Even conservatives are fleeing the GOP as more and more Americans turn against Trumpâs authoritarian project.
President Donald Trump departs after making an announcement in the Roosevelt Room of the White House in Washington, DC, on February 12, 2026.
(Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
Earlier this week, Gary Kendrick, a GOP council member in the red town of El Cajon, on San Diegoâs eastern outskirts, announced that he was crossing the aisle and joining the Democrats. Kendrick was the longest-serving Republican official in the regionâs local government. âIâve been a Republican for 50 years,â he said, in the statement explaining his action. âI just canât stand what the Republican Party has become. Iâm formally renouncing the Republican Party.â
An attorney friend of mine in San Diego, who knows local politics inside out, texted me, âWhen Trump has lost this guy, heâs in real trouble!â
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President Donald Trumpâs authoritarian project is finally running into real headwinds. That doesnât mean that the danger is passingâfar from it, as Trumpâs escalating attacks on the voting process in the runup to the mid-term elections illustrate and as his venomous, racist social media posts testify to. But it does mean that Trump is losing control of the storyline. Even among his own base, there is a growing realization that there is something rotten at the core of his administration.
Having failed to break the will of Minnesotans despite two months of federal occupation, humiliation rituals, and brutal violence, the Department of Homeland Security announced on Thursday morning that it was ending the Minneapolis surge. It wasnât because the surge had failed, Tom Homan was quick to claim; it was because Minnesota authorities had begun to cooperate with Immigration and Customs Enforcement and the US Customs and Border Protection.
Donât believe Homanâs explanation. The surge is ending because tens of thousands of Minnesotans stood strong and proud. They protested in the face of sometimes lethal violence meted out by ICE agents. They protected their neighbors. They refused to be cowed. And, as the ICE atrocities multiplied, the US public increasingly came to side with Minnesota in its struggle against this federally ordered occupation. By the end of January, more Americans told pollsters they wanted to abolish ICE than told them they wanted to keep the agency intact.
When this horrific chapter is written into US history books, Minnesota will be understood as the place where ordinary Americans defeated Stephen Millerâs might-is-right, white supremacist vision. Nonviolent protesters confronted the armed might of the federal government, and the federal government, having lost the battle for heart and minds, retreated. It is also in Minnesota where Democrats finally decided to fight over the funding for and accountability of ICE and its related security agencies.
A couple days after Kendrick announced that he could no longer justify being affiliated with the Republican Party, Attorney General Pam Bondi was testifying before Congress. It didnât go well. When Representative Joe Neguse challenged her on why she had hired a convicted January 6 felon, who had been caught on camera urging his fellow protesters to kill Capitol Police officers, Bondiâs only response was that Trump had pardoned the man. It was hardly a prime-time answer. When Neguse then challenged her on why she had fired most of the cryptocurrency enforcement team at the Justice Department, thus easing the way for Trump to make a vast fortune off the crypto industry, Bondi melted down, screaming at Neguse like a frustrated child. When Republican Thomas Massie went after Bondi for removing some names from the released Epstein files, Bondi had another meltdown, snapping, âThis guy has Trump Derangement Syndrome. Heâs a failed politician.â She sounded like a petulant, name-calling teenager.
It was an extraordinary public glimpse into Trumpâs sycophantic cabinet. Itâs one thing to be extremely unlikable, another to be blitheringly incompetent. In these hearings, Bondi came across as both.
Her reputation also wasnât exactly enhanced by this weekâs decision of a grand jury in Washington, DC, to refuse to issue indictments sought by the government against Senator Mark Kelly and five other legislators who had reminded members of the military that they should not obey illegal orders. At the Nuremberg Trials, after World War II, US and other allied prosecutors succeeded in establishing the precedent that âI was only obeying ordersâ is not a legitimate defense for those involved in war crimes or crimes against humanity. Yet, under Trump, the US Defense and Justice departments have sought to punish people who restate this obvious moral truth. The grand juryâs decision was another reminder that when the public has a say, they tend to rebuff the administrationâs efforts to use the Justice Department as an enforcer against political dissenters.
The decision to indict Kelly and the others was subsequently panned even by many Republicans, with outgoing North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis furiously denouncing the Justice Departmentâs use of âpolitical lawfareâ in bringing these charges.
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Bondi, of course, remains in office, but any pretense that she is a credible attorney general is long gone. Her inability to keep cool under pressure and her repeated misuse of her office to bring prosecutions demanded of her by a vengeful and Constitution-scorning president has made her an âattorney generalâ with air quotes around her titleâa reality-TV hire hopelessly out of her depth whose 15 minutes of fame has long since expired.
So, too, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem and Secretary of Defense (aka âWar Secretary,â chest thump chest thump) Pete Hegseth remain in office despite their bouncing from one catastrophe to the next. The latest: The FAAâs suddenly announcing, on Wednesday morning, that it was closing El Pasoâs airspace for 10 days, then, a few hours later withdrawing the closure. After initially refusing to clarify why the closure, which would have sealed Americaâs 22nd-largest city off from the rest of the world, had been ordered in the first place, the agency let it be known that it was because Customs and Border Patrol was testing, with Pentagon acquiescence, anti-drone technology over civilian airspace in southwest Texasâand that they hadnât bothered to coordinate this properly with the FAA in advance. In any remotely normal administration, such stunning ineptitude would have resulted in multiple firings and/or resignations. In this administration, where accountability is for the birds? Bubkes.
None of this is playing well with the public. Last week at the National Prayer Breakfast, Trump told his audience that he had to win the election in 2024 because otherwise he would have had a âbad ego.â Having won, however, he boasted, âNow I really have a big ego, though.â Fifteen months on from the election, that monstrous ego is butting up against a rapidly changing political reality. By large margins, Americans, including a growing number of Republicans, are turning decisively against him and his mendacious cabinet.
âOne thing has become clear to me,â Kendrick told reporters on Monday, as he announced that he was leaving the GOP. âThe Republican Party is beyond redemption.â
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