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The Republican Party may not survive the Trump day of reckoning

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by John Kenneth White, opinion contributor - 05/04/26 11:30 AM ET

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by John Kenneth White, opinion contributor - 05/04/26 11:30 AM ET

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President Donald Trump speaks to reporters as he meets with NASA’s Artemis II astronauts Victor Glover, Christina Koch, Reid Wiseman and Jeremy Hansen in the Oval Office of the White House, Wednesday, April 29, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Matt Rourke)

At first blush, the notion of America without a Republican Party seems absurd.

Since 1854, the Republican Party has been a major party whose status is protected by election laws giving its nominees automatic ballot access. Republicans have well-developed organizations at both the national and state levels. The party is awash in cash. One-third of Americans identify as Republicans. And our winner-take-all electoral system marginalizes third party candidates, often forcing voters to choose between Republicans and Democrats.

Over time, the Republican Party has produced both good and bad presidents. It survived the calamitous Great Depression policies embraced by President Herbert Hoover, the Watergate scandal and removal of President Richard Nixon from office, and the disastrous Iraq War and financial crisis during President George W. Bush’s tenure. Although the Republican Party has been unpopular at times, its existence has never been threatened.

Until now.

Something different is happening with President Trump. His takeover of the Republican Party occurred because it had become hollowed out. Trump led an insurgent populist movement that saw the government working for the wealthy, gutting manufacturing and blue-collar jobs and enhancing the growing ranks of minorities. His rebranding of the Republican Party happened because Trump understood his voters, whereas the pooh-bahs of the Republican establishment underestimated theirs.

Trump’s takeover allowed him to choke off any internal opposition. Prior presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, had to mollify opposing factions within the Republican Party. For Eisenhower, it was the die-hard conservatives who never trusted his modern Republicanism initiatives, which emulated Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal. For Reagan, it was the liberal Republican northeasterners who disliked some of his budget and tax cuts.

But Trump has very few elected Republicans voicing opposition. And those who have expressed disagreement are either exiled from the party or face internal opposition from MAGA-minded Republicans whose primary qualification is their undying allegiance to Trump.

Today, most Americans reject Trump’s policies. The Iran War is a quagmire from which Trump is having difficulty extricating himself. Trump’s so-called Big Beautiful Bill Act is unpopular, and his tax cuts have given rise to a countermovement that sees Trumpism as working for the wealthy at the expense of everyone else. Trump’s failures to deal with inflation, gas and grocery prices in his term’s first 15 months mock the promises he made in 2024 that he would take action to solve those problems on “Day One.”

Trump’s flawed policies are making the Republicans unpopular, as 2026 midterm polling and the Democratic Party’s overperformance in the special elections held since Trump returned to power demonstrate. But alone they do not threaten the Republican Party’s existence.

What does threaten the Republican Party’s long-term future is Trump’s upending of democratic norms that endanger the existence and security of the Republic. Historians will remember that it was Trump who incited the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot with false claims that the 2020 election had been stolen, then gave clemency to everyone convicted of participating in the storming of the U.S. Capitol.

It is Trump who has trashed the emoluments clause of the U.S. Constitution and enriched himself and his family, allegedly to the tune of $4 billion — so far. It is Trump who has turned the Justice Department into his personal law firm, bent on getting revenge on his perceived enemies, including former FBI Director James Comey and New York Attorney General Letitia James.

It is Trump who has empowered masked Department of Homeland Security immigration officials to arrest both undocumented and U.S. citizens of color and send them to mass detention facilities — sometimes to countries ruled by authoritarian dictators.

It is Trump, with help from Elon Musk, who has stripped the federal government of career employees with expertise that will take decades to rebuild. It is Trump who has single-handedly abolished federal departments and agencies without authorization from Congress by stripping them of