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In a move rarely seen in politics, a GOP lawmaker has left the Republican Party and rebranded as a Democrat. But he says it’s not because he’s changed — his former party has.

Lawmaker explains why he did it
©Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi, a Utah native, earned a degree in accounting from Brigham Young University before becoming a dental surgeon. He also has his pilot’s license and is raising a blended family of nine children with his wife, Mollie. By: @cyrusfororegon/Instagram
Oregon state Representative Cyrus Javadi announced his decision to flip his affiliation on his Substack in a post titled “Had Enough? I Have.” He explained that what really changed was the Republican Party, not him. “I’m switching parties. I’ll be running for re-election as a Democrat. And before the conspiracy mills start cranking: No, it’s not because I lost a primary. No, it’s not because I binge-watched Rachel Maddow and saw the light. And no, I haven’t forgotten who I am, who I serve, or the values that got me here. What’s changed isn’t me. It’s the party I once called home,” he began his post. According to Javadi, a dental surgeon who was first elected as a Republican in 2022 and reelected in 2024, serving Oregon’s 32nd district, “Most of the Republicans I know, my neighbors, my friends, many of my constituents, want good things. They want decent jobs, safe streets, a fair shot for their kids. But increasingly, the institutional Republican Party wants something else: spectacle,” Javadi wrote. “It’s not about governing. It’s about burning things down. It’s about isolating minority communities when politically convenient. It’s about waving the Constitution when it helps your argument and ignoring it when it doesn’t. That’s not conservative. That’s opportunistic. And it corrodes everything it touches.”

Witnessing a turn away from ‘constitutional conservatism’
©Javadi’s decision to leave President Donald Trump’s Republican Party boosts the Democratic supermajority in the Oregon House to 37 of 60 seats, further diminishing Republican power in the state, which continues to be a stronghold for liberal politics. By: ZUMAPRESS.com / MEGA
Javadi told Newsweek that he “switched because the Republican Party abandoned the principles that drew me to it in the first place: limited government, fiscal responsibility, free speech, free trade, and, above all, the rule of law.” He believes that nationally, and increasingly in statehouses, the GOP has “turned away from constitutional conservatism and toward something darker: fear-mongering over problem-solving, slogans over substance, and performative outrage instead of real governance,” he said, adding that the Republican Party has shifted to be “less about ideas” and “more about defending one man’s ego.”

Blasting Republican power grabs
©“For months now, the Republican Party’s message has been simple: We don’t care what the problem is, just vote no, or else,” Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi wrote on Substack. By: @cyrusfororegon/Instagram
Friends and family members have told Javadi — who sees health care, education and funding for roads and bridges as important issues for his constituents — that they’re worried about where the country, and Oregon, are heading. He said their fears are justified. “They see people being detained without due process. Public servants harassed. Fundamental rights treated like bargaining chips,” he told Newsweek. “Government is supposed to protect our freedoms, not take them away. I can’t be part of a party that cheerleads for that kind of power grab while calling it patriotism.” When his constituents needed a representative to fight for Medicaid access and basic infrastructure, “Instead, I was told to fall in line. To vote no. To create chaos for the sake of the next election,” Javadi said. “That’s not leadership. That’s not conservatism. That’s not why I ran.”

How he feels about Democrats
©“If outrage were a renewable energy source, Oregon could power the grid with Republican Facebook comments alone,” Oregon state Rep. Cyrus Javadi wrote on Substack. By: Marek Studzinski on Unsplash
While Javadi hardly agrees with every Democratic policy, they’re “the only party right now willing to govern,” he told Newsweek. “I still hold many of the same views I always have. But I’ve found more common ground with Democrats who are serious about solving problems than with Republicans who are more interested in stoking outrage and obstructing progress.” He clarified that his values “haven’t changed” though “the party I belonged to did. So I made a choice: keep serving my constituents with honesty, or keep pretending I didn’t see what was happening. I chose honesty,” Javadi said.

Hound of Heaven wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:27 am

, especially considering that millions of voters are transitioning from Democrat to Republican daily?

Whiskey wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:37 am

Hound of Heaven wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:27 am

, especially considering that millions of voters are transitioning from Democrat to Republican daily?

Transitioning?

Hound of Heaven wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 11:27 am

As millions of Democrats and independents register as Republicans over the past year, with hundreds of thousands doing so after Charlie Kirk's assassination, it’s clear how the actions of progressives like Canpakes, DrCamnPP, Bishop Schmo, Captain Progressive a.k.a. Res Ipsa, and Marcus the Carcass reflect a heart full of hatred, which is one of the main reasons democrats are leaving the party!

You choose to post on a discussion board a thread intended to uplift Democrats simply because one state representative switched parties? Could you share your thoughts on how you find solace in the situation where one Republican has switched parties, while millions of Democrats are transitioning to the Republican side?

Perhaps a visual representation would help you understand that Trump has significantly weakened the Democrat party, while he and the Republicans are actively registering thousands of voters daily to support the Republican cause. This image illustrates the effectiveness of the Republicans in registering and mobilizing voters to the polls in contrast to the Democrats. It's a significant change, Gunnar!

It is important to recognize that when you hear from these radical progressives who appear here, individuals such as Canpakes, Captain Progressive also known as Res Ipsa, and Marcus the Carcass, they are engaging in a suicide dance that leads them directly toward disaster! They would prefer to die for their extreme cult beliefs than exist in a reality where their ideology is perceived as a hateful Marxist death cult.

Could you please explain why you feel reassured by the party switch of a single state representative, especially considering that millions of voters are transitioning from Democrat to Republican daily?

Tom Homan, the White House border czar, allegedly accepted $50,000 in cash from undercover FBI agents posing as business executives during a sting operation last year, according to MSNBC. The payment was made after Homan implied that he could help the agents secure government contracts in a second Trump administration.

In layperson’s terms, this is what bribery looks like: officials promising favors in exchange for money. In this case, Homan was not a government official at the time of the sting, though he had said during the 2024 election that he would likely have a role in a second Trump term. The investigation related to Homan — which was launched during the Biden administration and was first reported by MSNBC this past weekend — was only recently shut down. FBI Director Kash Patel and Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that prosecutors “found no credible evidence of any criminal wrongdoing.”

Now, we don’t know the full details of the case, and, in the absence of a full investigation or a trial, we can’t know that Homan is guilty of hatching a bribery scheme. But to say this should raise eyebrows is an understatement.

The Homan story raises a question that has come up over and over again since President Donald Trump catapulted himself to the White House: Do American voters actually care about corruption? After all, Trump has so far gotten away with maintaining unprecedented conflicts of interest, accepting gifts from foreign governments, and turning the presidency into a giant cash grab. And despite his history of fraud and corruption, he still won a second term last November.

Yet polls consistently indicate that a majority of Americans think that corruption is a serious problem that plagues Congress, the presidency, and the Supreme Court. And there’s evidence that corruption scandals can drag down politicians. One recent example is Eric Adams, the mayor of New York City, who was indicted last year on corruption charges. An overwhelming majority of New Yorkers believe that Adams should resign, and his reelection bid seems all but doomed: Most recent polls show Adams’s support is in single-digits.

So why is it that no level of corruption in the Trump administration — no matter how brazen or how high up it goes, from Homan to other members of Trump’s Cabinet to the first family and the president himself — seems to ever stick?

Trump broke one of the biggest guardrails against corruption

Since Trump’s first term, a lot has been said about his attacks on institutions and his utter disregard for the rules and norms that preserve American democracy. But one of the biggest guardrails that Trump quickly shattered isn’t any kind of institution or law; it’s the effectiveness of public shaming.

Public shaming can be a powerful weapon for citizens protesting their government. It creates an environment that makes the shamed person lose legitimacy, and it puts pressure on institutions or other people in power to take action. And the prospect of public shaming likely deters some politicians from taking shortcuts or engaging in petty corruption, not out of principle or ethics but out of fear of getting caught. After all, public shaming was a tool that ultimately helped push many politicians to resign in disgrace, from President Richard Nixon to former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

Trump has discovered that not caving to shame eventually leads people to let go and move on. His seeming inability to feel shame has allowed him to plow through scandals — like the Access Hollywood tape — that would have easily ended other politicians’ careers. It’s also allowed him to maintain a sprawling web of conflicts of interest without feeling the need to answer to anyone. Throughout his time in politics, Trump has shown little remorse for his misdeeds, and his strategy to simply power through scandals, often with no apologies, has proven remarkably effective.

And other politicians have taken notice. For example, Cuomo, who resigned amid allegations of sexual misconduct in 2021, has tried to stage a comeback by running for mayor of New York City. But that doesn’t mean that shaming no longer works at all. Cuomo couldn’t outrun his past as his opponents reminded voters of why he resigned in the first place, and he eventually went on to lose the Democratic primary earlier this year. And, if the polls are accurate, he is on track to lose the general election in November as well. But when it comes to Trump, Americans have yet to find the scandal that can shame his way to political irrelevance.

Trump’s assault on public shaming has disempowered voters

There are two main reasons why Trump and his administration are so often able to avoid any accountability for potential corruption, even though there is evidence that voters do care about corrupt governance, as Eric Adams’s downfall shows. First, Trump’s core supporters are willing to look the other way because their priority is supporting Trump’s broader political project. In some cases, some of the president’s supporters might not believe any of the allegations of corruption or might point to how the president’s opponents are corrupt as well. In fact, many American voters believe the Democratic Party is more corrupt than the GOP.

Second, and more importantly, while the president’s opponents might care about the corruption in his administration, Trump’s ability to wiggle out of any consequences and ignore public shaming tactics has made people feel powerless. He won a second term, for example, despite being found liable for sexual abuse and defamation and getting convicted of crimes, including falsifying business records to conceal hush money payments. So while incidents of potential corruption might draw a lot of voters’ ire, they’re unlikely to break through and become full-fledged scandals because many Democratic voters seem resigned to the fact that Trump will likely get away with the story of the day, just as he has over and over again since his first campaign for president in 2016.

Part of what might be driving that general sense of apathy in the opposition is that Trump is term-limited, and unlike his first term, he can’t run for reelection. That leaves many people in the mindset of waiting out Trump’s second term instead of actively resisting it as they did during his first presidency. So while they know they’re stuck with him for now, they also know they’re not going to be stuck with him forever.

That’s not to say that corruption and abuse of power won’t ever galvanize resistance to Trump, especially as the midterms get underway next year. Democrats hoping to win back the House will likely highlight how a Democratic majority in at least one chamber of Congress would be a check on the president’s corruption. In fact, some Democratic operatives are pushing Democrats to embrace that message and focus on Trump’s “culture of corruption” as their midterm strategy, according to a memo obtained by the Bulwark earlier this month.

Whether Democrats go with that advice will depend on whether they believe Americans care enough about Trump’s corruption. And so far this year, it seems the answer to that question is no. But that might not always be the case, especially if an anti-corruption coalition finds the right messenger.

Gunnar wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 8:15 pm

Look, the fact is that Trump's approval rating is 50% on nearly every issue, including even the issues he ran on such as immigration and the economy. He is without doubt corrupt, which even he and his supporters hardly deny. If anything, he sometimes even seems boastful about getting away with it, claiming that that only proves he is smart!

Donald Trump’s approval rating has fallen slightly this week after a string of bad polls. As of today, 43.9 percent of Americans approve of the job he’s doing and 53.3 percent disapprove. That net approval rating of -9.4 is Trump’s worst since July 24th. But still, it’s not a huge departure from where he’s been for the past six months. Trump’s net approval has fluctuated between -4 and -10 since early April.

President Donald Trump’s approval ratings among all age and race groups are plummeting, according to a new poll by YouGov/Economist.

The president’s approval ratings are reaching new lows across the board since the start of his second term earlier this year.

His overall approval rating currently stands at -17, with 56% of voters disapproving of his job as president and 39% approving.

ceeboo wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 12:42 pm

2026/2028 will be here soon enough. We shall see.

I Have Questions wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 8:35 pm

ceeboo wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 25, 2025 12:42 pm

2026/2028 will be here soon enough. We shall see.

Are you confident there will be another Presidential Election in the same format as the past, and that Trump won’t manipulate a third term?