face the same uncertainty from the other side. The country is producing fewer potential students in many regions, international enrollment is weakening and families are looking harder at the connection between a program and a job. Together, those pressures threaten the finances and public standing of hundreds of institutions.

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The federal debt crossed $40 trillion last week with remarkably little drama in Washington. There was no serious call for a budget agreement and no sign that either party was prepared to make the choices required to change direction.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent offered the administration’s answer. The country could grow its way out of the problem.

That would be comforting if the numbers supported it. They do not. The debt is rising faster than the economy, interest payments are consuming a growing share of federal revenue, and Congress continues to widen the gap. The country is paying more each year to postpone decisions that become harder with every delay.

Republicans once built campaigns around the danger of federal debt. Under President Donald Trump, they have largely stopped trying to restrain it. Democrats cannot claim clean hands, but the party that once made fiscal discipline part of its identity now controls Washington and has chosen other priorities.

How the numbers stopped working

Treasury records showed total public debt at $40.047 trillion when the threshold was crossed. That included $32.266 trillion held by investors and the public. The total has more than doubled from $19.95 trillion when Trump first entered office in January 2017. Pandemic relief under both Trump and President Joe Biden explains a large share of the increase, but borrowing continued after the emergency passed. The government added the latest $1 trillion in less than five months.

Bessent told CNBC that there was “nothing magic about the $40 trillion figure” and that the United States would grow its way out of the debt. Growth would certainly help. A larger economy produces more income, more business activity and more tax revenue, making a fixed amount of debt easier to carry.

The problem is that the debt is not fixed. It keeps growing because the government spends far more than it collects. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion deficit in the current fiscal year, equal to 5.8%t of the economy. By 2036, the annual deficit is expected to reach $3.1 trillion, or 6.7% of the economy. Debt held by the public is projected to rise from 101% of the economy this year to 120 percent in 2036, higher than the record reached after World War II.

The basic arithmetic is not mysterious. Federal spending equals about 23.3% of the economy this year, while revenue equals about 17.5%. Growth cannot erase a lasting difference of that size while Social Security, Medicare and interest payments are also growing. Unless Washington collects more, spends less or does both, a larger economy will still carry a larger debt.

The cost has already reached home

The usual defense is that the debt is a problem for another generation. That was easier to argue when interest rates were low. It is harder now that the government must refinance old debt and sell new bonds at much higher rates.

Interest payments have approached $1.2 trillion during the first 10 months of this fiscal year. They have passed Medicare and become the government’s second-largest expense, behind Social Security. Every additional dollar used to pay interest is a dollar that cannot be spent on defense, roads, medical research or tax relief without still more borrowing.

Government bond rates influence the cost of mortgages, automobile loans and business credit. Long-term Treasury yields recently reached their highest level in nearly two decades, and the 30-year yield remained around 5.24% even after the Treasury announced larger bond buybacks. Inflation, the Iran war and heavy corporate borrowing have also pushed rates higher, but the government’s demand for money adds to the competition for credit.

“There’s no question that higher debt leads to higher interest rates,” Kent Smetters, a University of Pennsylvania professor and former Congressional Budget Office economist, told ABC News. Shai Akabas of the Bipartisan Policy Center told the network that debt was already affecting people’s cost of living and their ability to afford necessities. Treasury rates can flow into mortgages and credit cards while slower investment holds down economic growth and wages.

That connection makes an impossible number understandable. A family deciding whether it can afford a house does not think in trillions. It thinks about a monthly payment. When federal borrowing helps keep rates higher, the debt becomes part of that payment.

The fiscal hawks leave town

Trump once described much smaller debt totals as catastrophic. In the past, Trump called a $21 trillion debt a “time bomb” and promised that it would come down quickly. The warning helped reinforce a familiar Republican argument that Washington spent too much because it lacked discipline.

That argument has largely disappeared from Republican politics. Trump’s 2025 tax and spending law reduced some federal programs, but its tax provisions cost far more than its spending cuts saved. The Congressional Budget Office estimated the law would increase deficits by $3.4 trillion through 2034 before additional interest costs. Once $718 billion in added debt service is included, the projected increase reaches $4.1 trillion.

Some Republicans objected, but they did not stop the bill. The White House treated immigration enforcement and Trump’s tax policies as more important than reducing future deficits. With Republicans controlling the presidency, House and Senate, the party cannot blame divided government.

None of this clears Democrats. Federal debt increased by $8.4 trillion during Biden’s four years, while infrastructure spending, clean-energy subsidies and pandemic recovery measures added to long-standing commitments. Across Trump’s two terms so far, debt has risen by $11.6 trillion, including the enormous pandemic response during his first term. Both parties protect the programs and policies they value, then describe the resulting debt as someone else’s failure.

The choices nobody wants

There is no painless solution. Deep cuts to agency budgets cannot balance the books because those programs represent the smaller part of federal spending. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, veterans’ benefits and other required programs account for about 60 percent of the budget. An aging population will make them more expensive.

Meaningful restraint would therefore require some combination of higher taxes, slower benefit growth, later eligibility, reduced spending elsewhere and policies that encourage stronger long-term growth. Each choice creates losers, which is why politicians prefer promises about waste, fraud and economic miracles. Waste should be removed and growth should be encouraged, but neither is large enough to substitute for an honest budget.

Maya MacGuineas, president of the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, told Reuters that the debt “is felt throughout the economy and finds its way to the pocketbooks of people one way or another.” Her warning captures what the round number itself cannot. Forty trillion dollars is not a cliff, but it shows how far the country has traveled while its leaders kept insisting that the difficult part could wait.

The danger is that interest costs keep rising, private borrowing remains expensive, and future leaders have less room to answer a recession, war or another emergency. Bessent is right that there is nothing magical about $40 trillion. The trouble is that Washington appears ready to say the same thing at $41 trillion.

A Presidency in Stone

Donald Trump looked more engaged discussing white granite than the federal debt. During a tour of the White House grounds last week, he praised the stone and workmanship around a new helicopter landing area.

“One thing I know how to do is build,” Trump told reporters.

The tour showed what commands the president’s attention. Trump is remaking the White House and parts of Washington through a ballroom, helipad, new walkways, work on the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, changes at the Kennedy Center and plans for a 250-foot arch.

Presidents have renovated the White House before, sometimes out of necessity. Trump’s effort is different in its scale, personal branding and steady place in his public remarks.

The exact cost remains contested because the administration and news organizations count different parts of the work. A Washington Post review found at least $927 million in planned construction on the White House grounds, including the East Wing project, helipad, security work and a new visitor screening center. The Post reported that the work would be paid for primarily by taxpayers.

The ballroom has also become a legal fight over who controls the nation’s most famous public residence. Trump ordered the East Wing demolished to make room for a 90,000-square-foot ballroom and underground security complex. The administration has described the project as both a privately supported event space and a national-security necessity.

On Friday, Chief Justice John Roberts temporarily allowed construction to continue while the Supreme Court considers the administration’s request to lift a lower-court restriction. The order was temporary and did not settle whether Trump had authority to proceed without specific approval from Congress.

The politics may prove more difficult than the construction. A July Washington Post-Ipsos poll found that 65% of Americans were dissatisfied or upset with Trump’s ballroom, Reflecting Pool and proposed arch, while 32% were enthusiastic or satisfied. Those numbers would be troublesome at any time, but they are especially dangerous when voters are worried about prices.

In a survey, 48% of Americans identified the cost of living as their most important consideration in the midterm elections, up from 39% in January. Seventy percent disapproved of Trump’s handling of both inflation and the cost of living. Ipsos found that Democrats had opened an eight-point advantage over Republicans on handling living costs, reversing the near tie at the beginning of the year.

The contrast followed Trump to South Carolina on Friday. He was campaigning for Darline Graham, whom he described as being “more about affordability” than her late brother, Senator Lindsey Graham. Yet Trump also devoted part of the evening to celebrating the ballroom. For a president whose party is heading toward difficult midterm elections, it was an odd use of valuable political time.

The construction projects do not explain high grocery bills or gasoline prices, and even a billion dollars is small beside a $7 trillion federal budget. Their importance is symbolic. They suggest a president absorbed by monuments, luxury and permanence while many voters are asking whether government understands the pressure on their household budgets.

Trump sees buildings as proof that he acted. Stone, gold and concrete can outlast an executive order, and a ballroom bearing the imprint of his taste would keep his presence inside the White House long after he leaves it.

That may be the legacy he wants. The risk for Republicans is that voters reach November believing he spent too much time building a monument to himself and too little time addressing the costs that shape their lives.

Trump’s Profits Become a Midterm Issue

Donald Trump has spent his second term testing whether a president can turn public power into private wealth without paying a political price.

New polling suggests that Americans have noticed that businesses tied to Trump and his family have expanded alongside his return to power. Trump Media began selling financial firms faster access to presidential posts capable of moving markets.

Cryptocurrency ventures produced enormous gains while his administration promoted the industry, foreign investors put money into family businesses, and an agreement with the Internal Revenue Service protected Trump and his sons from some potential tax claims.

Trump and the White House argue that voters already knew he was a businessman and that no court has found a criminal exchange of money for an official favor. Those arguments have not removed the public’s concern.

A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 63% of Americans believed Trump and his family had profited inappropriately from cryptocurrency since his return to office. Nearly seven in 10 believed his private business interests influenced his presidential decisions. That included 48 percent of Republicans, showing that the concern reaches beyond committed Trump opponents.

A separate Economist/YouGov poll found that 65% disapproved of Trump and his family doing business with foreign countries. Majorities also disapproved of presidents accepting valuable gifts from foreign governments and of Trump’s personal investment in cryptocurrency.

Democrats are now trying to turn that uneasiness into a midterm argument. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has created an anti-corruption initiative built around what he calls the cost of corruption. House Democrats have formed an Anti-Corruption and Democracy Reform Task Force and an End Corruption Caucus.

Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff has described the administration as “the most corrupt administration of all time” during his reelection campaign. The message differs from the broad warnings about democracy that failed to produce the result Democrats wanted in 2024.

This time, Democrats are connecting Trump’s family profits to voters’ worries about prices and economic security. Their argument is that government works differently for families with presidential access than it does for people struggling to pay ordinary bills. Corruption becomes less of an abstract concern when it can be presented as another example of a political system serving the well-connected first.

A Brennan Center survey found that 62% considered corruption a very big problem, but 65% also believed it was deeply embedded in government institutions. When voters assume that everyone is corrupt, another disclosure can confirm their cynicism without changing their vote.

The polling suggests that Americans care about Trump’s financial conflicts but doubt the political system will respond. Democrats are now testing whether that concern can be converted into votes.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide offering calm, independent analysis of the economic and political forces shaping the United States and the wider world. Every edition is open for all to read without a subscription.

I may have just lost a friend over politics, but not because he is a conservative. I take pride in having friends of both liberal and conservative persuasions, and I believe we are better off when we listen to people who do not always agree with us.

Quite frankly, I do not know whether I am a shade left or a shade right. I see myself as a centrist, and I have described myself as “politically inconvenient” because I have supported positions from both camps.

No political party has a monopoly on wisdom, and neither side has a shortage of foolish ideas.I have sometimes described myself as “politically inconvenient” because I have supported positions from both camps. No political party has a monopoly on wisdom, and neither side has a shortage of foolish ideas.

This friend is smart, well-read and capable of making thoughtful arguments. For years, I listened to his political musings without turning every disagreement into an argument. But what I now hear is no longer ordinary conservatism. It is radical right-wing thinking, somewhere to the right of the czar, and I have grown tired of the anger and claptrap that come with it.

I would say the same about someone consumed by the radical left. What troubles me is not the party label but the dark vision of America that both extremes promote, a vision that teaches us to distrust our neighbors and treat political disagreement as a moral failing.

Losing a friendship over politics is sad, but sometimes stepping away becomes necessary. I still believe most Americans will eventually reject this relentless divisiveness because it solves nothing and leaves everyone more bitter and suspicious.

My hope, my belief, is that after Trump leaves the political stage, we will find our way back to a better place where good character will once again become of pimary importance. We do not have to agree on everything, but we do have to stop treating one another as enemies if this country is going to hold together.

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EVAN VUCCI/POOL/AFP via Getty Images

President Donald Trump has spent his second term testing how much pressure America’s allies will absorb before pushing back. Mark Carney may have supplied the answer.

By walking away from trade talks, the Canadian prime minister did what many European leaders have avoided, standing firm without bluster and making resistance look practical rather than reckless.

On The Rest Is Politics US podcast, Anthony Scaramucci went so far as to call Carney “the new leader of the Western world.” That may overstate the case, but his example offers other countries a model for dealing with a White House that often treats friendship as weakness.

The moment Carney chose

Canada did not refuse to negotiate. Carney offered to remove remaining retaliatory tariffs on steel, aluminum and automobiles if Washington reduced its duties enough to make Canadian exports competitive. The talks appeared to be moving toward an agreement until the United States introduced new terms near the end.

Those demands reached beyond tariff rates. According to Carney, Washington wanted limits on Canada’s ability to make future trade agreements and pressed for concessions affecting Canadian culture, the French language and key industries. Disagreements also remained over whether lower automobile tariffs would cover medium-duty and heavy-duty trucks assembled in Canada.

Carney said the new terms were “uneconomic, unfair” and on Friday night, he ordered the Canadian negotiators home. “We cannot accept what they have offered,” Carney said, “and we will not give what they have asked.”

Katty Kay captured the political calculation on The Rest Is Politics US. “His skill wasn’t in walking away from the trade deal,” she said. “It was in choosing the moment.”

The timing turned a failed negotiation into a statement of national independence. The confrontation was already backed by 50 percent U.S. tariffs covering about $20 billion in Canadian exports.

After Carney walked away, Trump threatened 50 percent duties on Canadian automobiles, trucks, parts and steel beginning January 1. Canada plans dollar-for-dollar retaliation beginning September 8. Both sides now face higher costs and disrupted supply chains.

Strength at home

Carney’s gamble touched Canadian identity as well as commerce. French-language protections carry special weight in Quebec. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer disputed Carney’s version, telling CNBC that the controversy was “a funny fake story.” Carney replied that the disagreement was not funny and revealed how differently the two governments viewed the issue.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said Carney was right not to accept a bad agreement. Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre called on Canadians to stand together against unfair attacks on their jobs and businesses. Quebec leaders also backed Carney’s refusal to negotiate French-language protections.

Public support was clear. An Angus Reid Institute survey found that 76 percent of Canadians believed the government was right to walk away. Sixty-nine percent said Carney had shown strength, and 53 percent of 2025 Conservative voters supported the decision.

Before the breakdown, another poll put Carney’s approval at 60 percent, up three points in one week. His central banking background also helps. Andrea Lawlor, a political scientist at McMaster University, told Axios that his restraint and resolve had made him Canada’s “man for the moment.”

The same survey contained a warning. Eighty-nine percent were worried about higher prices, while 38 percent of working Canadians feared the dispute could affect their jobs. Unemployment stands at 6.4 percent, its lowest level in two years, but industrial regions remain vulnerable.

Carney’s support could weaken if factories close or retaliation makes daily life more expensive. National pride is powerful, but it still has to survive the household budget.

A playbook for middle powers

Carney has been preparing for this confrontation since well before the latest talks. In January, he told the World Economic Forum that the old international order had suffered a rupture because powerful countries were using tariffs, financial systems and supply chains as weapons.

“Middle powers must act together,” he said, “because if you are not at the table, you are on the menu.”

His message was aimed beyond Canada. Countries that cannot match the United States or China need wider trade ties and alliances that reduce the power of any large nation to dictate terms. For Canada, that means building ports, transportation routes and commercial relationships outside the United States. Carney said diversification was never a backup plan. It was the plan from the start.

The latest dispute has turned that argument into a real-world test. Britain and several European governments have tried to manage Trump through praise, ceremony and concessions. Carney chose another route. He stayed calm and made clear that Canada would bear some economic pain rather than be treated as a “subsidiary of the United States.” Consultant Drew DeLong told Axios that Canada is testing whether “greater strategic autonomy is worth increased trade friction.”

Scaramucci said that “Carney is the one that handles him the best.” The more useful lesson is not that every country should copy Canada word for word. Mexico, Japan, South Korea and European nations have different levels of exposure to the American market and different tools available for retaliation.

The lesson is that accommodation has a price too. A country that accepts changing demands simply to preserve an agreement may discover that it has purchased neither stability nor respect.

Why another deal remains possible

Canada is taking a serious risk because nearly 70 percent of its exports go to the United States. Yet the dependence does not run in only one direction. The two countries exchanged an estimated $872.3 billion in goods and services during 2025.

Canada is the largest customer for 26 American states and one of the three largest for 45. Their automobile, steel, energy and agricultural markets were built over decades to operate across the border.

That gives Carney political leverage inside the United States. The trade fight is already causing anxiety in Maine, Michigan and Ohio, along with other states with important midterm races. Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine has criticized the new tariffs because businesses in her state rely on Canadian processing and markets. Automobile companies also face the prospect of parts being taxed each time they cross a border that was never meant to function as a wall.

The legal picture adds uncertainty. The Supreme Court ruled in February that Trump could not use the International Emergency Economic Powers Act to impose sweeping tariffs. The administration has turned to other trade laws that carry their own limits. Carney cannot assume the latest tariffs will disappear in court, but Trump cannot assume every threatened duty will survive unchanged.

Scaramucci predicted that the two countries would reach a deal within two weeks because economic and political pressure would force Trump to retreat. That may be optimistic. Greer said no new talks were planned, while Trump escalated his threats after the negotiations failed. Still, geography, industrial ties and electoral pressure will eventually pull both governments back toward the table.

An agreement could end the immediate fight and might even resemble the one that nearly existed before the talks collapsed. It would not restore the old relationship. Carney said America’s signature is now written in pencil, and Canada is beginning to plan accordingly.

The lasting change is not simply that Canada stood up to Trump. It is that other countries may now watch what happens when someone finally does.

Photo: Jake May/MLive.com

For most Americans, artificial intelligence remained distant from ordinary life even as its creators promised to transform work, medicine and education. Data centers changed that relationship. AI now arrives as cleared farmland, new power lines, large industrial buildings and demands on local electric systems.

Communities that had little influence over the direction of artificial intelligence have discovered that they can still argue over where its infrastructure is built. That discovery is bringing together environmental activists, farmers, labor supporters, conservative populists and residents who otherwise agree on little.

The opposition has moved beyond zoning meetings and permit fights into midterm campaigns. Candidates in both parties are retreating from projects their own leaders once courted, turning data centers into a test of whether Washington’s AI ambitions can survive local political resistance.

Public opinion has moved faster than the industry. A Gallup survey found that 71% of Americans opposed an AI data center in their area, including 48% who were strongly opposed. Americans were more hostile toward a nearby data center than toward a nearby nuclear power plant.

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Reform movements begin by challenging people and institutions that have grown too comfortable. They promise to open closed doors, break up old arrangements and return power to people who feel ignored. They often have history on their side because every institution eventually develops habits that protect those inside it.

But success invariably changes the reformers. The movement that once stood outside the gates eventually gets keys to the building. It hires employees, raises money, builds offices, creates procedures and develops allies who depend on its continued influence.

The original mission may remain, but it must now share space with a powerful new instinct to protect what the movement has built. That does not necessarily make reformers hypocrites. It makes them human and places their organizations under the same pressures that affect every successful institution.

Budgets must be defended, employees must be paid, leaders must preserve their authority and allies expect loyalty. An organization created to challenge power gradually acquires power of its own.

The success trap

Organized labor offers one example. Unions arose because industrial workers had little power against large employers. They helped win safer workplaces, better wages and greater dignity for people who could not bargain effectively on their own. At their best, unions brought needed balance to an economy in which owners held nearly all the cards.

Some unions continue doing that work, while others have become better known for protecting leaders, work rules or benefits that outsiders see as unfair. That does not erase what organized labor accomplished. It shows how a movement created to correct an injustice can become resistant to change once it gains power.

Business follows much the same pattern. Many successful companies begin as challengers that offer consumers something better or cheaper. Once those companies become dominant, however, their incentives change. Competition remains part of their public language, but their practical goal often becomes protecting market share, influencing regulators and making life harder for the next challenger.

This pattern reaches far beyond unions and corporations. Universities founded to expand opportunity can become gatekeepers for professional status. Political parties created to represent voters can become more concerned with protecting officeholders and donors. Government agencies established to solve problems can begin measuring success by the size of their budgets rather than by whether the original problem is getting better.

Liberalism joins the establishment

In a June 28 commentary on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS, Zakaria drew on Adrian Wooldridge’s new book, “The Revolutionary Center”, to explain how liberalism went through this transformation.

Liberalism began as a challenge to inherited privilege, monopoly power, censorship, aristocracy and religious control. It fought for individual rights, open competition and the principle that people should rise through talent and effort rather than family name.

That tradition was not born as the philosophy of the establishment. It was a force used against establishments that had become closed, rigid and unfair. Liberal reformers wanted to weaken systems that decided a person’s future at birth and replace them with societies offering greater freedom and opportunity.

Modern liberalism is now closely associated with many of the country’s most powerful institutions, including universities, foundations, major media organizations, corporations and government agencies. That association has changed how many people see it. A philosophy once identified with opening doors is increasingly viewed as the defender of the people who already made it through those doors.

The problem is not that liberal principles suddenly became wrong. Individual rights, fair competition, free expression and equality before the law remain essential to an open society. The problem is that institutions built around those principles can begin protecting the winners they produced. The language remains open and fair, while the system itself becomes harder for outsiders to enter.

This is especially clear in the system often called meritocracy, the idea that people should advance through talent and effort. That principle was a major improvement over societies organized by class, race, caste or inherited title. Yet successful families naturally try to pass their advantages to their children through elite schools, expensive neighborhoods, professional contacts, internships, test preparation and legacy admissions.

Together, those advantages can create a new form of inherited privilege. People inside the system continue describing it as competitive because they once competed to enter it. People outside it see a ladder being pulled farther out of reach.

Education shows how this happens. Schools should be judged primarily by whether they help children learn, develop and move toward better lives. Instead, education debates often become struggles among unions, school boards, universities, government agencies and political groups defending their own authority. The child remains at the center of everyone’s public argument while often being pushed to the edge of their actual decisions.

Democratic socialists and right-wing populists offer very different answers, but both gain strength from the belief that established institutions no longer listen to ordinary people. The left speaks about class, inequality and corporate power. The right speaks about borders, national decline and cultural loss.

Both present themselves as outsiders willing to fight institutions that appear distant, protected and more responsive to insiders than to the public.

Reform before revolt

The answer is not to destroy every institution that disappoints us. Societies need institutions because they preserve knowledge, enforce standards and carry responsibility from one generation to the next. Tearing them down without knowing what will replace them usually creates more damage than reform.

Healthy institutions must be willing to ask whether their rules still serve the public. They must make room for challengers, reward competence, admit failure and stop treating every criticism as an attack from an enemy. That is difficult because real renewal requires people with power to surrender some protection before anger forces them to surrender much more.

Every successful reform movement eventually faces the same choice. It can continue challenging concentrated power, including the power that has gathered around its own institutions, or it can become another guardian of the existing order. The best institutions survive because they remember why they were created and reform themselves before the next group of outsiders arrives with plans to do it for them.

Why Democratic Socialism Struggles in America

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is putting distance between herself and the politics of 2020. In an ABC interview last week, the New York representative declared, “Woke 1 was crazy.”

She also rejected Democratic Socialists of America proposals to abolish police and prisons, defund the Defense Department and grant amnesty to all immigrants. That is a notable shift for a politician who once insisted that defunding the police meant exactly that, supported decriminalizing border crossings and spoke favorably about prison abolition.

Ocasio-Cortez has not fully explained which positions she has abandoned, but her movement toward the cultural center shows that she recognizes the difference between winning a safe House district and building a national majority.

That calculation reflects both opportunity and risk. Republican pollster Brent Buchanan shared polling with Axios that placed her favorable rating at 39%, compared with 42% unfavorable, numbers that make her potentially formidable despite years of attacks.

Former Biden White House adviser Yemisi Egbewole told Axios that Ocasio-Cortez’s earlier positions could hurt her with culturally moderate voters, including Black voters in the South who play an important role in Democratic presidential primaries.

Wisconsin offered another example. Milwaukee County Executive David Crowley narrowly defeated democratic socialist Francesca Hong in the Democratic primary for governor. Concerns about Hong’s ability to win in November grew as old social media posts and weak interviews damaged her candidacy.

Crowley’s victory does not prove that democratic socialism has run out of energy, nor does Ocasio-Cortez’s repositioning mean that she has abandoned economic populism. Both developments show that candidates and electability still matter.

Cultural and identity battles have lost some force since 2020, while housing costs, food prices, health care and economic security have moved closer to the center. Voters remain open to ambitious ideas, but they want those ideas connected to the pressure they feel when they pay rent, buy groceries or open a medical bill.

That shift helps explain why the centrist group Third Way is spending $15 million to challenge the party’s democratic socialist wing. Axios reported that it is developing an agenda for working-class voters who have abandoned Democrats. Its problem is not identifying what it opposes. It is giving voters something equally clear to support.

Democratic socialists still have a case that is easy to summarize. Tax the very wealthy, provide broader public health care and child care, strengthen unions and reduce the power of markets over housing and education. Centrists offer a mixed system in which government corrects the failures of capitalism without replacing it, but that message is harder to fit on a bumper sticker.

Americans have nevertheless distinguished between supporting government programs and embracing a larger ideology. Social Security, Medicare, public schools and the GI Bill became part of national life as earned commitments, shared investments or tools for advancement.

My Take

I do not believe democratic socialism will take hold nationally, even if its candidates continue winning important races.

The resistance comes from a long tradition of self-reliance, property ownership, economic mobility and suspicion of concentrated government power. Americans may support higher taxes on billionaires, stronger unions and wider access to health care while rejecting a broad shift away from markets.

That does not mean the democratic socialist challenge can be dismissed. The movement is speaking to genuine economic pain, and its strongest candidates have learned to focus on affordability rather than the cultural arguments that pushed many voters away from Democrats. If centrists respond only by warning about socialism, they will leave the field open to people offering clearer and more forceful answers.

Centrists need a concrete agenda that restrains corporate abuse, makes health care, housing and education more affordable, and gives working people a fair chance to build secure lives within a market economy. Ocasio-Cortez’s repositioning and the Wisconsin result show that democratic socialism is not unstoppable, but limiting its appeal will require more than hoping voters dislike the label.

California Tests Its Billionaire Bargain

California’s high costs have not stopped wealthy people from building businesses and fortunes there. The state’s skilled workers, investment money and research universities have continued to make that price worth paying. Proposition 40 will test how much that bargain can bear.

On November 3, voters will decide whether billionaires who were California residents on January 1, 2026, should pay a one-time tax equal to 5 percent of their net worth. The tax would be due in 2027, although payments could be spread over five years.

Service Employees International Union-United Healthcare Workers West sponsored the measure to help offset federal cuts to health care and food assistance while also supporting education.

The proposal has divided California Democrats and organized labor. The California Democratic Party has endorsed Proposition 40, while Gov. Gavin Newsom, the California Teachers Association and several other labor and advocacy organizations oppose it.

The disagreement is not simply about whether billionaires can afford to pay more. It is about whether California can tax some of that wealth without losing the income-tax revenue billionaires generate later.

David Gamage, a University of Missouri law professor who helped develop the proposal, told CNBC that California would probably be better off if it passed. His reasoning is straightforward. Businesses need skilled workers, and workers need good schools, reliable health care and communities where they can build stable lives.

Taxing billionaires, in this view, would protect the public systems that help private wealth grow.

Newsom has warned that wealth can move easily to states with lower taxes. California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office reached a similar conclusion. It expects Proposition 40 to produce tens of billions of dollars in temporary revenue, but estimates that billionaire departures and other responses could reduce annual income-tax collections by less than $1 billion.

The political battle is already being measured in enormous sums. The Los Angeles Times reported that Google co-founder Sergey Brin, who reportedly moved his primary residence to Nevada before the January cutoff, has contributed approximately $102 million to an organization supporting measures that could block Proposition 40.

Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang has taken a different position. Huang, whose potential tax bill was estimated at more than $8 billion, told Bloomberg Television, “We chose to live in Silicon Valley, and whatever taxes they would like to apply, so be it. I’m perfectly fine with it.”

The question is not whether California would collect a great deal of money. The state almost certainly would, at least initially. The harder question is what happens afterward.

California has long asked wealthy residents to accept high costs and heavy regulation in exchange for workers, investment and opportunities found nowhere else. Proposition 40 will show whether that bargain still holds when the price is measured in billions.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide offering calm, independent analysis of the economic and political forces shaping the United States and the wider world. Every edition is open for all to read without a subscription.

An alliance can survive arguments over wars, trade and money. It becomes much harder to sustain when one member begins treating protection as a reward for political support.

That is the change now taking place in America’s relationships with some of its closest partners. The Trump administration is no longer asking allies to spend more on their own defense. It is increasingly linking military cooperation and diplomatic support to whether another government backs President Donald Trump’s policies.

Bloomberg reported that the Pentagon sent NATO members a questionnaire asking whether they had supported American foreign policy, restricted the use of their bases, bought American weapons or favored European suppliers. Their answers could help determine where American troops and equipment remain in Europe. A defense review has begun to look like a test of political loyalty.

When Protection Comes With Conditions

Trump did not invent the complaint that wealthy allies relied too heavily on American taxpayers. Presidents from both parties pressed Europe to spend more on defense, usually with limited success.

Trump’s pressure helped produce a real change. NATO members reached the old goal of spending 2 percent of their economies on defense by the end of 2025, and the alliance adopted a much higher target for 2035. NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte gave Trump much of the credit. “Without President Trump, we would have not taken those decisions,” he said in January.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth made the administration’s reasonable case during a May speech in Singapore. “Alliances only work when they are true partnerships. It is a two-way street,” he said. Asking allies to spend more and build forces capable of defending their own territory could make the entire system stronger.

The Pentagon questionnaire goes further. It asks not only what an ally spends but whether it has publicly supported American foreign policy, permitted the use of its bases for American operations and avoided rules favoring European defense companies. Those questions measure political agreement and commercial preference, not simply military preparedness.

The White House argues that Trump is restoring fairness to relationships that had become too one-sided. Spokesperson Anna Kelly told Axios that the president was correcting past mistakes by making diplomatic relationships “reciprocal.”

Reciprocity and obedience are not the same thing. Asking an ally to contribute more to its own defense strengthens the partnership. Making protection depend on whether that country supports the president in a separate war changes what the partnership means.

From Europe to South Korea

The war with Iran has exposed that difference. Several European governments refused to join the American campaign or allow their territory to be used for attacks. The administration responded by carrying those disagreements into other parts of their relationships with Washington.

In May, the Pentagon announced that it would withdraw 5,000 troops from Germany after Chancellor Friedrich Merz criticized the Iran war. A senior Pentagon official told Reuters that Trump was reacting to Merz’s remarks. American forces were being moved after an allied leader publicly disagreed with the president.

Spain received an even blunter warning after refusing to allow its bases and airspace to be used for attacks on Iran. Reuters reported that an internal Pentagon email outlined possible punishments, including a proposal to suspend Spain from NATO. The treaty has no procedure for suspending a member, but the proposal revealed the thinking inside the administration.

South Korea became the clearest example on August 16. Trump ordered the Pentagon to “substantially reduce” the Ulchi Freedom Shield exercises, citing their cost, his relationship with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and Seoul’s refusal to help with Iran. The annual exercises prepare the American and South Korean militaries to operate together against a nuclear-armed North Korea.

Only a few months earlier, Hegseth had praised South Korean President Lee Jae Myung for raising defense spending to 3.5 percent and taking greater responsibility for conventional defense. Seoul had met the administration’s burden-sharing demand. Its offense was refusing Trump’s request to join a different campaign thousands of miles away.

The United States and South Korea have now agreed to shorten the exercises from 11 days to five and reduce field training, according to Reuters. South Korean officials were caught off guard, while North Korea dismissed the reduction as an empty gesture and continued to describe the exercises as hostile.

Trump is making this concession while Kim strengthens ties with Russia. North Korea has sent troops, ballistic missiles and artillery to support Moscow’s war against Ukraine. Reducing military exercises under those conditions suggests that Trump’s personal diplomacy with Kim can take priority over the security concerns of South Korea.

That problem was at the center of an August 18 discussion on The Rest Is Politics US. Nicolle Wallace, a former communications director in the George W. Bush White House, told host Anthony Scaramucci that Trump’s affection for Kim had obscured the brutality of the North Korean government and the threat it poses. Their larger point was that Trump’s treatment of allies and adversaries is reversing assumptions that guided American policy for decades.

Trump made the new terms unusually clear when discussing South Korea’s refusal to help with Iran. “We can’t go around and protect all of these countries, especially when they’re not there to help us,” he told reporters. He was treating the alliance less as a common defense agreement than as an account from which he expected to make withdrawals whenever he chose.

Allies Start Building Backup Plans

Alliances usually weaken before they break. Governments begin by seeking more suppliers, strengthening their own forces and giving themselves more room to act without Washington. Those choices reveal how much confidence has already been lost.

Canada offers one example. Ottawa continues to review its plan to buy 88 American-made F-35 fighters while considering aircraft from other countries. In May, Canada selected Sweden’s Saab as the preferred supplier for a surveillance system based on the Canadian-made Bombardier Global 6500. Negotiations over Saab’s GlobalEye aircraft have begun, although no final order has been placed.

The same thinking is shaping Canadian trade. The proposed Ksi Lisims liquefied natural gas project reached a supply agreement with Germany’s state-owned energy company for deliveries lasting as long as 20 years. Canada remains deeply tied to the American economy, but it is looking for ways to make that dependence less complete.

South Korea is moving in the same direction. “A strong alliance makes the foundation of security stronger, and strengthening our own capabilities increases our value and necessity as an ally,” President Lee told a cabinet meeting on August 18. Even an ally praised for doing its share believes it needs greater protection of its own.

The podcast discussion carried this argument beyond Trump’s presidency. Wallace said the next president, whether Republican or Democratic, would have to spend substantial time and political capital rebuilding relationships in Europe and the Middle East. Restoring NATO cooperation might be the first task, but it would not be the last.

A new president could reaffirm NATO, restore military exercises and promise that treaty commitments no longer depend on political loyalty. Those steps would help, but they would not erase weapons purchases, new trade routes and defense plans built around the possibility of American withdrawal. Some allies may accept new assurances while continuing to reduce their dependence on Washington because another election could change the terms again.

What America Could Lose

The United States remains the world’s strongest military power, and its allies cannot quickly replace what Washington provides. That gives Trump considerable leverage. It does not mean that using that leverage in every dispute will leave America stronger.

The postwar alliance system was never charity. American guarantees came at great cost, but the United States received bases, intelligence, diplomatic support and partners that extended its influence around the world. The system allowed Washington to confront Russia, China, Iran and North Korea with coalitions rather than by itself.

China and Russia do not need to replace the United States to benefit from the current strain. They only need American allies to trust Washington a little less and prepare to act without it.

Trump may extract more spending and short-term cooperation from some countries. He may also help produce stronger European and Asian militaries, which many Americans have wanted for years. But if those countries become stronger because they no longer trust Washington, the United States will have traded lasting influence for temporary compliance.

America’s alliances are not disappearing. The treaties remain, the bases remain and the military relationships remain deeply rooted. The unraveling begins earlier, when governments stop assuming the United States will be there and leave the next American president to repair damage that one election cannot undo.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide offering calm, independent analysis of the economic and political forces shaping the United States and the wider world. Every edition is grounded in documented facts and open to all.

China has built commanding positions in electric vehicles, batteries, solar equipment, drones and shipbuilding. Now its artificial intelligence companies are narrowing what many Americans assumed was a comfortable lead for Silicon Valley.

The latest warning came from Moonshot AI, a Beijing startup whose Kimi K3 model performed competitively with leading American systems. Its performance, lower cost and availability challenged the belief that American companies would remain safely ahead.

The issue is not which country builds the best chatbot. AI is entering coding, medical research, military planning, government services and business decisions. The country whose systems become widely used may shape how billions of people receive information and organize their lives.

China’s progress is part of a broader industrial advance. The country produces at least 70 percent of the world’s drones, electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar cells. It installs more industrial robots than every other country combined, has surpassed the United States in registered clinical trials and possesses roughly 200 times America’s shipbuilding capacity.

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Photo: Julia Demaree Nikhinson/Associated Press

Democrats are heading into the 2026 midterm elections with the kind of political opening opposition parties usually hope for. Many Americans are uneasy about the economy, foreign wars and the direction of the country, giving Democrats a chance to make gains in November. Yet the party is becoming more liberal while many of the voters it needs to win remain somewhere in between.

That tension came into sharper focus in Michigan, where Abdul El-Sayed narrowly defeated Rep. Haley Stevens for the Democratic Senate nomination. El-Sayed won 48.5 percent to Stevens’ 47.5 percent, with another 4 percent going to state Sen. Mallory McMorrow, who had suspended her campaign.

Bridge Michigan called the result a progressive “shockwave,” but Democrats in one of the country’s most important swing states were almost evenly divided.

Michigan becomes the test

El-Sayed gives Democrats a chance to see whether the party’s progressive wing can carry its message from a Democratic primary into a competitive statewide election in the Midwest. A doctor and former public health official, he ran on Medicare for All, opposition to corporate political money and a tougher position toward Israel.

He has also called for abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement, a position Republicans will almost certainly use against him. El-Sayed does not call himself a democratic socialist and argues that some positions described as radical are reasonable responses to today’s problems.

The stakes go well beyond Michigan. Democrats need a net gain of four seats to regain control of a Senate now held 53 to 47 by Republicans, and Michigan is a seat they already hold. Losing it would make that climb considerably steeper. Reuters identified Michigan as a major concern when Democratic Sen. Gary Peters announced his retirement.

Republican Mike Rogers makes the test harder. Trump carried Michigan in 2024, while Rogers came within three-tenths of a percentage point of defeating Democrat Elissa Slotkin for the state’s other Senate seat. El-Sayed therefore needs many of the Stevens voters who opposed him in the primary, along with independents and other Michiganders outside the Democratic left.

El-Sayed believes his economic message can reach them. “In an era where our premiums are quickly pricing people out, I think being for Medicare for All is…the moderate position,” he told Bridge Michigan. His argument is that voters angry about health care costs, corporate power and money in politics may support ideas Washington still considers well to the left.

David Brooks put the opposing case bluntly during a discussion with Jonathan Capehart on PBS NewsHour. “If you want to win and defeat Republicans, nominate a moderate,” Brooks said.

If Democrats unite and El-Sayed wins, progressives will have evidence that their approach works beyond safe Democratic territory. If he loses after Democrats remain divided, progressives can blame the party establishment while centrists blame the nominee, leaving the larger argument unresolved.

A party pulling in two directions

There is real evidence that Democrats are moving left. A new Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 71 percent of Democrats now describe themselves as liberal, up from 55 percent in 2012. Large majorities of liberal Democrats also favor higher taxes on corporations and billionaires and government-provided health care for everyone.

Michigan provided another example on the same primary night. Democratic socialist state Rep. Donavan McKinney defeated incumbent Rep. Shri Thanedar in a Detroit-area congressional district after campaigning heavily on representing working people. BridgeDetroit reported that McKinney narrowly won, adding to the evidence of energy on the Democratic left. But the heavily Democratic district is very different from the statewide contest El-Sayed now faces.

Missouri offers a caution against reading too much into individual races. Rep. Wesley Bell decisively defeated former Rep. Cori Bush in their St. Louis rematch, winning 59.2 percent to Bush’s 36.9 percent. But Bush carried baggage unrelated to her progressive politics.

The Wall Street Journal noted several controversies and an unusually high number of missed votes during her years in Congress. Her defeat therefore tells us something about Bush, but much less about whether progressive Democrats generally can win.

Democratic voters remain divided. The Yale Youth Poll found them almost evenly split between moving toward the middle to attract more voters and emphasizing progressive policies to motivate the Democratic base. Younger Democrats leaned toward the progressive approach while older Democrats preferred moderation.

The center is still there

The danger for Democrats is assuming dissatisfaction with Trump automatically means voters are ready to move just as far in the opposite direction. Gallup found that a record 45 percent of Americans identified as independents in 2025. More began leaning Democratic during Trump’s first year back in office, but Gallup cautioned that Americans had not suddenly developed warmer feelings toward the Democratic Party.

The Pew Research Center identified a large group that favors many Democratic economic ideas while worrying more about crime and favoring tighter immigration policies than voters further to the left. Pew calls them the Order and Opportunity Left, and they make up 18 percent of the public.

That combination matters. A voter can favor higher taxes on wealthy corporations, protecting Social Security and bringing down health care costs while also wanting secure borders and effective policing. Democrats do not necessarily have to choose between addressing economic frustration and appealing to voters in the middle.

The evidence also does not support the simple claim that moderates always win and progressives always lose. Split Ticket found that moderate Democratic House members generally performed better than more progressive colleagues between 2018 and 2024. But election analyst G. Elliott Morris found only a small advantage in 2024 and argued that the strength of the candidate and circumstances of the race can matter just as much.

The 2024 results nevertheless contain a warning. Voters with college degrees favored Kamala Harris by 16 percentage points while those without college degrees favored Trump by 14 points, according to the Pew Research Center. Democrats cannot afford to become increasingly dependent on college-educated voters while continuing to lose ground among Americans without four-year degrees.

That is why Michigan has become more than another Senate race. The Democratic left has shown that it can win Democratic primaries. El-Sayed now has to show that a progressive can win enough voters who were never part of the left in the first place.

The Union Is Still Worth Saving

A recent conversation with an friend left me thinking seriously about something I once would have considered almost unthinkable.

He is a lifelong liberal whose political involvement stretches back to the civil rights movement in Mississippi during the 1960s, and he contends that Americans may decide they no longer share enough common ground to remain one country.

What stayed with me was not simply what he said, but who was saying it. This was not someone on the political fringe cheering for the country to break apart. He is thoughtful, deeply patriotic in his own way, and genuinely worried about where America is headed.

His concerns reflect something larger happening as talk of a “national divorce” moves from something people say to get a reaction toward an idea some Americans are beginning to take seriously.

Author James D. Telfer has taken that possibility several steps further. After nearly 25 years with the Central Intelligence Agency, Telfer wrote The National Divorce, A Story of a Fractured Superpower, a novel set in a near-future America that has broken into two countries.

His scenario does not begin with armies marching against each other. It develops through political violence, revenge attacks, outside interference and a government increasingly unable to keep political conflict from becoming something worse.

In a recent interview with Anthony Scaramucci on the Open Book podcast, Telfer argued that Americans should stop assuming such things simply cannot happen here. “We’re not completely impervious to change and we’re not impervious to political violence,” he said.

His point was not that another civil war is inevitable. It was that assuming the country will always hold together becomes dangerous when citizens increasingly see people on the other side as enemies rather than political opponents.

That is where I part company with the idea of national divorce. I am and will always be a union man. By that I mean the Union itself, the belief that however bitter our disagreements become, the United States is worth keeping together.

Americans increasingly clash over immigration, religion, race, education, government power, history and even what democracy is supposed to mean. Political disagreement has become personal, fed every day by social media and a political culture that rewards anger. Too many Americans no longer merely believe the other side is wrong. They believe the other side is dangerous.

There is a dangerous step between believing your opponents threaten the country and deciding it is impossible to continue living in the same country with them. Once that line is crossed, losing an election no longer feels temporary. Compromise becomes surrender, and every election starts looking like a fight for survival.

The United States has already learned what disunion can cost. Modern estimates cited by the National Park Service put the Civil War death toll at roughly 750,000, with many more wounded and entire communities devastated. Nobody talking about national separation today expects another Gettysburg.

But that is exactly why we should be careful about treating “divorce” as though it were a harmless way of describing what would happen.

There is no divorce court here. Red and blue America do not occupy two tidy blocks of territory that can simply be separated with a line on a map. Democrats live in Texas and Republicans live in California. Families cross political and state boundaries, while electric grids, water systems, highways, railroads, military bases, banks and supply chains tie the country together in ways no political map could easily untangle.

Telfer’s fictional America confronts those problems after the breakup. The new countries must still cooperate on defense and other shared needs while dealing with the economic damage caused by separation. He also imagines foreign powers taking advantage of the split, and that concern is not far-fetched.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence has warned that foreign governments use online influence campaigns to manipulate public opinion and stir political and social conflict. The intelligence community already understands why America’s adversaries benefit when Americans turn against one another.

A broken-up America would almost certainly be a weaker America. Separate countries would have smaller economies, different interests and less power abroad. China, Russia and other countries competing with the United States would have every reason to see an American breakup as an opportunity.

But the greater loss would be here at home. The American experiment has never depended upon Americans agreeing with one another. New England has never thought exactly like Appalachia, rural America has never looked quite like urban America, and the Deep South has long had a history and political culture different from the industrial North.

The country has survived those divisions because Americans have generally accepted that our disagreements ultimately have to be settled within the same country. That system has often failed people, sometimes terribly. The civil rights movement existed because millions of Americans were denied rights the Constitution was supposed to protect. Reform, protest and political confrontation are not threats to the country. They are part of how Americans force the country to fix what is wrong.

The greater danger comes when Americans decide the country can no longer fix its problems because the people on the other side are impossible to reason with or live alongside. Telfer made much the same point when he told Scaramucci that “the more we shut each other out and the more our families divide, the more we isolate ourselves.” A republic becomes harder to hold together when enough people stop believing they have a future together.

I still believe we do. I can disagree profoundly with the politics of millions of my fellow Americans while continuing to regard them as my fellow Americans. There is no political red line that makes breaking the country apart preferable to the difficult, frustrating and sometimes maddening work of governing it together.

The Union does not matter because Americans agree. It matters because we don’t, and for 250 years the challenge has been finding a way to remain one country anyway.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide offering calm, independent analysis of the political forces shaping the United States and the wider world. Every edition is grounded in documented facts and open to all.

Americans have not turned against business. They still depend on private companies for jobs, products and much of the innovation that shapes everyday life. But there is a growing difference between believing in business and believing that large corporations are treating people fairly.

That difference is especially clear when Americans compare big companies with small ones. Gallup found that 70 percent of Americans had substantial confidence in small business, compared with only 15 percent for big business. Ninety-five percent viewed small business positively, while just 37 percent felt the same about large corporations.

Large companies still have an important advantage. Americans have not found many institutions they trust more. A Bentley University-Gallup survey found that 43 percent trusted businesses to act in society’s best interest, compared with only 31 percent who trusted the federal government.

People continue to believe companies can improve their lives, but they are increasingly skeptical about who receives the rewards when those companies succeed. The problem is becoming less about whether business is good for the economy and more about whether ordinary people are getting their share of the benefits.

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Past American presidents generally tried to keep some distance between the power of the White House and the pursuit of personal wealth. President Donald Trump appears to have no such qualms.

Businesses tied to him and his family have expanded, attracted foreign money and benefited from decisions made by his administration. The pattern has become so open and routine that conduct once capable of consuming a presidency now passes as another part of governing.

Asked by The New York Times in January why he had abandoned restrictions placed on his family’s business ventures during his first term, Trump said he received no credit for showing restraint. “I found out that nobody cared,” he said.

His second term is testing that conclusion. Trump Media now charges Wall Street for faster access to posts announcing decisions that can move markets.

The information is generated by Trump’s public office, carried on a platform tied to his personal wealth and packaged for traders willing to pay as much as $100,000 a month. No envelope stuffed with cash is required. The presidency creates the valuable information, Trump Media sells the speed advantage and wealthy traders gain an edge unavailable to ordinary investors.

Selling presidential news by the millisecond

The service, called Truth API, delivers machine-readable versions of influential Truth Social posts directly to financial firms. Trump Media maintains that paying customers and the public receive the posts at the same time, but traders purchasing the feed can process the information and place orders more quickly than someone reading a post on a telephone.

Trump uses Truth Social to announce or threaten changes involving tariffs, wars, central bank leadership and individual companies. Financial firms can buy or sell before most investors have finished reading.

“For the big guys, it’s going to be something they need,” Joe Saluzzi, co-founder of Themis Trading, told The Associated Press. “It’s market-moving information.” Institutional traders can react within fractions of a second.

The financial connection is direct. Trump Media filings show that Trump’s revocable trust owns 41 percent of the company. Trump is its sole beneficiary, while Donald Trump Jr. is the trustee.

Truth API could provide meaningful income to a struggling company. Trump Media reported $3.7 million in sales during 2025 while losing more than $700 million. Three customers paying $100,000 a month would nearly match its annual sales.

Trump Media argues that the service uses publicly released information. That avoids the central problem. This is not an ordinary media company selling faster access to someone else’s news. It is a company partly owned for Trump’s benefit selling faster access to information he creates while exercising presidential power.

A fortune from an industry he regulates

Truth API is not an isolated venture. Trump and his family have made extraordinary sums from cryptocurrency while his administration has promoted the industry, eased enforcement and shaped the rules governing it.

A Reuters investigation estimated that Trump family cryptocurrency ventures had generated at least $2.3 billion in profits since he returned to the presidency. Outside investors in those projects had combined losses of roughly the same amount by the end of April, including losses that had not been realized through sales.

Trump’s financial disclosures showed how cryptocurrency transformed his conventional holdings. Reuters found that his portfolios of stocks and bonds increased at least fourfold during 2025 as proceeds from digital assets flowed into traditional investments. The White House said Trump did not manage the accounts and that administration policies were made in the public interest.

The New Yorker attempted to measure the larger gains. Reporter David D. Kirkpatrick estimated that the amount Trump and his immediate family had gained by leveraging the presidency had reached more than $4 billion after the first year of his second term.

That is an estimate, not an audited total or cash collected during 2025 alone. Kirkpatrick excluded existing properties, political contributions and some paper wealth. Even so, the total was unprecedented.

Foreign money creates an even sharper conflict. Four days before Trump’s second inauguration, investors backed by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the United Arab Emirates’ national security adviser, agreed to pay $500 million for a 49 percent interest in World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s cryptocurrency venture.

The Wall Street Journal reported that $187 million of the initial payment went to Trump family entities. Months later, the administration approved expanded Emirati access to advanced American artificial intelligence chips. The White House and World Liberty denied any connection.

The conflict remains. A senior foreign official acquired a major interest in a company benefiting the president’s family while seeking a valuable national security decision from his administration.

The Qatari aircraft makes the problem easier to see. Qatar gave the United States a luxury Boeing 747 valued at roughly $400 million, which the federal government converted for Trump’s use as Air Force One at a cost that has not been fully disclosed. Trump began flying aboard it in July.

Trump said the aircraft saved taxpayers money. Qatar denied expecting influence in return. The plane belongs to the government while Trump uses it, but ABC News reported that it is expected to be transferred to his presidential library foundation shortly before he leaves office.

A foreign government supplied an aircraft Trump wanted, taxpayers prepared it for his use and the plane may eventually pass to his library. It is not how a healthy government keeps foreign influence at a safe distance.

The government settles with itself

The Internal Revenue Service arrangement involved Trump using control of the executive branch to seek protection from the agency responsible for examining his taxes. Trump, his two oldest sons and the Trump Organization sued the IRS and Treasury Department for $10 billion over the illegal disclosure of their tax records.

Trump was the plaintiff, but the agencies he sued belonged to the government he controlled. His Justice Department did not mount the vigorous defense normally expected when a private party seeks billions from taxpayers. Instead, the two sides produced an agreement under which Trump dropped the lawsuit and received a formal apology.

The agreement created a $1.776 billion Anti-Weaponization Fund for people claiming they had been unfairly investigated or prosecuted. A panel appointed by the attorney general would select the recipients.

A separate order signed by acting Attorney General Todd Blanche purported to release Trump, his relatives, his companies and numerous affiliates from government claims involving previously filed tax returns. Republican Sens. John Cornyn of Texas and Thom Tillis of North Carolina joined Democrats in objecting.

Cornyn told Reuters that the agreement offered protection from audits “that no other taxpayer could possibly get.” The senators demanded written assurances that the fund and tax protections had been abandoned.

U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams found that Trump and his own administration were never truly opposing parties. She concluded that the lawsuit had been used to provide legal cover for an agreement benefiting Trump and his allies.

“This action was never about a party seeking judicial resolution of a legal issue or a factual dispute,” Williams wrote. She said it was an attempt to legitimize immunity for people and businesses affiliated with the president while earmarking billions of taxpayer dollars for grievances not recognized in law.

Under that pressure, Blanche issued written orders formally rescinding the fund and narrowing the tax protections. The Senate Judiciary Committee then voted along party lines on Aug. 4 to advance his nomination as attorney general.

The protection from tax scrutiny was not eliminated. It now applies to Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and the Trump Organization for tax matters that existed when the settlement was reached. It does not cover future returns. The Associated Press reported that the arrangement still could eliminate more than $100 million in potential back taxes and penalties.

Judge Williams did not void the tax agreement. She ruled that Trump’s lawsuit had been filed for an improper purpose and prohibited the government from presenting the settlement as the product of a legitimate adversarial proceeding. Trump has appealed her ruling.

The surviving arrangement remains one of the strongest examples of self-dealing in the administration. The president, his sons and his company retain protection from tax claims that ordinary taxpayers could still face. Political pressure forced the fund’s rescission, but the tax protection survived and the episode revealed how far the administration was prepared to go.

Why no scandal breaks through

Presidents are exempt from the principal federal conflict-of-interest laws applying to most executive officials. The system therefore depends on disclosure, voluntary restraint, congressional oversight and political pressure. Many of those safeguards are norms rather than enforceable barriers.

Republicans control Congress and have shown little interest in investigating his family’s businesses. Trump removed inspectors general, while financial regulators, law enforcement and tax officials answer to his appointees. News organizations can uncover conflicts but cannot force the government to act.

The lack of consequences is not public approval. A Brennan Center for Justice poll found that 92 percent of voters considered corruption a major problem, including 90 percent of Republicans and 93 percent of Democrats and independents.

The agreement extended to what corruption means. Ninety-seven percent said a government official using public office for personal gain qualified as corruption. Eighty-nine percent believed corruption produced policies benefiting billionaires and large corporations at the expense of ordinary Americans.

Nearly two-thirds viewed corruption as embedded in the political system rather than a collection of individual choices. That may explain why disclosures about Trump’s wealth have not produced the response earlier scandals did. They confirm what many voters already believe.

Watergate changed how Americans thought about corruption because it exposed a presidential cover-up and showed that institutions could impose consequences. Congress investigated, courts enforced subpoenas, Republicans withdrew their support and Richard Nixon resigned.

Even Vice President JD Vance has acknowledged how differently such a scandal might land today. “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story,” he said during a June appearance at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. “The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.”

Vance intended the remark as a defense of Nixon. Yet his description captured something important. A flood of controversies can protect a president by exhausting the public’s ability to absorb them.

Each disclosure competes with the one before it until an aircraft, cryptocurrency deals, tax protection and the sale of presidential information become background noise. What once might have defined an administration becomes another headline in an afternoon news cycle.

Trump’s defenders argue that he remains entitled to conduct business, that voters knew he was wealthy and that no court has found a criminal exchange of money for an official favor. Those points matter, but they do not answer the central question.

Corruption is not limited to envelopes of cash or criminal convictions. It includes using public authority to create private gain, protect personal interests or make decisions clouded by financial obligation. By the public’s definition, using office for personal benefit is corruption whether charges are filed or not.

Truth API is a fitting symbol of the larger problem. Public office creates the information, a company benefiting Trump sells the speed advantage and wealthy customers receive the better product. The Qatari plane converts a foreign relationship into a luxury presidential aircraft that may eventually pass to Trump’s library.

The IRS agreement attempted to turn control of government into protection from tax scrutiny and a compensation fund for allies. The cryptocurrency ventures allow the Trump family to profit from an industry whose treatment is being determined by Trump’s administration.

Axios co-founder and CEO Jim VandeHei wrote that Trump would “use levers of power to keep raising money to expand his clout beyond the presidency.” Not every dollar raised will become personal income, but the pattern reflects Trump’s view that money and political power strengthen each other. The presidency provides the leverage to accumulate both.

None of these episodes alone proves every allegation made against Trump. Together, they describe an administration in which the boundary between governing and personal benefit has nearly disappeared.

History may judge the second Trump administration as one of the most corrupt in American history, not because its transactions were hidden, but because so much happened in plain sight. Trump is betting that nobody cares. The evidence suggests Americans care but doubt the system will respond.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide that examines the political forces shaping the United States and the wider world. It looks at power, policy and political conduct with a calm tone and an independent eye. Its conclusions may not please everyone, but they are grounded in documented facts rather than party loyalty. Every edition is open to all, with no subscription required.

Open pit rare earth element mine at Mountain Pass, California.

America’s factories depend on a supply chain the country does not control. Missiles, computer chips, batteries, electric vehicles and artificial intelligence systems all require minerals that are often mined or processed elsewhere, with China holding the strongest position in many important markets.

For decades, that dependence was treated as an acceptable result of globalization. American companies bought materials from whichever supplier could provide them most cheaply, while mining, processing and much of the environmental burden moved abroad. The arrangement lowered costs, but it also allowed expertise and industrial capacity to disappear.

Washington now views that trade-off differently. Critical minerals are becoming part of a national strategy built around federal financing, government ownership, stockpiles, trade restrictions and partnerships with dependable suppliers. The objective is not complete independence, but preventing a rival from disrupting industries essential to American economic strength and national defense.

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Photo: Kylie Cooper/Reuters

The Democratic Party is being pushed toward a choice it has spent years trying to avoid. More of its voters want a party willing to challenge corporations, expand public programs and confront an economic system they believe no longer works for ordinary people.

The word socialism, once enough to end a national political career, no longer frightens much of the Democratic base.

Jim VandeHei, the co-founder and chief executive of Axios, believes party leaders are underestimating what is happening. “I am struck by the rise of socialism,” he said in an Axios Behind the Curtain video. “I think people are underestimating how powerful this movement is.”

The victories are not confined to one politician or city. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani helped three congressional candidates defeat establishment favorites in June, including two incumbents. Days later, 29-year-old democratic socialist Melat Kiros defeated Rep. Diana DeGette, a nearly 30-year incumbent representing Denver. Democratic socialists have also gained ground in Washington, D.C.

“One or two is an anomaly. This many is a trend,” VandeHei said. He described the insurgency as “the progressive Tea Party,” powered by young voters, anger at the party establishment and frustration after repeated Democratic failures.

VandeHei’s six stages

VandeHei’s warning rests on the Republican Party’s recent history. Donald Trump did not arrive with the beliefs, habits or temperament of a traditional Republican president. Yet he remade the party around trade protection, hostility toward longtime allies, presidential pressure on private business and personal loyalty to its leader.

“The question is, when can you change a party holistically?” VandeHei said. “When can you transition it from believing one set of things to believing something very different? That’s what we saw with Donald Trump.”

VandeHei divides that change into six stages. Party leaders first recoil from the insurgent, then squint and selectively accept parts of the message. They rationalize their support, submit when opposition becomes politically dangerous, amplify the leader’s language and behavior, and finally purge those who refuse to follow.

Trump’s former critics learned to ignore what bothered them, praise what appealed to the base and avoid a fight that could end their careers. “That submission comes because of the power of that politician and the power of that politician’s base,” VandeHei said.

By the final stage, Republicans such as Liz Cheney could no longer remain in good standing because disagreement with Trump outweighed their conservative voting records.

Why the comparison fits

Democrats have not traveled that road, but they may have entered its early stretch. Many party leaders still recoil from socialism and insist it cannot win outside deeply liberal cities.

At the same time, they embrace the language of affordability, housing and corporate power that makes socialist candidates attractive while avoiding the label.

That is close to what VandeHei calls rationalization, the third stage. Politicians support parts of an insurgent program but add a reassuring qualification. Republicans said Trump’s style was troubling but his judges, tariffs or border policies were worth it. Democrats increasingly argue that their proposals are not socialist, but practical answers to high rents, medical bills and stagnant wages.

The economic mood gives the left a real opening. Gallup found in 2025 that 66 percent of Democrats viewed socialism positively, compared with 42 percent who viewed capitalism positively. A July 2026 Echelon Insights poll found that Democrats wanted the Democratic Socialists of America to have more influence over their party by 46 percent to 21 percent, while one-third were unsure.

Those numbers do not mean most Democrats want government to own every grocery store and factory. They show that capitalism has become associated with high prices, concentrated wealth and an economy in which working people feel they are losing ground. Socialism, fairly or not, has become a way of saying government should take their side.

The Democratic Socialists of America is trying to turn that dissatisfaction into a broader program. Its new Workers Deserve More platform calls for universal health care and housing, stronger worker power, abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement and major changes to government.

Where the analogy breaks

The Trump comparison is useful, but it is not complete. Trump was one powerful figure with money, celebrity, unmatched command of the media and the ability to reward loyalty or destroy a Republican career.

The socialist left has successful candidates and popular issues, but it does not yet have a national leader who can impose discipline on the Democratic Party. VandeHei sees that as a major barrier.

“You need somebody who is a charismatic leader who can take a movement that right now is in a couple of different cities or a couple of different states, and turn it nationally,” he said.

Bernie Sanders created much of the movement, but he would be 87 by Election Day 2028. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has a national following, while Mamdani has shown that he can help allies win, but neither has yet demonstrated Trump’s control over a national party.

Democrats also operate in a much less unified media world. Trump benefited from Fox News and then built a larger MAGA network of podcasters, social-media personalities and friendly outlets that could carry the same message directly to Republican voters.

The left has influential podcasts, YouTube programs and independent publications, but its audience remains spread across competing factions and large news organizations that are unlikely to serve as an official socialist cheering section.

VandeHei put the advantage simply. Trump built “MAGA as a movement,” but he also showed that “MAGA is a media ecosystem.” Without a similar network, democratic socialists may continue winning carefully chosen primaries without gaining the power to set the party’s national message.

There is another complication. Democratic primary voters and the broader electorate are not the same. Pew Research Center found that only 32 percent of Democrats liked political leaders who identified as democratic socialists, while 56 percent were neutral. Among all Americans, 38 percent disliked such leaders and only 17 percent liked them. That is far from a national mandate.

The next political test

The decisive question is whether socialist candidates can move beyond safe Democratic territory.

Winning in New York City, Denver or Washington proves that the movement can defeat the Democratic establishment where the electorate is already far to the left of the country. Winning a statewide race in Wisconsin, or carrying competitive House districts in November, would show that its appeal travels farther.

VandeHei believes a few more victories could change the behavior of Democratic leaders. “If socialists ring up a couple more victories, I’d be shocked if you didn’t see more and more Democrats moving that way,” he said.

That movement would probably begin with the safest and most popular themes, including lower housing costs, stronger labor protections and a harder line toward large corporations and artificial intelligence.

The party is therefore not facing a simple choice between socialism and moderation. It is deciding which parts of the insurgency answer real public anger and which would hand Republicans an opening in places Democrats need to win. Party leaders who dismiss every socialist victory as a big-city curiosity may miss a genuine political change, but those who assume the entire program can travel nationally may learn an expensive lesson in November.

The socialist movement has momentum, organization and a message fitted to an age of economic frustration. It does not yet have a Trump, a unified media machine or proof that it can win the voters who decide national elections. That leaves Democrats somewhere between recoil and rationalization, interested enough to borrow the language but not yet ready to surrender the party.

Ideology, however, is only part of the midterm story. Democrats must still find the money and organization to exploit a favorable political environment. Republicans must explain why a party that condemns socialism now embraces government ownership and intervention in private industry. Those contradictions provide two different tests of where American politics is heading.

The Democrats’ Bigger Problem

Republicans would be delighted to spend the midterm campaign warning that socialists are coming for the suburbs. It moves attention away from prices, President Trump’s weak approval ratings and dissatisfaction with Republican rule.

It also allows every Democratic candidate, no matter how moderate, to be tied to the most provocative proposal coming out of New York or the Democratic Socialists of America. That helps explain why Republicans would rather fight over socialism than the economy.

A CBS News/YouGov poll found that only 35 percent approved of Trump’s handling of the economy, while just 29 percent approved of his handling of inflation. Fox News found that only 24 percent considered the economy excellent or good. Yet Democrats have not turned that dissatisfaction into a decisive advantage, leaving them with an opportunity they could still squander.

During a discussion with host Katty Kay on The Rest Is Politics US, Joe Scarborough argued that the socialist threat has been exaggerated. “You have a lot of moderate Democrats very worried about what’s happening in New York City, very worried what’s happening with DSA candidates,” the former Republican congressman and Morning Joe co-host said. “I personally think [this] has been blown up so much in the media.”

Scarborough pointed to a distinction that national coverage often misses. “Democrats are electing moderates in moderate swing districts,” he said. “They’re electing moderates to win the governorship of Virginia and New Jersey.”

Socialist candidates have demonstrated real strength in heavily Democratic territory, but the party’s most important general-election victories still depend on candidates who can reach the political middle.

The immediate danger may be less ideological than organizational. Federal Election Commission filings show that the Democratic National Committee ended June with $16.3 million in cash and $18.5 million in debts and loans. The Republican National Committee had $128.5 million in cash and no debt.

The Democratic House and Senate campaign committees maintain separate funds, so the DNC figures do not represent all the money available to the party’s candidates. The DNC also used its Washington headquarters as collateral for a $15 million line of credit, although the committee said it had used the building to secure credit in earlier election cycles.

The gap is especially striking because the political environment should favor Democrats. A July Pew Research Center survey gave Democratic congressional candidates a six-point advantage among registered voters. Trump’s approval stood at 34 percent, and voters were almost twice as likely to describe their midterm vote as opposition to Trump as support for him. Economic issues, especially prices and affordability, were what voters most wanted candidates to discuss.

That explains the Republican focus on socialism. A red scare cannot erase Democratic financial weakness, but it can change the subject. Democrats may have the more favorable campaign terrain, yet terrain is not the same as an army. Without the money and organization to compete across dozens of races, the party could win the argument and still fail to win Congress.

The GOP’s State Capitalism

Republicans still speak the language of free enterprise while governing through tariffs, ownership stakes and presidential pressure on individual companies.

That does not make Donald Trump a socialist. It does mean that the economic argument between the parties is no longer the familiar contest between big government and the free market.

In the same conversation with Katty Kay on The Rest Is Politics US, Joe Scarborough used deliberately provocative language. “If you want to talk about socialism, talk about a party where you have its leader actually seizing the means of production for some of our most important companies in America,” he said.

He accused Republicans of “seizing control of companies” while presenting themselves as defenders of small government.

The phrase seizing the means of production goes too far, but the underlying change is real. In August 2025, the federal government invested $8.9 billion in Intel and received a 9.9 percent stake. The money came from previously approved CHIPS Act and national-security funding, and the stake is passive, with no government seat on Intel’s board.

Even with those limits, direct federal ownership of a major semiconductor company would once have been difficult to imagine under a Republican administration.

Intel was not an isolated case. The government invested $400 million in MP Materials and became the rare-earth producer’s largest shareholder with a 15 percent stake. The deal also included a long-term price floor and a federal commitment to purchase thousands of tons of magnets each year.

Trump has paired such arrangements with tariffs intended to redirect trade, protect favored industries and pressure companies to manufacture in the United States.

This approach is better described as state capitalism or economic nationalism than socialism. Private owners still control the companies and keep their profits, but government increasingly decides which industries deserve protection, investment and guaranteed customers.

The fiscal record completes the break with old Republican doctrine. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9 trillion deficit in fiscal 2026, equal to 5.8 percent of the economy. The average over the previous 50 years was 3.8 percent. Tariffs bring in revenue, but they have not restored anything resembling traditional small-government conservatism.

Republicans can still attack the Democratic Socialists of America’s sweeping program on its merits. What they can no longer do honestly is pretend their own economic model leaves government outside the marketplace. The argument is no longer government intervention against free enterprise. It is a fight over who receives government power, protection and money, and who gets to decide.

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President Trump has based much of his strategy on the belief that the United States can withstand more pressure than the countries it wants to change. Tariffs turn access to American consumers into bargaining power, while military force is meant to protect American interests abroad.

The war with Iran is now testing how much economic pain that strategy can bring home. Renewed fighting has pushed oil back toward $100 a barrel and gasoline above $4 a gallon across much of the country.

At the same time, the administration has restored a broad tariff wall covering nearly all American imports. One conflict is being fought with military power and the other through trade, but American households will help pay for both.

The economy has survived repeated shocks without falling into recession, yet its room for another mistake is getting smaller. Inflation remains above the Federal Reserve’s target, hiring has slowed and families are still struggling with prices that never returned to their earlier levels. The danger is not simply another round of tariffs or another oil surge, but both arriving together and reinforcing each other.

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The most important part of President Trump’s immigration crackdown is no longer the number of people arrested or deported. It is the steady removal of the safeguards meant to restrain the officers carrying it out.

The latest reported change would take away one of the few remaining sources of independent scrutiny by ending FBI investigations into confrontations involving federal immigration agents.

The New York Times reported that FBI managers around the country were told that the bureau would no longer investigate such cases. Written notice was reportedly sent after recent fatal encounters involving immigration officers.

The Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security denied that a policy change had occurred, but people briefed on the decision described a clear shift that would probably leave Homeland Security Investigations, an arm of ICE, handling cases involving ICE personnel.

That arrangement would place the agency in the uncomfortable position of policing itself. It would also create a serious legal gap because Homeland Security Investigations does not have the FBI’s authority to investigate federal civil rights violations. A shooting might still receive an internal review, but the central question of whether an agent broke federal law could go unanswered.

Trump sets the direction

Trump’s immigration policy has consistently favored faster enforcement, wider discretion and public displays of strength, even when officials within his own government have tried to slow operations after people were killed.

That pattern appeared again after immigration officers fatally shot Lorenzo Salgado Araujo in Houston and Joan Sebastián Durán Guerrero in Maine during separate traffic stops. Neither man was the intended target, and neither encounter was recorded by an ICE body camera. Trump responded to a short-lived pause in traffic stops by ordering agents back onto the roads and declaring that suspending the practice would make the government appear weak.

Katty Kay, the BBC’s U.S. special correspondent and co-host of The Rest Is Politics US, captured the meaning of that decision on the podcast. “This would suggest that the White House has decided, ‘Take the gloves off. Go at it, guys. Don’t worry. You are not going to be investigated,’” Kay said. She then put the consequence plainly. “I think this paves the way for a lot more aggression.”

The point is not that every ICE agent will misuse that freedom. The point is that Trump is removing a reason not to. Independent investigation does more than punish wrongdoing after it occurs.

An agency without an outside referee

The FBI’s previous role was more complicated than simply investigating ICE. Many cases began as investigations of alleged assaults against federal officers. Yet the evidence collected could also reveal misconduct by the officers themselves and support a later prosecution.

Removing the FBI therefore changes which facts are likely to be discovered. An internal investigation may determine whether an officer followed agency policy. A civil rights investigation asks the harder question of whether the officer violated the law. Those are not the same standard.

Kay argued that credible investigations require separation between the agency and the investigators. “It’s very important to have an independent investigation,” she said. Her concern went beyond questions of procedure. If ICE investigates itself, the public may have little reason to trust the findings, particularly when the government has already defended officers before all the evidence has been gathered.

That loss of trust reaches beyond immigrant communities. When the government removes the outside referee, every disputed encounter becomes a contest between official statements and whatever witnesses happened to record.

The record already raises alarms

The reported change comes as the American Civil Liberties Union has released one of the broadest examinations yet of immigration enforcement under Trump. Its study reviewed more than 1,200 enforcement actions across eight states during 2025.

The organization stressed that its findings were not a complete accounting, but the sample was large enough to show that the effects reached well beyond undocumented immigrants with serious criminal records.

The ACLU identified 155 U.S. citizens and 214 children who were detained, targeted or subjected to alleged misconduct. Thirty-two of those children were American citizens. The report also documented 782 protesters, journalists, elected officials, and clergy members who were detained, targeted or subjected to misconduct.

Researchers found 418 incidents in which agents pushed, shoved, tackled or pinned people. They recorded 361 uses of chemical irritants, including 132 instances in which the chemicals were aimed directly at individuals. Agents also appeared at or near schools 49 times, contributing to 40 school lockdowns.

These figures come from an advocacy organization that strongly opposes Trump’s immigration program, and they should be understood in that context. But dismissing the report because of its source would miss the larger point. Its findings identify precisely the kind of allegations that require credible investigation rather than automatic acceptance or rejection.

Kay pointed to the children and American citizens while challenging Trump’s repeated claim that his crackdown targets the “worst of the worst.” “That doesn’t sound like the worst of the worst to me,” she said. Her argument was not that immigration laws should go unenforced. It was that enforcement had spread far beyond the group Trump originally promised to pursue.

The politics of looking strong

Anthony Scaramucci, a former Trump White House communications director and Kay’s podcast co-host, acknowledges that the Biden administration had failed to control illegal crossings at the border, but he rejected Trump’s attempt to turn immigration enforcement into a campaign against immigration itself.

The United States needs legal immigration to supply workers, support economic growth and strengthen the tax base, he argued.

Scaramucci called Trump’s approach “classically un-American” and said the crackdown was producing fear among immigrants with legal status as well as those without it. He described a Colombian family he knew whose grandmother, despite being a U.S. citizen, returned to Bogotá because she no longer felt safe. “To me, that is just heartbreaking,” Scaramucci said.

He also argued that Trump is paying a political price. “The American people absolutely hate this, and it polls horrifically for the president and for the Republican Party,” Scaramucci said. Whether that judgment proves correct in the midterm elections will depend partly on whether the public continues seeing what immigration enforcement looks like away from the border.

That may explain why independent investigation matters politically as well as legally. Evidence can interfere with a carefully managed story. An administration that portrays every agent as heroic and every target as dangerous has little interest in investigations that may produce a more complicated account.

Trump has made strength the measure of his immigration policy. Pauses suggest weakness, restraint looks like retreat and outside scrutiny becomes an obstacle. But a government does not demonstrate strength by shielding armed officers from independent examination. It demonstrates fear of what an honest investigation might find.

The decision therefore about more than a dispute between two federal agencies. Trump is giving immigration officers greater freedom while making it harder to hold them responsible when something goes wrong. He owns that choice, and the public will live with its consequences long after the latest arrest totals have been forgotten.

Trump Builds Another Deportation Pipeline

President Trump has spent much of his second term searching for ways to deport people faster and with fewer obstacles. When one route has been slowed by the courts, his government has looked for another.

The latest effort reaches back 30 years to a court never used by any president until now. The Justice Department has filed its first application, asking the Alien Terrorist Removal Court to remove an unnamed noncitizen.

The one-page public filing does not identify the person, describe the alleged conduct or explain why the ordinary immigration system would be inadequate. Nearly everything important remains under seal.

The precedent may matter more than this unidentified person. Trump is asking a court built for rare national security cases to open for business, creating another route to label someone a terrorist and seek deportation with much of the evidence hidden.

A court waiting for a case

Congress created the Alien Terrorist Removal Court in 1996 following the Oklahoma City bombing, which was committed by Americans, but the court was designed for cases involving noncitizens suspected of terrorism when an ordinary immigration hearing might expose classified information.

Five federal district judges serve on the court. Unlike immigration judges, who work inside the Justice Department, they hold lifetime appointments. The presiding judge is Joan N. Ericksen, a Minnesota judge appointed by President George W. Bush.

For three decades, the court existed mostly on paper. Officials considered about 100 possible cases by 2000 but decided that ordinary immigration charges were sufficient. Six administrations passed without filing an application.

“There’s been six administrations that have basically found the current immigration proceedings to be sufficient,” said Anthony Scaramucci, the former Trump White House communications director who now co-hosts The Rest Is Politics US. “You have other routes. You have other methods. Could you please explain why this case cannot go through the regular system?”

A process built around secrecy

The court gives the government advantages unavailable in a normal courtroom. Its first stage is private, with the Justice Department presenting its application to one judge. Prosecutors must show probable cause that the person meets the legal definition of an alien terrorist and that ordinary removal proceedings would risk national security.

If the application is accepted, the case moves to a public hearing where the accused has the right to attend, receive counsel and present evidence. The government must prove that the person qualifies for removal under the terrorism provisions.

Classified evidence can be shown to the judge without being shown to the person facing deportation. Lawful permanent residents can have a special lawyer challenge it, although the lawyer cannot reveal it to the client. Other noncitizens may have to defend themselves without knowing the government’s full case.

Katty Kay, the BBC’s U.S. special correspondent and Scaramucci’s podcast co-host, said the danger lies in how broadly Trump may use the terrorism label. His government appears to want “yet more routes to go after people, label them as terrorists” and remove them along with their families, Kay said.

The law can reach people accused of carrying out or preparing terrorist activity, but also those accused of endorsing terrorism, belonging to certain groups or encouraging terrorist acts. Whether it remains a narrow national security measure will depend on judges demanding evidence rather than accepting labels.

The judge applies the brakes

Trump’s Justice Department did not receive immediate approval. Judge Ericksen held a private hearing one day after the application was filed, where government lawyers offered arguments but no sworn testimony.

Ericksen questioned the connection between the unnamed person’s alleged actions and the terrorism provisions cited by prosecutors. Her order said the government “could benefit from the opportunity for more thoughtful consideration” and directed it to submit additional facts and legal analysis.

Kay described the response plainly. Ericksen “didn’t rubber-stamp what the administration was trying to do,” she said.

The judge could authorize the first public removal hearing in the court’s history, reject the application or approve a narrowly defined case without providing the broad precedent Trump may want.

The power of the terrorist label

Trump has repeatedly blurred the line between illegal immigration, ordinary crime and terrorism. His government invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to deport Venezuelans accused of belonging to Tren de Aragua, arguing that the gang’s presence amounted to an invasion. The Supreme Court required that those targeted receive notice and an opportunity to challenge their removal.

But the process allows Trump to attach the word terrorist to a person while keeping much of the supporting evidence secret. Even if the court rejects a case, the accusation can shape public opinion before the legal process ends.

Scaramucci accused Trump of overturning normal procedures in his determination to remove more people. The danger is that an exceptional process created for rare national security cases could become another political tool.

Ericksen’s initial order suggests the judges will not simply accept whatever the Justice Department puts before them. That is encouraging, but one skeptical order is not a lasting safeguard.

Trump’s immigration program advances by testing boundaries. Each successful test becomes the starting point for the next one. This court may remain a narrow path, but Trump has placed it inside a much larger deportation campaign. The question is no longer why the court remained unused for so long. It is how far the president will try to take it now that the door is open.

America's labor market is changing. The familiar relationship between hiring, unemployment and economic growth is beginning to break down as demographic shifts, the retirement of millions of Baby Boomers, lower immigration and artificial intelligence reshape the nation's workforce.

The June employment report offered another glimpse of that shift. The unemployment rate edged down to 4.2 percent, suggesting a healthy job market. At the same time, nearly three-quarters of a million Americans left the labor force, pushing participation to its lowest level outside the pandemic since 2021.

One month’s report never tells the whole story. But the conflicting signals reflected a pattern that has been building for years. The American economy is entering a period in which the supply of workers may matter as much as demand for them.

For generations, economic growth depended on a simple formula. A growing population produced a growing workforce, businesses expanded, and the economy moved forward. That formula is beginning to break down. Slower population growth, the retirement of millions of Baby Boomers, lower immigration, and the rapid advance of artificial intelligence are reshaping both the number of people available to work and the kinds of jobs employers need to fill.

The result is a labor market that no longer follows familiar rules. Employers struggle to fill critical positions even as many job seekers have trouble finding work. Some occupations face mounting pressure from artificial intelligence while others cannot attract enough workers at any wage. These are not isolated trends. Together they point to a fundamental shift that will shape the American economy for years to come.

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American capitalism helped build the world’s largest economy. It fueled extraordinary innovation, created industries that transformed daily life, and gave generations of Americans reason to believe that hard work would be rewarded with a better future. For much of the nation’s modern history, that promise formed the heart of what became known as the American Dream.

A recent Wall Street Journal-NORC survey found that fewer than half of Americans believe capitalism is working well, down sharply from a decade ago. Only 35 percent said they were fairly sure the country still offers people the opportunity to find good jobs and achieve the American Dream, while just 12 percent said democracy is working very or extremely well.

The findings suggest that Americans are questioning whether the nation’s economic and political institutions still work for ordinary families.

History has repeatedly demonstrated capitalism's remarkable ability to generate wealth and innovation. The more pressing question is what kind of capitalism Americans want to build over the next generation, and whether they can restore confidence that the system still rewards effort, encourages opportunity, and serves the broader public.

Growth or Redistribution?

Historically, economic growth and rising productivity lifted living standards for millions of Americans. Families generally expected their children to enjoy greater opportunities than they had themselves. That expectation helped sustain confidence in both capitalism and democracy because economic progress seemed broadly shared.

Growth has continued, but inflation-adjusted incomes have risen much more slowly, while housing, healthcare, childcare, and higher education have become steadily more expensive. At the same time, technological change and globalization have produced enormous rewards for highly educated workers, entrepreneurs, and investors.

The result is not simply wider inequality. More troubling is the growing belief that upward mobility itself has become harder to achieve. Research has shown that children born in the middle of the twentieth century were far more likely to earn more than their parents than those born in recent decades. Many Americans are less concerned that some people have become extraordinarily wealthy than they are that their own children may struggle to climb the economic ladder.

The Journal poll suggests these concerns have become deeply rooted. Nearly three-quarters of respondents said billionaires and large businesses have too much influence in Washington, while working people have too little. A narrow majority agreed that corporate power often comes at the expense of workers and consumers and believed government should do more to limit that influence, revealing a widening gap between economic performance and public confidence.

One response has been to call for greater redistribution. Advocates argue that modern capitalism produces extraordinary wealth but concentrates too much of it among too few people. They support policies ranging from higher taxes on wealth to expanded social programs, universal healthcare, and stronger income supports designed to spread the benefits of economic growth more broadly.

Others argue that stronger schools, workforce training, scientific research, infrastructure investment, and technological innovation can increase productivity while creating more pathways into the middle class. Rather than focusing on dividing existing wealth differently, they seek to enlarge the economy and help more Americans participate in its growth.

Expanding government programs requires substantial public resources at a time when federal debt continues to grow, while relying entirely on market forces risks leaving more Americans convinced the economy no longer offers a realistic path to success. As confidence erodes, pressure grows for greater government intervention even if broader economic indicators remain strong.

That helps explain why debates over economic policy have become increasingly emotional. They are no longer simply arguments about taxes or government spending. They have become arguments about fairness, opportunity, and whether the economic system still reflects the values Americans believe it should represent.

Walls or Bridges?

For much of the postwar era, leaders in both political parties generally agreed that expanding trade, foreign investment, and immigration would strengthen the American economy. Consumers benefited from lower prices, businesses gained access to larger markets, and innovation accelerated as ideas and talent moved more freely across borders.

That consensus has steadily weakened over the past two decades. Many communities experienced factory closures, manufacturing job losses, and prolonged economic decline. While economists pointed to the overall benefits of globalization, many workers experienced its costs far more directly, helping fuel populist movements across the political spectrum.

Tariffs, industrial policy, and stricter immigration enforcement have emerged as responses to those concerns. Supporters argue that government should protect strategic industries, strengthen domestic manufacturing, and reduce dependence on foreign supply chains. The pandemic and growing competition with China reinforced many of those arguments.

Economic retreat, however, carries costs of its own. Trade restrictions can raise prices, limits on immigration can deepen labor shortages, and barriers to investment and collaboration can slow innovation as technological competition intensifies.

The Journal survey suggests Americans hold more nuanced views than political rhetoric often implies. Nearly 60 percent of respondents said immigration helps the United States more than it hurts it, even as many also support stronger border enforcement. Rather than choosing between open borders and isolation, many appear to favor secure borders, legal immigration and continued economic engagement.

The challenge is not whether globalization benefits the United States, but how to ensure more Americans share in those benefits.

Regulation or Competition?

Every successful market economy depends on both competition and trust. Entrepreneurs need the freedom to take risks, invest capital, and bring new ideas to market. Consumers need confidence that markets are fair, contracts are enforced, and no company or interest group can bend the rules in its own favor.

The debate is not whether government should have a role, but how large that role should be and where it can do the most good.

American history offers examples supporting both sides of that argument. Competitive markets helped drive advances in aviation, computing, biotechnology, and now artificial intelligence, while venture capital transformed scientific breakthroughs into products that improved everyday life.

Yet markets do not always correct themselves. Financial crises, monopolistic behavior, environmental damage, and unsafe working conditions have all required public oversight. Government has also helped fund scientific research, build infrastructure, and establish the legal framework that allows markets to function effectively

The challenge is finding the point where regulation protects competition instead of replacing it. Poorly designed rules can discourage investment, delay infrastructure projects, and make housing, energy development, and business expansion unnecessarily expensive. Regulations introduced for legitimate reasons can also accumulate over time until they become obstacles to growth.

Perhaps the greater danger lies in what economists often describe as crony capitalism. Public confidence erodes when citizens conclude that political connections matter more than innovation, or that large corporations and wealthy interests receive advantages unavailable to everyone else.

Nearly three-quarters of respondents to the Journal survey said billionaires and major businesses have too much influence in Washington, helping explain why frustration with both government and corporate America now cuts across traditional ideological lines. People who disagree sharply on taxes, regulation, or trade often agree that powerful institutions appear increasingly disconnected from ordinary citizens.

Gretchen Barton, a public opinion researcher who works with Democratic organizations, told The Journal that many Americans describe themselves as feeling as though they are "drowning economically."

Yet the survey also points to a measure of common ground. Americans remain deeply divided over many political questions, but they still agree on the importance of opportunity, fairness, and accountable institutions. Most have not rejected capitalism outright. Instead, they appear to be asking whether it can once again produce the widely shared prosperity that defined much of the twentieth century.

The Road Ahead

The future of American capitalism will not be determined by a single election, one administration, or one piece of legislation. Nor will it be settled by choosing between markets and government. The country's history demonstrates that both have contributed to its prosperity. The real challenge is restoring confidence that they can work together to expand opportunity.

Economic growth remains essential because a stagnant economy eventually becomes a contest over dividing limited resources. But growth alone may not be enough if too many Americans believe they have little chance to share in it. Rising national wealth means less when families conclude their own prospects are standing still.

The Journal poll found that many Americans believe the country is becoming too divided to solve major problems, while substantial majorities see the nation in decline and believe its best days are behind it. Those attitudes run deeper than temporary political frustration.

Yet American history also offers reasons for optimism. The United States has repeatedly adapted to profound economic and technological change, emerging from depressions, financial crises, world wars, and periods of political division by reforming its institutions rather than abandoning them. Its greatest strengths have always been its capacity to innovate, attract talent, and adapt while preserving the principles that made its success possible.

The Center Lost Its Edge

Political earthquakes usually start when large numbers of people conclude that the old way of governing no longer works for them. That is the story unfolding across much of the Western world today.

Voters are abandoning familiar political parties, not because they have all embraced the same ideology, but because many have lost confidence that the political center still knows how to solve their problems.

The evidence stretches far beyond the United States. Center-left parties have struggled in countries across Europe, while populist movements on both the left and the right have gained ground. In Britain, Labour has sought to redefine itself after years of internal conflict. In France and Germany, traditional governing parties have watched support drift toward political outsiders.

Although each country’s politics are different, the underlying frustration sounds remarkably similar. Many voters believe the institutions that once promised greater opportunity have become more interested in preserving themselves than reforming the system.

This represents a profound reversal. Liberal democracy rose to prominence by challenging entrenched privilege. It fought hereditary power, defended free speech, promoted open markets and argued that talent should matter more than family background. For generations, it presented itself as the force that opened closed doors.

Today, many citizens see housing becoming less affordable despite years of economic growth. They see industries dominated by a handful of giant companies. They see universities, government agencies and large corporations speaking the language of opportunity while appearing increasingly inaccessible to ordinary people. Whether these perceptions are always fair is almost beside the point. In politics, perceptions often become reality.

That helps explain why political movements with very different philosophies have found common ground in one respect. Democratic socialists promise to confront concentrated economic power through a more active state. Right-wing populists promise to confront political, cultural and bureaucratic elites through nationalism and institutional disruption. They disagree on nearly everything except their diagnosis that the existing order has become too comfortable with itself.

Voters increasingly want evidence that leaders are willing to challenge powerful interests, even when those interests sit inside institutions traditionally associated with their own side. Defending the status quo is becoming a difficult political strategy at a time when many people believe the status quo is producing fewer opportunities and greater insecurity.

The future of liberal democracy may therefore depend less on moving left or right than on recovering its original purpose. That means encouraging genuine competition instead of protecting dominant firms, expanding opportunity instead of defending barriers, and measuring success by whether ordinary people believe the system is becoming more open rather than more exclusive.

History suggests that political movements survive by adapting to changing realities without abandoning their core principles. If the center rediscovers the confidence to challenge concentrations of power instead of merely administering them, it could once again become a force for reform. If it cannot, voters will keep looking elsewhere.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide, offering timely analysis between the magazine’s main editions when important stories are still unfolding. Paid subscribers receive full access to Between Editions, every edition of The Rising Tide, and our sister online magazine, Barber’s Mexico Business Report. Your support helps fund journalism focused on understanding what is changing, and why it matters.

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American presidents have for generations understood that public trust depended on more than obeying the law. They also tried to avoid business ties that could leave voters wondering whether private profit might compete with the national interest.

That standard gave the public a clear expectation that the president would remove obvious conflicts before they became a problem.

Donald Trump has continued to benefit from an international business empire while serving in office, arguing that legitimate business remains legitimate business even when the owner is president. His supporters see no reason he should give up profitable ventures, while critics argue that the presidency carries a higher burden because public confidence can be damaged even without proof of wrongdoing.

Financial disclosure forms released in late June show that Base Group, a South Korean holding company with interests in construction and manufacturing, paid $2 million last year to Mr. Trump’s holding company. The filing described the payment as part of a “letter of intent” and a “nonrefundable development fee.” Base Group and the Trump Organization said the money was tied to plans for a golf resort that has not yet been publicly announced.

The deal attracted attention because Base Group’s relationship with the Trump family extends well beyond the proposed resort. Since 2017, one of its subsidiaries has imported Trump-branded wine into South Korea, and Eric Trump visited Seoul earlier this year for meetings with company executives and other business leaders.

Base Group is also the controlling shareholder of Korea Aluminium, a company that has been fighting U.S. trade penalties over certain aluminum exports. Together, those business ties turned what might have seemed like an ordinary development agreement into a broader debate over presidential ethics and conflicts of interest

There is no evidence that Mr. Trump or members of his family intervened in the trade case. The Trump Organization has likewise insisted that its agreement with Base Group is simply a legitimate business transaction unrelated to the Commerce Department's review of Korea Aluminium.

No one has shown that a favor was granted. The concern is that a president is receiving money from a foreign company whose wider business interests can be affected by decisions made by his own administration. That is exactly the kind of doubt earlier presidents usually tried to avoid.

Most ethics rules for presidents were not written because every officeholder was expected to act corruptly. They were written because the public should not have to guess whether personal financial interests are influencing official decisions. The goal was to protect confidence in the presidency before doubts could take hold.

George W. Bush sold his ownership stake in the Texas Rangers before seeking the White House. Ronald Reagan liquidated his stock holdings. Calvin Coolidge reportedly worried so much about avoiding conflicts that he did not even want to own a home. Their goal was not simply to obey the law. It was to remove situations that could leave the public questioning whose interests came first.

A Different Approach to the Presidency

Before entering office in 2017, the Trump Organization pledged that it would not pursue new foreign business while he served as president. That promise was abandoned before his second administration, allowing the company to continue signing international projects across Europe, the Middle East and Asia. The South Korean golf development is one example of that broader strategy rather than an isolated case.

Mr. Trump's latest financial disclosure shows just how broad those overseas business ties have become. His holding company reported receiving at least $125 million last year from foreign sources connected to projects in Britain, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Oman, the Philippines, Qatar, Romania, Saudi Arabia, South Korea, Turkey, Vietnam and the United Arab Emirates. Those payments represent only a small share of Trump’s overall income, but they demonstrate that foreign business remains an active part of his financial life while he occupies the Oval Office.

The White House argues that the criticism is misplaced because there is no evidence Mr. Trump's business interests have influenced government policy. White House spokesman Kush Desai told The New York Times, "There are no conflicts of interest, and the only special interest guiding the Trump administration's decision-making is the best interest of the American people."

The Trump Organization has likewise insisted that its agreement with Base Group is simply a legitimate business transaction unrelated to the Commerce Department's review of Korea Aluminium.

Critics argue that presidential ethics have never depended solely on proving misconduct after the fact. Their purpose has been to prevent situations like this, where private business interests and presidential responsibilities can appear to overlap. Once the public begins wondering whether those two worlds are colliding, confidence in government becomes harder to preserve, even if every decision was made honestly.

Barry Appleton, an international trade lawyer and professor at New York Law School, told The New York Times he has seen no evidence that Korea Aluminium received favorable treatment. Even so, he said the constitutional tradition has always favored avoiding situations that invite questions about a president’s motives.

“The Constitution was built on the presumption that presidents would always step away from any situation where there could be a sense of conflict,” Appleton said. “That gives faith to the public, so the public does not have to second guess if the president is acting in his financial self-interest. That is an open question here.”

Have Americans Lowered the Bar?

Former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and technology journalist Cara Swisher recently argued that the bigger story is not simply the growth of Mr. Trump’s business empire but the country’s growing tolerance for controversies that once would have dominated American politics.

In their view, years of nonstop political conflict have steadily lowered expectations about what Americans consider unacceptable in public office.

David Brooks, a staff writer with The Atlantic, made the same point during a discussion on PBS NewsHour. Reflecting on Watergate, Brooks noted that the 1972 break-in at Democratic Party headquarters and the cover-up that followed forced President Richard Nixon from office and sent more than a dozen people to prison. He argued that the public’s reaction today would likely be very different.

“It would be a one-day story today because you define deviance down,” Brooks said. “The standards for the entire country have been deteriorating because of what we’ve lived through over the last decade.”

His point was that years of political polarization and nonstop scandal have changed what many Americans consider shocking. Stories that once dominated the national conversation for months now disappear within days as attention shifts to the next controversy. If Brooks is right, the South Korean payment may matter less because of the dollars involved than because of what it reveals about changing public expectations.

Whether the president crossed an ethical line will remain a matter of political debate. The larger question is whether Americans still expect presidents to avoid what earlier generations considered obvious conflicts of interest, or whether that old standard has quietly slipped away.

If that expectation has changed, the South Korean payment may ultimately be remembered less for the money involved than for what it revealed about changing expectations of the presidency.

Between Editions is a free weekly feature of The Rising Tide, offering timely analysis between the magazine’s main editions when important stories are still unfolding. Paid subscribers receive full access to Between Editions, every edition of The Rising Tide, and our sister online magazine, Barber’s Mexico Business Report. Your support helps fund journalism focused on understanding what is changing, and why it matters.