Newsletters
For Wael Tarabishi, his father was not just a parent; he was his only protection from certain death. The 30-year-old North Texan was born with Pompe disease, which required round-the-clock specialized care from his father, who took on the role of in-home nurse. But in January, death arrived unexpectedly for Wael when his father, Maher Tarabishi, was detained by ICE for overstaying a tourist visa in the early 2000s.
Tarabishi had been in the States since 1994, dedicating his life to caring for his son, who doctors believed would not survive past the age of ten. He had provided highly specialized clinical care for his son, which included operating feeding tubes and administering complex infusions that allowed Wael to live a quality life that otherwise would not have been sustainable.
According to Wael’s family, the grief and stress over his father’s detention caused Wael's health to deteriorate rapidly, leading to his hospitalization and passing.
Wael spent his final days crying out for his father from his hospital bed. “Until Wael's last conscious moment, he continued thinking and talking about his father,” family members told the press.
Tarabishi was not simply another statistic of the mass immigration crackdown sweeping across the United States. His case also reflects the direct consequences of a decades-long culture-war battle, one that first took shape during Trump's initial presidential campaign in 2016.
Trump has made culture-war rhetoric his signature move. In turn, both Trump and his MAGA-based faction of the Republican Party saw levels of populist success that no other modern-day American politician has been able to come close to replicating.
The culture wars helped legitimize more extreme policies that pushed the boundaries of what contemporary America had ever witnessed, including ICE deportation raids in American cities and towns.
According to rights groups, more than 70% of those detained by ICE have no criminal record, showing that, beyond concerns over security, immigration crackdowns have become a form of political theater intended to appease a voting base mobilized by racial and cultural grievances. Within these debates, MAGA has argued that mass immigration crackdowns are necessary to preserve America's national identity and protect what it perceives as the country's traditional Anglo-American values.
The sweeps have also been used as a trolling-style campaign by the administration against those who oppose its broader culture-war push. Leaked internal reports showed that ICE leadership used deliberate imagery as “hype-material,” including the use of official government social media accounts to post imagery mocking immigrants detained by ICE. In one image that received widespread backlash, the administration took a photograph of a weeping woman handcuffed by ICE and used AI to transform her into a cartoon-style anime meme.
But the American public was not amused.
The 2026 midterm elections delivered a swift rebuke at the ballot box to an administration whose policies had increasingly sidelined the economic concerns of everyday Americans for perceived culture-war slights.
During this election cycle, it was reported that Republicans spent over $183 million on ads highlighting culture-war grievances, a grave miscalculation by Republicans, who seemingly came into this election cycle ignoring the concerns of American voters who had placed the economy as the most motivating factor at the ballot box.
Data has also pointed to an American public that simply has “culture war fatigue.” According to CNN polling, only about one-third of Americans believe that continuing to fight over hot-button culture-war concerns will improve the country. A similar poll conducted by Change Research found that 77% of American voters describe themselves as feeling “exhausted” by the current state of outrage politics.
The midterms were nothing short of a historic sweep for Democrats. The party saw progressive flips in once-safe ruby-red GOP strongholds, including Texas, South Carolina and Mississippi. The Democratic Party also broke a nearly 100-year Republican streak in Kansas after Democrat Adam Hamilton won his Senate race, marking the first time a Democrat has held that seat since 1932.
As Florida Republican Governor Ron DeSantis stated, the midterms represented "close to an extinction-level event for Republicans."
This seismic shift was also seen amongst one of the Republican Party’s strongest demographics: white American men aged 19–29, who moved an astounding 40 points to the left. It was nothing short of a five-alarm catastrophe for a party that has spent decades actively courting young white men through anti-immigrant and culture-war rhetoric.
“Right now, my focus is on economic issues because I feel that I need to continue working simply to live. I don't have much room to focus on cultural issues, since what's on my mind is how I will be getting my next meal,” stated a 21-year-old college student from Pennsylvania in a Vox article titled "Gen Z Can’t Afford the Culture War."
The historic sweep seen by Democrats will be studied for years to come. But what is clear is that Americans' appetite for what they are willing to accept in the name of culture-war rhetoric has begun to shift. Americans are questioning whether the inflammatory rhetoric has translated into a better quality of life. And for many Americans, the answer is no. Instead, they are seeing higher costs at grocery checkout lines and at the fuel pump, alongside neighbors and communities and towns terrorized by ICE.
Americans have made their frustrations heard. It is now up to this administration to heed their message.
Set as preferred source
Set as preferred source
3 min read
