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Establishment Democrats have been panicking that an uptick in democratic socialist candidates within their party could make it easier for Republicans to win by painting the entire party as extreme. But a new poll showing that MAGA ideology is less popular than democratic socialism should help allay fears that the Democrats’ left wing is a toxic liability in the upcoming midterm elections.
According to the CNBC All-America Economic Survey released Friday, which polled 1,000 registered voters from July 8 to 12, American voters are more likely to support a democratic socialist candidate than a candidate who identifies as part of the MAGA movement or is endorsed by President Donald Trump.
Democratic socialism isn’t particularly popular in mainstream America, but it is less unpopular than MAGA politics. The survey found that if a candidate self identifies as a democratic socialist, 32% of voters say they are more likely to vote for that candidate, while 50% are less likely. If a candidate is endorsed by Trump, 29% of voters are more likely to vote for them, and 52% are less likely. And if a candidate self-describes as MAGA, then 27% of voters are more likely to vote for them, while 57% are less likely to vote for them.
The far left is somewhat more acceptable to a broader swath of the public than Trump and his movement.
Taken together, the results suggest the far left is somewhat more acceptable to a broader swath of the public than Trump and his movement. Neither side commands a majority. But democratic socialists appear to excite roughly a third of the electorate, while MAGA affiliation excites closer to a quarter. Both sides to some extent repel a big chunk of the electorate, but democratic socialism deters half of voters, while MAGA puts off a significant majority of them.
This finding might be a function of the growing popularity of the concept of socialism. CNBC’s poll found that 28% respondents rated socialism positively — 10 points higher than in 2024. And a larger proportion of voters appear to be comfortable with at least some socialist policies being enacted: 40% of respondents said some form of socialism would be a good thing, while 44% of voters said it would be a bad thing, and 14% had no opinion.
Moreover, the asymmetry between the socialist movement and the MAGA movement also bodes well for the left’s electoral prospects. Trump and the MAGA movement dominate their party, whereas democratic socialists remain at its fringe, even if they are growing in numbers. The poll doesn’t ask respondents to rank, say, centrist Democrats compared to these other camps, but it’s striking that the Democrats’ leftmost extreme — the part that the party leadership is most worried about — is more appealing than the heart of the GOP.
These numbers should be sobering for centrist Democratic leaders who treat democratic socialism as an albatross. First of all, the overwhelming majority of Democratic candidates up for election in November will not run on socialist platforms, and most voters will understand that. Moderate Democrats in the Rust Belt aren’t going to be running on Medicare for All or an aggressive billionaire wealth tax, and their more restrained calls for change are often legible to midterms voters. But to the extent that in some races Republicans will try to suggest that even moderate Democratic candidates could be a stalking horse for creeping socialism, the association isn’t necessarily lethal, and in some cases will excite some segment of the Democratic electorate.
Trump (wrongly) claims democratic socialists are no different than 20th century communists and treats them as an obvious liability for the Democrats, but some Republicans are not so convinced that leftists are necessarily an easy target — and believe they could even be a political danger to MAGA. Meghan McCain, the conservative daughter of the late Republican Sen. John McCain, wrote on X on Monday that she sees New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a democratic socialist, as a true threat to the right after viewing his recent interview with The New York Times.
“What he is saying is absolutely brilliant in his attacks against the right,” McCain wrote. “The tone of what he is saying is brilliant. It is part folksy everyman, Republicans have abandoned the working class and are a bunch of elites, without being harsh or conspiratorial.”
She added, “Despite my abject fear and repulsion of socialism, it is really impactful. If Democrats are smart they will nominate someone with his tenor and tone on economics and national policy.”
McCain’s concern brings in another element of the dynamics on the left that the poll doesn’t measure. Even if many Americans have no inclination to say they currently actively desire the U.S. to be more socialist, that doesn’t mean that socialists won’t be able to leverage a uniquely trenchant critique of the right. There is plenty of space for persuasion as the center of American politics is getting chipped away at from all sides. Democrats need to spend less time punching left and think more about why leftists are stacking wins.
Zeeshan Aleem is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He primarily writes about politics and foreign policy.
President Donald Trump knows that if Democrats manage to win back control of the House in November, his third impeachment likely will not be far behind. And yet, despite racking up a laundry list of potentially impeachable offenses primed for investigation, the president might not be the most vulnerable person in his administration. Democrats would be wise instead to set their sights not on the White House itself, but next door in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building, where Russell Vought has spent the last year and a half willfully breaking the law.
As head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Vought has a hand in how practically every tiny bud on the executive branch operates. With the possible exception of deputy chief of staff Stephen MillerVought arguably has the firmest grip on the levers of power in Washington. While Trump’s focus is trained on a handful of obsessions, Vought has the knowledge and skill set to turn his Christian nationalist ideology into policy — and transform those policies into reality.
As head of the White House Office of Management and Budget, Vought has a hand in how practically every tiny bud on the executive branch operates
For years, Vought has advocated for massive, draconian cuts to federal spending, during both his previous stint atop the OMB in the waning days of the first Trump administration and as part of a pro-MAGA think tank in the interregnum period. The OMB acted as overseer for the Department of Government Efficiency project last yearproviding an aegis for the quasilegal agency to initiate mass firings and unilateral spending cuts. While that effort failed to deliver on its promised savingsit gave Vought the ability to stress test his vision for a reduced role for Congress over spending.
Constitutionally, it’s Congress that controls the power of the purse. The president is required to submit a budget request to lawmakers each year, but he and all the executive departments and agencies under him rely on congressional appropriations to fund their activities. While Republicans control both the House and Senate, lawmakers yet again rejected the suggested cuts in Trump’s fiscal 2026 budget in favor of their own preferred spending levels.
Vought claims though that the figures in appropriations laws are a ceiling for how much can be spent, not an order of what must be spent. Accordingly, Trump’s OMB director has insisted that the president is allowed to hold back, or “impound,” funds that he doesn’t want to spend despite the 1974 Impoundment Control Act and Supreme Court precedent saying otherwise.
After one successful effort to get Congress to legally rescind unspent funds last year, Vought shifted tactics, using another tool at his disposal to make whatever spending reductions he sees fit. Once Congress has appropriated funds, it then falls to the OMB to apportion that money to agencies, telling them when to spend it and under what circumstances. According to a tracker from Protect Democracya nonprofit group dedicated to anti-authoritarianism, Vought has used the “apportionment” process to hold up millions of dollars in funds that Congress has allocated.
A recent opinion essay published in The Hill from Cerin Lindgrensavage, a counsel with Project Democracy, and David A. Super, a law professor at Georgetown Law, detailed some of these budget cuts via apportionment, why they are illegal, and the overreach they represent:
Trump proposed cutting funds for the Smithsonian by more than $60 million. Congress rejected that cut and increased Smithsonian funding to account for inflation. Vought’s office then unlawfully forbade the Smithsonian from spending any money Congress appropriated beyond the president’s budget request…
Congress has made clear that this is not allowed. For more than a decade, annual appropriations bills have required, government-wide, that no funds “may be used to increase, eliminate, or reduce funding for a program, project, or activity as proposed in the President’s budget request for a fiscal year until such proposed change is subsequently enacted in an appropriation act,” unless the administration follows congressional procedures to reprogram appropriated funds.
The two also argued that in withholding those funds, Vought and Trump have violated not just the Impoundment Control Act, which has no legal penalties, but also the Anti-Deficiency Actwhich does: “When a president delays, withholds or impounds funds to impose a cut proposed rejected by Congress, he is blatantly disregarding the appropriations laws: the funds appropriated for the salary of the Office of Management and Budget officials imposing those cuts is being spent in direct violation of that legal prohibition.”
Lindgrensavage and Super go on to suggest that a potential referral to the Justice Department for violating the ADA could be on the table for Vought.
But impeachment is a tool readily available for Congress. It is well within the legislative branch’s ability to bring articles of impeachment against Vought as, unlike Miller, he holds a Senate-confirmed position and clearly counts as among the “civil Officers of the United States” who shall be removed from office for “high Crimes and Misdemeanors.”
It is precisely because Vought is not Trump that a winning case can more easily be made against him.
The Government Accountability Office has already found multiple instances where OMB has clearly violated the law. But impeachment is a political process, one where the same standard doesn’t apply as in the courts. Even if Democrats manage to reclaim the Senate as well as the House, it will be difficult to reach the two-thirds vote needed to remove Vought from office, as many Republicans will likely be hesitant about removing a key member of Trump’s Cabinet.
And yet it is precisely because Vought is not Trump that a winning case can more easily be made against him. While the president has a power base of his own among lawmakers to protect him, Vought has repeatedly shown nothing but contempt for Congress’ role in governing. When sitting in hearings, he’s been savvy enough to be evasive under questioning while never acknowledging that he lacks the authority to override legislators’ orders with his own. Even the most zealot deficit hawks would be forced to defend giving away their own power to someone that has never received a single vote in their life.
It would be fully in keeping with the founders’ vision for the balance of powers that lawmakers jealously protect their prerogatives. Absent his willingness to accept congressional supremacy on this front, Vought could — and should — serve as an example for what happens to bureaucrats who try to place themselves above elected lawmakers.
Hayes Brown is a writer and editor for MS NOW. He focuses on policymaking at the federal level, including Congress and the White House.
The Dictatorship
‘I’m worried about the work of this agency’: Another Democrat commissioner expects to be fired by Trump
In the hours following the landmark Supreme Court decision that gave the president the power to fire independent agency heads, the woman who brought the action to the high court — former Federal Trade Commissioner Rebecca Slaughter — told MS NOW the U.S. had crossed a dangerous line.
“These government agencies that Congress set up to be economic watchdogs will turn into lap dogs,” she said.
And as that transition now unfolds, leaders at other independent agencies are on edge, waiting to see if and when their pink slips will come from the office of the president.
One sitting Democratic commissioner spoke exclusively to MS NOW as they prepare for what they say feels like an inevitable end to their tenure at one of these independent agencies. This person spoke openly yet anonymously to MS NOW, fearing that being identified would only hasten their firing — and noting that they still have work at that agency they would like to see through.
“I’m not worried about me or whether I have a job,” they said. “I’m worried about the work of this agency and other agencies.”
The Slaughter ruling has made this person more reticent. “We obviously have to think every time we’re about to make a public statement,” the commissioner said. “I have to weigh every time whether speaking out is worth getting fired by the president.”
Morale at this independent agency — which MS NOW is not naming as it could identify this commissioner — has dropped since Trump returned to office and fired commissioners at this agency and others, according to the person. They said career staff believe the agency has been politically weaponized by the administration and that it is “walking away from its mission.”
The Supreme Court gave President Donald Trump the green light to fire these leaders last month, when it expanded Trump’s executive authority over around two dozen independent agencies. In a 6-3 ruling that ran along ideological lines, the court found Trump’s firing of Slaughter without cause was lawful. In doing so, the Court overturned not only statutory protections set by Congress but also its own 91-year-old precedent that prevented members of independent agencies from being fired by the president at will.
The independent federal agency model was created by Congress in 1887 and has grown to add offices that protect workers and consumers, ensure the economy remains competitive and assist states with the administration of elections, among other missions. They are overseen by bipartisan boards of commissioners who are appointed by the president and it is not uncommon for commissioners to serve under presidents of both parties. The agencies have long touted that the work done there supersedes alliances to a particular party.
The commissioner who spoke with MS NOW says the Slaughter decision undermined the independent and bipartisan nature of the agencies — and with that, undermined their work.
“It makes these agencies arms of the president to go after the president’s enemies and to prioritize certain groups over other groups,” the commissioner said. “That’s obviously not what Congress intended and not in the spirit of this country.”
Trump has already exercised this power to fundamentally shape the agencies. About a week after the court ruled, Trump fired the two Democratic commissioners on the Election Assistance Commission, a bipartisan agency that supports elections officials. A Republican also resigned, leaving the agency with no remaining commissioners, just 100 days ahead of the midterm elections.
A different, former independent agency commissioner, who served during Trump’s second term, agrees with his actions. In their view, the firings are justified and well within presidential power. “There [are] three branches of government and there’s only one executive branch,” this commissioner told MS NOW. “There’s not an executive branch plus.”
But, this former commissioner concedes that the process of getting rid of the leaders is not perfect, noting that they watched the president fire their colleagues. “On a personal level, it was very difficult,” this person said. “It was stressful.”
Constitutionally, the agencies in question belong to the executive branch. The president has always appointed individuals to lead them, but until now he could only fire them under limited circumstances. Congress included a statutory protection, only allowing the president to fire agency leaders for “inefficiency, neglect of duty, or malfeasance in office.”
Many of these agencies are not fully staffed following Trump’s firings. And many who remain are aligned with his vision and are actively promoting his policies. In fundamentally reshaping these agencies — and due to the nature of their missions — Trump’s decisions about who leads them have the power to directly affect the lives of millions of Americans.
The Federal Trade Commission only has two Republicans serving on what is supposed to be a five-person bipartisan commission after Trump fired Slaughter and Alvaro Bedoya in March 2025. Another commissioner resigned to become the U.S. attorney in Utah.
Under this leadership structure, the FTC has targeted diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives as “anti-competitive collusion.” Earlier this year, the FTC began investigating Diversity Lab LLC. The DEI-focused company created a program that used data analysis to promote inclusive hiring at law firms across the country. The FTC’s investigation forced the company to cease operations. In a statementDiversity Lab’s founder wrote, “We’re closing not because we broke the law, but because we ran out of options and funds to defend ourselves against the FTC’s false accusations.”
The FTC chair applauded the closure.
“Colluding with your competitors to set race-based quotas for hiring is not only immoral, but it also may violate antitrust laws,” Andrew Ferguson said in a statement. “The FTC will not tolerate agreements rigging the labor markets.”
Trump has not fired anyone at the FTC. That decision is likely driven by the FCC’s statutory requirement to maintain a quorum, meaning the agency needs at least three of its five commissioners to conduct business.
Trump fired two Democratic commissioners from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in January 2025. The agency now has three members: two Republicans and one Democrat. The agency, which was designed to enforce laws that make discrimination illegal in the workplace, has been aggressively targeting DEI initiatives.
EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas, who was appointed by Trump, issued an open request for white men to file discrimination claims. In a video posted on X in December, Lucas said, “The EEOC is committed to identifying, attacking and eliminating all forms of race and sex discrimination — including against all white male employees and applicants.” Trump has repeatedly opposed DEI initiatives and has pushed a theory of “reverse discrimination” against white people.
At the same time, the EEOC has removed itself from several lawsuits the agency filed challenging discrimination in the workplace at Trump’s direction. In early 2025, the EEOC moved to dismiss some cases challenging alleged gender discrimination, citing Trump’s day-one executive order that blocks the federal government from recognizing nonbinary gender identities. In a court filingthe EEOC wrote, “The EEOC’s continued litigation of the claims in this action may be inconsistent with the Order and the OPM Guidance.”
The FCC currently has three members: two Republicans and a Democrat. The agency is chaired by Brendan Carr, a Trump loyalist who has targeted media organizations that are often critical of the president.
Last Fall, Carr called on individual, licensed local ABC stations to remove Jimmy Kimmel from the air after a monologue the late-night host delivered about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Carr suggested to the stations that the FCC could investigate them if they continued to broadcast the program. ABC briefly suspended Kimmel’s show following Carr’s comments. Ironically, Justice Neil Gorsuch referenced this incident as an example of agency overreach in his concurring opinion in the Slaughter case.
This spring, Carr threatened broadcasters’ licenses over negative coverage of the war in Iran, which was initiated by Trump. “Broadcasters that are running hoaxes and news distortions — also known as the fake news — have a chance now to course correct before their license renewals come up,” he wrote in a post on X.
Anna Gomez, the sole Democrat on the commission, spoke out against Carr’s attack on the media. “This FCC has attacked the media as part of a years-long campaign by this Administration and its allies to discredit factual, independent coverage while blaming the press for growing public distrust,” she wrote in a statement. “Meanwhile, it’s the FCC’s own credibility and public trust that are rapidly eroding.”
The sitting Democratic commissioner has similar concerns about their agency’s credibility. “When the agency is weaponized, that means the agency is no longer enforcing the law in the way that it’s supposed to do, and that’s a disservice to the public,” they said.
Independent federal agencies
Nearly every independent agency whose leaders were protected from at-will removal is affected by the Supreme Court’s ruling. Some of those include:
- Federal Trade Commission: enforces antitrust laws and reviews mergers
- Federal Communications Commission: regulates radio, television, broadband and telecommunications
- Securities and Exchange Commission: regulates securities markets, public companies and investment advisers
- National Labor Relations Board: protects private sector workers’ right to organize and resolves labor disputes
- Consumer Product Safety Commission: protects consumers from dangerous products
- Equal Employment Opportunity Commission: enforces laws that prohibit workplace discrimination
- Federal Energy Regulatory Commission: regulates interstate electricity, natural gas pipelines and hydropower licensing
- Nuclear Regulatory Commission: licenses and regulates commercial nuclear reactors and other nuclear materials
- National Transportation Safety Board: investigates transportation accidents and issues safety recommendations
- Election Assistance Commission: assists states with election administration
- Merit Systems Protection Board: hears appeals from federal employees and protects merit-based civil service
- Federal Labor Relations Authority: protects federal workers’ right to organize and resolves labor disputes
- National Mediation Board: governs labor relations in the railroad and airline industries
- Occupational Safety and Health Review Commission: interprets the Occupational Safety and Health Act in contested enforcement cases
- Federal Mine Safety and Health Review Commission: interprets the Federal Mine Safety and Health Act
Fallon Gallagher is a legal affairs reporter for MS NOW.
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