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The 'Iron Stache' Is Back: Wisconsin Ironworker Randy Bryce Announces 2026 House Run
"With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress."
May 20, 2025
As congressional Republicans and the administration of President Donald Trump set their sites on slashing vital social services, former union ironworker-turned-progressive Democratic U.S. House candidate Randy Bryce announced Tuesday that he will seek to oust the incumbent Trump ally in 2026 and help save Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security.
Bryce—also known as the "Iron Stache" due to his prominent moustache—is a disabled veteran who launched his 2018 campaign with a viral video skewering then-House Speaker Paul Ryan's (R-Wis.) attacks on healthcare. Bryce, who raised over $7 million with donations averaging around $25, won the Democratic primary but lost to Rep. Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) in the 2018 general election.He aims to face Steil in the next cycle.
"Every great story begins with a spark. Ours began in 2018, when one man stood up to Washington," Bryce said in an ad released Tuesday announcing his new campaign for Wisconsin's 1st Congressional District seat. "Now, as old enemies come out of the shadows, we need him one more time."
"Trump promised to bring manufacturing back," Bryce continued. "Eight years later, we're still waiting. We can't afford to wait any longer—not for jobs, or healthcare, or a damn living wage."
"This isn't about left versus right," he added. "This about the billionaires versus the rest of us, and we've got the numbers!"
As the Milwaukee Journal Sentinelreported Tuesday:
At the time, Bryce ran on supporting "Medicare for All" legislation, raising the minimum wage to $15 per hour, and boosting unions. He remains a member of the Ironworkers Local 853 and in the years since his first campaign, he said, has served as a union representative, worked with Social Security Works, an advocacy group seeking to expand Social Security, and more recently has helped people with disabilities find work.
Like his ally Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), Bryce believes that Democrats lack a coherent vision for defeating Trumpism and the oligarchy that's enriching itself at the expense of working-class Americans.
The solution? "With what Trump and Musk have been doing, it's more important than ever to get union people, working people, into Congress," Bryce toldCapital Times associate editor and Nation national affairs correspondent John Nichols on Tuesday, referring to de facto Department of Government Efficiency chief and world's richest person, Elon Musk.
Working-class Dem Randy Bryce Takes On Trump Ally Bryan Steil For Key Wisconsin House Seat. — Bryce is the union Ironworker whose 2018 challenge to Speaker Paul Ryan went viral and, ultimately, saw Ryan decide to quit. Bryce says he’s running in 2026 to save Medicaid, Medicare and Social Security.
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— John Nichols (@nicholsuprising.bsky.social) May 20, 2025 at 8:20 AM
"What Trump's doing, and what Bryan Steil is helping him do, is really scaring people," Bryce told Nichols. "I'm talking to veterans, to people who rely on Medicaid, to families that can't keep up with rising prices, to workers. They're all angry."
"You've got an administration that is strangling the Social Security system, laying off people, cutting services," he added. "The Republicans in Washington are pulling what's left of the rug out from under us. I just think this is a going to be an election where people in the 1st District say, Enough!"
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From Paul Ryan to Nikki Haley: GOP Nightmare of Senate Budget Chair Bernie Sanders About to Come True
"When Republicans controlled the Senate they used the reconciliation process to provide huge tax breaks for the rich and large corporations," said Sanders on Saturday. "We're going to use reconciliation to protect working families, the sick and the poor."
Jan 16, 2021
The long-held Republican nightmare that a champion of working-class people and the common good--one who has dedicated his political career to curbing poverty and injustice while denouncing corporate greed, endless war, and the cruelty of a for-profit health system that leaves millions upon millions uninsured or without affordable access to care--would assume the powerful position of chairing the Senate Budget Committee is about to become a reality.
"Time to face the harsh reality, socialist Bernie Sanders will become the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee. He has vowed to use his position to enact his progressive agenda on healthcare, climate, infrastructure spending, and cutting defense spending," Nikki Haley tweeted Saturday.
While it came from Trump's former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations as a kind of ominous warning, Sanders' wife, Jane O'Meara Sanders, was among those who shot back with a clever and simple quip. "Yes he has," she tweeted in response.
\u201cYes he has.\u201d— Jane O'Meara Sanders (@Jane O'Meara Sanders) 1610847261
Not that Jane Sanders was alone:
\u201cImagine being horrified by the prospect of spending more money on things that make life better for people everywhere and less on things designed to kill people outside the U.S. . . .\u201d— Sandeep Vaheesan (@Sandeep Vaheesan) 1610847730
"You forgot to mention raising the minimum wage and taxing your rich friends," the organizing group People for Bernie tweeted back at Haley.
Republican fears of Sanders taking over the committee go back to at least 2016 when Congressman Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, then-Speaker of the GOP-controlled House, said ahead of that year's election: "If we lose the Senate, do you know who becomes chair of the Senate Budget Committee? A guy named Bernie Sanders. You ever heard of him?"
\u201cWe are lucky to be alive to see Paul Ryan's worst nightmare come true\n\nhttps://t.co/Uj1axyzdI5\u201d— Olivia Becker (@Olivia Becker) 1610490482
The GOP trepidation over such a reality is about to materialize now that Democrats have seized razor-thin majority control of the Senate. And, while the gavel is yet to be placed in his hand, Sanders and his staff have signaled in recent days that he will be ready and willing to wield it to push the incoming Biden administration--as well as Democratic leadership in the House and Senate--to enact the kind of bold, working-class friendly policies that fueled both of his presidential runs.
Among the chief powers that the chair of the committee will utilize is fostering legislation through the Senate using the budget reconciliation process--a procedural tool that will allow, even under current rules, legislation to pass with a simple majority.
On Sunday, Sanders posted this social media:
\u201cFor too long our country has prioritized corporate profits, tax cuts for the rich and military spending over investing in the American people.\n\nThat is what I will fight to change as Senate Budget Committee Chairman.\u201d— Bernie Sanders (@Bernie Sanders) 1610903425
"Yes, we can, and we must use budget reconciliation to increase the minimum wage to at least $15 an hour with a simple majority vote in the Senate, just like Republicans did to pass massive tax breaks to the 1%," declared Warren Gunnels, one of Sanders' most senior aides who went out of the way to identify himself as the "Incoming Majority Staff Director" for the "Senate Budget Committee" in a tweet Friday morning.
Following the Democratic wins in Georgia that gave the party back the majority in the Senate, Sanders told Politico in an interview that he has no plans to be sheepish from his perch atop the committee.
"I'm going to use reconciliation in as aggressive a way as I possibly can to address the terrible health and economic crises facing working people today," Sanders told the news outlet. "As we speak, my staff and I are working. We're working with Biden's people. We're working with Democratic leadership. We'll be working with my colleagues in the House to figure out how we can come up with the most aggressive reconciliation bill to address the suffering of the American working families today."
Nina Turner, national co-chair of Sanders' 2020 campaign and now running for U.S. House in her home state of Ohio, has been among those in the progressive movement championing the legislative potential of his powerful new role in the Senate:
\u201cGo Big, Mr. Chairman. We have a moral imperative. Hello Somebody\ud83d\ude4c\ud83c\udffe\n\nhttps://t.co/7np4HnUuDE\u201d— Nina Turner (@Nina Turner) 1610490187
In a tweet on Saturday evening, Sanders himself stated: "When Republicans controlled the Senate, they used the reconciliation process to provide huge tax breaks for the rich and large corporations. We're going to use reconciliation to protect working families, the sick and the poor."
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The Republican Party Is as Guilty as Trump
Until they openly declare war on his presidency, his ongoing assault on our democracy is just as much their fault as his.
Oct 24, 2019
Every time it seems as though the firewall of apologists protecting Donald Trump might crumble, Republican politicians let us down over and over. In an interview Sunday, one of Trump's top Republican allies, Sen. Lindsey Graham, was asked in an interview whether he was open-minded about supporting impeachment if damning evidence of Trump's wrongdoing was to emerge. Graham said, "If you could show me that, you know, Trump actually was engaging in a quid pro quo outside the phone call, that would be very disturbing."
But just two days later, the high-ranking senator stood by Trump as the president used the most vile language in reference to his impeachment, saying on Twitter, "All Republicans must remember what they are witnessing here -- a lynching." In response, Graham said to reporters, "This is a lynching, in every sense." He did not say, "This is a symbolic lynching," or "In some sense, this is a lynching." (Even those terms would have been unacceptable given the history of quintessentially American racist terror the word references). But Graham said, "in every sense," this was a lynching of President Trump, implying that even in literal terms, Trump was, in his view, being strung up on a tree by a racist mob and murdered by hanging. Just as other high-ranking Republicans have done in the past, Graham went even further than Trump himself to defend him and his conduct. Are not all of Trump's supporters as guilty of the president's wrongdoing as he is?
There has been a mass exodus by Republicans from office and even the party the past two years, strongly suggesting that Trump's politics are too much for party members to tolerate. Among the earliest was the ambitious Republican star and former House Speaker Paul Ryan, who criticized Trump and then chose to retire, saying, "We're making really good progress on a lot of signature issues" -- as if Trump's destructiveness were a small price to pay for Ryan's chief economic concerns such as lowering taxes for the wealthy. Other high-profile lawmakers followed, including Sen. Bob Corker, who had been openly critical of Trump but then retired without speaking out. Sen. Jeff Flake also spoke up loudly against Trump but also chose to retire. House Republican Justin Amash became the first GOP congressman to say that Trump had met the standard for impeachment. He did so in May, before Democrats launched their formal impeachment inquiry -- and then made a bold stand by actually leaving the party. Sen. Mitt Romney is the highest-ranking Republican senator who remains in the party and who has spoken out strongly against Trump. According to Axios, Romney explained in an interview that "conservatives are trying to maintain the perception of a united front to voters so as not to risk internal shakeups that could lose them the Senate or Oval Office."
And there you have it. Fear of losing political gains has kept that Republican firewall around Trump strong regardless of what party members think of the president in private. The real reason Trump continues to be tolerated by his fellow Republicans is because he is delivering on the kind of economic reforms they are counting on. They see the rising tide of anti-capitalist populism in the country as Americans are fed up with the rich getting richer. They see the very real prospects of a Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren presidential election in 2020. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows that backing Trump unequivocally has given conservatives the chance to install two out of nine Supreme Court justices and win long-term right-wing influence in the nation's highest court. He understands that lowering corporate tax rates is worth the price of keeping Trump in the White House. While Trump is destroying the Republican Party, the Republican Party is destroying America.
Does it really matter if there is a secret resistance to Trump from within his party or even his cabinet? In September 2018, a person claiming to work for Trump wrote an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times saying that she or he was "part of the resistance" and had "vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." Now, more than a year later, that same person is apparently publishing a tell-all book called "A Warning," as a follow-up to the op-ed. But why continue to remain unnamed? Although anonymous resistance is better than no resistance, if Trump's horrendous damage to the country over the past year is what has survived the internal thwarting of his agenda by so-called resisters, then their efforts have been in vain.
Several people have asserted that if an impeachment trial were held in the Senate in secret, a large percentage of Republicans would vote to remove the president. Flake estimated that 35 would do so, while an unnamed Republican politician told Fox News' Chris Wallace that there was a 20% chance of the GOP voting to end Trump's presidency. But Republicans ought to have the courage to voice their opposition in public. Trump thrives on an impression of compliance and loyalty. He may suspect that Republicans are secretly turning against him, but if that resistance to him remains secret, it matters little. All he cares about is the perception of obedience and the view that he is winning no matter what e does.
One group, Republicans for the Rule of Law, has been working hard to expose Trump and encourage the GOP to take him on. They have operated openly without hiding who they are and are now calling on Romney to "pry the Republican Party from President Trump's hands." While their efforts are admirable, it remains to be seen if Republicans who are disgusted with Trump will take its advice.
With the testimony of the acting U.S. ambassador to Ukraine William Taylor confirming that Trump engaged in a quid pro quo to exact political dirt from Ukraine in exchange for military aid, one might imagine that Sen. Graham would stay true to his claim that he might consider impeachment if such a thing could be proved. But Graham, like McConnell and others, appears to have made the cold calculation that a guilty Republican in the White House is better than any Democrat.
Trump got into office because Republicans allowed it, and he remains in office because Republicans continue to allow it. Until they openly declare war on his presidency, his ongoing assault on our democracy is just as much their fault as his. He remains in office at their whim. They are his enablers, the facilitators of his evil. The stink of Trump's racist and misogynist hate, abject dishonesty and flagrant impunity over laws and the U.S. Constitution ought to follow every Trump supporter inside or outside government for the rest of their lives. The only way to save their soul from the complicity that history books will surely capture is to disavow him, and to do so now when it matters.
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