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    They were teacher and student in exile. Now this Democrat and Republican face off in Ohio

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    Almost 32 years ago, in a refugee camp in eastern Nepal, children sat cross-legged around a small blackboard propped on the dirt, repeating the alphabet in sing-song rhythm. Among them was Bhuwan Pyakurel, a fourth-grader, and his teacher, Kamal Subedi, barely 18.“He was tall, thin and very talkative,” Subedi said, now 52. “We didn’t know what would happen tomorrow. So we went hut to hut, gathering kids to learn.” In the early 1990s, thousands of Bhutanese refugees had arrived across seven camps in the region, each day bringing more families, more children and more uncertainty.Three decades later, the former teacher and student live a few miles apart in Reynoldsburg, Ohio, and on opposite sides of a US political divide. Pyakurel is now a Democratic city councilman and the first Bhutanese refugee elected to public office in the United States. Subedi, his former teacher, is running for another seat on the council as a Republican on 4 November.Their race has split the small but influential Bhutanese community in suburban Columbus. But the debate over Subedi’s candidacy has spread far beyond Reynoldsburg. Across Facebook and WhatsApp groups from Pennsylvania to Minnesota, members of the Bhutanese diaspora are weighing in – posting hundreds of comments, endorsements and rejections.Some see Subedi’s candidacy as a sign of maturity, proof that refugees can belong to and shape either party. Others, including Pyakurel, see it as a betrayal, aligning their story of exile with a party that, in recent years, deported dozens of Bhutanese refugees and cut social programs many families rely on.“When people with refugee backgrounds like Subedi run on the Republican platform, I see it as them standing against me, my children, my community, and my values,” Pyakurel said. “It feels like they’re rejecting the ideals this country was built on. If you support that kind of politics, you should be ashamed.”Subedi argues that change comes from participation. “If we never join the Republican Party, we’ll always be isolated from it,” he said. “If we take part, we can help shape the narrative to include us.”Pyakurel was nine when Bhutan carried out the mass expulsions of its Nepali-speaking minority, forcing his family into the Goldhap refugee camp in eastern Nepal. Life there was defined by restrictions, no legal work, little movement and constant uncertainty. “You feel that otherness every day,” he said. “It plants a question in you: why don’t I get the same chance everyone else does?”That chance came in 2009, when his family resettled in Colorado. There, through the Family Leadership Training Institute at Colorado State University, he learned the mechanics of civic participation.“It was the first course that made me think about running for local office,” he said.Then in 2014, Pyakurel, then 35, and his family moved to Reynoldsburg, joining hundreds of other Bhutanese families. Two years later, he became a US citizen. “When I took the oath, the judge said, ‘You have two duties: vote and consider running for office.’ I walked out in tears.”In 2019, when longtime Republican councilman Marshall Spalding sought re-election, Pyakurel decided to challenge him.View image in fullscreen“When he decided to run for office, I just thought that was great,” said Steve Walker, 80, a longtime colleague and adviser. “To have the potential of a Bhutanese representative on the Reynoldsburg city council – that meant a lot. There’s a significant Bhutanese population here.”Once a predominantly white and Republican suburb, Reynoldsburg’s population of roughly 40,000 people is now far more mixed politically and ethnically. Census data show the Black population rising from 10% in 2000 to 26% in 2020. Approximately 8,000 Bhutanese refugees have made their home there, accounting for roughly one-fifth of the city’s population.On the night Pyakurel announced his candidacy he felt his chest tighten as he climbed the steps to the microphone. “I don’t remember exactly what I said,” he recalled, laughing. “But people started clapping before I’d even finished.”Pyakurel threw himself into the campaign the same way he had rebuilt his life as a refugee, one door at a time. “When I told them I was a refugee and why I wanted to serve, most people listened,” he said. “But sometimes they said things that were cruel or racist.”His story still resonated with neighbors, with local Democratic leaders, and especially within the Bhutanese community.That year, Pyakurel made history as the first Bhutanese refugee in the United States to be elected to public office. He won the ward three seat on the Reynoldsburg city council, defeating Spalding by a comfortable margin – proof, he says, that “refugees don’t just find a home in America, they help shape it for the better.”Among Pyakurel’s earliest supporters was one of his former fourth-grade teachers from the Goldhap refugee camp, the soft-spoken Subedi. “I was so proud of him and everything he’d accomplished.”After Nepal, Subedi’s family had resettled in Dallas, Texas, in 2008. “The first year was very rough,” he said. “We arrived in the middle of the recession. There were no jobs. I had a young son and my parents to take care of.”He worked briefly for Catholic Charities in Dallas, then received a full scholarship to attend graduate school at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, where he completed a master’s in computational science in 2014. That same year, Subedi and his family migrated to Reynoldsburg, where he teaches physics as an adjunct professor at Columbus State Community College and runs a few small businesses.Unlike his former student Pyakurel, who found his values aligned with the Democratic party, Subedi says he chose the Republican party because of his refugee background, not despite it.“When I finally had to choose a party, I felt Republican principles matched the values I grew up with, Hindu faith, family, discipline, preserving language and culture,” he said. “We left Bhutan to protect those things.“It’s a mistake to assume refugees and immigrants automatically support Democrats. Many of us don’t,” he added.In 2024, Subedi and a group of Bhutanese residents campaigned for Donald Trump in Ohio – a key swing state that Trump carried with 55% of the vote. Now, Subedi is running for city council as a Republican even as the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown has led to the deportation of dozens of Bhutanese refugees, including several from Columbus.“I’ve already said deporting Bhutanese refugees is wrong. It’s one part of my party I don’t agree with,” Subedi said. “But when I compare that with open borders – where desperate migrants and even criminals cross without screening – I think both are serious problems.”His candidacy has exposed deep divisions within the Bhutanese community in Reynoldsburg.Charan Chamlagai, 42, who once canvassed for Pyakurel, sees Subedi’s Republican run as a positive step. “Subedi brings a different perspective,” he said. “He wants to change things from within and help our community understand the policies that affect us. Some Republican ideas align with our cultural and religious values. We should give him a chance.”Others, though, see Subedi’s campaign as a betrayal.“He’s supporting the Trump administration that deported our people,” said Harry Adhikari, 45. “By running as a Republican, he’s supporting the same system that would deport his own brothers and sisters. He’s not fixing potholes in our community – he’s creating them.”Subedi acknowledged that the deportation of Bhutanese refugees was fundamentally un-American. At the same time, he argues that deportations are not unique to the Trump administration.“Deportations didn’t start with President Trump,” he said. “President Obama deported more than three million people. This is a federal system.”When pressed on the fact that no known Bhutanese refugees were deported under previous administrations, Subedi hesitated. “Deporting Bhutanese refugees is wrong,” he finally said. “I don’t like it.”Decades after he was his student, Pyakurel has been outspoken about Subedi’s campaign.“He’s a Democrat, and in politics it’s fair to challenge your opposition,” Subedi said. “But I think Bhuwan and others have mischaracterized me. They blame me for deportations I had nothing to do with. They treat me like an enemy. Bhuwan won’t even shake my hand any more.”When asked what might change his view, Pyakurel paused before answering. “If Subedi publicly denounced Trump, I’d support him.”But Subedi hesitated when asked if he would take that stand.“I don’t think it would be wise to denounce him openly,” he said. “He’s our commander-in-chief. And there are things Trump has done that I believe are good for this country – to protect it, to save it.” More

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      JD Vance did nothing as Trump cuts cost his Ohio home town millions. Will it reshape the city council?

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      When the Middletown high school marching band performed at the presidential inauguration in Washington DC in January, they did so having called on parents, relatives and friends to empty their pockets to help pay for the trip.Despite his apparent nous and wealth, built from a former career in venture capital, Middletown native JD Vance declined to help the students and their supporters get to the capital on the day that honored and marked him as one of the most powerful people in the country.And in May, when the community learned that Donald Trump’s Department of Education was taking back a $5.6m grant that Middletown’s schools had been awarded, school representatives and local politicians, many of them Republicans, wrote to Vance, begging him to reinstate the funding.“To a public school district, $5.6m, that’s not just some easy figure to come up with to complete the project,” the Middletown schools superintendent, Deborah Houser, told WVXU.But all they heard back from Number One Observatory Circle, the vice-president’s Washington DC residence, were crickets.It’s for these and other reasons that progressives Scotty Robertson and Larri Silas decided to run for two seats on Middletown’s non-partisan city council in next month’s election.View image in fullscreenWith national midterm elections still a year out, the Middletown city council election could represent one of the first political temperature checks following nine months of upheaval fueled by White House policies that have targeted working-class Americans like many in Middletown.Although the Middletown city council is officially non-partisan, its current makeup leans 3-1 in favor of Republican members, with the fifth member, the mayor, being regarded as a centrist. The two council seats up for election are now occupied by Republicans.If both – or either – Robertson and Silas win, the swing would send shock waves all the way to Washington.“Middletown is a city that has communities with some very vulnerable populations. The [Trump administration] policies are designed to help billionaires, and there are not a lot of his billionaire friends that exist in Middletown,” says Robertson, a West Virginia native and pastor who moved to Middletown eight years ago.“Peter Thiel doesn’t live in Middletown.” Tech billionaire Thiel is thought to have played a major role in financing Vance’s political rise.Despite Vance being Middletown’s most famous son and Ohio broadly safe ground for Republican politicians for at least a decade, tellingly, nearly four in 10 of voters in the city of 50,000 people chose not to back Vance and Trump in last year’s presidential election.As a young Black woman in a city where 27% of the population is non-white, Silas’s candidacy could prompt residents not normally politically motivated to get out and vote in light of the wider political climate in the country.“I think a lot of people in Middletown want change, and that people see youth as change,” says the 22-year-old nursing home staffer and third-generation Middletown resident.“A lot of people say they want to see the youth get involved [in politics]. But when you do, you’re often criticized for not having experience.”Silas was jolted into politics after longtime Democrat Sherrod Brown lost his Ohio Senate seat to Bernie Moreno, a Republican endorsed by Trump, last November.“I thought: ‘What can I do? I can’t change national politics, but I can get involved someway,’ she says.National polls show Vance’s unfavorability rising since becoming vice-president. Those describing themselves as independents, a crucial voting bloc, have recorded their unfavorable view of Vance increasing from 48% around inauguration day in late January to a record 57% in early October. A similar increase has been recorded among African Americans and Hispanic voters, who make up a considerable number of Middletown residents.Vance has been criticized locally for not stepping in to save a Biden-era grant worth hundreds of millions to a local steel plant that would have created hundreds of clean energy jobs. In December, his mother admonished Middletown’s city council for not doing enough to recognize his achievements.Silas and Robertson claim Vance’s policies and lack of support are damaging Middletown’s prospects.“I’m confused [by Vance]. He says he wants to govern for the working person, for the average person, yet the policies that he supports are policies that hurt poor, working people disproportionately,” says Robertson.Last month, Vance posted on X, saying: “Democrats are about to shutdown the government because they demand that we fund healthcare for illegal aliens,” a claim that has no basis in reality.“Middletown has families that are disproportionately in the socioeconomic class that these policies are hurting. That’s why these policies are having a much more disproportionate impact on Middletown.” The US Census Bureau recorded that child poverty in Middletown is 29%, 13% above the national average.Meanwhile, one of Silas and Robertson’s city council opponents, incumbent Paul Lolli, courted controversy last year when receiving a $135,981 payout after retiring from his job as Middletown city manager “due to personal circumstances”. While more than $43,000 of that was attributed to accrued paid time off, the remainder accounted for six months of salary and insurance benefits premiums. Emails and voicemails left by the Guardian with Lolli were not responded to.Lolli and his right-leaning co-runner, a former city council member, have claimed it isn’t Vance’s job to lift up his home town.Past vice-presidents, however, have ensured their own communities were recognized.Kamala Harris helped bring millions of dollars in funding and grants into Oakland, California, her home town, during her vice-presidency.Still, the challenges facing Robertson and Silas are significant, chief among them the gap in experience between them and their opponents, who have collectively worked in city administrative positions for decades.Calling out Vance, a hometown hero for many Middletown residents, could also be costly.Experts say that Vance’s unpopularity – and that of vice-presidents in general – is largely down to how people see the president.“It’s hard to know how seriously to take a rating of JD Vance as an individual, as an office holder, because I think mostly what I think people are doing is transferring their opinion of Donald Trump as a president to JD Vance,” says Christopher Devine, associate professor of political science at the University of Dayton, who has written two books on vice-presidents.He says many people who turn out for a presidential election do not take part in local polls such as city council elections.“The more localized and less visible in terms of the office, the lower the turnout’s going to be,” says Devine.“Those folks who came out in force to vote for Trump and Vance in Middletown in 2024, that’s not going to be the same for people who are voting for city council in the fall of 2025.”Silas, whose family members were part of the Great Migration of job-seeking African Americans who moved from the south to the midwest more than a century ago, says she first heard of Vance when she voted against him in a Senate election he ultimately won in 2022. Vance secured Trump’s endorsement for the race, which was funded by millions of dollars from billionaires such as Thiel.For Robertson, countering the White House-fueled movement against working Americans starts in Middletown.“I think that our country in general is at a pivotal moment,” he says.“If good, decent people with the right motives don’t stand up and run for office and participate in the political process, then that leaves it ripe for picking for the bad actors.” More

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      Haitians helped boost Springfield’s economy – now they’re fleeing in fear of Trump

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      Every morning, Alicia Mercado makes the 50-minute drive from her home in Columbus to Springfield, where she runs the Adasa Latin Market store. She opened the business next to a Haitian restaurant in 2023, having spotted a gap in the market for Caribbean and Latin foods – the neighborhood’s Haitian population was booming at the time.But over the past year, she says her business, which includes an international money transfer kiosk, has taken a major hit.“About 80 to 90% of our customers were Haitians; now that’s down to about 60% over the past six months,” she says. “No more people are moving to Springfield.”Mercado’s experiences are being echoed around the city of 58,000 people that garnered international attention last year when Donald Trump falsely claimed during a presidential debate that immigrants were eating people’s pets.Until the end of last year, Springfield was something of a surprise economic juggernaut.A report from the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland found that it ranked second among all Ohio cities for job growth since the pandemic.New housing projects, worth hundreds of millions of dollars, are among the biggest investments the city has ever made.That growth was partly fueled by the availability of manufacturing and blue-collar jobs that were eagerly filled by the more than 15,000 Haitian immigrants who had moved to the city over the past eight years, fueling businesses such as Mercado’s.Local companies got cheap, reliable labor, while Haitian workers received stable income, health insurance and a safe place to live. Many bought homes and invested their hard-earned income into improving the city’s housing stock that, in turn, padded the city’s tax coffers. For the most part, it was a win for all involved.But since then, the city’s economic fortunes have spiraled.Springfield businesses, big and small, are struggling in the aftermath of thousands of Haitians fleeing the town after the Trump administration’s termination of the humanitarian parole program for citizens of several countries, including Haiti, in June. On top of that, the government has ended temporary protected status, affecting the immigration status of more than half a million Haitians, which comes into effect on or before 5 February 2026.The Department of Homeland Security says conditions in Haiti have improved to allow US-based Haitians to return. However, violence prompted Haiti’s government in August to issue a state of emergency in parts of the country. The US Department of State currently has a level four “do not travel” advisory for Haiti.The consequences of these moves are being keenly felt in places such as Springfield.Since January, when the Trump administration took office, the percentage of manufacturing jobs in Springfield has been falling by double digits as the civilian labor force also declines, something thought to be partly fueled by Haitians leaving the city due to fear of the administration’s anti-immigrant rhetoric.At Topre America, an automotive parts manufacturing company north-east of downtown Springfield, dozens of jobs that Haitians had once filled – forklift drivers, supervisors and stackers – have remained unfilled on the company’s employment webpage for months.Unemployment has ticked up slightly in the city – but still at a rate twice the state’s increase – in the 12 months since Trump’s racist comments.In a city where income tax makes up the majority of municipal funding, the loss of thousands of Haitian workers means fewer dollars for public services for all residents.“Our tax revenue, which is the backbone of our general fund, has flattened. After years of strong growth post-pandemic, the rebound is behind us,” Springfield’s city finance director, Katie Eviston, reported at a city commission public meeting in June.Previous estimates had tracked that 2025 would see a 3.5% increase in income tax funds for the city. By June, that anticipated growth, however, had been wiped out in what Eviston said was a “level of decline [that] hasn’t occurred since the early days of the Covid shutdown”.Moreover, the city faces a worrying $4.25m financial hole due to the cancellation of a host of Biden-era programs and grants by the Trump administration.Springfield and its businesses aren’t alone in dealing with the fallout of the Trump administration’s immigration policies.Experts say it has consequences for businesses and companies right across the country. In June, the Association of Equipment Manufacturers (AEM) said that ending visas for international workers would leave 85,000 jobs unfilled.“Stripping [immigrants’] ability to work and threatening them with removal is not just a human cost; it is an economic one,” an AEM executive wrote in the Washington Examiner.Small communities in Indiana, Pennsylvania and elsewhere in Ohio that enjoyed an economic rebound in the aftermath of the pandemic are also experiencing depressed purchasing power due to White House-fueled job cuts.“Trump’s immigration policy slowed inflows. Suddenly, more firms have seen their immigrant worker supplies decline, forcing them to pay more to attract native workers, thereby placing upward pressure on inflation,” says Mark Muro, a senior fellow at the Brookings Metro thinktank.“This, combined with Trump’s tariffs, has created serious upward price pressure along with the rise in labor costs – not a great combination for many US producers in the heartland.”Without the ability to work, many Haitians are leaving the US.According to the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada, more than 26,000 Haitians sought asylum there in the first six months of 2025, many of whom are thought to have fled the US. By contrast, just 21,756 claims were made for all of 2024.Many Haitians in Springfield, however, are stuck in place, without jobs and with bills mounting up.“A lot of people have work problems – we have lost half our customers,” says Youdins Solon, who helps out at his family’s Keket Bongou Caribbean restaurant in south-east Springfield. Solon moved to Springfield last March, having lived in Florida for 18 months prior. But by the summer, he lost his job at a local Amazon distribution center when his immigration status was revoked. He says he is one of hundreds who have been laid off.“I’m lucky because I have my family here, but for a lot of people, they moved [out of Springfield] because they were afraid of the situation.”But for those who have staked their businesses on a thriving immigrant community in Springfield, it’s not easy to pack up and leave.“We order Haitian food from companies in Florida and Chicago every two weeks,” says Mercado, “but now, that’s greatly reduced.” More

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      The right wants Charlie Kirk memorials across the US – but is it just an attempt to capitalize on his killing?

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      Republicans and conservatives are campaigning to quickly build statues and other memorials across the United States for the slain rightwing activist Charlie Kirk in the wake of his assassination at a college event in Utah last month.Political leaders in states such as Florida, Michigan and Oklahoma have not only called for construction of memorials but in some cases also threatened to penalize colleges that refuse to publicly honor Kirk, who was killed on 10 September.The heavy-handed push to honor Kirk, who held views that many see as racist and sexist, follows Donald Trump’s moves to restore monuments of Confederate leaders that were removed in recent years, which appear to be part of a broad effort to impose rightwing views on the country.“The way in which you keep the culture war going – or the way that you win it – is to have religious icons like Charlie and use their face and their name and their likeness to further your cause,” said Matthew Boedy, an English professor at the University of North Georgia who has studied Christian nationalism.Kirk, who co-founded the conservative youth organization Turning Point USA, was killed at Utah State University during one of his signature events in which he debated students.Since then, Trump and others in his administration, such as Stephen Miller, have blamed the shooting – without producing any evidence – on a coordinated violent effort by the “radical left” and threatened to “identify, disrupt, dismantle and destroy” the left’s “terrorism and terror networks”.Kirk often criticized gay and transgender rights and made Islamophobic statements and once suggested that the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was a “mistake”. However, at the state and local level, Republican lawmakers have described Kirk as a “modern civil rights leader” who stood for “allowing everybody to voice their opinion respectfully”.Just a week after Kirk’s murder, Ohio Republican state senators Shane Jett and Dana Prieto introduced legislation that would require all of the state’s public universities to build a “Charlie Kirk memorial plaza” with a statue “that features the conservative leader sitting at a table with an empty seat across from him” or one of Kirk “and his wife standing and holding their children in their arms”.A few weeks later, in Florida, Kevin Steele, a state house Republican, also proposed legislation that would require all of the state’s public universities to rename roads for Kirk.“The Florida State University shall redesignate Chieftain Way as Charlie James Kirk Road,” the bill states. “Pasco-Hernando State College shall redesignate Mrs Prameela Musunuru Health and Wellness Trail as Charlie James Kirk Trail.”In Florida, if the schools do not establish the memorials by stated deadline, the state would withhold funding from the institutions, and in Oklahoma, the state would fine the schools, according to the legislation.Boedy, the University of North Georgia professor, likened the lawmakers’ threats to withhold state money to Trump’s moves to cut off federal funding to universities unless they met his list of demands.“State funding for education should be based upon students’ interest in majors, in enrollment and in science, in objective criteria, and honoring a single person is not part of that,” said Boedy, who has been on Turning Point’s watchlist of “professors who discriminate against conservative students and advance leftist propaganda in the classroom”.Jett, Prieto and Steele did not respond to requests for comment.Kirk was critical of higher education and wrote a book titled The College Scam: How America’s Universities Are Bankrupting and Brainwashing Away the Future of America’s Youth.“I find it really ironic that the state of Oklahoma is demanding that every public university have a Charlie Kirk memorial plaza,” said Erika Doss, an art historian at the University of Texas at Dallas and the author of Memorial Mania: Public Feeling in America.While the states have not approved the legislation requiring the memorials, at least one Florida county has installed a sign for a Charlie Kirk Memorial Highway, despite some public opposition.And less than a week after the murder, New College of Florida, a liberal arts university that has been the subject of a conservative takeover, also posted on X an AI-generated image of a bronze sculpture of Kirk at a table and stated that it would build the statue on campus “to defend and fight for free speech and civil discourse in American life”.That may not be easy. After events like 9/11, the Vietnam war, and the assassinations of John F Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr, public monuments were often not built for years, sometimes decades.Quickly sharing a fake image of a Kirk memorial “is a lie”, Doss said. “It matters because it doesn’t tell the truth about how complicated and necessarily complicated making public art should be.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionBy waiting years to build a memorial, you can see how time really changes the “emotional tenor and the perspective on the event”, said Gabriel Reich, a professor of history and social studies at Virginia Commonwealth University who has studied collective memories of the US civil war and emancipation.“How people feel about [Kirk’s killing] five years from now may be different, and it may depend on what happens between now and then,” said Reich. “Does the political violence escalate and continue? Does it get tamped down?”It’s not a foregone conclusion that the schools will build the monuments.In Michigan, the Mecosta county board of commissioners wanted Ferris State University to build a statue for Kirk and offered to split the funding, but the school president declined, citing a “a longstanding practice that limits statues on campus to individuals who have made significant, direct contributions to Ferris State University itself”, according to the Detroit Free-Press.At New College, alum William Rosenberg sees the proposed statue as an attempt by the administration to distract from problems at the school, which was once a highly ranked institution considered among the most liberal in the country.“New College was a welcoming environment for people who were motivated and wanted to learn and wanted to do it on their own terms,” said Rosenberg, who graduated in 1980 with a degree in medieval studies.Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has tried in recent years to transform the school by appointing political allies such as the conservative activist Christopher Rufo to its board of trustees, firing its president and revamping its curriculum.Since then, the school has seen its national ranking and graduation and retention rates plummet, while the state now spends significantly more on each student than those at its other public universities, according to Inside Higher Ed.After posting the AI image of the statue, New College’s president, Richard Corcoran, touted the public response in a weekly email.“In the first 72 hours of the announcement, New College of Florida was mentioned nearly 3 billion times (including traditional media in the graph below, and reposts on social media),” the email stated. “Normally, New College receives about 100 million impressions a month. In 72 hours, New College received about 2 1/2 years of media coverage.”A New College spokesperson, James Miller, declined an interview request.Rosenberg, a semi-retired computer engineer, doubts the school will actually build the statue because of Corcoran’s “history of promising the world and delivering nothing”.“A lot of alumni feel it was a gross PR move to capitalize on Charlie Kirk’s murder,” Rosenberg said. “New College of Florida has now become a political pawn whose real mission is about making political headlines while the on-the-ground education has nosedived.” More

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      US Capitol police investigating flag with swastika in Republican representative’s office – report

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      US Capitol police are reportedly investigating after a US flag bearing a swastika was discovered inside the office of Republican House member Dave Taylor of Ohio.The image, obtained by Politico, shows a modified flag featuring red and white stripes arranged in the form of a swastika – which is virtually synonymous with the Nazis’ genocidal regime. The flag was displayed on what appears to be a cubicle wall behind Angelo Elia, one of Taylor’s staff members, during a virtual meeting.Other items pinned nearby include a pocket constitution and a congressional calendar. It remains unclear whether Elia had any connection to the display.“I am aware of an image that appears to depict a vile and deeply inappropriate symbol near an employee in my office,” Taylor said in a statement to the Cincinnati Enquirer.“The content of that image does not reflect the values or standards of this office, my staff, or myself, and I condemn it in the strongest terms. Upon learning of this matter, I immediately directed a thorough investigation alongside Capitol Police, which remains ongoing. No further comment will be provided until it has been completed.”According to his office, the flag was discovered on Tuesday afternoon inside Taylor’s suite in the Cannon building on Capitol Hill, Politico reported. The congressman suspects the act was “foul play or vandalism”, his spokesperson said.When contacted by the Guardian for comment, an automatic response from the US Capitol police public information office was sent that said the office is “closed for routine business” during the funding-related federal government shutdown that began on 1 October. “The office will reopen when the federal government is funded,” the response said.The discovery follows a report from Politico published on Tuesday detailing a Telegram chat in which Young Republican leaders exchanged racist comments and slurs, mocked the Holocaust, and expressed admiration for Nazi ruler Adolf Hitler.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe exposed chat has since been met with major backlash throughout the US, with some who participated being called to resign and at least one member having a job offer revoked. More

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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