In this episode of Democracy Works from The McCourtney Institute for Democracy, the team discusses democracy’s many doomsayers and how to heed their warnings for the future without falling into despair.
Podcast: On democracy's doomsayers
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President Donald Trump speaks to members of the press aboard Air Force One on April 17, 2026, just prior to landing at Joint Base Andrews, Maryland.
(Win McNamee/Getty Images/TCA)
MAGA is starting to question Trump
Apr 26, 2026
If supporters of Donald Trump were to be studied — and I very much expect they will be for years and years to come — academics may be hard-pressed to find the connective tissue that unites them all together.
It’s clear they’re not with Trump for his ideology — he doesn’t really have one, not that hews to ideas espoused by the traditional political parties at least. His policies have been all over the map, and even within his own presidencies he’s reversed them substantively or abandoned them outright.
It’s not because he’s done anything heroic or admirable, other than get very, very rich using legally and ethically questionable practices — admirable, perhaps, to some.
And it’s not because he’s done anything particularly great for them. He’s broken most of his promises, and by nearly any metric, he’s made the lives of his own voters demonstrably worse.
But they do love him, in spite of all of this. They love what he represents, what he projects back to them, a version of America they miss, even though he cannot deliver it. And they’ve decided to believe that he truly cares about them, even though he’s taken their money to line his own pockets, he’s endangered their lives by pushing baseless conspiracy theories, and he’s threatening to send their children to another endless war.
The thing that has united Trump supporters, if anything, has been their enduring faith in HIM.
But for how much longer?
Thanks largely to Iran, deportations, and the economy, Trump’s approval is at a second-term low, according to a trio of new polls out this week, which show him at just 33% to 36%.
And we’re starting to see one-time loyalists do something the MAGA base has never really done before: Question him.
They’re questioning Trump on his policies. From his decision to go to war with Iran to the efficacy of his tariffs, MAGA media influencers are vocalizing their concerns about his judgment in ways we haven’t heard before. From a crowd that even managed to justify an insurrection against the U.S. Capitol, this sudden skepticism is interesting.
They’re questioning his morality. The Epstein files have rankled Trump supporters in a way that little else has, and his obvious efforts to cover them up have them raising questions about his involvement and what he knew. Trump’s infidelity, his payoffs to porn stars, the “Access Hollywood” tape, the sexual abuse adjudication — none of that managed to turn MAGA voters off the way Epstein has.
They’re questioning his sanity and competence. In the wake of Trump’s deranged threats to end Iranian civilization, and his bonkers attacks on the first American pope and Catholics writ large, folks like Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Marjorie Taylor Greene are openly questioning his mental acuity and fitness for office. They didn’t do this during his impeachments, after his 34 convictions for fraud, or when his deportation goon squad killed two American protesters.
And now, they’re questioning his veracity. Several former Trump supporters have come out to question whether the assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, in 2024 was staged or is being covered up in some way. That’s questioning whether Trump can be believed, something no MAGA star dared to do just months ago.
Whatever may be motivating these influential one-time MAGA devotees to break ranks, they could very easily give MAGA voters permission to do something they’ve not felt they could do before — question their faith in Trump’s policies, his moral compass, his sanity, and his believability.
And if they start doing that, well, I’m not sure what’s left for them to buy into anymore.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
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House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest, R-Miss., says the committee is committed to accountability for members of Congress on both sides of the aisle.
(Photo by Samantha Freeman, MNS)
Florida Democrat resigns, moments before the Ethics Committee was supposed to weigh her expulsion
Apr 25, 2026
WASHINGTON – Florida Democrat Rep. Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick resigned from the House of Representatives on Tuesday, moments before the full Ethics Committee convened to weigh expulsion for allegedly stealing millions of dollars and funneling some into her congressional campaign.
Cherfilus-McCormick was not present at the hearing. “After careful reflection and prayer, I have concluded that it is in the best interest of my constituents and the institution that I step aside at this time,” her statement read.
Cherfilus-McCormick is the third congressional leader to resign since April 13. Eric Swalwell, D-Calif., and Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, resigned last week, following sexual assault allegations and discussions of expulsion at Capitol Hill.
“If members that conduct, bad conduct, whatever that conduct may be—we’ve seen sexual misconduct, we’ve seen financial misconduct—that those members are going to be held accountable,” House Ethics Committee Chair Michael Guest, R-Miss.
In March, a special subcommittee of the House Ethics Committee found Cherfilus-McCormick guilty of 25 ethics violations. She also faces a criminal trial in South Florida, scheduled for February 2027.
Cherfilus-McCormick said she’s not guilty of the ethics violations or the criminal charges.
“Rather than play these political games, I choose to step away,” she said in a follow-up statement, calling the Ethics investigation a “witch hunt.”
The Ethics Committee is also investigating Rep. Cory Mills, R-Fla., who has been accused of domestic violence, sexual misconduct, stolen valor, and profiting from federal contracts while in office.
Rep. Nancy Mace, R-S.C., introduced a resolution Monday calling for the expulsion of Mills.
“The swamp has protected Cory Mills for far too long and we are done letting it slide,” Mace said in a statement. “Any Member who votes to keep him here is voting to protect a woman beater and a fraud. He needs to be expelled immediately.”
In response, Mills told NOTUS he is considering an expulsion resolution against Mace over an interaction that she had at Charleston International Airport in October 2025, where she berated TSA officials.
Mills has denied any wrongdoing, calling the allegations politically motivated.
Guest said the investigation into Mills is ongoing and reiterated the committee’s dedication to holding members of Congress accountable on both sides of the aisle.
“We want individuals to have trust in their elected officials,” Guest said. “And I think as members of Congress, we should be held to a higher standard than the general public.”
Samantha Freeman is a graduate politics, policy and foreign affairs journalism student at Northwestern University Medill School of Journalism.
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Veterans, military family members, and supporters occupy the Cannon House Office Building on Capitol Hill calling upon the Trump administration to end the war on Iran on April 20, 2026 in Washington, DC.
Getty Images, Leigh Vogel
Trump’s Iran “Victory” Echoes Iraq’s "Mission Accomplished"
Apr 24, 2026
It didn’t exactly end well the last time a president declared victory this quickly. On May 1, 2003, President George W. Bush landed on the USS Abraham Lincoln in a flight suit, strutted across the deck for the cameras, then changed into a suit and tie, stood in front of a banner that read “Mission Accomplished,” and declared the end of major combat operations in Iraq. It was 43 days after the invasion began. Over the next eight years, as the conflict devolved into a protracted insurgency and sectarian war, more than 4,300 Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died.
On April 7, Trump—presumably not wearing a flight suit—declared in a telephone interview with AFP that the United States had achieved victory in Iran. “Total and complete victory. 100 percent. No question about it.” This was the day after the President threatened to destroy a “whole civilization,” hours after a two-week ceasefire was announced. It took six days for the whole thing to fall apart. By April 15, he was back on Fox Business: “We've beaten them militarily, totally. I think it’s close to over.”
In fact, Trump has been declaring some degree of victory since the first bombs. At a rally in Kentucky two weeks in, he told the crowd, “We won. We won the… in the first hour, it was over,” then seemed to catch himself and add, “We got to finish the job, right?” A few days later, he told reporters aboard Air Force One that the US had “essentially defeated Iran” while clumsily allowing they could “have a little bit of fight back.” After a call with Vladimir Putin, he said, “The war is very complete, pretty much.” When the Wall Street Journal's editorial board called it a premature win, he posted, “Actually, it is a Victory.” Asked about negotiations, he said, “Regardless what happens, we win.”
On February 28, 2026, the United States and Israel launched a coordinated air campaign against Iran, assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and striking military, nuclear, and civilian infrastructure across the country. Thirty-eight days later, Trump announced a ceasefire brokered by Pakistan, declaring that the US had “already met and exceeded all Military objectives.” The facts on the ground are harder to square with that claim, in part because the administration never settled on a clear definition of victory to begin with.
The war aims have shifted and contradicted throughout the conflict: freedom for the Iranian people, elimination of Iran’s nuclear program, regime change, the unconditional surrender of the Iranian government, and, as Trump put it in one post, peace “throughout the Middle East and, indeed, the world.”
No formal authorization for the use of military force has been requested from or passed by Congress. The administration never provided the American people with anything resembling an imminent threat, the legal threshold that would allow a president to launch an attack without congressional authorization. The 60-day clock under the War Powers Resolution of 1973 expires next week on May 1. The Senate has now voted five times to block war powers resolutions, each attempt failing predictably along party lines, with Rand Paul the only Republican voting to end the war and John Fetterman the only Democrat voting to continue it. But cracks are beginning to show: Senators Susan Collins and Thom Tillis have both signaled they may not authorize continued operations past the deadline. It is an illegal, undeclared war, launched unilaterally by a man who seems to believe the presidency should have the power of a monarchy, and Congress has spent nearly two months proving him right.
The war has been costly to both countries. Thirteen American service members have been killed and approximately 373 wounded, many severely. The Pentagon has been actively manipulating those figures. During the ceasefire, it inexplicably subtracted 15 wounded-in-action troops from the official count without explanation, with two Pentagon spokespersons unable to account for the discrepancy. A defense official described the practice to The Intercept as a “casualty cover-up.” On the Iranian side, more than 3,500 people have been killed, including 1,665 civilians, according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. On the first day of the war, a girls’ elementary school in Minab was struck, killing scores of children.
The Pentagon estimates it has spent roughly $28 billion, and the administration is still seeking up to $100 billion more from Congress. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz, which the International Energy Agency called the largest supply disruption in the history of the global oil market, has sent gas prices past $4 a gallon. The full extent of the damage to the global economy, from supply chains to food prices to markets that haven't yet absorbed the shock, probably won’t be known for years.
Adam Kinzinger, the former Republican congressman and Air Force veteran, put it plainly in a social media post: “The people of Iran aren’t free. Iran can now charge tolls. The nuclear material sits EXACTLY where it did, in the same amount, since June. The regime is still in place with a younger ayatollah. Iran was still launching missiles, now with more money to rebuild. Period.”
He’s right on every count. Trump declared “complete and total regime change,” but the assassinated Supreme Leader’s more hard-line son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was quickly installed as the new ayatollah, and the IRGC that runs the war still runs the country. Trump told the nation last June that Operation Midnight Hammer had already eliminated Iran’s nuclear capabilities, then went to war again over the same nuclear program. The uranium is still in the ground in Isfahan. As of the IAEA's last inspection in June of 2025, Iran had 440.9 kilograms of uranium enriched to 60 percent, enough for roughly ten nuclear weapons. That material remains unaccounted for. The IAEA has been denied access to Iran’s bombed nuclear facilities since February 28 and cannot verify the current status of the enriched uranium stockpile, meaning no one outside Tehran knows whether that material has been moved, used, or further processed. Trump himself acknowledged post-ceasefire that “nothing has been touched from the date of attack.” The authoritarian theocracy that imprisoned and killed thousands of protesters in January is still governing. Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz was international waters under de facto US Navy control. Under the ceasefire terms, Iran would coordinate passage and collect fees on every vessel.
Both sides are claiming they won, and when both sides claim victory after 38 days of war that has left thousands dead, and no measurable change in the nuclear threat that was one of the stated reasons for fighting, the word that comes to mind is stalemate, not victory. If anything, Iran may come out of this conflict stronger than it was before the war started.
Vice President Vance flew to Islamabad on April 12 to negotiate a permanent deal. The talks lasted 21 hours and, despite the vice president’s high-school debate champ energy, produced nothing. Vance told reporters that Iran had “chosen not to accept our terms” and flew home. Trump, six days removed from “total and complete victory,” responded by announcing a full naval blockade of Iran.
On April 19, he threatened to “knock out every single power plant, and every single bridge, in Iran” if the talks failed, then announced that the US Navy had fired on and seized the Iranian-flagged cargo ship Touska in the Gulf of Oman. U.S. Marines rappelled from helicopters onto the deck after a destroyer disabled it with gunfire, with Trump excitedly posting that they were “seeing what’s on board!” Iran called it piracy and vowed retaliation. The next day, Iran pulled out of a planned second round of talks in Islamabad, and two days after that, Iran seized two container ships in the Strait of Hormuz and attacked a third. On April 21, Trump extended the ceasefire, while keeping the blockade fully in place. Iran has called the blockade an act of war and said it won’t negotiate until it is lifted.
Despite the fragile ceasefire, I’m writing about this war in the present tense, and that’s intentional. If there’s anything we’ve learned from watching Trump since he first came to power, it’s that he says one thing, does another, lies constantly, backs out, and changes his mind on a daily basis. A ceasefire extension, a naval blockade, and dueling ship seizures in the same week say a lot about just how “over” this war really is—because it feels like we’ve seen this movie before. We all watched President Bush declare “mission accomplished” on May 1, 2003, 43 days after we invaded Iraq. In January of 2004, my infantry brigade deployed to Kirkuk to fight the growing insurgency. Over 4,300 Americans died after that banner came down.
In the lead-up to the Iraq War, President Bush stood at a podium and tried to deliver a simple proverb: “Fool me once, shame on—shame on you…” He paused, lost the thread, and landed on “fool me, you can’t get fooled again.” We all laughed and laughed and then spent a decade watching caskets come home. Some of those caskets had my friends in them.
Maybe the ceasefire holds. Maybe the talks resume, and something real comes out of them. I genuinely hope so. But we’ve elected Donald Trump twice, believed his promises twice, and now we’re watching another victory banner come down over another unfinished war in the Middle East. We should know better by now, but despite whatever W was trying to say, history suggests you absolutely can get fooled again.
***
As this piece was going to press, a third aircraft carrier, the USS George H.W. Bush, arrived in the Middle East, joining the USS Gerald R. Ford and the USS Abraham Lincoln—the same ship President George W. Bush stood on when he declared mission accomplished in Iraq… apparently, history has a sense of humor. Meanwhile, US forces seized a second tanker in the Indian Ocean, and Trump ordered the Navy to "shoot and kill" Iranian boats laying mines in the Strait of Hormuz and said there is "no time frame" on ending the war.
Nick Allison is a writer and editor based in Austin, Texas. His work has appeared in Slate, HuffPost, The Fulcrum, The Chaos Section, and elsewhere. Find him on Bluesky @nickallison80.bsky.socialEditor's Note: This story was updated on 4/24 to reflect several timely developments.
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American Cardinal Robert Francis Prevost presides over his first Holy Mass as Pope Leo XIV with cardinals in the Sistine Chapel at the conclusion of the Conclave on May 09, 2025 in Vatican City, Vatican.
(Photo by Simone Risoluti - Vatican Media via Vatican Pool/Getty Images)
A Lesson on “Matters of Morality” for the Vice President
Apr 19, 2026
The Vice President has stepped into the fray between the President and Pope Leo. For those of you who have not been following this, Pope Leo has been critical of various things that Trump has said regarding his war with Iran, including his statement that he was ready to wipe out the civilization. In response, Trump called Pope Leo too liberal and easy on crime. He also said that the Pope was only elected because he was an American, in response to Trump having been elected President. In response, the Pope said that he had no fear of the Trump administration and that his job was to preach the gospel. He said in response to Secretary of War Hegseth's invoking the name of Jesus for support in battle, that Jesus “does not listen to the prayers of those who wage war, but rejects them.”
Into this exchange steps the Vice President, who says he thinks the Pope should stick to "matters of morality" and let the President of the United States dictate American public policy. The Vice President obviously doesn't understand the meaning of morality and its scope.
"Morality" is defined by the Merriam-Webster dictionary as a system of moral conduct, conformity to ideals of right human conduct, or virtue. "Moral", in turn, is defined as the principles of right and wrong in human behavior. "Virtue" is defined as morally good behavior or character.
How do we as a society define what is right and wrong in human behavior? For most of man's history, that standard has been defined by religion, whether Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Buddhism, or other religions. Whether the voice is that of God, Jesus, Mohammed, or the Buddha, each has set the standard for right and wrong behavior towards one's fellow man. And those standards have, in most respects, been virtually identical.
The 10 Commandments are a prime example of religion defining right and wrong behavior. The Golden Rule—do unto others as you would have them do unto you—is a principle underlying all the world's great religions.
The Pope is thus an ideal person to make statements on human behavior and morality. What are some of Trump's statements?
“A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again.”
“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH! Praise be to Allah,” (this on Easter Sunday)
These are statements that the Pope, as Pope, has every right and responsibility to speak out against. As he said, he will continue to speak "out loudly on the message of the gospel, which is what I believe I am here to do, what the church is here to do.” Further, he said, "Too many people are suffering in the world today. Too many innocent people are being killed. And I think someone has to stand up and say there's a better way."
This is sticking to "matters of morality." The Vice President needs to restudy his catechism. He also needs to understand that the United States was founded on the Enlightenment's principles of morality, as stated in the Declaration of Independence:
"all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness—that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men."
When Trump dictates American public policy that is contrary to the essence of America's founding principles, then he is not jut being immoral, he is leading the country in a very un-American way.
Ronald L. Hirsch is a teacher, legal aid lawyer, survey researcher, nonprofit executive, consultant, composer, author, and volunteer. He is a graduate of Brown University and the University of Chicago Law School and the author of We Still Hold These Truths. Read more of his writing at www.PreservingAmericanValues.com
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