A nationwide movement is changing the dynamics of American politics. At the local, state, and national level, self-avowed socialists are winning races on radical platforms that would have disqualified them even five years ago.

Zohran Mamdani rose to prominence in New York City, winning the mayoral race in 2025 by promising to freeze rents, provide free childcare, and operate government-run grocery stores. He lashed out at capitalism, private property, and, of course, Donald Trump. It was a winning strategy, and now other socialists are riding the red wave.

As proud card-carrying members of the Democratic Socialists of America, these upstart communists aren’t holding back. Rather than disguising their extremism, they boast about tearing down America’s political, legal, and cultural institutions.

To show just how audacious they are, DSA cochair Megan Romer recently admitted that the long-term plan is to eliminate the U.S. Senate, replace the Supreme Court, abolish ICE and give illegal aliens amnesty, keep America’s borders open, shut down prisons, turn ownership of corporations over to the government, and shutter the Pentagon. In other words, they want to burn it all down.

DSA defenders mock the supposed Red Scare emanating from the Right. Yet as Charles C.W. Cooke writes at National Review, “There is virtue in calling things by their names, and the appropriate name for the Democratic Socialists of America is ‘red.’ They are communists. They are Jacobins. They are wreckers and despoilers and iconoclasts, who, if left unchecked, would wipe the United States from the face of this earth. To be ‘scared’ by such figures is not only rational, it is imperative.”

Similarly, House Speaker Mike Johnson warned, “The barbarians are inside the gate — and Democrats are WELCOMING them in. Communism is no longer a far fetched threat. It is here on our SHORES.”

Another DSA plan is to give Congress the power to elect the president and choose members of the judiciary. “It’s important to understand how radical this is, essentially blowing up the Constitution’s separation of powers,” explains The Wall Street Journal editorial board. “Letting Congress choose the President means adopting the parliamentary system that prevails in Britain. It would essentially remove the presidential veto power that the Founders designed as a check on the legislative passions of the day. Ditto for ending an independent judiciary, which is a check against legislative and executive violation of individual rights. Third World dictators seek to make the judiciary subservient to the ruling party for this reason, as they did in Venezuela, and as Mexico’s Morena party is now attempting to do.”

As for abolishing the Senate, there’s only one reason why the DSA wants this branch of government gone: power. “The left loathes the Senate because it is also a restraint on temporary majorities,” adds the Journal. “The Senate’s design, with two Members from each state, gives an equal voice to small and large states. This prevents dominance by California, New York and Texas. And it buttresses the federalist principles at the core of the Constitution’s design, which preserves certain powers to the states as a check on Washington, D.C.‘s commandments.”

These aren’t new ideas. Socialists have tried for more than a century to abolish our system of checks and balances and replace it with a unicameral legislature or remove other obstacles limiting political power. More than a century ago, President Woodrow Wilson strongly criticized the Constitution and its checks and balances as outdated for a modern, industrial nation. He was just as wrong then as the socialists who draw inspiration from him are today.

No matter the time or the spokesperson, the goal is always unfettered power. Sure, getting anything passed through Congress is a complex and frustrating process, but giving powerful politicians the ability to pass legislation with bare majorities is why democracies die out as quickly as they’re born. It also paves the way for authoritarian regimes that crush any opposition.

That’s the future envisioned by current DSA members such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, and Mamdani. Add dozens more to the list who are winning elections at all levels and drumming up support across the nation.

Hot Air’s Ed Morrissey writes, “The DSA and its candidates are not just an incremental iteration of the Bernie Bros; they are a radical and revolutionary party whose agenda and platform can only be implemented by force. The US Constitution and the federalist system have too many safeguards against radical change, which leaves only force and revolution for these changes.”

The sudden appeal of socialism isn’t hard to figure out. Educators either can’t or don’t articulate why our system has generated more freedom and prosperity than any nation on Earth for more than two centuries. Beyond that, a generation of young people is being lured by slick TikTok marketing that promises a panacea if they only give up their freedom and power to the likes of Mamdani and Ocasio-Cortez. And the Republican Party, despite its promises, hasn’t offered sufficient solutions for issues that ail us.

Heading into the fall elections, Americans are naturally feeling unsettled about the failure of the political class to address so-called kitchen-table issues. But turning to socialism would turn these challenges into a nightmare that would dismantle the very institutions that have sustained us for 250 years.