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      Trump expected to appoint China critics Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz

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      President-elect Donald Trump has reportedly decided to appoint the prominent China hawks Marco Rubio and Mike Waltz as his respective secretary of state and national security adviser.Rubio was arguably the most hawkish option on Trump’s shortlist for secretary of state, and he has in past years advocated for a muscular foreign policy with respect to America’s geopolitical foes, including China, Iran and Cuba.Over the past several years the Florida senator has softened some of his stances to align more closely with Trump’s views. The president-elect accuses past US presidents of leading America into costly and futile wars and has pushed for a more restrained foreign policy.A failed challenger to Trump for the Republican presidential nomination in 2016, Rubio had been rumored to be one of the leading contenders for Trump’s vice-presidential pick before JD Vance was announced.Since his failed run for president, Rubio has served as an informal foreign policy adviser and helped Trump prepare for his first debate against Biden in 2020.Trump has not confirmed the planned appointment, which was first reported by the New York Times. If confirmed, Rubio would be the first Latino to serve as America’s top diplomat once the Republican president-elect takes office in January.While the famously mercurial Trump could always change his mind at the last minute, he appeared to have settled on his pick as of Monday, sources told Reuters.While Rubio was far from the most isolationist option, his likely selection nonetheless underlines a broad shift in Republican foreign policy views under Trump.Once the party of hawks who advocated military intervention and a muscular foreign policy, most of Trump’s allies now preach restraint, particularly in Europe, where many Republicans complain US allies are not paying their fair share on defense.“I’m not on Russia’s side – but unfortunately the reality of it is that the way the war in Ukraine is going to end is with a negotiated settlement,” Rubio told NBC in September.Waltz, a Republican congressman and Trump loyalist who served in the national guard as a colonel, has criticized Chinese activity in the Asia-Pacific and voiced the need for the US to be ready for a potential conflict in the region.Last week, Waltz won re-election to the US House seat representing east-central Florida, which includes Daytona Beach. He defeated the Democrat James Stockton, a pastor and former president of a local NAACP branch.Waltz is a combat-decorated Green Beret and a former White House and Pentagon policy adviser. He was first elected in 2018, replacing the Republican Ron DeSantis, who ran for governor, in Florida’s sixth congressional district.Waltz served multiple combat tours in Afghanistan, and he was awarded four Bronze Stars. He was one of the lawmakers appointed in July to serve on a bipartisan congressional taskforce to investigate the attempted assassination of Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July.After Waltz left the US army, he worked in the Pentagon in the George W Bush administration as policy director for former defense secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates.Under the former vice-president Dick Cheney, Waltz served as a counter-terrorism adviser.In 2021, after Joe Biden ordered a chaotic evacuation from Afghanistan, Waltz asked Biden to reverse course and relaunch military operations in the region. The war in Afghanistan began under Bush after the 11 September 2001 attacks.The Intercept reported that before his run for Congress in 2018 Waltz managed a lucrative defense contracting firm with offices in Afghanistan.Waltz has consistently expressed the need for protecting the Afghan people, saying that US “soldiers will have to go back”. Government reports have stated that US nation-building efforts resulted in the deaths of more than 48,000 civilians and 66,000 Afghan police and military, and widespread torture.In other developments on Trump’s appointments, the governor of South Dakota, Kristi Noem, has been picked to become the next secretary of the Department of Homeland Security, CNN reported on Tuesday, citing two sources.Earlier this year, Noem was widely seen as a potential presidential running mate for Trump. She lost out after recycling a two-decade-old story designed to illustrate decisive leadership that involved her shooting dead a puppy that did not hunt and had bitten members of her family.Reuters contributed to this report More

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      Fema worker fired for telling Milton relief team to skip homes with Trump signs

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      A employee at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) has been fired from her job and is being investigated because she told a disaster relief team she was directing in Florida after Hurricane Milton to avoid homes displaying election campaign signs supporting Donald Trump, conduct that the agency head on Saturday called “reprehensible”.Deanne Criswell, the administrator of the federal agency, posted on X: “More than 22,000 Fema employees every day adhere to Fema’s core values and are dedicated to helping people before, during and after disasters, often sacrificing time with their own families to help disaster survivors.”She continued: “Recently, a Fema employee departed from these values to advise her survivor assistance team not go to homes with yard signs supporting President-elect Trump. This is a clear violation of Fema’s core values and principles to help people regardless of their political affiliation.”Hurricane Milton roared across the Gulf of Mexico and hit Florida last month, crossing the state before reaching the Atlantic Ocean, just two weeks after Hurricane Helene made landfall in Florida and then curved inland on a lethal path through Georgia and the Carolinas before dissipating in Tennessee. It killed 35 people.The Fema employee has not yet been officially identified, but Criswell said of the actions: “This was reprehensible. I want to be clear to all of my employees and the American people, this type of behavior and action will not be tolerated at Fema and we will hold people accountable if they violate these standards of conduct.”The agency has said it understood the conduct to be an isolated incident. The Daily Wire was the first to report on the actions of the employee, a supervisor, which it said it uncovered from internal correspondence.The employee reportedly sent a message to workers who were going door to door in Lake Placid, Florida, to plan federal assistance, telling them to “avoid homes advertising Trump”.Creswell further posted on Saturday: “We take our mission to help everyone before, during and after disasters seriously. This employee has been terminated and we have referred the matter to the Office of Special Counsel. I will continue to do everything I can to make sure this never happens again.”During the aftermath of the highly destructive Hurricane Helene, which affected 10 states and killed more than 230 people, Trump went campaigning in North Carolina and accused the Biden administration of holding aid back from Republican-voting areas, even though the government and prominent Republican leaders on the ground disputed that.But after the report of the Fema employee emerged, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, posted on X: “The blatant weaponization of government by partisan activists in the federal bureaucracy is yet another reason why the Biden-Harris administration is in its final days.”He said he was launching his own investigation into what happened. More

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      Roars of delight from the Maga faithful as Donald Trump does the unthinkable

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      The news came at 1.20am. Playing on a giant TV screen, Fox News declared that Donald Trump had won the all-important state of Pennsylvania. The room erupted in roars and shrieks of joy. “It’s over!” shouted one man, turning to hug a stranger. “Fuck Joe Biden!” shouted a young bro in a black Maga hat. “Fuck her!”The crowd broke into chants of “USA! USA! USA!” – for them, a positive affirmation. For the rest of the world, it may have sounded like the ugly threat of a superpower bully it no longer understands.This was the scene at Donald Trump’s election watch party, a lurid spectacle in West Palm Beach, Florida, on Tuesday night and the early hours of Wednesday morning. The unthinkable had happened. Once seemingly down and out, Trump, a twice impeached convicted criminal, appeared to have fought his way back to the White House.“I think that we just witnessed the greatest political comeback in the history of the United States of America,” said Senator JD Vance, now set to be vice-president.That may well be true. But to at least some of Trump’s critics, it will go down as the moment America elected its first fascist president.The people in the room scoffed at such a description. They welcome Trump’s tough stance on immigration and policies they believe will make the economy thrive. They believe Trump has been the victim of Democratic hoaxes and sabotage for years. Now it was payback time.The party was held in a somewhat nondescript convention centre. Inside a cavernous exhibition hall of blacks and greys, a giant “Trump will fix it!” banner hung on one wall and “Dream big again” banner hung opposite. People chatted, drank, milled around and helped themselves to a buffet of cheese and wine and other snacks.The guests were blonder, more tanned and more bejewelled than average. There was a blond woman with a gold necklace, gold and diamond bracelet and red leather dress; a 16-year-old African American girl in a Maga cap; a man in a checked suit and red Maga cap; a young Black man in a double-breasted grey suit and a Maga cap; a woman in a long red dress with floral tattoos climbing her right arm and a Maga cap.View image in fullscreenThree red, two white and three blue lights were suspended above a stage against the backdrop of a deep blue curtain and a giant Stars and Stripes. There were about 50 US flags on poles. Before them a blue lectern boasted: “Trump will fix it.”Two giant TV screens flicked between election coverage on CNN and Fox News. When Kamala Harris won Colorado and Illinois, the crowd booed. But as Trump picked up states, they erupted in cheers. The fog of uncertainty that had dominated this election was slowly lifting. A surge of confidence was palpable. The Maga fans began to believe their man was going to win.At 12.46am, the TVs showed an announcement from Washington that Harris would not be delivering an address. Immediately the Village People’s YMCA boomed from loudspeakers as the screens showed Trump pumping his fists at various rallies – an object of ridicule for his detractors; a sign of affection here.For those who has been present at Trump’s party in New York in 2016, there was a distinct sense of deja vu. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce.People gathered in front of the stage, forming a sea of red caps. Prominent among them was Blake Marnell, a rally regular who wears a suit styled after Trump’s wall. For a few minutes he held up a phone on which a message scrolled: “Trump will win!” Meanwhile a man studied the New York Times on his phone, anxious for updates.Then came the Pennsylvania announcement and bedlam ensued. Ethan Kirkegaard, 25, a property developer, said: “This is magical. We’re creating history right here. We’re on the right side of history, I truly believe. We’re so close to a victory. We just need a few more states to come through and I think we’re going to pull it off.”At 1.48am, the TV screens displayed: “Fox projects Trump elected 47th president.” There were more screams of delight. A group of young men in Maga caps hugged each other. “Let’s fucking go!” someone shouted. More chants of “USA! USA! USA!” Tricia Weldon, 52, clutching a drink, said: “This is history. I’m so excited. I feel like it’s a surreal moment.”At 2.24am the crowd’s patience was rewarded when Trump – wearing his customary dark suit, white shirt and long red tie – took the stage. The crowd joined in with his regular theme song God Bless the USA and raised a forest of phones to shoot photos and videos. “We love you, Trump!” one yelled.Melania Trump stood near her husband and was joined by Barron, the former president’s youngest son, whose pale white face contrasted with his father’s orange complexion. Trump’s older children – Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka and Tiffany – were all on stage too.“I want to thank my beautiful wife Melania!” Trump said. She smiled and waved. He praised her new book and went over to hug and kiss her. She kept smiling.Trump delivered a relatively low-energy speech for a man who, shadowed by criminal convictions and investigations, had just landed the ultimate get-out-of-jail card: the American presidency.“It’s time to put the divisions of the past four years behind us,” the uniquely divisive Trump said. “It’s time to unite.” The architect of the January 6 insurrection claimed again without irony: “This was also a massive victory for democracy and for freedom.”But the remarks were also freighted with grim omens for the second Trump administration. He gave a shout-out to Elon Musk, the billionaire owner of X, who has become one of his most high-profile supporters. “We have a new star,” he said. “A star is born: Elon.”Trump also lavished praise on vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert Kennedy Jr, promising that he would help “make America healthy again”. The crowd chanted “Bobby! Bobby!”He left the stage to the familiar strains of YMCA. People danced and punched the air. Barron turned briefly and gave a farewell wave.It was a different universe from the mood for millions of Americans who will wake on Wednesday with ashen faces and sick stomachs, struggling to understand that Trump was not an aberration after all. His political resurrection is complete.The world, too, will be reeling. It has long known the most powerful nation on earth committed war crimes from Vietnam to Iraq. Many will now take the view that has also committed a crime against decency and democracy itself. More

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      Donald Trump poised to win election after string of crucial swing state wins

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      After notching a string of wins in crucial swing states, Donald Trump was poised to return to the White House after a momentous presidential election in which democracy itself had been at stake and which is likely to take the United States into uncharted political waters.The Republican nominee took North Carolina surprisingly early, the first battleground state to be called, and later he took Georgia and then Pennsylvania. He was strongly positioned in Arizona and Nevada, other key contests.The race between Trump, a former president, and the current Democratic vice-president, Kamala Harris, had been a frenetic contest and it finally approached its conclusion amid scenes of celebration in the Trump camp.At 1.20am, at Trump’s election watch party in Palm Beach, Florida, a prolonged, almighty roar went up as Fox News had called Pennsylvania for Trump. “It’s over!” screamed one man, amid the noise, at what felt like the point of no return. A young man in a black Trump hat shouted: “Fuck Joe Biden! Fuck her!”The euphoric crowd chanted: “USA! USA!” They gathered near the stage, waiting for Trump to speak.At 1.47am, Fox named Trump president-elect, though the Associated Press – which the Guardian follows – has not yet put Trump over the finish line.The man who incited the deadly attack at the US Capitol on 6 January 2021, earning (and surviving) a second impeachment; the man who was this year convicted on 34 criminal charges; the man who faces multiple other criminal counts and who has been ordered to pay millions in multiple civil lawsuits, including one over a rape claim a judge deemed “substantially true”. The man at the centre of all of that whom senior military aides called a fascist and a danger to the republic was preparing to head for the White House again.Eventually, past 2am, Trump emerged to speak, to the strains of God Bless the USA, the Lee Greenwood country anthem plastered on Bibles that Trump hawks for sale. Trump was surrounded by his family, by close aides, and by JD Vance, the hard-right Ohio senator he made his vice-presidential pick.“This is a movement like nobody’s ever seen before,” Trump said. “This is I believe the greatest political movement of all time. There’s never been anything like this in this country and now it’s going to reach a new level of importance, because we’re going to help our country heal.View image in fullscreen“We’re going to fix our borders. We’re going to fix everything about our country … I will not rest until we have delivered the strong, safe and prosperous America that our children deserve, this will truly be the golden age of America.”Trump reveled in battleground state victories and said he would win them all. He claimed to have won the popular vote, which had not yet been decided. He described “a great feeling of love” and claimed “an unprecedented and powerful mandate”, celebrating Republicans retaking the Senate. He said it looked like Republicans would keep control of the House of Representatives – again, undecided at that point.Trump saluted his wife, Melania, his family, and Vance, who he invited to the podium to speak. Vance buttered up the boss, promising “the greatest economic comeback in American history under Donald Trump’s leadership”.Trump referred to the assassination attempts against him. “God spared me for a reason,” he said.At Harris’s watch party, at Howard University in Washington, the mood became somber, as hopes Harris could become the first president from a Historically Black College and University began to flicker and dim. Around 1am, Cedric Richmond, a former congressman and Harris campaign co-chair, told supporters they would not hear from Harris.“Thank you for believing in the promise of America,” Richmond said. “We still have votes to count. We still have states that have not been called yet. We will continue overnight to fight to make sure that every vote is counted, that every voice has spoken.”Attendees rushed out, the mood swinging to despair. Eight years after Trump defeated Hillary Clinton in a similar fashion, few attendees seemed surprised or shocked. Many declined to comment. “What more is there to say,” one woman shrugged as she shuffled out.Strewn water bottles and other litter were all that was left after the crowd was gone.Before 1am, the Republicans had retaken the Senate. A West Virginia seat went red as expected but the die was cast when Sherrod Brown, a long-serving progressive Democrat, was beaten in Ohio by Bernie Moreno, a car salesperson backed by Trump. Democrats had held the chamber 51-49. Other key races went right. In Maryland, Angela Alsobrooks provided a point of light for Democrats, joining Lisa Blunt Rochester, of Delaware, as the third and fourth Black women ever elected to the Senate.The House remained contested, Democrats seeking to retake the chamber, to erect a bastion against a Republican White House and Senate. The House can hold a president to account but the Senate controls federal judicial appointments. Further rightwing consolidation of control of the supreme court, to which Trump appointed three hardliners between 2017 and 2021, looms large.In June 2022, that Trump court removed the federal right to abortion. Campaigns for reproductive rights fueled Democratic electoral successes after that but on Tuesday such issues seemed to fall short of fueling the wave of support from suburban, Republican-leaning women Democrats had hoped for and pundits predicted.A measure to enshrine abortion rights in the Florida constitution, which Democrats hoped would help boost turnout, fell short of the 60% needed for approval. Nebraska, won by Trump, voted to uphold its abortion ban, which outlaws the procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy. Abortion-related measures did pass in New York, Maryland, Colorado, Missouri, Nevada and Arizona.A huge gender gap opened. A CNN exit poll showed Harris up by 11 points among female voters, Trump up 10 among male voters. Other polls showed dominant concerns over the economy and democracy. According to the AP Votecast survey, four in 10 voters named the economy and jobs as the most important problem facing the country, a hopeful sign for Trump. Roughly half of voters cited the fate of democracy, a focal point of Harris’s campaign.Wednesday will bring jitters in foreign capitals. Victory for Trump’s “America first” ethos can be expected to boost rightwing populists in Europe and elsewhere – and to place support for Ukraine in jeopardy as it fights Russian invaders.At home, America lies divided. Harris centered her campaign on Trump’s autocratic threat while he ran a campaign fuelled by grievance, both personal and the perception of an ailing America, baselessly painting Biden and Harris as far-left figures wrecking the economy with inflation and identity politics. Though he was the subject of two assassination attempts, in Pennsylvania and Florida, he stoked huge divisions and widespread fears of violence.Trump told supporters “I am your retribution” and threatened to prosecute political foes, journalists and others. He suggested turning the US military against “the enemy from within”. He put immigration and border security at the heart of his pitch, painting a picture of the US overrun by illegal immigration, with language that veered into outright racism and fearmongering. He referred to undocumented people as “animals” with “bad genes … poisoning the blood of our country”.He vowed to stage the biggest deportation in US history, to replace thousands of federal workers with loyalists, to impose sweeping tariffs on allies and foes alike.On election night, he said he would govern “by a simple motto: Promises made. Promises kept. We’re going to keep our promises. Nothing will stop me.”Additional reporting by Sam Levine in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Hugo Lowell in West Palm Beach, Florida, and Asia Alexander in Washington DCRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      Florida’s Abortion Rights Ballot Measure Fails, Keeping Six-Week Ban in Place

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      A ballot measure that would have enshrined abortion rights in the Florida Constitution failed, according to The Associated Press, delivering a major defeat to proponents who had hoped to restore broad access to the procedure in the nation’s third-largest state.The measure, known as Amendment 4, won 57 percent of the vote, falling short of the 60 percent required for passage. It would have allowed abortions “before viability,” usually around 24 weeks of pregnancy. Florida bans most abortions after six weeks, before many women know they are pregnant.The defeat, while not unexpected, halted what had been an unbroken winning streak for abortion rights groups on ballot measures since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Voters sided with abortion rights in all seven states that had ballot questions on the issue before this year, in states as different as Kansas and California. But the highest vote that any of those earlier measures won in red states was 59 percent, just under what Florida, with its higher threshold, needed to pass.The Florida measure’s failure is a political victory for Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, who had become the face of a well-funded and well-organized opposition campaign. He spent much of his political capital, and considerable state resources, to defeat it. Another ballot measure that Mr. DeSantis and his allies strongly opposed, which would have legalized marijuana in the state, was also defeated.Mr. DeSantis and Republican lawmakers enacted a 15-week abortion ban in 2022 and the six-week ban in 2023. Florida had previously allowed abortions up to 24 weeks and had been a destination for women in other Southern states with stricter laws.Organizers of the Yes on 4 campaign raised more than $100 million to get the measure on the ballot and campaign for it, knowing it would be a difficult battle. Though similar measures have passed in other conservative states, Florida’s 60 percent threshold is higher. Going into Election Day, polls showed support hovering around 60 percent.The nonpartisan Yes on 4 campaign knew that it would need support from Democrats, Republicans and voters with no party affiliation. Organizers hoped that enough Republican-leaning voters would vote yes even if they also supported anti-abortion candidates.Former President Donald J. Trump, a Florida resident, had opposed Amendment 4, after initially suggesting that he might support it.Eric Adelson More

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      Giuliani shows up to vote in Mercedes he was supposed to give to poll workers

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      Rudy Giuliani turned up to vote in Florida for Tuesday’s presidential election in a Mercedes Benz convertible that a court had ordered him to surrender more than a week ago as part of a $148m settlement to two Georgia poll workers he defamed.The 1980s car, once owned by the actor Lauren Bacall, is among the assets of the disgraced former New York mayor and vocal Donald Trump acolyte that Giuliani is deliberately hiding from their reach, according to a letter their attorney, Aaron Nathan, sent to the judge in the case.Additionally, Nathan said, the contents of Giuliani’s $5m Manhattan apartment to which the pair are also entitled were stripped out some weeks ago in contravention of the judge Lewis Liman’s receivership order. Nathan said Giuliani had deliberately ignored the court’s deadline for handing over the assets.“[Giuliani] has yet to reveal where the vast majority of the receivership property is actually located, despite repeated requests to his counsel,” said the letter, sent on behalf of the poll workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter Shaye Moss.“That silence is especially outrageous given the revelation that the defendant apparently took affirmative steps to move his property out of the New York apartment in recent weeks, while a restraining notice was in effect. Furthermore, despite the cooperative pose [he] put on in his letter of October 29, the receivers’ inquiries since that time have been met predominantly with evasion or silence.”In addition to the Upper East Side apartment, Giuliani was ordered to turn over several items of New York Yankees memorabilia and about two dozen luxury watches.In response to the letter, Liman has ordered Giuliani to appear at a hearing in New York on Thursday. Giuliani’s attorney, Kenneth Caruso, has requested a delay so his client can fulfill an obligation to host a radio broadcast from Florida that evening.Giuliani, wearing a New York fire department hat and stars-and-stripes shirt, was pictured arriving at the polling site in Palm Beach on Tuesday in the passenger seat of the Mercedes SL500. He spoke to reporters but had no comment about the settlement.Caruso, in a court filing last week, denied Giuliani was being obstructive. “[He] is, and will remain, ready to comply” with Liman’s order, Caruso said – but claimed that Giuliani, who filed for bankruptcy last year, had not received information about how to deliver it, the Hill reported.Nathan said that claim was “misleading”.Giuliani’s spokesperson Ted Goodman, meanwhile, told the Hill in a statement that he “has made available his property and possessions as ordered” and that he had put a “few items” into storage over the past year.Anything else that was removed was related to Giuliani’s nightly livestreams, Goodman claimed, asserting it was therefore outside the settlement. A separate lawsuit over Giuliani’s Palm Beach apartment is ongoing.In a subsequent statement to the Guardian on Tuesday, Goodman said Giuliani had made efforts to hand over the car.“Our lawyers have requested documentation to transfer over the title of the vehicle, and haven’t heard back from opposing counsel,” he said.“This is yet another attempt to render Mayor Rudy Giuliani – a man who has improved the lives of more people than almost any other living American – penniless and homeless. The weaponization of our once-sacred justice system should concern every American, regardless of partisan political affiliation.”Separately Michael Ragusa, Giuliani’s head of security, appeared to defend the disbarred lawyer’s retention of the Mercedes Benz in his own statement.“Mayor Giuliani is an 80-year-old man with a bad knee and 9/11-related lung disease, relies on this vehicle as his primary means of transportation in Florida, where there is no mass transit system like New York City’s,” he said.“He currently holds an active Florida driver’s license. The way he is being pushed toward poverty by those targeting him, after all he has done for this country, is appalling and it is clearly politically motivated.”In July, a judge dismissed Giuliani’s bankruptcy case, clearing the way for Freeman and Moss to begin collecting the settlement. But Nathan said in the letter dated Monday that Giuliani had “refused or been unable to answer basic questions about the location of most of the property”.He wrote: “The visit to the apartment, which all parties understood to be for the purposes of assessing the transportation and storage needs for the receivership property contained therein, instead revealed that the apartment was substantially empty.”Freeman and Moss said they received death threats and constant intimidation following the 2020 election that Trump lost to Joe Biden when Giuliani amplified a misleading video and falsely accused them of illegal activity while counting ballots in Atlanta on election night.The pair were formally cleared by investigators of any wrongdoing, and a jury ruled Giuliani owed them $148m for spreading lies about them.The pair subsequently settled similar defamation lawsuits with far-right media outlets the Gateway Pundit and One America News.Giuliani has sometimes been an attorney for Trump, who is running for the presidency again on Tuesday in a contest pitting him against Kamala Harris. 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      In Florida, the future of abortion might come down to men

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      When Maxwell Frost bounded on stage at a Saturday morning rally in support of Florida abortion rights, the 27-year-old congressman was quick to explain why he had shown up.“I’m so proud to be here as an ally and partner in this fight!” he yelled to the roughly hundred-strong crowd who had gathered in an Orlando church courtyard, clutching handwritten sings with messages like “abortion bans are killing us” and “womb-tang clan ain’t nothing to fuck with”.His biological mother had given him up for adoption, said Frost, who wore a black T-shirt that read “Abortion is Health Care”. “The thing that made it sacred was the fact that she had a choice,” Frost said. “I’ve had enough of people trying to use parts of all of our identities to take away freedoms from other people.”The crowd – mostly women – roared in response.In an election where women’s access to abortion has become a top issue, activists are now rushing to convince men that they also have a stake in the fight – and that, come Tuesday, they should vote accordingly.Although men support abortion rights at similar rates as women, they seem to be far less driven by the issue. Less than half of men identify as “pro-choice”, according to Gallup, and are far more likely to see the economy or immigration as their top issue. One poll of men of color found that, although more than 80% believe abortion should be legal, less than half prioritized candidates who supported abortion rights.“It’s that common misconception that abortion is a woman’s issue,” said Zach Rivera, a 24-year-old activist with Men4Choice, a national group dedicated to energizing men who support abortion rights.View image in fullscreenOver the last several weeks, Rivera has spent countless hours knocking on doors in Florida neighborhoods in support of amendment 4, a ballot measure that would enshrine abortion rights into the Florida constitution and overturn the state’s ban on the procedure past six weeks of pregnancy. Nine other states are also set to vote on similar ballot measures on election day, but amendment 4 may face the steepest odds. In order to pass, the measure must secure 60% of the vote in a state that has veered sharply to the right in recent years and whose state government has repeatedly tried to kneecap the campaign behind the amendment.Recent polling has found that support for measure hovers somewhere in the 50% range: while one poll found that 58% of Florida voters support it, another closer to 54%. In the latter poll, 55% of women supported the measure, compared to 53% of men. In an election as tight as Florida’s, nudging more men to vote yes could mean the difference between victory and defeat.As Saturday morning gave way to a humid afternoon punctuated by bursts of rain, Rivera trudged from house to house in a wealthy, blue area of Orlando, dropping off Men4Choice stickers and attempting to talk to voters about amendment 4. Numerous houses had blue “Harris/Walz” signs in their front lawns – but not a single one had a purple “Yes on 4” sign. Voters were reluctant to talk about it. “I’m friends with everyone,” one woman said.Rivera has had better luck, he said, with phone banking. In one recent conversation, Rivera described urging one reluctant man to think about his future wife and children: what if, 10 years down the line, his wife died because an abortion ban blocked her from accessing medical care? How would he reveal to his kids that he didn’t vote?“The whole point of this movement is to think about future you,” Rivera recalled telling him. The man, Rivera said, decided to vote in favor of amendment 4.At an early voting site in Tampa, 24-year-old Brandon McCray cited women’s rights as one of his greatest concerns in the 2024 elections. It helped convince him to vote for Kamala Harris. “Amendment 4 would just protect a lot of women,” he said. Banning abortion, he said, “is the biggest violation to a human right”.McCray may be a relative anomaly among his peers. Appalled by the triple-punch of Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election, the sexual violence exposed by the #MeToo movement in late 2017 and the 2022 overturning of Roe v Wade, young women have become the most progressive cohort ever measured in US history – but young men have inched towards the right. While 62% of young women now support Harris, 55% of young men back Donald Trump, according to recent New York Times polling. Moreover, young men’s participation in politics is falling, with young women now on track to vote, rally and donate more frequently.For many young women, the trend is so obvious that its unremarkable. “The right-leaning has more traditional values and more traditional values tends to benefit men more than it benefits women,” said Briana Valle, 22. “For obvious reasons, people are always gonna go for what benefits them.”Leila Wotruba, 22, added: “There’s a lot more at stake for women.”As a gay man, Rivera knows that he may appear to not have much at stake in the fight over abortion rights. But Rivera sees the future of the issue, especially in Florida, as a “litmus test” for other rights.“That’s what I tell people: Even if this might not be a personal issue to you overall … you are definitely next,” he said. “They are just waiting until there’s nobody left to defend you.” More