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      Why Biden Could Lose Georgia Next Year

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      Far from the hustle of modern Atlanta and its rapidly growing suburbs is an older Georgia, a rural land of cotton fields and vacant storefronts, of low-wage jobs and shuttered swimming pools, of underfunded Black colleges and American promises ever deferred.In 2020, strong turnout among Black voters in these isolated regions of the state was key to the coalition that turned Georgia blue and ousted Donald Trump from office. Though Atlanta and its suburbs have drawn much of the national attention, Black Democrats in rural Georgia were just as critical: Voting in large numbers in 2020, they reduced the margin of victory in Republican strongholds.Three years later, ahead of a presidential election that could determine whether the United States slides toward autocracy, there are signs this coalition is on the brink of collapse. Many Black voters say President Biden and the Democratic Party have so far failed to deliver the changes they need to improve their lives, from higher-paid jobs to student debt relief and voting protections. They want Mr. Trump out of the White House for good. But indifference and even disdain are growing toward a Democratic Party that relies assiduously on Black Americans’ support yet rarely seems in a hurry to deliver results for them in return.“The Black Hills,” a print by Jason Hunt, hangs at Major’s Barber & Beauty in Fort Valley, Ga.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesA shuttered business in downtown Fort Valley.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York Times“What does he know about my life?” Kyla Johnson, 19, told me of Mr. Biden outside the Dollar General grocery store in Fort Valley, a tiny town in central Georgia home to Fort Valley State University. Ms. Johnson said she had no plans to vote next year.To better understand this discontent, I set out to talk to Black voters across rural Georgia. What I found were many people who are largely living in poverty and say they feel forgotten by Mr. Biden and national Democrats, though almost all did vote for Mr. Biden in 2020. They say they won’t vote for Republicans, whom they see as embodying the spirit of the Old South. But so far, many voters told me, they have seen and heard nothing to suggest that the Democratic Party understands their problems, is committed to improving their lives or even cares about them at all.In dozens of interviews across rural Georgia, younger Black Americans in the region said they are struggling to put food on the table amid soaring prices. They are grappling with suddenly surging housing costs in areas that had long been affordable. Many are carrying tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, debts they have no idea how they can repay working the jobs available in the region, which are extremely limited and low paying. The bounty from a booming Wall Street is nowhere to be found.In Peach County, home to Fort Valley, nearly one in three Black Americans is living below the federal poverty line, according to U.S. census data, compared to 16 percent of white residents in the county and 12.5 percent of Americans nationally. In Lowndes County, which includes Valdosta, about one in three Black Americans is living below the poverty line, compared to just 12.5 percent of white residents.Ms. Johnson’s friend Zayln Young, 18, said she would consider voting, but had so far heard nothing from Mr. Biden about the issues she cared about the most. “For instance, I can’t get food stamps because I’m on my meal plan. Why?” Ms. Young asked, adding that her school meal plan at Fort Valley State University is hard for her to afford and doesn’t provide enough food. (Under federal rules, students who receive the majority of their meals from a school meal plan are ineligible for food stamps, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.)Inside the grocery store moments later, Kem Harris, a social worker, told me she had come to buy items to make gift baskets for Fort Valley State University students who were in need. “Some of them don’t have family nearby and they can’t afford basics, like food,” said Ms. Harris, 56. “Today is toiletries, like toothpaste.”In national polls, Black voters appear to be moving away from Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party while expressing growing support for Mr. Trump. In one October poll, just 71 percent of Black voters in battleground states said they would vote for Mr. Biden, compared to the 87 percent that voted for him nationwide in 2020. Nearly a third of Black men said they support Mr. Trump, while 17 percent of Black women do. In another poll, one in five Black voters said they wanted someone other than Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden.What’s going on? Trumpism has proved to be a powerful force in American politics, so it should come as little surprise that some Black Americans — especially Black men — might also be drawn to its authoritarianism, faux populism and toxic masculinity, as so many White Americans have been, particularly as the economy has grown increasingly unequal.Given Mr. Trump’s open embrace of white supremacy, however, that appeal is severely limited. What’s more likely is not a widespread shift of Black voters toward Mr. Trump but a vote of no confidence in Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party. Black Americans know they make up the backbone of the party. They believe — correctly — that it has long taken them for granted. And now they seem to be reaching a breaking point.Melinee Calhoun.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York Times“Overall, I hear this sense of apathy,” said Melinee Calhoun, the state organizing manager for Black Voters Matter, a nonpartisan voting rights group with a large presence in rural Georgia. “It’s: We did what we were asked to do, and nothing has changed.” In many communities, organizers like Dr. Calhoun are the only ones building a relationship with Black voters.Biden campaign officials say the president and Democrats have enacted policies, like the infrastructure bill and $2.2 billion in relief aimed at helping Black farmers, that directly benefit these communities. Part of the challenge, they say, is explaining that they could do more were it not for Republican opposition in Congress.“We want to point out the fact that the Republicans have stood in the way,” Quentin Fulks, Mr. Biden’s principal deputy campaign manager, told me in a phone interview. But, he said, “we have to do a better job of taking credit for the work we’ve been doing.”In rural Georgia, this disconnect is vast. Organizers, voters and others here say there has been little investment from national Democrats in the region. Mr. Fulks said that it’s early, and that the campaign was still hiring and planned to spend significant resources in the state. Nevertheless, as Mr. Biden campaigns for a second term, likely against a would-be autocrat, he is speaking about democracy in sweeping terms and lauding the strength of an economy whose fruits are far removed from the daily realities of Black Americans in rural Georgia.Whipping up fears over Mr. Trump and taking a victory lap on standard Democratic policies may not be enough to win back these voters. Instead, Mr. Biden and the Democratic Party will have to get serious about taking bolder measures to help a group of people who, descended from Americans once enslaved in the very same region, remain largely without access to financial capital, under constant threat of political disenfranchisement and, too often, in poverty.When the gentlemen at Major’s Barber & Beauty Shop in downtown Fort Valley learned a journalist from The New York Times was in town, one of them stepped out onto the mostly empty street and beckoned me in. Inside, one of the customers, a regular, welcomed me to what he described as “our country club.”“If it’s Trump, I’ll vote twice,” Major McKenzie, 72, joked. But across the room one barber, Shaun William, 38, carefully affixed a Louis Vuitton-themed cape around a client’s neck and shook his head. Mr. William was worried. Many of his clients, he said, couldn’t stand Mr. Trump. But in recent years under Mr. Biden, they had only seen their lives become harder with rising inflation.Major’s Barber & Beauty Shop in Fort Valley.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York Times“Bad as things were, people say they felt money was circulating with Trump in office, those stimulus checks,” he said. “Now there is no money circulating. Prices are up. The cost of food is up.”Throughout the region, opportunities for jobs are extremely limited. Many voters told me they are forced to make a choice: working menial jobs for local businesses owned by a handful of White Republican families, fast food or Wal-Mart. Given the grinding poverty around them, some voters here also said the recent headlines about the United States sending billions to Israel to bomb Gaza are hard to swallow.“I think he should stay out of other people’s business and focus more on problems here at home,” said Kameron White, a 33-year-old forklift operator. “We need help here. We need better education. More jobs. There’s drugs, there’s gang violence. There’s very few grocery stores. I want to see more change at home.”The state of Georgia stands to receive more than $9 billion under the infrastructure plan championed by Mr. Biden, money for roads, bridges, airports, public transit and cleaner water. But Black voters in Georgia, which has two Democratic senators but a Republican governor and legislature, say they have yet to see that money flow into their own communities. In Valdosta, not far from the Florida border, several residents told me they were angry the city was spending $1.8 million to build pickleball courts even as it keeps threadbare hours for a public swimming pool in a largely Black neighborhood throughout the sweltering South Georgia summer. Though Black residents make up a modest majority in Valdosta, the city’s mayor is a white right-wing talk-show host.The pool at the Mildred Hunter Community Center, in Valdosta, Ga., is open only on Saturdays during the weekends and for limited hours each weekday during the summer.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesVoter enthusiasm is critical in Georgia, where a spirited campaign of suppression and disenfranchisement driven by Republicans and conservative activists both local and national makes exercising the right to vote harder than in many places. In 2005, the state became among the first in the country to enact a measure requiring a government-issued photo ID to vote. In recent years, right-wing activists and Republican Party officials in the state have led an effort to remove voters from the rolls.In a quiet neighborhood of Valdosta near Barack Obama Boulevard, Erica Jordan, 29, greeted me on the porch of her aging white bungalow.She is behind on the rent, as she recently lost her job at Pizza Hut. Because of this, she lost her car, severely limiting her ability to work and be a parent in Valdosta, which has no regular citywide public transit system. Over the past year, the monthly rent on her small house went up by $100, to $750. In late August, floodwaters from Hurricane Idalia entered her home, damaging some of her belongings.Erica Jordan with her daughter.José Ibarra Rizo for The New York TimesMs. Jordan is now working a telecommunications job from home, but she says she earns too much for food stamps and not enough to make ends meet or afford food at the one grocery store within walking distance. At the end of every month, Ms. Jordan says, she asks to babysit or do hair just to eke by.“I’m not complaining, but I pay the bills on my own. I’m a single mother. I need help,” she said.She plans to vote next year, but wonders aloud if it will ever bring the change she needs. “All my life, I been played,” she says. “Every year it gets harder. It makes me wonder why I vote.”It was these voters, some of the poorest in the country, who played a key role in denying Mr. Trump a second term and preserving American democracy. It’s in America’s best interest to make sure they have a reason — and a right — to keep showing up to vote.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Georgia election workers sue to bar Giuliani from repeating same 2020 lies

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      Two former Georgia election workers who won a $148m defamation judgment against Rudy Giuliani asked on Monday for a court order barring him from continuing to repeat the lies he spread about them following the 2020 election.The new lawsuit points to comments the former New York City mayor made during and after the damages trial last week, repeating the baseless conspiracy theories about Ruby Freeman and Wandrea “Shaye” Moss.Those statements “make clear that he intends to persist in his campaign of targeted defamation and harassment. It must stop,” attorneys for the mother and daughter wrote in court documents.Giuliani’s political adviser Ted Goodman declined to comment on the lawsuit but pointed to the former mayor’s other accomplishments, including his celebrated leadership after the 11 September terrorist attacks in 2001.Giuliani has previously acknowledged in court documents that he made public comments falsely claiming Freeman and Moss committed ballot fraud as he fought to keep his fellow Republican Donald Trump in the White House after Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election.Those claims led to racist threats and intense harassment that forced the mother and daughter to flee their homes and fear for their lives, they said in emotional testimony last week. The trial was held to determine the amount of damages after a judge found he was liable for defaming them.Giuliani has vowed to appeal the verdict, and it is not clear whether he would be able to pay the staggering damages. He has shown signs of financial strain as he defends himself against costly lawsuits and investigations stemming from his representation of Trump.Also, Giuliani is among 19 people charged in Georgia in the case accusing Trump and his Republican allies of working to subvert the state’s 2020 election results. Giuliani has pleaded not guilty and has characterized the case as politically motivated. More

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      Appeals court rejects Mark Meadows’s bid to move Georgia elections case

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      A US appeals court has ruled that the election interference case against the former Trump White House chief of staff Mark Meadows must stay in state court in Georgia and not move to federal court as he requested.Meadows had attempted to transfer his 2020 election interference case in the state to federal court, but the court had expressed doubt in his argument that he was acting as a federal official in trying to reverse Donald Trump’s defeat by Joe Biden.Meadows has been charged with violating the Georgia racketeering statute, alongside Trump and other co-defendants by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, over their efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election in Georgia.More details soon … More

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      Trump seeks to dismiss Georgia election case by claiming political speech

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      Donald Trump’s lawyer asked a judge on Monday to throw out the Georgia criminal case over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election results in the state, contending the indictment violated the former president’s first amendment rights by charging him for so-called core political speech.The motion to dismiss the election interference case brought by the Fulton county district attorney, Fani Willis, was similar in scope and theory to Trump’s request to throw out the federal indictment in Washington DC that was rejected this month.Trump’s filing, submitted after a court hearing on the issue, directly attacked the charges that he and his allies violated Georgia’s racketeering statute in trying to reverse his 2020 election defeat, including his 2 January 2021 call pressuring the Georgia secretary of state to “find” 11,780 votes.The 19-page motion sought to reframe the indictment as an attempt to criminalize Trump’s political speech, arguing that the former president’s repeated lies that widespread fraud corrupted the vote count were supposedly aimed at prompting investigations by state legislatures.“It was directed at the bodies responsible for conducting government business, the bodies with the information in their possession, the bodies undertaking the investigations, and the bodies vested with the authority of adjudicating such complaints,” Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow wrote.The motion also argued that Trump’s claims of election fraud were protected by the constitution’s first amendment because the US supreme court had previously decided the government could not criminalize speech on disputed political issues just because it determined the views to be false.“The first amendment prohibits the state from weaponizing its powers to silence disfavored viewpoints or prevent people from advocating such viewpoints to government officials,” Sadow wrote.Trump probably faces a steep uphill battle to have the case dismissed, especially after the US district judge Tanya Chutkan in Washington DC earlier denied Trump’s near-identical motion to dismiss with a detailed 48-page opinion that cut down the same first amendment claims.Chutkan wrote in her decision even if Trump was right that his statements disputing the outcome of the 2020 election were true, “core political speech” did not immunize him from prosecution if it was used in furtherance of criminal activity.The decision also found that it was misguided for Trump to rely on the supreme court precedent in United States v Alvarez – that the Stolen Valor Act, which prohibits an individual from falsely claiming they received a medal for serving in the military, violated the first amendment.The stolen valor case was not helpful to Trump, Chutkan suggested, because the supreme court did not undermine settled precedent allowing prosecutors to charge cases where speech was used to advance a crime.Trump and the original 18 co-defendants in August pleaded not guilty to the racketeering charges. In the weeks that followed, the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro, as well as the local GOP operative Scott Hall, took plea deals and became witnesses cooperating with the prosecution.The Fulton county district attorney’s office does not intend to offer plea deals to Trump and at least two of his top allies, including his ex-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows and his former lawyer Rudy Giuliani, the Guardian reported last month. More

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      Black Georgian men helped Biden win the White House – are they losing faith?

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      Morehouse College, a 156-year-old Black men’s liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia, has produced graduates such as Martin Luther King and Spike Lee. It has been an essential campaign stop for Democratic politicians such as Barack Obama, John Lewis and, last September, Kamala Harris.But as another presidential election looms, Joe Biden can take nothing for granted here. “A resounding no,” was 28-year-old Ade Abney’s verdict on whether the US president has delivered on his promises to Black voters. “I voted for Biden in 2020 but next year I don’t know who I’m going to vote for. It probably will not be him.”Georgia is among half a dozen swing states that will decide the all-important electoral college next November. Despite its history as a bastion of conservatism in the south, Democrats have scored notable wins in presidential and Senate elections in recent years. African American voters have been fundamental to that success, with Biden securing 88% of the Black vote in 2020.But opinion polls suggest an erosion of support for the president. An October survey by the New York Times and Siena College found that, while 76% of Black voters in Georgia favour Biden, 19% prefer his likely rival Donald Trump – an unprecedented share for a Republican in modern times. It was enough to give Trump a six-point lead in the state overall.The current shift is particularly acute among Black men for reasons that include a perception that Trump would cut taxes and offer better economic opportunities. Abney, a Morehouse graduate who now works at the college, said: “I was in a barbershop and the barbershop conversation was how they like Trump.“The reason was at least when he was in office they felt as though they were able to make more money. A lot of people attribute that specifically to him. A lot of that conversation was pretty clear in terms of OK, well, I had more money when he was in office so I want him back.”Standing beside Abney at the tree-lined college entrance, Dejaun Wright, 23, offered even sharper criticism of Biden. “There’s a lot of broken promises, a lot of a lack of integrity,” the philosophy student said. “He campaigned on promises such as student loan forgiveness and every instance where he’s shown interest in that, he’s always applied a caveat: oh, well, I said student loan forgiveness, but I only forgive $10,000.“A lot of the things that he promised he’s offered either with a caveat or he just hasn’t offered at all. It’s a slap in the face. If you are going to build a campaign and then build a presidency off of lies, or at least not keeping your promises, then I don’t know if I can trust you again.”At liberal colleges such as Morehouse, there is also rising discontent over 81-year-old Biden’s staunch support for Israel, even as it unleashes an aerial and ground blitz against Hamas that is causing thousands of civilian deaths and a humanitarian disaster in Gaza.Wright added: “I’m not appreciative of how vocal he’s been in his blind support of Israel. No sense of criticism there whatsoever. He’s actively been ignoring all of us. We’ve all been saying we don’t support this war in Israel. We don’t like our tax money funding a genocide like this, especially considering the amount of debt we have.”Black men do still vote overwhelmingly Democrat, and it’s only a small segment who might be turning away. In 2020 87% of Black men supported Joe Biden, which although down slightly from the 95% who voted for Barack Obama in his first campaign was better than the 82% who supported Hillary Clinton in 2016. (Black women support Democrats even more strongly: in 2016 and 2020, 94% and 95% voted for Biden.) Only 12% of Black men voted for Trump in 2020 and no Democrat has attracted less than 80% of Black voters since the civil rights era.Small numbers could nevertheless make a big difference. Like Florida in 2000 or Ohio in 2004, Georgia has become a closely fought battleground that could decide the presidency. In 2020 Biden won the state by a margin of just 11,779 votes, or 0.24%, becoming the first Democrat to carry the state in 28 years. Trump’s false claims and efforts to overturn the result led to criminal charges and a potential trial next year.Democrats’ gains continued two months later, when Raphael Warnock became the first African American from Georgia elected to the Senate and Jon Ossoff became the state’s first Jewish senator. Last year, Warnock won re-election in a runoff against the Republican Herschel Walker, an African American former football star who failed to make significant gains among Black voters.But Stacey Abrams, bidding to become America’s first Black female governor, was defeated by the Republican incumbent, Brian Kemp. In the House of Representatives, the far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene cruised to re-election. The state remains so finely balanced that even a fraction of Black voters switching to Trump, voting third party or simply staying at home on election day could make all the difference.Cliff Albright, a co-founder and executive director of the Black Lives Matter Fund, does not believe there is more of an enthusiasm gap now than at the same stage in 2019, when Black voters were unexcited about Biden. “People confuse electability for enthusiasm,” he said. “We weren’t that enthusiastic and we’re still not that enthusiastic. But that’s not news.“It’s just showing up differently because we’re a year out from the election. My prediction is that as we get closer, that pragmatism will set back in and people will start to realise more that this is not a referendum about Biden. This is a choice between this person and the one that we know is anti-us or somebody else who’s equally as bad.”Albright does not believe polls that say Trump will improve on his share of the Black vote next time. But he acknowledges that Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza could hurt him among young Black voters, especially with independent candidates such as Cornel West offering a clear alternative by demanding a ceasefire.“A lot of Black folks see ourselves in the Palestinian struggle,” he said. “A lot of us view that as a David and Goliath situation, a colonial situation. We see ourselves in what’s happening. When we see armed military using teargas and rockets and all that, we also see the George Floyd protests and ourselves going up against tanks and police forces.“There’s some very strong feelings about what many have called a genocide that is taking place in front of our eyes. Not only are you supporting the Israeli government’s ability to carry out this war but you are literally transferring more and more money so that they can do so. It’s not just political cover. It is actual financial and military support.He continued: “You get the Black folks, especially younger Black folks, that are like, ‘you keep saying you don’t have money for us but you’ve got money to go over here to kill some other folks that actually look like us.’ People can say, ‘oh, Trump would be worse,’ but that doesn’t change that what these folks are seeing right now is not Trump doing it. They’re seeing President Biden do it and so that is going to impact.“And many of these young folks, once they turn you off, you’re done. He could come back next month and increase the student debt cancellation. He could come up with some new gun legislation. He could go even further on some of the climate change issues. But many of these folks that right now are furious about what’s going on in Gaza, none of that would change their minds. They’re that mad.”Israel is not the only foreign policy issue weighing on Black voters. While his unwavering support for Ukraine’s war against Russian aggression – Congress has already allocated $111bn in assistance – has earned global plaudits, it appears to be playing differently in some African American communities.Kendra Cotton, chief executive of the New Georgia Project (NGP), a non-partisan organisation that works to empower voters of colour, said she didn’t think much of Ukraine until she “saw all of the African immigrants getting kicked off those trains. Then my eyes glassed over and I was like, this ain’t my problem and I didn’t want anything to do with it.“While I empathise with what’s going on in Ukraine, what I know is, if my Black behind was over there, they’d have kicked me off the trains too, so good luck to you.”She added: “We have people under these overpasses right here living in tents … People are trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents.“So, when you’re talking about billions in aid leaving the country, people don’t know how to qualify that in their minds: OK, but what are you doing domestically? Because when you talk about domestic issues, all you hear is we ain’t got it, there’s no money for that.”The NGP has registered almost 50,000 voters this year as it continues to fight voter purges in the state. In a September survey it found approval of Biden’s job performance down to just 61% among Black Georgia voters, and only 45% of Black 18 to 24-year-olds. Keron Blair, chief of field and organising for the NGP, argues that the White House has less of a policy problem than a communication one.He said: “I talk to people who’ve had thousands of dollars in student loans forgiven. We hear from people who got money directly into their pockets because of IRA [Inflation Reduction Act]. We hear from communities that have received resources for infrastructure. We see the broadband initiative.“That has not been communicated in a serious and strategic way to voters and so people are always going to ask, I voted last time, what happened? If they don’t know the things they are seeing and experienced are the result of choices made by the administration, they’re going to feel like not much has shifted.”Indeed, the gap between positive economic data and a sense of malaise on the ground is evident among Black voters. Gregory Williams, 37, a health coach, said: “The economy doesn’t feel like it’s strong. Everything feels out of whack. Inflation is crazy. Cities that are far out are expensive. Everything is just up right now. It’s hard to even get a loan for a house. Atlanta has the most evictions it’s ever had in its history.”Williams does not rule out voting for Trump. “It depends if he makes sense. He might not be saying what people want him to say but there’s a lot of things that he does and it seems like it helps. It gets a visual effect. People see things happening.”Jasper Preston, 35, a programme director at a homelessness non-profit, added: “Biden’s presidency has been an absolute nightmare for me personally. All the progress I made becoming more financially secure has been completely undone. I find myself worse off than during the Obama years and that has caused quite a setback. I have four children so it’s been very unpleasant trying to make ends meet.”Preston is a longtime Trump supporter who was ridiculed for it by his siblings living on the South Side of Chicago. But not any more, he said. “One privately gave me a call to very secretly admit that she is no longer a Democrat and will be voting for Trump in this upcoming election. She can’t tell anybody around South Side Chicago because, well, it’s South Side Chicago.“The same for my other siblings in Chicago as well as in here in Georgia. People are realising, ‘Oh, my wallet has definitely been drastically affected by this new administration, and all the promises they made based on skin colour turned out to be lies, and apparently promises about skin colour don’t make for a good president.’”In his victory speech after winning the 2020 election, Biden acknowledged that when his campaign was at its lowest ebb, African American voters stood up for him. “You’ve always had my back, and I’ll have yours,” he promised. In his inaugural address two months later, he named racial justice as one of four national crises that would take priority during his administration.While Biden has poured money into historically Black colleges and universities and appointed record numbers of people of colour as judges, efforts at police reform or to protect voting rights have stalled in Congress. When the president travelled to Atlanta last year to make his most aggressive case yet for reform of the Senate filibuster rule, some campaigners boycotted the event.Shelley Wynter, a conservative radio host and member of the Georgia Black Republican Council, said: “A Biden partisan person will tell you all these things that he’s done, but none of it was specifically for Black people. If Ukraine gets attacked and you can find billions and billions of dollars to send to Ukraine, you could have sent money into inner-city urban areas to say, ‘Hey, let’s do this.’”He continued: “If I vote for you and I’ve continuously voted for you and I’m the strongest, most loyal base of voters that you have, and you’ve still got nothing specifically for this group yet you can do stuff for other people, that’s why people are shifting, particularly Black men.“I equate what’s going on to what happens in a Black church. If you go to an average Black church, you’re going to see 90% women, a sprinkling of men. Most of those men are going to be older guys. Men are raised in a church and they see the ministers driving a Rolls-Royce while they are still in a hooptie struggling, and they start to get turned off and they stop going.“But their wives continue to go. That’s what the Democratic party is becoming: a party of Black women and a sprinkling of Black men, because Black men are going to Trump, they’re not going to the Republican party – and it’s a big difference.”Wynter argues that many have come view to Trump’s racism as a myth, empathise with his legal troubles and dismiss dire warnings that he would behave like a dictator in a second term. “It’s like, ‘I’m already living in a dictatorship, I’m already oppressed as a Black man, so all those things that they’re saying about Trump don’t resonate because I’m already there.“‘So now let me pay attention to the things that I really care about, which is my money, and this guy allows me to keep my money in my pocket. Tax cuts, less regulations for the entrepreneurial-spirited guy.’ That’s what they see. It’s a real tangible thing. ‘In 2019, I had X amount of money after I got paid every two weeks. Now I have less. It’s very tangible. I can see it, I can feel it. You telling me he’s evil? I can’t see or feel that. But I can see more money in my pocket.’”Democrats acknowledge the work that must be done to rebuild Biden’s 2020 coalition. Earlier this month his election campaign released a new ad, “List”, making the case that the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act are helping people in African American communities. Despite worrying polls and signs of donor fatigue, the party is on a winning streak in recent elections and ballot measures on issues such as abortion rights.Back at Morehouse, there are still plenty of students keeping faith with the president. Damarion King, 18, studying political science, said: “I believe Joe Biden is doing a fantastic job, passing so many bipartisan bills. I don’t think his age is a factor in this election, at least for me. He’s doing the job. He’s doing his work for the people of America and I strongly support him.”King is sceptical that Black men who voted for Biden in 2020 will defect to Trump next year, not least because of the former president’s 91 criminal charges. “Anybody in the Black working class who’s saying that Trump is a better businessman is wrong. He’s gone bankrupt multiple times. He can’t be that great of a businessman.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani’s $148 Million Treachery

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      On Dec. 13, an election worker named Ruby Freeman took the stand in a Georgia courtroom and told the story of how her world was turned upside down by Rudy Giuliani. Three Decembers earlier, Giuliani shared a routine surveillance video of Ms. Freeman and her daughter, Shaye Moss, doing the routine yet vital work of counting 2020 presidential ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.But Giuliani’s description of the video was anything but routine. He falsely claimed that the footage was evidence of vote fraud. In that moment, everything changed for Freeman. As she said in her testimony, “Giuliani just messed me up, you know.” That’s a polite way of describing the horrors that followed. She faced an avalanche of threats, racist attacks and harassment at work and home. She had to leave her house — and then, after law enforcement officials found her name on a death list, the house of the friend she’d been staying with. Even now she’s afraid to walk in public without a mask.The purpose of Freeman’s courtroom testimony was simple: to describe in detail how Giuliani’s lies had profoundly damaged her life. And make no mistake, Giuliani lied. He admitted that his statements were false back in July, and in August the court entered a default judgment against him, holding him liable for those falsehoods. The only question left for the jury was the amount of the damages. And Friday, the jury gave its answer: Giuliani now owes Freeman and Moss $148 million to compensate them for his cruel and obvious lies.The verdict is against Giuliani alone. But make no mistake, MAGA was on trial in the courtroom — its methods, its morality and the means it uses to escape the consequences of its dreadful acts. That’s because Rudy Giuliani isn’t truly Rudy Giuliani any longer. In his long descent from a post-9/11 American hero to a mocked, derided and embattled criminal defendant (he has also been indicted in Fani Willis’s sprawling Georgia case), he became something else entirely. He became a MAGA Man.I’m reminded of Sigourney Weaver’s famous line in “Ghostbusters”: “There is no Dana, only Zuul.” There is no Giuliani now, only Donald Trump.There are many MAGA Men and MAGA Women in the modern G.O.P. To meet one is, in significant respects, to meet them all. The names roll off the tongue. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Kari Lake, Roger Stone, Marjorie Taylor Greene, John Eastman — the list could go on and on. And while they all have different stories before Trump, they share variations of the same story after Trump. Giuliani’s story, MAGA’s story, is theirs as well.That’s what was most significant about his trial. It wasn’t the damage award, as substantial as it was. It’s the story, the tale that lays bare what a MAGA Man is.The first thing you need to know about a MAGA Man like Giuliani is that he’s dishonest. Truthfulness is incompatible with Trumpism. Trump is a liar, and he demands fealty to his lies. So Giuliani’s task, as Trump’s lawyer, was to lie on his behalf, and lie he did. He even repeated his lies about Freeman and Moss — the same lies to which he’d already confessed — outside the courthouse during his trial.A MAGA Man such as Giuliani supplements his lies with rage. To watch him pushing Trump’s election lies was to watch a man become unglued with anger. The rage merged with the lie. The rage helped make the lie stick. Why would a man like Giuliani, former prosecutor and hero mayor, be so angry if he hadn’t discovered true injustice? MAGA Men and Women are very good at using their credibility from the past to cover their lies in the present.Amid the lies and rage, however, a MAGA Man like Giuliani also finds religion. But not in the way you might expect. No, MAGA Man is not sorry for what he’s done. Instead, he feels biblically persecuted. Freeman and Moss aren’t the real victims; he is. Moreover, he also knows that the base is religious and likes to hear its politicians talk about God.Giuliani learned that lesson well. So during the trial, he compared himself to Christians in the Colosseum, battling the lions like the martyrs of old. He’s not alone in this, of course. Trump shared an image of Jesus sitting by his side as he stood trial. Stone got so religious that he claimed to see supernatural sights, including, he said, a “demonic portal” that’s “swirling like a cauldron” about the Biden White House.One of the persistent debates in American life centers on how strictly we should judge the sins of our national past. Were those people who owned slaves or broke faith with Native Americans or passed the Chinese Exclusion Act merely products of their time? MAGA Men and MAGA Women will not have that excuse. They know there is a different way. Before Trump, many of them — whatever their flaws — lived very different lives. And few of them more so than Giuliani.His trial and verdict write another page in the volume of truth that tells the real story of MAGA America. Every voter should know exactly who Trump is and what his movement is like. They should know what happened to Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. We should remember their names. But if a MAGA Man remembers, he does not care. Whoever he once was is gone. He serves a new master now.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      ‘I miss my name’: Giuliani verdict lays bare limits of defamation law

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      About halfway down the main hallway in the federal courthouse in Washington DC are the names of every judge who has sat on the bench since the early 1800s. Printed in gold lettering, the names include Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Roberts, Brett Kavanaugh, Antonin Scalia and Ketanji Brown Jackson, all of whom have gone on to the highest levels of public service.But this week, four floors above that hallway, in courtroom 26A, two little-known public servants mourned the moment they lost their own names.In harrowing detail, Ruby Freeman and her daughter Wandrea ArShaye Moss testified about how Rudy Giuliani and Donald Trump falsely accused them of election fraud and ruined their lives shortly after the 2020 election as part of a scheme to contest and overturn the results. They told eight Washington DC jurors how they received a flood of racist messages and death threats. And how they’ve fled their homes outside Atlanta, Georgia, isolated themselves from their community and started protecting their identities. “I don’t have a name no more,” Freeman said on Wednesday. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am.”As millions of Americans have heard by now, Giuliani, the former New York mayor, repeatedly lied about the two women, who are Black. He claimed that they wheeled suitcases of illegal ballots out from under tables after counting had concluded at State Farm Arena, that they were passing around USB drives and that they created a fake water main break.The case was one of several significant efforts to hold Giuliani, Trump and other allies accountable for the lies they spread about the 2020 election – an election Trump continues to insist that he won.The jury awarded Moss and Freeman $148.1m in cumulative damages.The Giuliani case was about more than defamation. It was about power.At issue in the case wasn’t really the fact that Giuliani lied, but whom he lied about. It was a case about the way powerful people can use their influence to destroy the reputations of the average person.Moss spoke about this during her testimony on Tuesday when she described a nightmare she continues to have. In it, she opens her front door, she said, and finds powerful people with nooses ready to kill her.“They could do that because of who they are,” Moss said. “I’m a nobody.”Giuliani showed little emotion or remorse as lawyers for Freeman and Moss played horrific messages they received, including voicemails filled with racial slurs and letters sent to their homes with graphic death threats.In the first moments of the case, Von DuBose, one of the attorneys for Freeman and Moss, asked the jurors to consider the power of a name. “What’s in a name? Power, purpose, pride,” he said. “Your name is the most important thing you know.”He went on to say that the case was about how the names of Freeman and Moss have been transformed by Giuliani’s defamatory lies. Unspoken, too, were those of two men who have built their careers around their names: Giuliani and Trump. Two men who have continued to benefit as Moss and Freeman suffered.Though they never intended it, Moss and Freeman have become symbols of the human cost of the cost of election denialism because of that imbalance of power.They have largely stayed out of public since 2020, but their presence in a Washington DC courtroom served as a stand-in for the droves of election workers who have faced lies and harassment from people who believe the election was stolen. Many of them have left the profession.That sentiment was driven home in a gut-wrenching moment when Moss testified about the initial weeks in December 2020 when she went back to work, even while receiving harassment, to prepared for Georgia’s January 2021 runoff election. “I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”“Amidst all of this my goal was to get ready for the next election,” she said. “It’s hurtful … That’s the way people feel when I’m breaking my back to make sure their vote counts.”Usually in high-profile cases, it is the wealthy, famous person who is surrounded by a phalanx of lawyers in the courtroom. But in 26A this week, Giuliani sat alone at the defense table, flicking through his tablet, with a single lawyer, Joseph Sibley.Sibley did his best, with scattershot arguments to the jury to try to persuade them that Giuliani was not responsible for serious harm against the plaintiffs. He pointed to other actors, such as the far-right platform Gateway Pundit, that he said were really to blame for Freeman and Moss’s suffering because of how they disseminated the lies and videos. It would not really cost tens of millions of dollars to repair the reputation of the two women, he argued at another point.At the end, he made a simpler appeal: judge Giuliani by his good reputation.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“Rudy Giuliani is a good man. I know that some of you may not think that. He hasn’t exactly helped himself with some of the things that have happened in the last few days,” he said. “The idea of him being a racist, or him encouraging racist activity, that’s really a low blow. That’s not who he is.”At the plaintiffs’ table, about 10ft away, it was Moss and Freeman who sat quietly surrounded by a dozen attorneys. It was the first time the two women had come face to face with the man who has tormented them for years.“After everything they went through, they stood up and they said no more. They opened themselves up to you and the public, and unlike some other people, they testified here under oath,” Michael Gottlieb, one of their attorneys, said in closing arguments, needling Giuliani’s last-minute decision not to testify.He urged the jurors to “send a message” with their damages award.“Send it to Mr Giuliani,” the lawyer said in his closing argument. “Send it to any other powerful figure with a platform and an audience who is considering whether they will take the chance to seek profit and fame by assassinating the moral character of ordinary people.”The verdict came, and it sent a message. But it didn’t yet bring closure.It’s not clear when Moss and Freeman can expect to see a cent of the money they’ve been awarded. Giuliani is widely reported to have financial troubles and he is likely to use an appeal and every other legal maneuver to try to delay paying. And it’s not clear whether the case will even stop Giuliani from defaming them again.“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the federal courthouse on Friday.Giuliani had been far from repentant throughout the week. And since August, when Judge Beryl Howell entered a default judgment against Giuliani for defamation per se, intentional infliction of emotional distress and civil conspiracy, Giuliani has made at least 20 defamatory statements against Freeman and Moss, their attorneys said this week.The dynamic underscores the limits of defamation law to police misinformation. While it can force people to pay for their lies, it cannot force them to stop lying or persuade people not to believe the lies.RonNell Andersen Jones, a first amendment scholar at the University of Utah, said observers are concerned about instances in which defamers brush aside damages. In cases involving large media outlets, she said, it may simply be seen as the cost of doing business. And in others, like that of Giuliani, people may simply “be judgment-proof, bankrupt, or otherwise unwilling or unable to pay”, she said.“In both situations, we’re testing the outer boundaries of libel law’s ability to remedy the harm done by falsehoods and to deter defamers from telling future lies. We are also, more fundamentally, testing the rule of law,” she added.“If the incentive to lie to audiences eager to receive those lies is stronger than the power of any court proceeding, and if defamers have decided that they simply will not participate in cases brought against them and will avoid paying damages when they are issued, this raises far deeper concerns.”Even with the money, it won’t be able to undo the damage that the two women suffered to their reputations. Moss loved her job as a Fulton county election official and thought her interim position as the permanent absentee ballot supervisor would be made permanent.Instead, she was moved to a back office role under the impression she would never touch a ballot again.“I want people to understand this: money will never solve all of my problems. I can never move back to the house I called home. I will always have to be careful about where I go, and who I choose to share my name with,” Freeman said outside the federal courthouse in Washington DC after the verdict on Friday.“I miss my home, I miss my neighbors, and I miss my name.” More

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      Rudy Giuliani defamation trial: key moments at a glance

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      A jury has ordered Rudy Giuliani to pay former election workers Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss $148.1m after he spread lies about them following the 2020 election.The verdict, after a four-day trial in Washington, came after Moss and Freeman testified in court that they feared for their lives when Giuliani falsely claimed they had tampered with votes.Here’s a look back at some of the key moments in the trial:
      The $148.1m damages award for to two Atlanta election workers is one of the most significant verdicts to date seeking accountability for those who attempted to overturn the 2020 election.
      Freeman and Moss testified about the effects of lies spread by Giuliani and others who put them at the center of an election conspiracy theory. They shared examples of the racist, harassing, threatening messages they received after being publicly named by election deniers.
      Freeman testified about her experiences following Giuliani’s defamatory comments, in which he accused her of committing election fraud. “Sometimes I don’t know who I am,” said Freeman.
      Lawyers for Freeman and Moss played audio and displayed several of the racist messages they received in court. It included one of a person saying a racial slur over and over again. Another was a picture of what Freeman described as a kind of “monkey beast” and had writing on it that said “Ruby Freeman’s father”.
      Freeman said she had to leave her home for safety reasons. She hired a lawyer to help keep her name off any home-related documents for her new place. She said she felt like she has lost who she is, and her good name.
      Moss detailed how she became anxious to even leave the house, and that the false claims caused her son to be harassed, eventually failing his classes. She said she still does not really go out.
      Giuliani was initially expected to testify. But after two separate incidents of him doubling down, his team did not put him on the stand. His lawyer said the women had been through enough, but also pointed to Gateway Pundit, the rightwing media outlet, as more culpable for the harassment.
      Speaking outside court on Friday, Freeman said: “Today’s a good day. A jury stood witness to what Rudy Giuliani did to me and my daughter and held him accountable, and for that I’m thankful.Today is not the end of the road, we still have work to do. Rudy Giuliani was not the only one who spread lies about us, and others must be held accountable too. But that is tomorrow’s work.”
      Her daughter Shaye Moss also gave a statement, saying: The flame that Giuliani lit with those lies and passed to so many others to keep that flame blazing changed every aspect of our lives – our homes, our family, our work, our sense of safety, our mental health. And we’re still working to rebuild.
      Giuliani himself dismissed the verdict and told reporters outside Washington’s federal courthouse that he will appeal, saying the “absurdity of the number merely underscores the absurdity of the entire proceeding”. “It will be reversed so quickly it will make your head spin, and the absurd number that just came in will help that actually,” he said.
      Ashlee Humphreys, a professor from Northwestern University and an expert witness of Freeman and Moss, walked through the significant reputational damage done to them, showing how their names are now associated with election fraud.
      Freeman and Moss’s lawyer, Michael Gottlieb, said they hope the case sends a clear message to people launching smear campaigns not to do it.
      The jury began deliberations on Thursday and returned their verdict on Friday afternoon. More