In January of 2025, the Republican party gained “the trifecta,” controlling the Presidency and the Senate, and the House of Representatives. Since then, congressional Republicans have done little to assert the prerogatives of the legislative branch. “The wrath of Donald Trump,” as one reporter wrote in June of this year, “has kept congressional Republicans in line for much of his second term…” With a handful of exceptions, congressional Republicans have also given the administration a free hand in foreign policy, an area that the Executive Branch already enjoys substantial prerogatives. In matters of foreign assistance, the Trump administration has acted with virtually no constraints. It dismantled USAID, as well as provided Argentina with $20 billion in an apparently successful effort to shore up the presidency of Javier Milei.

The Trump administration has been particularly hostile to multilateral organizations and assistance. But could Democratic success in the upcoming midterms lead Trump to rethink that? Historical trends suggest that the answer is “yes.” In our new article “Dirty Work and the Domestic Politics of Aid,” we show that when an opposition party controls Congress — and uses its power to block the incumbent administration’s bilateral foreign-aid priorities — the United States often chooses to work through multilateral channels such as the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Scholars have long argued that multilateral institutions provide an attractive way for governments to “launder” foreign assistance. By channeling aid through an ostensibly independent international organization, donors can obscure their involvement from their own citizens or those of the recipient state. U.S. administrations, for example, have often found it useful to hide transfers to unfriendly or unpopular regimes by directing them through the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. 

This line of argument suggests that governments turn to third parties in order to hide “dirty work.” But U.S. administrations can use their influence in multilateral organizations to circumvent the need for Congressional approval. We saw this dynamic at work in 2024, when the Republican-controlled House blocked assistance to Ukraine. During that exact time, the World Bank approved $4.7 billion in new lending and the IMF approved a new $15.6 billion Extended Fund Facility arrangement for Ukraine.

Thus, when it comes to non-traditional allies and unpopular foreign regimes, U.S. administrations have two distinct incentives to pursue multilateral assistance. In the “dirty work” hypothesis, governments want to avoid the costs of publicly violating norms and values. In the “divided government” hypothesis, policymakers want to bypass rules that otherwise restrict their freedom of action. 

U.S. political polarization may affect the strength of these two incentives in different ways. In brief, if a president violates preexisting norms, then their own supporters will probably abandon those norms out of partisan loyalty. At the very least, an administration is less likely to fear pushback from elected officials in their own party. Thus, the need to hide “dirty work,” at least from its own citizens, becomes less important. For example, the current Trump administration makes no attempt to hide foreign-policy “deals” — even though many of them involve the kind of self-dealing that would have once triggered a bipartisan backlash. 

But if polarization means that an administration can “do no wrong” in the eyes of its co-partisans, it also means that it can “do no right” in the eyes of its opponents. Regardless of the merits of a policy, the other side will almost certainly oppose it. In other words, the explanatory power of the “dirty work” hypothesis should diminish, while the importance of the “divided government” hypothesis should increase. 

The obvious question is whether the Trump administration’s ideological antipathy toward multilateral institutions outweigh such pragmatic considerations? Come 2027, we may very well find out the answer.