As election day nears, the Let's Find Common Ground podcast speaks with two members of Congress, one Republican and one Democrat, who are reaching across rigid partisan divides, recognizing the value of compromise and seeking constructive change.
U.S. President Donald Trump alights from Air Force One upon arrival at Haneda Airport in Tokyo on Oct. 27, 2025.
Believe him.
Almost a year ago to the day, The New York Times ran a special editorial just before Donald Trump would win the presidency again.
They used a full page to print out in giant, boldface, all-caps the following missive:
“Donald Trump says he will prosecute his enemies, order mass deportations, use soldiers against citizens, abandon allies, and play politics with disasters. Believe him.”
It was good advice, as we know a lot of what he was promising to do has already happened.
We saw much of it outlined in Project 2025, a blueprint published by the conservative Heritage Foundation, to reshape the federal government and consolidate executive power around Trump.
Despite denying any involvement in the project, Trump has seemingly used it as a literal roadmap to help avoid the parts of his first administration where he was thwarted by pesky inconveniences like the Constitution, the law, and separation of powers.
A community-driven Project 2025 tracker found that of the 319 objectives outlined in the initiative, Trump’s already made good on 121, including using government contracts to “push back against woke policies” in corporate America, rescinding Biden-era Title IX rules that strengthened the ability to prosecute sexual assault and discrimination cases, and turning back former Attorney General Merrick Garland’s policy that limited DOJ’s ability to subpoena journalists during leak investigations, to name just a few.
But he also blatantly told Americans what he was going to do at his rallies. These weren’t empty threats. They weren’t trial balloons so he could poll-test their popularity. They were promises.
One in particular seems to be motivating many of his decisions: “I will be your retribution.”
Just five days after the Times editorial was published, Trump sued CBS News for its interview of former Vice President Kamala Harris. A month after he won reelection he sued the Des Moines Register over a poll he didn’t like.
He’s already prosecuted former FBI Director James Comey, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former National Security Advisor John Bolton. He’s actively investigating other critics, including Sen. Adam Schiff, former Special Counsel Jack Smith, and former DHS official Miles Taylor.
And as we’ve all seen, he’s ordered mass deportations. He’s used soldiers against U.S. citizens. He’s abandoned allies. He’s played politics with disasters.
And yet, there are still apparently people who think he’s bluffing when he says he’d run for a third term.
Trump’s been teasing the idea for months. He makes it sound a little like he’s joking, but we’ve seen this movie before. He “joked” about not leaving the White House in 2020, too — and we all know what happened on Jan. 6. It’s always just a joke, until it isn’t.
Speaker Mike Johnson, ever Trump’s loyal lackey, has laughed it off as mere “trolling,” and has said he’s talked to the president about the constitutional constrictions of such a move — as if that’s ever been a compelling consideration for Trump.
Former Ohio governor and former presidential candidate John Kasich also brushed it off on MSNBC:
“No! Listen, have we had any states try to move to call a convention to change the amendment? Have we had any Republican governors do that? They’re not even going to answer a question like that because it’s not going to happen.”
Oh, the hubris. Trump has broken every norm, and he’s already violated the Constitution dozens of times. Anyone who believes Trump lives within existing boundaries, either of legality or decency, hasn’t been paying attention.
And counter to Kasich’s beliefs, Trump’s already got accomplices in both chambers of Congress willing to help him.
Rep. Randy Fine called for repealing the 22nd Amendment, which limits presidential terms to two, earlier this month.
Sen. Tommy Tuberville says it’s Trump’s call to make:
“If you read the Constitution, it says it’s not [possible],” said Tuberville. “But if [Trump] says he has some different circumstances that might be able to go around the Constitution, but that’s up to him.”
This isn’t a troll or a joke. Just listen to Steve Bannon, the architect of Trump’s first campaign:
“Well, he’s going to get a third term. So, Trump ’28. Trump is going to be president in ’28 and people ought to just get accommodated with that. There’s many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we’ll lay out what the plan is.”
They have a plan. They’ll lay it out. This isn’t childish wishcasting or manifesting.
Bannon and Trump are designing it. They’re planning it. I’d bet they’re talking to lawyers and constitutional experts, and to the people they will need to help them do it at every level of government.
If we’ve learned one thing about Trump in all these years, it’s that we should believe him.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
Epstein abuse survivor Haley Robson (C) reacts alongside Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) (R) as the family of Virginia Giuffre speaks during a news conference with lawmakers on the Epstein Files Transparency Act outside the U.S. Capitol on November 18, 2025 in Washington, DC.
Today, the House of Representatives is voting on the Epstein Files Transparency Act, a bill that would compel the Justice Department to release unclassified records related to Jeffrey Epstein’s crimes. For months, the measure languished in procedural limbo. Now, thanks to a discharge petition signed by Democrats and a handful of Republicans, the vote is finally happening.
But the real story is not simply about transparency. It is about political courage—and the cost of breaking ranks with Donald Trump.
This morning, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene stood with accusers of Epstein’s abuse, declaring her loyalty not to Trump, but to the women whose lives were shattered by Epstein’s trafficking network. “I was called a traitor by a man that I fought for six years,” she said, referring to Trump. “I unapologetically and proudly stand with these women.”
Greene’s words matter because they pierce the mythology of Trump’s dominance over the Republican Party. For years, she was one of his fiercest defenders. Yet here she was, rejecting his demand that she withdraw her support for the bill. Her defiance is a reminder that even in the MAGA movement, loyalty has limits when justice is at stake.
The accusers themselves framed the issue in stark terms. Haley Robson said, "It's time that we put the political agendas and party affiliations to the side," CBS reported. "This is not an issue of a few corrupt Democrats or a few corrupt Republicans; this is a case of institutional betrayal," said Annie Farmer. And Liz Stein said, "The Epstein files are not about loyalty to any one political party. They're evidence of a crime."
Their testimony underscores the significance of Greene’s stand. By siding with them, she elevated their voices above partisan calculation. In doing so, she forced her party to confront a question it often avoids: Does loyalty to Trump outweigh loyalty to truth?
Trump’s initial opposition to the bill was a political blunder. Branding it a “Democrat hoax,” he underestimated the bipartisan appetite for transparency. His attacks on Greene—calling her “Marjorie Traitor Greene”—only deepened the perception that he was protecting powerful interests rather than victims.
Under pressure, Trump reversed course and urged Republicans to support the bill. But the damage was done. Greene’s refusal to bend revealed cracks in his grip on the GOP. Her words—“It really makes you wonder what is in those files and who and what country is putting so much pressure on him”—hinted at suspicions that transcend party politics.
The Epstein files vote is a test of whether Congress will prioritize transparency over secrecy, victims over elites, and conscience over loyalty. Greene’s stand shows that even Trump’s most ardent allies can choose principle over politics.
For Republicans, the choice is stark: follow Trump’s shifting whims, or follow Greene’s example by standing with accusers. For Democrats, the moment is an opportunity to demonstrate that bipartisan cooperation is possible when the stakes are moral rather than partisan.
Marjorie Taylor Greene’s break with Trump is not just a personal feud. It is a turning point in the GOP’s reckoning with power, secrecy, and accountability. She reframed the debate: this is not about Trump or party advantage. It is about whether America dares to confront the truth, no matter how uncomfortable.
Today’s vote will decide more than the fate of a bill. It will determine whether Congress is willing to honor the voices of survivors and prove that justice is not subordinate to political loyalty.
Hugo Balta is the executive editor of the Fulcrum and the publisher of the Latino News Network.
America is crying out for new leadership. We are stuck in a political swamp of hate and being hated. We can’t continue like this – we must make rational decisions to complex problems, and many of them need to be made quickly. It is simply not possible within the system that Congress has created. We need fresh ideas, fresh minds, and a fresh American spirit.
These are dangerous times for American self-government. We’ve heard that warning before—but the threat is here, right now, within the hearts and minds of our elected leaders. The institutions meant to represent us have become paralyzed or simply reneged on their duties. Partisanship has hardened into identity. Politics has turned into tribal combat instead of public service.
And yet, most Americans do not actually hate each other. For the most part, they feel helpless. What they hate is the system we have allowed to grow around us: a system where winning is more important than governing, where parties matter more than people, and where leaders treat political opposition as an enemy to be defeated rather than fellow citizens to be reasoned with.
The problem is not that Americans have different views. We always have. The problem is how we make decisions.
For decades, our public discourse has revolved around the idea that one party must be right and the other must be wrong. But in a country where razor-thin margins routinely decide elections, that framework makes governing impossible. In the last presidential election, the difference between the two major candidates was only 2 million votes — less than 1% of eligible voters. While 155 million voted, 90 million Americans didn’t vote or even register. They felt unrepresented by either side or disenchanted.
With numbers like these, there is no mandate for a political direction. No serious person can claim otherwise.
Yet our governmental structure treats it as one, and the winning party is emboldened by its announced dominance. The party that wins by the smallest of margins gains control of Congress, committee chairs, legislative agendas, and the mechanics of national decision-making. The losing party is basically locked out. The result is predictable: an angry party on one hand, and extremism and distortion on the other.
The Founders gave us a system of cooperation with checks and balances and meaningful representation. Our elected leaders have slowly replaced it with one designed for party control.
For much of our modern history, the unwritten norms of American democracy helped hold things together. The evening news provided a shared understanding of facts. Lies were disqualifying. The Constitution was respected not only in law but in spirit. Lawmakers negotiated differences in conference committees and found compromises that lasted beyond the next election cycle.
Technology, political incentives, and unheard-of wealth in and out of government have changed all of that. The rise of cable news, social media, and algorithmic outrage has fragmented our information environment. Extreme positions are rewarded. Moderation is punished. And the rules of Congress, created by the political parties over decades, have transformed our national legislature into a battlefield rather than a forum for problem-solving.
This is not what the public wants. We need a government we can trust to make high-level, complex decisions. It simply cannot happen in this twisted, entangled maze of politically-backed rules that Congress has woven for itself, where lobbyists and big money run wild.,
This is not a Constitutional problem. Most people don’t realize that the rules of Congress were developed for Congress, by Congress, and can be changed by Congress. The Public can demand that they be changed.
The Constitution allows each chamber of Congress to set its own procedures, its rules of operation. There is no requirement anywhere that the majority party controls committees. There is no constitutional principle that requires only one party to control the legislative process. The Founders never wanted modern party power structures; in fact, Washington explicitly warned they could destroy public liberty, and we can now see he was right.
So the issue is not that America’s founding design has failed — it’s that while we were working, taking care of families, and getting on with life, “we the people” let this miscarriage of governing happen. We ignored the oversight duty the Founders entrusted to us and let the mischief of political parties lead us astray.
Poll after poll shows Americans want cooperation, shared responsibility, and decisions grounded in broad public support. In polls, 70-75% of the public calls for members of Congress to compromise with the other side to address the nation's problems. They want leaders who respect their oath, work hard, and solve problems. They want to see Congress behave like a deliberative body.
Our current decision-making system fails on all counts and exacerbates the problems. It’s not structured to give us the results we want. If we want different outcomes, we have to change the way we make decisions.
We think of bipartisanship as one side agreeing with the other's position, not as both sides agreeing on a single position. Fortunately, we already have a working model inside Congress. It’s been operational for years, yet most people have never noticed it. The House and Senate Ethics Committees are the only standing committees structured with equal representation from both parties and professional nonpartisan staff. The House Committee even has an independent, non-legislative advisory committee of experts (Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE)) to increase accountability and transparency. These decision-making structures exist because ethical questions are too sensitive to be controlled by a single party.
If we can apply that principle where trust and compromise matter most, why not use it to all committees? If we want cooperation and compromise, why should one party have total control?
Imagine every congressional committee balanced 50/50. Imagine neutral staff, shared subpoena power, and rules requiring that any bill advanced from committee would receive a recorded vote on the House or Senate floor. Imagine informative hearings, not theater. No partisan leadership could bury legislation or shut down a chamber of Congress. Transparency, not messaging, would drive deliberation. Anti-gridlock provisions would force resolution if needed and prevent stalemate.
Republicans could adopt such a balanced committee rule change in the House at any time; however, it is highly unlikely given the current Executive Office's control over that body. If Democrats were to win control of the House in 2026, they could initiate such a change by majority vote at the beginning of the session in 2027. Such a change could be encouraged by various good government NGOs and launched by Democrats as a major response to public demands. A change in the House could serve as a model for the Senate, where there are formal (2/3rds majority) and informal (simple majority) processes for changing the rules.
Technology could help provide vastly improved transparency. Every member of Congress should be required to maintain a standardized, high-tech public dashboard: bills, amendments, votes, correspondence, meeting schedules, hearing schedules, lobbyist interactions, all searchable and open to the public in real time. Modern AI tools could make that information easily accessible and digestible to citizens and news organizations.
The solutions are here now. “We the people” must demand it.
If we want cooperation in Congress, we also need it in the Executive Branch.
A President committed to true bipartisanship should consider selecting a Vice President who is an Independent or from the other major party. Similarly, every Cabinet department should have diverse political interests at the top of the decision chain, supported by balanced professional staff. Policy differences would be debated, and when differences remained, the President would make the final decision, but with a public explanation of the reasoning and principles behind it.
Transparency and compromise would become the governing philosophy, not a slogan.
At the Constitutional Convention, George Washington argued that one representative should never speak for more than 30,000 citizens. Today, that number is closer to 765,000. Representation feels distant because it is. Washington also said it was the public duty to hold the government accountable.
But it’s also the government's responsibility to give the public the tools to do its job. We may not be able to expand Congress overnight, but we can close the distance between representation and constituents with new AI communication and information access systems. We can build systems that make legitimate, bipartisan petitions of the government meaningful. We can make constituent surveys accurate, reflective, and impossible to ignore. Enhanced technology can facilitate more beneficial public participation and involvement.
If we reconnect the public and journalists to the process of governing, we breathe new life into the representative democracy.
The United States does not need one side to win and the other to lose. The United States needs a system in which differences are acknowledged, common ground is found, and decisions reflect widespread public approval, not the dominance of one party.
We need a government that represents all of us, not just whoever won the last election by the smallest of margins.
We are not as divided as our politics suggests. We can restore cooperation. We can restore trust. And we can build a system designed not for victory, but for governance. If we don’t change the way we make decisions, America will fail. We are currently on that path.
It seems we have no choice, but we do. We must focus our protests on changing how we govern and make decisions. We need to expand the numbers to include the millions who cannot attend the rallies (e.g., the “a dollar for democracy” campaign, one per donor). We need coordinated, focused, and publicized electronic petition campaigns from respectable sponsors. Commitments must be received from elected incumbents and candidates in exchange for votes and support.
Enterprising NGOs and universities could lead the way by developing AI-driven information and communication technology (ICT) platforms to maximize interaction and oversight between elected members and their constituents. Several organizations are already pursuing the connection of AI to government involvement. The public could insist that such new technologies and standardized platforms be installed in all Congressional offices and utilized throughout the government.
If we change our decision-making process, we can begin to address the many critical issues and problems that must be addressed. If we choose cooperation over contempt, courage over confrontation, and country over party, we can begin a new chapter worthy of the generations who came before us. The question is not whether change is possible. The question is whether “we the people” will demand it.
Jeff Dauphin, aka J.P. McJefferson, is retired. Blogging on the "Underpinnings of a Broken Government." Founded and ran two environmental information & newsletter businesses for 36 years. Facilitated enactment of major environmental legislation in Michigan in the 70s. Community planning and engineering. BSCE, Michigan Technological University.
Politicians, including Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), right, New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, second from right,, New York Gov. Kathy Hochul, middle, and New York State Attorney General Letitia James, second from left, march during the NYC Labor Day Parade on Sept. 6, 2025, in New York City.
Here we go again.
Socialism is making a comeback, according to friend and foe alike. A new NBC poll now suggests that a majority of registered voters don’t like capitalism.
A Gallup poll in September also found that support for capitalism was slipping. A Data for Progress poll around the same time showed that — after asking some decidedly leading questions about democratic socialism — people liked democratic socialism. Still, Politico combined the results to declare: “Capitalism is out … and socialism is in.” And just this week, an NPR podcast dedicated a segment to explaining “How socialism got sexy.”
This has happened before. In 2018, Gallup found for the first time that a majority of Democrats had a more favorable view of “socialism” than of “capitalism.” And we got similar headlines as a result. No doubt such polls partly explain why Democratic presidential primary candidates overwhelmingly ran in the Bernie Sanders lane in 2020. Joe Biden, the candidate who mostly avoided that lane, however, won the nomination.
Like Sanders, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani describes himself as a democratic socialist. His popularity has driven many to claim that democratic socialism is popular too. It may well be, especially in New York City. But what plays in NYC may not have legs far outside the Big Apple. Indeed, Mikie Sherrill, the Democratic gubernatorial candidate in neighboring New Jersey, which shares much of the same media market, didn’t run as a democratic socialist and beat primary candidates who more or less did.
But punditry is not my aim here. My problem is with these periodic, poll-driven, “socialism is coming” fads.
For starters, issue polling — even when done well — is not very reliable. Change one word and you’ll get very different results. For decades, if you call a program “welfare,” Americans won’t like it. Call it “assistance to the poor” and Americans like it whole a lot more.
It’s also difficult to keep other issues from influencing issue polling. Capitalism’s popularity dropped — particularly among Democrats — during President Trump’s first term. It has dropped again during his second term. Is it really so hard to imagine people associating capitalism with the avowed party of capitalism? When that party is in power and is unpopular, it shouldn’t be surprising that the thing it claims to stand for is (slightly) less popular too?
And then there’s the messy fact that Trump’s brand of capitalism isn’t exactly the uncut free market stuff (that I like). It’s not socialism, but it’s definitely close to “state capitalism” — a system involving massive government interventions in the economy, usually on behalf of favored industries. Most serious libertarians would rather eat glass than call Trump’s program of massive tariffs, cronyism, industrial planning and partial government ownership of industries “capitalism.”
There’s a famous — and widely attributed— line that the problem with socialism is socialism, but the problem with capitalism is capitalists. When the administration is run from the top by private-jet-flying billionaires seemingly getting richer with insider deals and literally cosplaying “The Great Gatsby” at a time when SNAP benefits are running out for 40 million Americans, you’d think capitalism would be in even worse odor.
But take Trump out of it. When the status quo is unpopular, if you call the status quo “capitalism” they’ll have problems with it. Call the economic status quo “capitalism” and a lot of people will choose option number two, whether you call it “socialism” or not.
It’s not like the new “socialists” have cracked the books in their free time and suddenly have a newfound respect for Karl Marx, Sidney Webb, Michael Harrington or some other socialist thinker.
Socialist intellectuals have a hard enough time agreeing on what socialism is. The best definition the very well-read editors of the socialist journal Dissent could come up with in 1954 was “socialism is the name of our desire.” The idea that millions of Americans have a fully formed and coherent understanding of the concept, never mind know how to implement socialism, is preposterous. Asking people if they like socialism or capitalism is a “vibes” question and little more.
Of course, socialists are entitled to be happy about improving vibes. But the best way to make Americans sour on socialism is to put socialists in charge — which is why I’m not too worried about America becoming a socialist country.
Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.
