Democrats find themselves facing angry voters as a massive rift opens up between the far-Left and the party’s more moderate members. President Donald Trump and his top donor, Elon Musk, draw national attention to what could prove to be a pivotal battle for control of Wisconsin’s Supreme Court. And Trump revokes the security clearances of a number of Biden allies, while ICE and the IRS prepare to team up.
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<h2>Democrats’ Downward Spiral</h2>
<div id="attachment_896267" style="width: 841px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-896267" class="wp-image-896267 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Dueling-Dems-831x576.jpg" alt="" width="831" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Dueling-Dems-831x576.jpg 831w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Dueling-Dems-300x208.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Dueling-Dems-768x532.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Dueling-Dems-1536x1064.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/Dueling-Dems-2048x1419.jpg 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 831px) 100vw, 831px" />(Photo by wildpixel via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Democratic lawmakers have found themselves confronted by angry constituents as the party searches for a unifying message amid rampant infighting. Meanwhile, new polling shows Democrats continue to be less popular than ever before.
Historically, there’s often a sort of buyer&#8217;s remorse with voters, where a president’s approval ratings will start to decline quickly, and the opposition party will become more popular &#8212; but that has not happened. Trump’s approval ratings have held steady at around 48% — well above where he stood during his first term — and Democratic popularity has only plummeted since Election Day. Last week, CNN found that just 29% of Americans view the party favorably — that’s a 20-point drop from 2021. And over the weekend, things got even worse.
A new <a href="https://poll.qu.edu/poll-release?releaseid=3919">Quinnipiac</a> poll showed that just 21% of Americans approve of Democrats’ job performance in Congress &#8212; the lowest mark in the poll&#8217;s history &#8212; and only 40% of Democrats approve of the job their leaders are doing in Congress. By contrast, Congressional Republicans are more popular today than ever, with a 40% approval rating.
Democrats appear torn between two differing visions of the party’s strategy going forward.
There are those who say the party needs to listen to its left-wing base and double down on their opposition to Trump, doing everything possible to prevent his agenda from being implemented. In that camp is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), who kicked off a “Fighting Oligarchy” tour last week with Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT), hitting Tempe, Las Vegas, and Denver in recent days and drawing crowds in the tens of thousands.
“We are going to fight Trump and his oligarchic friends,” Sanders said. “But we have got to do something else. We have got to ourselves have a vision for the kind of country we want to become.&#8221;
On the other side are Democrats who feel November’s results were a clear rebuke of progressive ideologies and governance. They say the party has to shake the “woke” label and moderate on social issues while embracing a more old-school Blue Dog Democrat approach. Leading the charge on that front is, ironically, California’s Gavin Newsom, one of the nation’s most far-Left Governors. Newsom launched a new podcast where he’s been having friendly chats with hardline conservatives like Steve Bannon and Charlie Kirk. He’s openly criticized his party as being elitist and out of touch while conceding that he understands why folks supported Trump in November. He even went as far as saying he opposes trans-identifying males in women’s sports and called on Democrats to stop using gender-neutral language like “Latinx,” although he has used that term many times in the past.
The Democratic base appears to be as divided as their leadership &#8212; the latest numbers from Gallup found that 45% of Democrats want the party to become more moderate, while 29% say they should be more liberal, and 22% want to hold course.
<h2>Wisconsin Supreme Court</h2>
<div id="attachment_896401" style="width: 873px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-896401" class="wp-image-896401 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2206573074-863x576.jpg" alt="" width="863" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2206573074-863x576.jpg 863w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2206573074-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2206573074-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2206573074-1536x1025.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/GettyImages-2206573074-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 863px) 100vw, 863px" />RACINE, WISCONSIN &#8211; MARCH 23: Dane County Circuit Court Judge Susan Crawford, candidate for the Wisconsin Supreme Court (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)</div>
Topline: An upcoming election will determine whether liberals or conservatives control Wisconsin’s top court. Already the most expensive judicial race in United States history, analysts are calling it the first referendum on Trump’s presidency.
Next week, a midwestern election will offer a rare chance to flip the ideological balance of the highest court in a key swing state. Depending on how things play out on April 1st, Wisconsin’s Supreme Court could go from a 4-3 liberal majority to a 4-3 conservative one, which would have several ramifications on national policy.
The balance of power could play a significant role in Wisconsin’s congressional districting. After the 2020 census, Republicans — who controlled the legislature — drew Wisconsin’s congressional maps. Democrats said this was gerrymandering and sued. In 2022, the liberal court threw out the GOP’s maps and adopted ones drawn by Governor Tony Evers, a Democrat. That new map helped Democrats flip one congressional seat in 2024. If conservative candidate Brad Schimel wins, he will likely uphold GOP-drawn maps that help cement that very slim margin Republicans have in the House right now. On the other hand, if liberal Susan Crawford wins, the court is likely to strike down the Republican maps again, meaning Democrats will have a greater likelihood of winning more seats in the state.
“The congressional majority is so razor thin, it could cause the house to switch to Democrat if federal redrawing takes place,” Elon Musk, the world’s wealthiest man and the mastermind behind DOGE (the Department of Government Efficiency), said on <a href="https://x.com/cb_doge/status/1903547076002316644">X</a>, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “Then we won&#8217;t be able to get through the changes that the American people want.”
Republicans also see a conservative court in Wisconsin as a potential firewall that could shield Trump’s policies from state-level challenges — think lawsuits over federal overreach or immigration crackdowns. On Truth Social yesterday, Trump called Crawford a “Radical Left Democrat” who is “insistent on bringing hardened CRIMINALS, that we removed to far away places, back into our Country, allowing men into women’s sports, [and] Open Borders.”
<h2>Security Switch Up</h2>
<div id="attachment_896275" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-896275" class="size-large wp-image-896275" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-864x576.jpg" alt="" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-1536x1024.jpg 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-2048x1365.jpg 2048w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-1800x1200.jpg 1800w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/03/US-Security-Nodes-1200x800.jpg 1200w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />(Photo by Douglass Rissing via Getty Images)</div>
Topline: Immigration authorities may soon receive help from the IRS to confirm the identities of illegal aliens. Reports of the new agreement come as thousands of law enforcement officials are expected to be redirected toward President Trump’s mass deportation agenda.
The IRS and ICE are near an agreement that would essentially allow immigration agents to cross-check information on aliens with IRS databases &#8212; that’s according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/22/us/politics/irs-ice-immigrants-deportation.html">The New York Times</a>. To be clear, DHS would not have access to IRS systems, but agents would be able to verify with the IRS whether the home addresses agents have for illegal aliens are correct. The Trump administration has tried before to get the IRS to help locate illegals, but the agency has always resisted because of the sensitivity of taxpayer information &#8212; and because it didn’t want to run afoul of federal law. This way, the IRS can keep complete control over its taxpayer database.
Illegal immigrants are often employed in the United States and file tax returns that include information such as where they live, who they work for, and their income. The IRS has long encouraged illegal aliens to pay taxes; the agency even has a separate nine-digit code called an individual taxpayer identification number that it will give to aliens in place of a Social Security number.
More generally, the Department of Homeland Security is in the middle of a massive reshuffle to focus resources on deportations, according to reporting by <a href="https://www.reuters.com/world/us/thousands-agents-diverted-trump-immigration-crackdown-2025-03-22/">Reuters</a>. The Trump administration has also canceled the CHNV parole program, which allowed 30,000 immigrants from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela to apply for entry to the United States. Trump ended the program on his first day in office, but over the weekend, DHS issued an order revoking legal status for those aliens who entered the country through it. The order encourages them to self-deport within 30 days or risk deportation.
In other news, President Trump officially revoked the security clearances of a number of people on Friday, including top Biden administration officials, as well as some of the president’s top antagonists &#8212; those who brought and supported the court cases he faced during the election and who pushed Russian collusion conspiracies. Some of the most prominent names on that list include former President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, New York Attorney General Letitia James, and former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney (WY).

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Morning Brief: Dems’ Downward Spiral, Wisconsin Supreme Court Race, And Security Shakeup