By Claire Bayler & Angus McFarland
Worcester, MA / Portland, ME
As the US heads into the 2026 midterms, how can Trump—with the lowest support of any president in the 21st century—be fought? The US capitalist class, or at least major sections of it, gambled with Trump’s second presidency that despite his chaos and the inherent danger of lighting the fuse on a social explosion, they would be able to make progress on both long term and short term goals for profit extraction. On the one hand, Elon Musk became the first trillionaire in history. On the other, Trump’s imperialist adventurism and joint war with Israel against Iran has the global economy poised on the edge of recession.
Trump’s overall approval rating has dropped to 33% and disapproval has climbed to 62%, the worst of any second term president in the 21st century. This is of course connected to the war against Iran, which more and more Americans disapprove of, but also to Trump’s larger economic strategy of cutting taxes for the rich, massively increasing military and homeland security spending, and using tariffs as a political weapon on the world stage.
War Pigs
On August 21 Trump threatened a crushing financial campaign against Iran, which he has referred to as “economic D-Day”, as the war against Iran continues to drag on and the Strait of Hormuz remains closed to international traffic. The Treasury Secretary announced this campaign could include more secondary sanctions on other nations and companies doing business with Iran.
Trump continues the Biden Administration policy backing Israel’s genocide in Gaza. The Israeli government refuses to withdraw from its military occupation of over 60% of Gaza, the south of Lebanon, and western areas of Syria, all of which have been seized since 2023. Israel’s defense minister stated during their latest assault on Southern Lebanon that the campaign is modelled after the destruction of Gaza. Meanwhile, Trump’s “Gaza Board of Peace” has issued its first construction contract for a military outpost to house Moroccan troops.
Trump has also escalated imperialist interventions in Latin America. In January, US forces kidnapped Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. His successor, Delcy Rodriguez, has been a willing collaborator in allowing US capitalism to plunder and exploit Venezuela’s oil. Trump has also tightened the embargo on Cuba, in an effort to starve the Cuban people and force the regime to restore capitalism, which seems to be succeeding.
The imperialist war machine is shifting into high gear. Trump’s 2027 defense budget demands $1.5 trillion to “unleash the American Arsenal of Freedom,” which is a 42% increase over current funding levels. The 2026 budget was itself a record smashing $1,058,000,000,000, an 18% increase from 2025 levels. This money will pay for continued warfare and military escalation in Ukraine, Latin America, Iran, Israel/Palestine, sabre rattling with China, and anywhere else Trump and the capitalist class see opportunities for profit.
The Working Class Pays the Price
Food prices, already high from pandemic-era inflation and Trump’s tariff regime, are poised to skyrocket further. Trump’s war on Iran, and the resultant closure of the Strait of Hormuz, have pushed up the global price of fertilizer, diesel fuel, and other products that are needed to get food to market. The disruption of agriculture is compounded by this year’s El Niño weather pattern, which capitalist-driven climate change continues to intensify.
Gas prices in the US spiked by 40.5% in May 2026. Overall inflation from July 2025-July 2026 was 3.5%. But even “acceptable” levels of inflation to the capitalists means year after year of increasing prices and stagnating wages squeezing workers.
New York State Federal Reserve reported that in the second quarter of 2026, housing debt has reached a historic high of $13.58T and non-housing consumer debt $5.19T. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported an official unemployment rate of 4.1% in July, which has varied between 4% to 4.5% since the start of Trump’s second term. Yet the rate of those “functionally unemployed” has been at about 25% for over the last half year. Meanwhile the AI bubble threatens to destroy the economy, and enormous public debt makes the capitalist state less likely to respond to crises with bail-outs.
Defend the Minneapolis 15, Defeat State Repression
Trump is emboldened to use the power of the executive office to bring state repression to bear on workers and the left by the lack of an effective and sustained resistance. This sustained assault falls predominantly on immigrant and “foreign” workers, or those who are perceived as such by racist ICE agents.
Many of the ICE “surges” enacted since Trump’s re-election have been met with responding surges of popular resistance. In the aftermath of these flashpoints, especially Minneapolis, the Trump Department of Justice has cracked down on activists with draconian measures.
15 activists and trade unionists associated with Direct Action Minneapolis (DAMN) are charged with “conspiracy to impede or injure federal officers,” in retaliation for the mass protests after ICE agents murdered Renee Good and Alex Pretti. A conspiracy charge is a way for the state to inflict collective punishment on a group of activists for specific “crimes.” This is a case that is clearly designed to intimidate activists and have a chilling effect on protests, threatening any resistance to the Trump regime with serious jail time and life-altering criminal records.
Subsequently, the defense for the “Minneapolis 15” revealed that the investigative arm of ICE called Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) placed unions, churches, and non-profits under surveillance during the ICE surge. Ominously titled “Operation Puppet Master,” the program used undercover agents and seizure of financial records to spy on anyone they thought might be involved in resisting ICE terror, without any evidence of a crime.
With these and other measures, such as the 50-year terrorism sentences handed to the “Prairieland” anti-ICE activists in Texas, the indictment of protesters in Broadview, Illinois, and the subpoena of the Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL) and subsequent tax investigations of PSL funders and related media projects, the police state under Trump is sending a clear indication that they are making a priority of repressing the left and worker’s organizations, and that federal “law enforcement” is functioning more and more as Trump’s political police, as directed in National Security Presidential Memorandum 17 (NSMP 17). They calculate that these harsh measures will create a chilling effect on workers’ organizing to resist Trump and his anti-worker agenda by threatening activists with serious jail time and life-altering criminal records.
For Mass Protests and a Workers Party
Many are looking to the midterm elections to hand Trump a defeat, hoping for a wave of Democrats to get elected and win back majorities at the federal level and turn him into a lame-duck president. This strategy rests on the mistaken assumption that the Democratic Party will resist Trump’s pro-corporate agenda, and that Trump and the forces he represents will be stopped by parliamentary obstacles. Even then, it would mean suffering through two more years of Trump at the head of the incredibly powerful executive branch and all its various state forces before he could be voted out.
The Trump agenda can only be truly defeated by mass mobilization of working-class people, demanding an end to ICE state terror, imperialist war, and corporate handouts. We have to organize more protests, broaden them out, and deepen their roots. We also need a political arm in the form of a Worker’s Party to confront the Democrats as well as the Republicans who have jointly created the conditions that led to Trump’s presidential run even being possible. Activist organizations, labor unions, and others need to immediately prepare to run independent candidates on a pro-worker platform and start discussions to form our own party and our own ballot line.
