This article was originally published in Le Monde and is republished here with its permission.
On Independence Day, July 4, 2025, President Donald Trump signed a massive new tax and spending bill into law. Officially called the One, Big, Beautiful, Bill (OBBB), the law was a major victory for his second administration and signaled Trump’s considerable consolidation of power. That said, the passage of the bill highlighted persistent political tensions within the American right.
Major cleavages persist within the Trump coalition, as highlighted by the controversy surrounding the White House’s refusal to release the Epstein files, reignited by the explosive recent story published in the conservative Wall Street Journal about Trump’s unsavory connections to the late, disgraced mogul, who died in 2019. Understanding these rifts is essential to assessing the future of the MAGA (Make America Great Again) movement. Trump’s hold on the Grand Old Party (GOP)’s elites is also more complicated than the passing of the OBBB would indicate.
Since Trump’s political rise in 2016, the world of American conservative elites has undergone a dramatic reconfiguration. His first victory led to a dramatic ideological shift in the upper echelons of the American conservative movement, and the rise of a new coalition of intellectuals known as the”New Right.” Whereas the old conservative establishment stood for the “fusionist” trifecta of free-market economics, social traditionalism, and anti-communism, and internationalism in foreign affairs, the New Right stands for nationalist economics, social traditionalism, isolationism, and a crackdown on immigration.
Obvious Tensions
Today, the old legacy of fusionism continues to influence American conservatism, fueling schisms in the GOP and within the New Right coalition. Many tech industry figures on the New Right, for example, were frustrated with Trump and JD Vance’s new tariff regime. Elon Musk was a ferocious opponent of the OBBB, and at one point threatened to back alternative candidates in the Republican primaries against any member of the party who voted in favor of the bill.
Another example: The New Right often claims to represent workers, but the new bill benefits the wealthy far more than the working class. This tendency has proven disappointing to those in the coalition who once took Trump’s working-class rhetoric seriously. The Trump administration’s decision to bomb Iran is also in obvious tension with the New Right’s supposed preference for isolationism. In short, while the New Right dominates the Republican Party, that does not mean that the GOP’s older policy interests have been altogether vanquished.
The most important tensions on the right today concern the relationship between the New Right and the judiciary, including its entrenched conservative elements. The leading organization of the conservative legal movement, the Federalist Society [of which many judges are members or former members], has not caved to the radical programming of the New Right, and the judicial branch still represents an important check against the Trump administration’s authoritarian tendencies.
The Federalist Society promotes an originalist—that is, literal—interpretation of the US Constitution. This interpretive method was championed by the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, who died in 2016. Trump relied heavily on the Federalist Society’s recommendations as he made appointments to the courts throughout his first term, but so far, his second term has been marked by clashes with the group.
Likely Long-Term Damage
In late May, Trump lashed out at one of the Federalist Society’s co-chairs, Leonard Leo, over recent rulings delivered by judges recommended by the organization. In June, the president faced the rejection of his loyalist Emil Bove’s nomination to a court of appeals. Bove had not been recommended by the Federalist Society and came under considerable scrutiny during his confirmation hearings for allegedly suggesting that state officials did not need to abide by the decisions of American courts—a position bound to antagonize the conservative legal organization.
There are cohorts within the New Right who have been busy preparing the way for radical and destabilizing arguments like Bove’s. Foremost among them is Adrian Vermeule, a professor at Harvard Law School who opposes originalism. His theories concede a tremendous amount of power to the executive branch, including the authority to impose conservative morality on the whole country.
In light of the passing of the OBBB, it is tempting to conclude that all of American politics has been subsumed under Trumpism, and that whatever fissures we see on the American right are ultimately inconsequential—at least as concerns the party elites. Such a conclusion is all the more tantalizing given the string of victories that the Supreme Court recently delivered for Trump. But that would be a premature conclusion.
The law passed on the narrowest of margins, caused terrific upset with some of the most important people in the New Right coalition, is very unpopular with Americans, and drew a lot of attention to the overall incoherence of Trump’s movement. In the long term, it is likely to cause damages that will matter electorally. The Epstein debacle has only further upset and divided the entire coalition. As we watch the fallout from these events unfold, the second Trump administration, much more effective than the first, will continue to test the limits of the American constitutional order.
Laura K. Field is a writer and political theorist in Washington, DC, and a senior advisor for the Illiberalism Studies Program at The George Washington University. Her book, Furious Minds: The Making of the MAGA New Right, will be published by Princeton University Press in November.
