In this episode of the Politics in Question podcast, the team discusses what American politics will look like in 2022 from Congress to the upcoming midterm elections.
Podcast: What will American politics look like in 2022?
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U.S. forces patrol the Arabian Sea near M/V Touska on April 20, 2026, after firing upon the Iranian-flagged vessel that the U.S. accused of attempting to violate the U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports near the Strait of Hormuz.
(U.S. Navy/Getty Images/TNS)
The Iran war could shape American policy for decades
Jul 17, 2026
The war with Iran that never really ended is back on. Like everybody else, including the Trump administration and the Iranian regime, I have no idea how it will end. But it eventually will, and how it will be remembered will matter enormously.
Politics is about many things, but whether you call it “spin,” “framing” or “narrative competition,” storytelling is never far from the heart of it. As the philosopher Richard Rorty observed, “Competition for political leadership is in part a competition between differing stories about a nation’s self-identity, and between differing symbols of its greatness.”
Sometimes the story itself is the point, like the recent clashes over the American founding — 1619 vs. 1776 — and sometimes the story is a means to some other political end, like winning an election or passing controversial legislation. If people believe the spin that elections are routinely stolen thanks to votes by illegal immigrants, then passing the SAVE Act makes sense. If they don’t believe that story — perhaps because it’s not true — but do believe that the bill is another chapter in the story of President Trump’s goal of undermining confidence in elections, then passing it doesn’t make sense.
Very often the story is more lastingly important than the facts.
Take the New Deal. Save for the Founding and the Civil War, I’m hard-pressed to think of a story that shaped American politics more. The modern Democratic Party was defined by it. And in many ways, so was the GOP.
For decades, the reigning view was that President Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal was a huge success. To deny this was — and often still is — dismissed as nuttery. According to legend, the New Deal unified the country, defeated the Great Depression and proved that politicians and experts could plan the economy for the benefit of all Americans. Hence the unceasing progressive quest for a “new New Deal.”
This story has facts in its favor. It also has facts heavily weighted against it. The economy didn’t really recover until well after the New Deal was over. The 1930s was no period of “we’re all in together” unity. Instead it was a time of significant domestic upheaval: the Harlem Riots and labor unrest — “the Uprising of 1934” alone was one the largest industrial strikes in American history — and hundreds of unemployment protests.
Nor was the New Deal a coherent, uniformly successful plan. FDR made stuff up as he went.
“To look upon these programs as the result of a unified plan,” wrote Raymond Moley, FDR’s right-hand man during much of the New Deal, “was to believe that the accumulation of stuffed snakes, baseball pictures, school flags, old tennis shoes, carpenter’s tools, geometry books, and chemistry sets in a boy’s bedroom could have been put there by an interior decorator.”
In 1940, when Alvin Hansen, an economic adviser to FDR, was asked if the principle of the New Deal was “economically sound,” Hansen replied, “I really do not know what the basic principle of the New Deal is.”
My aim isn’t to relitigate a very lost cause, but simply to note that the triumphant narrative of the New Deal swamped all others, and shaped domestic politics and policy for generations.
Which brings me, finally, to the war. I think it’s obvious that once Trump realized his little war in Iran wasn’t going to repeat the “success” of his little war in Venezuela, he had no idea or plan for what to do next. He’s been improvising ever since. His strategy looks more like the boy’s messy bedroom Moley described than a successful work of interior design.
But what if the war ends successfully? A lot of the president’s critics assume that’s impossible. They shouldn’t. It’s true that Trump misread the Iranians, but that doesn’t mean the Iranians aren’t misreading Trump. Indeed, hostilities resumed last week precisely because the Iranians got greedy, launching fresh attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.
The Iranian regime could still fall. Europe, fed up with the chaos and disruption, could get over its well-earned frustration with Trump and join the fray, helping to secure the strait. I’m not saying this is likely, just that it is quite possible.
What then? You can be sure people will have very different stories to tell about this war. Many opponents of “forever wars,” on the left and right, will still pronounce it a failure no matter what. Some supporters will argue that Trump merely lucked out. Many others will claim this was the “chess master’s” plan all along.
Some story will prevail, and that story — accurate or not — will shape American foreign policy for years to come.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
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U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House on July 14, 2026 in Washington, DC.
(Photo by Andrew Harnik/Getty Images)
Trump’s Defense of ICE Traffic Stops Shows a President Willing to Risk Lives for Politics
Jul 16, 2026
President Donald Trump blasted ICE’s decision to suspend most vehicle stops after agents fatally shot two men just six days apart in Texas and Maine, declaring on his social media site: “We CANNOT give up one of ICE’s most important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC STOP!” His response made the stakes unmistakably clear. Instead of acknowledging the loss of life or the urgent need for accountability, Trump rushed to defend the very tactic that produced these deadly encounters. Once again, he signaled that the wellbeing of people — immigrants or citizens — matters far less to him than protecting his political agenda.
Trump’s posture toward ICE has always been rooted in escalation. He has framed undocumented immigrants as threats, encouraged aggressive enforcement, and rewarded secrecy over transparency. The consequences of that approach are now visible in a series of fatal encounters that reveal an agency operating without meaningful oversight.
The two most recent ICE killings — one in Biddeford, Maine, the other in Houston, Texas — are not isolated tragedies. They are flashing red sirens warning that a federal agency armed with guns and legal authority is functioning without basic safeguards. In Maine, agents shot and killed 26‑year‑old Colombian national Johann Sebastian Guerrero during a traffic stop; in Houston, they killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, a Mexican man driving to work. In both cases, agents wore no body cameras, offered conflicting accounts, and left families — and the public — with nothing but their word. When an agency can take a life and leave behind no evidence, that is not law enforcement. That is impunity — the predictable outcome of a political climate that has spent years dehumanizing undocumented immigrants.
The Maine shooting is even more alarming because Guerrero was not the person ICE intended to arrest. Sen. Angus King said ICE briefed him that Guerrero — identified by community groups as a 26‑year‑old Colombian national — was mistakenly targeted. King also confirmed that agents were not wearing body cameras, leaving investigators and the public with no independent record of what happened. A man who was never wanted by ICE ended up dead, with no video, no transparency, and no accountability — a stark reminder of how dangerously opaque and error‑prone the agency’s enforcement practices have become.
The Houston killing reveals the same pattern. Salgado Araujo, a Mexican national on his way to work, was shot and killed by ICE agents who claim he tried to ram an officer with his car — a narrative his family strongly disputes. As in Maine, ICE officers were not wearing body cameras, leaving no independent evidence of what occurred and no way to verify the government’s account. The absence of video forces the public to rely solely on ICE’s version of events, eroding trust and underscoring how easily deadly force can be used without scrutiny.
Earlier this year, the Minnesota shootings showed how deeply ICE’s lack of transparency has damaged public confidence. Renee Good, a 37‑year‑old mother of three, and Alex Pretti, a 37‑year‑old ICU nurse, were both killed by federal officers during January protests against an immigration enforcement surge in Minneapolis. State investigators say ICE withheld key evidence for months, including body‑camera footage that should have been turned over immediately. That delay stalled the investigation and left families in limbo, forced to grieve without answers while federal officials controlled the narrative. The Minnesota cases reveal the same pattern seen in Maine and Houston: deadly force, disputed accounts, and an agency that treats transparency as optional — even when lives are lost.
Illinois offers yet another example. In Franklin Park, an ICE agent fatally shot Silverio Villegas González during a 2025 enforcement operation, later telling investigators his injuries were “nothing major” — a detail that sharply undercuts ICE’s claim that deadly force was necessary to protect officers from serious harm. ICE also delayed the release of key records, mirroring the same secrecy and stonewalling seen in Minnesota, Maine, and Houston. When an agent can kill someone and then describe his own injuries as minor, it raises fundamental questions about whether deadly force was justified at all — and exposes how ICE’s internal accounts often collapse under scrutiny.
Taken together, these cases show a consistent pattern: an agency emboldened by political rhetoric that casts immigrants as threats and protected by a system that rewards secrecy over accountability. Trump’s repeated portrayal of undocumented people as “invaders” and “poison” has not only dehumanized millions — it has created the political permission structure in which ICE’s most extreme actions are tolerated, excused, or ignored. When leaders strip people of their humanity, agencies feel licensed to strip them of their rights.
ICE’s impunity is not accidental; it is structural. The agency operates inside a deportation‑industrial complex where private prison corporations like CoreCivic and GEO Group profit from detention, lobby for harsher enforcement, and thrive under weak oversight. Their business model depends on opacity, and ICE’s enforcement practices — shrouded in secrecy, resistant to scrutiny — help keep that model alive.
This profit motive flourishes in a political climate shaped by Trump’s dehumanizing language. When people are labeled “animals,” “invaders,” or “poison,” violence becomes easier to justify, secrecy becomes easier to defend, and detention becomes a business opportunity. When agencies operate in the dark, violence becomes easier to hide. When corporations profit from detention, violence becomes part of the business model.
The killings across the country demand more than outrage — they demand a national reckoning with an agency allowed to operate outside democratic norms. ICE must be required to wear body cameras during all enforcement operations, ban face coverings that obscure identity, release incident footage within a defined timeframe, end contracts with private detention companies, and submit to independent oversight with real investigative power. These are not radical demands — they are the bare minimum for any agency that carries weapons, conducts raids, and makes life‑and‑death decisions in our communities.
As a journalist and advocate for equitable civic information, I have spent years listening to immigrant families who live with the daily fear of ICE. Their stories are not abstractions. They are parents who worry about being taken from their children, workers who fear being targeted at job sites, students who wonder whether their school will be next. They see agents arrive in masks, without cameras or accountability.
The deaths of people at the hands of the Trump administration are warnings we cannot afford to ignore. ICE’s current model is unsustainable, unsafe, and incompatible with democratic values. If we fail to act, more families will suffer the same fate as the loved ones of Johann Sebastian Guerrero, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Renee Goode, Alex Pretti, and Silverio Villegas González.
Trump’s refusal to confront ICE’s deadly pattern is not just a policy failure. It is a moral one. And it is costing lives.
The question now is not whether ICE needs reform. It is whether the country is willing to confront a president who treats human suffering as collateral damage in the service of his political ambitions. The families of those killed by ICE are watching. Immigrant communities are watching. The nation is watching.
And history will remember who chose silence — and who demanded accountability.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of The Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network, and twice president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists
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George Washington warned against partisan division. This opinion piece explores election reform, congressional dysfunction, and rebuilding trust in American democracy.
Malte Mueller/Getty Images
Washington Warned Us — Now America Must Renew Its Democracy
Jul 16, 2026
When George Washington left office in 1796, he did not simply say farewell. He issued a warning.
In his Farewell Address, Washington cautioned against what he called "the baneful effects of the spirit of party" — the instinct toward political tribalism that, he feared, would one day consume the republic he had helped build. He warned that partisan division would render our governing system dysfunctional, eroding public faith in government, and ultimately threatening the democratic experiment itself.
Two hundred and fifty years into that experiment, it is worth pausing to ask: how are we doing?
The honest answer is that Washington's nightmare is at least partially upon us. Eighty-six percent of Americans say they are exhausted by our divisions. Faith in institutions has fallen to historic lows — Congress hovers near a 15 percent approval rating, barely above "friends and family" support levels. Can we blame people? Faith follows function, and Congress has not passed a federal budget on time since the 1990s. Government shutdowns have grown longer and more frequent.
But this is not a story about bad people. It is a story about bad incentives.
Over decades, partisan actors have engineered an electoral system that rewards division and punishes cooperation. In most states, taxpayer-funded primaries sort citizens into partisan camps before a single vote is cast. Plurality-winner rules allow candidates to win without earning majority support. Partisan legislators draw the very maps that determine their own electoral fates. The result: only about 8 percent of voters effectively determine the outcomes of 90 percent of congressional races — and those voters tend to be the most intensely partisan. Politicians adapt rationally to the system in front of them. If vitriol is rewarded and cooperation is punished, division becomes a survival strategy. We let highly partisan figures serve as referees in our elections, with predictable results.
We have coded dysfunction into the DNA of our democracy. The good news is that we can code it out.
Reform, after all, is not radical. It is tradition. Secret ballot voting did not become widespread until the late 1800s. Statewide direct primaries were first adopted in Wisconsin in 1904. Women's suffrage was not guaranteed until 1920. Arizona established an independent redistricting commission in 2001. Alaska overhauled its entire election system as recently as 2022. The history of American democracy is a story of continuous renewal, not static acceptance.
For America’s 250th birthday, we need to restore public faith by seriously revising our political institutions for our time.
So, what would renewal look like today? Here is a starting agenda from a recovering politician — a set of structural repairs that would make our governing system more functional and more worthy of public faith:
Fix Electoral Incentives
Nonpartisan primaries open to all voters: Replace taxpayer-funded party primaries with unified primaries in which all candidates compete together, and the top vote-getters advance to the general election, regardless of party. Alaska did it. More states should follow.
Majority-winner election rules: Use instant runoff voting, so that the winner must earn majority support — not just plurality backing from a narrow partisan base. Candidates who must build broad coalitions govern more cooperatively once in office.
Independent redistricting commissions: Take map-drawing out of the hands of partisan legislators and give it to independent bodies whose mandate is representation, not safe seats. Several states have moved in this direction. This should be a federal standard.
Fix Incentives Inside Congress
No Budget, No Fundraising: Members of Congress should not be permitted to hold campaign fundraisers until the federal budget is passed and funded. The American people pay for Congress to govern. That obligation should come before political campaigns. This single rule change would end government shutdowns. It could also restore some public faith in having a moment to govern free of the influence of donors.
Fix Runaway Campaign Cash
An arms-control-style compact among major donors to partisan campaigns: The goal would be mutual reductions in contributions for divisive campaign advertising — with half the savings redirected to charitable activities that actually help American communities. The logic is the same as in nuclear arms control: neither side gains a strategic advantage from the reduction, and both countries benefit from the de-escalation. If we can negotiate treaties to reduce weapons of mass destruction, surely we can negotiate to reduce campaign spending, and who would miss the extra negative ads?
Washington's warning was not a counsel of despair. It was a challenge — issued not to politicians alone, but to citizens. He said it was "the interest and duty of a wise people" to restrain the partisan spirit and preserve our democracy. That duty falls to us now.
We owe it to the country we love — on this 250th anniversary — to repair the parts that need repair. To set our politics up for success instead of division. To inspire the rising generation to carry forward the vital project of democracy for generations to come.
The American democratic experiment has survived civil war, the Great Depression, and profound transformation. It has done so not by clinging to the status quo, but by doing the hard, hopeful work of renewal. That is who we are. That is what this moment calls for.
Glenn Nye is the President and CEO of the Center for the Study of the Presidency and Congress.
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woman with US American flag on her shoulders
Photo by Josh Johnson on Unsplash
A Love Letter to All Americans
Jul 16, 2026
My fellow American,
You may feel weary right now about the condition of our country.
So many of us feel exhausted, worn out, riddled with uncertainty, and worried about how we can get out of the mess we’re in. We are disgusted by the division and acrimony, the finger-pointing, and the endless partisanship that dangerously envelops our public lives and is tearing apart our very nation.
If you feel this way, you’re not alone.
As you know, I’ve been traveling the country to speak out about where we are and how we can move forward—together. Wherever I go, people from all walks of life and all political persuasions feel as I suspect you do: We can do better and be better—as individuals, as communities, and as a nation.
If you’re like me, you love this country. Honestly, I love it deeply. I know that’s not always a popular thing to say nowadays.
Yet in marking another July 4th—which was the 250th anniversary of our nation—it can be hard to express such love. Such is the nature of love, right? In all parts of our lives, love is often filled not only with joy, but with ambivalence, conflicting feelings, and even anger. It can make celebrations of our love for others—and for this nation—tenuous, difficult, even foul.
So, what does it mean to love America today?
For me, I think about what “patriotism”—and being a patriot—means. It isn’t about holding a blind allegiance to the country, wrapping ourselves in the flag, and using it as a weapon to denigrate, diminish, or even decimate those who look different from us or hold different views. I flatly reject such patriotism. I believe we all must.
Nor do I subscribe to a view that relentlessly trashes America, a view that is blind in its own ways to the good and goodness that exists throughout our nation, one that believes we must tear down the country in order to rebuild it. This patriotism is a dead end.
Instead, I urge us to embrace—indeed, to enact—a “patriotism of devotion.” Such patriotism is rooted in a deep affection for the nation—a love of the nation—that is so deep that you choose to stick with it through thick and thin, especially when you do not like what it is becoming or the direction it is going.
A patriotism of devotion beckons us to step forward, turn outward toward one another, and get to work—together. In this kind of patriotism, we see ourselves as builders, partners, and creators—even re-creators—in a shared American project where each of us matters, each of us has something to contribute, and each of us is afforded the dignity we deserve.
Retreating, surrendering, or giving up cannot be the answer, even though there may be days when you may feel like doing so. I get it. We all have such days.
Indeed, I am not asking you to pretend that you don’t hold certain feelings amid July 4th and the 250th anniversary of our nation. Nor am I suggesting you should somehow set aside, even suppress, your feelings. They’re yours; you have them. Let’s face it, many of us do.
Rather, I am writing to ask of you something basic but that, amid the current chaos, may feel seemingly out of reach. It is this: We must recommit to building together—or perhaps rebuild the very civic culture of our communities, this nation, and our common lives, so that we might better move toward our shared desire for a more perfect union, amid the real challenges we face.
This should be our American ambition today. To rebuild our country, starting in our local communities. Brick by brick. Block by block. Neighborhood by neighborhood.
We can do this. But we must go together.
Rich Harwood is the president and founder of The Harwood Institute.
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