But, as dominant as Trump and his way of thinking are on the Right, no political coalition is permanent, and internal debates are already rumbling over issues such as immigration and trade that could split the movement within a few years.

Such disagreements have spilled into the open on social media for all the world to see, publicly exposing rifts between some of Trump’s biggest backers in the early months of his second term. Not everyone is convinced that debate is a problem, especially for a party that now prides itself on its embrace of unfettered free speech.

“The emerging conservative realignment won’t have the internal consistency of an Ayn Rand protagonist, but so what?” wrote Sam Hammond, chief economist at the Foundation for American Innovation. “For conservatism properly understood, that’s a feature not a bug.”

“Debate and disagreement is fundamentally generative in a way that inoffensive consensus-building is not,” he added.

Trump rose to prominence precisely because he was willing to debate and loudly disagree with establishment thinking on foreign policy, family policy, tariffs, and illegal immigration. In his wake, the New Right movement developed, led by Vance and other high-ranking officials like Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO). All of them champion limited foreign intervention, strict border enforcement, a pro-family outlook, and the reshoring of middle-class manufacturing jobs to the United States.

“If you take a middle-class family living in Toledo, Ohio, let’s say you have a single breadwinner and three children. The fundamental question in terms of policy is, ‘does this decision help or harm that key constituency?’” said Johnny Burtka, president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, in outlining the guiding principles of the New Right.

“If it helps them, we should do it, and if it harms them, we shouldn’t do it,” he added. “That’s a different approach than saying, ‘What decision will be best for the stock market?’”

Still, internal fissures could threaten the dominance of New Right thinking, especially as Trump is term-limited and will, at some point, need to hand the baton off to another leader. Vance is widely considered the front-runner to succeed him, though he’ll still have to prove himself when the time comes.

“If Vance is successful, it’ll be because he has learned how to be playfully serious and seriously playful,” Catholic University political professor Justin Litke said. “No one is going to be able to succeed to Trump’s Entertainer-in-Chief schtick with the same level of support or adhesion … if Democrats are able successfully to paint Vance as an out-of-touch or manipulative elite, then he’ll not last. For all his gold-plated life, Trump isn’t that to his base.”

Rifts that need reconciling

The New Right is devoted to promoting marriage and family formation in a way that its predecessors were not, as evidenced by the Respect Parents’ Childcare Choices Act, which was introduced by three Republican congressmen and would provide a government-sponsored voucher for families to spend on child care as they see fit.

However, how far that commitment extends is being tested in real time. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-FL) left the conservative House Freedom Caucus last month due to a debate over whether new parents should be allowed proxy voting in Congress. She blasted House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) and her opponents as “anti-family” for opposing the idea.

As the debate festered within the House GOP, Trump stepped in to back Luna, saying he didn’t understand why her idea was controversial.

Similar debates have emerged on other issues, such as immigration. While the New Right is aligned on illegal immigration, there was a split earlier this year on the H-1B visa that allows 85,000 foreigners to enter the U.S. to work each year.

Would more H-1B visas help a middle-class family in Toledo? Trump, who previously spoke out against the H-1B, now supports it, as do prominent backers Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk. The visas typically go to high-skill workers in information technology and computer sciences, systems analysts, engineers, university professors, and healthcare professionals.

But right-wing influencer Laura Loomer soon voiced her opposition, claiming the issue would lead to a “civil war” within the Make America Great Again movement. Former Trump confidante Steve Bannon stepped in as well, calling Musk a “parasitic illegal immigrant” who is working to serve his own interests. That issue remains unresolved at the moment.

While Trump and Musk agreed on visas, they appear to be at odds on tariff and trade policy.

Part of New Right economic thinking is the idea that Americans should be considered producers first and consumers second, with a focus on increasing domestic manufacturing even if it comes with somewhat higher prices.

“We had an idea that China would liberalize through free trade, that we would do the design and they would do manufacturing,” Hammond told the Washington Examiner. “But it turns out you can’t win a war if you don’t have a manufacturing base.”

Vance made that case during a speech in March arguing against “cheap labor” at home and abroad.

“It should be no surprise that when we send so much of our industrial base to other countries, we stop making interesting new things right here at home,” the vice president said, using shipbuilding as an example. The U.S. dominated ship manufacturing during World War II but now controls less than 1% of the world’s shipmaking capacity, while China now dominates.

Trump is aggressively implementing that vision, rolling out “Liberation Day” tariffs that hit 10% for virtually every country in the world and, at the moment, 104% for China. The tariffs met a tepid reception in the Republican-controlled Congress, and some big-name Trump supporters, such as billionaires Bill Ackman and Elon Musk, have come out against it.

“This is not what we voted for,” Ackman wrote. Musk went even further, publicly defending free trade and hurling insults at White House trade adviser Peter Navarro.

A bill that would claw back some of the president’s tariff authority has seven Republican co-sponsors in the Senate, with leadership holding against it for now.

Tariffs may be the most internally divisive legislation Trump has rolled out so far, splintering his support between relatively isolationist free trade skeptics and those who argue that trade benefits everyone.

“It clear that a lot of new right protectionist types want Americans to be poorer,” Washington Examiner columnist David Harsanyi posted on X. “They think dynamic economies offer too many choices. And if people are stuck in safe union factory jobs they’ll have families and go back to church and live in the utopian fantasy world of the 1970s.”

Nathan Halberstadt, chief of staff at New Founding, said the tariff question will eventually be resolved based on its outcome.

“If we go into recession, then I anticipate a crack up over this issue,” Halberstadt said. “But if we succeed, if Trump finds a way through and reindustrialization progresses — if we avoid recession and jobs start coming back — then it seems unlikely major players will defect.”

Trump, for now, insists that he’s in it for the long haul.

“No other president would be willing to do what I am doing or even go through it,” Trump said at the White House on Monday. “I don’t mind because I see the end goal.”

Amid the turmoil, Antonin Scalia, a senior adviser in the Manhattan Institute’s Logos Initiative, emphasized that open conflict is healthy for the New Right, which he characterized as a coalition of different groups rather than an ideological movement.

“Ideology causes things to become brittle, and then fragile, and then ultimately to break apart,” he said. “You do need to have these internal principles that you are oriented by, but in the specific instance, your response will look different.”

He argues conversely that a lack of open debate and discourse gradually weakened the Democratic Party between former President Barack Obama’s triumphant 2008 election and the disastrous former Vice President Kamala Harris campaign of 2024.

New Right proponents also say its openness to ideas and conversation draws in younger people. Oren Cass, founder of the American Compass think tank, argues that age is often a factor in political alignment, with those under 40 tending to support his views.

“I have a great deal of hope that as that moves to be the center of the party, you really are going to see a different Republican Party that still loves markets and wants them to work but has a much better understanding of their limitation,” he told Daily Show host Jon Stewart.

Left in the lurch are establishment Republicans such as former Vice President Mike Pence, who is now often at odds with Trump, his former boss. Pence ran unsuccessfully against Trump in the 2024 GOP primary, and this year, he fought publicly against two of his Cabinet picks.

Halberstadt says that one of the biggest internal divisions that must be resolved is between the tech wing and the populist, working-class wing, especially once Trump moves on and the right faces the perilous task of coalescing behind a new leader.

The question of where to go next is on the minds of Republican leadership as well. Both Vance and Ohio gubernatorial candidate Vivek Ramaswamy have delivered speeches on the topic within the last year.

Ramaswamy pitched the battle as between “national protectionists,” who want to reshape the regulatory state toward conservative political ends, and “national libertarians,” who would shut down the regulatory state altogether. Ramaswamy identified himself as part of the latter group.

The New Right comes to define Trump and the Republican Party

Vance took a different track, identifying the groups as the “techno-optimists” who would advance artificial intelligence and factory automation and the “populist right” who want to protect blue-collar jobs. Unlike Ramaswamy, Vance said he’s part of both factions, arguing that it’s possible to maintain a unified vision.

“We recognize now, in our administration, that it’s time to align our work interests with those of all of you [tech entrepreneurs],” Vance said. “It’s time to align the interests of our technology firms with the interests of the United States of America writ large.”