Marking the 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence, President Donald Trump gave a July Fourth speech about “freedom’s triumph over tyranny, liberty’s conquest over oppression, and the enduring victory of the American spirit.”

Then he turned his attention to communism. 

“Communism is a loser and it always will be,” the president said in his late-night address on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. “Our warriors did not fight communism on battlefields across the world only to have that menace rear its ugly head right back here in America. We’re not gonna let it happen.”

In the days leading up to the event, he said Democrats are communists.

The Democratic Party is “becoming a communist party,” Trump said June 26 at the Faith and Freedom Coalition conference. “These are not social Dumocrats, these are hardcore, godless communists. They’re godless communists.”

Trump’s comments came after a handful of democratic socialist-aligned candidates won June congressional primaries in New York, Colorado and Pennsylvania.

Call it the Red Scare of 2026. 

The focus on communism echoes 1950s rhetoric, when Republican Sen. Joe McCarthy of Wisconsin led hearings on what he alleged was communist infiltration at high levels of the federal government. Accusing politicians of being communist evokes fear in many Americans, especially people in Florida who fled to the U.S. from authoritarian communist regimes.

The Democratic Socialists of America is an organization and not a political party. It has members who are communist, although it is unclear how many. But even if the handful of DSA-endorsed candidates for Congress win in November, they will represent a small slice of the 435-member Congress. 

This isn’t a new line of attack for Trump and Republicans; they have previously falsely labeled Democrats as communists, including former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Here we explain what democratic socialism and communism are, and the views of one prominent candidate who is an outlier on the left.

Who are the DSA-aligned candidates?

The national group Democratic Socialists of America has endorsed about two dozen candidates in the 2026 midterm elections, mostly in local and state contests and four for Congress. Democratic socialist organizers are active in supporting candidates in upcoming Midwest primaries.

Two nationally endorsed candidates won their primaries: Melat Kiros in Colorado defeated an incumbent, and Christopher Rabb in Pennsylvania won and faces no Republican opposition. 

The New York City DSA endorsed Claire Valdez, who secured the Democratic party nomination for an open congressional seat. It also endorsed Darializa Avila Chevalier, who upset a five-term incumbent and is now the Democratic nominee of a Manhattan congressional district. New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani — who describes himself as a democratic socialist and who Trump has falsely called a communist — endorsed Chevalier and Valdez.

These candidates are expected to win, and if they do, they’d join Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib as democratic socialists in the House who run as Democrats.

Chevalier’s views have drawn the most scrutiny. She told MSNOW she is a democratic socialist, not a communist. But CNN unearthed Chevalier’s deleted social media account with pro-communism posts. In them, she called to “seize the means of production” and made favorable comments about Marxism or communist leaders. 

Sebastian A. Arcos, director of the Institute for Cuban Studies at Florida International University, wrote in an email to PolitiFact, “Seizing the means of production is a fundamental tenet of socialism and communism.”  

Chevalier also expressed support for a Twitter post that called for a world without borders, police or prisons. 

These positions place Chevalier on the political fringe.

“I understand that she’s advocated closing all prisons, defunding police departments, opening borders,” Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., said. “None of those views are within the mainstream of the Democratic Party.”

Chevalier’s positions on borders and deportation in the context of U.S. politics, Arcos said, “are extreme positions, but not in the context of totalitarian regimes. Such regimes strictly control borders, immigration, and the State becomes the police.”

Chevalier’s views are a “mishmash of democratic socialism and the progressivism and inclusion of leftist politics,” Ted Henken, a Baruch College professor and Cuba expert, told PolitiFact.

Some of her positions are at odds with communism, such as abolishing the police. Most communist states have “very powerful police forces,” Henken said. 

What is the DSA platform?

Organization or party platforms aren’t a guarantee about how a politician will vote or govern, but they can shed light on beliefs.

When U.S. politicians such as Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., describe themselves as democratic socialists, they are primarily referring to a belief in systems similar to generous social programs available in many European countries, such as heavily subsidized child care, often funded by high tax rates. (Sanders, who caucuses with Democrats, is not a DSA member.)

Communism eliminates the free market and private property and replaces them with an all-powerful, bureaucratic plan. It seeks to establish a system of collective control over the means of production and resources. The communist ideal of “seizing the means of production” means transferring an entity such as a factory from private to public ownership.

The DSA platform denounces Trump while criticizing the Democratic Party as “controlled by its elite donor class.” 

And it goes beyond the traditional Democratic platform by calling for free college, ending deportations and moving to a multi-party system. (A DSA spokesperson told PolitiFact it will unveil a new platform July 14 but it will not be significantly different from the current one.)

The DSA platform “is certainly radical in its call for reforms, but it is not revolutionary in the sense of a communist takeover of the means of production and the abolition of capitalism,” Henken said. “I imagine that U.S. communists and the U.S. Communist Party would criticise the DSA for not going far enough.”

One recent area of disagreement within the DSA is over the Israel-Hamas war. 

The DSA platform calls for ending military and economic aid for Israel and giving national sovereignty to Palestinians. About two dozen DSA members retracted their membership following DSA’s actions after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel. DSA called Hamas’ murder of more than 1,200 Israelis “not unprovoked.” The New York City DSA promoted a Times Square rally Chevalier attended where speakers praised the attacks. 

The Pew Research Center found in a 2025 poll that about 37% of respondents disliked democratic socialist ideology while 17% liked it. A larger group of respondents, 43%, took no stance on it.

Henken said an internal Democratic Party battle between moderates and radicals has pushed the party to the left during the primary. But it will likely shift back to center before the November elections because places where democratic socialist-aligned candidates are succeeding such as New York City, California and Colorado are not representative of the nation.

DSA has been influenced by communists

Writing in The Atlantic on July 1, liberal commentator Jonathan Chait said there are some areas of ideological overlap between democratic socialists and the Democratic Party. He also detailed elements of communism within DSA organizations.

Since 2023, communist caucuses have held a majority on the DSA’s national policy committee, wrote Vincent Lima, the political committee chair of the Socialist Majority Caucus, citing a leader of a Rochester, New York, chapter.

Caucuses within DSA include Bread and Roses, whose members identify as Marxist, and Red Star, a Marxist-Leninist sect. Red Star published a 2024 letter calling DSA the political home for American communists. Jonah Goldberg, editor of The Dispatch, a conservative outlet that opposes Trump, documented how some caucuses are openly communist, such as the Liberation Caucus, which calls itself the “Marxist-Leninist-Maoist caucus in Democratic Socialists of America” while the Marxist Unity Group, a faction, calls for overthrowing the Constitution.

“DSA is significantly influenced by people who consider themselves communists or Marxist-Leninists,” said Harvey Klehr, a retired Emory University professor of politics and history, praising The Atlantic for outlining the tangible influence of communism within the DSA. “They are unapologetic and gaining traction within the organization. A lot of sincere democratic socialists have resigned in protest over DSA’s direction. DSA has not taken over the Democratic Party, but it is clearly a growing influence in it.”

Separately, since the 2016 presidential election, the Communist Party USA has seen a surge in its membership and now has about 20,000 members, said co-chair Joe Sims. People were catalyzed by political events, includingTrump’s elections, Sanders’ treatment by the Democratic National Committee during his 2016 presidential campaign and Sanders dropping out of the Democratic primary n 2020. In 2012, the party told PolitiFact it had fewer than 5,000 members. 

Sims said there are “zero” communists in Congress and he knew of none running for Congress.

“It’s a bunch of baloney, that’s standard GOP talking points,” Sims said. “Not that it would be a crime if they were.”

The majority of voters have not rejected capitalism, but there is growing discontent on the left.

A 2025 Gallup poll found that Americans continue to be more positive toward capitalism than socialism, but the 54% viewing capitalism favorably is down from 60% in 2021. Democrats and independents viewed capitalism less positively, each group showing 8 percentage-point declines since 2021.