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Politics
ZOHRAN MAMDANI, Rama Duwaji, MIRA NAIR, MAMOOD MAMDANI during an election night event at The Brooklyn Paramount Theater in the Brooklyn borough of New York, US, on Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2025.
Last Tuesday, a self-identified democratic socialist who ran on making New York affordable for the 99% won the city’s mayoral race in a landslide, defeating former Governor Andrew Cuomo. And the reactions have been predictably hysterical.
Some critics are claiming that Mamdani will impose Sharia law and turn New York into Venezuela. Business leaders and billionaires are warning about a mass exodus. The Washington Post editorial board sees "class warfare" on the horizon. And President Trump, never one to waste an opportunity for confrontation, is threatening to cut federal funding to the city.
Everyone needs to take a breath. Yes, a 34-year-old Muslim who's never managed anything bigger than a state assembly office with five staffers just won the most powerful mayoral job in America on a platform of free buses, rent freezes, universal childcare, and soaking the rich. But most of that isn’t going to happen. Why? Because the mayor of New York City, for all the pomp and circumstance of the office, has remarkably little unilateral power to do... well, almost anything.
Let’s start with the most basic and binding constraint on Mamdani: money. The city is legally required to run a balanced expense budget each year, meaning that every dollar the mayor wants to spend on new programs has to come from somewhere else – either budget cuts elsewhere or new revenue.
Mamdani has proposed increasing the top corporate tax rate from 7.25% to 11.5% and levying an additional 2% tax on incomes over $1 million to fund his ambitious agenda. But – and this is key – the mayor of New York can’t raise income or business taxes on his own. The power of the purse belongs exclusively to the state legislature in Albany and requires Governor Kathy Hochul's signature.
And Hochul – a centrist Democrat who was Andrew Cuomo's lieutenant governor – has already ruled out tax hikes. "I'm not raising taxes at a time where affordability is the big issue," she stated flatly. Not surprising given that New York already has a combined top marginal income tax rate of 51.776 percent – the highest in the nation. Mamdani could raise property taxes with City Council approval, but that wouldn't solve his problem – property taxes don't discriminate by income, hit middle-class homeowners and co-op owners who've already seen taxes skyrocket, get passed through to renters, and wouldn't raise nearly enough to fund his agenda anyway.
What does this mean for free buses? Mamdani made this a centerpiece of his campaign, but it’d cost the Metropolitan Transportation Authority $630 million annually in lost fares, and the mayor doesn't control the MTA – the governor does. To make buses free, he would need to get either the City Council to approve funding replacement or the state to pony up the money.
What about universal childcare? The mayor could operationally run such a program, but funding it would cost $5 billion annually – requiring either massive budget cuts elsewhere or tax increases he can't authorize and Albany and Hochul won’t. A $30 minimum wage by 2030? Can't do it without the state legislature. Building 200,000 affordable housing units? That would require borrowing $70 billion, $30 billion more than the city's debt limit – and Albany’s approval is needed for that, too. Are you starting to see a pattern?
Even the rent freeze – probably Mamdani’s most viable promise – would face challenges. Yes, the mayor appoints the Rent Guidelines Board, and there’s precedent for political appointees freezing rents. But the RGB is supposed to follow economic indicators or risk lawsuits, and it doesn't always do what the mayor wants. Crucially, even if Mamdani gets his freeze, it’d only cover about one million rent-stabilized apartments – not market-rate units, condos, co-ops, or the thousands of newer "affordable" units governed by federal and state regulations.
What can Mamdani do? He can make buses faster through dedicated bus lanes and Department of Transportation enforcement. He can open city-run grocery stores through the Economic Development Corporation, which already operates retail food operations, for relatively little money. He can reorganize the NYPD to create an Office of Community Safety, even if a full department would need City Council approval. And he can use new charter amendments passed in November—which reduce City Council and community board veto power over housing—to accelerate private development, even if he can't fund the government-built affordable housing he promised. Not nothing, but not exactly a socialist revolution.
The good news is that Mamdani’s tenure doesn’t need to be revolutionary to be successful. Fiorello La Guardia had it right when he said, “There is no Republican or Democratic way to pick up the garbage.” There isn't a socialist way either. What most New Yorkers will care about when they go back to the polls in four years is whether their mayor kept the subways running, the trash collected, the schools functioning, and the streets safe. That’s what the job is largely about, and why the mayor’s real power isn't passing laws or raising taxes but appointing hundreds of commissioners and department heads and managing the 300,000-person workforce that runs city services. Here's where a truly radical mayor could do real damage: hiring incompetent ideologues and cronies to run the NYPD, the Department of Education, sanitation, emergency management, and so on.
Given Mamdani’s lack of an administrative track record, the jury is still out on whether he will govern as an ideologue or a pragmatist. But the early signs are encouraging. His transition team is heavy on people with actual records of accomplishment. He’s talking to experienced hands like Maria Torres-Springer, who's served multiple mayors and knows how to get things done at City Hall. He’s expressed a desire to keep Jessica Tisch as police commissioner, a widely respected technocrat whom business leaders and moderates trust. And in his victory speech on Tuesday night, Mamdani quoted his defeated opponent’s dad Mario Cuomo about campaigning in poetry but governing in prose, signaling that he understands the job ahead will take more than just slogans.
The real risk isn't that Mamdani will turn New York into a socialist hellhole, but that he won't be able to accomplish much of anything at all. This isn't some low-tax, low-spending jurisdiction where a progressive can open the spigots and transform society. New York already has some of the highest taxes and spending in the country. But the problems that actually make the city so unaffordable – entrenched public unions with ironclad contracts, overregulation, a bloated bureaucracy – have no easy fixes and are mostly beyond any mayor's control.
We've been here before. When progressive Bill de Blasio won the mayoralty in 2013 on a very similar “soak the rich” campaign, the same people predicted an apocalypse. Crime would explode, the tax base would flee to Florida, and the city would enter a death spiral. De Blasio made many mistakes during his eight years at Grace Mansion, but none of that (save for crime going up during the pandemic, not just here but everywhere) came to pass. New York remained New York: dirty, noisy, expensive, still the greatest city in the world.
I don’t know if Mamdani will be a good mayor. But people who've been predicting the death of New York for forty years still haven't learned that betting against the city is a sucker's game. We’ve survived far worse than an inexperienced progressive mayor with big ideas and limited power. And if you look past all the pearl-clutching, Mamdani’s victory reveals something far more interesting about where American politics is headed.
Mamdani ran a left-wing populist campaign focused almost entirely on one thing: affordability. He didn't win on identity politics or progressive social policy or democracy or Trump's corruption. He won by speaking to New Yorkers’ economic anxiety while mostly avoiding the more polarizing cultural issues that alienate moderate voters and tear the Democratic Party apart.
And here's the thing: economic anxiety resonates far beyond New York. Yes, the city's electorate is younger, wealthier, more educated, and less white than the rest of the country. These people are particularly concerned that they and their children won't have the opportunities their parents had – whether because of inflation, housing costs, student debt, AI displacement, or disillusionment with capitalism. But voters everywhere are angry at a system that feels rigged for the rich and powerful, less meritocratic capitalism than kleptocracy. That grievance is not exclusive to liberal urbanites.
Just as Trump won by convincing Americans that democracy was broken and he alone could fix it, expect to see a wave of left-wing economic populism that mirrors right-wing Trumpism but comes from a completely different place. Neither the current Democratic establishment nor Trump himself – who's abandoned "drain the swamp" for pay-to-play corruption – is positioned to capitalize on this energy.
It won't be Mamdani either. His Israel-Palestine and identity-politics positions don't play nationally like they do in deep-blue New York (frankly, neither do his demographics). But his economic playbook will. The candidates who can speak most credibly to economic anxiety and promise to disrupt a captured system – without the culture-war baggage – will have an edge in 2026 and 2028.
- What We’re Watching: Far-left upstart wins NYC mayoral primary, NATO members to boost defense spending, Iran nuclear damage in doubt ›
- Why Mamdani’s win matters ›
- How Israel made it onto the ballot in the NYC mayoral race ›
- Now the real work begins ›
- What Zohran Mamdani’s win really signals for US politics ›
- Zohran Mamdani and America's political future ›
Democratic nominee for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani getsures on stage after winning the 2025 New York City mayoral race, at an election night rally in the Brooklyn borough of New York City, New York, USA, on November 4, 2025.
By Zohran Mamdani’s own telling, his campaign for mayor began roughly a year ago, when he stood on a street corner in the Bronx, the New York City borough that is home to some of the country’s poorest and most diverse congressional districts – typically the backbone of the Democratic coalition – asking voters why they voted for US President Donald Trump.
Mamdani, a democratic socialist, interviewed them for his social media account. He listened – these voters were upset about rising costs. And so he focused his own campaign on affordability, pledging to make New York City, the capital of global finance, a more affordable place for the working poor and middle classes. It worked. Yesterday, the residents of the United States’ largest city elected him to be their mayor.
When he takes office on Jan. 1, the real work will begin – and there is much of it.
Mamdani has promised a lot. Among his campaign pledges are: free universal childcare, free bus services, and city-run grocery stores. He also wants to deploy mental health workers to work alongside police officers. He says he will freeze the rent for rent-stabilized homes as part of a bid to lower housing costs.
So how is Mamdani going to pay for this? He wants to raise taxes. Specifically, he wants to increase state corporate tax from 7.25% to 11.5%, and introduce a flat 2% tax on the 34,000 people in New York City who earn $1 million or more annually. He also wants to boost tax collection and reform procurement procedures. These policies, he says, will raise $10 billion, enough to pay for the $6-billion cost of universal childcare and the $800-million price tag of free bus rides.
To do that he will need to look beyond the city itself. Firstly, increasing the state corporate tax will require approval from the New York State Legislature and Gov. Kathy Hochul – this will be especially challenging with Hochul up for reelection next year. Secondly, the City Council as well as the State Legislature will have to approve the additional tax for those earning over a million. Finally, these measures will face major opposition from the city’s financial establishment, most of whom supported Mamdani’s main opponent, former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.
Then there’s another major issue in New York City: public safety. Mamdani’s rivals – including Cuomo – relentlessly tried to paint him as being soft-on-crime, highlighting his previous advocacy for defunding the police. Mamdani has also raised fears among some of the city’s million-plus Jewish residents, in part over his refusal to denounce the use of the term “Globalize the Intifada.” To alleviate some of these fears, Mamdani said he will keep Jessica Tisch, a widely-respected technocrat, as police commissioner, who has presided over a significant drop in crime since being appointed by outgoing Mayor Eric Adams last year.
The Trump challenge. Mamdani will immediately be in conflict with the president over a range of issues: immigration enforcement, infrastructure financing, and public safety. The president has several powerful tools at his disposal – he can cut infrastructure funding to the city, as he did for a proposed tunnel across the Hudson River, and could send in the National Guard to quell protests and arrest undocumented migrants.
Trump and Mamdani, both populist New Yorkers from radically opposite points of the political and generational spectrum, seem to openly want this confrontation.
“Donald Trump, since I know you’re watching, I have four words for you,” Mamdani said during his victory speech last night. “Turn the volume up.”
Trump responded on social media last night: “…AND SO IT BEGINS!”
What We’re Watching: Some Americans head to the polls, German U-turn on Syrian asylum policy, Russia may have to find new oil buyers
Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, votes in the New York City mayoral election at a polling site at the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts High School in Astoria, Queens borough of New York City, USA, on November 4, 2025.
It’s Election Day in the United States
It’s the first Tuesday after Nov. 1, which means it’s US election day. Key ballots to watch include the mayoral race in New York City – where democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani is poised to pull off an upset that will echo into national level politics – as well as state Supreme Court races in Pennsylvania, and ballot initiatives on gerrymandering in California. Don’t forget about the New Jersey governor election either, where GOP nominee Jack Ciattarelli is looking to eke out a victory against Democratic nominee Mikie Sherrill. New Jersey was once reliably blue but has been getting more purple in recent years: in 2020 Joe Biden won it by 17 points, but Donald Trump lost by just four last year.
Germany to end asylum for Syrians
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz says Syrians no longer have grounds for political asylum in his country now that the Syrian civil war is over. Merz called for a repatriation program to ease burdens on Germany and accelerate the rebuilding of Syria, though the United Nations warns Syria still isn’t ready to absorb a large population of returnees. It was exactly ten years ago that Chancellor Angela Merkel declared “Wir schaffen das” (we can do it), establishing a generous asylum policy that welcomed in more than a million Syrians fleeing their country’s horrific civil war. A decade later, with the war over and the far right surging on anti-immigrant backlash, Merz is now saying, “Wir schaffen das nicht.”
Is India buying less Russian oil?
Last month, Trump announced sanctions on Russia’s top two oil companies, in a bid to squeeze the Kremlin’s war effort by scaring off major crude buyers like India and China. Is it working? Preliminary data show India’s imports of Russian oil actually increased slightly in October compared to September. But wait, there’s more: India’s purchases in the second half of October plummeted compared to the first half. That may have something to do with the fact that Trump announced the sanctions on Oct. 23. They don’t take effect until later this month, so we’ll be watching to see what the November data tell us. With Chinese firms now also reportedly exploring alternative sources of oil, Russia may in fact start feeling the effects of US sanctions (for more on this, and whether it would change his approach to Ukraine, read here).
Public disgust with Congress is mounting as the government shutdown drags into a third week. Former GOP strategist Steven Law joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to talk about the intense polarization and intractable gridlock plaguing Washington. Is there any hope for a breakthrough? Law says that voters want leaders who are constructive, even while executing a strong agenda. It’s part of the reason President Trump has such an enduring appeal with his base. They may not agree with everything he does, but he’s taking action.
But decisiveness can also come at a cost. Party loyalty, fear of backlash, and an increasingly combative political culture has made compromise all but impossible, constraining lawmakers on both sides of the aisle. The partisan bases are demanding a fight, and Law predicts the next real political breakthrough will come from a leader bold enough to do the opposite: turn down the temperature and offer unity without weakness.
“People see a completely dysfunctional, broken Congress and when they see Trump, here’s a guy who’s constantly putting points on the board,” Law says “He’s getting stuff done and that’s something I think people have been longing to see in Washington.”
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Amid deep polarization and a Congress paralyzed by dysfunction, America feels less governed by policy than by tribal warfare. How did we get here? Former GOP fundraiser Steven Law joins Ian Bremmer on GZERO World to talk about the state of US politics, the upcoming midterm elections, and the intense partisanship in Washington driven by the highly-polarized bases of both parties. As the government shutdown drags on, is there any hope for meaningful compromise?
According to Law, the political reality is Democrats and Republicans are mistrustful of the other side and both bases “want a fight.” While the American public writ large would probably like to see the temperature lowered in DC, neither party seems willing to work with the other side to keep the government running. Republicans are united behind President Trump, but that hasn't prevented a federal shutdown. Democrats are struggling to define what they stand for. With so much chaos and fighting on Capitol Hill, can their messages break through or is the political system broken beyond repair?
“People look at Washington and they look at politics with just derision and what they see is a completely dysfunctional broken system,” Law tells Bremmer, “Congress can't even pass bills to spend money. I mean, that's just how bad it's gotten.”
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube.Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔). GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Public disgust with Washington is growing as the government shutdown continues, with both Democrats and Republicans seemingly unwilling to compromise. Is the American political system broken beyond repair? Former GOP fundraiser and chief of staff for Mitch McConnell, Steven Law, joins Ian Bremmer on the GZERO World Podcast to discuss the state of America’s political parties ahead of a pivotal midterm election year.
While Congress seems more polarized and divided than ever, Law believes that the American public writ large wants leaders who are constructive and unifying, even as they’re prosecuting a strong agenda. But exactly what that agenda is, is what’s unclear. According to Law, the GOP has become the party of President Trump while the Democrats are experiencing an identity crisis and period of “massive redefinition.” What should parties focus on ahead of next year’s midterms? Can either side break through the deep polarization in DC to deliver a message that resonates with voters?
“Both bases want to fight. They are mistrustful of the other side,” Law says, “There's going to be a dividend that the voters will pay to a public leader who stands up and says, we just need to turn the temperature down here.”
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.TRANSCRIPT: The politics of polarization in America, with Steven Law
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you can find extended interviews of my show on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer, and today we are talking about the state of American politics and we're refusing to look away because unlike a five-car pileup on the Beltway, this crash isn't getting cleared anytime soon. Democrats are in a period of what my guest today calls massive redefinition after their 2024 defeat. Republicans are in lockstep behind an unpopular president. The opposition Democrats are nowhere and the country feels less governed by policy than by tribal warfare. How did we get here and what can we expect heading into a pivotal midterm election year? To unpack it all, I'll be joined by someone who's been deep inside the GOP machine, former Mitch McConnell chief of staff and Republican Super fundraiser, Steven Law. Let's get to it.
Steven Law, welcome to the show.
Steven Law:
Thank you so much. It's great to be on with you this morning, Ian.
Ian Bremmer:
Political parties in the United States, when I talk about them, it doesn't usually amount to a pleasant conversation, right? I mean, because people don't seem to believe as much in their parties these days. What are the Republican and Democratic Party, in your view? What do they stand for right now?
Steven Law:
Well, on the Republican side, at least for the foreseeable future, it's pretty clear where the party is and it's the party of Donald Trump. He has a incredible grip over the party, influence over its voting base, influence over donors. So his views, his ideology, to the extent that he has one, everything that he's doing I think defines the party pretty substantially. On the Democratic side, you're seeing this play out in the shutdown battle that we're seeing unfold in Washington. The Democratic Party is undergoing a period of reappraisal and trying to figure out where they go for the future. For me, there's a little bit of PTSD involved because Republicans went through the same thing after Mitt Romney failed to defeat Barack Obama in 2012. There was a huge roiling conflict within the party. What are we going to be? How are we going to deal with Obama? What are we going to be about? And I see that going on in the Democratic Party today.
Ian Bremmer:
So the Democratic Party, in a sense, is orienting itself in terms of what it's not as opposed to what it is. I mean, is that a fair thing to say?
Steven Law:
Yeah, I mean, you see these different voices as recline talking about the importance of focusing on economic abundance, kind of pulling out of the culture war issues that the party became tainted with in this last election. But then you also see the more left-wing, very activist base, which has a huge amount of influence in the party and a lot of money. I mean, they're tied to the unions, particularly the teachers unions and other government unions. And their view is that the party should be much more focused on taking on Trump, on standing strong on the social issues that they had been championing over the last few years.
And somewhere in the middle are a lot of elected leaders in Washington just trying to figure out what to do and how to do their share of governing in Washington for the next couple of years. And what they all are also looking for as well is a year and a half, hence there will be the 2026 midterms. And that's really going to be an important moment. It's going to be a report card on the Trump presidency. It's also going to be a report card on whether the Democrats are able to offer a compelling alternative vision.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, when I think of midterms, I usually think of lower turnout. I usually think of elections that are principally about what the incumbent and the incumbent party, especially when they run everything, is actually doing. And so in that regard, it's less about what the Democrats stand for and who they happen to be running. Do you think that's not likely to apply this time around?
Steven Law:
Well, again, it's another little moment of PTSD for me. Republicans thought that would be the case during President Biden's midterm election in 2022. We thought it was going to be all about him. Inflation was a big problem. People were still stung by the embarrassing withdrawal from Afghanistan. But what ended up happening was that Republicans became mired in bad primaries that produced even worse candidates. There were a lot of other things that made, and then you may recall that Donald Trump announced he was going to be running for President again before that election.
So all of a sudden, the focus shifted away from Joe Biden, inflation, all that, to okay, what are the Republicans doing? What are their candidates like? And it made for a disappointing midterm. So it is possible for the Democrats to end up if they have weak candidates or far left-wing candidates, or they can't shake this complete identification with that left-wing social agenda, it could be a problem for them as well.
Ian Bremmer:
We haven't spoken yet about democratic candidates per se. I don't want to get too in the weeds about individuals, but when I see Mamdani, who's likely to be the next New York mayor, when I see the continued popularity of Bernie Sanders when he shows up on campuses, for example, it feels, and I'm not inside it the way you are, but it feels like that's where the momentum and the energy is in the Democratic Party right now. Maybe that's more about economic issues than it is about identity politics, but do you think that's true? Do you think that is where kind of like the Republicans did after Mitt Romney, do you think that that is, the Democrats are essentially an election cycle or two behind?
Steven Law:
Well, there's significant difference in what happened in 2012 and at least what seems to be going on in the Democratic Party right now. In 2012, there was this huge upsurge of anger mostly from the Tea Party, but what ended up happening was that Tea Party candidates who had been part of the reason we had lost significant winnable elections in 2012 and 2010, they ended up losing primaries. And we feel that an incredibly strong group of candidates in 2014 that led to the switch over of nine Democrat-held Senate seats, one of the most significant turnarounds in electoral politics. But that was because we had mainstream candidates and more mainstream ideas.
We avoided this kind of endless confrontations with President Obama that would've made us part of the focus, and it was a very successful year. It remains to be seen, in my view. I mean, obviously everybody in the Republican Party is very focused on Mamdani. I don't know, I assume he wins the mayoralty in New York. The question is whether he's still newsworthy after that from a national perspective. A person voting in a Senate race in Texas or Ohio or Georgia, whether they're going to have Mamdani at the top of their mind, they're probably going to be more focused on the candidates.
Ian Bremmer:
Well, presumably Trump wants Mamdani to be focused and front of mind, right? He's certainly been talking in that way.
Steven Law:
Yeah. Well, the one thing that is an asset in this sort of setting is President Trump can own the megaphone like no other politician we've seen certainly in my lifetime. And if he wants to make Mamdani the focus of attention, Mamdani will be, is certainly a focus of attention next year. The only question is, as I look at it from more of a political professional point of view, is whether a candidate who's going to be choosing between Democratic Senator John Ossoff, who has decided to be very, very liberal, not to move to the middle, whether they're going to vote for him or whoever the Republican candidate is, and whether that Republican has a compelling enough persona to be able to defeat him.
Ian Bremmer:
And if you were telling the Democrats, "Here are the two, three issues that you should actually be running on in the midterms to make a difference, to not have the challenges that you've suffered PTSD for," you'd say What? I'll move to the Republicans after this. I'm just trying to clear the wood for you.
Steven Law:
Yeah, sure. No, I always hate to give advice to the adversary, but I think there are two issues that I think are most important for them really in almost any election. This whole shutdown gambit at the end of the day reflected a strategic decision, I think by Democrats to go back to one of their core issues, which is healthcare.
Ian Bremmer:
Healthcare.
Steven Law:
And that's a base play issue. You talk about healthcare, it's a dog whistle to democratic voters. They pay attention, they want to vote democratic, less so for Republicans. But the other issue that's lurking out there, and we just simply don't know yet what the environment will be like, and that's the economy, inflation, cost of living, the job market, is it soft, is it strong? Certainly the stock market is pricing in a lot of economic growth going forward, but we'll just have to see. At the end of the day though, in most elections, most elections I've seen in the last 40 years, they're doing this. Most elections turn on how people view the economy and how that's going. So that's one that either they're going to be able to take advantage of because it seems like the economy's slowing down and inflation continues to go on, or as the White House is currently saying, "You just wait. It's going to be great next year."
Ian Bremmer:
And so you didn't mention corruption. One of the things that Trump talked a lot about in the first term when he won was draining the swamp. He doesn't mention that so much anymore, in part because he's part of it, he's more of a politician, and because he's done so well for so many really rich people, cap taxes down, he's making a lot of money himself. I mean, these things that are unprecedented. Is that a mistake for Democrats because it's more of just going after Trump as opposed to being something themselves and nothing sticks to him? Or is there a real lane here? I'm just seeing so much economic populism among young people in other countries around the world who are rising up right now against what they perceive to be very corrupt elites that don't care about them.
Steven Law:
Yeah, it's a good question. I tend to think that that set of issues is compelling to one's own base. And you hear it in the rhetoric of Bernie Sanders, for example. I think-
Ian Bremmer:
Absolutely.
Steven Law:
... he's hitting that note, and it inflames that part of the electorate that is going to be very focused on it. But again, at the end of the day, I think most people vote their own pocketbooks. One thing, that we've used corruption issues against democratic candidates at different times, and what we find is that a lot of voters price in a certain amount of corruption for anybody who's in politics. It's quite remarkable. I mean, I actually have gotten to know a lot of politicians. I've found very few who are actually doing anything wrong. Most of them are pretty civic-minded. That goes for both Republicans and Democrats. But most voters assume if you're up in Washington, you must be up to some no good. And so that issue, it kind of attenuates the impact of that issue I've found in elections.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, look, I think one of the things the Republicans have been very effective at, certainly with their own supporters, is there's nothing Trump is doing that Biden hasn't already done, or even worse, which I don't find personally compelling when you do the research and the facts. I think a lot of what Trump represents is unprecedented, but I think that message has really resonated well with the voters, especially in a very divided media space algorithmically and network and cable and the rest. Do you agree with that?
Steven Law:
Yeah, certainly with respect to expanding executive power and wielding it with a lot of purpose. I think part of what's happening, and I've not seen data on this, but I'm increasingly of the view that people look at Washington and they look at politics with just derision, and what they see is a completely dysfunctional broken system. Congress can't even pass bills to spend money. I mean, that's just how bad it's gotten. And when they see Trump, whether they like specifically what he's doing or not, and it may have been this way with President Biden if you were a Democrat, here's somebody taking decisive action to address problems that everybody knows are problems, and they look at Washington, they look at the political culture that's just not able to do anything.
And I think people often say, eyes follow motion. Here's a guy who's constantly doing things, constantly putting points on the board. May not like the points that he's putting on the board, but he's a guy who's getting stuff done. And that is something that I think people have longed to see more happen in Washington. Incidentally, if Democrats ever take the White House back, and you have to assume that someday they will, I assume they'll do the same thing.
Ian Bremmer:
I think that's absolutely true. And you do, you saw that from Ted Cruz when he was concerned about the Jimmy Kimmel and the FCC flare-up. He's like, "Look, they're going to do this to us if they come in, so you should be careful." But I don't see many people making that kind of argument. It was notable for the fact for me that it came from Cruz.
Steven Law:
Yeah, that was an interesting play by him. It was an opportunity for him to criticize something the Trump administration was doing without blaming President Trump. So it was a fairly smooth move there. But also, I mean, it is something that is a reflection of principle, and I think a lot of Republicans, certainly a lot of conservatives are quite concerned about anything that looks like cancel culture. I do think the Attorney General who is on the hill today, I think she very quickly walked back the comment saying that they wouldn't tolerate hate speech. And then all of a sudden, people reminded that Charlie Kirk, may his memory be a blessing, was completely against this idea of categorizing something as hate speech that therefore you could regulate or ban. So it makes people uncomfortable on the right, and I think that Ted Cruz saw an opportunity and he took it.
Ian Bremmer:
So let's bring you closer to your comfort space and switch the talk to the Republicans. You did say right up the top, and it's not at all surprising, we know what the Republicans stand for right now because you've got a leader who doesn't really brook a lot of dissent. Now, there are some things that it seems that he really does stand for in terms of ending wars, for example, in terms of using tariffs as the principle tool of US statecraft internationally for a whole bunch of reasons. But domestically, could you provide some clarity around what you would say the Republican Party now stands for from a policy perspective?
Steven Law:
Yeah, and you hear different members of Congress say this. Certainly the administration is fully in unison on this. The Republican economic project under President Trump is not just about supporting big business and giving that whatever it wants, but Scott Bessent has actually, I think been a very articulate spokesman for this point of view, the goal of making the economy work for everybody. I tend to lean much more on the free and open trade side, but there is legitimate concern about the fact that that system of global trade has impacted adversely entire communities, entire regions of the country, and certainly sections of the middle class.
You could also argue, I think, correctly that it has raised living standards overall for this country and around the world, but it has had some disparate impacts that I think this administration is saying, "We want to make sure that the economy works for everybody." Interestingly, that's a page stolen directly from the Democrats, which is why you see Democrats not criticizing what Trump is doing on tariffs and all these things to kind of blunt the force of globalism. I think they like it. In fact, my concern again is someday there'll be a Democratic president and they'll do it 2X or 5X.
Ian Bremmer:
Certainly my presumption is that if the Democrats come in 2028 that these tariffs are going to stick because there aren't a lot of government officials, you and I know, that don't want that revenue.
Steven Law:
Right. It's a source of revenue and it's a talking point for how you're protecting American jobs. I think the challenge for this administration and Republicans along with him is between now and next year, and then certainly beyond that, to be able to demonstrate that this approach of being much tougher on foreign trade on raising tariffs, which then sometimes lead to investment deals and sometimes lead to resourcing jobs in the US, there's going to be need to be a concrete case made that this is in fact happening, that the short term pain of $5 a cup of coffee, what's coming through that is jobs back here in the US, factories being built, more investment in the US and people getting jobs. I think that's going to be the argument that will need to be made between now and next November, and then even beyond that.
Ian Bremmer:
And otherwise, again, the economy has always been core issue. If it's not number one, it's almost always number two for the US electorate. Certainly a lot is being made by Trump right now, not just on border security with Mexico where he's been quite popular, but specifically on immigration and crime inside the United States, which appears to be a fight that he really wants to have. Do you think that is smart strategy? Are the numbers bearing that out?
Steven Law:
Well, I haven't seen a lot of numbers on it yet, and I think it might be still a little early to measure it because the move from securing the border, which is undeniably immensely popular, even among Democrats, certainly among Independents and Republicans, now we're shifting toward, first of all, finding and deporting criminal illegal migrants, people who their illegality is not just their status, but things they've done in this country. That's also popular. But then the next step is obviously that they're pursuing, which is to find people who are here, simply here illegally, no other known crime besides that, and detaining them and ultimately deporting them.
Each of those has different levels of support, and in some cases, the tactics required to do these kinds of significant deportations of people who are simply illegal as far as status, but no other reason, that's going to be uglier. That's going to be messier. We're already starting to see that, and obviously that's also leading to these confrontations. It's a big part of why the National Guard is now being deployed in some cities, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. So the core focus of the president to really bear down on sealing the border from illegals, dealing with people who are here illegally and committing crimes, that's popular. Question is how much further it goes and how much the average American follows that. But certainly with the base, and the base matters in a midterm election, all of that is what those voters signed up for.
Ian Bremmer:
And sort of relatedly, the level of, and there's a mutual demonization in the United States going on right now, which clearly is unhelpful to the political culture of the country, I found it very noteworthy that when President Trump and Pete Hegseth were addressing the troops not so long ago, they were really focusing on the enemy within in the United States. And defining that much more broadly than certainly I've ever heard a president define it in my lifetime, which means more resources, but it also means that the political opposition in the United States might not be legitimate in their view. Did you hear that the same way? Is this something that concerns you?
Steven Law:
Well, I did hear it, and I certainly heard that as an interpretation. Whether Trump himself meant it that broadly, sort of this kind of Nixonian view of the opposition, Trump is kind of famously imprecise in his words. He doesn't speak like a politician. At different times, he said things that people take one way, but actually it means something more benign. But obviously this is an area where you really have to speak with great care, and if you're the leader of the country, you have to be clear what you're saying. I think when he's spoken more recently, he seems to be focused primarily on these groups that I've long worried about that show up sometimes in civil disturbances, and they're clearly very well organized, almost militaristic in their garb and in their tactics, and they look like left-wing militias to me.
That's a concern. Who are they? What are they doing? What do they fund? Are they just simply well-organized protesters or are they something much more malign? That's the area where I think the concern is, I would share as well. But again, to your point, you can't simply with a broad brush say every judge who issues a negative ruling, every Democrat who opposes what we want to do is somehow an enemy. And I don't think the President believes that. I really don't. But again, you have to be very careful about when you talk about things like that.
Ian Bremmer:
So this raises a challenging question because on the one hand, the Republicans are winning right now, and they're winning in part, not just because they have a better message for the people and their policies are popular, they're also winning because as you said, they have a leader that actually does not brook dissent, that everyone is loyal to. Having a strong leader makes it easier to win an election. On the other hand, that leader is occasionally saying things that are not only imprecise, but that can cause outcomes that clearly you and many of my other Republican friends are deeply uncomfortable with. And so I'm wondering to what extent that you, and perhaps more importantly, all of the Republican leaders that you advise, do you feel like they are constrained in a way that is uncomfortable for them? Do you feel that they are not able to speak their mind on issues that they really would rather to help ensure that the Republican Party reflects a party that they want to be part of, that they're proud of, those sorts of things?
Steven Law:
Well, I would say is almost it's time immemorial that when your party has the White House and you're in Congress, you support the party line. I mean, that was true, very, very few times that I ever hear any Democrat say anything critical of President Obama, even when, as we know, just a few short months ago, there was obvious evidence that President Biden was just not functioning well. You could argue whether it was cognitive decline or something else. Most Democrats took the party line and said, "No, he's great. In private meetings, he's wonderful." So that's not an unusual phenomenon.
I do think that Republicans and others who wish the success of this administration do find avenues to express concerns about particular policy issues, and they just do it inside the tent. And I think that with this president, that's an especially preferred approach than doing it publicly. So I think there are outlets for that, but then you kind of take your question more broadly. I do think, and you're seeing this play out, and I'll mention this in just a minute, you're seeing this play out in the Virginia Attorney General's race that many people aren't focused on.
Ian Bremmer:
But perhaps should, given that the candidate actually in a text had essentially called directly for political violence against a Republican official city.
Steven Law:
And against his children, wanting to see the opponent's children die. I mean, this person obviously, he's really not qualified to get any job in any company in America, let alone elected office. But my point is that I feel like at some point between now and next year, there's going to be a dividend that the voters will pay to a public leader who stands up and says, "We just need to turn the temperature down here." And you see that every once in a while. You saw a little bit of that in the wake of the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
Ian Bremmer:
From the Governor of Utah in dramatic contrast to the President of the United States.
Steven Law:
Well, as he said, he can't forgive his enemies.
Ian Bremmer:
But that's exactly what we don't want, right? I mean, I thought that Spencer Cox, Republican in good standing, very popular in Utah, it happened in his state, and he gave the leadership message that I think most Americans wanted to see from their president.
Steven Law:
Yeah, and even more poignantly, Charlie Kirk's widow, in a really remarkable moment, perhaps to me, the most remarkable moment of that event. But the other dynamic that you have that is the political driver, and you have this on the Democratic side, you have it on the Republican side, is that both bases want to fight. They want to fight. They are mistrustful of the other side. I mean, your average far left Democrat thinks that every Republican is a Nazi or a fascist. Well, fascist is now the new term of art. And every Republican on that far right fringe views the left as basically incorrigible traitors. I mean, that's the energy underneath it all. And so you've got people in both sides saying, "We just really, really need to fight."
Ian Bremmer:
But I mean, I don't think, I mean, you and I know a lot of Americans in common across the political spectrum. I can't think of many people in those groups who consider the opposition to be fascist or traitors, but I do think that that's the way the leaders are framing it.
Steven Law:
Well, I don't know that that's a leadership-level message. I don't hear that from the president, sort of this broad brush there that way. I don't hear that from know Minority Leader Jeffries or Minority Leader Schumer. Although every once in a while, Schumer does have an ungoverned moment of rhetoric, such as when he stood in front of the Supreme Court and said they would inherit the whirlwind. But for the most part, leadership is about attenuating that. You've got to, obviously, you're leading a party on either side, you're leading a base on either side. But I think the American public writ large wants leaders who at some point are constructive, unifying, even as they're prosecuting a strong agenda.
Ian Bremmer:
Steve Law, thanks so much for joining today.
Steven Law:
Thank you.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars, otherwise, don't do it, on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.
What is going on with the Democratic Party? President Trump says they’ve “gone crazy” and even Democratic leaders are unsure of what they do (or don’t) stand for. On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the current state of America’s political parties. With the midterms just about a year away, Republicans need to show voters they can overcome Washington gridlock and Democrats need to prove they are more than just the party of “anti-Trump.”
While President Trump’s approval ratings may have slipped in recent months, especially with young voters, Republicans are united behind him. Yet Democrats can’t agree on what they stand for. Should they move to the center or further to the left? Should they focus on the economy or double-down on social issues that matter to the base? If Dems can’t find a message (or understand how to deliver it), it’s going to be an uphill battle. Trump, for all his foibles, knows how to control the narrative.
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