We’ve been reporting from the US Capital over the past several weeks, hoping to document how Congress is responding to the authoritarian impulses of the Trump administration.
It has been fruitful, albeit chaotic. There have been colorful press conferences and illuminating back-and-forths with Republican legislators, but not in the way we expected.
Republicans, it seems, are happy to dispense with democracy, provided liberals go with it into the dustbin of history. In person they seem practically giddy, almost ebullient, and dangerously overconfident that abolishing liberalism is an end unto itself, regardless of the consequences.
And that might be their downfall—and ours.
During the press conferences we’ve attended, Republicans have reveled in massive federal job cuts and a possible tariff-induced recession. They’ve deflected serious concerns about data privacy and the dislocation of veterans from the federal workforce with puzzling confidence.
They have expressed few doubts about a feckless billionaire delving into Social Security data and IRS records with little apparent oversight.
Congressman Pete Sessions, co-chair of the Republican-led DOGE caucus, gave an elliptical answer on this very topic. When we asked if he could guarantee the safety of Americans’ personal information in light of reports that the DOGE team was underskilled and over-empowered, he deflected.
“The IRS failed that test, and has failed it for many, many years,” he responded obliquely.
Even on topics like economic growth, high-profile Republicans have acted confident about usually touchy subjects, like a possible recession. Congressman Tim Burchett embraced a tariff-induced downturn, proclaiming with confidence on the Capitol steps that there would be temporary pain from the fallout over Trump’s tariff ballet, but it would be limited to the wealthy.
“There is going to be some pain, but it’s going to be very, very short term,” he said with confidence.
Normally, all of these political third rails—a dour economy and massive federal job cuts—would be anathema to a party working to remain in power. Yet these controversial topics have been met with a collective shrug by MAGA apostles.
You could write off this behavior as the natural hubris of a newly elected majority. But that would be an understatement. Conservatives seemed buoyed by a different sort of political calculus—the kind that shrinks politics to a binary conception of power, us versus them, that is downright dangerous.
That’s because Republicans seem certain their sole enemy—and ongoing biggest political challenge—is excising liberalism from its traditional bastions, like the federal government and academia; not improving, not reforming, or even meeting the challenges of a changing world, but vanquishing their Democratic rivals. They’re giddy that Democrats and liberals have been silenced, obliterated, or otherwise marginalized.
That’s one of the reasons they seem unconcerned that the cuts have been indiscriminate and unlawful. Purging appears to be a priority. Chaos, the primary effect.
But all of this gloating ignores the reality of a world that is not so easily cowed. Conservatism may consider itself to be locked in an epic battle of left versus right, but the world is more complicated and nasty, and that might be a fatal miscalculation. The defeat of liberalism could be a pyrrhic conservative victory.
Consider that while the Trump administration has withdrawn aid and drastically cut funding for research at American universities, China has committed to even more funding for research.
As Trump has been deleting references to climate change and green energy, China is on the precipice of world domination in renewable energy. Sure, Republicans may wipe out the “Green New Scam,” as they call it. But how do we compete with China when cheaper and cleaner solar power drives an economy already constructed to overwhelm ours?
Trump has slowed immigration to a trickle, even as our falling birthrate indicates we need more people. The downturn occurs as the conservative Cato Institute touts that immigrants consume fewer welfare benefits than native-born Americans and have also been a key factor in America’s recent economic growth.
If the game were simply between these two teams, liberals and MAGA, the victory could be resounding. Universities will falter, the federal workforce will dissolve, and the power base of liberalism will wither.
But the world does not abide by this calculus. This will not be the win MAGA expects. The upcoming fight will, more accurately, be one of democracy versus autocracy, scientific truth versus disinformation, and a free market versus a command economy. Battles we might not be able to fight if the chaotic deconstruction of the federal government continues.
These are the spoils Republicans seek. The rest of the world awaits a weakened nation courtesy of the Republican obsession with liberalism.
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