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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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      Small US college towns reel amid Trump immigration crackdown: ‘They need international students’

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      For a town of 20,000 residents a few miles from the Indiana state line in rural Ohio, the city of Oxford boasts an outsized number of international eateries.On High Street, the Phan Shin Chinese restaurant sits a few doors down from the Happy Kitchen, another Chinese food joint, which is next door to the Krishna Indian restaurant. There’s a French bakery and even a Uyghur restaurant selling central Asian fare.The diversity of international restaurants mirrors the student population attending Miami University, which in 2019 had a student body including more than 3,000 international students.But in recent years, the number of international students coming to study at US colleges has plummeted, a trend that could have devastating consequences for small college towns.It was the large number of Chinese students attending Miami University that prompted Fei Yang to open the MImian Chinese restaurant in Oxford, a full 60 miles from his home, in 2018.“There used to be 2,000 to 3,000 [Chinese] students but now there is like 300, 400 maybe,” says Yang. “Covid-19 stopped a lot of people coming. Before we used to make real Chinese food, now we make the American versions.”In fall 2019, Miami University admitted 2,895 international students, mainly from China, Vietnam, India, and elsewhere – last year, the number plummeted to 750. Since international students at Miami University are not receiving scholarships, they typically pay more than $65,000 in tuition, fees, housing and food, according to 2024-25 estimated cost of attendance figures, which represents a potential loss of about $140m for the university, local businesses and the thousands of workers they collectively employ.Across the US, an estimated 150,000 fewer international students are expected to study at US colleges and universities this fall compared to last year, a 40% drop.While the reasons are varied, the Trump administration’s response to protests on campuses against Israel’s war on Gaza has played a major role in fueling the falloff by driving fear of arrest and deportation into many would-be incoming international students.In June, the state department announced more severe screening and vetting processes for international students intending on studying in the US, including ordering applicants to turn their social media profiles public.Students from Turkey, Palestine, and Iran have been detained, imprisoned and deported or self-deported for expressing their first amendment rights, rights that are protected by the US constitution, regardless of whether they are citizens of the country or not. About 6,000 student visas have been revoked this year with some students seeing their visas revoked for alleged minor wrongdoings such as speeding.International student enrolment, however, has been in decline since before the current administration’s crackdown. The tariffs regime initiated on China during the first Trump administration, as well as Covid-19 pandemic travel restrictions in 2020, prompted a massive fall in students traveling to the US for higher education five years ago. In the years since, Chinese students have increasingly chosen to study in the UK and Australia in place of the US.While mid-sized and large cities and wealthy small towns such as Ithaca, New York, – home to Cornell University – can typically take the financial hit from the loss of thousands of international students due to their diversified economies, less affluent towns, whose economies have never fully recovered from the loss of students on-site during the pandemic, remain imperiled.According to the US Department of Commerce, international students are thought to have contributed around $50bn to the US economy in 2023 in tuition, rent, food, taxes and a host of other ways. In Ohio, Kentucky, and Iowa, which rank among the lowest states for GDP growth in the country, and which are Trump strongholds, their economies are set to lose as much as $200m, $45m and nearly $43m respectively. Florida’s economy could see losses reaching as much as $243m.“We tend to think that foreign students only go to big Ivy League schools in big cities. But if you look at a recent Brookings Institution report, it is clear that every school, small, medium and large, in every town or city – small, medium or large need income from international students,” says Tara Sonenshine, Edward R Murrow professor of practice in public diplomacy at Tufts University.In West Lafayette, Indiana, the 50,000 students who attend Purdue University make up the overwhelming majority of the city’s population. Almost one in four of those at Purdue in 2024 were international students, most paying full tuition and board costs. These students, many who attend to learn cutting-edge agriculture practices, help employ more than 10,000 people, making Purdue University the largest employer in the region.It’s a similar story for rural Illinois, where one-quarter of students at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus are from overseas – one of the highest ratios of any private or public college in the country. There, an international student studying for a four-year undergraduate degree can net the college and offshoot businesses about $200,000 in tuition and other fees.In Oxford, Ohio, one of the biggest issues international students help local businesses with is providing custom during the six-week period from mid-December to the end of January when there are no classes at Miami University. At that time, other than permanent residents, the only people in town are international students.“Our business community is very dependent on Miami University students. Oxford’s population is about 20,000, of which 17,000 or more are Miami University students,” says Oxford city manager Doug Elliott.“We have a lot of homes that were converted into student housing. That’s typical for small college towns like us.”Elliott notes that aside from the financial benefit, international students bring energy and diversity in the form of festivals and gatherings to parts of the US that would otherwise never get to experience the wider world.“Cutting off visas for international students, combined with demographic shifts in America and the declining enrolment in college, in addition to the general disdain for immigrant populations coming here,” says Sonenshine, “would all add up to chaos and potential closures of small schools who rely on a broader pool on enrolment.” More

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      Rural Americans who rely on Head Start worry about its future: ‘Without free childcare I couldn’t work’

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      For almost as long as she’s been a mother, Sara Laughlin has known where she could turn for help in Troy, a western Ohio town 20 miles north of Dayton.For years, the local Head Start program provided stability and care for her oldest son, and it now does the same for her two younger children, twin boys. Head Start was there for Laughlin and her family through tough transitions, including the end of a long relationship. She credits the free federally funded program, housed in a blue building on the edge of this manufacturing hub of 27,000, for allowing her to keep her job as a massage therapist while raising three kids.“If we had to pay for childcare, I would not be able to work,” Laughlin said. “There’s no way I could do it.”So, Laughlin said, she was “dumbfounded” when she heard this spring that Head Start was targeted for elimination in an early draft of Donald Trump’s budget proposal.In small towns and rural areas throughout the country, voters like her were key to both of Trump’s election victories. Laughlin was particularly attracted to his campaign promise to eliminate taxes on tips, which she relies on. She couldn’t conceive why cuts to early childhood programs would be on the table.“Out of all the things in this country that we could get rid of, why do you want to attack our children’s learning?” she said. Laughlin’s experience shows what’s at stake in towns and rural areas up and down the western side of Ohio – and across the country. In many of these communities, Head Start, which combines early childhood education, health, nutrition and other family services, is the only game in town for childcare, allowing thousands of parents to work. It’s often the only early childhood program in which educators can make a decent wage in a chronically underpaid industry. And it’s a key source of connection and support for parents dealing with trauma, job loss, poverty and parenting challenges.View image in fullscreenNearly 90% of rural counties in the United States have Head Start programs, which are funded with federal dollars and run by public or private agencies including schools and non-profits. Almost half of the 716,000 children Head Start serves live in rural congressional districts, compared with just 22% in urban districts.“These are communities that are underinvested in by philanthropy or the states where they are,” said Katie Hamm, who during the Biden administration served as deputy assistant secretary for early childhood development at the federal Administration for Children and Families, which oversees Head Start.In many rural communities, the program is not just about education and childcare. Head Start is particularly crucial to the survival of these local areas in a way it isn’t in larger urban areas with more diverse economies. The program not only employs local residents; it also supports other local businesses as centers pay rent, buy food from local farmers and grocers, use local mechanics to repair buses, hire local technicians to service kitchens, and pay local carpenters to outfit centers.Head Start was created in 1965 to provide early learning, family support and health services to low-income families, part of Lyndon B Johnson’s “war on poverty”. The program has long enjoyed bipartisan support: 74% of Trump voters and 86% of Democrats said earlier this year that they support funding the program, according to a survey conducted on behalf of the advocacy group First Five Years Fund.Although Head Start has survived elimination so far this year, its local centers are still trying to recover from what many say feels like death by a thousand federal cuts since Trump took office – with more likely to come.In early February, many Head Start programs were caught up in a federal funding freeze. Then the Trump administration fired about 20% of the program’s federal staff.This spring, some rural programs shut down because the administration delayed Head Start payments in some regions. In April, the administration abruptly closed five regional Head Start offices, cutting off a main source for support for programs. Just three months after that, the administration announced that undocumented immigrant children, long eligible for Head Start, could no longer participate.In the midst of all that turmoil, some local and regional Head Start programs have begun laying off employees. At the start of the year, the government withheld nearly $1bn in funding from local programs, a move the Government Accountability Office called illegal in July. While the money has since been distributed, in the interim several Head Start programs closed temporarily, and a few have told some staff they will be let go.View image in fullscreenAfter all that, Head Start leaders in rural communities said, their futures feel more tenuous than ever. While urban Head Start programs are more likely to be supported by large, well-resourced organizations that receive donations from individuals and local philanthropies, those additional funding streams are often absent in rural communities.In Greenville, Ohio, a town of about 12,700 that hugs the Indiana border 40 miles north-west of Dayton, the median household income is just under $47,000. The local Head Start program is one of just two licensed childcare centers available in town for nearly 600 children under the age of five who live in Greenville. Run by the Ohio-based Council on Rural Services non-profit, it serves children whose parents work in nearby retail stores, fast food chains or factories, as well as a growing number of kids being raised by their grandparents.Teachers there describe their work as far more than providing childcare. On any given day, in addition to teaching a group of preschoolers, Greenville Head Start teacher Sasha Fair may find herself lending an ear to parents who need to vent and helping caregivers track progress toward personal educational, parenting or employment goals. At her center, like many others in the region, Head Start workers pool their money to buy birthday presents for children who would otherwise go without. They track down car seats for parents who can’t afford them. And they go door to door to local dentists trying to convince them to accept children who use Medicaid.“It’s about connection and community,” Fair said. She was terrified for the families she serves when she heard Head Start was briefly on the chopping block.“These are our future,” she said, gesturing at the preschoolers playing in her classroom. “We need to give them the strongest, best possible start, and that includes their healthcare, their access to care, their education.”Many residents would also be out of jobs if Head Start programs were to close. Nationally, nearly a quarter of the program’s teachers are parents with children currently or formerly in the program. In Ohio, Head Start is among the state’s 50 largest employers, providing work for more than 8,000 Ohioans and, by extension, additional area residents who rely on Head Start spending.“We try to stay local and utilize whoever is local,” said Stacey Foster, who leads a Head Start program in Urbana, a town of about 11,000 that is 40 miles north-east of Dayton and surrounded by picturesque fields and farmhouses.The program’s fleet of buses is serviced by Jeff’s Automotive Service, a local garage. Katy Leib, service manager at Jeff’s Automotive, said demand for work rises and falls, especially this year, with some people spending cautiously because of economic uncertainty.View image in fullscreenShe said being able to rely on Head Start as one of its larger, more consistent accounts has been helpful for the business’s stability. If Head Start were to lose its funding, it would affect not just Jeff’s Automotive, but other companies that contract with Jeff’s.“When we’re working on their vehicles, we’re also purchasing parts from local businesses. It’s affecting tire companies and our oil companies,” Leib said. ”It’s a domino effect.”Heather Littrell, who lives in Troy, is an example of a parent who found support, and eventually employment, through Head Start. At 19 years old, she was standing in line to apply for housing assistance when she spotted an ad for free preschool. At the time, she was struggling to keep a job while raising her two young children. Family members helped when they could, but without consistent childcare, Littrell was forced to leave job after job at local factories and a gas station.“Everything was unstable,” she said. “I wasn’t really knowing what direction I was going to take.”Littrell ended up enrolling her girls in Head Start, where they learned their colors, numbers and social skills, while Littrell received parenting advice, diapers and meals for her daughters. Most important, she could work. A few years later, inspired by her experience as a Head Start parent, Littrell decided to pursue a degree in early childhood education.Now, 17 years later, she has moved from being a Head Start student teacher to serving as a coordinator for mental health and disability services in Head Start programs across western Ohio.“If I hadn’t seen that flyer that day, I wouldn’t be standing here now,” she said. “I really did use Head Start to help me become a better person and a better member of society.”Trump’s latest budget proposal would not change the amount of money set aside for Head Start, but, given inflation, keeping the program’s budget unchanged effectively amounts to a cut.View image in fullscreenLaurie Todd-Smith, appointed by the Trump administration in June to oversee federal early childhood programs at the Administration for Children and Families, including Head Start, acknowledged that the programs play an important role in rural areas. “If Head Start wasn’t in rural areas where those most impoverished families are, we’d have very different outcomes for children,” she said.But Todd-Smith isn’t convinced that the program needs more money. Rather, she said, programs should look for ways to be more efficient. In some places, state-funded offices already provide health services, employment assistance and mental health assistance. She said Head Start programs could tap into those services instead of offering their own.“There might be some cost savings if we actually link state systems to some of the work of Head Start, instead of creating duplication of services,” Todd-Smith said.At the local level, however, Head Start providers say that if they’re going to raise salaries, keep teachers and serve more children – there aren’t currently enough seats for all who qualify – they need more money.Littrell, the former Head Start parent who now works for the program, hopes residents will realize programs such as Head Start are critical for communities like hers and vote for politicians who will try to protect them. From her early years as a teen mom, she said, she knows how easy it is to end up in a situation where a family needs some help to move forward.“We had food stamps, we had [subsidized] housing, we used Head Start,” Littrell said. “We used them to help us build a life where we didn’t depend on those social services. But they were there for us when we needed them.”This story was produced by the Hechinger Report, a non-profit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. More

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      Farmers in US midwest squeezed by Trump tariffs and climate crisis

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      Seventh-generation farmer Brian Harbage grows corn, soybeans and grass, and runs a cattle operation across five counties in western Ohio. In the world of agriculture, his work makes up a large business.And still, the past two years have been immensely challenging amid the twin threats of the climate crisis and the Trump administration.Last year, regions of the eastern corn belt saw just 20% of crops harvested due to a drought that brought little precipitation between June and October. It was part of a climatic cycle that involved drought, heat and wildfires that cost crop producers $11bn nationally.“Last year, we got a good crop started, and then it just quit raining. Our yields were definitely reduced by at least 25-30%,” says Harbage.This year, it’s been almost the complete opposite.Excess rainfall has fueled severe disease and pest pressure on the several thousand acres of soybeans and corn he planted in the spring.“There were three-day windows, it seemed like. It would just start to get dried out and it would rain,” he says.“We finished up [planting] at the beginning of June. We like to be finished by 15 May. Anything that’s planted later means that it was probably planted in marginal conditions since we were rushing to get it in, and secondly, it doesn’t have near enough time to mature before harvest.”With the 2025 harvest of corn and soybeans approaching – America’s biggest two crops and the linchpins of agriculture – crop growers are facing down the gauntlet. Climatic swings, rocketing operating costs and low international demand, caused, in large part, by government policy in the shape of tariffs, has created the perfect storm.“Farming is not for the worrisome,” says Harbage. “We always kid that we are crisis managers.”Suicide rates among farmers are 3.5 times the national level.In 2023-24, China bought 24.9m metric tons of soybeans worth $13.2bn, largely used to feed its 427-million-strong pig herd. At under 6m metric tons, US farmers’ second biggest international soybean market, Mexico, lags far behind.Since 2017, when tariffs were first introduced by President Trump, crop farmers have been struggling with the decline of China as the leading market for soybeans and an important market for corn exports.Last month, reports emerged that exports of soybeans – America’s largest grain export by value – had hit a 20-year low.“Tariffs are probably something that will help in the long run, for the whole country; in the short run it’s terrible for farmers,” says Harbage.“We’re really taking it on the chin now because if we can’t export, our prices are low. And if we can’t export and we have a terrible crop then it’s a one-two punch. I see what the government wants to do, but it’s hurting me in the near term.”Farmers and rural Americans are keen to highlight that their political and voting preferences are rarely fueled by a single issue or event such as tariffs. Many continue to back Trump, despite the obvious financial challenges the president’s policies are fomenting.Trump has been largely silent on addressing the pain his tariffs have caused farmers and ranchers, despite rural voters being a cornerstone of his political base. On 10 August, he posted to Truth Social a demand that China quadruple its purchases of American soybeans. The president claimed that China was “worried” about having a soybean shortage, although China has vowed to increase its domestic soybean production yield by 38% by 2034.What’s more, some market analysts say that Trump’s post didn’t make the rounds on Chinese social media, suggesting his demand may not have been heard by the country’s political leaders.With the soybean harvest in the midwest set to start about a month from now, and corn following weeks later, the fear that China may not buy a single shipload of grain this season is growing for many.“With [tariffs] in place, we are not competitive with soybeans from Brazil. Our marketing year starts 1 October and usually by now we’d see China making commitments to pre-purchases for soybeans. China has not made a single purchase for US soybeans,” says Virginia Houston, director of government affairs at the American Soybean Association, a lobbying organization.“No market can match China’s demand for soybeans. Right now, there is a 20% retaliatory duty from China.”To appease his farming base, the Trump administration announced $60bn in subsidies for farmers over the next decade in the recent tax bill, but that has drawn criticism from those who say that farmers shouldn’t be subsidized on taxpayers’ dime.Others have reported that funding is going to select producers in specific regions of the US, benefiting bigger producers rather than family farms. Adding to the export challenges, the price of commodity crops in the US has been in steady decline for the past three years due to a smaller cattle herd and falling ethanol production.Houston says that when she speaks with the White House and Congress to share the struggles farmers are facing due to tariffs, the response is that “they support farmers [but] we are one cog in the wheel of this complex relationship.“The farm economy is in a much tougher place than where we were in 2018 [during Trump’s previous China trade war]. Prices have gone down while inputs – seed, fertilizer, chemicals, land and equipment – continue to go up.”All the while, unpredictable weather conditions continue to make planning more difficult.For much of this summer, afternoon storms had been a near-daily occurrence in Indiana, Ohio and elsewhere in the eastern corn belt, causing ponding that kills early plant growth. Diseases such as northern corn leaf blight, gray leaf spot and tar spot soon followed.“When it’s being attacked by disease, it’s not growing to its full potential because it’s trying to fight off the disease,” says Harbage.Although he treated his crops for disease, the heat and humidity that have been an uncommon feature of life this summer can overcome the effects of fungicides.On top of that, Harbage says he’ll have to spend additional money on propane to dry his corn before sending it to consumers, again due to the high moisture content.If Trump walked into his farm today, Harbage says he’d have one message.“The exports is number one. That’s the number one fix. We have to get rid of what we’re growing, or we have to be able to use it,” he says.“China, Mexico and Canada – we export $83bn worth of commodities to them a year. So if they’re not buying, we’re stuck with our crop.”

      In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org More

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      Ohio requires buses for private school kids. Public school students have to find their own ride

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      For about 2,000 students attending high school in Dayton, Ohio, there won’t be a bus in sight when they walk out the door for the beginning of the school year this week.Ruben Castillo, an 11th grade student at Meadowdale Career Technology Center, is one of them.Ohio law means that public school districts such as Dayton’s are responsible for transporting students who attend private and charter schools. When they fail to do so, they risk fines of millions of dollars.A shortage of drivers and buses combined with the threat of fines, means that public school districts in Dayton and around Ohio find themselves relegating their own students to the back of the transportation line.“I’m going to have to use Uber, and it’s going to cost me $25-$30 a day to get to and from school,” says Castillo. “In wintertime, when demand is higher, it’s probably going to be more.” At 180 school days over the course of a year, that’s thousands of dollars he is set to fork out from his own pocket.For the past several years, school administrators in Dayton, Cincinnati and elsewhere have been trying to get around the problem by issuing students with bus passes for public transportation.But children riding public buses have reported being subjected to a variety of dangers. Public transportation administrators have also reported difficulties trying to serve the public and thousands of students all at once.The situation came to a tragic head on the morning of 4 April when 18-year-old Alfred Hale III was shot dead at the public bus hub in downtown Dayton while en route to class at Dunbar high school. Shortly after Hale’s killing, Ohio lawmakers introduced a law making it illegal for Dayton public schools (DPS) to buy public bus vouchers for students.The burden of getting children to school now falls on students’ parents, grandparents, local churches and charities, say officials. Families who choose to continue to have their students use public buses to get to and from school will have to fork out at least $540 per high school student a year.“There seems to be an aggressive approach to the most vulnerable families and people in America,” says DPS’s superintendent, David Lawrence.“Not only is it unfair, it’s onerous that public schools have to provide transportation to non-public school students.”What’s happening in Ohio is a result of a wider effort by conservative politicians to push for more children to attend charter and private schools, many of which are run by religious organizations.Republican politicians hold a supermajority across Ohio’s legislature and have built up a $1bn fund in the form of vouchers for families who want to send their students to private and charter schools.Ohio is not alone.Republican-dominated state legislatures have been pushing for or have already enacted laws that see billions of dollars of taxpayer money directed to funding private school voucher systems in Texas, Florida, Iowa, Tennessee and elsewhere.In Pennsylvania and Minnesota, where political control is largely split between Democrats and Republicans, public schools are required to provide transportation for students attending non-public schools. In January, Donald Trump signed an executive order steering taxpayer funds from public schools to private schools.Many in Democratic-leaning cities say they are being targeted.In Cincinnati, children as young as 13 are being forced to use public transportation to get to and from school due to funding shortages that this year will see more than 100 yellow bus routes cut.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Columbus, where more than half of all students are African American, the public school system is required to bus students of 162 private and charter schools.About 1.8 million, or 80%, of all school-going students in Ohio attend public schools and nearly two-thirds of students attending Dayton public schools are African American. In July, the state passed a budget that saw the smallest increase in spending on K-12 public education in more than a decade.“It’s simple – if we did not have to bus non-public school students on our transportation, we could transport every single one of our K-12 students on yellow buses,” says Jocelyn Rhynard, a member of the Dayton public school board. DPS transports between 4,000 and 5,000 charter and private school students every school day.“It’s a direct result of the legislation from the extremist Republicans at the Ohio statehouse mandating that we must transport non-public students as well as public students in our district.”But Republican politicians disagree.“We had an 18-year-old get shot and killed. The environment for the students is not good down there. The NAACP interviewed the children, they don’t want to ride the public transportation buses, they want to ride the yellow school buses,” says Phil Plummer, a Republican party state representative who spearheaded the budget amendment banning DPS from giving its students public bus vouchers.Plummer says he and others “found 25 school buses” that DPS could purchase. “They decided not to transport their kids,” he says.DPS administrators, who pay drivers the highest rates in the region, say about 70 buses would be required to meet the need, a number that could take up to two years to procure. Lawrence says the process of buying buses and training drivers is not simple.“It’s an 18-month cycle. [Buses] are $150,000 to $190,000 each to buy, and ones with backup cameras and air conditioning are [even] more expensive. Then drivers have to take at least 10 tests before they become fully qualified,” he says.With the law coming into effect just months before the new school year, parents, students and public school managers have been left in a difficult situation.“I’m a single dad raising two kids on my own. We all have to be at school at the same time. That’s a big dilemma,” says William Johnson, an educator at DPS whose daughter is no longer able to get to school using a bus provided by or paid for the district.“I’m lucky that my 80-year-old father is going to help out taking them to school. But I ask the state [politicians] – please come up with a solution. We’re going to lose a whole generation of kids if this continues.” More

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      Secret Service request to raise river level made ‘without knowledge’ of JD Vance, his office says

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      A spokesperson for JD Vance said he and his staff were unaware that the Secret Service decided earlier this month to ask military engineers to raise the water level of the Little Miami River ahead of a family boating trip, which took place on his birthday.“The Secret Service often employs protective measures without the knowledge of the vice-president or his staff, as was the case last weekend,” the spokesperson said.The statement followed the publication of a Guardian report on Wednesday that revealed the US Army Corp of Engineers (USACE) in Louisville, Kentucky, had been asked by the Secret Service to raise the outflow of a lake to accommodate Vance’s boating excursion. The USACE had said on Wednesday the decision was made to “support safe navigation” of Vance’s security detail.The Secret Service provided additional information on Thursday, emphasizing in a “revised” statement to the Guardian the vice-president’s office was “not involved in the decision” and that it had been “operationally necessary” to adjust the water levels to accommodate motorized watercraft, local law enforcement and emergency responders.“These decisions were made solely by agents during our standard advance planning process and did not involve the Office of the Vice President,” the Secret Service said in a statement. A public safety boat is also alleged to have run aground during a joint scouting mission with the Secret Service ahead of the trip, prompting the Secret Service’s decision to seek an elevation in the water level.Vance’s office had not initially responded to the Guardian’s request when asked about the water level change in connection to his boating excursion. But the publication of the Guardian’s story generated some controversy.Marcy Kaptur, a Democratic congresswoman from Ohio, posted a tweet demanding more information about the USACE move, saying: “Outrageous! Must be why he wasn’t available to meet about his Big Bonanza for Billionaires Bill which will devastate Ohio manufacturing jobs and our rural hospitals. The Army Corp of Engineers should share records with relevant committee of jurisdiction in Congress.”The news also elicited comparisons to an embarrassing episode for another vice-president, Al Gore, who faced scrutiny in 1999 after a local utility poured millions of gallons of water into the Connecticut River to keep him from running aground during a canoe trip.It is not unprecedented for the USACE to modify outflows to accommodate public use – for example, for use in community river events and training for emergency responders.USACE regulations regarding requests for so-called “deviations” – or any changes to normal practices – require approval and documentation that demonstrates why the deviation is justified. This process also ensures that risks associated with any deviation – including a flood risk or other environmental impact – is detailed.The USACE said in a statement on Wednesday that the Secret Service request “met the operational criteria outlined in the Water Control Manual for Caesar Creek Lake and did not require a deviation from normal procedures”.

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      in US Politics

      Democrats slam Texas senator over alleged FBI role in locating lawmakers

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      Democrats harshly criticized Donald Trump and fellow Republicans on Thursday after a US senator said the FBI had agreed to assist in returning Texas Democratic lawmakers who left the state to stop a Republican effort to redistrict.Senator John Cornyn’s claim that the FBI would assist Republicans’ effort could not be independently confirmed. The FBI declined to comment. An administration official told NBC News this week the government did not plan on using federal agents to arrest Texas lawmakers and a federal law enforcement official told the outlet that as of Thursday morning, the agency had not assisted with trying to locate the lawmakers.The Texas lawmakers who fled the state earlier this week to block Republicans’ effort to add five more seats to the state maps are currently staying at a hotel in suburban Chicago. Speaking to reporters at the Illinois state fair on Thursday, the Democratic governor, JB Pritzker, said he welcomed the FBI to the state.“I hope they take in the state fair, I hope they go see the beauty of Lake Michigan. But they won’t be arresting anyone because there is no US federal law that prohibits those Texas house Democrats from being here in the state,” he told reporters.Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the US House, called it an effort to intimidate Democrats.“Shouldn’t the FBI be tracking down terrorists, drug traffickers and child predators? The Trump administration continues to weaponize law enforcement to target political adversaries. These extremists don’t give a damn about public safety. We will not be intimidated,” he said in a post on X.Ken Martin, the chair of the Democratic National Committee, also accused Cornyn, who is locked in a primary battle against Texas’s attorney general, Ken Paxton, of grandstanding. “John Cornyn is desperately swinging for the fences, asking Kash Patel to take a break from covering up for Donald Trump to instead pull this political stunt. They both know damn well that legally, there’s nothing they can do,” he said.Legal experts have questioned how the federal law enforcement agency could play a role in returning the lawmakers.“Federal government intrusion into a state’s process of self-government should only occur when there is a clear constitutional warrant. In this situation, the federal government has no authority to intervene and no legitimate role to play,” said David Froomkin, a law professor at the University of Houston.In his request for assistance to the FBI earlier this week, Cornyn said he was “concerned that legislators who solicited or accepted funds to aid in their efforts to avoid their legislative duties may be guilty of bribery or other public corruption offenses”. Trump also suggested earlier this week that the FBI might have to get involved in the matter.Texas’s governor, Greg Abbott, has also launched a long-shot legal effort to get the top Democrat who left, Gene Wu, removed from office.Paxton, the Texas attorney general, also announced on Wednesday he had launched an investigation into a group run by former congressman Beto O’Rourke that has been covering the costs of Texas lawmakers as they remain in Illinois. Each lawmaker that breaks quorum is fined $500 per day.Also on Thursday, JD Vance met with Republican lawmakers in Indiana to encourage them to redraw the state’s congressional map to be more favorable to the GOP, the latest in a brazen nationwide push to reconfigure district lines ahead of next year’s midterm elections.Republicans already control seven of Indiana’s nine congressional seats, but the party has complete control of state government, which could allow them to redraw the map to pick up more seats. Donald Trump is also pushing Missouri to redraw its congressional map to add more GOP seats and Republicans in Ohio, where Republicans already control 10 of 15 districts, are also likely to reconfigure their map later this year to add more Republican seats.Vance met with Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Braun, and state legislative leaders on Thursday. To redraw the maps in Indiana, Braun would need to call a special session.Republicans have an extremely slim margin in the US House and Democrats need to net just three seats to flip control of Congress next year. The president’s party typically loses US House seats in a midterm election, which is why Republicans are pushing to redraw districts in their favor.During a conference call on Thursday, two of four Texas lawmakers who had been scheduled to speak were delayed by taking a security briefing in light of the report of FBI involvement in the quorum break. Legislators deflected questions about the risk of a conflict between state and federal law enforcement, redirecting questions toward flooding relief and Abbott’s legislative and executive priorities.“We wouldn’t need to have a quorum break and wouldn’t need to be scared of the constitutional breakdown of states’ rights, and Illinois law enforcement versus the FBI, if we were focusing on the things that matter,” said the Texas representative Mary Gonzalez. “To me, the thing that matters most is that over 100 people died and that the homes are still destroyed and that people are still living in unsafe communities because there is debris.”The governors of California and New York, where Democrats have complete control of state government, have pledged to retaliate against Republicans’ redistricting efforts by adding Democratic seats, though both states face legal requirements that make aggressive gerrymandering more difficult.Additional reporting by George Chidi More

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      in US Politics

      How refugees have helped save these midwestern cities: ‘That’s really something we celebrate’

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      At a time in life when many are winding down, Gunash Akhmedova, aged 65, fulfilled a lifelong dream of opening her first business.A member of the Ahiska, or Meskhetian, Turk community who came to the US as a refugee from western Russia in 2005, Akhmedova opened Gunash’s Mediterranean Cusine two years ago on the site of a converted freight house alongside other international food vendors in a formerly industrial corner of Dayton, Ohio.Akhmedova is one of several thousand Ahiska Turks to have moved to Dayton over the past 15 years. In that time, the new community has bought and rebuilt dozens of homes in blighted parts of the city, turning them into thriving neighborhoods replete with Turkish restaurants, community centers and a wrestling club.While in Utah, where Akhmedova was first resettled by the US government, she found her opportunities were limited to dish washing and cooking at retirement homes and hospitals. Here in Ohio, her longstanding goals have been realized.“We Turkish people are all cooks, from a young age,” she says. “I saw that here, there is a lot of opportunities to do something that you like.”While cities such as New York, Miami and Los Angeles have long enjoyed the diversity of life and economic growth fueled by refugees and immigrants, recent years have seen smaller, more homogeneous towns in so-called “flyover states” transformed into vibrant, growing communities thanks to immigrants.Ohio’s foreign-born population has grown by 30% over the last decade, helping to offset a decades-long population decline that was fueled by the offshoring of manufacturing and the Great Recession of 2008. Neighboring Kentucky resettled more refugees per capita than any other state in 2023, where between 2021 and 2023 their numbers grew from 670 to 2,520.In places such as Springfield, Ohio; Logansport, Indiana; and beyond, refugees and immigrants have stepped in to fill critical entry-level jobs such as packaging and manufacturing, the demand for which locals find themselves unwilling or unable to meet.In Owensboro, a town of 60,000 people in western Kentucky, hundreds of Afghan refugees and humanitarian parolees have brought a diversity to the area not previously seen. There, three refugees ran a restaurant serving central Asian food for several years out of a diner whose owners allowed them to use their facilities. In 2023, the restaurant, called Pamir Afghan Cuisine and since closed, was voted the best international restaurant in town.In Lexington, nearly 2,000 refugees from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ukraine and elsewhere have brought diverse vibrancy to a city formerly mostly known for horses and whiskey.Refugees are people unable or unwilling to return to their country of nationality due to the threat of persecution or war. According to the UNHCR, the UN’s refugee agency, there are roughly 36.8 million refugees around the world, and despite the US being the world’s second-richest country based on purchasing power parity, the number of refugees being admitted has been falling since the beginning of the program, in 1980.Similar experiences are playing out in Indianapolis, a city that saw years of population and economic decline in the 1970s and 1980s. Today, it finds itself home to the largest Burmese community in the US, a haven for more than 30,000 immigrants from the south-east Asian country who have fled the Myanmar military regime’s decades-long crackdown on democracy activists and minority religions.“Indiana is at the crossroads of America, where a lot of logistics and manufacturing companies are located. Those jobs are readily available for refugees,” says Elaisa Vahnie, who heads the Burmese American Community Institute in Indianapolis, an organization helping refugees and immigrants from the country adapt to life in Indiana.“There’s also around 150 small businesses – insurance and real estate companies, restaurants, housing developers – run by Burmese people in central Indiana.”Since 2011, the Burmese American Community Institute has helped more than 17,000 people adjust to life in the midwest, and has even driven up college attendance rates among young Burmese Americans. About 40% of the community in Indiana was initially resettled elsewhere in the US but moved to the midwestern state due to family connections and job opportunities.Data from the US Census Bureau shows that 70% of Indiana’s population growth in 2024 was due to international immigration, driving the largest population growth the state has seen in nearly two decades.However, like in 2017, these communities find themselves facing a host of new immigration restrictions and controls introduced by the Trump administration.This month, the White House barred entry to the US by citizens of Myanmar, Afghanistan and 10 other countries, in order to, it claims, “protect the nation from foreign terrorist and other national security and public safety threats”.“We have heard that church pastors, family members, friends and those who have been planning to visit find themselves in a very sudden situation. The community here has been impacted already,” says Vahnie.A refugee who fled Myanmar due to persecution for his pro-democracy advocacy, Vahnie has recently been to Washington DC to canvass state department officials and congressional staffers to end the travel ban.“If this ban continues, the impact will not just be on Burmese Americans. The United States is a leader of global freedom, human rights and democracy. It’s in our best interest to invest in the people of Burma. We need to carefully think through this, and I hope the administration will consider lifting the ban as quickly as possible,” he says.Last year, more than 100,000 people entered the US as refugees. On 27 January, the newly inaugurated Trump administration suspended the country’s entire refugee program due to what the White House called the US’s inability “to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities”.But many community leaders don’t see it that way.“I respectfully disagree with the idea that we are not able to take legal migrants,” says Vahnie.“After 20 to 25 years of welcoming Burmese people here, they bring a high educational performance, economic contribution and diversity to enrich Indiana. That’s really something we celebrate.”Born in Uzbekistan, Akhmedova saw first-hand the ethnic violence that affected her community during the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989. She and her family fled to the Krasnodar region of western Russia, where her community again faced attacks and discrimination.She moved from Utah to Dayton in 2017 to be nearer to family.“I was always dreaming about [opening a restaurant] to show my culture, my food, my attitude,” she says.“Ninety-nine per cent of people tell me they’ve never eaten this kind of food.” More

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      in Elections

      Ohio Officer Won’t Be Charged in Fatal Shooting of Teenager

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      The teenager, Ryan Hinton, was shot by a police officer responding to a stolen vehicle report on May 1. The youth’s father is accused of killing a sheriff’s deputy with his car.A police officer in Cincinnati will not be charged in the fatal shooting of a teenager whose father is accused of intentionally striking and killing a sheriff’s deputy with his car the day after his son’s death, prosecutors said.Connie Pillich, the prosecuting attorney for Hamilton County, said at a news conference on Tuesday that the officer, whom she did not identify, was “legally justified in his use of force” and declined to send the case to a grand jury.The teenager, Ryan Hinton, was fatally shot by a police officer who was responding to a report of a stolen vehicle on May 1. Mr. Hinton had a fully loaded gun that he pointed at officers when they confronted him, Ms. Pillich said.“I’m confident that my decision was based on every fact available and was made with due diligence and the utmost care,” the prosecutor said.Fanon A. Rucker, a lawyer for Mr. Hinton’s family, said in remarks after the news conference that the family planned to file a lawsuit.The police were investigating a report of a stolen vehicle when they found Mr. Hinton and three other people in the stolen car. When officers approached the vehicle, the four men ran. One of the officers saw Mr. Hinton fall as he ran away and heard the sound of metal hitting the pavement, Ms. Pillich said.In audio from police dash camera footage played at the news conference, another responding officer can be heard yelling, “He’s got a gun,” before shots are fired.Ms. Pillich said the officer who had fired the fatal shots told investigators that he had heard the warning about the gun and saw Mr. Hinton point a gun at him, after which the officer fired his weapon.The father, Rodney L. Hinton, 38, is accused of intentionally driving his car into a Hamilton County sheriff’s deputy who was directing traffic outside a University of Cincinnati graduation event on May 2, a day after the son’s death, according to the prosecutor’s office, which filed charges last month.A lawyer who had been representing the family said that they had gone to the Cincinnati police chief’s office earlier that day to see the body-camera footage of the confrontation and that Mr. Hinton had become visibly upset and left before the video was over.The elder Mr. Hinton pleaded not guilty last month to two counts of aggravated murder, one count of murder and two counts of felonious assault. He faces the death penalty if he is convicted of aggravated murder.Clyde Bennett, Mr. Hinton’s lawyer, said that he was being held without bond at the Clermont County jail. More