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    Rage Against Elon Musk Turns Tesla Into a Target

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    Tesla charging stations were set ablaze near Boston on Monday. Shots were fired at a Tesla dealership in Oregon after midnight on Thursday. Arrests were made at a nonviolent protest at a Tesla dealership in Lower Manhattan on Saturday.The electric car company Tesla increasingly found itself in police blotters across the country this week, more than seven weeks after President Trump’s second inauguration swept Tesla’s chief executive, Elon Musk, into the administration as a senior adviser to the president.Mr. Musk, 53, is drawing increasing backlash for his sweeping cuts to federal agencies, a result of the newly formed cost-cutting initiative Mr. Musk has labeled the Department of Government Efficiency.During a demonstration on Saturday at a gleaming Tesla showroom in the West Village neighborhood of Manhattan, protesters joined in chants of “Nobody voted for Elon Musk” and “Oligarchs out, democracy in.” One held a sign saying, “Send Musk to Mars Now!!” (Mr. Musk also owns SpaceX.)Shots were fired at the Tesla dealership in Tigard, Ore., this week.Tigard Police DepartmentSeveral hundred protesters remained there for two hours, organizers said, blocking entrances and shutting down the dealership.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      US justice department to review conviction of former election clerk

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      Donald Trump’s justice department said it will review the Colorado conviction of former election clerk Tina Peters, who received a nine-year prison sentence for her role in a voting system data-breach scheme as part of an unsuccessful quest to find voter fraud in 2021.Yaakov Roth, an acting assistant attorney general, wrote in a court filing on Monday that the Department of Justice was “reviewing cases across the nation for abuses of the criminal justice process”, including Peters’.“This review will include an evaluation of the state of Colorado’s prosecution of Ms Peters and, in particular, whether the case was ‘oriented more toward inflicting political pain than toward pursuing actual justice or legitimate governmental objectives’,” Roth wrote, echoing the language in a Trump executive order on “Ending the Weaponization of the Federal Government”.Peters, then the clerk of Mesa county, allowed a man affiliated with the pillow salesman and election denier Mike Lindell to misuse a security card to access the Mesa county election system. Lindell posted about the DoJ’s statement on his fundraising website, telling donors their assistance had “contributed to positive developments at the Department of Justice that give us hope that the wheels are in motion for the early release of Tina Peters”.Jurors found Peters guilty in August, convicting her on seven counts related to misconduct, conspiracy and impersonation, four of which were felony charges. Judge Matthew Barrett sentenced her in October to nine years in prison, calling Peters “as defiant as a defendant that the court has ever seen” and said he believed Peters would do it all over again if she could.Peters had argued for probation and is appealing against her conviction.The DoJ’s statement of interest notes that Peters’ physical and mental health have deteriorated while she’s been in prison, and that “reasonable concerns have been raised” about her case, including the “exceptionally lengthy sentence” the court imposed and the denial of bail for Peters while her appeal plays out. Her appeal deserves “prompt and careful consideration” by the court, Roth wrote.Dan Rubinstein, the Mesa County district attorney, said in a statement that “nothing about the prosecution of Ms Peters was politically motivated”.“In one of the most conservative jurisdictions in Colorado, the same voters who elected Ms Peters, also elected the Republican district attorney who handled the prosecution, and the all-Republican board of county commissioners who unanimously requested the prosecution of Ms Peters on behalf of the citizens she victimized,” Rubinstein said.“Ms Peters was indicted by a grand jury of her peers, and convicted at trial by the jury of her peers that she selected.”Peters has become a cause célèbre on the right, with some Republicans promoting a “free Tina Peters” movement. A small rally in Fort Collins, Colorado, over the weekend called attention to Peters’ appeal, and protesters there insisted she was innocent and had discovered election fraud.Trump cannot pardon Peters because she was convicted of state crimes, not federal ones. Some Colorado Republicans have suggested Trump should withhold federal funds from the state until the Democratic governor Jared Polis agrees to pardon Peters, Colorado’s 9News reports. More

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      in Elections

      Colorado Snowboarder Becomes Fourth Avalanche Victim in a Week

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      The victim was traveling on a terrain feature known as The Nose near Silverton, Colo., when the avalanche occurred on Thursday, officials said.A backcountry snowboarder was killed in an avalanche on Thursday in a remote part of southwestern Colorado, the fourth person to die in a mountain slide this week in the western United States following several winter storms.The Colorado Avalanche Information Center said that the victim was traversing a terrain feature known as The Nose, near Silverton, Colo., when the person got caught in the avalanche.A skier who was with the snowboarder escaped the avalanche, the authorities said.Emergency responders used a helicopter to try to rescue the snowboarder, but the person did not survive, the center said. Rescuers were alerted about the avalanche by the staff from a nearby backcountry hut.The avalanche added to what has been a deadly week in the West.On Monday, two skiers were caught in an avalanche in the Cascade Mountains in Oregon, one that occurred at a height of 6,700 feet on a south-facing slope. Their bodies were recovered on Tuesday.Also on Monday, an avalanche claimed the life of a backcountry skier in California near Lake Tahoe.The Sierra Avalanche Center said that the skier was traveling alone when he triggered the avalanche, which carried him downslope over rocks and through trees. The victim was buried beneath more than four feet of snow against a tree, the center said. More

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      in US Politics

      Thousands protest against Trump’s war on immigrants after Ice raids: ‘Fight for our neighbors’

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      Thousands took to the streets on Wednesday and Saturday last week following a series of dramatic raids by agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) throughout Denver as protesters expressed solidarity with the undocumented and rage at Donald Trump’s war on immigrants.“We’re here to fight for our neighbors, to stand together and say no to the threats from the Trump administration,” Amanda Starks, a local artist at a rally on Saturday who’s been handing out literature to immigrants on their legal rights.She added: “I think this is worse than in 2016, when we thought the GOP would stand up to Trump. Now they’re all Christian nationalist yes-men, and we’re up against something greater this time around. But it’s bringing this community together.”The US president has taken a special interest in the historically immigrant-friendly state of Colorado, calling his deportation plan for alleged gang members Operation Aurora, named for the Denver suburb claimed by him and echoed by conservative media to have been “taken over” by the Venezuelan gang, Tren de Aragua (TdA).One of the executive orders signed on Trump’s first day in office was to cut funding and send a stop-work order to the Rocky Mountain Immigrant Advocacy Network (Rmian), a Colorado non-profit offering free legal services to the undocumented. Due to the large volume of those in need, Colorado has one of the lowest rates of legal representation for undocumented immigrants.Then last week heavily armed Swat teams began storming apartment complexes around Denver and Aurora in the early hours of the morning – sometimes with a Fox News crew embedded with the teams – though with 30 arrests in all, only one gang member has been confirmed to be in custody.View image in fullscreenWith around 155,000 undocumented immigrants in Colorado fearing for their safety, many local residents have rallied to show their support however they can.Despite their setbacks, last week the Rmian was able to offer a crash course in immigration law to 100 Colorado attorneys who, despite not working in that field, have volunteered their legal services.Whenever Ice raids are spotted, volunteers from groups like the Immigrant Legal Resource Center often are on hand to offer literature on the legal rights of those under siege. At Saturday’s rally outside the state capitol building in Denver, activists with megaphones led a call-and-response chant of legal advice, prompting the crowd with “When Ice shows up?” followed by a collective roar: “Don’t open the door!”The protester and artist Starks, along with many others, have been attending weekly gatherings at a local Methodist church on how to best serve the legal needs of immigrants. One organizer placed the turnout at a meeting last Monday at more than 1,500 people.View image in fullscreenMany of the activists speaking at Saturday’s rally expressed contempt for New York-based property management company CBZ Management, which oversee several properties in Aurora and Denver that have been fined or shut down for squalid and neglectful living conditions. Last August, Zev Baumgarten of CBZ Management, accused of being “an out of state slumlord” by the Aurora mayor, claimed one of their Aurora apartment buildings had been overtaken by TdA gang members, which was why they were unable to provide needed repairs and services.This unfolded just in time for Trump to parrot the claims during his presidential debate against Kamala Harris weeks later, eventually making Aurora an unlikely campaign spot for the Republican candidate, since Colorado has been a reliably blue state since 2008.For decades Colorado has cultivated a reputation for welcoming immigrants who have come across the US-Mexico border, especially when they’re under siege from many across the rest of the nation.In the 1990s, when Democrats were being pulled to the right on issues like immigration, Denver’s mayor, Wellington Webb, pushed against that tide, criticizing federal persecution of immigrants in a 1998 executive order and declaring the state capital would “welcome all to share in Denver’s warm hospitality”.He insisted: “We must respect this diversity and ensure the rights of all our residents are protected,” and Denver “would not tolerate discrimination in any form”.However a movement of hard-right, anti-immigrant activists in the Republican party found representation at this time in Colorado, such as in the form of congressman Tom Tancredo, who built his political career attacking Denver libraries for stocking Spanish speaking books, calling for the deportation of a Denver high school student, stripping “sanctuary cities” of their federal funding, and calling on America to reject the “cult of multiculturalism”.View image in fullscreenTancredo’s decade as a congressman from 1999-2009, along with his failed bids for the presidency and governorship, helped build the narrative architecture of what would become the Make America Great Again conservative movement’s anti-immigrant rage.Despite the protests last Wednesday and Saturday in Denver, portions of the state still hold enough conservative voters to keep Trump loyalists like Representative Lauren Boebert in office.Boebert recently joined forces with two other Colorado representatives to pressure the state’s Democratic governor, Jared Polis, to repeal a series of laws protecting immigrants rights in Colorado. Often referred to as a “Democratic libertarian”, Polis has endorsed the core of Trump’s deportation plan.“Hey Polis, where are you? We have courage, how about you?” the crowd at Saturday’s rally chanted, as it moved away from the capitol building and through downtown Denver.The march eventually made its way peacefully back to the capitol, where more literature was handed out and future gatherings were announced.“We take these threats [from Trump] very seriously,” said Katie Leonard, one of the days’ speakers and an organizer with the Party for Socialism and Liberation, which has been documenting Ice raids and posting their locations on social media, leading to the arrival of more volunteers, often shouting advice to residents about their rights through megaphones or blasting the neighborhoods with informative leaflets.“But the decisive factor in what happens here, when these Ice raids come and indiscriminately round up people, is whether the community is prepared, whether the people know their rights,” she said. More

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      in US Politics

      Trump border chief threatens jail for Denver mayor amid deportation dispute

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      Tom Homan, Donald Trump’s hardline incoming border czar, has threatened to put the mayor of Denver in jail after the latter said he was willing to risk incarceration to resist the president-elect’s migrant mass deportation plan.The threat was issued against Mike Johnston, a Democrat, who said he was not afraid of being jailed and encouraged people to protest against mass round-ups of immigrants in their cities and communities.Johnston’s remarks came after Trump focused during the presidential election campaign on the Denver suburb of Aurora, which he said had become “a war zone” where apartment buildings had been taken over by Venezuelan gang members.Asked to respond by Fox News’s Sean Hannity, Homan said: “Me and the Denver mayor, we agree on one thing; he’s willing to go to jail. I’m willing to put him in jail.”Johnston had originally been asked by a local Denver television station to respond to Homan’s previous vows to arrest local leaders and politicians who stood in the way of deportation efforts.He said he was not willing to go to jail, though he is “not afraid of that” in a Friday interview with 9 News.“I think the goal is we want to be able to negotiate with reasonable people how to solve hard problems,” he told the outlet.He said previously, in a separate interview, that he would send Denver police to the city line to confront federal agents – an action he likened to Tiananmen Square. He later withdrew the comments.Speaking to Hannity, Homan insisted that he was willing to put Johnston “in jail because there’s a statute”.“What it says is that it’s a felony if you knowingly harbour and conceal an illegal alien from immigration authorities. It’s also a felony to impede a federal law enforcement officer. So if he don’t help, that’s fine. He can get the hell out of the way, but we’re going to go do the job,” he said, before adding: “I find it hard to believe that any mayor or governor would say they don’t want public safety threats removed from their neighbourhoods.“I don’t know what the hell is going on in Denver, but we’re going to go in and we’re going to go and we’re going to fix it. If you don’t want to fix it, if you don’t want to protect his communities, President Trump and Ice [Immigration and Customs Enforcement] will.”Homan, who was deputy director of Ice in Trump’s first administration, said the president-elect had a “mandate from the American people … to save American lives”.He has taken a similarly unbending stance against other local and state Democratic politicians who have declared their local fiefdoms “sanctuary cities” safe from Trump’s deportation plans.Gavin Newsom, the California governor, and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, have both vowed opposition. Pritzker recently told journalists: “If you come for my people, you come through me.”In a separate Fox News interview at the weekend, Homan said the incoming administration would respond to blocking tactics by withholding federal funding from non-compliant cities and states.“That’s going to happen, I guarantee you,” he told the network’s Mark Levin. More

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      in Elections

      Owners of Colorado Funeral Home Admit to Abusing Nearly 200 Corpses

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      Jon and Carie Hallford pleaded guilty to corpse abuse after dozens of decaying bodies were found at their funeral home.A couple who owned a funeral home at two locations in Colorado pleaded guilty on Friday to multiple counts of corpse abuse, more than a year after 191 bodies were found decaying at their businesses in a horrific scene, the authorities said.The couple, Jon and Carie Hallford, operated the Return to Nature Funeral Home in Colorado Springs and Penrose, Colo.They agreed to facing 15 to 20 years in prison after they each pleaded guilty in El Paso County Court to 191 felony counts of abuse of a corpse, Michael Allen, the district attorney for the 4th Judicial District of Colorado, said at a news conference.The Hallfords are scheduled to be sentenced in April.Return to Nature advertised to families that their loved ones would be given green burials that included the use of biodegradable caskets, baskets or shrouds.But when a foul odor led investigators to the Penrose location, they found at least 190 improperly stored corpses at the Hallfords’ funeral home in Penrose and Colorado Springs in October last year. They were arrested in November.“The impact on these family members has been immense,” Mr. Allen said.He added that the Hallfords deceived grieving families and that “having somebody violate that trust is something that they’ll likely never recover from.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      in US Politics

      Denver mayor says he will urge protests against Trump’s mass deportations

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      Denver’s Democratic mayor, Mike Johnston, has said he will encourage people to protest mass immigrant deportations planned by the president-elect Donald Trump in Colorado, as civic leaders in “sanctuary cities” begin to plan their response to the threat.In an interview with Denver’s channel 9, Johnston, 50, said he is willing to go to jail to stop any deportation efforts. Denver’s neighboring city of Aurora has been a focus of the debate over migration after three apartment complexes were allegedly taken over by the Venezuelan prison gang Tren de Aragua.In comments, Aurora city council member Danielle Jurinsky, a Republican, said she had spoken with Trump’s transition team about “Operation Aurora” and warned city leaders that “I hope that we are taking this seriously. This is coming.”Metropolitan areas, including Denver, New York and Los Angeles, have offered mixed responses to Trump’s promise to deport a vast number of immigrants who are in the US illegally. “Sanctuary city” laws typically forbid city employees and resources from being involved in federal immigration enforcement.On Friday, Tom Homan, Trump’s incoming “border czar”, vowed to send “twice as many” Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) agents to Los Angeles to enact mass deportations. LA city council members have warned that Los Angeles will not be collaborating.In New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has said the city has always welcomed immigrants and that law-abiding immigrants and families will be protected, but said that the current immigrant crisis had cost the city billions of dollars, and the federal government had not assisted it in dealing with the influx, estimated at more than 200,000 people.“I’m not allowed to let them work [legally],” Adams said. “I’m not allowed to get them to participate in our tax system.”But Denver’s Johnston walked back comments that he had made earlier this week to Denverite about sending police officers to the county line to stop federal agencies from entering the city.“It’s like the Tiananmen Square moment with the rose and the gun, right? You’d have every one of those Highland moms who came out for the migrants. And you do not want to mess with them,” he said.In the subsequent interview, he said he regretted using the Tiananmen Square image, from 1989, of a man blocking a tank during pro-democracy protests.“Would I have taken it back if I could? Yes, I probably wouldn’t have used that image,” Johnston said. “That’s the image I hope we can avoid. What I was trying to say is this is an outcome I hope we can avoid in this country. I think none of us want that.”Johnston added that his willingness to go to jail over the issue was real.“I would if I believed that our residents are having their rights violated,” he said. “I think things are happening that are illegal or immoral or un-American in our city, I would certainly protest it, and I would expect other residents would do the same.”The mayor also said he would encourage people to protest and that he is not opposed to all deportations – a line that other sanctuary city mayors have also sought to draw – including deportations for violent criminals.“We think if you are a violent criminal that is committing serious crimes like murder or rape in Denver, you should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and you should be deported,” he said. More

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      in US Politics

      Democratic leaders across US work to lead resistance against Trump’s agenda

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      After the November elections ushered in a new era of unified Republican governance in Washington, Democratic leaders across the country are once again preparing to lead the resistance to Donald Trump’s second-term agenda.California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, said he would convene a special legislative session next month to “safeguard California values and fundamental rights”.Washington state’s governor-elect, Bob Ferguson, who is currently the state’s attorney general, said his legal team has been preparing for months for the possibility of a second Trump term – an endeavor that included a “line-by-line” review of Project 2025, the 900+ page policy blueprint drafted by the president-elect’s conservative allies.And the governors of Illinois and Colorado this week unveiled a new coalition designed to protect state-level institutions against the threat of authoritarianism, as the nation prepares for a president who has vowed to seek retribution against his political enemies and to only govern as a dictator on “day one”.“We know that simple hope alone won’t save our democracy,” the Colorado governor, Jared Polis, said on a conference call announcing the group, called Governors Safeguarding Democracy. “We need to work together, especially at the state level, to protect and strengthen it.”With Democrats locked out of control in Washington, many in the party will turn to blue state leaders – governors, attorneys general and mayors – as a bulwark against a second Trump administration. For these ambitious Democrats, it is also an opportunity to step into the leadership void left by Kamala Harris’s defeat.Progressives such as Newsom and the Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, are viewed as potential presidential contenders in 2028, while Democratic governors in states that voted for Trump such as Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania, Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan are seen as models for how the party can begin to rebuild their coalition. And Tim Walz, Harris’s vice-presidential running mate, returned home to Minnesota with a national profile and two years left of his gubernatorial term.Leaders of the nascent blue state resistance are pre-emptively “Trump-proofing” against a conservative governing agenda, which they have cast as a threat to the values and safety of their constituents. As a candidate, Trump promised to carry out the “largest deportation operation in American history”. In statements and public remarks, several Democrats say they fear the Trump administration will seek to limit access to medication abortion or seek to undermine efforts to provide reproductive care to women from states with abortion bans. They also anticipate actions by the Trump administration to roll back environmental regulations and expand gun rights.“To anyone who intends to come take away the freedom, opportunity and dignity of Illinoisans, I would remind you that a happy warrior is still a warrior. You come for my people – you come through me,” Pritzker said last week.Unlike in 2016, when Trump’s victory shocked the nation, blue state leaders say they have a tested – and updated – playbook to draw upon. But they also acknowledge that Trump 2.0 may present new and more difficult challenges.Ferguson said Trump’s first-term executive actions were “often sloppy”, which created an opening for states to successfully challenge them in court. Eight years later, and after studying Project 2025 and Trump’s Agenda 47, he anticipates the next Trump White House will be “better prepared” this time around.Pritzker said Trump was surrounding himself with “absolute loyalists to his cult of personality and not necessarily to the law”. “Last time, he didn’t really know where the levers of government were,” the governor said on a call with reporters this week. “I think he probably does now.”The courts have also become more conservative than they were when Trump took office eight years ago, a direct result of his first-term appointments to the federal bench, which included many powerful federal appeals court judges and three supreme court justices.The political landscape has also changed. In 2016, Trump won the electoral college but lost the popular vote. Despite Republican control of Congress, there were a number of Trump skeptics willing – at least initially – to buck the president during his first two years in office.This time around, Trump is all but certain to win the popular vote, and he made surprising gains in some of the bluest corners of the country.Though the former president came nowhere close to winning his home state of New York, he made significant inroads, especially on Long Island. At a post-election conference last week, New York’s Democratic governor, Kathy Hochul, struck a more neutral tone. Hochul, who faces a potentially tough re-election in 2026, vowed to protect constituents against federal overreach, while declaring that she was prepared to work with “him or anybody regardless of party”.In New Jersey, where Trump narrowed his loss from 16 percentage points in 2020 to five percentage points in 2024, the Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, acknowledged the result was a “sobering moment” for the party and country. Outlining his approach to the incoming administration, Murphy said: “If it’s contrary to our values, we will fight to the death. If there’s an opportunity for common ground, we will seize that as fast as anybody.”Progressives and activists say they are looking to Democratic leaders to lead the charge against Trump’s most extreme proposals, particularly on immigration.“Trump may be re-elected but he does not have a mandate to come into and rip apart our communities,” said Greisa Martínez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream Action, a network of groups that advocate for young people brought to the US as children, known as Dreamers.She called on state and local officials, as well as university heads and business leaders, to “use every tool at their disposal” to resist Trump’s mass deportation campaign, stressing: “There is a lot we can do to ensure Trump and his cabinet are not successful in their plans.”State attorneys general are again poised to play a pivotal role in curbing the next administration’s policy ambitions.“The quantity of litigation since the first Trump administration has been really off the charts – it’s at a new level,” said Paul Nolette, a political scientist at Marquette University in Wisconsin. “I fully expect that to continue in Trump 2.0.”There were 160 multi-state filings against the Trump administration during his four years in office, twice as many as were filed against Barack Obama during his entire eight-year presidency, according to a database maintained by Nolette.Many of the Democratic lawsuits succeeded – at least initially – in delaying or striking down Trump administration policies or regulations, Nolette said. Attorneys general can also leverage their state’s influence and economic power by entering legal settlements with companies. States have used this approach in the past to “advance their own regulatory goals”, Nolette said, for example, forcing the auto industry to adopt stricter environmental regulations.In a proclamation calling for a special session next month, Newsom asked the legislature to bolster the state’s legal funding to challenge – and defend California against – the Trump administration. Among his concerns, the California Democrat identified civil rights, climate action, LGBTQ+ rights, reproductive rights, as well as Trump’s threats to withhold disaster funding from the state and the potential for his administration to repeal protections shielding undocumented immigrants brought to the country as children from deportation.Trump responded on Truth Social, using a derisive nickname for the Democratic governor: “Governor Gavin Newscum is trying to KILL our Nation’s beautiful California. He is using the term ‘Trump-Proof’ as a way of stopping all of the GREAT things that can be done to ‘Make California Great Again,’ but I just overwhelmingly won the Election.”Democratic leaders in battleground states that Trump won are also calibrating their responses – and not all are eager to join the resistance.“I don’t think that’s the most productive way to govern Arizona,” the state’s Democratic governor, Katie Hobbs, told reporters this week, according to the Arizona Capitol Times. Hobbs, who faces a potentially difficult re-election fight in 2026, said she would “stand up against actions that hurt our communities” but declined to say how she would respond if Trump sought to deport Dreamers or to nationalize the Arizona national guard as part of his mass deportation campaign.The state’s Democratic attorney general, Kris Mayes, who also faces re-election in two years, drew a harder line against Trump, vowing to fight “unconstitutional behavior” and protect abortion access, according to Axios. In an interview on MSNBC, Mayes said she had “no intention” of dropping the criminal case against allies of the former president who attempted to help Trump overturn Biden’s victory in the state.Yet she insisted there would be areas of common ground. She urged Trump to revive a bipartisan border deal that he had previously tanked and called on the next administration to send more federal resources and agents to help combat the flow of fentanyl into the US.With Democrats locked out of power in Washington, the new Indivisible Guide, a manual developed by former Democratic congressional staffers after Trump’s election in 2016 and recently updated to confront a new era of Maga politics, envisions a major role for blue states.“Over the next two years, your Democratic elected officials will make choices every single day about whether to stand up to Maga or whether to go along with it,” the Indivisible guide states. “Your spirited, determined advocacy will ensure that the good ones know they’ve got a movement behind them as they fight back – and the bad ones know they’re on notice.”Among the examples of actions blue state activists can demand their leaders consider, it suggests establishing protections for out-of-state residents seeking abortion access or gender-affirming care; refusing to cooperate with federal immigration enforcement and forging regional compacts to safeguard environmental initiatives, data privacy and healthcare.Democratic leaders at every level and across the country – even those in purple or red states – can serve as “backstops for protecting the democratic space”, said Mary Small, chief strategy officer at Indivisible.“The important things are to be proactive and bold, to be innovative and to work with each other,” she said. “I don’t think everybody has to have all of the answers right now, but to have that intention and that commitment and to not shrink down in anticipation of a more oppressive federal government.” More

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      in Elections

      Evans Defeats Caraveo in Colorado, Flipping a Key House Seat for the G.O.P.

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      Representative Yadira Caraveo, Democrat of Colorado, lost her first re-election battle to her Republican challenger, Gabe Evans, a state representative, former Army captain and police officer with ties to the far right, The Associated Press declared on Tuesday, handing the G.O.P. a key pickup as it closes in on retaining its House majority.Mr. Evans’s win puts Republicans just two seats shy of the majority, with about a dozen races left to be called.A moderate Democrat, Ms. Caraveo kept a relatively low profile after winning her seat two years ago in a new swing district north of Denver. Her campaign heavily emphasized Ms. Caraveo’s background as a pediatrician and the daughter of Mexican immigrants, highlighting how her stances on reproductive rights and access to health care contrasted starkly with her opponent’s.She was Colorado’s first Latina elected to federal office.Mr. Evans, who has refused to say that former President Donald J. Trump lost the 2020 election and also downplayed the severity of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, was one of several election deniers and skeptics who sought to flip tossup districts.He also backpedaled his stance on abortion, saying in a recent debate that he would no longer support a national ban after endorsing one in 2022. As a state representative, he voted against a ban on corporal punishment in Colorado public schools, and refused to say during a debate with Ms. Caraveo when he believed it would be appropriate for a teacher to strike a child. More