USA Today, August 2026
Ahead of a challenging midterm election, Republicans have seized an opportunity to castigate their opponents as extremists after democratic socialists won recent Democratic congressional primaries in New York and Colorado. GOP leaders have invoked the specter of radical left authoritarianism by calling progressive Democrats “communists,” an echo of Cold War-era messaging from prominent Republicans such as Wisconsin Sen. Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. “Ronald Reagan used to warn about communism,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-Louisiana, recently said on “Fox News Sunday,” referring to the late Republican president who confronted the former Soviet Union during the Cold War. “Now the barbarians are inside the gate,” Johnson said July 5. “So this election is for all the marbles.”
President Donald Trump has also upped the attacks. “These are hardcore, godless communists,” Trump said at the June 26 conservative Faith & Freedom Coalition conference. “This is the most serious threat to our country since its existence.” Trump devoted part of his July 4 address on the 250th anniversary of American independence to attack communism.
