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      The other New York: how Republicans made ‘shocking’ gains in the empire state

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      The other New York: how Republicans made ‘shocking’ gains in the empire state The GOP made surprise gains in immigrant enclaves in Brooklyn, as Republicans slammed Democrats as ‘soft on crime’When political pundits predicted a national “red wave” in the midterm elections, they never imagined that one of the few areas it would actually surface would be southern Brooklyn, New York.They weren’t imagining Sunset Park, a working-class area where nearly three in four residents are people of color: a tight-knit Mexican community on its west side and a fast-growing Chinese community to the east, with plenty of mouth-watering taquerias and hand-pulled noodle joints. At the park, when it’s nice out, Latin dance music intermingles with old Mandarin pop songs until the sun goes down.Or Bensonhurst, further south, where old-school pizza joints have been replaced by boba shops and Asian vegetable stalls, drawing shoppers with pushcarts under a clattering overhead train.But it was in immigrant enclaves like these that Republicans overperformed by as many as 30 points compared with four years ago, building on steady rightward trends in nearby Russian and Orthodox Jewish communities. Altogether, the GOP racked up enough votes to flip three state assembly seats in southern Brooklyn and push candidate Lee Zeldin within six points of the governor’s mansion, the best performance for a Republican in 28 years, stunning the state’s political elites.Among those surprised was Joe Borelli, a 40-year-old rightwing city councilman and longtime Trump ally from Staten Island. “It was hard for me, even as a student of politics, to compute that we could flip some of these districts,” Borelli told me. “It was shocking to me how far we’ve actually gone in engaging some of those voters.”Statewide polls found midterm elections voters ranked crime as the most urgent issue, and southern Brooklyn has been no exception. Crime statistics paint a more complicated picture. Like in the rest of the country, homicide rates in New York have ticked up since the pandemic. They also remain at historic lows for the city – on par today with the homicide rates in American suburbs.But media coverage of New York’s crime has swelled dramatically. In July, a Bloomberg report found local tabloids like the New York Post mentioned violent crime six times more often after the election of the city’s cop-turned-mayor Eric Adams, a Democrat who has also made violent crime a focus of his speeches.So it seemed to confirm the trend in April when a gunman opened fire on passengers in a subway car in Sunset Park, injuring 10 people and grabbing global headlines. The 62-year-old shooter was captured the next day, but it shook the neighborhood – particularly Chinese American residents, already on edge over a pandemic-era surge in reported assaults against Asian Americans.Whether accurate or not, the narrative of New York City spiraling into violent chaos seems to have played in Republicans’ favor. Top Democrats have been stuck in a debate over how to respond: Adams has ordered more policing while blaming violent crime on bail reform – a progressive policy backed by Governor Kathy Hochul – which state data shows hasn’t increased recidivism. The confusion has presented an opportunity for Republicans like Adams’ challenger, Curtis Sliwa, and Hochul’s opponent, Lee Zeldin, who have slammed Democrats as “soft on crime” and called loudly for the harsher treatment of suspected offenders. And they’ve taken that pitch directly to immigrant neighborhoods in southern Brooklyn, drawing large rallies of enthusiastic new supporters.That includes Yiatin Chu. At a Bensonhurst coffee shop called Cafe Gossip, Chu, a 55-year-old political activist, tells me how she was a liberal who went through a conservative awakening in the last few years. She says Asian immigrants have long been goaded into voting Democratic by non-profit social services, but in recent years voters like her have grown wrathful over bail reform, along with moves by Adams’ Democratic predecessor, Bill de Blasio, to open new homeless shelters and a high-rise jail in Chinatown. She’s even angrier over his proposal to end an admissions test that has enabled Asian American students to dominate the city’s top high schools. “It’s about self-interest and self-interest of your family, self-interest of your community,” Chu said. And the Republican party “is at the very least paying attention to us and talking to us”.This year, Chu founded a political club called Asian Wave, which in November instructed thousands of voters through the Chinese messaging app WeChat to vote for Republicans down the line. One of them was a virtually unknown candidate named Lester Chang, who ended up toppling Peter Abbate, a Democratic state assemblyman who has represented Sunset Park and surrounding neighborhoods since 1987. Chang, a former navy officer and longtime Chinatown resident, had run two failed races in Manhattan before switching to run in Brooklyn this year. “Manhattan is solidly blue,” he said. “So I tried here in Brooklyn because I saw I had a chance.” He claims to have spent just $25,000 on his victory – buoyed by teams of enthusiastic Chinese American volunteers.Chang, who is 61, says he won by knocking on doors and asking voters if they felt better off than two years ago. “The theme is anger, simple anger, especially for crime,” he tells me. “They don’t feel safe anymore, especially going to the subway.” To fix that, Chang wants to build a “transition center” to house homeless people next to the city’s notoriously unsafe prison on Rikers Island, where 14 detainees have died this year. Chang also wants to deploy a “minimum of 3,000 national guard soldiers to guard every single subway station, platform, cars and buses, carrying long and small guns”, which he likens approvingly to the militarized cops in China.“Everyone I talk to,” he says, emphasizing each word: “They. Love. That. Idea.”For years, social scientists have found the perception of crime is influenced by consuming negative news, and that perceptions of crime influence one’s sense of safety more than actual crime. That could help explain why the Republican narratives found traction this year in the areas just outside of New York City – where violent crime is rare, but urban chaos can feel frighteningly close. As Staten Island’s Borelli puts it: “Every household in my district has at least one person who commutes to another borough for work. And they see and witness the degradation of a lot of the general sense of order that New York had just three years ago.”How a five-term New York Democrat lost a House seat to a RepublicanRead moreIn the Hudson Valley, known for its quaint colonial hamlets an hour north of the city, the Republican Mike Lawler ousted Sean Patrick Maloney after months of hammering the Democrats’ congressional campaign chair over bail reform, in one of the biggest political upsets of the year. Attacks on crime also helped Republicans flip two congressional seats in Long Island, the wealthy suburb directly to New York City’s east.The GOP also made gains in Staten Island, New York City’s whitest borough. Connected to southern Brooklyn by the Verrazano Bridge and Manhattan by only a ferry, Staten Island is a suburb where most own their homes and drive cars, unlike the renters and strap-hangers who fill the rest of the city. Instead of a compact city grid, Staten Island has sparse, rolling boulevards lined with ranch homes, Victorian mansions, and American flags. Republicans flipped one of the few Democratic state assembly districts here in November, electing a Republican known for erecting a giant pro-Trump statue on his mansion’s front lawn.But Borelli is even more excited by the Republican surge in southern Brooklyn, which he says is proof the party can hold its own in urban neighborhoods. That could have big implications in battleground states like Pennsylvania, where residents are concentrated in left-leaning Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. “We don’t have to win the vote in every city, but we can lessen the margins in the city to be more competitive statewide. And this should be the plan for the Republican party going forward.”The real test may be a neighborhood called Bay Ridge. Here at the end of the R subway line, just south of Sunset Park, you won’t find trendy lofts or cramped tenement buildings but neat limestone row houses and single-family homes. The area still carries an old reputation as a conservative white enclave; that’s been challenged in recent years by an influx of Arab, Asian and Latino immigrants, as well as millennials seeking cheaper rent. Now, bars aimed at Irish retirees share streets with Palestinian cafes full of diverse young people. In recent elections, votes have split almost evenly between the left and right, creating tension over the neighborhood’s political identity.Tanya, a white resident in her 30s who calls herself a “pragmatic leftist”, says she fell in love with Bay Ridge’s small-town feel when she moved in 10 years ago, but in recent years the conservatism has become “pretty in your face”. “Thin blue line flags, ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ banners, Maga hats, Trump 2024 posters can be seen around the neighborhood. There’s a house that has a big inflatable Santa in military fatigues every Christmas season, and another plays the national anthem off their balcony at the same time every day.” Last week, she says, some people set up a booth outside the grocery store promoting rightwing conspiracy theories. “I walked by them as fast as I could and didn’t engage. You can’t reach those people.”C, a progressive-leaning Bay Ridge homeowner in his 40s who asked not to use his full name, said that the neighborhood was filled with “old guard south Brooklynites” who “feel like they’re being forced out” by newer immigrants of color. These residents “don’t think they’re racists and are often kind and charitable people. But since I’m white they think they can tell me at the bar how ‘lack of education and role models lead Blacks into crime’, or how when we moved in they were ‘glad we weren’t Arab, Asian, or Mexican because they’re ruining the neighborhood’.”Bay Ridge’s liberal people of color mostly avoid confrontation. Chris Live, a 43-year-old left-leaning Black and Puerto Rican resident who grew up in the Afro-Caribbean neighborhood of Flatbush, tells me his friends warned him against moving to Bay Ridge 10 years ago. But he says he feels secure here: “People know you and tend to look out for each other.” He doesn’t take the conservativism personally. “If I walk into a bar and I see somebody with a Maga hat on, if that’s the only seat in the building, I’m sitting next to him, but I’m not going to engage.” Once, he encountered a drunk man in a corner store who made a racist joke using the N-word. “I’m pissed, but I just walked out,” Live says. “I thought, ‘This guy’s out of his mind. He doesn’t represent this neighborhood to me.’”How do you represent the neighborhood? The Democratic city councilman Justin Brannan, a 44-year-old former punk guitarist, says the divisions didn’t feel nearly as stark when he founded the Bay Ridge Democrats in 2012. “I was surrounded by Republican elected officials. We didn’t agree on much of anything, but we weren’t at each other’s throats and shit.” Trump’s election changed that: “It gave everyone this false license to be a complete asshole, and the national climate seeped into the local conversation. Now I can’t talk about how I got a pothole filled for Mrs O’Leary without someone spitting in my face about George Soros and Hillary’s fucking laptop or whatever. And it’s really sad that demagogues can turn people into enemies, when we’re not enemies.”‘I voted Democrat for the first time’: Guardian readers on the US midtermsRead moreBrannan – who signs his emails “Love all, serve all” – knows he may not be able to persuade Bay Ridge’s longtime rightwingers. But he and other local Democrats are worried about how newer arrivals might swing. The state senator Andrew Gounardes, a Bay Ridge Democrat narrowly elected in 2018, says he and Brannan have been “sounding the alarm for years” about southern Brooklyn’s rising conservatism. “In particular, we’ve been saying that the Democratic party needs to be investing more in connecting with and relating to Asian voters, who make up a growing population in southern Brooklyn. So it’s not a surprise that the day after the election, you see a sea of red, because the other party was the only party talking to these people.”To succeed in southern Brooklyn, they argue, Democrats should listen to immigrants, not deny their anxieties about safety. “No victim of a crime or witness to a crime wants to hear about statistics and data that says crime is low,” Brannan says. Instead, he suggests, Democrats should advocate for policing that treats communities of color “with dignity and respect” and emphasize rebuilding communities’ social safety nets, which were “blown wide open” by the pandemic. (As the city council’s finance chair, Brannan notes, he has helped Bay Ridge build four new public schools, and there’s a new hospital on the way.)The councilman points to other signs of progressive change, like Gay Ridge, a queer neighborhood organization formed by residents in 2019. This year, Gay Ridge hosted its first Pride event, which drew more than 1,000 attendees from across the city. The group has organized mutual aid efforts, game nights, and park cleanups – and is hoping to turn a strip of vacant storefronts near Bay Ridge’s Pier 69 into a queer business district they’re nicknaming “Gay Ridge Ave”.McKenzie Keating, a 49-year-old organizer who came out as trans three years ago after living in Bay Ridge for nine years, believes visibility is a kind of safety. “I love walking up and down Third Avenue. Even if it starts off in a negative place, people seeing me every day – with my partner, with my kid, with my groceries – when shit does go down, when they’re in that voting booth, hopefully they’ll say, ‘OK, who do I see as my neighbor? And I’m going to vote for their safety.”In the wake of the election, Sunset Park feels a little quieter. The temperatures have dipped, and outside the Chinese beauty stores and bakeries, Lee Zeldin signs have been chucked in the trash. So has a banner with big Chinese characters that reads: “If you don’t vote, don’t complain.”Despite the red wave here, Chu says her side remains the underdog. “No matter how strong the Chinese community, even if we were to get a dozen people elected among the state assembly and city council, that’s still a small, small portion. So unless we also get the attention of the non-Asian electeds, we’re not going to be able to affect policy.” It’s a point Lester Chang nods to as well when he tells me that his victory has made him “the highest-ranking elected Asian Republican in the state”. As a minority in the minority, he says, “the best I can do is be a squeaky wheel for my constituents and get those Democrats to come along with us and get things solved”.If there’s a part of New York where bipartisanship can work, maybe it’s southern Brooklyn. That’s what Chris Live tells me as we’re chatting on a windy afternoon outside his Bay Ridge home. In spite of the political tensions, it’s a great place, he keeps saying: “It feels like one of the last true neighborhoods, where, you know, your neighbors bring you food.” He adds that I should consider moving here.“My rent is good. It’s a friendly neighborhood, it’s a safe neighborhood, and I don’t attribute that to any political party. We have a lot of parks. A great view of the Verrazzano Bridge. And as long as the red wave didn’t turn into a red curtain, I’d be fine here for the foreseeable future.”TopicsNew YorkUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More

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      Iowa Republicans threaten to move caucuses if Democrats change schedule

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      Iowa Republicans threaten to move caucuses if Democrats change scheduleParty chair says ‘I’ll move this thing to Halloween if that’s what it takes’ amid suggestion Democrats may go to Michigan first Few in the US would suggest that the presidential election process should last even longer than it already does, but that is exactly what may happen if Republicans in Iowa follow through with a recent threat.Where was Ivanka when Donald launched his campaign? Looking after number one | Arwa MahdawiRead moreIn an interview this week with NBC News, Iowa’s Republican party chair said he would be prepared to move the state’s caucuses – the process Iowa uses to identify its preferred presidential candidate – “to Halloween” should Democrats shake up their primary schedule.Iowa has long been the first state in the nation to cast its vote in the Republican and Democratic presidential primary processes, but Democrats are exploring the idea of holding their first ballot elsewhere in 2024.Clamor has been growing in the party for a different state, with a population more representative of the US as a whole, to be given the first go, with Democratic officials in Michigan, in particular, pushing for the state to be moved up in the primary calendar.Earlier this year, the Democratic National Committee made changes to its primary process, which could allow states other than Iowa and New Hampshire, the two states which have voted first since 1972, to kick off the ballot.The potential usurping of Iowa has left Republicans in the state furious.“This is the Democrats that are pulling this crap and I’m telling you right now, they don’t want to play chicken with me. This is pure, progressive, power politics,” Jeff Kaufmann, the chair of the Iowa GOP, told NBC News.“If, for some reason, California and New York dictate policy for the entire DNC and they give the middle finger to Iowa and the midwest – if that happens, we will be first,” Kaufmann said.“I’ll move this thing to Halloween if that’s what it takes.”Given the first vote is usually held in January, Kaufmann’s threat has the appearance of hyperbole, yet since Kaufmann also heads the national Republican committee, as NBC reported, that oversees its presidential schedule, he would potentially have scope to change the date of the Iowa caucuses.After changing its rules in April, in July the DNC postponed a vote on whether Iowa and New Hampshire should continue to be the first states in the calendar. According to US census data, 84% of Iowans identify as “white alone, not Hispanic or Latino”, and 89% identify the same way in New Hampshire. Nationwide, 59% of Americans identify as “white alone”, according to the census.The Michigan primary was held on 10 March in 2020, by which time only three candidates – Joe Biden, Bernie Sanders and Tulsi Gabbard, remained in the race. Biden won the Michigan primary convincingly, and carried the state in the presidential election.Democrats in Michigan have since been lobbying to be moved forward in the calendar, and that case was strengthened by results there in the midterms. Democrats gained control of the state house and senate for the first time in 40 years, and Gretchen Whitmer retained the governorship.Going first in the primaries brings prestige and exposure, with TV channels and newspapers providing daily updates from early states for weeks, and also brings a financial boost in the depths of winter. The Daily Iowan reported that campaigns spent $7.2m in Iowa in January 2020 alone – 14.7% of the state’s entire gross domestic product for that month.TopicsDemocratsRepublicansUS politicsUS elections 2024newsReuse this content More

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      Democrats issue fresh calls for assault weapons ban after shooting tragedies

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      Democrats issue fresh calls for assault weapons ban after shooting tragediesQuestions also raised about the funding of law enforcement agencies in places that refuse to enforce so-called red flag laws Gun control returned as a leading topic over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, with Joe Biden and other prominent Democrats issuing fresh calls for a ban on assault weapons for the general public.At the same time, questions were raised about the funding of law enforcement agencies in places that refuse to enforce so-called red flag laws, after shooting tragedies in Virginia and Colorado in the last two weeks.“If you passed an assault weapons ban you would see less mass shootings in this country,” Connecticut’s Democratic US Senator and leading gun control advocate, Chris Murphy, said on Sunday.He added: “You are not going to magically eliminate mass-shootings, but an AR-15, or AR-15 style weapon, is generally the choice of mass shooters.”Such a military-style rifle was used in the shooting at an LGBTQ night club in Colorado last weekend, although different firearms were used in the shootings of University of Virginia football team players earlier in the month and at a Walmart store, also in Virginia, two days before Thanksgiving, in a tragic spate of violence.‘It’s the guns’: violent week in a deadly year prompts familiar US responsesRead moreThe Democrat lawmaker pointed to a “dramatic decline” in mass-shootings after the decade-long assault weapons ban passed in 1994. “It wasn’t until the expiration date of the ban that we started to see mass shootings spiral up”.With Biden returning to the White House on Sunday afternoon after spending the Thanksgiving break with his family in Nantucket, the gun issue returned to prominence.On Thursday’s Thanksgiving day itself, Biden spoke about the “scourge” of gun violence, saying he wants to sign into law a ban on high-powered guns that have the capacity to kill many people quickly.“The idea we still allow semi-automatic weapons to be purchased is sick. Just sick,” Biden said. “I’m going to try to get rid of assault weapons.”The Democratic-led House passed legislation in July to revive the 1990s-era ban on assault weapons, following the passage of a landmark bipartisan bill on guns, strengthening background checks and red flag laws, which allow authorities to remove firearms from those posing a danger.Colorado Springs shooter had allegedly threatened his mother with a bomb. Why could he still get a gun?Read moreBut the legislation is going nowhere in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes to pass and Democrats lack Republican support.House majority whip Jim Clyburn admitted that an assault weapons ban and other gun restrictions would not get through Congress, even in the lame duck session while Democrats still control the House, but that did not mean it was not worth pursuing.“Just because it’s legal [to buy a gun] doesn’t mean it’s the right thing. Slavery was legal but it was not right,” he said.Murphy, who has been the Senate’s leading advocate for stronger gun control since at a school in Newtown, Connecticut in 2012, also told CNN on Sunday that one avenue Democrats might pursue is to restrict federal funding for law enforcement in counties that declare themselves gun sanctuaries.“We learned in Colorado that the county in which the shooting happened was a so-called second amendment sanctuary state,” Murphy said. “The majority of counties in this country have declared that they’re not going enforce state and federal gun laws.”“It’s a growing problem in the country and we’re going to have to have a conversation about that in the Senate. Do we want to to continue to supply funding to law enforcement in counties that refuse to implement state and federal gun laws?”Red flag laws, Murphy added, had proved wildly popular across the county but “we have to do something” about the refusal by 60% of counties to enforce gun control laws.On NBC, Kentucky Republican congressman James Comer said in respect of any additional gun regulations: “We already have many gun laws on the books … the number one priority with respect to crime in America for Republicans is going to be the fentanyl crisis” with respect to the traffic in illicit drugs across the US-Mexico border.NBC’s Meet the Press host, Chuck Todd, noted to Comer that “the states that have the most gun [control] laws have the least amount of per capita gun crime, and the states with the least amount of gun laws seem to have the most … so there is a correlation here, if you have more gun-related laws on the books as a state you have … fewer gun-related deaths. That’s been proven statistically.”Comer responded that in rural America most households had guns and “there aren’t a lot of crimes” because criminals know people are armed.TopicsUS gun controlColoradoUS politicsJoe BidenDemocratsnewsReuse this content More

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      Uniting America review: how FDR and the GOP beat fascism home and away

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      Uniting America review: how FDR and the GOP beat fascism home and away Charles Lindbergh casts a shadow over Peter Shinkle’s new book, which ends with a warning about Trump and his partyThe subtitle of this remarkable popular history is “How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans together to Win World War II”, Stimson being the Republican Franklin Roosevelt chose as secretary of war on 19 June 1940, the same day he chose another Republican, Frank Knox, for secretary of the navy.‘It’s on the tape’: Bob Woodward on Donald Trump’s ‘criminal behavior’Read moreThose appointments came five weeks after the king asked Winston Churchill to form a unity government in Great Britain, two weeks after 338,000 French and British troops were rescued at Dunkirk, and four weeks before Roosevelt was nominated for an unprecedented third term, all events featured in this compelling volume.But Peter Shinkle’s book is a great deal more than a celebration of the bipartisanship that was a key factor in American success. It also offers brisk accounts of all US campaigns in Africa and Europe, a detailed description of how Pearl Harbor happened, and the best explanation I have read of why the government pursued its disastrous policy of interning Japanese Americans.Besides all that, there is terrific social history of the ways the war changed the status of women and African Americans. Practically the only important social impact Shinkle omits is the war’s effects on gay and lesbian Americans, a subject covered best by Allan Bérubé’s definitive book, Coming Out Under Fire.Shinkle is a veteran reporter who has written another fine book, Ike’s Mystery Man, about Robert Cutler, the closeted gay man who was Dwight Eisenhower’s right-hand man for foreign policy in the White House. That book also combined political and social history. But his new volume is broader and more important.There are probably more books written about the second world war than any other 20th-century event, but every generation needs to be reminded of its triumphs and tragedies. Shinkle does a splendid job mining for new nuggets of information and fresh perspectives.There are two big reasons for focusing on Stimson. Not only did he play a vital role in practically every important military decision from 1940 to 1945, he also kept an extremely detailed diary, which makes it possible for Shinkle to tell us exactly what he was thinking.Besides canny portraits of Roosevelt, Stimson and George Marshall, the first chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, there are a host of subsidiary characters. The first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, and Black activist A Philip Randolph are two of the most important heroes while Charles Lindbergh, the celebrated solo pilot to Paris who became a fierce isolationist and a virulent antisemite, is one of its principal villains.There has been a raging debate for decades about how the surprise Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor came about, and whether Roosevelt and his aides ignored information from Japanese diplomatic cables because they wanted to bring America into the war.It turns out almost all of the answers are in Simpson’s diary, including this key sentence: “The question was how we should maneuver [the Japanese] into the position of firing the first shot, without allowing too much danger to ourselves.”One of the biggest problems Roosevelt faced in 1940 and 1941 was how to counter isolationists like Lindbergh, whose affection for the Nazis and hatred for the Jews made him as popular in some quarters as he was despised in others.Before Congress, Lindbergh denounced the bill that gave Britain resources to survive the Blitz. There was much he didn’t like in the world, but “over a period of years [on both sides] there is not as much difference in philosophy as we have been led to believe”. After the House approved the extension of the draft by a single vote, Lindbergh declared “the greatest danger to this country” posed by its Jewish citizens “lies in their large ownership and influence in our motion pictures, our press, our radio and our government”.While Roosevelt’s White House denounced that speech for resembling “the outpourings of Berlin”, former president Herbert Hoover “readily defended Lindbergh, a sign of the enduring political power of both the aviator and isolationism”.That power of these isolationists explains why Stimson did not record “shock, horror or anger” after Roosevelt informed him of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Instead, he wrote, “my first feeling was of relief that the indecision was over and that a crisis had come in a way which would unite our people … For I feel this country united has practically nothing to fear while the apathy and visions stirred up by unpatriotic men have been hitherto very discouraging.”Roosevelt refused to desegregate the armed forces, largely for fear of alienating southern Democrats. But Shinkle reminds us that Roosevelt’s civil rights record was much more complicated than that failure suggests.Ike’s Mystery Man review: astonishing tale of a gay White House aideRead moreRandolph, who was president of the first important Black union, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, used the threat of a March on Washington by 100,000 citizens to pressure Roosevelt into signing a landmark executive order prohibiting discrimination and segregation by military contractors. One activist wrote that the Fair Employment Practice Committee Roosevelt impaneled led to “more progress” against “racial and religious discrimination than [in] any other period in American history”.Three million women were employed in the defense industry by the end of 1942, as well as new divisions of the army, navy and coast guard, similarly transforming their status.Jacqueline Cochran commanded the Women Airforce Service Pilots, which graduated 1,100 women training inspectors and test pilots. “Menstrual cycles didn’t upset anyone’s cycle,” Cochran wrote. Women flew “as regularly and for as many hours as the men”.Shinkle ends with all the ways history is repeating itself today, including a description of “Trump’s fascism”. The resurgence of that hateful ideology, and the budding isolationism of many Republicans eager to end support for Ukraine, are two reasons why this vivid volume is so timely and important.
      Uniting America: How FDR and Henry Stimson Brought Democrats and Republicans together to Win World War II is published in the US by St Martin’s Press
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      What can Democrats push through Congress in the lame-duck session?

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      AnalysisWhat can Democrats push through Congress in the lame-duck session?Lauren Gambinoin WashingtonLegislation on the debt ceiling, civil liberties and elections is still possible before Republican House majority kicks in As a new era of divided government looms in the US, Democrats are rushing to complete a lengthy legislative to-do list that includes landmark civil liberties legislation, a routine but critical spending package and a bill to prevent another January 6.Trump is now effectively in control of the US House of Representatives | Sidney BlumenthalRead moreThere are only a handful of working days left before the balance of power in Congress shifts and Democrats’ unified control of government in Washington ends. In January, Republicans will claim the gavel in the House, giving them veto power over much of Joe Biden’s agenda.Meanwhile, Democrats will retain – and possibly expand, depending on the outcome of a runoff election in Georgia – their majority in the Senate, allowing them to continue confirming Biden’s judicial and administrative nominees.With a narrowing window to act, Democrats intend to use the end-of-year “lame duck” session to leave a legislative mark while they still control all the levers of power in Washington. But they are also under mounting pressure to act to raise the statutory debt limit, staving off a partisan showdown next year that many fear could lead to economic calamity.“We are going to try to have as productive a lame-duck session as possible,” the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, said at a post-election press conference. “It’s going to be heavy work, long hours to try and get much done.”Among the unfinished business is enacting legislation to keep the federal government funded past a 16 December deadline. Failure to do so would result in a government shutdown. Lawmakers must also reauthorize the annual National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), a must-pass bill that sets US military policy for the coming year.Democrats must also decide whether to confront the debt limit. House Republicans have threatened to use the debt ceiling as leverage to extract deep spending cuts, a prospect that has raised alarm among economists and policymakers who are pleading with Democrats to defuse a dangerous fiscal standoff.In an interview with CNN, Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, who is poised to succeed Nancy Pelosi when she steps down as the House Democratic leader in January, said raising the debt ceiling before Republicans take control of the House was probably “the right thing to do” as a way to prevent conservatives “from being able to hold the American economy hostage”.The debt ceiling now stands at $31.4tn, a level that will need to be addressed by the third quarter of 2023, according to projections.Yet Democratic leaders have suggested that it is unlikely Congress will address the borrowing limit in the next few weeks.Schumer said last week that he would like to “get a debt ceiling done in this work period” but insisted that it would require Republican support, effectively ruling out a go-it-alone approach that would allow Democrats to unilaterally raise the debt limit. Speaking to reporters on the same day, the Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell, said he didn’t think Congress would take up the issue until “sometime next year”.In a Washington Post op-ed, Peter Orszag, the former director of the Office of Management and Budget and the Congressional Budget Office, implored Democrats to prioritize the issue, even if it takes up precious floor time to accomplish.“Any Democrats averse to taking such a painful vote now should consider how much leverage their party will lose once Republicans control the House – and how much higher the risk of default will be then,” he wrote. “It’s generally not a good idea to enter a negotiation with a ticking timebomb and a counter-party willing to let it go off.”While fiscal matters are at the center of negotiations on Capitol Hill, there are many more legislative items on the agenda.Schumer said the Senate will take a final vote on legislation to protect same-sex and interracial marriages when the chamber returns after the Thanksgiving recess. Earlier this month, 12 Republicans joined all Democrats to clear a major procedural hurdle that put the historic measure on track to passage.“Passing the Respect for Marriage Act is no longer a matter of if but only of when,” he said in recent remarks. A version of the bill passed the House earlier this year, with support from dozens of Republicans.Meanwhile, the Senate also hopes to enact reforms to a 19th-century elections law that Donald Trump attempted to exploit to reverse his defeat in 2020, which led to the insurrection at the Capitol.A bipartisan proposal would overhaul the Electoral Count Act, clarifying that the role of the vice-president, who presides over the certification of the electoral votes as president of the Senate, is purely ceremonial. That means the vice-president could not unilaterally throw out electoral votes, as Trump and his allies pressured his vice-president, Mike Pence, to do. If the bill passes, it would be the most substantive legislative response to the events of January 6.The White House is also eager for Congress to approve additional financial support for Ukraine, as the nation defends itself against a Russian invasion. The House Republican leader, Kevin McCarthy, who could be the next speaker if he can survive a revolt among hardline conservatives in his caucus, signaled that Republicans would use their majority to limit – or possibly oppose – future spending on the war.Previous aid packages to Ukraine have been approved with overwhelming bipartisan support, and the president and Democratic leaders are hopeful that a new package can be achieved. Fears that Republicans could cut off aid just as Ukraine forces Russia into retreat with the assistance of US weaponry may motivate lawmakers to authorize vast new spending for Ukraine. The White House has also asked for additional funding to prepare for a possible winter surge of coronavirus infections, though Republicans are unlikely to back the request.Constrained by the calendar and their narrow majorities, a host of other Democratic priorities will probably remain out of reach as the sun sets on their power in Washington.A group of Democrats is urging Congress to pass immigration reform and ensure legal protections for Dreamers, undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children, while efforts are under way to reach an agreement on cannabis-related legislation. Senator Raphael Warnock, whose Georgia runoff election will determine the margin of Democrats’ control next year, has continued his push to cap the cost of insulin.TopicsUS CongressHouse of RepresentativesUS SenateUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS domestic policyanalysisReuse this content More

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      How Republicans and Democrats are missing the mark with Latino voters

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      How Republicans and Democrats are missing the mark with Latino votersStrategists, pollsters and advocacy groups say both parties continue to treat Latino voters like a monolithic group In the 2022 midterms, Latino voters reinforced their power as the second-largest voting bloc in the United States.These voters, who account for nearly 35 million people, or 14%, of the US voting electorate, both tilted the balance for Democrats in key battleground state Senate races in Pennsylvania, Arizona and Nevada and secured a Republican hold in Florida. Since 2018, the number of Latino voters has grown by nearly 5 million people, accounting for more than 60% of newly eligible voters.But Latino strategists, pollsters and advocacy groups say both parties are still missing the mark. They argue Democratic and Republican campaigns continue to treat Latino voters like a monolithic group, failing to contact and reach out to voters early and invest in ads grounded in what communities themselves care about. As Latino operatives ascend the ranks in independent political action committees and campaigns, that’s steadily changing. But those who plan to continue with the status quo could make or break party election results in 2024.Bar chart of battleground states’ total and Latino population growth.Beyond politicsCampaigns need to take a page from independent groups, according to Latino political strategists, pollsters and voter mobilization groups. They said political parties need to build trust with voters, listen to what they care about and use that data to tailor culturally relevant messaging to different communities in different states.According to the 2022 Midterm Election Voter Poll, a comprehensive exit polling of thousands of voters led by the African American Research Collaborative and other groups, nearly two-thirds of Latino voters voted with Democrats. Even as Republicans gained ground, the data shows that there wasn’t a drastic shift in Latino voters’ support for political parties.But that doesn’t mean the party will maintain its popularity.“Hispanic voters are sending a message to both parties: they see their own values and policy positions align with the Democratic side but the message to Democrats isn’t so much that they are treating it as a bloc. They are neglecting it,” Clarissa Martinez de Castro, vice president of the Latino vote initiative at UnidosUS, says.Meanwhile, De Castro says that if Republicans want to maintain and grow Latino support they need to realize they’re “radically out of step with what Latinos want”.As the number of Latinos in the United States nearly doubled in the last two decades, strategists say reaching out and contacting Latino voters, and uplifting Latino consultants who are mindful of the electorate’s nuance, will be key to critical elections. “We’re outpacing everyone,” Colin Rogero, a Democratic strategist and partner of the political consulting firm 76 Words, says. “There’s no choice. If you want to win campaigns in the future, the Latino electorate has got to be a significant portion of who you are targeting and communicating with.”But Chuck Rocha, a longtime Democratic political strategist focused on Latino voters and founder of Solidarity Strategies, says that the lack of diversity in the ranks of political consultants – and the predominant whiteness – frames how Latino voters are often seen.“When you start talking about ‘the Latino vote’, there aren’t Latinos in the room to make the corrective,” said Rocha, a former senior adviser to Senator Bernie Sanders in his presidential bid. He argued that the political strategies from consultants have not adjusted to speaking to Latino voters in culturally or regionally specific ways, despite the fact that these voters have been the fastest growing group within the American electorate for decades.That work, however, was on display from independent advocacy groups that supported Democratic candidates, and civic mobilization organizations that focused on galvanizing Latino voters, Rocha said. They invested in showing up in communities, even during off-election years, and built trust over time. He pointed to Nevada, where super Pacs and groups like the Culinary Workers Union and Somos Votantes canvassed neighborhoods across the state and spent millions of dollars in ads that specifically targeted Spanish-speaking voters.“Our universe wasn’t just reaching Democrats. We were reaching eligible voters. It was about turning out Latinos to vote,” Cecia Alvarado, executive director of Somos Votantes’ Nevada division, says. Issues and immigration patternsClaudia Lopez, who volunteered with the Culinary Workers Union and voted for the first time in Nevada’s midterms. She frequently heard about the rising costs of rents in Las Vegas and heard fears of being evicted. That focus became a centerpiece of the union’s messaging in the weeks ahead of the election.“I care about a change in a good way. I don’t care who’s elected. I don’t care who wins I just want it changed for the for the better,” she told the Guardian in October.Lopez’s perspective – caring less about party politics and more about candidates’ actions – reflects a common thread among Latino voters, said Gabe Sanchez, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and vice president of research at BSP Research.“Because so many Latinos are first-time voters and US born with foreign born parents, you don’t have the same party loyalists,” Sanchez says. “A lot of people describe party politics like sports in the US. I just don’t think that fits the majority of Latino voters.”Beeswarm chart of policy priorities of Latino’s in battleground statesMaría Teresa Kumar, president and CEO of Voto Latino, says that there is a generational divide: Latino voters are, on average, younger than the rest of the electorate, consisting of people who are newer to the country as immigrants and migrants compared to other voters of color. And Sanchez found that two-thirds of Latino voters under age 40 supported Democrats compared to 60% of Latino voters over that age. That will play a key role in the upcoming presidential race as campaigns attempt to figure out how to court young voters and make sure they turn out.Kumar said her group addressed this in the midterm by investing in registration in eight battleground states in 2020, registering 650,000 voters. But she said that campaigns did not invest in the same way because Democratic donors and campaigns internalized the idea that they were losing Latino support to Republicans.“For politics, it’s important to think about the issues that are driving individuals and the life experiences they are having in pockets that were once not Latino,” Kumar says.“We are a holistic fabric of all these aspirations, wants and needs but if we are living in a society where our policy issues are not being met that allow our children to thrive, it doesn’t matter if I like arepas or pupusas if I have a politician enacting bad legislation if I have a politician say ‘I can’t invest in you because you’re not a monolith.’”Matt Barreto, a political science professor at UCLA and co-founder of BSP Research, notes that in public opinion polling, Latinos often express shared culture, values, language and customs but politically, they vary depending on the political environment they live in.The 2022 Midterm Election Voter Poll, which Barreto worked on, found that Latino voters described sharing similar issues of concern: cost of living, gas prices, reproductive rights, healthcare costs and gun violence. But when broken down by Latino voters in states polled, those issues vary depending on the state, with the consensus concern over the economy.Midterm resultsThe midterm results offer a roadmap of how parties approached different Latino communities.Carlos Odio, co-founder of EquisResearch, a data firm focused on Latinos, wrote on Twitter that Republicans failed to make the projected “Latino red wave” a reality. It took Dems a great deal of toil & treasure to battle to a point of stability with Latino voters. Right now they should celebrate. Next week they should start putting in the work to strengthen their coalition for the ‘24 election. FL shows what happens when you don’t.— Carlos Odio (@carlosodio) November 21, 2022
      In key races in Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania, Latino voter support for Democrats played a significant role. In Arizona, where two-thirds of Latino voters supported Senator Mark Kelly, he capitalized on an already influential long-term investment in Latino voter outreach by grassroots groups to capture wins in Maricopa and Pima counties.“In Arizona, it’s a dual community effort,” Sanchez said. “They’ve been working with these communities and building trust. It’s not something you can just do when the election cycle happens.”Alvarado, of Somos Votantes, said the group spent $14m on digital, TV and radio ads and voter outreach such as canvassing neighborhoods in support of Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, the first Latina in Congress who narrowly won re-election.Alvarado, the daughter of Costa Rican immigrants who moved to the US as a teenager, says that without Latino voters, “you don’t win elections in Nevada”. In the state, 64% of Latino voters supported Cortez-Masto over Republican Adam Laxalt, according to the 2022 Midterm Election Voter Poll.In Colorado, where the Latino population has grown 72% since 2000, Sanchez worked with the Latino Victory Fund to survey Latino voters about their concerns, particularly in rural areas. That influenced voter outreach efforts and aided in Yadira Caraveo becoming the first Latina to be elected to Congress from the state.In New Mexico, Rogero, who worked with Democratic campaigns in several states, says his team worked with Democratic congressman-elect Gabe Vasquez’s campaign against Republican incumbent Yvette Herrell to invest heavily and early in Spanish-language ads, particularly in the district’s southern region, framed around Vasquez’s upbringing. That, Rogero says, was key to “not lose a majority” of Latino voters in the state’s largest Latino district, Vasquez edged out a win, and flipped the seat by just over 1,000 votes.Florida represented an outlier, where Latino voters made a shift toward supporting Republicans, with the largest gains among Cuban and non-Puerto Rican voters, allowing incumbents Governor Ron DeSantis and Senator Marco Rubio to win re-elections by wide margins. But Baretto points out that the strategy remained the same: Long-term investment from Republicans in Florida in English and Spanish ads targeting Latinos since 2020.Rogero, who grew up in south Florida and worked on several races in the state, argued that Democrats’ losses there were a “direct reflection of investment”, He pointed to the recent loss by Democratic incumbent Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, the first South American immigrant elected to Congress, against former Miami-Dade county mayor Carlos Giménez. In that race, Powell became one of the few Democrats nationally to outperform Biden among Latino voters, crediting voter outreach, ad investment, and door-knocking.“I don’t think the [Democratic] national infrastructure, the donors, the major party committees understands Florida because it’s a complicated place,” Rogero said. “Miami is not a lost cause. It’s just Republicans have been spending a lot of money there where Democrats have not.”That investment strategy among Latino voters could become important in the Georgia runoff between Senator Raphael Warnock and Republican candidate Herschel Walker, where the Latino population is on the rise. While white voters largely supported Walker and Black voters overwhelmingly supported Warnock, Warnock captured 67% of Latino voters, according to exit polling.Somos Votantes, the national Latino mobilization group that supported Cortez-Masto in Nevada, announced it would invest $2m in the runoff.“It used to be that one side would neglect it and would take it for granted, and the other one would just simply ignore it,” Clarissa Martinez de Castro of UnidosUS says. “We’ve seen signs of progress of more outreach happening. But I think there’s still some way to go.”TopicsUS politicsUS midterm elections 2022RepublicansDemocratsRacefeaturesReuse this content More

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      Five new members of the House of Representatives to watch

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      Five new members of the House of Representatives to watchMaxwell Frost, Becca Balint, Monica De La Cruz, Mike Lawler and Max Miller are standouts among the 2022 midterms intake Roughly 80 new members will join the House of Representatives when the 118th Congress convenes in January.How Democratic wins in key toss-up seats helped stave off the ‘red wave’Read moreAlong with their more seasoned colleagues, they will have to navigate the potentially tricky terrain of a narrow Republican majority in the House as Democrats control the White House and the Senate.The new members come from every part of the county, and they vary dramatically in terms of political ideology. Some are progressives who have demanded universal healthcare coverage, while others have embraced Donald Trump and his lies about widespread fraud in the 2020 presidential election.As the final ballots are counted and Americans prepare for another significant shift in the political landscape, here are five new members of the House to keep an eye on:Maxwell Frost, a Democrat of FloridaMaxwell Frost will become the first Gen Z member of Congress when he takes the oath of office in January. Just 25 years old, Frost won his Orlando-area seat by campaigning on implementing Medicare for all and reforming America’s gun laws.Frost, a March for Our Lives organizer who first became involved in politics after the shooting at Sandy Hook elementary school in 2012, has made it clear that he will be aggressive in addressing gun violence. After the recent shooting at an LGBTQ night club in Colorado Springs, Frost has repeated his call for Congress to advance an assault weapons ban.The House passed an assault weapons ban in July, but the bill stalled in the Senate. With Republicans now in control of the House, it will be nearly impossible to resuscitate the proposal, but Frost is undeterred.“I think it’s important to put it up for a vote even if it doesn’t pass because it gets people on the record,” Frost told NBC News on Monday. “We have to show the American people that this is a problem that our government is working on and we’re going to solve.”Frost’s determination to take action on his top policy priorities could ruffle some feathers within the House, but his persistence could also help keep Democrats motivated in the face of Republican obstruction.Becca Balint, a Democrat of VermontOne of Frost’s new colleagues in the Congressional Progressive Caucus will be Becca Balint, a Democrat of Vermont. Balint’s victory earlier this month made history; she will be the first woman and the first openly LGBTQ person to represent Vermont in Congress. Once Balint is sworn in, all 50 US states will have sent a woman to Congress, as Vermont was previously the sole outlier on that metric.Balint has described herself as “a scrappy little queer lady” who was initially written off in Vermont’s crowded Democratic congressional primary because of her lack of widespread name recognition or political connections.“What I did have was an amazing team that believed that I could do this if I got in front of enough Vermonters and spread a message of courage and strength and hope,” Balint said at a press conference earlier this month.“We did it because we tapped into the courage of working people across Vermont, regular people who want to have a voice again. That’s who I am. That’s who I will be in Congress.”Frost and Balint are just two members of an expanded progressive caucus that may be able to exert more influence over Democratic leaders starting in January.Monica De La Cruz, a Republican of TexasDe La Cruz’s win was a bright spot for Republicans on a generally disappointing election night. De La Cruz will be the first Republican to represent the 15th congressional district in southern Texas, where the party has been trying to make gains among Latino voters.Party leaders had hoped to win two other south Texas districts with Latina Republicans, reflecting their broader strategy this year of attempting to flip seats by running a more diverse slate of candidates. Mayra Flores ran in the 34th district, while Cassy Garcia competed in the 28th district. Together with De La Cruz, the three women were often dubbed the “Triple Threat” in conservative media, but of that group, only De La Cruz won her race.Overall, De La Cruz will be one of at least 45 Latino lawmakers serving in the 118th Congress, marking a new record for the US. Several newly elected members – including Democrat Yadira Caraveo in Colorado and Democrat Delia Ramirez in Illinois – will be the first Latinas to represent their states in Congress.Despite Republicans’ efforts to diversify their House caucus, they still trail Democrats on that front. At least 34 Latino Democrats will serve in the House starting in January, compared with at least 11 Latino Republicans. With the victories of John James in Michigan and Wesley Hunt in Texas, the number of Black Republicans in the House will also double in January – from two to four. In comparison, 58 Black Democrats are currently serving in the House.Mike Lawler, a Republican of New YorkMike Lawler’s victory made national headlines, as he defeated the incumbent congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, who served as the chair of House Democrats’ campaign arm this election cycle.Lawler was one of four Republicans who flipped House seats in New York, and those wins ultimately proved crucial in determining control of the lower chamber. When the “red wave” that many Republicans had expected failed to materialize on election day, the success of Lawler’s group helped them win back a narrow majority.Because of that slim majority, the incoming Republican speaker will be able to afford only a few defections within the party when trying to pass legislation. There are already signs of tension and disagreement within the House Republican caucus, and Lawler is one example of this. While most House Republicans continue to wholeheartedly embrace Trump and his divisive brand, Lawler has suggested that it may be time to move on from the former president, particularly after his endorsed candidates fared so poorly on election day.“I would like to see the party move forward,” Lawler told CNN earlier this month. “I think more focus needs to be on the issues and the substance of those issues than on personalities.”But many of Lawler’s new colleagues may not be ready to start a new chapter for the Republican party.Max Miller, a Republican of OhioMax Miller, who won the race to represent a newly reconfigured House district in Ohio, personifies Trump’s enduring hold on the Republican party and the House Republican caucus in particular.Most of Miller’s district is currently represented by Anthony Gonzalez, a lawmaker who was once considered a rising star in the Republican party but became a target of scorn after he voted to impeach Trump for inciting the January 6 attack on the Capitol. Following that vote, Miller received Trump’s endorsement to launch a primary challenge against Gonzalez, and the incumbent congressman later announced he would not seek re-election.Miller has his own connection to the January 6 insurrection, as he appeared before the House select committee investigating the Capitol attack over the summer. According to the committee, Miller participated in a meeting two days before the attack to discuss the rally that Trump held on the Ellipse immediately before a group of his supporters stormed the Capitol.Miller won his seat in Congress partly thanks to Trump’s endorsement, and he will probably be quite hesitant to distance himself from the former president. That hesitation could put him and his allies on a collision course with colleagues like Lawler, who say they want to chart a new course for the Republican party.The incoming Republican speaker will need to keep all factions of the caucus unified to get anything done. That task already appears immense.TopicsHouse of RepresentativesUS politicsRepublicansDemocratsUS midterm elections 2022featuresReuse this content More

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      Who’s really in charge of the House of Representatives? Politics Weekly America

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      There was no red wave, but come January next year, the Republicans will officially be in control of the House of Representatives. What will they do? Who will be in charge? Will they hold together or fall apart?
      Jonathan Freedland puts these questions and more to Marianna Sotomayor of The Washington Post. The pair also discuss the legacy of the outgoing Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know

      Archive: CBS News, CNN and CSPAN Listen to Susan Page look back at Nancy Pelosi’s career Send your questions and feedback to podcasts@theguardian.com Help support the Guardian by going to theguardian.com/supportpodcasts More