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US is shutting down 10% of airport traffic because of government shutdown in November 2025. Democrats are holding up the passing of the new budget till Obama's Affordable Care Act healthcare subsidies for low income Americans are restored. Republicans who control both houses of Congress are unwilling to restore these subsidies saying it will cost $350 billion over 10 years. Editorials in the Washington Post in November see Obama's Affordable Care Act as a bandaid approach for a broken healthcare system in the US. Public opinion in the US supports this assessment. Trade unions and labor have called for an end to the government shutdown. Democrats are acting as though the party is for low income Americans and labor yet this is not the party of FDR who fought hard for labor over vested interests, Democrats today are the vested interests whether from Tech which is taking a disproportionate share of the Nation's wealth and resources and pouring it into projects that do not reduce the cost of living or rebuild crumbling obsolete infrastructure, or from Banks which were not sanctioned for their part in the 2009 financial crisis, or from healthcare interests that oppose restructuring the entire healthcare system for fairness in insurance, pharmaceutical pricing and wellness. Republicans are making an effort to displace Democrats in the role of FDR and Lincoln under newcomer DJT who rejects both the incompetent Bush (Republican) and Obama (Democrat) administrations that wasted money and resources in foreign wars while overlooking America's many challenges and strengthening foreign powers including China, while weakening the US. The US government is cutting airport traffic to relieve unpaid traffic controllers. Also at risk are SNAP benefits which are for the loew income Americans. The US president is asking the Senate to drop the filibuster rule which requires 60 votes in the Senate for the biudget to pass it and pass it by majority vote. The Senate Majority Leader Republican Thune wants to keep the filibuster because it acts as a brake for hasty legislation passed by whichever party is in government. ...

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The U.S. Senate voted 51 to 49 on a Democratic party measure for further reductions in 2012 Social Security payroll taxes for workers and employers, including a surtax on incomes over $1 million. A measure supported by the Republican party to pay for the payroll tax cut by reducing the Federal payrolls was defeated, with half the Republicans voting against it. Democrats hope to use this issue to show Republicans favor the rich over the middle class, as the payroll tax cut benefits most Americans. Polls show Americans by a large majority see Republican policies favoring the rich. A New York Times/CBS poll in October showed 7 of 10 Americans feel this way. Pollster Geoff Garin says the income inequality issue is beginning to override other issues including antigovernment feeling. This is one way in which the Occupy Wall Street Movement's slogan of "the 99 percent" has resonated with U.S. public opinion. The Democratic party sees this as an opportunity to define the campaign issues for 2012, with Republicans running for reelection cautious about being seen this way....

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The problems facing U.S. Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner, as a government shutdown occurs in October 2013. Republicans and Demorats fail to agree on raising the debt ceiling and financing of the government. Boehner faces a movement in the Republican party led by Senator Ted Cruz of Texas for defunding the Obamacare law.

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French voters turned to parties outside the mainstream left Socialist Party and the right Republican Party for the first time in a run off presidential election. The National Front's Jean Le Pen made it to the runoff in 2002, then lost to Chirac of the Republican Party who won 78% of the vote. This time the Republican Party candidate Fillon had about 20%, the Socialist Party candidate Hamon won just 6% of the vote with the rest of the socialist vote going to a far left candidate Jean Luc Melenchon who had 19.6%. The winners were Emmanuel Macron, a former Economy minister under president Hollande of the socialist Party, getting about 24% and Marine Le Pen, the daughter of Jean Le Pen of the National Front, getting 21.5%. Compared to the U.S. the situation is slightly different in France because of the very high unemployment rate for young people- younger voters supported the National Front, and people especially in rural areas in the north, north east, and the south of the country around Nice and Marseille supported the National Front. Macron's movement En Marche, centrist party drawing support from centre right and centre left without clear ideology except to renew France and pro-EU, was strong in urban areas, among more educated people, especially in Paris and the area around Bordeaux and Toulouse in the south east of the country. Fillon did not do well in some traditional Republican Party areas including Nice, with inroads from Le Pen, who defined the party around anti-immigration, closed borders, and withdrawal from the European Union. ...

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The 7.1 million Venezuelan refugees who have settled in other Latin American nations puts a great burden on the region and its resources. This NYT report shows how it is affecting Mexico today. Shown are migrants who are by the rail tracks trying to board a freight train north in Mexico. It is an endless dilemma for Americans, for Democrat states facing Republican opposition, and has been a problem for both Republican and Democratic administrations. How do you deport Venezuelans as US has no diplomatic relations with Venezuela? The Biden administration is pursuing legal immigration channels by taking in a specified number and cutting the dangerous migrant flow over the Mexican border, the only policy open to Republicans also in this situation. At some future date the Venezuelans absorbed into the US can fill worker shortages, in the present it is creating some chaos for many nations including Mexico and the US and other latin American nations, and neither party Democrat or Republican has easy answers. As the Democrats are deporting nearly as many as the Republicans. ...

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Gerard Baker in the WSJ says the abortion rulings of the Supreme Court and the Inflation Reduction Act, Climate Change bills have energized Democrats. He says that as the chances of president Trump running as the nominee of the Republican party in 2024 increased in August, the electoral prospects for Congress of the Republican party have diminished. He says the Mar-a-lago taking of documents by FBI and investigation are also now seen as part of national security issues.

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Effects of the hurricane in the hard hit rural western part of North Carolina and the controversy surrounding the Republican candidate for governor are likely to affect voting in the state in 2024. The margin is razor thin for Republicans says this report in WSJ, less than 0.8%.

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This WSJ editorial sees president Biden's speech at Independence Hall in Philadelphia as intended to give the Democrats the advantage in the midterm elections for Congress. It says Vice President Pence and other Republicans opposed Mr. Trump when he claimed he had won the election. Seen from outside the US in Europe, and Asia, other parts of the world there was a real sense that democracy was facing a critical time in the US. Mr. Biden's speech about the struggle for the soul of America is very real considering that the Republican party is today for the most part pro-Trump and lessons learned from the traumatic experience of 2020 are sometimes set aside. There were real issues with the future of democracy during the transfer of power to Mr. Biden in 2020, and the future of America's leadership in the world as the place where the Declaration of Independence inspires the whole world for 200 years, which cannot be ignored and will always be remembered, as much in America as in the world to which offers hope and acts as a beacon. ...

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Peggy Noonan says that Trump's group has broken from the Republican Party. She also describes the Republican party as broken, that it cannot look to the past or 1980. She says two unwon wars, with one a catastrophe, and a great recession are enough to break any party. Worse the top of the party believes in things such as immigration, trade, entitlements, that the bottom doesn't, says Noonan. You have a situation where the base has left the party leadership. She describes Hillary Clinton as having a web of relationships and arrangements from the past, and with the idea that is popular among Republicans that she is only interested in acquiring power. Sanders is respected by Conservatives for his sincerity. Noonan sees God's role as chastising in this election, reminding people about what can go wrong and what needs to be done as the damage is surveyed for democracy and the country. The only reason for hope Noonan sees is in the way the 2016 U.S. presidential election is turning the decision over to the young people of America, who can decide who shapes the future. ...

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Mr. Trump has decisively changed the Republican party. Most Republicans support Mr. Trump personally, less the Republican party. Mr. Lindsey Graham, a senator from South Carolina, says of the Republican party before Trump that it had become a bit staid, that we looked like the banker next door who may foreclose on your house. Mr. Romney epitomized that in his view. Gone are the views on deficits, on wars, and on imports and transfer of technology to China as being acceptable.  Five years from 2015 when Mr. Trump came into prominence with his new style taking on the establishments of both parties with a fierce disdain for convention, both the Bushes and the Obamas and Clintons, the Republican party is completely transformed. Registered Republicans are now 60% non college educated in 2020 compared to 50% non college educated in 2016. The Trump policies on trade putting American workers first and America first have a resounding popularity with this audience- this should be no surprise after decades of job losses and factories shipped overseas under the previous administrations for 2 decades. Most of these workers are not college educated and are white and had enjoyed a good standard of living with a high school education in American factories till the shift of American manufacturing to China destroyed good paying jobs and impoverished the American working class.  Only 30% of college educated people are registered Republicans in 2020 compared to 40% in 2016. Overwhelmingly about 90% of registered Republicans are white.  They are majority male and older but there is a significant about 40% female and 40% young population under 40 years of age. This might resemble the party put together by Missouri Congressman Harry Truman as he led the Democratic Party in 1948 with a majority of non college educated Democrats, fighting for American workers and America first in the cold war with Russia. Truman also had a rough Missouri farm language and accent comparable to Mr. Trump's rough style and language disdainful of the old establishment and new tech establishment. Both were heavily disliked by the media and both did not let this bother them in any way. Both liked facing large crowds as Truman showed in campaigning by train across the country and Trump has shown in campaign rallies run in his own way. ...

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Seib points out why the current political landscape with the popularity of Trump and Sanders reflects demographic, economc and social changes in America compared to when Geroge H.W. Bush won the election in 1988 and Bill Clinton won in 1992. The Republican party is more populist, with older Americans, more Southern and conservative, making it harder for Jeb Bush or Wall Street backed candidates. The Democratic Party more liberal, more popular on both the east and west coast of the U.S., with younger Americans, diverse demographic groups, making it harder for Hillary Clinton as an establishment candidate. A Journal/NBC poll of Oct. 2015 shows 28% of Republicans describing their views as very conservative, and 26% of Democrats saying they are very liberal. Yet there is another aspect that will show up once the primaries are over. And this is the steady group of somewhat conservative and moderate combined in the Republican Party of 64%, and the steady group of somewhat liberal and moderate in the Democratic Party of 62% in the 2015 Journal/NBC poll. The moderates are up from 26% in the above 1990 poll to 31% in the 2015 poll for the Republican Party, and from 26% to 33% in the Democratic Party. So that one sees about a quarter of people polled in each party pushing for fringe views and a countervailing trend for moderate or close to moderate views with about two thirds support in the 2015 Journal/NBC poll for each party....

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The fight for electing a new Speaker that led to 5 days of voting could lead to month of turmoil in the US House of Representatives. Kevin McCarthy made concessions that could lead to more fractiousness among Republicans says this report in the WSJ. A single House Republican can challenge the Speaker under one of the concessions. Other concessions would make it harder to pass legislation. The WSJ Editorial Board says some Republicans who agree more with Democrats than positions taken by the 20 Republican holdouts in voting for Speaker, such as spending on infrastructure and support for Ukraine may actually join Democrats in future voting.  This brings in a new period in which party affiliations will be only one of the factors deciding how members vote, other factors being where they stand in the US support for Eastern Europe against Russian threats, and on issues such as spending on fixing broken American infrastructure .

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The U.S. House of Representatives voted 332 to 94 to approve a budget deal for 2 years negotiated by Rep. Paul Ryan (Republican) and Senator Pat Murray (Democrat). This ends a chapter of 3 years of crisis prone budgeting negotiations and a brief government shutdown from failure to negotiate a deal between the two political parties. Ryan, the vice presidential candidate in the 2012 elections has credibility with all parts of the Republican Party which helped get the deal passed overwhelmingly. On the floor of the House Ryan said about the deal- "This is good government, it's also divided government. And under divided government, we need to take steps in the right direction." Ryan was able to win 169 Republican votes, with 62 against. House Speaker Boehner (Republican) was critical of Tea Party supporters and groups such as Heritage Action, Club for Growth, FreedomWorks and Senate Conservatives Fund opposing the Ryan deal, because he said these groups were pushing the Republican party into places where it did not want to be through "misleading" information and had "lost credibility."...

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Republicans new strategy break the budget bills in half some budget parts expiring before the others- extend budgeting for some government agencies through early January and some through early February. This is what new Speaker Mike Johnson has done and what a more vocal group the ultra conservative Freedom Caucus in the Republican controlled Congress seeks. Democrat senators and some Republican senators oppose this kind of bifurcation of the budget and setting different dates. Chuck Schumer says the "hard right proposals, hard right slashing cuts have zero support among Democrats."

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The U.S. Senate passes a motion that allows the chamber to proceed with a debate on a health care bill. The motion passed 51-50 with Vice President Mike Pence casting the deciding vote. Republican Senators Collins and Murkowski voted against the motion. This report in the WSJ says this sets in motion a process in which debate will take place and amendments will be made. It is not clear what shape the bill will take. Under the process used only a simple majority is needed in the Senate, yet this allows for many amendments to be made.  Only hours after this motion passed by one vote, a bill replacing major parts of the Affordable Care Act failed to pass 57 votes against and 43 in favor. Senator John McCain who arrived in Washington from Arizona following brain tumor surgery, delivered strong criticism of the way the Republican healthcare bill was rushed through allowing very little debate. Experts have commented on the way the bill was rushed through with a thin majority for passage, with very little debate, first by Democrats in 2009 and now in the House by Republicans. With the same pattern now followed in the Senate by Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader in the Senate. A backup bill would remove just the individual and employer mandates and a tax on medical devices- the elements Republicans agree on, if no majority can be put together for the healthcare bill. ...

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Wellsville is 80 miles south of Rochester, New York. The town of 7000 made parts for coal fired power plants for 100 years till the impact of climate change led to decline. Today it is recovering from the loss of jobs as it is building parts for wind turbines. It is a very Republican area and one resident says Republicans were quick to say that anything renewable, wind or solar was bad. Gradually there is a sense that the town can thrive once more.

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The former president having 81% of the vote for non college educated in the primaries and  small percentage of votes among college educated means that if elected it would be that a whole population of college educated people are being effectively disenfranchised in choosing the government. It means that democracy that took over 200 years to include people with less education and income in selecting a government has moved in 2024 to doing the opposite excluding the educated with all its implications for good government of such a lopsided state of affairs. A recent poll shows 81% of Haley's 250,000 votes in the Republican primary would not vote for the former president. Haley won moderates by 61% to 31%. Trump won those without a college degree by 82% to 13% for Haley. Trump support huge in rural areas, Haley's in the suburbs.This shows how different this Republican party is from that even as recent as 2015. In fact Gallup has found that in 1999 the Democratic party was a plus 14 percentage points for non college educated and in 2024 the Republican party is a plus 14 percentage points for non college educated. Among postgraduate educated the gap was 8 percentage points in 1999 and now has widened to where Democrats have 60% to Republicans 21%. ...

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The Republican party has split shows the New Hampshire and Iowa Republican  primaries says WSJ in this video that is essential to understand 2024. Demographic expert that the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) talked to in this video say Donald Trump has brought in working class voters into the Republican party, no question about that. Yet in doing so and with his style he has alienated what are suburban Republican voters, higher educated with college degrees, the country club type that was long been associated with the Republican party since 1900. Taking the Iowa and New Hampshire voters the WSJ shows in visual dynamic graphs that half of voters in both states did not vote for Trump. There are no differences between Republican voters who voted for Trump and who voted against Trump when it comes to gender, age, they are evenly divided for gender and age. Difference is in education and suburban. Higher educated, suburban Republican voters acted to vote against Trump. This means says WSJ is that the Republican party has now effectively split up. Immigration is not as important to these Republicans who voted against Trump, foreign policy is also important which is not so for Trump voters. Ukraine matters for these voters who voted against Trump. Abortion also matters and the economy matters for these Republican voters who did not vote for Trump. In the backdrop of all this is the advisers who surround the president, the chief of whom may be Jake Sullivan, not just for foreign policy but also on issues such as immigration. Where Michael Shear of the NYT who has covered the White House for 30 years shows Jake Sullivan actively pushing to close down the asylum and parole avenues that are surging migrant flows, and to get Biden to close the US Mexico border under a bipartisan deal worked out by Lindsay Graham and Chuck Schumer in the US Senate. Sullivan, Michael Burns and other thoughtful, careful advisers are helping the Biden administration navigate the Israel Palestinian conflict and the Ukraine Russian conflict. The Middle East is what tripped Jimmy Carter with the Iran hostage crisis, leading to the Reagan period and Reagan economic culture that is unwinding today with huge gaps in incomes and educational opportunities that never existed before in the US. What also tripped Jimmy Carter was the split with the party that John Kennedy and LBJ built on the foundations of the FDR Truman period, and his handling of the Kennedys that effectively split the Democratic party. This is the situation that is now happening in the Republican party as the Reagan era and its culture of extremes comes to a close. Of extremes not seen since the Great Depression of a working family struggling to live on wages near the poverty level in a automobile factory in Michigan before the UAW settlement that Biden was on the picket lines for, and the $55.8 billion pay package that was put forward for Mr. Musk at Tesla. ...

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Reps. Eric Cantor (Va.), Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) and Paul Ryan (Wis.) have jointly written a book "Young Guns," that completely distances the new leadership in the Republican party from the leaders of a prior generation. The book says the older Republican leadership "betrayed its principles," by not controlling spending. See the the link to David Stockman who has criticized previous Republican administrations for their attitude to spending, including President Reagan. A recent NBC/WSJ poll shows only 24% of those polled seeing the Republican party positively. The idea is to differentiate the younger leaders as new voices in the party, different from the party's previous role.

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A Republican says the party's failures to come up with alternative policies instead of simply opposing president Obama, has led to the atmosphere of negativism and anti-immigrant rhetoric that increases support for Trump in the party base. He cites as an example 2012 Republican presidential nominee Romney and his comments about "self-deportation." Other examples cited include pushing Rubio to where he repudiated his own immigration legislation just to maintain support in the party. He says this leaves him little option but to vote for Hillary Clinton.

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The comparison by Goldsmith and Moyn has picked the wrong Roosevelt. Only Washington in the war of independence, Lincoln in the Civil War over slavery, and FDR Franklin Delano Roosevelt in the Great Depression and economic collapse, fall in that category and there is no one and nothing to compare with both the struggles they fought and the challenge to the survival of the US. On the next scale comes TR Teddy Roosevelt, and this is the Roosevelt to compare DJT with. TR was unconventional, TR spoke a different language and could be frank and outspoken. TR actions matched his words, as his days on the Indian frontier and with the Rough Riders. TR also had one term plus completing McKinley's term after his assasination. And TR like DJT did not like his successor and did everything to make the comeback denouncing the policies of his successor William Howard Taft in the 1912 election, which TR lost to Democrat Woodrow Wilson. All this is true for DJT in 2026. TR denounced the shift away from his "progressive policies" and the shift to corporate interests of Republican Taft. In this sense also DJT is similar as he denounced the shift to corporate interests of the Bush/Clinton/Bush/Obama years. TR was no country club Republican and was willing to confront opponents in the politics to fight for the benefit of the working man, splitting the Republican party in the process. This is true of DJT. TR launched the rebuilding of the Navy, and announced he would reassert the Monroe Doctrine. DJT is doing the same and is reasserting the Monroe Doctrine. One could say that DJT feels the hidden TR in him and like Teddy Roosevelt is putting America in the place it once was. For TR the industrial revolution had distorted a country founded on the backs of settlers owning the land independent and rugged, as industry turned the country into corporate interests and workers in factories with few rights, and poor working conditions and wages. This TR even as a Republican fought to reverse. In DJT there is the Republican also of a different mould who fights to reverse the situation created by Bush/Clinton/Bush/ Obama over three decades since the 1990's when America has fallen to new lows when drug trafficking gangs in Mexico and Venezuela are able to run rampant over the western hemisphere, when elites in Canada and the US act impotent in the face of this, or living in their own world away from the streets and neighborhoods of America devastated by drug trafficking, towns and neighborhoods from Janesville to Flint economically deprived as elites shifted manufacturing overseas to China in complete indifference to the American worker and his family, and carried out wars in remote parts of the world such as hills of Afghanistan and deserts of Iraq no worker or farmer in America had even heard of or cared about since the American continent was settled in 1600. If there is a Woodrow Wilson around the corner who won in 1912, for the 2028 election, then it is someone who like Wilson will take policies to benefit the American worker and farmer and his family, and America as a Nation to a better place over the next decade. A passage from Teddy Roosevelt from his Autobiography about who TR was struggling against illustrates this point- "They favored Civil Service Reform; they favored copyright laws, and the removal of tariffs on works of art; they favored all the proper (and even more strongly the improper ) movements for international peace and arbitration; in short, they favored all good and many goody-goody, measures so long as they did not cut deep into social wrong or make demands on National and individual virility. They opposed, or were lukewarm, about efforts to build up the army and the navy, for they were not sensitive regarding National honor, and above all they opposed every non-milk-and-water effort, however sane to change our social and economic system in such a fashion as to substitute the ideal of justice towards all for the ideal of kindly charity from the favored few to the possibly grateful many." (Theodore Roosevelt, Autobiography, Chapter 5 title: Applied Idealism, 1913) ...

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Scientific American says 8-11% impact larger emissions under the One Big Beautiful Act than the 61%-66% emissions cut under Biden IRA in 2035 over 2005. What is the reasoning behind DJT Republicans approach? 

Remember that the wealthiest House districts are now in the Democratic party and the working class, rural and poorer districts are now in the Republican party as shown in the recent WSJ analysis.  In this situation after  30-40 increase in the price of groceries, new and used cars, and housing costs 2019-2024 the argument is that American working families need relief. Another factor was the grasp of the fact that for climate change action to work China could not be allowed to build one coal plant a week (95GW of coal electricity capacity in 2024). In 2024 US represented only 12% of global emissions and EU only 6%, China, Russia, India, Brazil etc emitting the rest of 82%. 

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France's regional elections show president Macron's party has failed to covert national power into grassroots support. Macron's En Marche party was reduced to just 10% of the vote. Some called it a slap in the face for Macron's party. It was hastily setup during Socialist president Hollande's last year in office in April 2016 by one of his ministers Emmanuel Macron. The National Front of Marie Le Pen on the far right also lost support and won just 19% of the vote. About a third of the vote went to candidates from the former Republican party of president Sarkozy. Xavier Bertrand from the Republican party, which is in the Gaullist tradition, was one of the winners and emerges as a presidential candidate. Only 34% of voters turned out with very young people and people over 35 not turning out to vote. It appears that voters are now disillusioned with the party of Macron and Marie Le Pen that had hoped to win voters from the two traditional parties the Gaullist party and the Socialist party. The socialists did well in western France and have gained at a regional level. The Gaullist party, called Republicans under Sarkozy now looks to gain at the national level. The situation in Germany shows voters shifting back from the far right back to the traditional parties. In the regional election in eastern Germany the AfD far right lost to the CDU recently. Voters are beginning to return to the traditional parties. In Germany this includes a shift to the Greens party that has gained as the voters shift to moderate parties. Macron lost much support and was seen as not sensitive enough to people who had struggled to make a living because of changes in the economy and the urban rural split, social upheaval. He had a popular prime minister during the first wave of the coronavirus  in 2020 who Macron removed as this would create a candidate who might run against him in the national elections. A series of terrorist actions led to a sense of a lack of safety which added to voter unease and the shift to the traditional centre right Republicans.  ...

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With the partisan politics in the U.S. Congress exceeding anything that happened before, both sides Republican and Democrats, are rarely talking to each other. During the many hours of impeachment debate in the U.S. Senate, Chief Justice Roberts had to call for civil discourse to be maintained. Republicans have remained loyal to the president throughout the debates. Following the rejection of impeachment in the vote on party lines, president Trump heads into the State of the Union speech to Congress on February 4th in which he will have the opportunity to defend his administration's record.

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Both the Democratic and Republican parties are in danger of splitting as reader comments to this analysis in The Times shows. The progressive wing of the Democratic Party has little in common with the rest of the party. The Republican party has shifted to take on the working class base of the traditional Democratic party creating a confusing array of interests in each party with no particular sense of loyalty.