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    Democratic candidates can win Rust Belt voters by … attacking the Democratic party | Jared Abbott and Bhaskar Sunkara

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    If anyone could have broken through as a progressive in red America, it was Sherrod Brown. For decades, the Ohio senator railed against corporations for shipping good-paying jobs overseas and pleaded with Democrats to take the struggles of deindustrialized communities seriously. Yet in 2024, even Brown, a model economic populist, fell to a Republican challenger.Does that prove, as writers such as Jonathan Chait have argued, that the idea of winning back the working class with progressive economic policies has been tried and has failed?We wanted to know why Democrats keep losing working-class support in the Rust belt, and what could turn things around. So, with colleagues at the Center for Working-Class Politics, the Labor Institute and Rutgers University, we surveyed 3,000 voters across Pennsylvania, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin. The research suggests the story is more complicated – and that Democrats’ problems in the Rust belt are real, but solvable.We found a consistent pattern we call the “Democratic penalty”. In a randomized, controlled trial, respondents were shown hypothetical candidates with identical economic populist platforms. The only difference was that some were labeled Democrats, while others were labeled independents. Across the four states, the Democratic candidates fared eight points worse.In Ohio the gap was nearly 16 points; in Michigan, 13; in Wisconsin, 11. The voters most alienated by the party label were the very groups Democrats most need to win back: Latinos, working-class Americans, and others in rural and small-town communities.This pattern helps explain why figures like Brown can run as tough economic populists and still struggle, while independents like Dan Osborne in Nebraska dramatically overperformed expectations on nearly identical platforms. It’s the Democratic brand that’s unpopular, not the populism.What’s at the root of the mistrust? After the 2024 election, many commentators pointed to “wokeness” as the culprit. But our research tells a different story. When we asked voters to write a sentence about what first came to mind when they thought of Democrats, 70% offered negative views. Yet only a small minority mentioned “wokeness” or ideological extremism – 3% of Democrats, 11% of independents, 19% of Republicans. The dominant complaints weren’t about social liberalism but about competence, honesty and connection. Democrats were seen as out of touch, corrupt or simply ineffective: “falling behind on what’s important” and having not “represented their constituents in a long time”. While some of these critiques bled into broader claims that Democrats are focused on the wrong priorities, the responses suggest cultural issues are not voters’ dominant concern.This should be a wake-up call. Rust belt voters aren’t gullibly distracted by culture wars but, rather, are frustrated that Democrats haven’t delivered. What does resonate with them is a tougher, more credible economic message.Even if the Democratic label is a serious drag in red and purple states, our results show that full-throated economic populism that speaks directly to workers’ sense that the system is rigged can substantially boost candidates’ appeal, particularly in areas that have lost millions of high-quality jobs over the past 40 years. Standard “bread-and-butter” Democratic messaging performed over 11 points better when paired with strong anti-corporate rhetoric (condemning companies for cutting good jobs) than with a “populist-lite” frame that merely knocks a few price-gougers while acknowledging that most businesses play by the rules.When we forced respondents to choose tradeoffs among 25 economic policy proposals, the results were even clearer. Across partisan and class divides, voters consistently prioritized concrete measures framed in terms of fairness and accountability for elites: capping prescription drug prices, eliminating taxes on social security income, and raising taxes on the super-wealthy and large corporations. These policies polled far ahead of flashy ideas such as $1,000 monthly cash payments or trillion-dollar green industrial plans, and well ahead of traditional conservative staples such as corporate tax cuts and deregulation.Even on immigration, Rust belt voters proved more open than expected. Nearly two-thirds supported legalization for long-settled undocumented workers who had played by the rules. Despite years of rightwing fearmongering, a progressive position carried the day.So what’s the path forward? Not every candidate can reinvent themselves as an independent populist. In many districts, doing so would simply split the anti-Republican vote. But Democrats can blunt the “Democratic penalty” by speaking against their own party establishment and making a populist case that neither major party has delivered for working people. Candidates who take this approach appeal more effectively to the very voters Democrats have been losing.The electoral map itself makes the stakes plain. Without states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Ohio, Democrats cannot hold national power. Sherrod Brown’s defeat underlined that even the most credible economic populists can only run so far ahead of the party’s damaged brand.If Democrats remain seen as out of touch with working-class concerns, more Browns will fall, and Republicans will keep gaining ground in once-reliable Democratic strongholds. But if Democrats take on corporate elites, level with voters about their own party’s failures, and fight for policies that put working families first, they might finally chart a path back to the working class – and to the future.

    Jared Abbott is the director of the Center for Working-Class Politics. Bhaskar Sunkara is the president of the Nation magazine and the founding editor of Jacobin More

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      ‘I don’t feel safe any more’: Dearborn’s Arab Americans on rising Islamophobia

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      Amirah Sharhan recalls it being a regular fall afternoon in October 2024.The Yemeni American, who had been living in the Dearborn and Detroit area for four years, was preparing dinner while her mother took Amirah’s seven-year-old daughter, Saida, to a nearby playground to play with her friends.But when the door of their home slammed open a little after 3pm, everything changed.Saida rushed in, holding a napkin against her neck. When Amirah moved it away, she saw a long, deep cut across her daughter’s neck. A man had approached her on the playground, grabbed her head and slit her throat with a knife.“My mind flipped. I didn’t know where I was,” Amirah recalls.“My son was screaming: ‘Don’t die! Don’t die!’ I didn’t even know how to dial 911.”The accused, 73-year-old Gary Lansky, who lives near the park, was caught shortly afterwards and in January was found competent to stand trial for assault with intent to murder and other charges.“For a mom to see her daughter’s throat open. It was terrifying,” says Amirah.“He’s a 73-year-old. How could he do that to a little child?”Saida received 20 stitches and is scarred mentally and physically. Most of her nights are still filled with nightmares.Amirah is convinced her daughter and mother were targeted for being Muslims; the attack happened two days after the first anniversary of Hamas’s terrorist attack on Israel and her grandmother was the only visibly Muslim person in the park.That the accused was not ultimately charged with committing hate crimes has angered the local Muslim and Arab American communities who have been feeling abandoned and afraid since 7 October 2023. Those sentiments increased support for Donald Trump, but some are reassessing that support amid the continued killing in Gaza and ongoing threats against their community.Islamophobic attacks across the US have risen precipitously in the two years since Hamas’s attack on Israel, which killed about 1,200 people, and the ensuing destruction Israel has unleashed on Gaza that has killed more than 67,000 people and devastated the Strip. Last year, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (Cair) recorded 8,658 complaints, a record.Reports of antisemitism have also surged in recent years – a report released on Sunday found that more than half of American Jews say they have faced antisemitism in the past year. Data is difficult to come by because some sources tracking antisemitism don’t make clear distinctions between anti-Zionism and anti-Jewish hate. However, synagogues have widely reported increasing their security budgets over violent threats, and Jewish institutions are especially unnerved after two people were killed in an attack on a UK synagogue last week.“Since the Pittsburgh synagogue bombing of 2018, in which 11 Jews were killed at worship, there have been anti-Jewish attacks in Poway, California (at a synagogue), Jersey City, New Jersey (at a kosher grocery store), at a rabbi’s house in Monsey, New York, and at the Coleyville, Texas, synagogue,” Mark Oppenheimer, of the John C Danforth Center on Religion and Politics at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, wrote in an email.While Muslim and Jewish communities face attacks that are often connected to anger over the Israel-Gaza war, a tense political climate in the US appears to be encouraging violence more broadly. After a recent shooting at a Mormon church in Michigan, the Washington Post reported mounting anxiety on the part of groups across religions. “No matter what level of violence you look at, violence against faith-based organizations is increasing,” said Carl Chinn, head of the Faith Based Security Network, a non-profit association of security professionals.But Dearborn, the US’s first majority-Arab-American city, home to many residents who have lost family members to Israeli bombardments in Gaza and Lebanon, seems to attract particular vitriol.Last month, a mosque in neighboring Dearborn Heights received a call from a Texas man threatening to burn down Dearborn and its mosques. On 23 September, a Virginia man was arraigned in court on terrorism charges for threatening on YouTube to attack a mosque in Dearborn.In August, a man in a neighboring city was arrested for writing on social media that he would like to see marchers at a Muslim religious event taking place in Dearborn that month be shot. Dearborn officials have also recently been targeted by pro-Israel groups.View image in fullscreenResidents report growing racism platformed on rightwing media outlets. In recent weeks, Fox News has devoted significant attention to Dearborn, highlighting, for example, noise complaints about mosques and an alleged dispute between a local pastor and the city’s Lebanese American mayor.Arab Americans have come in for criticism in some quarters for voting for Trump in last November’s election. In Dearborn, a city of 106,000 people of whom about 55% have Arab ancestry, Trump won 42.5% of the presidential election vote, more than any other candidate, helping deliver Michigan, a crucial swing state, to the president. Arab American leaders in Michigan were incensed by the Democratic party and former presidential candidate Kamala Harris’s support for Israel’s war on Gaza.Now, interviews with some of those who backed Trump last year suggest that support may be eroding.Faye Nemer, the founder of the Dearborn-based Mena American Chamber of Commerce, which works to build economic and cultural exchanges between organizations in the Middle East and US, says that many among the Arab American community who backed Trump in last year’s election did so on the premise that he would be a president of peace. She was among a cohort of Arab Americans who welcomed and organized Trump’s visit to Dearborn just days before the presidential election last November.“We’re cautiously optimistic about this ceasefire deal [but] it’s become somewhat problematic – what was promised during the campaign cycle versus what we’re seeing occur on the ground,” she says.View image in fullscreenNemer says she believes there’s a shifting of opinion in the Arab American community. “I think they are in for a rude awakening come the midterm elections,” she said of the Republican party. “There should be some introspection there.”But in addition to fear and disappointment, there is also defiance.On Saturday, dozens of people marched in Dearborn’s streets in protest of the ongoing bombardment of Gaza and the detention of members of the Global Sumud Flotilla by Israel. At a convention held in Dearborn last month, Michigan’s lieutenant-governor, Garlin Gilchrist, called Israel’s war on Gaza a genocide, becoming one of a tiny but growing number of US politicians to do so. Gilchrist is running for governor of Michigan as a Democrat in next year’s election.In the meantime, Saida Sharhan has had to move to a new school because of her former school’s proximity to the site of the attack. The park that’s a short distance from her home where she once played with her friends is now off limits.“Two days ago, she woke up me and her father, screaming. She was shaking,” Amirah, her mother, says.“She told me it’s the same dream all the time – the park is full of blood and [the attacker] telling her: ‘I’m coming back for you.’”“I don’t feel safe any more,” says Amirah, “like I used to.” More

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      in US Politics

      Michigan judge dismisses charges against 15 of Trump’s 2020 fake electors

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      A judge in Michigan dismissed the felony charges against a slate of electors who falsely signed on to documents claiming Donald Trump won the 2020 election in the latest blow to efforts to hold the president and his allies accountable for attempting to overturn the results of the White House race he lost to Joe Biden.Sixteen people were initially charged with eight felonies each related to forgery and conspiracy by the Democratic attorney general, Dana Nessel, in 2023, though one of them had his charges dropped after he agreed to cooperate with the prosecution. The fake electors in Michigan will not go to trial.District court judge Kristen Simmons decided that the state had not provided “evidence sufficient to prove intent”, a requirement for fraud cases. She told a courtroom on Tuesday that the case did not involve the intent of those who orchestrated the scheme, like Kenneth Chesebro and other Trump attorneys – but those who actually signed the documents, Votebeat reported.“I believe they were executing their constitutional right to seek redress,” Simmons said of those who signed the documents.Nessel spoke against the decision in a press conference after, according to Michigan Advance. “The evidence was clear,” she said. “They lied. They knew they lied, and they tried to steal the votes of millions of Michiganders. And if they can get away with this, well, what can’t they get away with next?”Trump supporters in seven swing states signed on as fake electors in the scheme. Some of the fake electors – and, in some cases, those who orchestrated the scheme – were charged for state crimes in five of those states.Protesters outside the courtroom called the case an example of “lawfare” and a “hoax”. After the judge’s comments, those charged and their supporters celebrated the decision and called for consequences against Nessel for bringing the case.An attorney for the former Michigan Republican party co-chairperson Meshawn Maddock said the case was a “malicious prosecution” and that “there needs to be major consequences for the people who brought this,” according to the Associated Press.Some of those who signed on as fake electors in 2020 went on to be real presidential electors for Trump in the 2024 election, when he defeated Kamala Harris to return to the Oval Office beginning in January. More

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      in US Politics

      A coal-fired plant in Michigan was to close. But Trump forced it to keep running at $1m a day

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      Donald Trump has made several unusual moves to elongate the era of coal, such as giving the industry exemptions from pollution rules. But the gambit to keep one Michigan coal-fired power station running has been extraordinary – by forcing it to remain open even against the wishes of its operator.The hulking JH Campbell power plant, which since 1962 has sat a few hundred yards from the sand dunes at the edge of Lake Michigan, was just eight days away from a long-planned closure in May when Trump’s Department of Energy issued an emergency order that it remain open for a further 90 days.On Wednesday, the administration intervened again to extend this order even further, prolonging the lifetime of the coal plant another 90 days, meaning it will keep running until November – six months after it was due to close.The move, taken under emergency powers more normally used during wartime or in the wake of disaster, has stunned local residents and the plant’s operator, Consumers Energy. “My family had a countdown for it closing, we couldn’t wait,” said Mark Oppenhuizen, who has lived in the shadow of the plant for 30 years and suspects its pollution worsened his wife’s lung disease.“I was flabbergasted when the administration said they had stopped it shutting down,” he said. “Why are they inserting themselves into a decision a company has made? Just because politically you don’t like it? It’s all so dumb.”The 23 May order and the latest edict, by the US energy secretary, Chris Wright, both warn that the regional grid would be strained by the closure of JH Campbell with local homes and businesses at risk of “curtailments or outages, presenting a risk to public health and safety” without it.“This order will help ensure millions of Americans can continue to access affordable, reliable, and secure baseload power regardless of whether the wind is blowing or the sun is shining,” Wright said in a statement on Thursday.But Miso, the grid operator for Michigan and 14 other states, has stressed it has had “adequate resources to meet peak demand this summer” without JH Campbell and Consumers Energy had already set about making plans for life after its last remaining coal plant.“What’s remarkable is that this is the first time the energy secretary has used these powers without being asked to do so by the market operator or power plant operator,” said Timothy Fox, an energy analyst at ClearView. “It shows the Trump administration is prepared to take muscular actions to keep its preferred power sources online.”View image in fullscreenWright – whose department has bizarrely taken to tweeting pictures of lumps of coal with the words “She’s an icon. She’s a legend” – has said the US “has got to stop closing coal plants” to help boost electricity generation to meet demand that is escalating due to the growth of artificial intelligence.The administration has also issued a separate emergency declaration to keep open a gas plant in Pennsylvania, although it has sought to kill off wind and solar projects, which Trump has called “ugly” and “disgusting”.The president, who solicited and received major donations from coal, oil and gas interests during his election campaign, has signed an executive order aimed at reviving what he calls “beautiful, clean coal” and took the remarkable step of asking fossil fuel companies to email requests to be exempt from pollution laws, again under emergency powers.So far, 71 coal plants, along with dozens of other chemical, copper smelting and other polluting facilities, have received “pollution passes” from the Trump administration according to a tally by the Environmental Defense Fund, allowing greater emissions of airborne toxins linked to an array of health problems. Coal is, despite Trump’s claims, the dirtiest of all fossil fuels and the leading source of planet-heating pollution.Trump has launched a “political takeover of the electricity grid” to favor fossil fuels, according to Caroline Reiser, an attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council. “The result of this will be higher electricity bills, more pollution in our communities and a worsening climate crisis,” she added.In Michigan, the cost of keeping JH Campbell open is set to be steep. Consumers Energy initially estimated its closure would save ratepayers $600m by 2040 as it shifts to cheaper, cleaner energy sources such as solar and wind.Reversing this decision costs $1m a day in operating costs, an imposition that midwest residents will have to meet through their bills. It is understood the company privately told outside groups it fears the administration could keep adding 90-day emergency orders for the entire remainder of Trump’s term.“Consumers Energy continues to comply with the [Department of Energy] order and will do so as long as it is in effect,” a company spokesperson said. “We are pursuing recovery of the costs of running the Campbell plant in a proceeding currently before [the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission]. Timely cost recovery is essential.”Should the Trump administration go further and force all of the US fossil fuel plants set to retire by 2028 to continue operating, it will cost American ratepayers as much as $6bn a year in extra bills, a new report by a coalition of green groups has found.This would almost certainly be met by legal action – Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general, has already filed a lawsuit arguing the “arbitrary and illegal order” to extend JH Campbell’s lifespan will unfairly heap costs upon households in the state.Trump’s efforts may bear some fruit, with US coal production expected to tick up slightly this year, although the longer-term trend for coal is one of decline amid cheaper gas and renewables. “The administration may slow the retirement trend although they are unlikely to stop it,” said ClearView’s Fox. “The economics don’t change but the administration could be a savior for these plants at least while Donald Trump is in office.”For those living next to and downwind of coal plants, there is a cost to be paid that isn’t just monetary. Tiny soot particles from burned coal can bury themselves deep into the lungs, causing potentially deadly respiratory and heart problems.The closure of such plants can lift this burden dramatically – a recent study found that in the month after a coal facility was closed near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 2016, the number of childhood asthma visits to local hospitals declined by 41% and then continued to fall by about 4% each month.The study shows “the closure of a major industrial pollution source can lead to immediate and lasting improvements in the lung health of the those who live nearby”, said Wuyue Yu, research co-author and postdoctoral fellow at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine.For those living in the township of Port Sheldon, a mostly bucolic setting on the shore of the vast Lake Michigan, a pollution-free future beckoned once JH Campbell had been scheduled to close, with lofty plans for new parkland, housing and a battery plant touted for the site.View image in fullscreenNow there is uncertainty. Last week, a few dozen residents and activists held a protest event next to the sprawling plant, which hummed and whirred in the summer heat, one 650ft chimney puncturing the horizon, another, smaller flue striped red and white, like a candy cane.Dozens of train cars full of coal, hastily procured after the plant’s supply was used up ahead of a closure that has been scheduled for four years, backed up in the sunshine. When burned in the huge 1.5GW plant, this coal emits about 7.7m tons of carbon dioxide a year.“Trump is just trying to keep the money coming into coal companies as long as he can, I suppose,” said David Hoekema, who has lived a couple of miles from the plant since 2006 and has had to clean coal dust from his windows. Trump easily won this county, called Ottawa, in last year’s election, but Hoekema said even his staunchest conservative neighbors don’t want the coal plant.“I’ve not met anyone along the lake shore who says, ‘Oh yeah, let’s keep this open’ – even the conservative Republicans are concerned about their health,” he said. “Republican ideology says local control is best but the Trump administration is saying, ‘We don’t care what the hell states do, we will impose our order on them.’ I know there’s a lot of competition, but this would have to be one of their craziest decisions.”The Department of Energy did not respond to questions about its plan for JH Campbell once its latest extension expires. The battle over the coal plant’s future has taken place to a backdrop of a scorching summer in Michigan, one of its hottest on record, with algal blooms sprouting in its lakes, both symptoms of an unfolding climate crisis.“The talk in neighborhoods has been how hot it’s been this summer – my kid was prepared to be outside every day and it’s been so hot so often it’s been irresponsible to do that,” said Stephen Wooden, a Democratic state lawmaker who added that Michigan residents are also “pissed off” about increasing power bills.“We’re seeing the impacts of climate change daily, it is impacting our state,” Wooden said. “And this is being caused by the continuation of outdated, expensive fossil fuels that Donald Trump wants to prop up.” More

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      in Elections

      Detroit Mayoral Primary Election Results 2025

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      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press.By The New York Times election results team: Michael Andre, Emma Baker, Neil Berg, Andrew Chavez, Michael Beswetherick, Matthew Bloch, Lily Boyce, Irineo Cabreros, Nico Chilla, Nate Cohn, Alastair Coote, Annie Daniel, Saurabh Datar, Leo Dominguez, Andrew Fischer, Martín González Gómez, Joyce Ho, Will Houp, Jon Huang, Junghye Kim, K.K. Rebecca Lai, Jasmine C. Lee, Joey K. Lee, Alex Lemonides, Ilana Marcus, Alicia Parlapiano, Jaymin Patel, Dan Simmons-Ritchie, Charlie Smart, Jonah Smith, Urvashi Uberoy, Isaac White and Christine Zhang. Mitch Smith contributed reporting.
      Source: Election results and race calls are from The Associated Press. More

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      in US Politics

      At least 11 people stabbed at Walmart store in Michigan and man in custody, police say

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      At least 11 people were stabbed at a Walmart in Traverse City, with six people in a critical condition, Michigan authorities said.About 4.45pm on Saturday, a 42-year-old man allegedly entered the store and used a folding knife to stab 11 people, the Grand Traverse county sheriff’s office said, adding that it appeared to have been a random act of violence.A sheriff’s deputy arrived within minutes and took the man into custody. People in the store helped apprehend the suspect and treat victims, the sheriff’s office said.Emergency vehicles and uniformed first responders gathered in the parking lot of the shopping centre, which houses several other retail stores.Authorities also were seen interviewing employees, still wearing blue uniform vests and name tags, as the response gave way to an investigation.Tiffany DeFell, 36, who lives in Honor, about 25 miles (40km) from Traverse City, said she was in the store’s parking lot when she saw chaos erupt around her.“It was really scary. Me and my sister were just freaking out,” she said. Munson Healthcare said via social media that 11 people were being treated at the region’s largest hospital in northern Michigan. A spokesperson said six people were critical and five were in serious condition late on Saturday.The hospital requested patience and understanding from the public as “our emergency department is currently experiencing a higher than usual volume of patients”.Shea said the weapon involved appeared to be a folding knife. The suspect in custody was believed to be a Michigan resident.The Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, posted on social media that she was aware of the incident and in touch with law enforcement.“Our thoughts are with the victims and the community reeling from this brutal act of violence,” she said. “I am grateful to the first responders for their swift response to apprehend the suspect.”Walmart said it would continue to work closely with law enforcement in the investigation. “Violence like this is unacceptable. Our thoughts are with those who were injured and we’re thankful for the swift action of first responders,” a statement said.Traverse City is about 255 miles (410km) north-west of Detroit and is a popular holiday spot on the coast of Lake Michigan. More

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      in Elections

      Elissa Slotkin Wants Democrats to Reclaim Their ‘Alpha Energy’

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      In a wide-ranging interview, the junior senator from Michigan took stock of her party’s deep-seated woes, warning Democrats not to be “so damn scared.”As Democrats battle over age, ideology and how to wrest back power, they increasingly agree on one idea: Their party needs an affirmative vision.That is where the consensus ends.So Senator Elissa Slotkin, a Democrat from Michigan, is trying to help her party fill in those details.Ms. Slotkin, who gave the Democratic response to President Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress in March, is delivering a series of speeches that are part candid diagnosis of her party’s problems, part policy prescription and part political pep talk, sometimes irritating more left-wing Democrats in the process.Last month, she laid out what she called her “economic war plan,” focused on rebuilding the middle class and slaughtering “some sacred cows” in the process.She is planning to give speeches about security and democracy later this year.“You cannot win a game, a war, anything, just by playing defense,” Ms. Slotkin said in an interview this week. “You can’t just point at Donald Trump every day and point out the bad things that he’s doing. You have to show a positive, affirmative vision of what you’re going to do if you’re in power.”In the half-hour interview, Ms. Slotkin discussed her party’s messaging problems, the new fault lines defining Democratic debates and the 2028 presidential race.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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      Justice Dept. Explores Using Criminal Charges Against Election Officials

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      Such a path could drastically raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, bringing the department and the threat of criminalization into the election system.Senior Justice Department officials are exploring whether they can bring criminal charges against state or local election officials if the Trump administration determines they have not sufficiently safeguarded their computer systems, according to people familiar with the discussions.The department’s effort, which is still in its early stages, is not based on new evidence, data or legal authority, according to the people, speaking on the condition of anonymity to describe internal discussions. Instead, it is driven by the unsubstantiated argument made by many in the Trump administration that American elections are easy prey to voter fraud and foreign manipulation, these people said.Such a path could significantly raise the stakes for federal investigations of state or county officials, thrusting the Justice Department and the threat of criminalization into the election system in a way that has never been done before.Federal voting laws place some mandates on how elections are conducted and ballots counted. But that work has historically been managed by state and local officials, with limited involvement or oversight from Washington.In recent days, senior officials have directed Justice Department lawyers to examine the ways in which a hypothetical failure by state or local officials to follow security standards for electronic voting could be charged as a crime, appearing to assume a kind of criminally negligent mismanagement of election systems. Already, the department has started to contact election officials across the country, asking for information on voting in the state.Ballots from the 2024 general election locked in a secure warehouse area of the Ada County Elections Office in Boise, Idaho, last November.Natalie Behring for The New York TimesWe 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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      Democratic senator sounds alarm on party’s failures: ‘We don’t act as a team’

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      A Democratic senator has sounded the alarm about her own party’s failings, urging colleagues to “slaughter some sacred cows” if they want to combat Donald Trump and win back power.Senator Elissa Slotkin of Michigan castigated fellow Democrats for losing their “alpha energy” and “bravado”, being “scared” to enforce immigration rules, taking an “elitist” approach to the climate crisis and having “a bias towards navel gazing”. She painted a bleak picture of a leaderless party pulling in different directions.“Democrats are very disparate,” Slotkin told an audience at the Center for American Progress thinktank in Washington DC. “We’re like a solar system with no sun. We got a lot of planets, some with their own gravitational pull, we’ve got a lot of stars but there’s not enough cohering us.”The senator added: “You can’t retake the town of Mosul without a plan but then also a coordination effort by all parties to specialise and do things. Everyone has a different role to play … My concern is that we don’t act as a team and, when we don’t work as a team, we turn our guns on each other and it’s so, so, so fruitless.”Slotkin, a former CIA analyst who served three tours in Iraq, is a first-term senator widely regarded as a rising star in the party. In March, she delivered the Democrats’ rebuttal to Trump’s joint congressional address.The 48-year-old used her speech on Thursday to unveil an “economic war plan”, proposing that the government addresses problems such as rising costs and declining trust in institutions rather than exacerbating them.The plan focuses on five areas: creating well-paying jobs, modernising education to prepare for future economies, making housing affordable through increased construction, pursuing an “all-of-the-above” energy strategy to lower costs, and reforming a broken healthcare system by introducing a public option and tackling drug pricing.“As a CIA officer and Pentagon official by training, I believe that the single, greatest security threat to the United States is not coming from abroad,” she said. “It’s the shrinking middle class here at home.”When people cannot provide for their children as they themselves were provided for, she argued, it breeds “anger and suspicion among Americans”. This frustration can be unifying for Democrats including “moderates, progressives and everything in between”.Slotkin argued that government failed to uphold its “Great American Deal” by not ruthlessly expanding the middle class, instead being swayed by special interests and political expediency. She proposed rebuilding systems around jobs, education, housing, energy and healthcare rather than simply “nibbling at the margins”.She also advocated for political reforms, such as banning corporate political action committee donations and congressional stock trading, to regain public trust and refocus politicians on the needs of the middle class.The senator urged Democrats to take a pragmatic approach willing to “slaughter some sacred cows” to achieve results. She called on her colleagues to distinguish between small businesses and multinational corporations and avoid “vilifying success”.Slotkin, who hails from a border state, said there must be acknowledgment that the immigration system is broken. “Both parties have been a mess on this issue. Republicans say border security should substitute for an immigration policy and are rounding up people in a way that goes against American values.“Democrats are scared to impose real rules. So let me slaughter another sacred cow. We need to move past the talking point on comprehensive immigration reform … We need big, bold change to fix a broken system but at this point that can be one bill or spread across five bills. I will work with any adults I can find who are actually interested in making some kind of progress on immigration.”On education, Slotkin called for mobile phones to be banned from every K-12 classroom in the US and advocated for investment in certification programmes, community colleges, trade schools and apprenticeships as well as a radical overhaul of federal workforce training programmes.“Killing another sacred cow: in America you don’t have to go to college to be successful … Making a living using your hands is a worthy path. Some Democrats give that lip service but it’s time to put our money where our mouth is.”She called for an “all-of-the-above energy plan”, including natural gas, nuclear, batteries, renewables and new technologies, rejecting the “elitist” climate change approaches of some fellow Democrats that create “purity tests”.Slotkin represents swing state Michigan, which Democrat Kamala Harris narrowly lost to Trump in last year’s presidential election. She was speaking two days after the progressive candidate Zohran Mamdani stunned the Democratic establishment by beating the moderate Andrew Cuomo in the New York City mayoral primary.Asked for her reaction, Slotkin replied: “The message that came across loud and clear to me was number one, people just like in November are still really focused on costs and the economy and their own kitchen table math. And they’re looking for a new generation of leadership. Those were to me the two big takeaways.“That’s why, again, it reinforces for me we may disagree on some key issues but understanding that people are concerned about their family budget – that is a unifying thing for our coalition. The message, at least for me, was clear.”She rejected the common observation that Trump supporters were voting against their own interests. “Their interest was in believing that someone was going to do something different and, while I don’t believe Donald Trump for one second on what he’s been selling, he at least was offering something different, and we need to hear that.” More