President Donald Trump and congressional Republicans were not directly on the ballot in the November 4, 2025, elections, but the results were still a consequential loss for them as Democrats swept virtually every state and local race. They won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey and the mayoralty of New York (where Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani scored a breakthrough victory). Democrats also gained two state Senate seats in Mississippi, two contested seats on Georgia’s Public Service Commission, and four hard-fought positions on an important Pennsylvania school district board—all notable gains in “red” states that Trump won in 2024. These results seemed to presage a reckoning between the administration and voters that may go on to influence domestic politics through the 2026 midterm elections.
Voters seem to have reacted to the Trump administration’s numerous missteps and
provocations.
In these and other Democratic victories, voters seem to have reacted to the Trump administration’s numerous missteps and provocations—presidential overreach, Trump’s authoritarian strivings and corrupt tendencies, his inability or unwillingness to do anything about persistent inflation, and his abuse of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which in his administration functions as a kind of secret police that has detained many thousands of people (including some American citizens). The October 1–November 12, 2025, shutdown of the federal government—the longest in US history— cut off millions of Americans from food assistance and resulted in the (perhaps temporary) firing of thousands more federal employees, developments that directly affected many voters and shocked the consciences of others. The Republican establishment may think that it “won” the shutdown, in the sense that eight Democrats voted to reopen the government without securing their party’s main demand, the extension of Affordable Care Act (ACA) subsidies for tens of millions of voters. But whether the Trump’s party achieved a victory is debatable. Recent polls show that nearly half of the public blames Republicans for the shutdown, regardless of the murky political outcome. In December 2025, Republicans must face the vote that they promised on ACA subsidies as part of the government-reopening deal. If they vote against extending the subsidies, they will face the anger of ACA-marketplace voters, who will be hit with an average of 26 percent increase in their health care premiums in 2026. Meanwhile, Democrats have a strong lead in hypothetical ballots for the 2026 midterms, on which control of the House of Representatives, and possibly the Senate, may hinge. A further reckoning is to come.
This fall’s string of Republican electoral defeats has exposed Trump’s domestic weaknesses, marking him as a possible lame-duck (meaning an ineffectual second-term) president whose influence on national politics—and even his own party—may be waning. A well-publicized rift with Marjorie Taylor Greene, the hard-right Republican congresswoman from Georgia, until recently a staunch ally, epitomized the beginnings of the breakdown. (On November 21, 2025, Taylor Greene unexpectedly announced her resignation from Congress.) The controversy over the government’s so-called Epstein files have fanned the flames. And the fire has shown signs of spreading.
Foreign Policy Is a Factor in the Background
Trump’s approval ratings have been sinking but are not drastically below the level of the typical bounds of his public support, which ranges from the high 30 percent to the low 40 percent of voters. A recent poll by the Vandenberg Coalition, a right-leaning foreign policy group, noted that “Trump voters love American power and appreciate when President Trump is not afraid to use it.” They award his foreign policy with an “82 percent approval rating overall.” Specific Trump policies, such as on the Gaza ceasefire, may enjoy some popular support. But these positive rating do not tell the whole story.
The 2025 elections appear to have exposed certain foreign policy rifts between Republicans.
The 2025 elections appear to have exposed certain foreign policy rifts between Republicans. For one thing, many in Trump’s base apparently feel that he has been spending too much time on frivolity and foreign policy. Instead of remaining in Washington, DC during the government shutdown—which most presidents do in case they need to negotiate a reopening deal—Trump traveled overseas, went golfing, and hosted a lavish “Great Gatsby” party at his estate in Mar a-Lago, Florida. As concern about affordability of basic goods such as housing and food rise at home, Trump has seemed more fixated on pursuing a Nobel Peace Prize by brokering peace deals overseas (an end to eight wars, so far, by his own dubious reckoning). A president who repeatedly promised an end to “forever wars” and a disengagement from overseas conflicts has, in practice, signaled the opposite, as illustrated by his unauthorized and largely unexplained attacks on alleged drug-smuggling boats in the Caribbean and his confusing threats to use military force in Venezuela and Nigeria. Whether these actions are social media clickbait or genuine foreign policy goals, they lack robust backing from many of Trump’s supporters, and many crucial Independent voters oppose them.
The Gaza Factor
On Gaza, Trump has inherited much of the American public’s discontent with his predecessor Joe Biden’s policy. True, he succeeded where Biden could not: Trump forced a deal to end that war, for the most part, and imposed a peace plan, recently adopted by the United Nations Security Council, to reconstruct the Gaza Strip without displacing its inhabitants (as Israel seemed to have desired but the rest of the world has rejected). The plan vaguely hints at the possibility of an eventual pathway to a Palestinian state, a goal that has been a staple of US and international Arab-Israeli peace-making efforts, but that had been placed on the back burner by the Biden and the Trump administrations. But discontent with Israel among Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) base is growing, especially among young voters.
As early as July 2025, Trump recognized a crisis in conservative support for Israel.
As early as July 2025, Trump recognized a crisis in conservative support for Israel, telling a major donor, “My people are starting to hate Israel.” Young right-wing evangelicals, among the core of Trump’s support, have seemed to veer away from Trump and the Republican Party, traditionally strong supporters of Israel, on this issue. Soon after the November 2025 elections, influential right-wing podcaster Tucker Carlson interviewed prominent anti-Semite and White supremacist Nick Fuentes, with the conversation delving into such matters as “organized Jewry” and its influence on US foreign policy. For all Trump’s opposition to alleged anti-Semitism on American university campuses, Trump actually went on record supporting the Carlson-Fuentes interview. Such unsettling developments follow numerous right-wing expressions of hatred targeting Jews and others, in recent years.
The November 2025 election results have exposed widening cracks in the Republican party, creating space for these sentiments to move into the mainstream. In other words, after a poor electoral performance that reinforced the impression that Trump’s influence is waning, the worst impulses of his party and supporters seem to be surging forward as various factions attempt to shape the future of the political right before the 2026 midterm elections and the 2028 presidential race. Some conservative columnists have begun to recognize the danger of such extremism to the Republican Party, if not necessarily to the country.
America First—Or Trump First?
In the near term, it is unclear where these dynamics will lead Trump’s foreign policy, which seems more erratic than ever.
In the near term, it is unclear where these dynamics will lead Trump’s foreign policy, which seems more erratic than ever.
On November 18, 2025, Trump welcomed Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) to the White House, marking a remarkable rehabilitation of a figure whom US intelligence agencies had determined was responsible for the 2018 murder of Washington Post contributor Jamal Khashoggi. At least the crown prince had the grace to say in the Oval Office press conference that the murder had been a “huge mistake.” Trump dismissed the killing by insulting the murdered journalist and by saying, “Things happen.” Saudi Arabia came away from the visit with major agreements on defense—including the sale of advanced F-35 fighter jets—AI deals, and other economic partnerships.
On the same day, news leaked of a new Trump-backed 28-point peace plan for Ukraine that would require Kyiv to cede territory to Russia and to vastly reduce the size of its army—a Moscow-friendly proposal that Trump demanded that Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, accept by the US Thanksgiving holiday on November 27.
Both the MBS and the Ukraine developments appear confusing— or enraging— to the traditional Washington foreign policy establishment, but they make sense in the Trump worldview, in which joining the authoritarian club, while infuriating critics of the left and right, has become an aspiration.
New World Order?
For many Americans, it is difficult to disentangle the president’s foreign policy from his personal financial interests, not to mention those of the Trump family and its many hangers-on. It is consequently a challenge to analyze US foreign policy from any perspective that assumes that Trump possesses a coherent global diplomatic strategy, or even a generally agreed-upon understanding of US national interests. Normal battles over foreign policy are simply not being waged anymore. The November 2025 elections have highlighted this disconnect and probably have accelerated further disagreements on the very nature of the United States’ position in the world. As politicians and citizens continue these debates—and as the Trump administration appears to be abandoning the very basis of US power through its destruction of national institutions and principles—a very different world order is taking shape.
The views expressed in this publication are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab Center Washington DC, its staff, or its Board of Directors.
