Eliana Willis

The fight over access to the ballot was one of the most important stories in America in 2020.
The country faced a pandemic that both offered new barriers to the ballot box and exacerbated existing ones. After election day, America faced an unprecedented effort to undermine faith in the election results as Donald Trump and Republican allies baselessly claimed fraud and brought a flurry of unsuccessful lawsuits seeking to get election results overturned.
Even though those efforts have failed, Republicans have created a dangerous precedent, laying out the playbook for future losing candidates to refuse to accept election results. More immediately, Republicans may use the uncertainty Trump helped create to justify new restrictions on the right to vote.
Here are a few of the biggest stories around voting rights from 2020:
Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine the election
As it became clear that a record number of Americans were going to vote by mail, experts warned that election officials would probably need more time to count and verify ballots after the polls closed, making it unlikely that Americans would know the winner of the presidential race on election night. Moreover, because Democrats were more likely to vote by mail, they warned that initial election results might show Trump ahead, only to see his advantage slip away as more votes were counted. The uncertainty, they warned, opened a dangerous opportunity for Trump to claim victory before all votes were counted after months of falsely saying vote by mail would lead to fraud.
On election night, Trump did exactly that, making a late-night appearance at the White House to claim he won the election as votes were still being counted. In the days that followed – as Biden’s lead widened – the president and his legal team escalated claims of wrongdoing, alleging things such as that poll workers weren’t given adequate access to observe ballot counting. They began waging long-shot legal battles in both federal and state court, which rejected them overwhelmingly. Trump tried, and failed, to pressure some state lawmakers to override the popular vote in their state and award him electors anyway.
By December, Trump and his allies had lost dozens of cases in court across the country, but that didn’t seem to matter to many Republicans. A total of 126 Republicans in the US House, nearly two-thirds of the entire caucus, signed on to an amicus brief supporting a last-minute effort by Texas to block electors in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Georgia – all states Biden won. The US supreme court rejected the case, but the fact that so many Republicans were willing to embrace the claims underscored how the party embraced Trump’s baseless claims.
Switching to vote by mail
When America began shutting down because of the Covid-19 pandemic, it became clear there was going to be a surge in the number of people who cast their ballots through the mail. That presented a huge problem for many states, including key swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, where vote by mail was not widely used before.
Loud alarm bells sounded early on. During an April election in Wisconsin, there were reports of voters not receiving their ballots on time while others waited hours in line to vote. In Pennsylvania’s June primary, there were reports of similar delays and election officials struggled to count the influx of ballots. The Brennan Center for Justice estimated states needed about $4bn to adequately conduct elections during the pandemic, but Congress allocated just a fraction of that in the spring, $400m.
As state election officials scrambled to get new procedures in place, a significant new problem for mail-in voting emerged during the summer. Americans began experiencing severe mail delays, a problem critics attributed to changes implemented by Louis DeJoy, a prominent Republican donor who took over the US Postal Service in June. Many worried that a poorly functioning postal service would disenfranchise many voters, who would not be able to get their ballots and return them in time to have their vote counted. In a remarkable admission, Trump said publicly that he opposed additional funding for the postal service because it would make it harder to vote by mail.
Facing several lawsuits and congressional inquiries, DeJoy pledged to reverse the changes and ensure timely delivery of ballots. As the election moved into its final months, there was a sprint to get voters to request and return their ballots as early as possible. State elected officials encouraged voters to return their ballots in person, either to an election office or to a ballot drop box. Some states, facing legal pressure, extended the deadline for returning an absentee ballot.
When election day arrived, those efforts paid off – there were no reports of widespread disenfranchisement because of the mail. And preliminary data shows Democrats’ focus on voting by mail paid off. Some of the places where voters were the most likely to return their ballots saw some of the biggest swings towards Democrats compared to 2016.
Drop boxes
Amid worries about mail service, Republicans in some places began cracking down on ballot drop boxes.
In Ohio, Frank LaRose, the state’s top election official, refused to allow counties to offer more than one location for voters to return their ballots, even as courts said there was nothing preventing him from doing so.
The most egregious example may have been in Texas, where Governor Greg Abbott, a Republican, unilaterally said in October that counties could offer just one ballot drop box. The decision meant that Harris county, home to 2.4 million registered voters, could offer just one location for voters to leave their ballots instead of the 12 it had planned. Texas already makes it extremely difficult to vote by mail, and the decision meant that voters in Harris cunty, one of the most diverse in Texas, had to travel long distances if they wanted to return their ballots in person.
The supreme court’s conservative turn on voting rights
The unique conditions of the 2020 elections unleashed a flood of litigation aimed at easing rules around mail-in voting. The suits, filed in large part by Democrats and voting rights groups, sought to suspend things like witness requirements for mail in ballots as well as state policies that allowed officials to reject a ballot based on a voter’s signature without first giving the voter a chance to fix the ballot.
Several of those cases reached the United States supreme court, where the court’s conservative majority kept restrictions in place. In June, for example, the court allowed Texas to keep in place a law that only allowed a certain group of voters to cast their ballot by mail. It also said Alabama could block some counties from offering curbside voting.
In the week before the election, the supreme court declined to overturn decisions from state courts in North Carolina and Pennsylvania extending the ballot receipt deadline. But it did overturn a federal court ruling doing the same in Wisconsin. In that case, Brett Kavanaugh wrote a concurring opinion strongly suggesting that state supreme courts could do little to question state election laws because the constitution gives state legislatures clear authority over elections. The opinion alarmed many observers, who worried it could handcuff state courts from striking down suppressive voting laws in the future.
In a case not related to the pandemic, the supreme court also left in place a 2019 Florida law requiring people with felony convictions to repay fines and other court costs before they could vote again. Voting rights advocates challenged the measure, saying it effectively amounted to a poll tax and gutted a 2018 constitutional amendment eliminating Florida’s lifetime ban for people with felonies. An estimated 774,000 people in the state are blocked from voting because of the law, according to an estimate by the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped represent some of the plaintiffs in the case.
The decision, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent, blocked some people from voting, “simply because they are poor”.
Attacks on the census
Even before the pandemic, the 2020 census, which aims to count every living person in America, faced enormous challenges. Advocates worried that immigrants, turned off by Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, would not respond to the decennial survey. They also worried about new technological changes – this was the first census where the government encouraged people to self-respond online.
An inaccurate census would be catastrophic. The survey is used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets as well as how $1.5tn in federal funds get allocated. Businesses and local governments also rely on the data to make decisions about where to open stores, build schools, roads and implement transportation routes.
When the pandemic hit, it upended carefully prepared census plans and the bureau had to pause operations. After initially supporting an extension in completing the survey, the Trump administration reversed course, and said it was going to try to complete the census on-schedule, even as the bureau fell behind. That decision was probably linked to a July memo in which the president ordered undocumented immigrants excluded from the data used to determine how many seats in Congress each state gets. Several federal courts have since blocked the order, but the US supreme court reversed those decisions earlier in December without deciding on the merits of the memo, saying the suit was premature.
Deep concerns remain about the reliability of the data, given the Trump administration’s rush to complete the process. The consequences of the rush are likely to become clearer when the bureau begins to release data in the coming weeks. More

The Republican Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell, says the bill that would direct $2,000 coronavirus relief payments to Americans has ‘no realistic path to quickly pass the Senate’. After Donald Trump and Democrats pushed for larger relief cheques, McConnell said he would not be ‘bullied’ by Democrats into quickly approving the measure. House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, criticised McConnell for adding a delay to the payments.’These Republicans in the Senate seem to have an endless tolerance for other people’s sadness,’ she said
Mitch McConnell says ‘no realistic path’ for $2,000 relief checks bill More

US President-elect Joe Biden has criticised the Trump administration’s promise of a swift coronavirus vaccine rollout, saying it has ‘fallen far behind’ expectations. Biden, speaking in Wilmington, Delaware, said some 2 million people have been vaccinated, well short of the 20 million Trump had promised by the end of the year. Biden said the vaccine rollout is the ‘greatest operational challenges we’ve ever faced as a nation’ and outlined his plan for ramping up vaccinations, including the use of the Defense Production Act More

Donald Trump’s refusal to concede the election has fueled intense speculation about his post-presidency: will he start a new conservative cable network? Will he act as a kingmaker in the Republican party? Will he run for president again in 2024?Underlying all of these rumors is the assumption that Trump will continue to hold sway over a significant voter base. But this is by no means assured. It seems just as likely that, over time, Trump’s trajectory will land him closer to associates like Steve Bannon and Rudy Giuliani – hosting a middling podcast and hawking branded merchandise while trying to fend off prosecution.The media echo chamber which now insists that Trump will be a titanic political force for years to come sounds increasingly similar to the one that, five years ago, claimed he was no more than a flash-in-the-pan celebrity candidate. The glaring underestimation of Trump in the past and probable overestimation of his prospects today actually stem from the same error: the belief that Trump’s political appeal rests mainly on his personality cult, not on any association with a certain set of policy arguments.Trump did not win the presidency in 2016 simply because he had a cameo in Home Alone 2 and an uncanny talent for Twitter. He also outlined a wide-ranging, if inchoate, critique of the bipartisan policy consensus that had dominated American politics since the end of the cold war: a failed combination of “neoliberal” economics at home and military adventurism abroad. Moreover, Trump’s critique was based on national interests rather than the (often treacly) left-liberal moralism of progressive Democrats, thus scrambling ideological categories and establishing himself as a candidate with a unique appeal among key constituencies.Trump’s larger-than-life persona, ubiquitous presence in pop culture and peculiar media savvy were certainly assets in 2016, as they are today. But the critical policy factors that set Trump apart in his first campaign have diminished considerably since then.First, after one term in office, it is clear that the Republican establishment changed Trump more than he changed the party. Although his administration’s policy record is a mixed bag, the shift in rhetoric over four years was unmistakable. Attacks on hedge fund managers and pharma executives became rarer and rarer, replaced with praise for tax cuts, cheering on the Dow, bashing “socialism” and lauding supreme court appointments. To be sure, arguments can be made for all of these things, at least among conservatives, but they are arguments that Ted Cruz or even Jeb Bush could make, albeit less theatrically. Of late, Trump’s combativeness has focused almost exclusively on allegations of election fraud and cringe-inducing self-pity; most people are already tuning it out.Meanwhile, as Trump has drifted away from the more substantive themes of 2016, others have embraced them. Up-and-coming politicians like Senator Josh Hawley and pundits like Tucker Carlson have articulated more coherent right-populist arguments than Trump ever has. Senator Marco Rubio is leading an ambitious attempt to rethink Republican economic policy, while figures like Representative Matt Gaetz have emerged as passionate critics of foreign interventionism. It made little sense for these and other prominent Republicans to criticize the 45th president while he was in office. Should Trump enter the 2024 race, however, he will find the populist “lane” of the Republican primaries far more crowded. The Democratic party has also changed. Joe Biden campaigned on a “Made in America” industrial policy program, something Trump never really countered in the 2020 campaign.Politics, of course, is about much more than policy. Yet those who believe in the invincibility of Trump’s personality cult – including, it seems, the president himself – hold a view of American democracy that is at once too cynical and too naïve.On the one hand, the average voter is not motivated entirely by tribal loyalties and subrational impulses (though the average media personality might be). Even if wonkishness is an undesirable trait for presidential candidates, big-picture policy visions matter.On the other hand, turning out enthusiastic audiences at rallies and commanding a large social media following are much less important than is commonly believed. Joe Biden proved that in both the Democratic primaries and the general election of 2020. Furthermore, when it comes to policy formation, the effectiveness of mass politics is often constrained by an increasingly oligarchical system. Institutional power often outweighs popular appeal.Trump’s 2016 victory proved the concept that Republican voters are tired of zombie Reaganism, but his presidency did almost nothing to reorient Republican institutions and donors, which supported his administration out of convenience, not conviction. Despite four years in office, Trump built essentially no new long-term infrastructure or donor networks that could sustain a distinctive and lasting political movement, even one centered entirely around himself.On his own, Trump may never lack an audience or fail to draw a crowd. Yet as an aficionado of professional wrestling, he should understand the limitations of a genre in which advertising rates historically tend be quite low relative to ratings, presumably because wrestling’s core audience has comparatively little discretionary spending power. Unfortunately, the parallels between pro wrestling and American politics go beyond the entertainment spectacle; they extend to economics and influence as well.Accordingly, claims that the Republican party is “afraid” of Trump are grossly exaggerated. Republican members of Congress recently voted overwhelmingly for the National Defense Authorization Act, in spite of Trump’s public opposition to it, just as they steamrolled Trump on the recent Covid-19 stimulus and spending bill. The Republican party might give Trump a wide berth on symbolic gestures like his frivolous election lawsuits, and he could still be a factor in close races like the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs. But on significant matters of policy, the party’s attitude is closer to contempt than to fear.Like Nietzsche’s Socrates, Trump was “the buffoon who got himself taken seriously”. Unlike a Socratic buffoon, however, Trump never overcame himself. Bereft of the wider critique that once confounded political elites, his personality cult is no longer compelling even as a vessel for ressentiment. Its chief acolytes today are the legacy media operations whose fortunes his nonstop controversies helped revive, opportunistic scribblers hoping to cash in on one more #Maga or #Resistance potboiler, and those who prefer that the media focus on anything except the substantive issues raised in 2016. They will happily ride the Trump gravy train as far as it goes, but it’s already running out of steam. More

President-elect Joe Biden accused the outgoing Trump administration of failing to provide sufficient information to his transition team. ‘Right now, we just aren’t getting all the information that we need from the outgoing administration in key national security areas,’ said US president-elect Joe Biden. ‘It’s nothing short, in my view, of irresponsibility.’ Biden also said that the Trump administration had caused serious damage to many government agencies. ‘Many of them have been hollowed out in personnel, capacity and in morale,’ he said. ‘In the policy processes that have atrophied or have been sidelined. In the despair of our alliances and the disrepair of those alliances.’
America’s democracy is in crisis – how can Joe Biden fix voting rights? More

Donald Trump has abruptly signed a $900 billion Covid-19 relief and spending bill, ending days of drama over his refusal to accept the bipartisan deal that will deliver long-sought cash to businesses and individuals and avert a federal government shutdown.Without the legislation, the government would have shut down on Tuesday and millions of Americans would have lost eviction protections and unemployment benefits. His delay in signing the bill has already allowed crucial unemployment aid programs to lapse.Trump blindsided members of both parties and upended months of negotiations when he demanded last week that the package – already passed by the House and Senate by large margins and believed to have Trump’s support – be revised to include larger relief checks and scaled-back spending.But on Sunday night, while vacationing in Florida, Trump released a statement saying he had signed the bill, and it was his “responsibility to protect the people of our country from the economic devastation and hardship” caused by the coronavirus.Signing the bill into law prevents another crisis of Trump’s own creation and ends a standoff with his own party during the final days of his administration. It was unclear what, if anything, Trump accomplished with his delay, beyond angering all sides and empowering Democrats to continue their push for higher relief checks, which his own party opposes.Trump had received the bill last Thursday and his decision to delay signing it allowed unemployment benefits for millions of Americans to expire. The lapsed benefits will not restart until the first week of January.In the statement, Trump said he would still send a “redlined” version of the bill to Congress highlighting changes he wanted to the legislation. There is no indication Congress plans to act on these changes, in part because Trump’s presidency ends in a few weeks.Trump ended the statement by saying “much more money is coming,” although he provided nothing to back this promise.Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell welcomed Trump’s signing of the bill. “I am glad the American people will receive this much-needed assistance as our nation continues battling this pandemic,” the Kentucky Republican said.Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said it was a “downpayment on what is needed” adding: “Now, the president must immediately call on congressional Republicans to end their obstruction and to join him and Democrats in support of our stand-alone legislation to increase direct payment checks to $2,000.”Democratic lawmakers, who have a majority in the House of Representatives and have long wanted $2,000 relief checks, hope to use a rare point of agreement with Trump to advance the proposal – or at least put Republicans on record against it – in a vote on Monday afternoon.It was not immediately clear why Trump changed his mind as his resistance to the massive legislative package promised a chaotic final stretch of his presidency.White House officials have been tight-lipped about Trump’s thinking but a source familiar with the situation cited by Reuters said that some advisers had urged him to relent because they did not see the point of refusing.Republican officials were relieved that Trump had backed away from his veiled veto threat, saying it should help Republican Senate candidates David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler in the Georgia runoff elections on 5 January that will determine control of the Senate.Republican representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois said too much was at stake for Trump to “play this old switcheroo game”.“I don’t get the point,” he said. “I don’t understand what’s being done, why, unless it’s just to create chaos and show power and be upset because you lost the election.”Washington had been reeling since Trump turned on the deal, without warning, after it had won sweeping approval in both houses of Congress and after the White House had assured Republican leaders that Trump would support it.The bill laid unsigned on his desk since Christmas Day as the president, who was mostly silent through weeks of intense negotiations, spent the weekend at the Trump International Golf Course in West Palm Beach.Instead, he assailed the bill’s plan to provide $600 Covid-19 relief checks to most Americans – insisting it should be $2,000 – and took issue with spending included in an attached $1.4 trillion government funding bill to keep the federal government operating through September.And already, his opposition has had consequences, as two federal programs providing unemployment aid expired on Saturday.Lauren Bauer of the Brookings Institution had calculated that at least 11 million people would lose aid immediately as a result of Trump’s failure to sign the legislation; millions more would exhaust other unemployment benefits within weeks.How and when people are affected by the lapse depends on the state they live in, the program they are relying on and when they applied for benefits.In some states, people on regular unemployment insurance will continue to receive payments under a program that extends benefits when the jobless rate surpassed a certain threshold, said Andrew Stettner, an unemployment insurance expert and senior fellow at the Century Foundation think tank.About 9.5 million people, however, had been relying on the pandemic unemployment assistance program that expired altogether Saturday. That program made unemployment insurance available to freelancers, gig workers and others normally not eligible. After receiving their last checks, those recipients will not be able to file for more aid, Stettner said.Joe Biden, who won November’s presidential election and who will be sworn in as Trump’s successor on 20 January, accused him of an “abdication of responsibility” in a statement on Saturday.The relief bill wrangles come as the coronavirus pandemic continues to worsen in the US, with medical experts joining Biden in predicting that the darkest days lay ahead.“We very well might see a post-seasonal, in the sense of Christmas, New Year, surge,” Dr Anthony Fauci, the US head of infectious diseases, told CNN on Sunday. More

On 5 January the US state of Georgia will vote, again, on who to send to the Senate.The control of the Senate is up for grabs, and thus the prospects for the Biden administration – at least for the next two years. As millions of dollars and hundreds of campaigners descend on the state, here is an explainer about what is happening.What is at stake?Two seats are up for grabs. Republicans hold 50 of the 100 seats, and Democrats hold 48. There are 46 formally party-aligned and two independents – Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont – who caucus with the Democrats. When there is a 50-50 tie, the deciding vote is cast by the vice president. That will be Democrat Kamala Harris after the Biden administration is sworn in on 20 January.If Democrats can win both seats they will control the Senate.A Senate majority is crucial in deciding a range of legislative changes, cabinet appointments, potential presidential impeachments and nominations to the supreme court. Republicans have controlled the Senate since 2014.The Democrats have a majority in the House, so a Democratic Senate majority would make Joe Biden’s next two years much easier. Conversely a Republican-controlled Senate under majority leader Mitch McConnell would be able to block much of his agenda, just as it did with former president Barack Obama’s. Biden has a history of attempting compromise across the aisle and could try to entice one or more Republicans on individual votes, but given McConnell’s history of obstructionism that seems a distant prospect. With so much hanging on the result, money has been pouring in to the state to support both sides. More than US$400m was spent on political ads by the middle of December, most going to the two Republicans.Today in FocusThe Georgia Senate runoffSorry your browser does not support audio – but you can download here and listen https://audio.guim.co.uk/2020/05/05-61553-gnl.fw.200505.jf.ch7DW.mp300:00:0000:00:00Who are the candidates?Both Georgia seats are contested between one Democratic candidate and one Republican.One race pitches Republican David Perdue, incumbent senator since 2015, against Democrat Jon Ossoff, a former journalist, who is only 33.Their battle has been vitriolic at times, Ossoff repeatedly calling Perdue a crook and referring to investigations into Perdue’s alleged insider trading.But Perdue has mostly not risen to the bait, and he declined to meet Ossoff in their scheduled TV debate earlier this month, leaving Ossoff to make his points on an empty podium.The other, much more colourful, race is between Republican Kelly Loeffler, a seriously wealthy former businesswoman, and Democrat Rev Raphael Warnock.Warnock, bidding to become Georgia’s first black senator, is a pastor at the Atlanta church where Martin Luther King held the same position. A long-time civil rights campaigner, he is a powerful orator in the tradition of King, and a strong supporter of the Black Lives Matter movement.As a result he has been denounced as a “radical liberal” by his opponent, Loeffler, at every possible opportunity, but has responded in disarming campaign ads by accusing Loeffler of having nothing positive to say about herself and stressing how much he loves puppies.Loeffler ran into controversy when she criticised players from the WNBA team she owns – the Atlanta Dream – over their support for Black Lives Matter, saying BLM had “Marxist foundations”.Loeffler is also technically an incumbent – she was appointed an interim senator on 6 January after former Republican senator Johnny Isakson resigned due to ill health.Why are they runoffs?Georgia state law requires runoffs in both elections because no candidate in either seat reached 50% in the November election.For the Loeffler-Warnock seat, the vacancy was created by the resignation of a sitting senator.This meant the November vote was contested by 20 people, in what is known as a “blanket” or “jungle” primary, which is to say it was almost always going to a runoff, with the top two from the first round going through. In that blanket primary, Loeffler also faced strong competition from moderate Republican congressman Doug Collins, and Warnock competed against a range of Democrats.Warnock topped the blanket primary with 32.9%, Loeffler came second with 25.9% and Collins came third with 19.95%. The top two – Warnock and Loeffler – then advanced to the runoff.In the other seat, contested by Perdue and Ossoff, the 2.32% of the vote won by Libertarian party candidate Shane T Hazel was enough to ensure that neither main party candidate reached 50% in a tight race: Perdue received 49.73% and Ossoff 47.95%.Who is likely to win?A Democrat has not won a Senate race in Georgia in 20 years, so the odds of winning two at the same time do not look great.However, Biden won the state in the November presidential election, the first time in 30 years a Democratic candidate had done so.How the outcome of the presidential race will affect the runoffs is the great unknown. Will traditionally Republican voters who rejected Donald Trump return to the party to ensure the Biden agenda is tempered by Republican control of the Senate? Or will Trump’s insistence on continuing to campaign in Georgia on the basis that the election was a fraud – and tying the Senate candidates to that cause – again motivate Democratic voters to turn out in high numbers?As in the presidential election, voting is not compulsory – so turnout will be a huge concern for both camps.A few more younger voters will be eligible to vote in January. Anyone who turns 18 on or before 5 January is eligible to vote, according to the Georgia Voter Guide. Registration to vote closed on 7 December.What do the polls say?By 24 December the poll average compiled by FiveThirtyEight had Perdue ahead of Ossoff by 0.5%, but Warnock leading Loeffler by 0.6%. Real Clear Politics on 22 December gave the Republicans slightly better figures, with Perdue up by 1% and Loeffler by 0.2%, but the numbers for the Democrats were improving over the past week or so with both agencies.Both polling outfits came under sustained criticism over the presidential election when they drastically underestimated Republican support in some states.When will we know the result?It depends how close the races are. The first Ossoff-Perdue race from November was so close that the result was not known for three days, but under most circumstances the result should be apparent on the night. More

How much damage did Donald Trump do around the world, can it be repaired, and did he accomplish anything of lasting significance? Assessing the international legacy of the 45th US president is not so much a conventional survey of achievement and failure. It’s more like tracking the rampages of a cantankerous rogue elephant that leaves a trail of random destruction and shattered shibboleths in its wake. Last week’s wild pardoning spree is a case in point.First, the big picture. Trump’s confrontational manner, combined with his “America First” agenda, seriously undermined transatlantic relations and US global leadership. Joe Biden promises to set this right, but it will not be easy. France’s Emmanuel Macron exploited US introspection to advance ideas of European autonomy and integration. Leaders in the UK, Hungary and Poland cynically flattered Trump for their own political purposes.Trump’s ill-disguised hostility left deep scars in Germany, the most important European ally. This apparent phobia, fed by Berlin’s large trade surplus and relatively low defence spending, had a misogynistic tinge. He was, on occasion, unbelievably rude to chancellor Angela Merkel. A recent Pew poll found only 34% of Germans think US relations are in good shape.“Transatlantic relations worsened exponentially under Trump because of his open disdain for the European Union, his often belligerent interactions with EU leaders, and his vocal support for Brexit,” new analysis by the International Institute for Strategic Studies says. Yet divergences were already evident pre-Trump, it notes. George W Bush’s Iraq war was deeply unpopular in Europe. Barack Obama’s “pivot to Asia” made old friends feel unloved.All that said, Nato not only survived Trump’s constant criticisms; in some respects, its original purpose – deterring Russia – was reinforced by deployments of additional US forces in eastern Europe and the Baltic republics. Trump’s demand that European allies spend more on defence was not unreasonable, although his bullying brought only limited change.His lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroadTrump’s habit of thinking transactionally, not strategically, had a disastrous impact in Asia and elsewhere. He treated loyal allies Japan and South Korea with disdain – especially over misconceived talks with North Korea. He indulged rabble-rousers such as Rodrigo Duterte, the Philippines president, antagonised Pakistan, yet still failed to significantly enhance ties with India.The fierce mutual animosity currently poisoning US-China relations is Trump’s most troublesome geopolitical legacy. Before 2017, there was still an outside chance that the old and new superpowers could find ways to get along. That’s gone. China is now viewed by Americans of all stripes as the No 1 threat. Beijing’s aggressive leadership is much at fault. But Trump’s trade and tech wars, Taiwan brinkmanship and “Wuhan virus” rhetoric made everything worse.Biden has bought into the China fight, which looks set to continue. At the same time, he must repair the harm caused by Trump’s inexplicably deferential attitude towards Vladimir Putin in Russia – the backdrop to the Mueller inquiry and his impeachment. This puzzle has yet to be solved. It surfaced again last week when Trump downplayed Russia’s latest cyber attack.In appraising Trump’s foreign policy record, supporters point to his brokering of new ties between Israel and Arab regimes – including the grandly named Abraham Accords. If these deals lead to a broader, just settlement of the Palestine-Israel conflict, claims of “historic” success may ultimately be justified. To date, Trump’s main contribution has been to help entrench Benjamin Netanyahu, a hard-right prime minister opposed by a majority of Israel’s voters, who is on trial for alleged corruption.In conflict zones around the world, Trump’s America was largely absent without leave. He vowed to end “forever wars”. But in Afghanistan his peace efforts camouflaged a dishonourable scramble for the exit. He betrayed Kurdish allies in Syria, falsely claimed to have beaten Isis, and ceded the battlefield to Bashar al-Assad, Russia and Turkey. By wrecking the Iran nuclear deal, he made a dangerous problem infinitely worse.Trump fans such as Fred Fleitz, writing for Fox News, conjure a mirror image of these shameful derelictions. Trump “restored American leadership on the world stage, put the interests of the American people ahead of the dictates of globalist foreign policy elites, and kept our nation out of unnecessary wars”, Fleitz wrote. Biden, he predicted, “will surrender US sovereignty to the United Nations and Europe” and allow Russia and China to “walk all over the US”.It’s difficult to make sense of such seemingly distorted views. But that, in a nutshell, is the great, bifurcating conundrum bequeathed by the Trump era. Trump was a catastrophe for the climate crisis and the environment, for the Covid emergency, for racial and gender equality, for the global fight against poverty and hunger, and for the UN and multilateralism in general. In a connected world, he cut the cord.Trump encouraged authoritarian “strongman” leaders such as Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Egypt’s dictator Abdel Fatah al-Sisi, and hooligans such as Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro. He coddled autocrats such as Saudi Arabia’s Mohammed bin Salman and Russia’s Putin. Worse, his lies eroded trust in democracy and the rule of law, at home and abroad. Yet even as, properly and electorally vanquished, he slowly departs, he continues to antagonise and divide – and to be lionised by the right.Maybe it’s not that hard to see why. Trump’s personal brand of viciousness appealed to every worst human instinct, justified every vile prejudice, excused every mean and unkind thought. His is a blind ignorance that resonates with those who will not or cannot see. Falsehood is always easier than truth. For these reasons, Trump’s global legacy is Trumpism. It will live on – toxic, immoral, ubiquitous and ever-threatening. More