We call it “Trumpism” for short, the collection of positions, policies and preferences embraced by the president of the United States.

But does all this amount to a coherent philosophy that can be carried out by future Republicans once Donald Trump is no longer in office?

And where does that leave conservatism? Trump never pretended to be a classic conservative, which deeply divided the movement.

There are those who quietly abandoned their previous views and have backed virtually everything Trump does, from tariffs to deportations to the war in Iran.

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And there are those who renounced Trump from the start, who believe he betrayed conservatives – and who tend to have prime spots in cable commentary, so shows can boast they have Republican pundits (who happen to hate Trump).

Some on the right bring a fierceness that eclipses the attacks by liberal critics. Former Wall Street Journal editor-in-chief Gerard Baker, a Fox News contributor, said yesterday after the Iranians denied having talks with the White House that the “unsettling reality” is Americans have to “suspect that the enemy’s version of events is more likely to be true than our own. We have become Baghdad Bob.”

Talking to reporters before leaving Palm Beach yesterday, Trump said: “My life is a deal. That’s all I do is deals.” 

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The context was what he insisted were the negotiations with Iran, but the declaration certainly applies to his business pursuits and political career.

I’ve known Trump since 1987, and I can tell you that he basically does whatever works in the moment. If that is inconsistent with his position the previous day or week or month, so be it. Let the pontificators argue about that. 

Trump is immune to corrosive criticism about flip-flops because he views every day as a clean slate, in which his allies may be those he once furiously criticized and his enemies may be former loyalists.

For instance, the president’s first-term position, backed by Congress, was that TikTok was a threat to national security because of its Chinese ownership, and should be banned unless it was sold to an American company.

When I asked him about this before the election, Trump, whose campaign greatly benefited from its use of TikTok, said he was no longer in favor of a ban. This, he said, was because removing TikTok would help Facebook, and he deemed Mark Zuckerberg’s empire more of a threat.

Not a terribly convincing explanation, but with the president, that was then, this is now.

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For what it’s worth, a deal was finally reached this year to sell the hugely popular app to a joint venture in which American investors have majority control.

The hot media debate right now is what comes after Trump, and whether future Republicans – JD Vance, Marco Rubio, whoever – must follow his blueprint. This is especially resonant because the America First candidate who crusaded against foreign wars radically changed his approach by attacking Iran.   

Atlantic contributor Pete Wehner, whose specialty is Christian ethics, says that in 2016 he was a lifelong Republican who had served under Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush.

He said in a New York Times op-ed that Trump “would threaten the future of the Republican Party,” that he “sought to cultivate and encourage the ugliest passions within the GOP, dousing the embers of hate with kerosene.”

Among Republicans, including evangelical and fundamentalist Christians, the president “rewired their moral circuitry… And in the process, he killed American conservatism. MAGA is not just antithetical to conservatism; it is at war with it.”

But look at Trump’s record. He sealed the southern border which was utterly porous under Joe Biden. He launched a mass deportation program aimed at illegal immigrants, a major target on the right. He cut taxes, and if most benefits went to the affluent, that’s what Republicans have always done. He slashed regulations at such places as the EPA. He reduced the size of the federal government by at least 300,000 jobs, or 10 percent, despite the mixed record of DOGE. And he was responsible for overturning Roe v. Wade.

Aren’t all these things, from easing tax burdens to restricting abortion to shrinking government, in line with conservative principles?

That’s not to say all these initiatives were handled well – look at the excesses of ICE and the killing of two Americans – or that they were wise decisions. But they’re not exactly at war with the conservative agenda of yore. 

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And then there’s all the other stuff, some of it breaking with fiscal orthodoxy, including the vow to protect Social Security and Medicare.

Wehner concedes that many Republicans voted for Trump because they were struggling economically (and, I would add, felt marginalized by the mainstream culture).  He twists the knife by saying “at the core of the MAGA project and Trumpism is disruption and destruction, the delegitimization and razing of institutions, and the brutalization of opponents… The MAGA movement represents the betrayal of the temperamental tradition of conservatism” and “the disfigurement of the Republican Party.”

Jonah Goldberg, co-founder of the Dispatch, which has had success as a conservative, anti-Trump site, scoffs at such pointy-headed analysis.

“Trump has no ‘ideology,’” Goldberg writes. “He does have a few ideas. Off the top of my head: take the oil, tariffs are economic Viagra, strength good, never apologize, women won’t resist celebrities when they grab them by their privates, ‘good genes’ matter a lot, allies are whiny b—-es, a bunch of romantic convictions about the supremacy of his instincts…”

He says these “gut impulses” and “sentiments” could be turned into an ideology. “But constructing an actual ideology requires thinking about how your various commitments might conflict, where the trade-offs are, what the edge cases might be, etc.”

To Jonah, it’s a matter of psychology. “But Trumpism is not just about Trump’s psychology, it’s the psychology of many of his supporters. If Trump is for it, it must be right.”

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I’d just note that our politics is so polarized that many liberals engage in similar behavior, demonizing opponents, spouting the party line and never giving the other side a scintilla of credit. 

Iran has been the world’s leading terror state since 1979, but while raising questions about congressional approval, nearly all Democrats won’t say anything positive about the attack on Iran.

Chuck Schumer, on “Morning Joe” yesterday, repeatedly refused to acknowledge to Joe Scarborough that the U.S. decimating Iran’s military was a good thing. He just kept deflecting.

One notable dissenter, John Fetterman, told CBS that what the president has accomplished in Iran is “remarkable.” And the senator said on a podcast that “our party is governed by TDS,” Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Of course, Democrats don’t seem as wedded to one ideology because of undeniable splits over Israel, over pronouns, over transgender issues, over the old defund-the-police rhetoric, running the gamut from more moderate lawmakers to the Squad. What’s more, they don’t have a leader ready to denounce them and endorse primary opponents, so there’s little penalty for going off the reservation.

Gavin Newsom, a man of the left, has problems with progressives in his party because he has fought labor initiatives, backed housing deregulation, vetoed a bill allowing colleges to favor descendants of slaves, and opposes trans women playing in men’s sports.

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There’s no single answer to the future legacy of Trumpism. That depends on the president’s popularity, and the economic picture, and how Iran is viewed, in 2028. Trump the dealmaker is a singular figure, impossible to imitate.

But one thing is certain: the Republican Party will never return to the green-eyeshade stinginess of Paul Ryan, the compassionate conservatism of Bush 43, the NATO embrace of Bush 41, or the bipartisan chumminess of Ronald Reagan with Tip O’Neill. 

The next era may be unclear, but Donald Trump has transformed the GOP forever.

The Department of Education (ED) just took a big step closer to shutting down.

The Trump administration announced on Thursday an interagency agreement between the ED and the Treasury to move student lending operations to the Treasury, which will “assume operational responsibility for collecting on defaulted Federal student loan debt and provide operational support to ED’s efforts to return borrowers to repayment,” the ED said in a release. 

“I think we’ve been very clear about this last week that this is a multiphase process,” Nicholas Kent, Undersecretary of Education, told Fox News Digital on Monday.

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Throughout the 2024 campaign, then-candidate Donald Trump promised to eliminate the Department of Education and signed an executive order directing his administration to start disbanding it. 

“The Secretary has been on the record saying that these interagency agreements are proof of concept, that we want to show Congress, that we want to show families, we want to show moms and dads and families that the Department of Education does not need to be here for federal grant aid and federal student loans to continue flowing to borrowers,” Kent said.

Andrew Gillen of the Cato Institute told Fox News Digital that this particular shift in responsibilities is significant because previous interagency agreements have been “relatively small.”

“Whereas this student loan move–this is the biggest staffing and the biggest budgetary component of the Department of Education. So, if it’s sent over to Treasury, this really does indicate that this is moving a substantial portion of the Department of Education elsewhere,” Gillen said.

“I think that that’s absolutely right,” Kent said in agreement with Gillen’s analysis. “Characterizing it as the next and largest step toward winding down the Department of Education is absolutely the right way to think about it.”

This interagency agreement follows the Trump administration’s effort to shift power from a handful of its offices and programs to other federal agencies as it works to dissolve the federal department completely.

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“Cutting through layers of red tape in Washington is one essential piece of our final mission,” Secretary of Education Linda McMahon said in a press release. “As we partner with these agencies to improve federal programs, we will continue to gather best practices in each state through our 50-state tour, empower local leaders in K-12 education, restore excellence to higher education, and work with Congress to codify these reforms.”

The department added that shifting student loan responsibilities to the Treasury will “mitigate the continuing fallout and cost to taxpayers from the Biden Administration’s mismanagement of the Federal student loan portfolio, and facilitate the return of defaulted borrowers to repayment.”

The total of student loans owed is at nearly $1.7 trillion, according to the department. It said less than 40% of borrowers arrange a repayment plan and almost 25% of them are in default.

“This will benefit students by streamlining the aid application and student loan repayment processes and save taxpayers money by reducing losses on student loans,” Gillen told Fox News Digital. “Once the move is complete, Education’s biggest budgetary and staffing requirements will be handled elsewhere, which will make it much more feasible to shut down the Department of Education.”

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The ED has made “historic progress in such a short period of time,” according to Kent. 

“In over a year, we have reduced the size of the department by over 40%. We have entered into 10 interagency agreements. We have done multiple staff details for other agencies where staff who are in the department are literally physically sitting at other agencies,” he said. “We are showing Congress and others that this proof of concept works and that we want to continue to work with Congress to memorialize these changes in legislation and with the ultimate goal of closing down the department and putting ourselves out of a job.”

A United States Park Police officer was shot in Southeast Washington, D.C., the D.C. Police Union confirmed Monday.

“We can confirm that a member of US Park Police was shot in the 5000 blk of Queens Stroll Place SE,” the union posted on X. “The officer was transported to an area hospital in critical condition. We’re all sending prayers for the officer and @1791FOP at this time.”

Fox News Digital has reached out to the Metropolitan Police Department for additional information.

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Authorities shut down multiple blocks in the area, restricting both vehicle and pedestrian access as police responded to the incident, FOX 5 in D.C. reported.

The closures include areas along Benning Road SE as well as nearby residential streets, including the 5000 through 5100 block of Queens Stroll Place SE and the 4600 block of Hillside Road SE.

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Officials said no vehicular or pedestrian traffic is allowed in the affected zones and are urging the public to avoid the area and follow police directions. Closures remain subject to change.

The station also reported a heavy law enforcement presence remains as investigators work to determine what led to the shooting.

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FBI Director Kash Patel wrote on X that he is praying for the injured officer.

“Praying for the Park Police officer shot in Washington, D.C. The FBI is actively supporting the investigation alongside our law enforcement partners and will bring those responsible to justice,” Patel wrote.

“We will provide updates as we are able – please keep the officer and their family in your prayers,” he added.

This is a developing story.