Progressives on Minneapolis’s city council used the council’s first meeting of the year to install members of the Democratic Socialists of America as both the “majority leader” and “minority leader,” seemingly installing a one-party state designed to ice out representation for the council’s moderate minority.

Aisha Chughtai will be majority leader, saying her role would be to “identify uncontroversial ideas that the rest of the body largely agreed with,” as the Star Tribune paraphrased, while the minority leader would be tasked with convincing others to accept more controversial ideas.

Chughtai nominated Robin Wonsley as minority leader. Wonsley explained the role differently, saying the minority role would be to “recognize the political diversity” of the council, specifically the four members of the Democrat Socialists of America–a group that includes Chughtai, as well as Jason Chavez and Soren Stevenson.

Wonsley’s City Council bio says “Robin Wonsley is a Democratic Socialist” who “In 2018 … began her PhD program in Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies.” Chugtai’s bio says “She is the first Muslim woman, and youngest person ever elected to the Minneapolis City Council.”

Moderate members protested the appointments, with council member LaTrisha Vetaw pointing out that the socialists were claiming to represent “political diversity” by installing two members of the same political faction in the majority and minority slots. But the progressive majority refused to budge.

Linea Palmisano, the council’s longest-serving member, said “President Payne, you put the four DSA-ascribed members on everything. This is over-representation,” adding that the majority and minority leaders almost always voted the same way. “If the desire is political diversity, which I also appreciate, this is not.”

Palmisano was the only moderate permitted to lead a committee: the Enterprise and Labor Relations Committee.

Even the moderate members are hardly moderate by national standards, aligning with Mayor Jacob Frey. Elliot Payne was re-elected as council president.

Star Tribune columnist Eric Roper reacted with shock to the appointments, writing that “for those following at home: The majority leader, a democratic socialist, is the steward of consensus issues. And the minority leader, a democratic socialist, is the progressive champion. And these aren’t partisan roles, except the minority member represents a political movement that the majority member also belongs to. Got it.”

The move overrode the will of voters as expressed in a 2021 referendum, which eliminated a partisan structure in the council, including those titles.

Roper wrote that the city attorney emphasized that the majority and minority titles “didn’t have to do with political parties, since the council offices are technically nonpartisan.”

Wonsley, the minority leader, said “Democratic socialism has been a growing political movement nationwide,” and that Democratic socialism is not a political party.

Payne, the council president, said that Wonsley brings a “very specific lens” as minority leader because while the other DSA members on the council also align with the Democrat-Farmer-Labor party, Wonsley technically fashions herself an independent.

Wonsley, the minority leader, said “We’re going to have to generate progressive revenue, and that includes also a tax on the rich,” adding she also wanted to have unarmed mental health professionals respond to 911 calls.

The chaos at the council’s inaugural meeting bodes poorly for Minneapolis as it is the epicenter of violent clashes with immigration enforcement and rampant fraud by Somalis that led to Minnesota Governor Tim Walz dropping his re-election bid.

President Trump is not on the ballot in 2026, and thus his coattails will really not apply to House Republicans or Senate Republicans.

That means an uphill battle for Republicans. The incumbent party in off-year elections tends not to do particularly well. Right now, Republicans are running the barest majority humanly possible in the House of Representatives because of the untimely death of California Republican Representative Doug LaMalfa. His death shrinks the House GOP majority to 218 to 213.

Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wants to run for president herself and seems to be running an anti-Trump campaign, formally resigned from the House in the middle of her term this week. So there are now four empty seats, two in red-leaning districts, two in blue districts. Also, Representative Jim Baird of Indiana was in a car accident, so he is sidelined temporarily.

That means that the GOP is now down to 217 votes. Then you also have people like Thomas Massie, who routinely votes against the president of the United States, and now you’re down to 216. 

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson always had a very, very tough job. Now that job is becoming nearly impossible.

So the question becomes: How do President Trump and Republicans somehow get something done this year that allows them to claim victory heading into 2026?

Foreign policy wins actually do matter. There is this idea that what happens on the foreign policy front doesn’t help presidents at all, or their parties, but that is eminently untrue. Foreign policy wins can help at the margins. That is particularly true if you are targeting political constituencies that are drifting away from you.

One of the factors about the Trump constituency that is really quite fascinating is that he radically overperformed with Hispanic Americans in 2024. There’s a case to be made that what he’s doing in places like Venezuela, and possibly Cuba, is going to have an outsized impact on voter turnout in 2026, particularly in some of the swing states.

Trump also has a booming stock market.

The stakes are very high because if Democrats were to win the House of Representatives, the Trump agenda stops — dead.

President Trump says that if the Republicans do not win the midterms, he will undoubtedly be impeached. He is likely right about this, although I’m not so sure that President Trump gets impeached the minute that the Democrats take over the House. I think that they will start investigating everybody in Trump’s orbit. I think they will start ruining lives inside Trump’s orbit. They did that during Trump’s first term.

One of the things the GOP will not be able to count on is Democrats being totally stupid. They are getting less stupid. They have lost a series of elections. It’s not been good for them. And now they seem to be jettisoning some of their worst baggage, including the trans issue. You don’t hear them talking about DEI anymore.

Instead, they are refocusing over and over again on “affordability.” They believe that is their only winning path. They are using the Venezuela issue to say that Trump is ignoring the “affordability” problem at home.

But there is a line of attack here that Republicans are going to have to use — and use often: the amount of fraud, waste, and abuse of the system that is inherent in a bigger government, from Democratic administrations everywhere from Minnesota to New York City.

That is what is going to crush the “affordability” issue.

Another thing that’s been fascinating to watch is the collapse of Tim Walz in Minnesota, a very blue state. And Tim Walz just had to declare that he would not run for reelection again. He was forced to make that declaration because of the extraordinary amounts of fraud that allegedly exist in his blue state.

When you connect that to the Democrats’ immigration policy, it is a toxic combination. One of the reasons the fraud in Minnesota has captured the minds of so many Americans is because it appears to revolve around members of a community who have been imported into the United States, who have not assimilated into American practices, and bilked the rest of the taxpayers in Minnesota.

When you combine the fraud and immigration issues, it’s a toxic brew for Democrats. It exists across the spectrum. And it’s not just in Minnesota; it’s in New York; it’s in California.

Republicans need to focus extraordinary fire on this particular issue, because it’s not just enough to unleash DOGE and say waste, fraud, and abuse have to be caught; you have to actually connect it with Democratic policy, and you have to connect it to something that Republicans have been loath to connect it to: the size of government.

When I was growing up, being a conservative meant you were against the expansion of the size and scope of government. Nowadays, it seems in vogue for Republicans to be in favor of that expansion, but at the same time, to want to “cut that waste, fraud and abuse.”

That’s not a great argument, because inherent in a bigger government is waste, fraud, and abuse. And when you combine that with loose immigration policy, the way Democrats have, you end up with Minnesota.

So here’s my advice for 2026 for Republicans: Focus on “affordability,” but point out what Democrats would do if they gained power: radically expand government, which radically expands fraud, radically expands waste, and radically increases costs.