Evelyn Reynolds

Kamala Harris said her presidency “would not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency” in a testy interview with the rightwing Fox News channel on Wednesday night as she criticized Donald Trump over his continuing threats against “the enemy within”.The 25-minute interview, conducted after Harris held a rally with more than 100 Republican officials in Pennsylvania, was the first time Harris had sat for a conversation with Fox News, which has been a consistent supporter of Trump.Bret Baier, Fox News’s chief political anchor, is seen as a straight news counterbalance to the vitriol of Fox News’s evening shows, but still came with a laundry list of rightwing topics, including immigration, the rights of transgender people and Joe Biden’s performance, as Harris attempted to sell herself to the channel’s older, largely Republican, audience.Harris was asked if there was anything she “would do differently” from Joe Biden, as Baier played a clip of the vice-president, in a previous interview, saying there is “not a thing that comes to mind” that she would have changed. That response has become an attack point among Republicans as they seek to tie Harris to the unpopular Biden administration.“Let me be very clear. My presidency will not be a continuation of Joe Biden’s presidency, and like every new president that comes into office, I will bring my life experiences, my professional experiences, and fresh new ideas. I represent a new generation of leadership,” Harris said.“For example, as someone who has not spent the majority of my career in Washington DC, I invite ideas: whether it be from the Republicans who are supporting me, who were just on stage with me minutes ago, and the business sector and others, who can contribute to the decisions that I make.”Baier pointed to polling which shows a majority of Americans believe the country is “on the wrong track”, and asked Harris why they were saying that when she has been vice-president since January 2021. Harris suggested the polls show a fatigue with Biden and Trump, given the latter has “been running for office” since 2016.Harris noted that several high-profile former members of the Trump administration now believe “that he is unfit to serve, that he is unstable, that he is dangerous, and that people are exhausted with someone who professes to be a leader, who spends full time demeaning and engaging in personal grievances”.Baier asked why, given those criticisms, Trump has support of “half the country”. He added: “Are they stupid?”“I would never say that about the American people. And in fact, if you listen to Donald Trump, if you watch any of his rallies, he’s the one who tends to demean, and belittle, and diminish the American people,” Harris said.“He’s the one who talks about an enemy within. An enemy within, talking about the American people, suggesting he would turn the American military on the American people.”Trump had appeared on a Fox News town hall episode which aired earlier on Wednesday, where he doubled down on his comments about “the enemy from within”. He characterized this alleged internal enemy, which he has said should be “handled by” the military, as “the Pelosis” and his other political opponents.The former president had reacted furiously to the news that Baier would be interviewing Harris, posting on social media that the anchor was “often very soft to those on the ‘cocktail circuit’ left” and falsely claiming that Fox News “has grown so weak and soft on the Democrats”.But Baier, while being an alternative from the more radical nighttime hosts such as Sean Hannity and Jesse Watters, largely stuck to rightwing issues.He played a Trump campaign ad, which he suggested was among the few political ads to “break through” this year. The ad quoted an interview with Harris in 2019, when she said she supported “surgical care” for trans prisoners.Trump has spent tens of millions on anti-transgender advertising, but Harris brushed off the issue, pointing out that “under Donald Trump’s administration, these surgeries were available on a medical necessity basis, to people in the federal prison system”.“And I think, frankly, that ad from the Trump campaign is a little bit of like throwing, you know, stones when you’re living in the glass house,” she said.Polls show Harris and Trump effectively tied in most swing states, as both campaigns seek to convince voters before 5 November. Harris’s appearance on Fox News came amid a raft of interviews over the past week. She was interviewed on CBS’s prestigious 60 Minutes news show, sat down with the crowd from The View talkshow, appeared on the Call Her Daddy podcast, and on Tuesday spoke with radio host Charlamagne tha God.Harris is also reportedly in negotiations to appear on Joe Rogan’s podcast – the most popular podcast in the US, which has a large following among young men. Trump, who refused to take part in a second debate on CNN with Harris, has said he will appear on Rogan’s podcast.This was Harris’ first sit-down interview with Fox News, although her running mate, Tim Walz, has appeared on the network multiple times. Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, has been a regular presence on Fox News screens, with his calm responses to sometimes hostile questions frequently going viral and delighting Democrats. More

The League of Women Voters of Wisconsin has called on the Department of Justice to investigate text messages they say targeted and threatened to discourage young people from voting in the November election.The League of Women Voters says it initially learned of the alleged text campaign on 10 October, when the group received numerous complaints from voters who had received the text. Two people in their 20s who work with the League of Women Voters also received the message, which reads: “WARNING: Violating WI Statutes 12.13 & 6.18 may result in fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison. Don’t vote in a state where you’re not eligible.” The rules governing voter eligibility for college students are no different than for any other Wisconsin residents, who are required to have lived at their current address for at least 28 days before the election to vote there.Some Republican-controlled states have sought to clamp down on student voting, drafting legislation to restrict the use of student identification cards as a form of voter ID and close campus polling places. Most lawmakers justify the measures as a means of preventing voter fraud. Others have openly complained that voting is too easy for college students – who tend to favor Democratic party candidates.“They basically put the polling place next to the student dorm so they just have to roll out of bed, vote, and go back to bed,” Trump’s former attorney Cleta Mitchell told donors at a retreat in April 2023. During the meeting Mitchell reportedly emphasized the importance of limiting campus voting.In Wisconsin, Republican lawmakers proposed a bill in 2024 that would have required University of Wisconsin campuses to provide information to students on how to vote from their home state.Debra Cronmiller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin, said she hoped for “some accountability for trying to intimidate these voters” and that the apparent mass text was unusual.

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“We have been planning as voting rights organizations, as national organizations, for many, many different scenarios of things that could disrupt our election,” said Cronmiller. “I think because we were as prepared as we were, is why we could respond so very quickly to this particular threat.”In their letter to the attorney general, Merrick Garland, the League of Women Voters of Wisconsin and the non-profit organization Free Speech for People claimed that the text message had “targeted young voters aged 18-25” and “reached many voters who are part of the University of Wisconsin system”. Now, the letter alleges, “many students and other young voters are fearful that they will face criminal prosecution if they register and exercise their right to vote – because of a malicious, inaccurate text sent by an anonymous party.”The groups asked the attorney general’s office to investigate and publicize the person or group behind the text messages. More

The former director of Project 2025, a conservative plan to overhaul the US government, has blamed “violent rhetoric” from his former boss Kevin Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation thinktank, for the blueprint’s downgrading as Donald Trump has sought to publicly distance himself from it.Paul Dans, who resigned as head of the project in July after it threatened to become an electoral liability for Trump, said it was damaged after Roberts made inflammatory comments in a podcast that were widely interpreted as a veiled threat against leftwingers if they resisted an envisioned conservative takeover.In an interview with the Washington Post, Dans also called on Trump’s running mate, JD Vance, to withdraw a foreword he wrote for Roberts’s forthcoming book, which has been criticised for perceived violent undercurrents, partly due to its appeal to rightwingers to “load the muskets”.“If we’re going to ask the left to tone it down, we have to do our part as well,” Dans told the newspaper. “There’s no place for this sort of violent rhetoric and bellicose taunting, especially in light of the fact that President Trump has now been subject to not one but two assassination attempts.”Roberts made headlines in July when he told Dave Brat, a former Republican congressman who was presenting Steve Bannon’s podcast: “We are in the process of the second American Revolution, which will remain bloodless if the left allows it to be.”The comments intensified scrutiny on Project 2025, a 922-page policy document detailing plans for – among other things – the mass firing of thousands of civil servants and a drastic curtailment of reproductive rights. The project had been run, in collaboration with other thinktanks, under the Heritage Foundation’s auspices and the ultimate authority of Roberts.Trump subsequently sought to disown the project – in public at least – as the Democrats seized on Roberts’s remarks to highlight its most radical provisions and depict it as a roadmap for a second Trump presidency. The Republican nominee falsely claimed that he did not know its architects, even though many of them – including Dans – had served under him when he was US president.Dans said he warned Roberts against media interviews and provocative language and squarely blamed his comments for damaging the project and those who had worked on it.“There’s really no place for this level of rhetoric, let alone from the head of an august thinktank,” Dans said. “And by doing that, he’s essentially besmirched the professional reputations of everyone involved in Project 2025.”

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Roberts has been criticised for using similarly strident terms in promoting his book, Dawn’s Early Light, whose original September publication date has been postponed until after next month’s presidential election.Its original subtitle, Burning Down Washington To Save America, has been watered down and its cover illustration of a lit match has been removed.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionDans has also urged Vance – whose relationship with Roberts has undermined Trump’s efforts to dissociate himself from Project 2025 – to distance himself from the Heritage Foundation president by retracting the foreword he has written for his book.In it, Vance calls for a more aggressive conservative line of action, writing: “It’s fine to take a laissez-faire approach when you are in the safety of the sunshine. But when the twilight descends and you hear the wolves, you’ve got to circle the wagons and load the muskets.’A foundation spokesman, Noah Weinrich, dismissed Dans’ criticism and said Roberts’s podcast comments had been referring to the threat of leftwing violence.“Any attempt to mischaracterize Dr Roberts’s comments as supportive of violence is grotesque and completely contrary to the observation he was making,” he told the Post.Vance, whose links to the thinktank long predate his support for Trump, has not commented.Dans previously blamed Trump campaign officials for the downgrading of Project 2025’s status in the Republican nominee’s priority list. He singled out the campaign aides Susie Wiles and Chris LaCivita for publicly denigrating the project in a September interview with the New York Times and said they had jeopardised Trump’s chances of beating Kamala Harris. More

Alabama cannot remove thousands of people from its voter rolls on the eve of the presidential election, a federal judge ruled on Wednesday.The US district judge Anna Manasco, an appointee of Donald Trump, issued a preliminary injunction halting an effort by Alabama’s top election official to try to remove more than 3,200 people from the voter rolls who it suspected of being non-citizens until at least after the presidential election.The office of Alabama’s Republican secretary of state, Wes Allen, conceded in court filings this week that the list of non-citizens it had compiled was not accurate. At least 2,000 people of the more than 3,200 people were actually eligible to vote, the secretary of state’s chief of staff said in a sworn declaration. That means that almost two-thirds of the people on the list accused of being non-citizens were wrongly flagged. Civil rights groups and the Department of Justice had both sued Alabama, saying that the removals violated a federal law that prohibits systematically removing voters from the rolls within 90 days of a federal election.“Alabama’s initial splashy announcement gave a total misimpression,” said Kate Huddleston, a lawyer at Campaign Legal Center, a watchdog group that helped challenge the purge. “It’s clear now that 63% of those people on the list were wrongfully on the list and were had to take time out of their lives and had to deal with this problem.”Both the justice department and the groups challenging the program also said that the state was using unreliable methodology to flag non-citizens and that many eligible voters were being flagged for removal.Allen said in a statement he would abide by the court’s ruling.“I have a constitutional duty to ensure that only eligible American citizens are voting in our elections. State and federal laws are clear that only eligible American citizens can vote in our elections. Today’s order does not change that,” he said.The justice department also sued Virginia on Friday over a similar program that has also drawn scrutiny for being inaccurate.Both of the suits rely on a 1993 federal statute, the National Voter Registration Act, which creates a 90-day period ahead of any federal election in which states cannot systematically remove voters from their rolls. The buffer was designed to ensure that eligible voters would not be wrongly removed from the rolls at the last minute without any recourse.On 13 August, 84 days before the November election, Allen announced that the state had identified 3,251 people on the rolls who at some point in time had received a non-citizen number from the Department of Homeland Security. Even though he acknowledged some of those people may have become naturalized citizens, he instructed local election officials to require all of them to prove their citizenship to vote and referred them to the state attorney general for possible criminal investigation.Alabama and Virginia are both part of a handful of states that have loudly touted misleading efforts to remove suspected non-citizens from the voter rolls. Their announcement comes as Republicans nationwide have leaned into false claims about non-citizen voting to seed doubt about the outcome of the election.In addition to halting the removals, Manasco’s order also instructs Allen to oversee a mailing to flagged voters informing them that they can vote. The notice must also tell voters that they are not subject to criminal penalties for registering or voting.Manasco also ordered Allen to write to the attorney general and inform him that several of the voters sent for further investigation were wrongly included on the list and to identify those voters.“We know from talking with our plaintiffs and from talking with others in Alabama that this really created a chill for naturalized citizens who were intimidated and deterred from registering to vote and from voting,” Huddleston said. And it’s really important that all Americans have access to the ballot.” More

Jimmy Carter, the centenarian former Democratic president, has voted in the 2024 presidential election, his representatives confirmed on Wednesday.A statement from the Carter Center did not reveal who he voted for, but it is assumed the 100-year-old, who is in hospice care, cast his ballot for the Democratic candidate Kamala Harris.“He’s never voted Republican in his life,” his son, Chip, told the Atlanta Journal Constitution, after revealing in August that Carter’s greatest wish, more than reaching his 100th birthday, was to live long enough to support her.“I’m only trying to make it to vote for Kamala Harris,” he said at the time.At the Democratic national convention in August, just weeks before Carter’s 1 October birthday, his grandson Jason, the Carter Center chair, told delegates that the former president believed Harris “carries my grandfather’s legacy”.The statement issued on Wednesday at lunchtime was brief: “The Carter Center can confirm that former US President Jimmy Carter voted by mail today, Oct 16, 2024. We do not have any further details to share at this time.”Some media outlets earlier reported falsely that Carter, whose single term of office was 1977 to 1981, had already voted on Tuesday’s first day of early voting in Georgia.

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The Journal Constitution, confirming the correct details on Wednesday, said Carter filled out his ballot and it was placed in a drop box at the Sumter county courthouse near his hometown of Plains this morning.Carter has been “an especially reliable voter” over the years, the New York Times reported on Wednesday. The newspaper said he had routinely cast ballots in general elections as well as primary runoffs and special elections. For more than a decade, he has voted exclusively by mail in elections tracked by the state, it said.According to Jason Carter, his grandfather, the 39th US president, was in August “more alert and interested in politics and the war in Gaza”. He has been in hospice care since February 2023, nine months before the death of his wife, the former first lady Rosalynn Carter.The move was widely believed to be an indication that Carter was nearing the end of his life, a perception reinforced by his decision to ask Joe Biden to deliver his eulogy the following month.Biden then suggested he might have provided that information unintentionally, telling reporters: “Excuse me, I shouldn’t say that,” before adding Carter’s medical team had “found a way to keep him going for a lot longer than they anticipated”.The ultimate elder statesman of US politics, Carter became the first president in history to reach 100 years old, a milestone celebrated a couple of weeks before his birthday at a star-studded party in Atlanta.“Not everyone gets 100 years. But when someone does and uses that time to good, it’s worth celebrating,” Jason Carter, the 2014 Democratic nominee for Georgia governor, said.After losing to the Republican Ronald Reagan in the 1980 election and leaving the White House, Carter dedicated himself to diplomacy, and was regularly provided counsel to subsequent presidents dealing with international crises.He was awarded the Nobel peace prize in 2002 “for his decades of untiring effort to find peaceful solutions to international conflicts, to advance democracy and human rights, and to promote economic and social development”.He founded the Carter Center in 1982 with the intention it become a leading advocate for advancing human rights globally and alleviating famine, poverty and suffering. More

The line to get into the Donald Trump rally snaked about a quarter-mile around the venue in Marietta, Georgia, on Tuesday, an hour before the event started.The hall, which seats 2,700 people, had already started filling up with supporters, the first of whom arrived around 1pm for the 7.30pm event. Not everyone was getting in.There’s no shortage of political enthusiasm in Georgia. Early voting opened on Tuesday, with 310,980 people casting a ballot in person according to the Georgia secretary of state’s office. The previous record was about 130,000. Few of Trump’s supporters sported “I voted” stickers.Though the energy before the rally was high, many have noted in recent months – including Kamala Harris during the presidential debate last month – that crowds at Trump rallies dwindle as his speeches turn into multi-hour rambles.“I’m going to actually do something really unusual and I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch,” Harris said during the debate. “You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”The Guardian tested that proposition on Tuesday.About three out of 10 people attending the rally left before Trump finished speaking at 10.14pm. In their defense, Trump was an hour and a half late.Seven minutes into Trump’s address, as he recited a litany of grievances about inflation, schools, the quality of cars, cities, immigration and the prospect of a third world war, a dozen people had already walked out.Twenty minutes in, as Trump was describing how “murderers” immigrating illegally posed a bigger threat to America than inflation, Ryan Taylor, a podcaster, headed to her car.“I live an hour away, and my son is waiting in the car,” she said. “He didn’t want to come in. He’s a teenager.” He’s 15, she said.View image in fullscreenHaley Lummus, of Jasper, Georgia, left at 9.22pm, just as Trump was describing Harris as the “taxing queen” and complaining about how his attacks on San Francisco depreciate the value of the property he owns there.“We had to wait a while, like to get him on stage,” she said. “Everyone was doing the wave, and there was a lot of people very excited to see him cheering.” Why was she leaving early? “I worked and I’m tired.”Perhaps 50 people had left by then.A group of five young men wearing brand-new red “Make America Great Again” baseball caps walked out just before 9.30, as Trump was claiming that the wars in Ukraine and Gaza would not have happened if he had been president. The five looked mildly bewildered and very slightly out of place, even there.“We’re from Denmark, and we don’t really care about American politics at all, but we wanted to experience American politics firsthand,” said Gustave. He and his friends were staying about 15 minutes away, heard about Trump’s appearance and said why not. They described the event as a “fever dream” and “something like The Bachelor” before heading off to beat traffic.Another 50 or so left over the next 10 minutes. Four of them were thrown out.“Some of us went in with flags to scream, ‘Free Palestine’.” said one young man who wouldn’t identify himself. Trump was talking about ending taxes on tips. “The flags got snatched from us. We got booed. We got kicked. I still support Trump though.” They complained that the burly security guard in front of them roughed them up, taunting him as they ambled on the periphery of the hall. A few minutes later, Secret Service agents arrested one of them.By 9.50, as Trump was talking about how the “migrant invasion” was “stealing American jobs”, a consistent stream of people hit the exits. Most said they had to work the next day, or had a babysitter to relieve. Marietta is a metro Atlanta city, while Trump’s base of support often lives in more rural communities a distance away.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreenSeason Poole, once an army diesel mechanic, lives in Social Circle, Georgia. This was her second rally; she attended one in North Carolina two weeks ago, she said. As Trump described “alien gang members and migrant criminals from prison”, Poole contemplated schoolwork and an hour drive.At least 500 people had left by then. Voni Miller would have stayed if she could.

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“He made me cry,” Miller said. “I cried when he was speaking about making changes. You know, closing the border, making changes. If Kamala wins we’re so screwed, because she can’t make up her mind about anything. It just made me cry because he’s giving up so much. He doesn’t have to do this for us. Like, you know what I mean. He has all the money, but he is still getting shot at, and people saying horrible things about him. But he’s doing it because he wants to make changes for America, and it was just so emotional.”So. Why leave?“I’m actually leaving early because my phone is dying and I have a Tesla so I can’t get in. It’s really upsetting, because it meant a lot to be here, and I just can’t get in my car.”By 10.05, as Trump was talking about how important it was for police officers to be shielded from civil suits in misconduct cases for “doing something good”, Trump had lost about a third of his audience.Stephen Rosenbaum was walking back to his car with his son at that point. “I think I get more out of these rallies than anything else, and I hope that other people do,” he said. “He shows the human side. You know, we watched the Butler rally live on television when it happened. It was terrible,” he said about the first assassination attempt on Trump. “But, you know, right before all those events took place, he said, Listen, we just want to make the country a better place.”Rosenbaum has been to several rallies, he said.“We wanted to see that, see it in real life. We want to see it live,” he said. But, you’re not staying for the whole thing? “He’s got to go to school tomorrow. And he’s gotten to the part now where, I mean, we’ve seen enough of these. We kind of know how it’s going to finish. We just wanted to see it live. You know?” More

We are mere weeks away from perhaps the most consequential election in American history. The good news, at least for your blood pressure, is that you can ignore the endless parade of horse-race polls. We already know everything we need to know about what will happen.First, we can be confident that, for the third time in a row, a majority of Americans will reject Donald Trump and the Maga agenda. Last month, I used high-quality voter file data to explain why it’s almost certain that Kamala Harris, like Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton, will win the national vote.Thanks to our wildly undemocratic electoral college system, however, we also know that we could see a different result that doesn’t reflect what most Americans want. Shockingly, if that happens, it will be for the second time in the last three elections, and for the third time in the last eight elections. If that is the case in this election, as well, it will be in large part because typically disengaged voters who voted for Biden in 2020 feel less alarmed today about the threat of Trump and Maga than they did four years ago.As I wrote in July, “the winner in November will be determined by what, to most voters, the election seems to be ‘about’ by the time voting starts.” In what I call the Maga Era (post-2016), the best predictor of how – and whether – someone will vote in the future is how – and whether – they have voted in the past.Unfortunately, most political coverage focuses nearly all its attention on for whom people will vote (that is, for Harris or Trump), and almost none on whether people will vote. Indeed, Biden would have lost the electoral college in 2020 without the support of those voters who stayed home.The difference between Democrats’ losses in 2016 and subsequent victories has been the unprecedented participation of new voters who believe that if the Maga agenda wins they will lose the freedoms they now take for granted. This turnout surge from new voters is how Democrats have won 23 out of 27 statewide races in the battlegrounds since 2016. Today, there are about 91 million Americans who have voted for Biden and House Democrats since 2016, and about 83 million who have voted for Trump or House Republicans.While the threat of a second Trump administration should be alarming, especially given the extremist Republican policy goals and planning on display in the conservative manifesto called Project 2025, survey data suggests that voters are less attuned to that threat lately.There’s no question that Harris has done an amazing job of consolidating and energizing the Democratic coalition since Biden dropped out. But not all anti-Maga voters are necessarily pro-Democrat. Too many of those who hadn’t been regular voters before 2016 and still don’t have favorable views of Democrats – but came out to vote against Trump or Maga in 2018, 2020 and 2022 – seem disengaged. In particular, young voters, Latinos and non-college voters are disproportionately likely to have said that they haven’t heard Trump say something offensive “recently”, or that they “know nothing at all” about Project 2025.When we imagine a stereotypical “midwest swing voter”, we might think of a burly guy sitting in a Wisconsin diner who thinks Democrats are too liberal or too “elite”. But this image ignores the “whether” voters who are much more key to Democrats’ success – like Charlene, the pro-choice woman pouring coffee for the burly guy, or Jimmy, Jenny and Amber, the contingently employed twentysomethings in the other booth who feel the whole system is rigged against them. All of them decided to turn out in at least one of the last three elections – not because they thought Democrats could make their lives better, but because they understood that Trump and Maga would make their lives worse.Trump’s best chance is for these voters to shrug off the very real threat he poses. The US supreme court’s conservative majority, including three justices Trump himself put on the court, have contributed to that by shielding the former president this year from legal accountability for his crimes. Even though a New York court found him guilty of 34 felonies, the actions of the six Republican justices have ensured that he won’t be sentenced for those crimes, or tried for his conduct related to January 6 crimes before the election.The good news is that any election within the margin of error is within the margin of effort. We know that voters come out against the Maga agenda when they realize what is at stake. The future of American democracy depends on the efforts of all of us – not just Democratic campaign operatives, but members of civil society, the media and ordinary Americans – to make sure the stakes are clear to all.

Michael Podhorzer, the former longtime political director of the AFL-CIO, is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, the chair of the Analyst Institute, the Research Collaborative and the Defend Democracy Project and writes the Substack Weekend Reading More

In New York City, Republicans are something of a rarity. Only 10% of New Yorkers are Republicans, according to 2021 voter registration data, and the state is polling bright blue for Kamala Harris. But the Republican party has not called it quits.“You live in a blue city, but it’s going red very, very quickly,” Donald Trump claimed at a Bronx rally in May. Step into the suburbs, and Republican candidates have enough momentum to turn multiple House elections – and ultimately, control of the House – into nail-biters.It’s an interesting time for the New York Young Republicans Club (NYYRC). The club brings together conservative New Yorkers 40 and under to socialize, campaign and discuss policy; recent events have included debate watch parties and a self-defense course in light of “illegal military-age male immigrants flooding our country, the threat of World War III, and New York’s insistence on stripping our Second Amendment rights”. It’s using this momentum in New York to branch out to other Republican youth organizations around the country.This year, the photographer Paola Chapdelaine spent time with four male members of NYYRC and one male member of the nearby Connecticut Young Republicans, who represent a nationwide trend of young men increasingly embracing the right. Here, they explain how they found their way to the Republican party as young men in a liberal city and what they think of political polarization in America.Frank Filocomo, 27: ‘Community cannot be politically monolithic’View image in fullscreenWhen I was an undergrad, I saw a woman on the train with a button on her backpack that said “a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle”. I remember completely disagreeing with that. This move towards dissolving the family, or saying that we don’t need each other and we could just be these totally individualized, autonomous beings with no connection to family, with no connection to our history, I reject that idea. I think we’re all connected to something greater. I guess that’s what makes me a conservative.Recently, I thought I had a great rapport with a date – lots of laughter, great chemistry. Then, the morning of the second date, she [texted]: “Hey, I did some thinking, and never mind. I would not like to go on a date with you.” I immediately knew that she Googled me. I’m not a rightwing vigilante, but I write for conservative publications.If I start immediately in a relationship by saying: “Hi, I’m Frank, I’m a conservative,” then I’m setting myself up for failure. I say: “Hi, I’m Frank, I have a cat that I love. These are my hobbies. I play guitar.” That’s not to say you should be deceptive about your beliefs, but it is to say that you should be cognizant of the political polarization in this country. I think it was Muhammad Ali who said that he judges people based on how they treat waiters at restaurants. Similarly, how do you treat animals? I think squabbling over the tax code, or the right number of immigrants we should have per year, or how you feel about foreign policy ultimately mean nothing to me in a relationship. What I care about is how you treat me and how you treat others.I sound like a hippy, but I also totally believe in this idea of community, and that community cannot be politically monolithic. It has to have Democrats in it, has to have liberals. The second we go to the “me versus them” or “us versus them” mentality, we’re doomed.Born, raised and currently living in Brooklyn, Filocomo is program manager at the conservative non-profit National Review Institute. He serves as policy chairman of NYYRCJude Somefun, 41: ‘My politics caused all types of consternation among my friends’View image in fullscreenIt was 2008 and I was a political free agent. This was when everybody was like, “Obama, Obama, Obama.” He was the hope and change guy. But he was saying stuff like: “These billionaires and millionaires have made too much on American people. It’s time for them to spread the wealth” – like socialists. And I was like: “I can’t vote for this guy.”That’s when I leaned on biblical faith and started researching the political parties. Growing up in New York, most Black people are implicit Democrats or explicit Democrats. My friend Ben, who was a socialist, illustrated to me what it takes to be courageous and not fall into the trend, to express your opinion. I don’t necessarily agree with socialism, I just felt like he was very courageous.I felt like the Republican party was more in alignment with freedom, more in alignment with business, more in alignment with marriage, more in alignment with life in the womb. I was like, “OK, I could get down with that.” It caused all types of consternation amongst my friends, my girlfriend at the time. People were having interventions. My dad kind of renounced me as a son. It was very, very tough.In this election, I believe we should promote the interests of America first. A lot of people are hurting now economically. I don’t see the benefit in sending money over to Ukraine, a bunch of foreign aid, a border that’s open, when we have to take care of our citizens.Somefun is philanthropy chairman of NYYRC. He was born and raised in Harlem and currently lives there. He is a life insurance agentMatthew Carrier, 22: ‘From the outside, I’m a raging conservative, but biodiversity concerns me’View image in fullscreenI got started with the College Republicans my sophomore year. There were four of us, so, like, something had to change. So we made it a very conversation-centric group. Our first topic was the Afghanistan pullout, because that was timely. Veganism was a recent [topic] we did, but the conversation was very good. We had a transgenderism and athletics meeting that was probably our most contentious.The club is College Republicans, there’s no hiding from that, and still, we’ve gotten a very dynamic group of people that are willing to have conversations. We have respect for ourselves. We have respect for the campus, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. It’s something I see where other college Republican groups falter.From the outside, I’m a raging conservative, but biodiversity concerns me [as a farmer]. Still, I don’t share the same concerns [as environmental activists] with GMOs and stuff, because I see there’s a need when you have a world of 8 billion people to feed. I try not to criticize farmers that are at a much larger scale than me by saying: “Just let there be more ladybugs and your crops will be fine.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion

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Republicans are very much a party of clean air, clean water. When you want to talk about global warming and such, that’s where you lose us. I’m much more appreciative of the climate change conversation if folks I’m talking to are willing to rank their issues. That’s a hard thing to do, and maybe a very cold way of thinking. But what’s the biggest issue, carbon in the atmosphere or plastic on the ground? Biodiversity? I think there’s a lot of benefits to nuclear [power], but no one wants to be the guy that stakes a claim to nuclear out of concern that things go bad.Carrier is the former president of College Republicans at University of Rochester and current statewide chairman of the Connecticut Young Republicans, as well as a political consultant and small scale farmer and beekeeper. He is from Enfield, ConnecticutLucian Wintrich, 36: ‘We’re in an economically terrifying situation’View image in fullscreenSo many younger people in New York are conservative, but they’re scared to actually come out and say that they’re conservative. [There’s also] a quarter of the party, and it tends to be these younger, reactionary kids, who will regurgitate whatever certain conservative influencers say, rather than reading and thinking for themselves.I was the only gay guy and the only pro-Bush guy in fourth grade. To me, conservatism is about actual individuality and autonomy and the understanding that the only real authority that we should appreciate and look towards is God, versus the government and elected officials. I mean, I fully believe in community. Most public schools, before the [federal government] took over and established the failing Department of Education, were run by communities. The more you involve the [federal government], the less control communities have, individuals have, and the worse off we are.[In 2024], I think we need to stop funneling all this money to Israel and Ukraine and honestly, every other country that we’re funneling money to. Actually, Israel is a little trickier than Ukraine. I do think it’s a stabilizing country [in the Middle East], but still we’re hemorrhaging money while our debt is going up. We’re in an economically terrifying situation right now.Wintrich lives in New York’s East Village. He is a media strategist and PR consultant and serves as press chairman of NYYRCKwasi Baryeh, 24: ‘It seems like political violence is becoming normalized’View image in fullscreenOne of the biggest problems I see with New York and other cities that lean liberal is that there’s a degradation of property rights. There’s potential for squatters. Tenants have the right to not pay and stay within the property. It’s also landlords abusing their position by not following their legal responsibilities. When people don’t pay rent or don’t abide by their contracts, that’s probably a gateway to people refusing to obey laws, refusing to follow established norms and conventions. It prevents people from living as moral people.I support the party. I support Trump. Trump did the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. A couple months ago, I filed my tax return, and I saw I got a little extra money from that. He also [signed a bipartisan bill] funding HBCUs, which my mother, who’s a college professor, was really grateful for. He met with Kanye to see what could be done to remedy the injustice of more Black people being in prison – reducing the incarceration problem. The First Step Act, allowing the formerly incarcerated to re-enter society, was bipartisan, and it was passed. But with the [current] political environment, it doesn’t seem feasible that anyone is going to get much done.[I’m also concerned about the] two recent assassination attempts on Trump. It seems like political violence is becoming more normalized in our society, which makes things much more unstable as things get close to election day.Baryeh is a financial analyst. He lives in the Bronx and is a board member of the NYYRC Catholic caucus

These interviews have been edited for clarity More