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During the first weeks of President Donald Trump\u2019s second term, Representative Mark Pocan, a Wisconsin Democrat who for many years co-chaired the Congressional Progressive Caucus,\u00a0decided to hold \u201cask-me-any-question\u201d town hall meetings in Republican-leaning areas. At these meetings, in rural areas of Pocan\u2019s own district and in the neighboring district of a rightwing Republican colleague, he expected to hear a wide-ranging array of views on the chaos unleashed by the forty-seventh President. But, very early on, a pattern emerged. When Pocan asked a packed session in Belmont, Wisconsin\u2014population: 989\u2014what people wanted to talk about, the answers were loud, clear, and specific:<\/p>\n
\u201cMedicaid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cMedicare.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cSocial Security.\u201d<\/p>\n
It was the same a few weeks later in Viroqua, Wisconsin\u2014population: 4,500. Speaker after speaker offered poignant testimony on their fear that elderly relatives would be denied their full benefits under Social Security, that children with disabilities might be cut off, that lifesaving health care support might become inaccessible. Those weren\u2019t the only issues that constituents in counties that voted for Trump in November 2024 were bringing up in February and March 2025 but, says Pocan, \u201cIssues with Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security kept coming up. People were worried about cuts, about systems that were breaking down because federal workers were being laid off, about the threat of privatization. There was a lot of anxiety, and understandably so.\u201d<\/p>\n
The \u201cmove-fast-and-break-things<\/a>\u201d approach to governing that has defined the first months of Trump\u2019s second term has been so reckless, so lawless, and so genuinely threatening to the fabric of society\u2014not to mention democracy\u2014that members of Congress, reporters, and activists find themselves whipsawed between crises. The list of legitimate subjects of concern seems very nearly endless. There is the stock market\u00a0turbulence<\/a>\u00a0associated with tariffs and trade wars. Profound fears about the future of civil liberties have been raised by the lawless\u00a0kidnappings<\/a>\u00a0of immigrant students and workers by masked federal agents. The agency-upending\u00a0schemes<\/a>\u00a0of billionaire \u201cspecial government employee\u201d Elon Musk, which have laid off thousands of essential workers, have made it virtually impossible to get through to government helplines\u2014raising the prospect that long-established programs and departments, which deal with everything from international aid to education, might simply disappear.<\/p>\n These assaults on basic understandings of what the federal government can and should do will be significant issues in the off-year elections of 2025 that will determine how key states respond to Trump and Trumpism, and in the 2026 midterm elections that could stop the increasingly erratic President in his tracks. But there is growing evidence that\u2014as has often been the case over the ninety years since Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt launched Social Security, and the sixty years since Democratic President Lyndon Johnson signed the legislation that effectively established Medicare and Medicaid\u2014the greatest prospect for a political realignment comes from rising anxiety over the threat that a Republican President and his administration and his Congressional allies could destroy an already threadbare social safety net.<\/p>\n The fears resonate so deeply because they are grounded in reality\u2014as opposed to traditional political posturing. Republicans have a long record of seeking to raise retirement-age requirements, reduce benefits, and privatize programs. Trump and his billionaire cronies really have been pushing for massive federal tax cuts\u2014as much as\u00a0$4.5 trillion<\/a>\u2014that Republicans\u00a0have proposed<\/a>\u00a0to pay for with deep cuts to Medicaid. And the Republicans have refused to even entertain fiscally sound initiatives\u2014including strategies for making upper-income Americans pay their fair share\u2014that would preserve Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security over the long term.<\/p>\n Anxiety over threats to programs that for tens of millions of Americans provide critical support has moved preserving Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid toward the top of the list of issues for voters. In an early March Gallup poll, 52 percent of those surveyed said they\u00a0worried<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca great deal\u201d that harm might be done to Social Security.<\/p>\n A January Navigator Research study\u00a0found<\/a>: \u201cFour in five Americans oppose cuts to Medicaid and Medicare (81 percent) in order to pay for the Republican tax plan, including 87 percent of Democrats, 76 percent of Republicans, and 77 percent of independents.\u201d<\/p>\n In a rational politics, that would settle the issue. Obviously, there is very little that is rational about the politics of the Trump Administration and its Congressional allies. But could voters impose rationality in special elections this year for U.S. House seats, and next year for the whole of the House? And in state contests like the off-year gubernatorial and legislative contests in New Jersey and Virginia?<\/p>\n The Navigator Research report noted that, \u201cWhen presented with a list of proposed policies that go along with the Republican tax plan, a majority of Americans are most concerned that it will lead to cuts to Medicaid and Medicare (64 percent).\u201d That creates the prospect that Republican control of the policy agenda could be upended in relatively short order.<\/p>\n In a desperate attempt to avert such a result, the President and House Speaker Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana, claim there will be no cuts. Unfortunately for Johnson, his own language calls his commitment into doubt. \u201cWe\u2019re not going to cut into those programs that way,\u201d the speaker\u00a0told CNN<\/a>\u00a0when asked about using Medicaid cuts to finance new tax breaks for the rich. \u201cWe\u2019re talking about finding efficiencies in every program, not cutting benefits for people who rightly deserve them.\u201d \u201cFinding efficiencies\u201d? \u201cPeople who rightly deserve them\u201d? These phrases, critics say, sound like wiggle words employed by Republican politicians who have historically eyed Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid accounts as pots of money to enrich the billionaire class and, through privatization schemes, to give Wall Street speculators virtually unlimited fun money.<\/p>\n If\u00a0Johnson\u2019s words have failed to inspire confidence, Trump\u2019s\u00a0March address<\/a>\u00a0to a joint session of Congress kindled open fear that Social Security is in the administration\u2019s sights. After lavishing praise on Musk\u2019s slash-and-burn assault on federal agencies, the President glossed over mounting concerns about the state of the economy, leading a frustrated Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders\u00a0to comment<\/a>, \u201cI did not hear one word from Trump tonight about the economic reality facing 60 percent of our people [who live paycheck to paycheck], or the enormous stress that they are living under.\u201d<\/p>\n But Trump took a lot of time to describe the Social Security Administration\u2014which is\u00a0generally well-regarded<\/a>\u00a0by government watchdogs\u2014as a cesspool of waste, fraud, and abuse.\u00a0Claiming<\/a>\u00a0the administration had uncovered \u201cshocking levels of incompetence and probable fraud in the Social Security program,\u201d Trump echoed disproven assertions and outright lies in a speech that suggested that millions of Americans are gaming the system.<\/p>\n \u201cBelieve it or not, government databases list 4.7 million Social Security members from people aged 100 to 109 years old,\u201d Trump\u00a0claimed<\/a>. That was a demonstrably false claim. \u201cThe vast majority of these people do not have dates of death listed in Social Security\u2019s database,\u201d\u00a0explained<\/a>\u00a0CNN\u2019s fact-checking team. \u201cBut that doesn\u2019t mean they are actually receiving monthly benefits. Public data from the Social Security Administration shows that about 89,000 people age ninety-nine or over were receiving Social Security benefits in December 2024, not even close to the millions Trump invoked.\u201d<\/p>\n Clearly, Trump had no interest in facts. Rather, he was spinning a fantasy that might make it easier to assault the program. \u201cTrump is spewing misinformation about Social Security so he can ultimately justify cutting your benefits,\u201d argues Pocan, a senior member of the House Appropriations Committee. Former U.S. Labor Secretary Robert Reich\u00a0wrote<\/a>\u00a0on X, \u201cTrump keeps spreading lies about Social Security. What he isn\u2019t telling you is that he\u2019s actively trying to\u00a0dismantle it<\/a>\u2014firing thousands of SSA employees and shuttering regional offices. Why? To pave the way for privatization, so Wall Street can gamble with our retirement.\u201d<\/p>\n That\u2019s the concern of Senator Tammy Baldwin, Democrat of Wisconsin, who already sees evidence of the assault playing out in the form of Social Security Administration office closures and staff cuts in her state. \u201cWisconsinites pay into Social Security over a lifetime of hard work. But instead of helping our seniors access their earned benefits, Donald Trump and Elon Musk are gutting the agency and putting up roadblocks for Wisconsinites who often rely on Social Security to pay rent, keep the heat on, and put food on the table,\u201d Baldwin put it in an early April\u00a0statement<\/a>. \u201cIf you fire people at the Social Security Agency, who is going to help our seniors get their benefits? As far as I can tell, this is all about taking Social Security benefits away from seniors in our state\u2014all so they can fund their tax breaks for big corporations.\u201d Warning about the prospect of similarly devastating cuts to Medicaid, Baldwin\u00a0launched<\/a>\u00a0a \u201cHands Off Medicaid\u201d\u00a0tour<\/a>\u00a0of mid-sized Wisconsin cities \u201cto highlight the potential impact of cuts on over 1.2 million Wisconsinites who rely on the program.\u201d<\/p>\n Baldwin, a progressive with a long history of defending Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid, brings moral clarity to an issue she presents as a stark choice between siding with working Americans who just want what they are owed versus billionaires who not only refuse their fair share but want to redistribute wealth upward. She\u2019s also a savvy political strategist who has never lost an election in the nation\u2019s ultimate battleground state, and who won re-election last year even as Trump was narrowly carrying Wisconsin.<\/p>\n Baldwin is well aware that, if Trump keeps threatening vital programs that Americans value and rely on, Republicans are likely to be punished at the polls in the off-year elections of 2025 (a year in which they have already lost a high-stakes Wisconsin Supreme Court race, where Musk intervened with more than $25 million in spending) and the bigger-stakes elections of 2026.<\/p>\n How potent are these issues? On their hugely successful \u201cFighting Oligarchy\u201d tour of red states and Congressional districts with vulnerable GOP House members, Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, asked the crowds that attended their mass rallies to demand that their Republican representatives reject Trump\u2019s efforts to use Medicaid cuts to fund tax breaks for billionaires.<\/p>\n