House Republicans are preparing to bring the fight against socialism back to the floor next week, and this time they are not being subtle about who they are targeting. Lawmakers are set to vote on a resolution that condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, explicitly calling out the Democratic Socialists of America by name, a step further than a similar resolution took just last year.
The measure is expected to move through the House Rules Committee before heading to a full floor vote, where it will need only a simple majority to pass. Given the bipartisan support the last socialism resolution received, Republicans appear confident this one will clear the chamber as well, even as they force Democrats into an uncomfortable position ahead of the midterms.
The resolution’s language leaves little room for interpretation. It states that the House condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America, and opposes any implementation of socialist policy in the United States. It goes further this time, reaffirming support for free, fair, and secure elections, insisting that American elections belong to American citizens alone, and recommitting the chamber to upholding the Constitution.
Perhaps most notably, the new resolution calls for passage of the SAVE America Act, a voter identification measure that has stalled in the Senate because Republicans lack the sixty votes needed to overcome a Democrat filibuster. By tying election integrity language to a resolution about socialism, House Republicans are making clear they see the two issues as connected threads in the same broader fight over the direction of the country.
This marks a deliberate escalation from last year’s vote. In November 2025, the House passed H.Con.Res. 58, a resolution denouncing what it called the horrors of socialism, in a lopsided 285 to 98 vote. That measure did not name the DSA specifically, but it did not pull punches either. The resolution laid out, in stark and unapologetic terms, the human cost of socialist ideology across the twentieth century and beyond.
The text of that earlier resolution invoked the darkest chapters of socialist rule, citing the deaths of more than one hundred million people worldwide under regimes tied to the ideology. It named names, listing Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, Pol Pot, Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, and Nicolas Maduro as socialist ideologues responsible for some of history’s greatest crimes.
It also detailed specific atrocities, from the tens of millions who died amid the Bolshevik Revolution and the Soviet gulag system, to the Holodomor famine that Stalin’s regime inflicted on Ukraine, to the staggering death toll from Mao’s Great Leap Forward in China, which claimed somewhere between fifteen million and fifty five million lives. The resolution also cited Cambodia’s killing fields, where socialist ideology under the Khmer Rouge led to the deaths of more than a million people.
That vote passed with remarkable bipartisan support, with eighty six House Democrats crossing the aisle to join Republicans. All of the opposition came from the Democrat side of the aisle, with two members voting present rather than taking a clear position either way. The resolution was introduced by Florida Republican Maria Elvira Salazar, whose family fled Fidel Castro’s Cuba, giving her a deeply personal stake in the fight against socialist ideology.
The floor debate last year was not without its fireworks. Salazar accused California Democrat Maxine Waters of being a friend to the Castro regime, referencing Waters’ past travel to Cuba and what Salazar described as firsthand knowledge of the abuses committed there. Waters objected and demanded the remarks be struck from the record, though Salazar ultimately withdrew the comment to allow debate to proceed.
The timing of last year’s vote was itself notable, coming just before New York City’s newly elected mayor, self-described democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, arrived in Washington for a meeting with President Trump. Mamdani’s stunning victory over the Democratic establishment in the city’s mayoral race sent shockwaves through the political world and gave Republicans fresh ammunition in their long-running effort to tie the Democrat Party to socialist and even communist ideas.
Since then, the socialist movement inside the Democrat Party has only continued to grow. The Democratic Socialists of America has swelled to more than 120,000 members, making it the largest socialist organization in American history. The group has backed a wave of insurgent candidates who have knocked off longtime Democrat incumbents, including Melat Kiros in Denver and Darializa Avila Chevalier in New York, further fueling Republican arguments that the far left is capturing the Democrat Party from within.
House Republicans have made countering this trend a centerpiece of their 2026 midterm messaging strategy. According to a memo circulated within the House Republican Conference and reported earlier this summer, party leadership has explicitly advised members to link socialism and Marxism to communism whenever criticizing Democrats, on the theory that voters still view communism as a far more dangerous and alarming concept.
The memo reportedly urged Republicans to connect all three ideologies together whenever possible, describing them as fruit of the same poisonous tree. That strategy appears to be playing out in real time with this new resolution, which pairs the condemnation of socialism with language about election integrity, tying together two issues Republicans believe resonate strongly with voters heading into November.
House Speaker Mike Johnson has also gotten personally involved in the anti socialism push, launching a website aimed at educating young voters about the dangers of socialism and communism ahead of the midterm elections. The effort reflects a broader Republican strategy of trying to reach younger Americans who polls suggest have grown more open to socialist ideas in recent years, often without a full understanding of the ideology’s brutal historical record.
