The GOP Has Become a Single-Issue Party. The Issue Is Elite Impunity.
This dynamic is also apparent in the Republican Party’s slavish devotion to AI billionaires. The class divide on this topic is stark: Ordinary Americans are increasingly concerned about the potentially devastating impact of AI on their jobs and their children’s economic prospects, and they certainly don’t want AI’s parasitic data centers to raise their electricity prices and dirty their water. But the Epstein class loves this plutocracy-enriching technology, so the Republican Party took action. Does your community want to hold AI billionaires accountable for the harmful effects of their products – mass unemployment, suicide, cognitive decline, climate breakdown? Not while the party of elite impunity is in charge. Twice last year, congressional Republicans attempted to pass legislation preventing state and local regulation of AI. Democrats successfully defeated both efforts, but in December, Trump signed an executive order to circumvent Congress by, among other measures, ordering his government to take legal challenges to state AI laws and withhold federal funds from jurisdictions that regulate AI.
Then there is climate change. Millions of voters are already feeling the pain of skyrocketing home insurance rates due to increasing climate risks, and millions more face the staggering costs of recovering from a climate catastrophe each year, with no help from the companies that created and profited from this crisis. So communities across the country have taken legal and legislative action to force fossil fuel companies to pay for the damage they have caused: homes swallowed by the sea, businesses wiped out by inland flooding, communities destroyed by wildfires, deadly heat waves, terrible droughts and other disasters. In response, Big Oil has called for a get-out-of-jail-free card, with the American Petroleum Institute explicitly naming Big Oil’s immunity as one of its top priorities in 2026. Naturally, Republicans have heeded the call, with the administration filing several legally unbalanced lawsuits to try to stop states from pursuing liability lawsuits and congressional Republicans recently announcing they are crafting legislation to prevent communities from spending their day in front of the courts.
On issue after issue, the Republican Party has gone to the mat to protect the most powerful and wealthy individuals and entities from the legal consequences of their misdeeds. Surely Democrats should make this a central part of their message this year?
