Corporate America thought Republicans were their friends in Washington.
That assumption is getting torched ahead of the 2026 midterms.
And Josh Hawley just asked four words about Wall Street that every big financial firm needs to hear.
The Anti-Corporate Wave Sweeping the GOP
On television airwaves in central Arkansas, Republican House Financial Services Chair French Hill (R-AR) runs ads touting his efforts to “keep Wall Street from buying up our neighborhoods.”
In Michigan, GOP Senate hopeful Mike Rogers vows to “take on Big pharma” companies that “are ripping American families off.”
In northeast Iowa, an ad boosting Republican House candidate Joe Mitchell declares he “will be the only Republican refusing corporate PAC money” in Washington.
None of these are fringe candidates running on the outer edges of the party.
These are mainstream Republican voices, running in competitive races, and they have all decided that punching at big corporations is good politics in 2026.
The right-wing populist movement — the kind that actually fights for American workers, national sovereignty, and accountability from elite institutions — is showing up on the campaign trail in force. And corporate America is only now starting to realize it.
US Senator Josh Hawley (R-MO) has been saying this for years. He put the question plainly: “There should be a shifting relationship between Republicans and Wall Street for sure. I mean, what do those people do for America?”
That’s a fair question. And the fact that it’s being asked by a Republican senator says everything about where the party is heading.
What This Actually Means for Big Business
Major corporations have long treated the Republican Party like a concierge service — lower taxes, looser regulations, and a friendly ear when Democrats came after them. The second Trump administration has delivered on some of that. Congressional Republicans passed a sweeping tax bill that earned applause from the US Chamber of Commerce, and Trump’s agency heads have moved to loosen certain banking regulations.
But that’s not the whole story anymore.
Earlier this year, Congress passed a major housing affordability bill that included language limiting private equity’s footprint in the single-family home market. That provision created a coalition few would have predicted: the White House, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), and populist Republicans. Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-OH), who helped champion that private equity crackdown, drew a clear line.
“I think the difference is, there’s Republicans that will worship at the altar of corporations. I worship at the altar of working Americans to make sure that they’re getting a fair shot in this country,” Moreno said. “If there’s asshole executives that take advantage of their workers or consumers, they should be punched in the balls.”
That’s not the kind of language you’d have heard from a Republican senator a decade ago. And it’s not an accident that it’s being said out loud now.
Trump has backed other ideas that could force similar coalitions — capping credit card interest rates, cracking down on swipe fees that merchants pay to banks and card networks when customers make purchases. With Democrats well-positioned to take back at least one chamber of Congress heading into 2027, the window for that kind of cross-aisle deal-making could open wider than corporate lobbyists want to admit.
Rohit Kumar, who served as a top aide to former Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell and now works at the consulting firm PwC, said the trajectory is clear. “It’s entirely foreseeable that two, three cycles from now, you have a very Trump-influenced Republican elected official class, and their willingness to engage in the sorts of activities that you would have traditionally thought would be the province mostly of House and Senate Democrats starts to become a little more commonplace,” Kumar said.
That’s an establishment voice acknowledging what the populist Right has been arguing for years: the old rules are gone.
The Realignment Corporate America Still Hasn’t Accepted
There are still Republicans who hold the old line. Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) said he believes private enterprise is “one of the key ingredients of what makes America great” and that the country needs “an environment where businesses can thrive.” That view is sincere and it isn’t going away entirely.
But it’s no longer the dominant energy in the party. The dominant energy is the kind of populism that asks whether Wall Street, Big Pharma, and Silicon Valley are actually serving American workers or just extracting value from them.
The honest answer, too often, is the latter. Financial services firms loaded up on real estate, squeezing out working families trying to buy their first home. Health insurance companies built entire business models around denying claims. Tech giants used their platform power to suppress competition and — as documented repeatedly — censor conservative speech on COVID policy, the 2020 election, and other contested issues. These aren’t abstract grievances. They’re the lived experience of millions of Americans who voted for Trump and who expect something different from Washington.
Kevin Madden, a longtime GOP communications strategist and senior partner at consulting firm Penta, described it this way. Companies are “very aware” of the trendline, he said, and can’t afford to keep their heads down. “The risk is that it starts to become part of every policy conversation, whether it’s legislative, political, regulatory, reputational,” Madden said. “If the political incentives are there for Republicans to go after corporations and business interests, that’s a problem.”
But here’s the thing Madden didn’t say explicitly: those incentives exist because the corporations created them.
And what the media calls “left-wing populism” isn’t the same creature. Democrat versions of this rhetoric come packaged with open-borders policies that import illegal aliens to displace American workers, cultural radicalism that has nothing to do with protecting the working class, and an instinct toward government control of industry rather than accountability from it. The right-wing populism showing up in French Hill’s Arkansas ads and Mike Rogers’ Michigan rallies is different in kind. It’s rooted in American sovereignty, fair wages, and the idea that big institutions — corporate and government alike — should answer to the people.
That distinction matters, even if Washington hasn’t fully caught up to it.
The 2026 midterms will test how far this goes. But the broader realignment — the one Trump accelerated and that figures like Hawley and Moreno are now running with — isn’t going to reverse just because the Chamber of Commerce cuts some checks.
Corporate America spent years assuming the Republican Party was a reliable shield. What it’s learning, slowly and uncomfortably, is that the party now belongs to the voters. And those voters have some questions.
Sources: Politico, “Grand Old Populists: GOP lawmakers target big business,” by Jasper Goodman and Victoria Guida, October 2, 2026.