We’re a Democrat and former Trump official—We agree on one thing | Opinion

One of us worked for Donald Trump. The other is a political science professor and an elected Democrat in the hometown we share.

We disagree on most major public policy issues. On our front porches, we have had our share of red-faced arguments over candidates, ideas, and policies, and no doubt will continue to do so.

Yet we share a conviction that should not be controversial: Americans who disagree with one another remain Americans first.

As the United States approaches its 250th anniversary, the country faces a question more fundamental than any election or policy debate: Are we still committed to the idea that made the United States possible?

Our greatest threat is not political disagreement. Robust debate has always been the lifeblood of American democracy. The danger is our drift away from the principle of unity that originally held us together.

The founders chose to call the new nation the United States of America.

That choice was not accidental. At a moment when loyalty remained overwhelmingly local—to Virginia, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, or New York—they placed a single word at the center of the national experiment: united.

It was a statement of purpose. Americans from different states, with competing interests and competing visions, would remain free only if they acted as one people, even when those interests and visions were incredibly different.

The Constitutional Convention was not a gathering of men who agreed with one another. It nearly collapsed several times. Delegates fought bitterly over representation, the balance of power, and the nature of the republic itself. The miracle was not consensus. It was the creation of a constitutional framework within which disagreement could continue without destroying the nation.

Today, too many of our political, media, and cultural institutions now reward the opposite instinct. Politicians raise money by casting opponents as existential threats. Media figures and online influencers build audiences by amplifying venom. Algorithms deepen the divide, rewarding outrage until even the most mundane corners of daily life become political identity tests. Gas stoves, light bulbs, drinking straws and toilet paper have triggered culture war controversies in recent years.

The result is a political culture that increasingly encourages Americans to see one another not as fellow citizens with different views, but as enemies.

The effects are visible. Trust in institutions has eroded. Americans are sorting into separate political and informational ecosystems. Pew Research has found that large majorities of both Republicans and Democrats view members of the opposing party as immoral. When citizens cannot agree on basic facts, they cannot find common ground.

The consequences are deadly. The killings of Charlie Kirk and Melissa Hortman, the assassination attempts on Donald Trump, the arson at Josh Shapiro’s house are the tip of the iceberg. Princeton University’s Bridging Divides Initiative reports a 74 percent increase in documented threats and harassment of local administrators, election workers and school board members.

The rot is not confined to any single faction or leader. It is a contagion that infects the fringes of our entire political body. This is the predictable consequence of a toxic culture that has spent years telling citizens the other side is not merely wrong but evil. Extremists will always take that message literally.

In his Farewell Address, George Washington warned that political factions would likely become “potent engines, by which cunning, ambitious, and unprincipled men will be enabled to subvert the power of the people.” Today, both Democrats and Republicans are actively building those engines into our politics through the gerrymandering wars. We need more competitive swing districts, where politicians must think about all of their constituents rather than those on their side. When we create nothing but safe seats, the result is a political class incentivized to inflame differences rather than bridge them. Outrage becomes a strategy. Compromise becomes liability. Principled debate is replaced by blind tribal loyalty. And citizens are left with dysfunctional institutions that struggle to sustain our republic.

Ronald Reagan warned that “freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction.” The choice before this generation is the same one faced by every American generation: faction or union, contempt or citizenship, us-versus-them or e pluribus unum. But Reagan and his democratic partner Tip O’Neill understood that free societies do not endure because they eliminate differences. They endure because enough elected officials—and citizens—choose to place something larger than those differences first.

Authoritarian regimes understand the power of division. They amplify it, exploit it, and invest in it. The strategy is straightforward: widen existing fractures, deepen mistrust, and weaken democratic societies from within. Every political feud that erodes trust in democratic institutions is a gift. Those pulling our societies apart are aiding and abetting those who wish us harm.

America’s adversaries are betting against us. The hope and warning at 250 is the same one Benjamin Franklin posed to every generation of Americans: can we keep the republic? We believe we can. If the two of us can get along, so can America.

Len Khodorkovsky served as a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the first Trump Administration. Matthew Hale is a political science professor at Seton Hall University.

The views expressed in this article are the writers’ own.