US Politics

The Vermont senator Bernie Sanders said US motor workers were ‘fighting against corporate greed’ as he spoke in support of the biggest automotive industry strike in decades. Speaking to members of the United Auto Workers union at a rally in Detroit, Michigan, Sanders said it was reasonable for employees at the largest US auto companies – Ford, Stellantis and General Motors – to get a ‘fair share of the record-breaking profits’. A disagreement over a new contract led to about 130,000 workers taking to the picket lines shortly after midnight on Thursday More

The US special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for election subversion has asked a judge to impose “limited restrictions” on the former president’s public statements, citing his frequent “inflammatory attacks” on the court, prospective witnesses and citizens of Washington DC.In a filing on Friday, federal prosecutors requested that judge Tanya Chutkan issue a “narrow” gag order that would prohibit Trump from making statements “regarding the identity, testimony, or credibility of prospective witnesses” and “about any party, witness, attorney, court personnel, or potential jurors that are disparaging and inflammatory, or intimidating”.The request noted his “near-daily” disparaging posts on social media site Truth Social, including his post after his arraignment that said, “IF YOU GO AFTER ME, I’M COMING AFTER YOU”; claims that the justice system is “rigged” against him; attacks on DC as a “filthy and crime ridden” district where he says he will not get a fair trial and direct attacks on Chutkan, including calling her “a fraud dressed up as a judge” and “radical Obama hack”.The filing from Jack Smith, the special counsel, who has himself been disparaged by Trump as “deranged” and someone with “unchecked and insane aggression”, said that prosecutors were seeking a “well-defined restriction that is targeted at extrajudicial statements that present a serious and substantial danger of materially prejudicing this case”.Prosecutors noted that his attacks on social media have previously endangered the subjects of his vitriol, sometimes leading to violence: “The defendant knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and institutions, he inspires others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets.”Chutkan has previously warned Trump’s legal team about his statements. Last month, she told his lawyer: “I caution you and your client to take special care in your public statements about this case. I will take whatever measures are necessary to safeguard the integrity of these proceedings.”The gag order request came the same day that unsealed filings revealed that Twitter, now known as X, gave prosecutors at least 32 of Trump’s private messages.Repeated violations of gag orders in criminal matters can lead to jail time for defendants. The judge has set a March 2024 date for the trial on charges of conspiracy to defraud the US, conspiracy to obstruct an official proceeding, obstruction of and attempt to obstruct an official proceeding, and conspiracy against rights.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn his separate criminal case in Georgia, Trump was released on the condition that he not intimidate co-defendants, witnesses and others. More

US car workers striking against the nation’s three biggest automakers “are waging … a fight against the outrageous level of corporate greed” seen across the country, Bernie Sanders said on Friday.The liberal US senator’s remarks came on Friday afternoon during a rally with the United Auto Workers in Detroit, Michigan, kicking off the first day of the union’s “Stand Up” strikes against General Motors, Stellantis and Ford.During his speech at the rally, Sanders told the crowd: “The fight that you are waging here is not only about decent wages, decent benefits and decent working conditions in the automobile industry. No. The fight you are waging is a fight against the outrageous level of corporate greed and arrogance that we are seeing on the part of CEOs who think they have a right to have it all and could [not] care less about the needs of their workers.”He continued: “The fight you are waging is to rebuild the struggling middle class of our country that was once the envy of the world.”Sanders also asserted that the CEOs and stockholders of the US’s biggest carmakers “make out like bandits”.“We refuse to live in an oligarchy,” Sanders said. “We refuse to accept a society in which so few have so much and so many have so little.”Among those who watched the Vermont senator’s speech was Chris Sanders, a worker at the Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan, for 10 years. Sanders, 54, told the Guardian that significant media attention and focus on the economic effects of the strike on businesses and consumers misses the point.“The question that should be asked is what has 20 years of not paying our fair share cost the economy?” he said. “If we learned [anything] from the Covid-19 pandemic, we learned that putting money in the hands of real people is what keeps the economy going, because what creates jobs are not billionaires.“What creates jobs is having money in the hands of real people spending it or saving it, because they are spending it on products that create demand.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionChris Sanders noted the Ford plant had been holding job fairs and had trouble hiring because the starting wages of about $16 an hour no longer compete with other jobs. “No one ever has a problem with the executives getting paid $21m to $27m, and hourly labor and benefits is less than 5% of the total cost of a vehicle,” he said. “They just always want to put it to the greedy autoworker and I’m so damn tired of it.”Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer, it secretary of state, Jocelyn Benson, and lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist II, gave introductory speeches at the rally before the UAW president, Shawn Fain, brought on Sanders, who is an independent but caucuses with Democrats.“It’s time to pick a side,” Fain said while introducing Sanders. “Either you’re with the billionaire class or you’re with the working class.” More

Jenna Ellis – the Donald Trump lawyer who like the former president faces criminal charges regarding attempted election subversion in his defeat by Joe Biden in 2020 – says she will not vote for him in the future because he is a “malignant narcissist” who cannot admit mistakes.“I simply can’t support him for elected office again,” Ellis said. “Why I have chosen to distance is because of that frankly malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.”Ellis, 38, was speaking on her show on American Family Radio, a rightwing evangelical network run by the American Family Association, a non-profit that by its own description has been “on the frontlines of America’s culture war” since 1977.Ellis was one of 18 Trump associates charged with him in Georgia over attempts to overturn Biden’s victory there. Charged with violating state anti-racketeering laws and solicitation of violation of an oath by a public officer, she was granted $100,000 bail and pleaded not guilty.Trump pleaded not guilty to 13 racketeering and conspiracy charges.Denying all wrongdoing and claiming political persecution, he also faces four federal counts related to election subversion; 40 federal counts related to retention of classified information; 34 state counts in New York over hush-money payments; and civil cases including a $250m lawsuit lodged by the New York attorney general over his business affairs and a defamation claim arising from a rape allegation a judge said was “substantially true”.Nonetheless, Trump leads polling regarding the 2024 Republican presidential primary by vast margins, in national and key state surveys.Ellis is a former counsel for the Thomas More Society, a conservative Catholic group, whose claims to be a constitutional lawyer have been widely doubted.Described by the New York Times reporter Maggie Haberman as “a lawyer whom Trump sought out after seeing her television commentary”, in 2020 Ellis rose from relative obscurity to become part of what she called an “elite strike force team” working to overturn Trump’s defeat by Biden.That effort failed. American Family Radio signed up Ellis in December last year. On her show on Thursday, she spoke to Steve Deace, another rightwing host.Deace said: “Before that man [Trump] needs to be president again … [to] escape the quote-unquote, ‘witch-hunts’, that man needs Jesus again because … his ambitions would be fueled by showing some self-awareness. And he won’t do it because he can’t admit, ‘I’m not God.’”Ellis said Deace had “perfectly articulated exactly how I as a voter feel”. She knew Trump well “as a friend, as a former boss”, she said, adding: “I have great love and respect for him personally.“But everything that you just said resonates with me as exactly why I simply can’t support him for elected office again. Why I have chosen to distance is because of that, frankly, malignant narcissistic tendency to simply say that he’s never done anything wrong.“And the total idolatry that I’m seeing from some of the supporters that are unwilling to put the constitution and the country and the conservative principles above their love for a star is really troubling.“And I think that we do need to, as Americans and as conservatives and particularly as Christians, take this very seriously and understand where are we putting our vote.” More

From 4h agoFederal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to newly unsealed court filings.Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned. The news was first reported by Politico.Prosecutors argued for keeping Trump in the dark about the Twitter search warrant was necessary because they said the former president presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote.
Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
In response, Twitter said the prospect of violence was “facially implausible” and argued that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation. US district court judge Beryl Howell ultimately rejected the social media company’s arguments.The new filings also show Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, to prosecutors. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show his location at the time certain tweets were sent, or if anyone else was accessing his account.It’s 4pm eastern time. That’s it from me, Léonie Chao-Fong, and the US politics live blog today.Here’s a recap of today’s developments:
Americans do not trust the government’s economic news – or the media’s reporting of it – according to a Harris poll conducted exclusively for the Guardian that presents the White House with a major hurdle as it pushes Joe Biden’s economic record ahead of next year’s election.
Prosecutors in the office of special counsel Jack Smith urged the judge overseeing his federal 2020 election interference criminal case to deny a request by Donald Trump to recuse herself from the case. There is “no valid basis” for US district judge Tanya Chutkan to remove herself from the case, Smith wrote.
Twitter gave the special counsel prosecuting Donald Trump for alleged election subversion access to at least 32 of the former president’s private messages. The company, now known as X, turned over the messages after receiving a search warrant, citing newly unsealed filings to the US circuit court of appeals.
Federal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to the newly unsealed court filings. Prosecutors worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.
Joe Biden spoke out in support of auto workers as they launched a historic series of strikes after their union failed to reach an agreement with the US’s three largest vehicle manufacturers. “No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ rights to use their options under the collective bargaining system, and [I] understand their frustrations,” the US president said in a brief, unscheduled appearance at the White House.
Joe Biden has declared a state of emergency in Maine as Hurricane Lee rapidly approaches the north-easternmost US state amid the likelihood of a landfall there or more likely in Canada over the weekend.
Donald Trump’s October trial in a civil case brought by the New York attorney general, Letitia James, could be delayed because the former US president has quietly sued the judge Arthur F Engoron.
Donald Trump said he would testify under oath denying he asked a staffer to delete surveillance footage at the center of an investigation into whether he mishandled classified documents. In an NBC interview, the former president said it is “very unlikely” he would pardon himself if he is re-elected in 2024.
The House oversight committee announced it will be launching a Republican-led investigation into the Biden administration’s response to the deadly wildfires in Hawaii, which killed at least 115 people last month.
The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he would drop out of the Republican presidential primary if he does not show well in New Hampshire.
A lawyer for Hunter Biden, who was indicted on Thursday over illegally possessing a firearm, said he expected the case “will be dismissed before trial”. The president’s son was indicted by special counsel David Weiss on three felony gun charges after a plea agreement he struck with prosecutors imploded in recent months.
Three men were acquitted in the final trial connected to a scheme to kidnap the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, a pandemic-era plot steeped in extremist politics and domestic terrorism that saw others imprisoned for lengthy terms.
About half of Americans are interested in getting an updated Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new poll, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising coronavirus cases around the country.
The House oversight committee announced it will be launching a Republican-led investigation into the Biden administration’s response to the deadly wildfires in Hawaii.A joint statement by James Comer, the chair of the House oversight committee, and Pete Sessions, the subcommittee chair, reads:
The deadly wildfire in Maui shocked the nation and left many, especially those directly impacted by the tragedy, with serious questions that remain unanswered today. President Biden built his entire reputation on empathy and compassion but failed to deliver an appropriate response when it mattered most.
At least 115 people were killed in last month’s wildfires on the island of Maui. The fire nearly destroyed the town of Lahaina, and caused more than $5.5bn in damage, according to estimates by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.The House oversight committee’s investigation into the fires is separate from a hearing by the energy and commerce committee, which will feature testimony from Hawaii utility and energy officials.Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has subpoenaed former justice department official Jody Hunt for an upcoming hearing to transfer Jeff Clark’s case to federal court.From my colleague Hugo Lowell:About half of Americans are interested in getting an updated Covid-19 vaccine, according to a new poll, after the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved a series of Covid-19 booster vaccines amid rising coronavirus cases around the country.The Reuters/Ipsos nationwide poll found that almost 30% of respondents were “very interested” in getting the vaccine and another 24% were “somewhat interested”.On Monday, the FDA approved Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech vaccines that target a recently circulating Omicron subvariant of the coronavirus.The results of the poll suggest that more Americans are willing to get a booster shot than a year ago. According to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in six Americans opted for an updated shot.About 14% of those who said they were not interested in getting the booster said it was because they had Covid-19 already, while another 14% said they believed their previous vaccinations provided sufficient protection.The former New Jersey governor Chris Christie said he would drop out of the Republican presidential primary if he does not show well in New Hampshire.“I can’t see myself leaving the race under any circumstances before New Hampshire,” he told the New York Times. “If I don’t do well in New Hampshire, then I’ll leave.”As the Times pointed out, Christie is following the playbook he used in 2016, when his run for the Republican nomination focused on New Hampshire … and ended after it, after he finished sixth in the primary.Christie then became the first major figure to endorse Donald Trump in his insurgent run to the White House.Christie planned the transition at Trump Tower, only to be brutally (if of course metaphorically) defenestrated by Jared Kushner, whose father Christie put in jail back when he was a prosecutor in New Jersey. That didn’t stop Christie supporting Trump, and nor did Trump’s part in Christie ending up in the ICU with Covid. It took January 6 to finally propel Christie away from Trump, whose unfitness to govern the former governor is now dedicated to exposing.As the Times reported, Christie is portraying the Republican primary as an existential matter for the country:
‘The future of this country is going to be determined here,’ Mr Christie told a crowd this week at a local brewery, clutching an IPA. ‘If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.’”
The Times also noted the current state of play in primary polling:
Though Mr Christie has improved in recent polls, he still trails Mr Trump in New Hampshire by double digits, and by much more in national polls and surveys of Iowa, the first nominating state.
Christie told the Times he wanted to emulate John McCain, the Arizona senator who “broke late” in New Hampshire in 2000, ending up winning the state.McCain, of course, did not win the Republican nomination in 2000. George W Bush did. McCain did win it in his second attempt, eight years after his first. He was then heavily beaten in the general election, by Barack Obama.An exhaustive manifesto for the next conservative US president produced by Project 2025, an initiative led by the hard-right Heritage Foundation, uses “dehumanising language” about LGBTQ+ Americans too extreme even for candidates currently seeking the Republican presidential nomination, a leading advocate said.“The dehumanising language is consistent with the way the right talks about LGBTQ+ people overall,” said Sasha Buchert, director of the Non-Binary and Transgender Rights Project for Lambda Legal.“They’re never talking about transgender people or gay and lesbian people, it’s always referring to them as an ideology of some kind, or an ‘ism’. There’s no humanity involved … Not even the presidential candidates in the Republican debates are embracing this kind of rhetoric.”Donald Trump is the clear leader of that Republican race, despite facing 91 criminal indictments and multiple civil suits. Primary candidates have eagerly embraced anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, particularly over state anti-trans laws and the place of LGBTQ+ issues in public education. This summer, however, Trump’s closest polling rival, Ron DeSantis, was forced on to the defensive over an online video that used harsh imagery and language to accuse Trump of being too soft on LGBTQ+ issues.By its own description, Project 2025 is the work of “a broad coalition of over 70 conservative organisations”, aiming to shape the presidential transition should a rightwing candidate beat Joe Biden next year.In the words of Paul Dans, its director, Project 2025 is “systematically preparing to march into office and bring a new army, aligned, trained, and essentially weaponised conservatives ready to do battle against the deep state”.Such language may echo conspiracy-tinged rants by Trump and his supporters, but that “army” has produced something solid: Mandate for Leadership: the Conservative Promise, a 920-page document that sets out policy wishes across the breadth of the federal government.Read on…As the old saying goes, “where there’s smoke there’s fire”: the Colorado Republican congresswoman Lauren Boebert’s claim not to have been vaping during a theatrical performance in Denver from which she and a male companion were ejected has been proven false.In an episode that generated widespread headlines, the far-right controversialist was escorted out of a performance of the Beetlejuice musical at the Buell Theatre last weekend.Speaking on condition of anonymity, a woman who sat behind the congresswoman told the Denver Post: “These people in front of us were outrageous. I’ve never seen anyone act like that before.”The woman, who is pregnant, said she asked Boebert to stop vaping.Boebert said simply: “No.”Boebert and her companion were eventually escorted from the theatre. Boebert’s office confirmed the incident but denied the congresswoman had been vaping, even though such behaviour was detailed in a widely cited incident report.Surveillance footage obtained by 9News, an NBC affiliate, disproved Boebert’s claim.More:Donald Trump has widened his lead in the Republican presidential primary in the three weeks since the first GOP primary debate – in which he did not take part, according to a new poll.The Fox News poll showed 60% of potential Republican primary voters support Trump, up from 53% in a survey taken before the 23 August debate in Milwaukee. The report said:
Some of Trump’s biggest gains come from women (+10), voters under age 45 (+9), White evangelicals (+8), and White men without a college degree (+8).
Trump’s closest rival, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, has seen his support drop since the debate, the results showed. The survey found 13% of GOP voters back DeSantis in the primary, down three points. Vivek Ramaswamy held his third-place slot at 11%Melania Trump, Donald Trump’s wife, may be back on the Republican presidential candidate’s campaign trail with him “pretty soon”, he said.In an interview with Meet the Press, moderator Kristen Welker asked the former president, “we’ll get her on the trail soon?” Trump replied:
Yes. Soon? Yeah, pretty soon. When it’s appropriate, but pretty soon. She’s a private person, a great person, a very confident person and she loves our country very much.
He added:
Honestly, I like to keep her away from it. It’s so nasty and so mean.
The former first lady was a prominent fixture in Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and throughout his presidency, but she has rarely been spotted by her husband’s side since leaving the White House. Most notably, she did not appear at any of his court appearances.Joe Biden appeared to support the auto workers strike in strong comments made during his White House address this afternoon. He said:
No one wants a strike, but I respect workers’ right to use their options under the collective bargaining system.
“I understand the workers’ frustration,” he added.
Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW.
My colleague Maya Yang is covering the strike on our dedicated UAW strike blog.The team of special counsel Jack Smith obtained a search warrant in January directing Twitter, now known as X, to produce “data and records” related to Donald Trump’s Twitter account as well as a non-disclosure agreement prohibiting Twitter from disclosing the search warrant.Court filings last month showed Twitter delayed complying with the warrant, leading to a federal judge holding the company in contempt and fining it $350,000.The filing said prosecutors got the search warrant after a court “found probable cause to search the Twitter account for evidence of criminal offenses”.The court found that disclosing the warrant could risk that Trump would “would seriously jeopardize the ongoing investigation” by giving him “an opportunity to destroy evidence, change patterns of behavior”, according to the filing.Federal prosecutors secretly argued that informing Donald Trump about their efforts to access his Twitter account could “precipitate violence”, according to newly unsealed court filings.Prosecutors working for special counsel Jack Smith worried that Trump would publicly announce the search warrant or his Twitter feed, as he did on his Truth Social platform when his Mar-a-Lago estate was searched by the FBI last year.Informing Trump about the Twitter search warrant “could precipitate violence as occurred following the public disclosure of the search warrant executed at Mar-a-Lago,” the prosecutors warned. The news was first reported by Politico.Prosecutors argued for keeping Trump in the dark about the Twitter search warrant was necessary because they said the former president presents a “significant risk of tampering with evidence, seeking to influence or intimidate potential witnesses, and ‘otherwise seriously jeopardizing’ the Government’s ongoing investigations.”“These are not hypothetical considerations in this case,” the prosecutors wrote.
Following his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, the former President propagated false claims of fraud (including swearing to false allegations in a federal court filing), pressured state and federal officials to violate their legal duties, and retaliated against those who did not comply with his demands, culminating in violence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6.
In response, Twitter said the prospect of violence was “facially implausible” and argued that Trump already knew many details about Smith’s investigation. US district court judge Beryl Howell ultimately rejected the social media company’s arguments.The new filings also show Twitter turned over at least 32 direct messages from Trump’s account, @realDonaldTrump, to prosecutors. Prosecutors also obtained data that could show his location at the time certain tweets were sent, or if anyone else was accessing his account.Twitter handed over at least 32 direct messages from Donald Trump’s account to special counsel Jack Smith earlier this year in the justice department’s investigation into the 2020 election subversion case, according to newly unsealed court filings.In the new filings, Smith’s team revealed “the materials Twitter produced to the Government included only 32 direct-message items, constituting a minuscule proportion of the total production”.From Politico’s Kyle Cheney:A prominent New York progressive is warning that mayor Eric Adams’s hostile comments about the rising number of migrants in the city are “dangerous” and risk inciting violence against the new arrivals and other immigrants.Tiffany Cabán, aiming for re-election to the city council this November and long endorsed by leading leftwing figures, including US senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren and New York representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, attacked as “irresponsible” the mayor’s remarks last week that the sharp increase in migration to New York would “destroy” the city.Cabán told the Guardian:
The idea that new arrivals would destroy New York City is absurd to me. New arrivals, immigrants, made our city.
“I think there’s a real possibility of his rhetoric fomenting violence, and that’s the last thing we need,” Cabán, a former public defender, added.New York and other Democratic-led cities have received hundreds of thousands of people who crossed the US-Mexico border to request asylum since last year.More than 110,000 migrants have arrived in New York, most making their own way but many also bussed by Texas authorities, without liaison. Officials say they are struggling to provide for nearly 60,000 migrants currently in the city’s care. More

The US president said on Friday that no one wanted the United Auto Workers’ union to strike in its labour dispute with the big three US carmakers – but workers should get a share of the profits those companies are making.

Biden told reporters at the White House that he understood the workers’ frustration, adding: ‘Record corporate profits … should be shared by record contracts for the UAW’ More

For 20 or so years, the architects of public housing have clung tightly to what became conventional wisdom in the field: move residents of low-income neighborhoods out of public housing and into economically resourced neighborhoods.As the theory goes, middle-class and wealthy communities with high-quality schools, healthcare and public facilities could work “wonders” on the residents of low-income and mostly Black neighborhoods. This idea – which advocates call “mixed-income housing” and includes Section 8, among other programs – depends on the idea that people with low incomes, especially those who are Black, are somehow culturally deficient. They need to be immersed in “better” neighborhoods so they are no longer exposed to food deserts, street violence and a lack of employment opportunities.More often than not, this policy experiment fails. In Chicago, many residents who were moved into higher-income neighborhoods ended up living in Black, low-income neighborhoods within five years. Mixed-income housing policy initiatives have struggled for a variety of reasons, but mostly because they are rooted in racist notions of public housing as a breeding ground for Black dysfunction.It’s clear “compassionate relocation” has been a notoriously mixed bag. Sociologist Ann Owens found that mixed-income housing policy has had a minimal impact on concentrated poverty from 1977 to 2008. Another study examined the experiences of 4,600 families who participated in the Moving to Opportunity (MTO) program, which offered families subsidized vouchers for private rentals. Moving improved the educational prospects of younger children and the mental health of women (who wouldn’t feel better in housing not plagued by chronic plumbing or heating problems, pests and cramped living conditions?). But relocation had no effect on employment or income for people who moved as adults. Economic opportunity didn’t magically appear at a new address.By the 1990s, scholars and politicians had made a cottage industry out of claiming that grouping poor Black people in high-density residential communities causes poor quality of life in the form of struggling schools and other ills. If you subscribe to this view, you probably believe poverty spreads among people with lower incomes like a highly contagious virus.The US Department Housing and Urban Development (HUD) bought into this narrative and, with its Hope VI transformation plans, emphasized moving former public housing residents out of their old neighborhoods. The Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), one of the nation’s largest public housing systems, committed to this course of action in 1999.Soon Chicago began demolishing “severely distressed public housing”. Among them were high-rise public housing developments like the infamous Cabrini-Green complex, which became a national symbol of urban blight and failed housing policy; those ideas were imprinted on the American imagination when Cabrini-Green appeared as the location of the 1970s sitcom Good Times and as the nightmarish setting for the 1992 horror film Candyman.The real experts on how relocation is not all it’s cracked up to be are the very targets of resettlement. As a political scientist who studies public housing, I’ve interviewed dozens of women who lived in properties owned by the CHA, which has a 50-year-old track record of grossly mismanaged and dilapidated public housing.I attended a memorable 2011 CHA tenants association meeting where women questioned discriminatory drug-testing policies in mixed-income housing developments. A CHA official claimed, “We don’t have a drug policy.” Chaos erupted because the women knew otherwise. Developers who managed mixed-housing programs often did as they pleased and made their own policies, sometimes in violation of CHA or HUD rules. Later in the meeting, another official seemed to admit those enrolled in mixed-income programs were subjected to more drug testing than residents who paid full market value.That contradicted talking points from advocacy groups like the National Housing Conference. It has contended that “mixed-income communities provide a safer environment that offers a greater range of positive role models and exposure to more job leads for area residents”. Transplanted residents weren’t safer, but rather vulnerable to additional surveillance, potential interaction with law enforcement (sometimes when neighbors reported them for no reason) and a different kind of stress in their nice, new homes. White supremacy and class bias followed residents wherever they moved, if they could move. Many participants in voucher programs continue to have trouble finding landlords willing to accept them.Researchers who hew to the old, entrenched school of thought – that masses of poor Black people living together are the problem – don’t seem to grasp that kids who once lived in public housing may not be accepted in their new schools. Or that their parents don’t “fit in” enough to get a nearby job. Or that groceries and life essentials are often more expensive in wealthier areas. Or that families are often placed in suburbs far from any of the public housing or welfare offices, let alone public hospitals and other support systems.Robert Chaskin and Mark Joseph coined a term for the marginalization of relocated families: “Incorporated exclusion”. People considered “lucky” enough to “get out” deal with isolation from valuable community networks. Contrary to popular belief and social entitlement policy, such networks and social support do exist in public housing. Far from being the “welfare queens” of the Reagan era, residents work hard and frequently to support each other. They provide childcare or elder care, organize meals for each other and advise neighbors on how to deal with bureaucracy that ignores the crumbling state of public housing it’s supposed to maintain.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionYet mixed-income housing policy has shown little to no consideration of the importance of living near friends, family, church, schools and so on. Lack of easy access to community can also have detrimental effects on both community and individual health. By transferring residents all over metro Chicago, the CHA disrupted mutual aid mechanisms. Importantly, it also undermined tenants’ ability to organize and advocate for themselves.Because Black and poor Americans are presumed to be socially, culturally and spiritually broken, US poverty policy has never prioritized maintaining or protecting their communities. We don’t have enough meaningful public conversation about what redlining housing discrimination, systemic underdevelopment of places like Chicago’s South Side and police torture have done to low-income Black communities today.Housing policies forged in racism, sexism and classism do little but duplicate anti-Blackness and socioeconomic biases. Mixed-income housing policy attempts to shift the blame for what geographer Ruthie Wilson Gilmore calls “the organized government abandonment” of public housing stock and inner cities, de facto economic dead zones where white people and investment will not go.The problem is not high concentrations of Black, low-income people causing negative child and family outcomes. Rather, it’s that our government, businesses, schools and citizens discriminate against the working class, the poor and the unhoused. Members of the “underclass” – once a popular term in US poverty studies – are literally pushed out of sight and into public housing, low-performing schools and low-wage jobs.We deny them the rights to safe and secure housing, transportation and living-wage employment. White, middle-class and wealthy citizens refuse to frequent businesses or attend schools in high-poverty neighborhoods, and businesses are disincentivized to offer services in neighborhoods with high numbers of Black people.Assumptions about public housing residents have been built into the very foundations of public housing policy. It’s time to retire these damaging scripts – and eradicate them in policy because, as Fannie Lou Hamer said: “Nobody’s free until everybody’s free.”Alex J. Moffett-Bateau PhD is from Detroit, Michigan, and is an assistant professor of political science at John Jay College in New York City More

Politicians want to be heard – to land a soundbite on the nightly news, to advertise their legislative accomplishments and to have people know their platform. But when given opportunities to talk to voters, they often share details about their personal lives instead.

Presidential candidate Tim Scott used a September 2023 appearance on Fox News to talk about his dating life, saying that voters would soon meet his girlfriend. On Twitter, Senator Ted Cruz often posts football clips and selfies at sporting events.

And in July 2023, President Joe Biden, who has described himself as an “ice cream guy,” tweeted a picture of himself holding an ice cream cone captioned, “In my book, every day is National Ice Cream Day.”

This trend of politicians sharing personal information isn’t new.

One study of campaign tweets found that congressional candidates in 2012 were more likely to tweet about their personal lives than their policy platforms.

Why do politicians share so much from their personal lives on the campaign trail?

I am a scholar of political science, and my research shows that when people see elected officials as people and not just politicians, it boosts their popularity. It also reduces party polarization in people’s views of politicians.

Senator Ted Cruz receives a Philadelphia Eagles jersey at a political rally in Philadelphia in 2018.
Bastiaan Slabbers/NurPhoto via Getty Images

‘House of Cards’ to hot sauce

My research was inspired by the weekly column, “25 Things You Didn’t Know About Me” published in the celebrity entertainment magazine Us Weekly. While actors, musicians and reality television personalities regularly share facts about themselves or their personal lives in this column, several politicians have been featured over the years.

In 2016, then-presidential candidate Cruz shared with the magazine that his first video game was Pong and that he has watched every episode of the Netflix drama series “House of Cards.” When she was running for president in 2016, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton shared that she loves mystery novels and puts hot sauce on everything.

I was interested in whether these kinds of autobiographical and apolitical details changed how people evaluate elected officials.

As part of my research, I noted five items from the list Cruz provided to Us Weekly in 2016, along with five similar autobiographical details collected from the news that same year about Senator Bernie Sanders.

Details about Cruz included that his favorite movie is “The Princess Bride” and that he was once suspended in high school for skipping class to play foosball. Sanders, meanwhile, has shared in news interviews that he is a fan of the television show “Modern Family” and that he proposed to his wife in the parking lot of a Friendly’s restaurant.

I then shared these details with a nationally representative sample of 1,000 Americans in a survey conducted just before the 2020 election. Half were asked to just rate the senator, while the other half were given one of these lists of autobiographical details before rating their favorability toward the senator.

I found that those who read autobiographical details gave warmer evaluations of the politicians than those who did not learn these facts.

Even though both Cruz and Sanders are well known and arguably polarizing politicians, members of the public nonetheless shifted their opinions of the senators when they found out a little more about them as people.

I also found that these autobiographical details led to candidate ratings that were less polarized along party lines.

People’s party loyalties typically determine their views of elected officials. People offer positive ratings of politicians who share their partisan loyalties and very negative ratings of those from the opposing party.

But in my research, I found that minor details like Cruz’s penchant for canned soup were especially likely to boost his ratings among Democrats. And Sanders’ love of the musical group ABBA was especially likely to improve his favorability ratings among Republicans.

We know that people tend to evaluate new information through the lens of their partisan biases. People generally accept new information that reinforces their views, and are skeptical of information that is inconsistent with their prior beliefs.

But when politicians share autobiographical details, people see them as humans – and not just through the lens of their usual partisan biases. When politicians talk about their personal lives, it not only appeals to their supporters, but dampens the negativity people feel toward politicians from the opposing party.

Senator Bernie Sanders has shared personal details about his relationship with his wife, Jane O’Meara Sanders, pictured together in 2020.
Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

What this means for politics

Even in a time where partisanship drives elections, there is still value in being likable.

For elected officials who want to boost their support among supporters of rival partisans, shifting the focus to personality rather than partisan politics can be a useful strategy.

I think that this approach could also help depolarize politics.

If political campaigns focused more on the candidates rather than replaying familiar partisan divides, views of elected officials would be less polarized along party lines.

It can be tempting to dismiss the political content in late night talk shows or celebrity entertainment magazines as mere fluff and a distraction from serious policy debates. But we also know that policy issues rarely matter for the votes people cast. Instead, party loyalties determine much of people’s decision-making. In a time of deeply partisan politics, it is useful to find ways to interrupt partisan biases and decrease polarization. More