At the Faith & Freedom Coalition gathering in Washington last week, President Trump warned that many Democratic Socialist candidates “are not social democrats. These are hardcore, godless Communists. . . . This is the most serious threat to our Country since its existence.” Trump’s remarks sparked a wave of condemnations, including from CNN chief White House correspondent Kaitlan Collins, who said that “socialism, much less democratic socialism, is not communism.”
Statements like Collins’s highlight how little attention the press has given to the Democratic Socialists of America and its national leadership. The majority of the DSA’s governing board, the National Political Committee (NPC), openly identifies with Communist ideology.
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Self-avowed Communists were not always so well represented in DSA’s leadership, but the DSA’s leftward shift has helped turn it into a vehicle for a wide range of organizing beyond electoral politics, attracting Marxist-Leninist tendencies in particular. To dismiss the DSA as simply “not Communism,” as Collins does, is wrong. Members with Communist political tendencies now significantly shape the DSA’s leadership, and the organization is an increasingly attractive vehicle for bringing together a wide range of left-wing movements, many of which profess to be Communist.
Every two years, DSA convenes its national convention, where delegates pass resolutions and elect members to its board of directors, the NPC. From 2021 to 2023, the Socialist Majority Caucus and the Green New Deal slate held a majority on the NPC, drawing criticism for failing to hold elected officials accountable and for prioritizing coalition building that positioned the DSA as a political partner rather than an independent force. By 2023, however, a “coalition of Communist caucuses” had secured a majority on the NPC.
Vincent Lima, the political committee chair of the Socialist Majority Caucus, described the NPC at the time as divided between two tendencies, “mass politics” and “sectarian.” Those seeing mass politics as the path forward favor labor organizing, electoral participation, and incremental reforms to build a socialist future; they view the DSA as an organization for millions of Americans. The sectarians, by contrast, emphasize ideological purity and see the DSA as something closer to a vanguard prepared for “the final crisis of capitalism to sweep a socialist party into power.”
The upshot of Lima’s somewhat obscure leftist terminology is that the NPC is defined by two competing blocs: a coalition that sees the American system as capable of reform, and a rival bloc grounded in a revolutionary framework that emphasizes movement work and protest, often dismissing electoral politics as a waste of time. Membership in these blocs is not rigid; depending on the issue, individuals on the NPC may move between them.
Lima characterizes the NPC’s sectarian faction as suffering “paralysis,” but that framing understates its level of activity. In the months following the October 7 terrorist attack on Israel, sectarian-aligned elements were deeply engaged in movement work, including disruptive protest tactics and efforts like supply-chain targeting. More broadly, Lima overlooks how beneficial this kind of organizing has become for the DSA. When focused on labor issues, it can even serve as a point of convergence between the secularist and mass-politics tendencies. It also helps explain why the DSA continues to enjoy relatively high favorability.
The 2025 convention marked another turning point for the NPC, as the committee expanded in size and Communist-aligned caucuses secured a majority. Far-left news aggregator Fight for a Future reported that the NPC was composed of 51.9 percent Communists, a 14.8 percent “centre” bloc, and 33.3 percent reformists. The existence of a “centre” bloc reflects the political reality that some members occupy a middle position within the DSA, aligning with either of its two dominant factions depending on the issue.
More significantly, the convention repealed the organization’s ban on “democratic centralism,” the Leninist concept that internal debates and voting should occur behind closed doors, after which the group should present a unified public front. One DSA member described the ban as a “holdover from DSA’s anti-Communist period and a ward against entryism by external groups.”
Since the 2025 convention, tensions between reform-minded leaders and those aligned with Communist and Marxist-Leninist perspectives have intensified, with the Communist bloc prevailing on many of the most contentious issues. The divide has been on display throughout 2026 in many contentious NPC votes. One such vote centered on Christopher Winston, better known as BlackRedGuard, a Maoist DSA member of the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Liberation Caucus, which published a statement supporting Elias Rodriguez, the alleged assassin of two Israeli Embassy staffers outside the Capitol Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C. After Winston was elected to serve on the DSA’s militant Red Rabbits Security Commission, an NPC member introduced a resolution to remove him from the body, which failed by a vote of 15 to 10. The ten votes in favor of removing Winston came entirely from members of the reformist caucuses, Groundwork and Socialist Majority, along with one unaffiliated NPC member, Abdullah Farooq.
As the DSA continues to grow and gain national recognition as the nation’s largest and most capable socialist organization, it increasingly attracts individuals and groups seeking a vehicle with resources and manpower for their own political projects. In a recent podcast episode, Philly DSA’s James Ray and James Harr of Means Workwear described the DSA as a space where members are open to “the most radical position,” making it “the most fruitful ground” for Marxist Leninists to win people over. Their comments point to the Trotskyist concept of entryism, in which individuals join an organization with a defined ideological aim and work to change it from within. What these two discuss is nearly identical to the argument that the Red Star Caucus advances in “Communists Belong in DSA” for why Communists should organize within the DSA. Christopher Winston has even implied that new DSA members who follow him can wind up as Maoists, citing a clip about brainwashing from the John Candy comedy Volunteers to illustrate this dynamic.
Just last month, the Marxist Unity Group (MUG) put forward an amendment to the “Workers Deserve More!” program that passed the NPC by a razor-thin 12–11 vote. That amendment added language calling for the replacement of the U.S. presidency and Supreme Court with bodies chosen by, and subordinate to, Congress. The coalition in favor of the amendment included MUG, Red Star, Springs of Revolution, Reform & Revolution, and the lone Libertarian Socialist Caucus member. The opposition was mainly Groundwork, the Socialist Majority Caucus, and Bread and Roses. In other words, a more radical bloc pushing for a revolutionary break in U.S. state structure beat out a more reform-minded bloc.
Media figures who reflexively criticize Trump’s rhetoric on the DSA should look into the organization’s evolution. Just as North Korea’s official name, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, doesn’t reflect the reality of its political system, the DSA’s official name isn’t a reliable guide to the ideological makeup of its current leadership. Though the DSA presents itself as a big-tent organization, its leadership is increasingly dominated by individuals who openly identify as Communists, Marxists, or Marxist-Leninists.