President Trump and other Republicans have been struggling to land on any sort of uniform messaging as they seek, ahead of the midterms, to spin their recent legislative effort as making life more affordable for working class Americans when it has, in fact, largely done the opposite. This is, in part, because Trump has forced congressional Republicans to spend time tending to his election fraud delusions rather than using their trifecta to move legislation: he refused to sign a bipartisan bill aimed at increasing housing supply as he tried to force Republicans to pass the impassable-in-the-Senate SAVE Act, for example.
It’s also because they passed a massive bill last year that extended Trump’s 2017 tax cuts for the wealthy, and offset the cost of that extension by slashing multiple social safety net programs that low-income families and otherwise vulnerable Americans rely on to survive. Not exactly a winning message for the party at a time when Americans’ top issue is the cost of living.
But the party now seems to be coalescing around what its members appear to think will be an effective messaging platform to scare voters in the midterms: Democrats, and the policies they support, are actually communist.
Trump debuted that rhetorical hysteria at the Faith & Freedom Coalition’s annual Road to Majority Conference in Washington, D.C. in June, in the wake of the first wave of progressive victories in primary elections in New York and Colorado.
“They want to restart the war on Christians and churches. And, as you saw with the communists elected in New York City recently — they’re communists, they’re not social Democrats — they want to completely destroy the traditional American way of life,” he said.
White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt quickly followed suit, describing the progressive candidates running on a populist and affordability-focused platform as “radical marxist ideas that have never worked in the history of the world.” It’s spread across the party from there. Just yesterday, while trying to roll out the usual conspiracy theories, including baseless claims about election fraud in Detroit, Trump referred to the winning Democratic candidate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed, as “the Communist, who is not liked in Detroit.”
Now everybody’s on the bandwagon. Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) took it a step further during an interview with Newsmax Thursday, referring to Medicare for All as a “communist” proposal. Here’s a snippet of his remarks:
If you look at the type of people they’re nominating across the country, these are candidates that support what DSA supports, that supports Medicare for All, that supports socialist policies, that supports communist policies and Schumer has to get behind these individuals because this is a pick-up seat for Republicans in the Senate and so they have to unite behind whoever wins the primary, otherwise they’re basically giving up a seat in the United States Senate. But this is, again, great for Mike Rodgers and Republicans to showcase how far left the Democrats are nationwide in a Midwestern state like Michigan.
While programs like Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security are government programs that provide money and health care coverage for elderly, disabled, retired and low-income Americans, America’s social safety programs are paltry compared to social policies in other wealthy nations across Europe. The U.S. actually spends more on its social safety net programs than other countries because so much of our health care system is privatized. The pandemic in 2020 exposed the vast disparity between America’s social safety net and those in Europe where many nations take a cradle-to-grave approach to social services that provides additional stability during times of economic downturn.
A recent study published in The Conversation that examined how well the governments of 200 different countries and territories are meeting the human rights promises they’ve made found that the U.S. ranks below its peer nations on health and food:
Our data for the right to food in the U.S. spans 2015 to 2023. The U.S. food score fell slightly during that period, from 81.9% to 81.1%. This means that as the U.S. got wealthier, Americans got hungrier.
This score peaked in 2020, before the pandemic. Persistent inflation, rising housing costs and changes to the Supplemental Nutrition and Assistance Program led to declines.
Signs point to the share of Americans who have access to affordable and nutritious food declining further.
About 3.4 million people lost access to food assistance from September 2025 to June 2026, also due to cuts in Trump’s 2025 legislative package.
Which is all to say: America’s social safety net programs hardly qualify as “socialist” policies. Republicans may be doing Democrats a favor when they admit that they’re invested in demonizing and getting rid of these popular and necessary-for-many entitlement programs.
Take Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins remarks this week, when she openly celebrated the fact that some five million people have lost access to SNAP, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program her department oversees, thanks to sweeping cuts made to food stamps in the Big Beautiful Bill via work requirements.
“For those who love work and celebrate work and want people to work and not be on food stamps, it’s a pretty big win when we’ve moved 5 million people off food stamps, y’all,” she said.
Here’s What Else You Should Read From TPM Today
The New York Times reported last month on one instance in which the Trump admin admitted in court that it withheld grant $$ from blue states, explicitly for political reasons. Emine Yücel and Josh Kovensky have found many more: Trump Administration Has Repeatedly Confessed in Court to Withholding Money From Blue States
In this week’s edition of The Franchise, Khaya Himmelman writes on the DOJ’s decision to send election monitors to blue municipalities in Michigan during Tuesday night’s primary election. That hasn’t stopped Trump from spreading conspiracy theories about the vote count in those exact cities: DOJ Election Monitoring In Michigan Was Uneventful — But That Doesn’t Fit Trump’s Narrative
“The targeting of Anthony Fauci stands as a textbook case of retribution by the Trump administration using, in tandem with Republicans on Capitol Hill, what has become a well-worn and ruthless feedback loop that has ensnared other former officials and targets of the president’s ire,” David Kurtz writes in today’s Morning Memo: The Ruthless Persecution of Anthony Fauci Is the Story of Our Time
Yesterday’s Top Story
What I’m Reading
Justice Department’s $3 billion ‘BIDEN’ grants come with an immigration catch
‘Is she even allowed to be doing this?’: Inside a federal judge’s side gig running a PR firm
IRS worker’s group joins Jan. 6 ‘slush fund’ suit, seeking to block Trump audit carveout
This is 2026 not 1956, 1966 or even 1986. I don’t believe the red scare will work now as Trump is in power messing everything up. This won’t work much for voters under age 50.
Well, it’s time for D’s to remind people which party’s leader has been moving us toward state ownership of the means of production by taking stakes in various corporations.
And as for that “look at the people Democrats have been nominating” barb aimed at the so-called commies, let’s remind 'em about the various wife-beaters, adulterers, pedophiles, child-endangerers, nepo-babies, liars, criminals and scam artists Republicans have been nominating at all levels of government. It’s not so very difficult to come up with a list that’s much longer than their list.
One word not in today’s Republican dictionary. Altruism. Doing good for no gain is completely alien to them. They do not have the imagination to see the the actual gains, some long term that comes from that concept. There has to be an angle that usually results in money in their pocket.
“WORK IS THE ESSENCE OF SHIT”
Was written on the wall of the linen room I worked in of a Holiday Inn when I was 17
My job was to collect the linens from the maids, drag it back to my linen room. sort it. count in, then put it on a truck and drag it to another Holiday Inn 8 miles away, because this stupid motel didn’t have a laundry, and drag clean stuff back.
$2.35 an hour in 1977
Some odd goings on in the upper Midwest.
Washburn county in Wisconsin - their government systems are under cyber attack.
MSP airport shut down due to ATC system failure.