Maxwell School News and Commentary

"Even though there have been rumors of further resignations on the Republican side of the aisle, in part as a reaction to Donald Trump capturing the nomination, I have a hard time seeing the party voluntarily giving the majority and the speakership to the Democrats," says Grant Reeher, director of the Campbell Public Affairs Institute.

“The Republican party now has a leader who has been very clear, in his speeches, rhetoric and actions, that he has authoritarian tendencies. He [President Donald Trump] doesn’t have a lot of respect for the norms of democracy, and he is willing to use violence and call on others to use violence to save power,” says Shana Gadarian, professor of political science and associate dean for research.

Sandhya Bathija leads the communications efforts for Campaign Legal Center in Washington, D.C.

“Really, we have 24 years of watching Putin build an increasingly repressive, authoritarian state. So the main purpose of elections like this in an authoritarian country is to show everyone that Putin is forever, there is no alternative to Putin, there's no point in resisting his state,” says Brian Taylor, director of the Moynihan Institute of Global Affairs.

"The more politicized a misperception is, the more it's tied up with someone's party identity, the more likely it is to be a product of people's political attitudes rather than something that affects those attitudes," says Emily Thorson, assistant professor of political science.

Trump’s return to the White House would mark a radical change from Biden’s multilateralism, says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. “[There would be] an emphasis on bilateral rather than multilateral relations, and a general reduction in American involvement in international affairs,” he says.

"The vast majority of members of Congress...come from safe districts that are decidedly red or decidedly blue. And so the primary election is the only consequential election that those members run in and if those elections are determined by nothing but their partisan base, it's a pretty clear through line to how that really distorts our politics," says Richard Barton, assistant teaching professor of public administration and international affairs.

John Zogby ’74 M.A. (Hist) joined political scientists for the State of Democracy lecture to examine voter turnout and other top issues affecting the 2024 election.

“It was definitely always a long shot and the ruling is not surprising,” says Thomas Keck, professor of political science and Michael O. Sawyer Chair of Constitutional Law and Politics. But, he adds, the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling opened up larger questions about what guardrails exist to protect US democracy.

“Even among the Republican primary voters, there are 40% of the people in that state who preferred Haley to Trump,” says Grant Reeher, professor of political science. “So, bearing in mind that Trump is a former president, has four years of a presidential record, lost a pretty close election in 2020...there's a significant chunk of the Republican Party that is not happy with him.”