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As the midterm elections near, a slew of extremist candidates — selected by GOP primary voters at Donald Trump’s urging over the past few months to represent their party in the general election — are aiming to woo the public in marquis races around the country. Should they get elected, they will push the U.S. political system even further to the right, mainstreaming views that until recently would have been considered far outside of the boundaries of the acceptable.

For 30 years, I have followed the rightward drift of the GOP. Seemingly, each election cycle since the 1994 midterms that catapulted Newt Gingrich into control of the House of Representatives has resulted in a more extreme iteration of hard-right politics. Gingrich’s “Contract with America” ushered in sweeping cuts to the social safety net. Nine years later, Tom “The Hammer” DeLay became House majority leader on a platform even further to the right of anything Gingrich dared to propose. When he wasn’t pushing his authoritarian vision for the U.S., DeLay spent his time in leadership embroiled in increasingly bitter legal disputes, and narrowly avoided prison after being indicted on money laundering charges. In 2010, the Tea Party election swept out much of what remained of the GOP old guard in Congress and saw the party commit itself to even harsher anti-safety net, anti-immigration, and anti-health care coverage policies. In 2016, Trump captured the party and the MAGA movement began its purge of moderate Republicans they derided as being Republican In Name Only (RINOs). In the years following, relatively centrist figures such as Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake were drummed out of office, and both the GOP caucus in the Senate and the House of Representatives increasingly became redoubts for Trumpists, their members foot soldiers in what was increasingly a party based around a cult of personality.

Since Trump’s reelection, the Republican Party has increasingly opened its arms to overtly white nationalist and conspiracist candidates; to candidates who have established a working rapport with neo-fascist groups such as the Proud Boys and the Patriot Front; and, of course, to people willing to ignore Trump’s corruption. The 2026 elections represent a flowering of this Trump-inspired rightward shift.

For months now, I have watched the political fortunes of many extremist candidates, endorsed by Trump over more moderate rivals, rise. Here are a few who particularly stand out.

In Texas, at Trump’s urging, primary voters selected the corrupt state Attorney General Ken Paxton — dogged by scandals for 20 years in public life, impeached by his own state’s ultra-conservative GOP state legislators for abusing his........

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