How Trump has paved the way for new GOP policy fights: From the Politics Desk

Welcome to the online version of From the Politics Desk, an evening newsletter that brings you the NBC News Politics team’s latest reporting and analysis from the White House, Capitol Hill and the campaign trail.

In today’s edition, Jonathan Allen explores how the major policy fights in Washington are happening within the Republican Party. Plus, after we noted yesterday that outspoken progressives are seeing an influx of campaign cash, Natasha Korecki and Bridget Bowman dive further into how the anti-Trump 2.0 resistance is starting to find its footing. 

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— Adam Wollner

How Trump has paved the way for new GOP policy fights

By Jonathan Allen

As they stare into the abyss of rising national debt, Republicans are starting to talk about the possibility of raising taxes on the wealthy.  

Yes, you read that right, and NBC News’ Sahil Kapur and Peter Nicholas have the reporting to back it up. 

Since the days of George H.W. Bush’s breaking his “read my lips” promise, Republicans have run for the hills any time a tax hike is mentioned. Now, that option is part of a sprawling, animated and consequential set of policy fights between the ascendent populist wing of the GOP and the grasping-for-relevance old guard conservatives.

What happened? President Donald Trump. His eagerness to take both sides on certain issues — sometimes in a single sentence — allows him to maintain the dominant voice on public policy and makes it harder for his adversaries to pin him down. In his second term, fellow Republicans are starting to adjust. 

As long as they support him in the end, they are freer to take positions against one another — and party orthodoxy — before he makes a final call.

It’s not just on domestic taxes. Trump’s on-again, off-again tariffs may be a threat to the economy and his long-term political success. But in the interim, they have upset traditional Washington partisan paradigms and blocked out coverage of other issues.

While progressives Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hold rallies across the country, bringing tens of thousands of people to rallies that accuse Trump of selling out the working class to line the pockets of the wealthiest people in the country, the MAGA wing of the GOP is rhetorically — and in some cases on a policy level — arguing for a stick-it-to-the-rich agenda. 

The dynamic is still nascent, but it’s somewhat reminiscent of the mid-20th century era of Democratic dominance in Congress — when a party that was on both sides of civil rights, both sides of foreign policy and both sides of the distribution of benefits held all the power and had all the energy in policymaking. 

The cart, of course, should not be put before the horse. There are plenty of reasons to think that the GOP won’t actually increase the tax burden on the wealthiest. After all, Trump is in the process of gutting the IRS, which already under-collects hundreds of billions of dollars in owed taxes, mostly from the rich.

But for now, at least, the Trump model of triangulating against himself — and of fellow Republicans’ following suit — is making it even harder for the Democratic minority to lock on a target and define its own agenda.

Democrats draw on renewed energy in the fight against Trump

By Natasha Korecki and Bridget Bowman

In the red state of Montana on Wednesday, a crowd swelled for two political stars of the left, Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., who vowed to “fight oligarchy” in President Donald Trump’s administration.  

That night, Rep. Nikki Budzinski, D-Ill., had her largest-ever town hall crowd, with many people wanting to know how Democrats were pushing back. 

And hours later, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., traveled to El Salvador to bring attention to a case at the center of the party’s arguments that Trump’s immigration policies have gone beyond existing law and court orders.

Those events of the last 24 hours point to a similar phenomenon: In ways big and small, the second-term resistance to Trump is growing stronger and bolder.

The pushback is from not just politicians but also some of the powerful institutions that have come under attack by the administration. They include Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Princeton, all of which refused to yield to a list of Trump demands that would overhaul hiring, disciplinary and other practices in the face of billions of dollars in federal funding freezes. 

While it is far from a full-fledged revolt, more of those being targeted by Trump’s policies are putting up a fight now, compared with the universities, law firms and even Democratic politicians who bent his way in the first weeks and months of his term. Yet amid the bursts of resistance is a steady flow of appeasement by some of the country’s most powerful institutions, such as major law firms that have struck deals with the White House — including five more last week — to collectively provide hundreds of millions of dollars in free legal work.

Meanwhile, Democrats are trying to harness anti-Trump energy as the party regroups from 2024 and refocuses on next year’s midterm elections. But that could get complicated, as some of that anxiety is aimed at Democratic leaders.

Read more from Natasha and Bridget →

That’s all From the Politics Desk for now. Today’s newsletter was compiled by Adam Wollner.

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