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    Long-Running Storm Drenches Central U.S. but Starts to Shift East

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    The heaviest rains so far this weekend have hit Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky. More rain is expected on Sunday, but the risk of flooding will be less severe.The huge storm system that has caused widespread damage across the central United States is bringing more heavy rain and high winds on Sunday, continuing its dayslong stretch of soaking communities from Texas to Ohio as it begins to move east.The heaviest rains over the weekend so far have fallen in Arkansas, Missouri and Kentucky, and rising water levels and flooding have prompted water rescues, road closures and evacuation orders. The storm has killed at least 16 people, including a 5-year-old boy in Arkansas, a 9-year-old boy in Kentucky and a firefighter in Missouri, since it began on Wednesday.

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    By Bea Malsky and Martín González Gómez

    The threat of storms and rainfall will shift eastward but diminish on Sunday, which will be a welcome reprieve for residents in the South and the Midwest. In some areas — including northern Arkansas and southern Missouri — rivers are expected to crest on Sunday, and possibly as late as Wednesday, but the risk of dangerous flooding will not be as high as it was on Friday and Saturday.While the worst of the rain is over in northern Kentucky, parts of the region are still expected to receive up to five inches of rain before the long stretch of bad weather finally clears, according to the National Weather Service. “Moderate to major” flooding was forecast on many of the region’s rivers.“Given the fact that everything is so saturated, everything is just running right off the ground and into area creeks and streams,” said Nate McGinnis, a meteorologist with the agency in Wilmington, Ohio.

    Forecast risk of severe storms for Sunday

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      Communities Brace for Flooding as Storm Moves Across Central U.S.

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      The rising water levels have prompted rescues and road closures. The storm, which has already wreaked havoc across the South and the Midwest, doesn’t show signs of letting up.Rivers were rising rapidly across much of the Midwest and South on Saturday, prompting water rescues and road closures as a relentless storm continued to dump rain and to rage across the country. The increased flooding, which was happening from Texas to Ohio, came after days of heavy rains and tornadoes that killed at least nine people, including a Missouri firefighter who died while responding to a water rescue call on Friday. Forecasters warned that the floods might continue well into next week, with rivers not expected to crest in some places until Tuesday or Wednesday.Emergency workers reported overnight water rescues in Texarkana, Texas; Izard County, Ark.; and several places in southern Missouri, including around Cape Girardeau. “We’ve got flooded streets everywhere — and lots more rain on the way,” the Texarkana police posted on Facebook.On Friday, the local sheriff in Izard County, in northern Arkansas, was traveling to rescue a family when he crashed his truck on a washed-out road. The sheriff was not injured, but photos showed his truck partially submerged.“All county roads will have major damage like this for the coming days that can be hidden by the water,” the department warned, adding that people should stay home if possible. More

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      Scenes From States Devastated by a Powerful Storm System

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      A massive storm system has pummeled the Midwest and South this week, killing at least seven people and leaving a trail of destruction from Arkansas to Ohio. The risk may only increase in the days ahead as sustained rainfall is expected to cause widespread and potentially catastrophic floods.The storm began to menace the region on Wednesday, when tornadoes and strong winds toppled barns, houses and power poles. Several people died in Tennessee, including a teenage girl whose modular home was destroyed by a tornado. Officials also linked a fire chief’s death in Missouri and a motorist’s death in Indiana to the storm.In many communities, the focus shifted immediately to the threat of flooding. Water already covered roads in Nashville, and schools in some drenched Kentucky and Tennessee communities called off Friday classes. With many waterways expected to crest at major flood stage over the weekend, residents of river towns in Arkansas, Missouri and beyond were racing to fill up sandbags.Here is a look at some of the damage:ArkansasBrad J. Vest for The New York TimesCody Ferguson took pictures of damage to his home in Lake City.Brad J. Vest for The New York TimesJessica Rust showed off a photo of a tornado that she took on Wednesday as she and her family cleared debris from her father’s destroyed mobile home in Lake City.Associated PressPeople surveyed destroyed homes in Lake City.Brad J. Vest for The New York TimesDylon Davies embraced Skylar, his friend’s dog that survived the tornado in Lake City.TennesseeWilliam DeShazer for The New York TimesRescue operations were underway as floodwaters grew in Nashville.@racheljanemarie via XFloodwaters overflowed into streets in Nashville.William DeShazer for The New York TimesUtility workers began restoring power in Selmer.William DeShazer for The New York TimesBuildings were shredded in Selmer.Tennessee Highway Patrol via StoryfulCrews searched through wreckage after a tornado hit Selmer.William DeShazer for The New York TimesFlooding in Nashville.William DeShazer for The New York TimesResidents in Selmer patched a roof as rain continued to pour.Anthony Kyle Borden via FacebookLightening as tornado warnings were issued in Statonville.KentuckyMichael Swensen/Getty ImagesParishioners and community members assessed damage after a tornado struck the Christ Community Church in West Paducah.Leandro Lozada/Agence France-Presse, via Afp /Afp Via Getty ImagesA tornado ripped through buildings in Louisville.Indiana@DKahunaB via StoryfulTornados toppled trees and damaged homes in Carmel.MissouriDavid Robert Elliott for The New York TimesResidents explored the wreckage in Nevada.David Robert Elliott for The New York TimesBusinesses in Nevada were destroyed by the storm.OklahomaMike Simons/Tulsa World, via Associated PressRyland Mosley, 18, who was on the second story of his home when the storm passed, stood outside and observed the aftermath in Owasso.Mike Simons/Tulsa World, via Associated PressDamage in Owasso. More

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      Tornadoes Sweep Across the South and Midwest, Killing at Least 7

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      After hail, heavy rains and more than 30 tornadoes drenched the region, officials warned that a “generational flooding” disaster was possible.At least seven people have been killed in Tennessee, Missouri and Indiana, officials said on Thursday, after more than 30 tornadoes, combined with hail and heavy rains, swept through the South and Midwest, flooding streets, snapping power lines and flattening homes and businesses.The flooding was expected to worsen as the storm stalls over the region, putting millions under severe weather advisories over the next few days. Officials warned that a “generational flooding” disaster was possible as more than a foot of rain could fall, pushing swollen rivers and creeks over their banks.Cities and counties across the Midwest and South were ramping up efforts to prepare for the severe flooding that was predicted for the days ahead. Officials said that schools in some districts in Tennessee and Kentucky would be closed on Friday.The Army Corps of Engineers said it had filled about 1,500 sandbags to reinforce a levee near Poplar Bluff, Mo., where the Black River was expected to surge to near-record flood levels over the weekend. An urban search-and-rescue team was also deploying to the area.Gov. Mike Braun of Indiana said he was activating the National Guard to help with the storm response.As much as 10 to 15 inches of rain could fall through the weekend, the National Weather Service said. The most intense rain was expected in Arkansas and Tennessee, where floodwaters were rising in parts of Nashville and rescues were underway.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Why the Right Still Embraces Ivermectin

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      Five years after the pandemic began, interest in the anti-parasitic drug is rising again as right-wing influencers promote it — and spread misinformation about it.Joe Grinsteiner is a gregarious online personality who touts the anti-parasitic drug ivermectin. In a recent Facebook video, he produced a tube of veterinary-grade ivermectin paste — the kind made for deworming horses.He gave the tube a squeeze. Then he licked a slug of the stuff, and gulped.“Yum,” Mr. Grinsteiner said in the Feb. 25 video, one of a number of ivermectin-related posts he has made that have drawn millions of views on Facebook this year. “Actually, that tastes like dead cancer.”Ivermectin, a drug proven to treat certain parasitic diseases, exploded in popularity during the pandemic amid false claims that it could treat or prevent Covid-19. Now — despite a persistent message from federal health officials that its medical benefits are limited — interest in ivermectin is rising again, particularly among American conservatives who are seeing it promoted by right-wing influencers.Mr. Grinsteiner, 54, is a Trump supporter and country music performer who lives in rural Michigan. He has claimed in his videos that ivermectin cured his skin cancer, as well as his wife’s cervical cancer. In a video last month, he said a woman told him her nonverbal autistic child had become verbal after using ivermectin. In a recent phone interview, Mr. Grinsteiner said that he takes a daily dose of ivermectin to maintain his general well-being.There is no evidence to support people taking ivermectin to treat cancer or autism. Yet Mr. Grinsteiner believes that the medical and political establishments just want to keep average people from discovering the healing powers of a relatively affordable drug. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mitch McConnell is retiring from US politics. Good riddance | Moira Donegan

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      You would think that this is exactly what Mitch McConnell wanted. McConnell, the 83-year-old Kentucky senator – who announced last week that he will retire in 2026 and not seek an eighth term – is one of the most influential Republicans in the history of the party. But he has in recent weeks expressed dissent and discontent with the direction of the Republican party. He voted against some of Donald Trump’s cabinet appointees, refusing, for example, to cast a vote for the confirmation of the anti-diversity campaigner and alleged rapist and drunk Pete Hegseth.He has also voiced some tepid and belated opposition to Republicans’ extremist agenda, citing his own experience as a survivor of childhood polio as a reason for his opposition to Republican attacks on vaccines. But the Republican party that McConnell is now shaking his head at is the one that he created. He has no one but himself to blame.Over his 40 years in the US Senate, with almost two decades as the Republican leader in the chamber, McConnell has become one of the most influential senators in the nation’s history, radically reshaping Congress, and his party, in the process. Few have done more to erode the conditions of representative democracy in America, and few have done more to enable the rise of oligarchy, autocracy and reactionary, minoritarian governance that is insulated from electoral check. McConnell remade America in his own image. It’s an ugly sight.In the end, McConnell will be remembered for one thing only: his enabling of Trump. In 2021, after Trump refused to respect the results of the 2020 election and sent a violent mob of his supporters to the Capitol to stop the certification of the election results by violent force, McConnell had an opportunity to put a stop to Trump’s authoritarian attacks on the constitutional order.McConnell never liked Trump, and by that point, he didn’t even need him: he had already won what would be his last term. He could have voted to convict Trump at his second impeachment; if he had, it’s likely that other Republican senators would have been willing to do so, too, and that Trump could have been convicted and prevented from returning to power. He didn’t. McConnell voted to acquit, and to allow Trump to rise again. If the next four years of Trump’s restoration are anything like the first 30 days have been, then that will turn out to have been the singularly significant decision of McConnell’s career.But McConnell had been working against American democracy long before Trump sent the mob to ransack the Senate chamber and smear feces on the walls. It was McConnell, after all, who is most responsible for the current campaign finance regime, which has allowed unlimited amounts of dark money spending to infiltrate politics – making elections more influenceable, and politicians’ favor more purchasable, in ways that tilt public policy away from the people’s interests and towards those of the billionaire patron class.Such arrangements of funding and favors are not consistent with democracy; they change politicians’ loyalties, diminish the influence of voters, diminish constituents and their needs to a mere afterthought or communications problem in the minds of elected representatives. This was by design, and it is how McConnell liked it. In Washington, he operated at the center of a vast funding network, moving millions and millions of dollars towards those Republicans who did his bidding, and away from those who bucked his authority.It was partly his control over this spiderlike web of wealthy funders that allowed McConnell to exert such control over his caucus. It is hard to remember these days, when Republicans pick so many fights with each other, that the party was once feared for their discipline. McConnell was able to snuff out any meaningful dissent and policy difference in public among Republican senators with the threat of his deep-pocketed friends, always ready to fund a primary challenger. The lockstep from Republicans allowed McConnell to pursue what he viewed as his twin goals: stopping any Democratic agenda in Congress, and furthering the conservative capture of the federal courts.As Senate Republican leader during the Obama years, McConnell pursued a strategy of maximal procedural obstructionism. His mandate was that no Republican in the Senate would vote for any Obama agenda item – that there would be no compromise, no negotiation, no horse trading, no debate, but only a stonewalled total rejection of all Democratic initiatives. This has become the singular way that Republicans operate in the Senate; it was McConnell who made it that way.The underlying assumption of McConnell’s strategy of total opposition and refusal was that Democrats, even when they win elections, do not have a legitimate right to govern. In practice, the authorities of the presidency or congressional majorities expand and contract based on which party is in power: Republicans can achieve a great deal more in the White House, or with control of Congress, than Democrats can.In part this is because of McConnell’s procedural approach, which posits bending the rules to suit Republican interests when they are in power, and enforcing the rules to the point of functionally arresting legislative business when Democrats take the majority. This, too, is antithetical to democracy: constitutional powers can’t be limited for one party, and expanded for another, so that voters are only fully represented if they vote one way. The strategy of obstructionism functionally ended Congress as a legislative body in all but the most extreme of circumstances. What was most the most representative, electorally responsive, and important branch of the federal government has receded to the status of a bit player, and policymaking power has been abdicated to the executive and the courts. That’s McConnell’s doing, too.Maybe it was part of McConnell’s indifference to the integrity of democracy meant that he refused, during the Obama era, to confirm any of the president’s judicial nominees. Vacancies on the federal courts accumulated, with seats sitting empty and cases piling up for the overworked judges who remained. But McConnell’s seizure of the judicial appointment power from the executive was only in effect when the president was a Democrat; when Republicans were in power, he jammed the courts full of far-right judges.When Antonin Scalia died in 2016, under Obama, McConnell held the US supreme court seat open for almost a year, hoping that Trump would win the 2016 election and get the chance to appoint a right-wing replacement. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, just a few weeks before the 2020 election, McConnell jammed through the nomination of Amy Coney Barrett. His tendencies, then, were always authoritarian: power, in his view, did not belong to those the people elected to represent them. It belonged, always, to Republicans – no matter what the voters had to say about it.Mitch McConnell is an old man. In 2026, when he finally leaves office, he will be 84. He will not have to live in the world that he made, the one where what was left of American democracy is finally snatched away. But we will. Whenever you see a horror of anti-democratic rule – whenever cronyism is rewarded over competence, whenever cruelty is inflicted over dignity, whenever the constitution is flouted, mocked, or treated as a mere annoyance to be ignored by men with no respect for the law or for you – remember Mitch McConnell. You have him to thank.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      ‘Here We Go Again’: Kentucky Residents Face More Destruction and Anxiety From Storms

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      The flood damage over the weekend was not as catastrophic as some previous climate disasters in the state. But the rains still brought widespread havoc, and painful reminders of trauma.As the rains began to drench Eastern Kentucky this weekend, Mimi Pickering looked anxiously out her window in the town of Whitesburg as the North Fork Kentucky River kept rising, and rising, and rising.Would it once again swallow the bridge that leads to the historic Main Street? And would the media and arts education center where she is a board member be damaged, as it was a few years before?“It just looked so much like the 2022 flood — it felt just like, ‘Here we go again, this is unbelievable,’” Ms. Pickering, a filmmaker, said. “It’s been traumatic for people when it rains so heavily — it just adds to that PTSD.”By Sunday, a clearer picture had begun to emerge of the destruction caused by the storms: At least nine people dead throughout the state, with the death toll expected to rise. Nearly 40,000 people without power. More than 1,000 rescues. At least 300 road closures of state and federal roads. Two wastewater systems out of service, including one that was underwater.And more grim news was likely, Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky said during a news conference on Sunday, warning that a snowstorm was expected in the next few days that could dump as much as six inches. He urged Kentuckians to stay home and allow emergency boats, vehicles and workers to reach people in need.“This is one of the most serious weather events that we’ve dealt with in at least a decade,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      We must defend elective abortions, not just the most politically palatable cases | Moira Donegan

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      A Kentucky woman known by the pseudonym Mary Poe recently filed a lawsuit against her state, seeking an abortion for what was once a banal reason: because she wanted one.Poe, who was about seven weeks pregnant at the time of the lawsuit’s filing, has since had an abortion out of state. But her attorneys argue that she still has standing to sue to overturn Kentucky’s two abortion bans – a six-week ban and a separate total ban – arguing that the laws violate the state constitution. This much, at least, is typical: lawsuits challenging abortion bans have sprung up across the country since Dobbs, with women and their families seeking to overturn bans, expand exceptions, or get some compensation from the state for the graphic, distressing, disabling or deadly outcomes that the bans have made them suffer.The US supreme court justices who voted to overturn Roe in Dobbs cited the surge in activist litigation around abortion – a product of conservative investment in anti-choice legal shops – as part of their reason for doing so. Surely this must be a contentious, controversial issue that the federal bench is ill equipped to resolve, the judges from the conservative legal movement reasoned – because look how many complaints the conservative legal movement has filed against it!This rationale was always disingenuous, but it has also been proved flatly wrong: Dobbs has not got the courts out of the abortion business. Instead, lawsuits over abortion have exploded. The anti-choice camp has pounced, seeking to further restrict abortion by banning pills; targeting reproductive rights advocates, abortion funds and sexual health educators; claiming rights for fetuses or embryos; or by asserting that men who father pregnancies have a right to keep women from terminating them.But the pro-abortion rights side has been busy with litigation, too. Women who have been put at great health risk or made to suffer terrible, painful complications as a result of bans brought a class-action lawsuit in Texas. Bans have been challenged over and over again – on religious liberty grounds, on the grounds of state constitutional provisions securing the right to make individual healthcare decisions, under a federal law that guarantees emergency room treatment for patients needing stabilizing care, and under state constitutional clauses guaranteeing liberty, due process and privacy.The Kentucky lawsuit is part of this latter camp. Mary Poe has cited Kentucky’s constitutional guarantees of individual rights to both privacy and self-determination, which she says have been violated by the bans. “I feel overwhelmed and frustrated that I cannot access abortion care here in my own state,” she said in a statement delivered via her lawyers at the American Civil Liberties Union. “I am bringing this case to ensure that other Kentuckians will not have to go through what I am going through, and instead will be able to get the healthcare they need in our community.”This kind of desire for an abortion – the dignified simplicity of it – has been missing from much of the post-Dobbs abortion rights discourse. After the ruling, as trigger bans shot into effect across the country, clinics shuttered their doors, and scared women tried to discern their options, there was no shortage of tragic stories highlighting the brutality, indignity and gendered bigotry of the laws. But as the dust settled and members of the Democratic party, the major reproductive rights advocacy groups and the liberal legal movement surveyed the national scene, a consensus emerged that the face of the mainstream pro-choice movement would be the patient who experienced a medical emergency.Women who had suffered horrific medical complications became lucid, moving and highly sought after tellers of their own stories, explaining how abortion bans has risked their health: Amanda Zurawski, for example, was denied an emergency abortion at 18 weeks, subsequently went into septic shock twice, and one of her fallopian tubes was so scarred that it is now permanently closed, inhibiting her future fertility. Kate Cox was denied an abortion after discovering that her fetus has trisomy 18, a rare genetic condition which is incompatible with life, and which, because of Cox’s own medical history, also endangered her fertility and life.During her presidential run, Kamala Harris ran an ad featuring a woman identified only as Ondrea, who suffered a miscarriage at 16 weeks and was denied the standard care due to her state’s abortion ban. She developed sepsis and almost died. The ad features a shot of Ondrea in a bathroom, staring at her body in a mirror wearing only a sports bra. Her belly bears the scars of the emergency surgery that eventually saved her life – the surgery that she never would have had to have if it weren’t for the ban.It does not diminish these women’s bravery, their suffering, or the wrongness of what was done to them to say that they are only one small fraction of those who need abortions in America. These are married, middle-class women with wanted pregnancies; Zurawski and Cox are both white. Cox has spoken movingly about her hopes to meet her future child, a girl; in the ad that features Ondrea, she and her husband hold a baby blanket. These are women whose suffering at the hands of abortion bans has nothing to do with a refusal or distaste for heterosexual, married, middle-class life. Their suffering can be made visible precisely because they are so acceptable.Not so with Mary Poe. Poe may well be married, middle-class and white; from her statement, in which she talks about the difficulty of finding childcare, we can infer that she, like most abortion patients, is already a mother. But Poe is not suffering a physical emergency; she is not enduring any pain or medical misfortune that she can use to purchase social license. She is not, in other words, a woman whose claim to an abortion is based on a plea for mercy. She is merely a woman who seeks to be in control of her own life, one who believes that things like privacy and self-determination apply to her, too.“I have decided that ending my pregnancy is the best decision for me and my family,” Poe writes in her public statement. “This is a personal decision, a decision I believe should be mine alone, not made by anyone else.”This was not always a radical proposition. But in the post-Dobbs world, it has sadly become one.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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

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