US Politics

It might seem surprising today in the era of Donald Trump, but Republicans in the United States once championed immigration and supported pathways to citizenship for undocumented Americans.

In January 1989, Ronald Reagan’s final speech as president was an impassioned ode to the immigrants who made America “a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas”.

Contrast this with Trump, who has normalised dehumanising rhetoric and policies against immigrants. In this year’s presidential campaign, for instance, he has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Both Trump and his vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, also repeated a false story about Haitian “illegal aliens” eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Perhaps most troubling, Trump has pledged to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”, if he’s elected.

Immigration policies throughout history

Nativism, or anti-immigrant sentiment, has a long history in American politics.

In 1924, a highly restrictive immigration quota system based on racial and national origins was introduced. This law envisaged America as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation.

However, there was no restriction on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. The agricultural and railroad sectors relied heavily on workers from Mexico.

In 1965, the quota system was replaced by visa preference categories for family and employment-based migrants, along with refugee and asylum slots.

Then, as violence and economic instability spread across Central America in the 1970s, there was a surge in undocumented immigration to the US.

Scholar Leo Chavez argues that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an alarmist “Latino threat narrative” became the dominant motif in media discussions of immigration.

This narrative was frequently driven by Republican politicians in states on the US-Mexico border, who derived electoral advantage from amplifying voter anxieties.

The growing popularity of this negative discourse coincided with a significant increase in income inequality – a byproduct of neo-liberal policies championed by Reagan and other Republicans.

Read more:
Before Trump, there was a long history of race-baiting, fear-mongering and building walls on the US-Mexico border

A dramatic shift in Republican rhetoric

In the early-to-mid 20th century, Democrats were often the party that supported restrictive immigration and border policies.

However, most Republicans at the national level – strongly supported by business – tended to endorse policies that encouraged the easy flow of workers across the border and increased levels of legal immigration.

Prominent conservative Republicans also rejected vilifying rhetoric towards undocumented Americans. They presented all immigrants as pursuing opportunities for their families, a framing that emphasised a shared vision of the American dream. In this telling, their labour contributed to the economy and America’s growth and prosperity.

George H. W. Bush And Ronald Reagan debate immigration in a Republican primary debate in 1980.

Reagan, the most influential conservative of the late 20th century, opposed erecting a border wall and supported amnesty over deportation.

Reagan also strongly supported bipartisan immigration reform. In 1986, Congress passed an immigration act that increased border security funding, but also ensured 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, primarily of Latino background, were able to gain legal status.

Twenty years later, President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain lobbied for a bipartisan bill that would have tightened border enforcement while simultaneously “legalising” an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. It was narrowly defeated.

This vocal support for immigrants by leading Republicans was striking because for much of the period between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, a majority of Americans actually wanted immigration levels reduced.

Then, around 2009, a dramatic shift in political rhetoric took place. The Tea Party movement brought border security and “racial resentment” towards immigrants centre stage, challenging conservative Republicans from the populist right.

Supporters of a controversial new law in Arizona in 2010 that made it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally.
Ross D. Franklin/AP

As a result, more and more Republicans began to voice restrictionist and xenophobic rhetoric and support legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

What’s surprising, though, is the number of undocumented immigrants in the US was actually declining at this time, from 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016.

Donald Trump and the new nativism

In this worsening anti-immigrant climate, Trump descended a golden escalator in mid-2015 to launch his presidential campaign.

In his speech that day, immigration was front and centre. Trump vowed to “build a great wall” and accused Mexico of sending “rapists” and “criminals” to America.

His speeches during the presidential campaign were marked by frequent anti-Mexican assertions and calls for Islamophobic visa policies. This hostile stance on immigration was central to his victory in both the Republican primaries and the general election against Hillary Clinton.

Once in office, Trump then adopted a “zero tolerance” stance towards undocumented immigration. His administration pursued a heartrending family separation policy that split children and their undocumented parents at the border. This approach was celebrated on conservative media outlets such as Fox News.

During his presidency, he also reduced legal immigration by almost half, drastically cut America’s refugee intake, and introduced bans on people from Muslim-majority countries.

Policy expert David Bier concluded the goal of Republican lawmakers had shifted:

It really looks like the entire debate about illegality is not the main issue anymore for Republicans in both chambers of Congress. The main goal seems to be to reduce the number of foreigners in the United States to the greatest extent possible.

Indeed, Trump’s vision of the nation had overtly racial overtones.

In one 2018 meeting, he asked why America should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador or the African continent. His preference was for Norwegian migrants.

Immigration as a major election theme

From 2021–2023, undocumented US-Mexico border crossings surged due to natural disasters, economic downturns and violence in many Latin American and Caribbean nations. Many of the recent arrivals are asylum seekers.

Though the numbers have fallen sharply in 2024, immigration and the border are still one of the top issues for voters across the political spectrum. The issue is particularly important in the key swing state of Arizona.

In 2024, Trump’s central immigration promise was encapsulated by the beaming delegates waving signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now” at the Republican National Convention.

The Trump-Vance ticket has blamed undocumented immigrants for almost every economic and social problem imaginable. The two candidates present them as a dangerous and subversive “other” that cannot be assimilated into mainstream American culture.

Yet Trump, as both president and candidate, has worked to prevent the passage of border security legislation. Turmoil on the border benefits him.

And his nativism now encompasses all forms of immigration – he has pledged to curb legal channels for people to enter the country, as well.

All of this rhetoric has had a dramatic impact on public opinion. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of people supporting the deportation of undocumented immigrants jumped from 32% to 47%.

In July 2024, 55% of Americans also said they wanted to see immigration levels decrease, a 14-point increase in one year.

Many Americans do not perceive immigration as a source of vitality and renewal as they had in the past. Instead, reflecting Trump’s language, they are viewing immigrants as an existential threat to the country’s future. More

It might seem surprising today in the era of Donald Trump, but Republicans in the United States once championed immigration and supported pathways to citizenship for undocumented Americans.

In January 1989, Ronald Reagan’s final speech as president was an impassioned ode to the immigrants who made America “a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy and new ideas”.

Contrast this with Trump, who has normalised dehumanising rhetoric and policies against immigrants. In this year’s presidential campaign, for instance, he has referred to undocumented immigrants as “animals” who are “poisoning the blood of our country”.

Both Trump and his vice presidential running mate, JD Vance, also repeated a false story about Haitian “illegal aliens” eating pets in Springfield, Ohio.

Perhaps most troubling, Trump has pledged to launch “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country”, if he’s elected.

Immigration policies throughout history

Nativism, or anti-immigrant sentiment, has a long history in American politics.

In 1924, a highly restrictive immigration quota system based on racial and national origins was introduced. This law envisaged America as a white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant nation.

However, there was no restriction on immigrants from the Western Hemisphere. The agricultural and railroad sectors relied heavily on workers from Mexico.

In 1965, the quota system was replaced by visa preference categories for family and employment-based migrants, along with refugee and asylum slots.

Then, as violence and economic instability spread across Central America in the 1970s, there was a surge in undocumented immigration to the US.

Scholar Leo Chavez argues that in the late 1980s and early 1990s, an alarmist “Latino threat narrative” became the dominant motif in media discussions of immigration.

This narrative was frequently driven by Republican politicians in states on the US-Mexico border, who derived electoral advantage from amplifying voter anxieties.

The growing popularity of this negative discourse coincided with a significant increase in income inequality – a byproduct of neo-liberal policies championed by Reagan and other Republicans.

Read more:
Before Trump, there was a long history of race-baiting, fear-mongering and building walls on the US-Mexico border

A dramatic shift in Republican rhetoric

In the early-to-mid 20th century, Democrats were often the party that supported restrictive immigration and border policies.

However, most Republicans at the national level – strongly supported by business – tended to endorse policies that encouraged the easy flow of workers across the border and increased levels of legal immigration.

Prominent conservative Republicans also rejected vilifying rhetoric towards undocumented Americans. They presented all immigrants as pursuing opportunities for their families, a framing that emphasised a shared vision of the American dream. In this telling, their labour contributed to the economy and America’s growth and prosperity.

George H. W. Bush And Ronald Reagan debate immigration in a Republican primary debate in 1980.

Reagan, the most influential conservative of the late 20th century, opposed erecting a border wall and supported amnesty over deportation.

Reagan also strongly supported bipartisan immigration reform. In 1986, Congress passed an immigration act that increased border security funding, but also ensured 2.7 million undocumented immigrants, primarily of Latino background, were able to gain legal status.

Twenty years later, President George W. Bush and Republican Senator John McCain lobbied for a bipartisan bill that would have tightened border enforcement while simultaneously “legalising” an estimated 12 million undocumented immigrants. It was narrowly defeated.

This vocal support for immigrants by leading Republicans was striking because for much of the period between the late 1980s and the early 2000s, a majority of Americans actually wanted immigration levels reduced.

Then, around 2009, a dramatic shift in political rhetoric took place. The Tea Party movement brought border security and “racial resentment” towards immigrants centre stage, challenging conservative Republicans from the populist right.

Supporters of a controversial new law in Arizona in 2010 that made it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally.
Ross D. Franklin/AP

As a result, more and more Republicans began to voice restrictionist and xenophobic rhetoric and support legislation aimed at cracking down on illegal immigration.

What’s surprising, though, is the number of undocumented immigrants in the US was actually declining at this time, from 12.2 million in 2007 to 10.7 million in 2016.

Donald Trump and the new nativism

In this worsening anti-immigrant climate, Trump descended a golden escalator in mid-2015 to launch his presidential campaign.

In his speech that day, immigration was front and centre. Trump vowed to “build a great wall” and accused Mexico of sending “rapists” and “criminals” to America.

His speeches during the presidential campaign were marked by frequent anti-Mexican assertions and calls for Islamophobic visa policies. This hostile stance on immigration was central to his victory in both the Republican primaries and the general election against Hillary Clinton.

Once in office, Trump then adopted a “zero tolerance” stance towards undocumented immigration. His administration pursued a heartrending family separation policy that split children and their undocumented parents at the border. This approach was celebrated on conservative media outlets such as Fox News.

During his presidency, he also reduced legal immigration by almost half, drastically cut America’s refugee intake, and introduced bans on people from Muslim-majority countries.

Policy expert David Bier concluded the goal of Republican lawmakers had shifted:

It really looks like the entire debate about illegality is not the main issue anymore for Republicans in both chambers of Congress. The main goal seems to be to reduce the number of foreigners in the United States to the greatest extent possible.

Indeed, Trump’s vision of the nation had overtly racial overtones.

In one 2018 meeting, he asked why America should accept immigrants from “shithole countries” like Haiti, El Salvador or the African continent. His preference was for Norwegian migrants.

Immigration as a major election theme

From 2021–2023, undocumented US-Mexico border crossings surged due to natural disasters, economic downturns and violence in many Latin American and Caribbean nations. Many of the recent arrivals are asylum seekers.

Though the numbers have fallen sharply in 2024, immigration and the border are still one of the top issues for voters across the political spectrum. The issue is particularly important in the key swing state of Arizona.

In 2024, Trump’s central immigration promise was encapsulated by the beaming delegates waving signs calling for “Mass Deportations Now” at the Republican National Convention.

The Trump-Vance ticket has blamed undocumented immigrants for almost every economic and social problem imaginable. The two candidates present them as a dangerous and subversive “other” that cannot be assimilated into mainstream American culture.

Yet Trump, as both president and candidate, has worked to prevent the passage of border security legislation. Turmoil on the border benefits him.

And his nativism now encompasses all forms of immigration – he has pledged to curb legal channels for people to enter the country, as well.

All of this rhetoric has had a dramatic impact on public opinion. Between 2016 and 2024, the number of people supporting the deportation of undocumented immigrants jumped from 32% to 47%.

In July 2024, 55% of Americans also said they wanted to see immigration levels decrease, a 14-point increase in one year.

Many Americans do not perceive immigration as a source of vitality and renewal as they had in the past. Instead, reflecting Trump’s language, they are viewing immigrants as an existential threat to the country’s future. More

The US supreme court signalled a willingness to uphold the regulation of “ghost guns” – firearms without serial numbers that are built from kits that people can order online and assemble at home.The manufacturers and gun rights groups challenging the rule argued the Biden administration overstepped by trying to regulate kits.Justice Samuel Alito compared gun parts to meal ingredients, saying a lineup including eggs and peppers isn’t necessarily a Western omelet. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, though, questioned whether gun kits are more like ready-to-eat meal kits that contain everything needed to make a dinner like turkey chili.Chief Justice John Roberts seemed skeptical of the challengers’ position that the kits are mostly popular with hobbyists who enjoy making their own weapons, like auto enthusiasts might rebuild a car on the weekend.Many ghost gun kits require only the drilling of a few holes and removal of plastic tabs.
“My understanding is that it’s not terribly difficult to do this,” Roberts said. “He really wouldn’t think he has built that gun, would he?”A ruling is expected in the coming months.As ghost guns were increasingly used in crimes – including 1,200 homicides and attempted homicides between 2016 and 2022, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms – the Biden administration issued new rules regulating them in 2022. The new ATF rule classified ghost gun kits as firearms under the Gun Control Act of 1968, the US’s main firearms law – making them subject to the same regulations as all other guns.Since the rule went into effect, police departments in cities like New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia have all recovered fewer ghost guns at crime scenes.However, firearms manufacturers and gun-rights groups quickly sued to block the ATF rule. A federal district court judge in Texas ruled against the ATF in 2023 – but the Biden administration appealed the decision to the fifth circuit court of appeals. While that decision was pending, the supreme court intervened to keep the regulation in effect, by a narrow 5-4 vote. The fifth circuit ultimately ruled against the Biden administration, which then appealed the case to the supreme court.Garland v VanDerStok will require the supreme court to consider issues of firearm policy, but also the extent of federal regulatory powers. The court has been resistant to regulate guns in recent years, issuing decisions like a 2022 ruling striking down New York state’s ban on concealed carry firearms and a decision earlier this year overturning a ban on bump stocks.At the same time, the court has been wary of federal regulatory power, overturning a 40-year-old legal precedent known as Chevron deference, which allowed agencies like the ATF to broadly interpret the laws they are charged with implementing, earlier this year.The supreme court sided with the Biden administration last year, allowing the regulation to go. Roberts and Barrett joined with the court’s three liberal members to form the majority.Ghost guns, which can be assembled at home in under an hour to produce a fully functional weapon, used to be rare, except among hobbyists. In 2016, police recovered about 1,800 such firearms. But by 2021, that number had soared to nearly 20,000, according to the justice department. The weapons’ popularity was in part tied to the fact they were not regulated like already assembled firearms: they had no serial number, no sales records and did not require a background check.

The Associated Press contributed reporting More

A former aide to Eric Adams was arrested Tuesday on charges of witness tampering and destroying evidence in relation to a federal investigation that has spawned FBI raids, a string of resignations and bribery charges brought against the New York mayor.Mohamed Bahi, who ran the mayor’s community affairs office, had already stepped down when he was charged on Tuesday with instructing multiple witnesses to lie to federal investigators about a December 2020 fundraiser for Adams’ victorious mayoral election campaign.Federal prosecutors in New York allege that Bahi, 40, deleted Signal, an encrypted messaging app that he used to communicate with the mayor from his phone, when he realized the FBI was on his trail.“The charges unsealed today should leave no doubt about the seriousness of any effort to interfere with a federal investigation, particularly when undertaken by a government employee,” Damian Williams, US district attorney for the southern district of New York, said in a statement.At least three federal corruption investigations are focused on Adams and his aides. Prosecutors charged the mayor in September with five counts of public corruption, including bribery and violating campaign finance laws.Adams has pleaded not guilty to the charges and has petitioned the court to drop the bribery count.“I am going to serve my term and run for the election,” Adams said Tuesday, adding: “I think when both sides of this come out, people are going to have a second look at this entire event that’s taking place.”The ongoing raids and resignations, including that of his chief legal adviser, have raised questions about Adams’ ability to simultaneously lead the city, run for re-election and defend himself from the allegations.The New York governor, Kathy Hochul, the only elected official with the power to remove Adams from office, has not called for him to step down. If he did, the city would be run by Jumaane Williams – a progressive Democrat who serves as public advocate for the city – until elections are held.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBut with tight congressional elections in the suburbs of New York City on 5 November, and Hochul facing her own re-election in 2026, it is not believed that the governor is willing to risk political discord by removing Adams as mayor.Hochul has reportedly told Adams to clean house and to work to regain the trust of New Yorkers. “I’ve talked to the mayor about what my expectations are, and I don’t give out details of private conversations,” Hochul said recently. More

The Trump administration protected Brett Kavanaugh from facing a full FBI investigation in the wake of serious allegations that he sexually assaulted two women – once in high school and once in college – during his controversial 2018 Senate confirmation to become a supreme court justice, according to a new report.An investigation led by the Democratic senator Sheldon Whitehouse also found that both the Trump White House and the FBI “misled the public and the Senate” about the scope of the investigation it did conduct into the sexual assault allegations by falsely claiming that the FBI had conducted its investigation thoroughly and “by the book”.Kavanaugh’s confirmation by the Senate seemed to be in doubt after Christine Blasey Ford, a professor at Palo Alto University, alleged he had sexually assaulted her while the two were in high school. A classmate at Yale, named Deborah Ramirez, alleged in a report published by the New Yorker that Kavanaugh had exposed himself at a drunken dormitory party. Kavanaugh denied both allegations.The Senate judiciary committee agreed after Ford publicly testified about her allegations that the FBI conduct a supplemental background check to examine those allegations before the full Senate voted on his nomination.In the aftermath of Kavanaugh’s ultimate confirmation by the Senate, in a 50-48 vote, Whitehouse and his staff set out on a six-year investigation to try to find answers about how the FBI conducted its investigation.The investigation was hampered, Whitehouse said, by executive branch delays, reluctance to answer even basic questions, and often incomplete answers.“In 2018, I pledged to Christine Blasey Ford that I’d keep digging, for however long it took, and not give up or move on from Senate Republicans and the Trump White House’s shameful confirmation process for Justice Kavanaugh,” Whitehouse said.“This report shows that the supplemental background investigation was a sham, controlled by the Trump White House, to give political cover to Senate Republicans and put Justice Kavanaugh back on the political track to confirmation.”The findings are significant because at least eight senators cited the FBI’s findings – that “no corroborating evidence” had been found to back up the allegations against Kavanaugh – when they voted to confirm the justice. They include the then majority leader, Mitch McConnell, Shelley Moore Capito, former senator Jeff Flake and Bob Corker, Chuck Grassley and Susan Collins.In reality, the Whitehouse report claims the FBI’s limited supplemental background investigation involved only a “handful” of interviews of relevant witnesses, and ignored other potential sources, including Kavanaugh himself, Ford, or others who had offered to give the FBI corroborating or otherwise relevant information.Ford was not interviewed, the report said, even though her attorney repeatedly contacted the FBI directly to request the FBI interview her.A lawyer for Ramirez provided lists of suggested witnesses to the FBI, including a list of 20 additional witnesses likely to have relevant information who Ramirez suspected could corroborate her account.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn one case, a former classmate of Kavanaugh at Yale named Max Stier sought to come forward to report that he had once witnessed Kavanaugh with his pants down at a drunken party, and that his friends pushed the future justice’s penis into the hands of a female student.The alleged incident was separate from others that became public during the investigation but bore similarities to the allegations made by Ramirez. Stier notified the Senate and the FBI about his account, according to media reports, but the matter was never investigated by the FBI.The FBI director, Christopher Wray, was even personally notified by Senator Chris Coons of Delaware about Stier’s account but he was never contacted.Stier, who runs a non-profit in Washington, has declined to discuss the matter with the Guardian. He is married to Florence Pan, who serves as a circuit judge on the US court of appeals, a post formerly held by the supreme court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson.In response to the release of the report, Debra Katz and Lisa Banks, lawyers for Ford, said in a statement: “Dr Ford performed a heroic act of public service that came at a steep personal cost for her and those close to her. We know today that Trump White House officials acted to hide the truth. They conspired, with the FBI complicit, to silence those who offered important evidence, including one college classmate who ‘saw Mr Kavanaugh with his pants down at a different drunken dorm party, where friends pushed his penis into the hand of a female student.’ We also know that this will likely result in no consequences for those involved, though it should.”The FBI also declined to pursue information it received through the agency’s tip line. The tips were forwarded directly to the White House. More

In one of the most memorable moments of the current presidential campaign, Donald Trump in July 2024 contended that Democratic nominee Kamala Harris recently stopped identifying as Indian and “happened to turn Black.”

With these false remarks, Trump implied that Harris emphasized one part of her background to appeal to voters and then changed that to appeal to a different group of voters.

Lost within this controversy has been the underlying assumption in Trump’s comments, that people tend to vote for someone with a shared identity. But is that true? Are Asian Americans, for example, especially likely to vote for Harris because of their shared identity?

Asian Americans are a quickly growing political constituency that made a difference in 2020 in swing states such as Georgia, Nevada and Arizona, helping elect President Joe Biden. They are positioned to be influential again this November.

Taken as a whole, Asian Americans lean Democratic in 2024, with 62% favoring Harris, compared with 38% who support Trump. But for Harris, Asian Americans are not as strong a voting bloc as Black Americans, who poll at 77% supporting Harris, according to the Pew Research Center. Harris cannot take Asian Americans’ votes for granted.

Kamala Harris takes a photo with guests during a White House reception in May 2022 celebrating Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
Associated Press

What guides identity politics and voting

Despite the assumption in Trump’s comments that voters gravitate toward a political candidate who shares parts of their identity, such as race or gender, that is not always the case.

Voters are more likely to vote for someone with a shared identity when they see a “linked fate.” with the candidate. So, people who have the same ethnicity or race may vote in a similar fashion because they expect to experience the effects of policy changes in the same way. Latinos could be more likely to vote for a Latino candidate because the candidate would prioritize issues that matter to them, such as immigration reform.

Politicians, for their part, can try to encourage people with whom they share an identity to believe in a linked fate to win their vote. In order to do this, candidates can play up issues that affect their identity group and then make the case that they are best equipped and more motivated to address those problems.

For instance, women rank abortion rights as a key issue and trust Harris to understand it.

In order to earn voters’ support, candidates must also come across as likely to act in their supporters’ shared interests. This helps explain why people who care about so-called women’s issues, such as education or health care, are more likely to vote for a Democratic woman than a Republican woman. People generally think that Democrats represent women better than Republicans do – and they would not assume that a Republican female politician would champion women’s issues just because of her gender.

With this in mind, a candidate wanting to secure the vote of a group must first know what issues matter to them and then demonstrate that they understand the group well enough to earn their vote.

Asian Americans, like most Americans, list the economy, inflation, health care, crime, Social Security, the price of housing and immigration as their top issues in this election.

In order to effectively appeal to Asian American voters, Harris could demonstrate first that she identifies as Asian in order to invoke their shared identity. She could also show that she both understands the issues that Asian Americans care about and that she can be trusted to act in ways they favor on those issues.

To an extent, Harris has already worked to publicly identify with her South Asian heritage. She has referred to her mother’s immigrant background and has talked about her grandfather who lived in Chennai, in southern India. She has made references to her ethnic culture, such as when she mentioned coconut trees and cooked the traditional South Indian dish dosa in a video with fellow Indian American Mindy Kaling.

New Hampshire delegate Sumathi Madhure attends the Democratic National Convention on Aug. 19, 2024.
Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Connecting to Asian Americans

Once solidifying that they share an identity with a group of voters, political candidates must demonstrate that they understand how the group experiences the issues that matter to them. The concerns of Asian Americans arise out of specific experiences they have – such as immigration.

Asian Americans, for example, often complain about the long wait to sponsor family members abroad for visas to the U.S. At the same time, Asian Americans represent 15% of immigrants living in the U.S. without a visa.

Asian Americans are also concerned about the growing government backlog of visas and smugglers whom immigrants pay to help them illegally cross the border.

Harris often speaks about immigration and the U.S.-Mexico border, but not in personal terms – or about how this issue specifically relates to Asians.

While all U.S. residents are affected by inflation, small-business owners, in particular, feel the pinch. They must pay higher prices for goods but have limited capital with which to do so. They also must navigate higher interest rates.

While Asian Americans make up about 7% of the total U.S. population, they represent 10% of business owners and are the largest nonwhite group of small-business owners.

Harris talks about the economy and inflation, as well as the need to support small-business owners, but not about how these issues specifically affect Asian Americans. Her only ad targeting Asian Americans has focused on hate crimes against them.

And Asian Americans, like most voters, strongly support Social Security and other federal programs that aim to ensure stability for the elderly. Harris could speak of how Social Security is the sole income source for over a quarter of Asian Americans – and for a third of African Americans – compared with 18% of white Americans.

Harris seems poised to capture the majority of the Asian American vote, which leans Democratic. But to what extent they vote for her – and with how much enthusiasm – will depend on Harris’ ability to connect with them as Asian Americans and the issues they care about. More

White female voters have been the backbone of the GOP for decades – but polls indicate their support for the party may erode this November, thanks to younger white women who are moving left at breakneck speed.In the weeks after the 2016 presidential election, after Donald Trump stunned the world by defeating Hillary Clinton, media outlets seized on white women to explain his shock win. Forty-seven per cent of white women voted for Trump, while 45% backed Clinton, according to an analysis of validated voter files by the Pew Research Center.Trump’s success with white women highlighted a longstanding truth: this group votes for Republicans. Over the last 72 years, a plurality of white women have voted for the Democratic candidate in only two presidential elections – in 1964, when Lyndon Johnson won 44 states, and in 1996, when Bill Clinton ran in a three-way race. Trump’s lead with white women even grew in 2020, when 53% supported him. In contrast, 95% of Black women voted for Joe Biden in 2020, along with 61% of Hispanic women, Pew found.But quite a bit has changed since 2020 – especially for women. The US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade in 2022, transforming abortion rights into a major election issue. Kamala Harris took over as the Democratic candidate from Joe Biden, becoming the first woman of color to secure a major-party nomination for president. All this raises the question: will 2024 be the year that white women, who make up almost 40% of the national electorate, finally join women of color in supporting the Democrats?Well, not necessarily. But the gap very well may shrink.There are signs that younger white women are peeling off from the GOP – a trend that is linked to a steady drift by all young women to the left.“Young women of color and young white women, in my research, are pretty uniformly liberal and feminist,” said Melissa Deckman, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute and author of the recent book The Politics of Gen Z: How the Youngest Voters Will Shape Our Democracy. “I think Harris’s selection as the nominee now – as opposed to Biden – has really further made them enthusiastic about voting. So I strongly suspect that young, white women voters are going to defy the longer-term trend of white women in general voting for Republicans.”Young women are increasingly queer, increasingly secular and getting married later in life – all characteristics that tend to be linked with liberalism and support for the Democratic party. (People who identify as liberal are very likely to be Democrats, though the inverse is not necessarily true – not all Democrats identify as liberal.)Between 2011 and 2024, liberal identification among white women rose by 6%, according to a Gallup analysis shared with the Guardian. Such identification also rose by 6% among Black women, but fell by 2% among Hispanic women.Gen Z is the most diverse generation of Americans yet, but Gallup research suggests that doesn’t explain young women’s leftward drift. Between 2017 and 2024, 41% of white women between the ages of 18 and 29 identified as liberals – 2 percentage points more than their peers of color.Young women are also unusually involved in politics. Women have long outvoted men, but in 2020, 60% of 18- to 29-year-old white women voted – more than any other group of youth voters, according to an analysis of AP VoteCast data by the Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning and Engagement. Fifty-five per cent voted for Biden.Trump’s 2016 victory may have something to do with these trends. Raised by Democratic-leaning independents, Chloe Fowler said Trump’s election was a critical inflection point in her political evolution. She was a sophomore in high school when Trump won; the day after, somebody in her school hallway shouted gleefully: “Grab ’em by the pussy!”“Things like that stick with us,” recalled Fowler, who is white. A few months later, her mom took her to the Women’s March in Omaha, Nebraska. “That was a very pivotal moment for me, honestly – doing a bunch of chants with her and wearing the pink cat ear hats.”Fowler is now the vice-president of Nebraska Young Democrats. The 23-year-old has been phone-banking furiously in her home district – Nebraska’s second congressional district, which may end up deciding whether Trump or Harris becomes president.‘Why is this race so close?’A 19th News/SurveyMonkey poll in September found that white women narrowly prefer Harris to Trump, 42% to 40%. (The poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 1%.) The remaining 18% can make or break the election, of course. The gender gap between white women and white men is larger. Fifty per cent of white men prefer Trump, with only 36% supporting Harris.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionA majority of Black women support Harris, that poll found, as do pluralities of Hispanic and Asian American women.Jane Junn, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, says what is often misunderstood as a “gender gap” between male and female voters is really a race gap. While women as a whole may end up voting for Harris – a September New York Times/Siena poll showed that 54% of women planned to vote for Harris, compared with 40% of men – white women, Junn predicted, will remain Republicans in 2024. “If all of a sudden, the white women were like: ‘Oh, my God, I’m burning my bra and my Barbie shoes and my long fingernails and all the plastic sprays I put into my body’ – we’re not seeing that,” Junn said. “Why is this race so close? It’s so close because these groups remain fairly consistent in their partisan loyalty.”Polling from Galvanize Action, an organization that seeks to mobilize moderate women – especially in the critical “blue wall” states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan – has found the race in a dead heat among moderate white women, who are split 43% to 44% in favor of the former president. These women, who Galvanize Action defines as not ideologically entrenched as Democrats or Republicans, account for more than 5 million voters in those three states.Trump has the edge when it comes to these women’s top issues of the economy and immigration, but the women polled by Galvanize Action trust Harris more on democracy and reproductive freedom.“Even among women who say that economy or democracy is their No 1 issue, a good segment of those people also say: ‘I’m not going to vote for anyone that won’t protect abortion,’” said Jackie Payne, Galvanize Action’s executive director and founder.Democrats are hoping that abortion rights-related ballot measures – which voters will decide on in the battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada and Nebraska’s second congressional district – will spur turnout among their base. However, white women may in effect vote split-ticket, simultaneously voting for a pro-abortion rights measure and for Republicans. More than half of white women voted for Ohio’s 2023 abortion-related ballot measure – but more than 60% of white women supported Mike DeWine, the Republican governor who signed a six-week abortion ban into law, in 2022, just months after Roe fell.“This is going to be all about turnout. This is going to be a very, very close election,” said Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers. “The Democratic party counts on women. They count particularly on Black women to turn out. Will they be more energized?” More

Who, exactly, could be an undecided voter in 2024? It’s not as if the candidates do not draw a sufficient contrast. There can be few people alive these days, let alone few registered voters in America, who do not know much more than they ever thought they would about the habits, history, and inner psyche of Donald Trump, who has now been a singularly domineering force in national politics for nearly a decade. The Harris campaign has been trying to play their candidates’ comparative newness on the national stage as an asset, rigorously keeping her from saying much of substance, but Kamala Harris, too, is by now a well-known figure: once a popular and high profile senator from the country’s biggest state, she moved on to a busy, energetic, and extremely visible vice presidency.The candidates are about as familiar to Americans as they’re going to get; anyone still saying they are “undecided” now, just four weeks out from the election, seems like the sort who has been paying so little attention that they’re not likely to remember to vote at all.And yet it is this undecided voter, that irresistible phantom in American politics, who both candidates seem to be chasing as the race enters its final weeks. Both candidates seem, for lack of a better term, to be trying to cast themselves as making a pivot to the center, seemingly in a bid to convince this imaginary voter – the one who is apparently torn between a center-left bureaucrat of obvious competence and a raving, racist narcissist who wants to be a dictator and has already tried – to pick them. If such a person exists, I’m not sure that I, for one, would place much value in their esteem. But the campaigns are making a different calculation.On the Republican side, Trump, never one to miss an opportunity for cynicism and dishonesty, has tried to cast himself, in somewhat feeble and unconvincing terms, as a moderate on abortion. He has tried to say that his position is that abortion should be left to the states (which conveniently elides several of his past statements, as well as leaving unacknowledged the homicidal and sadistic policies that many states have enacted). Now, his wife is shilling a book in which she claims, with conspicuously convenient timing, that she is personally pro-choice. At the vice-presidential debate, Trump’s surrogate, Ohio senator and pronatalist activist JD Vance, spoke in patronizing terms about women who need to be given “more options” – not the option to have an abortion or dictate the fate of their own bodies or the course of their own lives, of course, but the option to drop out of the workforce to stay home and raise babies.The lies, obfuscation, and euphemism from the Trump camp are an effort to conceal the substance of their anti-woman policies behind a slick style of obscurantism. Distressingly, it might be working: polls show that many voters wrongly believe that a second Trump presidency would not further erode abortion rights.Harris, for her part, has been seeking to court the imagined undecided voter by bear-hugging Republicans – sometimes literally. On Thursday, she held a rally in Ripon, Wisconsin – the birthplace of the Republican party – to campaign alongside former Wyoming Congresswoman Liz Cheney, who has endorsed Harris. The women stood together in front of large signs that said “Country Over Party.” The official pitch was that Trump is a great enough threat to democracy that figures who agree on little else can unite to oppose him out of a sense of patriotic duty. But the appearance also seemed to signal Harris’s bid to attract Trump-skeptical conservatives, and to lessen her liberal California image in favor of a moderate, conciliatory one.But if the two candidates seem to be looking to gain the same kind of voters, they face very different risks in trying to court them. Trump is the charismatic leader of a personality cult whose voters respond to his efforts to ignite their grievances and largely seem to ignore his own repeated and well-documented lies and contempt for them. This has always been Trump’s paradox: that he is loved by a base of support that he himself seems to profoundly disrespect, and that, in the eyes of his followers, his transparent self-interest only serves to make him more trustworthy, more authentic, with each of his lies seeming to evoke a larger truth.As Trump has ostentatiously tried to pivot to the center on abortion, there has been some grumbling from the anti-choice movement, which has been not a little bit disturbed by the way their cause has become a political liability for the Republican party. But for all the anti-choice set’s dissatisfaction with Trump’s recent statements, there has never been any real risk that they would withhold their votes from him. Their loyalty is permanent.Not so for Harris. In the Trump age, the Democrats have cobbled together a coalition too large and internally contradictory to be sustainable – consisting, as it does, of people with fundamentally different worldviews, opposed interests, and a great deal of mutual mistrust. Harris’s efforts to win over Republican voters will run a much greater risk of alienating her party’s progressive base, many of whom see Republican policy preferences as a threat to their civil liberties and way of life. The day after she appeared on stage with Cheney in Wisconsin, Harris met with leaders of the Arab and Muslim communities in Flint, Michigan, many of whom have been distraught at the horrific suffering in Gaza and outraged by the Biden administration’s complicity in Israel’s increasingly reckless and aggressive actions.Their votes will be crucial to her victory in Michigan, an essential swing state. But it’s not clear how much the meeting will do to reassure them. Back in Wisconsin, Harris had taken time out of her rally with Liz Cheney to specifically thank the former Vice President Dick Cheney – the architect of the disastrous 2003 invasion of Iraq. He, too, has endorsed Harris.

Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More