What Did the MAGAts Expect?

 

Jen Rubin's Columns

What Did Republicans Expect?

Republicans privately fret...but they empowered Trump

Jennifer Rubin

Mar 25, 2026

 

Republicans made a calculated bet that by indulging Donald Trump’s ill-conceived and cruel schemes (e.g., unleashing ICE on cities, tariffs, wars with Venezuela and Iran, slashing healthcare to pay for tax cuts for the rich), the country would somehow stumble through. They figured congressional Republicans would share in any successes but somehow avoid any blame when things (inevitably) went haywire. Politics rarely works out that way.

Through Trump’s Iran War, shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security, futile effort to pass a Jim Crow-style voter suppression act (the so-called SAVE Act), and inflation-aggravating tariff scheme, Republicans are discovering they are tied at the hip with Trump. Refusing to deviate from his dictates, they will bear the brunt of his serial failures.

Whether the Iran War ends this month or months from now, Republicans cannot escape responsibility for the massive expenditure of taxpayer dollars, loss of life, rise in energy costs, regional instability, and damage to alliances Trump has wrought. Congressional Republicans refused to invoke the War Powers Act — or even to conduct meaningful oversight hearings — and applauded a senseless, unconstitutional war. Now they seem prepared to rubber-stamp a preposterous demand for $200B more in war spending. Republicans will have no place to hide come November when voters come looking for politicians to blame.

The latest CBS/You Gov poll has nothing but horrendous news for the Iran war cheerleaders: 90 percent say the war will make gas prices higher in the short term, 58 percent over the long term; 63 percent predict it will weaken the economy (a plurality assume we will be in a recession); a plurality of 49 percent think the war makes us less safe; and 57 percent say the war is going badly. Some 62 percent disapprove of how Trump is handling the war. Perhaps Republicans should have fulfilled their constitutional obligations rather than contenting themselves with sitting on the sidelines.

Meanwhile, Trump’s web of lies about immigrants and voting fraud have entangled him and Republicans in a political knot. Trump’s lie about mass voting fraud drove him to insist on the unpassable voter suppression SAVE Act. He then made that a precondition for any deal to resume DHS funding. Even to Republicans, this made no sense.

When Senator John Thune (R-SD) initially recommended that Trump agree to Democrats’ proposal to pass a DHS funding bill that would pay for TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard (leaving ICE funding for later negotiations), Trump rebuffed him. By Monday night, however, Trump was considering a deal to do just that, namely to fund the rest of DHS and handle funding for ICE in reconciliation.

What happened between his refusal to relent on funding and his capitulation? Trump trotted out another senseless and entirely performative maneuver: deploying ICE to airports. ICE agents, untrained for any TSA duties, stood around with virtually nothing to do (reminding one of the National Guard deployed to D.C., who largely loiter around metro stations). This underscores Republicans’ responsibility for bollixing up air travel, Trump’s feebleness in resolving messes of his own making, and the dangerous transformation of ICE into a roving street militia Trump deploys to intimidate and harass Americans.

All the ICE/airport stunt accomplished was to trigger a robust blowback from Democrats and civil society groups, demonstrating once again Trump’s talent in supercharging the Resistance. Deploring Trump’s use of ICE as his “personal dystopian police force,” Public Citizen observed: “The confluence of authoritarian overreach of this moment is striking.” The ACLU likewise condemned using ICE at airports “despite their lack of training for airport security and interactions, and their clear track record of abusing their power, including through using excessive force against citizens and immigrants alike.” (Unsurprisingly, this venture, the ACLU noted, was the first time a president “sent armed ICE agents to airports to replace trained security agents and instill fear in families and other travelers.”)

Trump’s compounding calamities have fractured Republicans internally. Cultists demand perfect fidelity to Trump on the war abroad and bullying at home; others fret that a war betrays their America First ideology and the SAVE Act is a legislative cul-de-sac that now compounds the DHS shutdown disaster. (MAGA provocateur Sen. Mike Lee of Utah has become a chief enabler of Trump’s destructive schemes, “sparking a wave of mostly private animosity from GOP colleagues who believe his plan to push through legislation overhauling how federal elections are conducted is ill-conceived and potentially harmful to the party’s chances in the midterms,” Politico reports.)

Republicans fret privately that the Trump reign of chaos, coupled with the highly unpopular war, spells doom for them in November. One is tempted to ask about the private Republican hand-wringing:

What did Republicans think would happen when they fully empowered a delusional narcissist, one who is so clearly ignorant of government and keen to pursue his own wealth and power, the country be damned?

Some dim-witted MAGA Republicans remain true believers and actually think Trump’s antics will pay off. Others know Trump is nuts and recognize the party is headed for disaster, but lack the courage to say so. They are banking that they will survive the blue wave coming in November to fight another day. Their lack of patriotism may be galling, but their self-preservation strategy looks increasingly daft.

The damage Trump and his flunkies have inflicted on our democracy will reverberate for years to come. American families may take years to recover from the economic hits. It is a small consolation that MAGA lawmakers and right-wing media stooges, who have chosen the route of cowardly compliance over constitutional duty and self-serving propaganda over truth-telling, will shoulder much of the blame. History in the long run and voters in the near term will hold Republicans fully accountable for the blunders they countenanced.

OLIVIA OF TROYE

 

They Tried to Silence Me. They Failed.

Today, the court dismissed the case against me, with prejudice. The truth held.

Olivia of Troye

Mar 25, 2026

⚖️ We Won.

Today, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia dismissed Richard Grenell’s lawsuit against me, with prejudice.

After everything—the amended complaint, the escalation, the pressure, the cost, and years of dealing with this—the case is over.

I want to be very clear about what this was. This lawsuit wasn’t about justice. It wasn’t about truth.

This was about intimidation.
About trying to break me—financially, professionally, and personally. About sending a message: if you speak out, we will come after you.

They wanted me to settle. They wanted me to say I lied. I did not lie. And I refused to say something that wasn’t true just to make it go away.

Today, the court confirmed what I have said all along: there was no viable claim here.

Back in August 2025, when this lawsuit was refiled, I wrote about exactly what this was: an attempt to intimidate, to drag this out, and to make speaking the truth as costly as possible. Nothing about that assessment has changed, except now we have the court’s ruling to prove it. If you want to understand what this fight looked like in real time, you can read that piece HERE.

This fight has been exhausting.
It has been expensive.
And at times, it has been incredibly lonely.

But I stayed in it because I knew the stakes weren’t just about me.

This is what lawfare looks like. It’s not always about winning in court. It’s about dragging someone through the process long enough to wear them down, to isolate them, to make them think it’s not worth it to ever speak again.

That’s why I refuse to stop standing by others who’ve been targeted the same way. Because I know exactly what it feels like, and I know how important it is that we don’t let this tactic work.

I also want to take a moment to thank my attorneys, Mark S. Zaid, P.C., who himself has been targeted by the Trump administration, and Tom Craig, for standing with me, for believing in this case, and for fighting it with integrity and resolve.

To those of you who stood by me—who read, shared, supported, and reached out—thank you. Truly. You made a difference more than you know.

And to anyone watching this, wondering whether it’s worth it to speak up:

They may try to break you.
They may try to silence you.

But the truth still matters.
And today, it held.

I’m still here. And I’m not going anywhere.
We’re in this together, and I will never back down.

In solidarity,
Olivia

JOYCE VANCE

 

Civil Discourse with Joyce Vance

The End of the Poll Tax

Joyce Vance

Mar 24, 2026

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Today marks the 60th anniversary of the official demise of the poll tax at the hands of the Supreme Court of the United States. On March 24, 1966, the Court banned their use in state and local elections in Harper v. Virginia Bd. of Elections. The Court held that “wealth or fee paying has . . . no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.”

 

Harper was necessary because there was a loophole in the 24th Amendment, which had been ratified two years earlier. The Amendment abolished poll taxes in federal elections, but failed to address state and local ones. The Court slammed the door shut on any notion that states could discriminate against voters’ fundamental rights when the federal government was forbidden to do so.

“Undoubtedly, the right of suffrage is a fundamental matter in a free and democratic society. Especially since the right to exercise the franchise in a free and unimpaired manner is preservative of other basic civil and political rights, any alleged infringement of the right of citizens to vote must be carefully and meticulously scrutinized."

Today’s Harper anniversary is ironic, with Donald Trump pushing the SAVE Act and Senate Republicans considering it, although it seems to be foundering. The Act, which would require voters to prove they are citizens, functions like a poll tax. Voters would need passports or other forms of identification that are expensive to obtain in order to exercise their right to vote. Additional costs would be borne by certain voters, like married women, whose current name doesn’t match the one on their birth certificate.

It’s clear Republicans understand what the SAVE Act is about: it’s not preventing non-citizens from voting, because that’s not a real problem. It’s about maintaining Republican control despite what the voters want.

 

Harper: “To introduce wealth or payment of a fee as a measure of a voter's qualifications is to introduce a capricious or irrelevant factor. The degree of the discrimination is irrelevant. In this context -- that is, as a condition of obtaining a ballot -- the requirement of fee paying causes an "invidious" discrimination…that runs afoul of the Equal Protection Clause.”

Today, Democracy Docket reported that Texas Republican Chip Roy, one of the leading proponents of the SAVE Act in the House of Representatives, and someone who has repeatedly dismissed “concerns that millions of Americans would face unnecessary barriers while registering to vote if the draconian bill became law,” took a different view in private.

In a video obtained by independent media organization Call to Activism, Roy discusses how difficult it was for one of his employees, a woman, to obtain the identification she needed to get a REAL ID, which is similar to what the SAVE Act requires. In the recording, Roy says, “So, she had to go through a bunch of hoops. She’s gonna have to go back to the DMV twice because they want the paperwork. That’s just part of the issue with how we try to set up the ability to identify people.”

This March 13 exchange between Senators Cornyn and Durbin is illustrative:

·        Senator Cornyn: I don't understand how the SAVE Act could disenfranchise millions of Americans.

 

·        Senator Durbin: You have to present identification, but your driver’s license is not acceptable. 50% of Americans do not have a passport. Those who want to obtain it so they can vote will pay $186

 

The Court in Harper: “In a recent searching reexamination of the Equal Protection Clause, we held, as already noted, that ‘the opportunity for equal participation by all voters in the election of state legislators’ is required…We decline to qualify that principle by sustaining this poll tax. Our conclusion, like that, in Reynolds v. Sims, is founded not on what we think governmental policy should be, but on what the Equal Protection Clause requires.”

We shouldn’t have to “go through a bunch of hoops” to exercise a fundamental right. Republicans know exactly what they’re doing with the SAVE Act and other measures designed to make it more difficult for Americans to vote.

The Court concluded Harper like this: “[T]o repeat, wealth or fee paying has, in our view, no relation to voting qualifications; the right to vote is too precious, too fundamental to be so burdened or conditioned.”

We’re in this together,

Joyce