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      Trump will destroy the government agencies that most help working people | Katrina vanden Heuvel

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      The Republican party has shellacked its clean-cut corporatism, in recent years, with a veneer of economic populism. See JD Vance’s pseudo-criticisms of Wall Street, so gestural they could be mistaken for an interpretive dance routine, or Donald Trump’s stint as a McDonald’s “employee”, which seemed more inspired by his contempt for Kamala Harris than his affection for fry cooks.But when it comes to how the second Trump administration actually intends to govern, there have already been plenty of signals that they intend to target and weaken – if not outright destroy – the parts of government most beneficial to working people. And right now, the agency most clearly in their crosshairs is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB).While there’s new fervor behind rightwing efforts to undermine the CFPB – or, indeed, “delete” it, as Elon Musk recently tweeted – these attacks have been ongoing since the agency’s inception. In his first term, in fact, Trump slashed the CFPB’s budget, appointed a vocal critic to run it and rolled back regulations protecting consumers from predatory practices.Trump and his nearly-half-trillionaire “first buddy” feel threatened for good reason: the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is one of the few federal agencies created explicitly to help average Americans, and actually given authority to do so. Its efforts have represented some of the Biden administration’s most impactful advances for working people – and gutting it would be among the most devastating anti-consumer moves the Trump administration could make.The CFPB was born out of the 2008 financial crisis, which saw almost 400 banks fold and American households lose about $17tn in wealth (that’s 42 Elon Musks). The popular narrative rightfully blames predatory lending and securities fraud, but those lapses were only possible because of decades-long bipartisan deregulation. In response, the then Harvard professor Elizabeth Warren proposed a federal agency to centralize regulation of the consumer financial sector, work which had been spread thin across seven different agencies. Rather than being “duplicative”, as Musk has claimed, the CFPB began as a novel effort to make government more responsive, effective and – indeed – efficient.But not until the current directorship of Rohit Chopra did the CFPB begin fulfilling its true potential. Since his appointment in 2021, Chopra has cracked down on exploitative consumer practices with a fervor not seen since Upton Sinclair stepped into a meatpacking plant.In the last year, the agency has banned excessive credit card late fees, saving consumers $10bn annually. It has started regulating “buy now, pay later” lenders, which often leave buyers on the hook for expensive purchases they return. It has created a registry of businesses who have repeatedly engaged in illegal practices, finally bringing a tough-on-crime approach to “corporate recidivism”. And just last week, the CFPB announced a rule capping overdraft fees that will return another $5bn to consumers every year.Chopra has notched these wins while burnishing a dynamic persona that might best be described as swashbuckler meets bureaucrat. He has embraced public engagement in a way most regulators don’t; see his PSAs on medical debt with Rashida Tlaib, the Michigan representative. He has also embraced conflict, prompting some opponents to accuse him of antagonism, as when he sued not just a credit reporting firm but one of its executives for misleading consumers. Still, one populist’s antagonism is most Americans’ vindication, and Chopra has even drawn reluctant praise from Republicans such as the onetime speaker pro tempore Patrick McHenry.Other than consumers, arguably the biggest beneficiary of Chopra’s ferocity has been Joe Biden. The CFPB has accomplished many of his administration’s most unambiguously progressive (and practical) victories. Chopra joins a class of hugely productive Biden appointees – Lina Khan at the FTC, Marty Walsh and Julie Su at the Department of Labor, and a slate of pro-worker appointees at the National Labor Relations Board – who reaffirm the adage that “personnel is policy”.Even in the administration’s waning days, Khan’s FTC has helped unravel a merger between Kroger and Albertsons that would probably have spiked food prices, and raised alarms about “task scams” that have cheated targets out of millions. In this respect at least, Biden has taken a page from Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who gleefully stocked his cabinet with unabashed crusaders such as Frances Perkins, the mother of the New Deal.While many Democrats continue post-election recriminations, many will no doubt feel tempted to disavow anything and everything associated with the first one-term Democratic president since Carter. But a prevailing lesson of 2024 has been that voters respond to brash anti-corporate messaging, even when it comes from the mouths of an erstwhile venture capitalist and a real estate tycoon who stiffs workers.So even if the legacies of Chopra, Khan, Walsh and Su aren’t reflected in the next four years of governance, progressives can at least embrace them in their campaign rhetoric – especially in response to Trump’s imminent efforts to deter or even dismantle agencies such as the CFPB in favor of corporate interests.Three years ago, immediately after his swearing-in ceremony, Chopra wrote a memo describing the CFPB’s most important mission as this: “We must anticipate emerging risks so we can act before a crisis, rather than acting after it is too late.”It may be too late to avert the crisis of the last election. But it’s also the best time to act in anticipation of the next one.

      Katrina vanden Heuvel is the editorial director and publisher of the Nation. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and has contributed to the Washington Post, New York Times and Los Angeles Times More

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      Mitch McConnell warns Trump to avoid ‘isolationist’ foreign policy in second term

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      Mitch McConnell, the Republicans’ outgoing leader in the US Senate, has called on Donald Trump to avoid an “isolationist” foreign policy during his looming second presidency – and urged him to back up a surge in American “hard power” by continuing to support Ukraine in its war against Russia.In a 5,000-word essay in Foreign Affairs magazine, McConnell, 82 – who retires as the GOP Senate leader at the end of this term in 2027 – takes issue with a strand of foreign policy thinking in the party’s pro-Trump “Make America great again” (Maga) movement, which casts China as the US’s biggest threat and advocates turning away from the war in Ukraine to tackle challenges in Asia.He also urges continued robust support for Nato, the military alliance which Trump has often criticised and has threatened to withdraw US backing from unless European members increase their share of defence spending.Warning Trump that he would confront a more dangerous world when he returns to the White House in January – and pinning much of the blame on Joe Biden’s outgoing administration – McConnell writes: “The response to four years of weakness must not be four years of isolation.”In a coded rebuke to senior pro-Trump figures such as JD Vance, the incoming vice-president, McConnell dismisses the idea that Ukraine should be abandoned in favour of an all-out confrontational approach towards China.“Even though the competition with China and Russia is a global challenge, Trump will no doubt hear from some that he should prioritize a single theater and downgrade US interests and commitments elsewhere,” he writes.“Such thinking is commonplace among both isolationist conservatives who indulge the fantasy of ‘Fortress America’ and progressive liberals who mistake internationalism for an end in itself.”He accuses some members of his own party of “retrench[ing] in the face of Russian aggression in Europe”, although he does not spare the left, which he says is reluctant to confront Iran and support Israel.But it is the swipe at Republican “isolationism” that is certain to attract more attention. McConnell, who has a tense relationship with Trump – calling him “stupid” and “despicable” after his 2020 presidential election defeat – will have a platform to push his foreign policy agenda in the Senate term, when he will become chair of the subcommittee on defence appropriations.Trump has frequently voiced misgivings about US military aid for Ukraine and has claimed he would end its war with Russia in 24 hours.For his part, Vance is on record as saying he does not “really care what happens to Ukraine one way or another”.Taking aim at those views directly, McConnell writes: “Republicans who consider Ukraine a distraction from the Indo-Pacific should recall what happened the last time a president sought to reprioritize one region by withdrawing from another. In the Middle East, [Barack] Obama’s premature withdrawal from Iraq left a vacuum for Iran and the Islamic State (also known as Isis) to fill.”Trump can only effectively confront China and the adversaries, he adds, by continuing to back Ukraine: “A Russian victory would not only damage the United States’ interest in European security and increase US military requirements in Europe; it would also compound the threats from China, Iran, and North Korea.”McConnell, who has said he will feel “liberated” by no longer holding the Repbulican leadership in the Senate, is also supportive of the US’s European allies – saying many of them have boosted their defence spending commitments – while taking a swipe at Hungary, whose far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, has been feted by Trump and his Maga acolytes.“After major surges in their defense budgets, US allies on the continent now spend 18% more than they did a year ago, a far greater increase than the United States,” he writes.But there are – inconveniently, for Orbán’s Republican admirers – exceptions to this trend, he continues. “One of the West’s most glaring vulnerabilities to the influence of Russia – and China and Iran – is Hungary’s self-abnegating obeisance to those countries,” McConnell writes. More

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      The forgotten faces of Christmas in China | Letter

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      Reading “made in China” on his toys for the first time, my young Chinese nephew asked me innocently whether Santa was Chinese. Oddly, like Santa’s elves, toy assembly workers in China remain remote and faceless to most of us in the west. In Britain, most Asian migrants work backstage, too, kept in kitchens or workshops, taking the first and last train, earning low wages and hidden from our eyes. In many countries this Christmas, instead of being acknowledged for alleviating our cost of living crisis, those foreign workers will be vilified for stealing our jobs and threatened with tariffs whose consequences economists are still not certain about.It is always easier to blame people who remain invisible and voiceless. Although our world has never been so interconnected, and hence our nations so reliant on each other’s labour, Chinese society remains poorly understood. In the west, Chinese people remain enigmatic, the ever-silent and under-represented minority. When scrutinised, it is often with a political lens as well, maybe showing some cognitive bias.The question today should be how much value the free movement of products and people has brought to our nations and how to ensure that it keeps doing so in the future. As evidenced by world history, curiosity and interest towards foreign societies has often been an engine of progress. Christmas is a time to reach out and be thankful to one another: it is hoped that this spirit will continue to animate our politicians and societies in this coming year.Hugo WongAuthor of America’s Lost Chinese; London More

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      Lindsey Graham contradicts Trump by saying January 6 investigators should not go to jail

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      US senator Lindsey Graham has said officials who investigated Donald Trump supporters’ deadly attack on the US Capitol in 2021 should not be imprisoned – despite what his fellow Republican has argued in advance of his second presidency.During an interview Sunday on NBC’s Meet the Press, show host Kristen Welker asked Graham whether he agreed with Trump’s assertion on the program seven days earlier that those involved in the investigation of the January 6 Capitol attack “should go to jail”.“No,” said Graham, South Carolina’s senior senator as well as a ranking member of the chamber’s judiciary and budget committees.Welker directed the question at Graham during a segment meant to elicit quick answers, which she acknowledged by replying: “OK – that was very clear and concise.”The exchange offered an example of Graham’s occasional willingness to publicly disagree with Trump while still generally serving as a staunch ally – and it came amid a broader political dialogue about who should receive pardons in connection with an attack on Congress that was linked to multiple deaths, including the suicides of traumatized law enforcement officers.Trump has promised to begin his second presidency in January 2025 by issuing pardons to those who carried out the attack, though there may be some exceptions. He spoke to Welker on 8 December about how supporters of his were pressured into accepting guilty pleas in connection with the violent, desperate attempt to keep him in the White House after losing the presidency to Joe Biden in 2020.Having won the Oval Office back in November in his race against Vice-President Kamala Harris, Trump denied he would direct his second administration to arrest elected officials who investigated the Capitol attack, leading to federal criminal charges against him that have been dismissed. Nonetheless, he made it a point to tell Welker: “Honestly, they should go to jail.”Bernie Sanders, the liberal US senator, made a separate appearance on Sunday on Meet the Press and said Biden in turn should “very seriously consider” issuing pre-emptive pardons to those who investigated the Capitol attack, as others have suggested. Sanders didn’t provide any names, but a week earlier Trump mentioned the names of Bennie Thompson and Liz Cheney, once the chairperson and vice-chairperson respectively of the US House committee convened for that investigation.“You do not arrest elected officials … who undertake an investigation,” Sanders said, adding that doing so “is what authoritarianism [and] dictatorship is all about”.Sanders also said: “You just heard Lindsey Graham make that statement – I think that idea of Trump is not going to very far.”More than 1,250 people have pleaded guilty or otherwise been convicted in the January 6 attack. And at least 645 people have been sentenced to serve some time in prison, ranging from a few days to 22 years.During his 8 December interview with Welker, Trump blamed those convictions on “a very corrupt system” that he would hold in check with pardons, despite criticizing Biden’s recent pardon of his son, Hunter, on convictions of lying on gun ownership application forms as well as tax evasion.“I know the system,” said Trump, himself convicted in May in New York state court on charges of criminally falsifying business records to conceal hush-money payments to the adult film actor Stormy Daniels. More

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      Washington DC steels itself for Trump’s ‘takeover’: ‘We’re in for a bumpy ride’

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      View image in fullscreenBoth a senator and a pastor, Raphael Warnock reflected on being asked to give closing remarks at an annual congressional dinner in Washington. “Since we are meeting in what used to be the Trump International Hotel,” he mused, “perhaps it is an exorcism”.That was last year, when the ghost of Donald Trump had seemingly been banished for good from the nation’s capital. But like all the best horror movies, there is going to be a sequel. Next month Trump will return to a city that he has openly disparaged – the feeling is generally mutual – when he is inaugurated as the 47th US president.Trump lost the Republican primary election to Nikki Haley in the District of Columbia. He lost the presidential election there to Democrat Kamala Harris by 86 percentage points. Even so, he has vowed to radically overhaul the capital, threatened its political autonomy and recruited the billionaire Elon Musk to slash the federal workforce.Sally Quinn, an author, journalist and socialite, said: “The mood is pretty grim. People are depressed. I had a dinner last night with a number of people from Washington and I would say that everyone was very subdued and there’s not a lot of gaiety or celebration. I don’t know anybody who’s in the Christmas spirit right now.”During his first term, Trump, a New Yorker and now Florida resident, never truly embraced Washington, a city of around 700,000 people that has been home to the abolitionist Frederick Douglass, the singer Marvin Gaye and the comedian Dave Chappelle.During his presidency, the only DC restaurant he patronised was his own, ordering a well-done steak with ketchup at BLT Prime in the Trump International Hotel, half a mile from the White House. He has since sold the hotel, and its new restaurant is run by José Andrés, a Spanish-American chef and outspoken Trump critic.The former president snubbed Washington rituals. He was the only president never to attend the annual Kennedy Center Honors. He also skipped the annual White House Correspondents’ Association dinner. In late 2019 Trump did watch the Washington Nationals in the baseball World Series only to be met with loud boos and chants of “Lock him up!” and “Impeach Trump!”In 2020 Washington was convulsed by the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter demonstrators. Teargas was fired against nearby peaceful protesters outside the White House before Trump staged a photo opportunity holding a Bible outside a church. DC responded by painting “Black Lives Matter” on a nearby street and creating Black Lives Matter Plaza.Then came his defeat in the presidential election. First the city erupted in joy with people celebrating in the streets. Then it was stunned by the insurrection on 6 January 2021 at the US Capitol building, leading to five deaths. Washington was left reeling but, two weeks later, saw Trump depart the White House and assumed he was gone for good.Quinn reflected: “This is a Democratic town. People are in a state of shock and disbelief and trying to understand: how do you get over January 6? What is it that Democrats did wrong that was so much worse than January 6? What did the Democrats do that didn’t appeal to people? You have an indicted criminal as an elected president. How is that possible?”With the Trump hotel now under different ownership, it remains to be seen where his allies and supporters will congregate. Quinn recalls that some used to gather at Cafe Milano in Georgetown, much to the dismay of locals. “One night there were about 10 Trump people there and the buzz all around the room was such that I felt like everybody was going to stand up and start singing ‘La Marseillaise’ the way they did at Rick’s Café in Casablanca.”Trump’s return also has huge implications for the way that DC runs itself. The district has always lacked the autonomy of state. It was granted limited self-governance by the Home Rule Act in 1973 but Congress still essentially vets all DC laws and can outright overturn them.During his first term Trump threatened to federalise DC police, deployed the National Guard against protesters and expressed a desire to control city functions like road repair. On the campaign trail he expressed disdain for the city, raising fears about a potential escalation during his second term.Trump repeatedly vowed to “take over” the city and usurp the authority of the local government. In August last year, when he briefly came to town to plead not guilty on charges of trying to overturn his 2020 electoral loss to Biden, Trump derided the capital on social media, calling it a “filthy and crime ridden embarrassment to our nation”. He has long condemned it as “the swamp”.George Derek Musgrove, co-author of Chocolate City: A History of Race and Democracy in the Nation’s Capital, suggests that there are two Washingtons in Trump’s imagination. “One is the place where only lobbyists, lawyers and Hill staffers and federal regulators live. He sees those people as parasitical: if we got rid of those, we’d be able to have a much more functional democracy.“Contradictorily, he also sees the district where actual real people live but those people are poor and Black and highly criminal. Those are two DCs that he and House Republicans have presented to the country and both of them have a national political function. They’re a way of painting the Democratic party as part of the deep state and siding with criminals over victimised law-abiding citizens.”Trump has duly appointed Elon Musk and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy to a “Department of Government Efficiency” intended to save money by shrinking the federal government – an effort that could risk the jobs of thousands of employees in Washington and nearby Maryland and Virginia. The president-elect has also vowed to dismantle the Department of Education.Musgrove, an associate professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county, said: “When you talk about the fear of the incoming Trump administration, it’s twofold. One is the attacks on democracy in the district. The other is this real fear that his plans to slash the federal workforce will fall disproportionately on us and cause economic pain in the district.”Congressional Republicans have become increasingly aggressive in using their power to override DC laws, restrict its budget and target liberal policies on criminal justice, marijuana legalisation and abortion. Andrew Clyde, a Georgia congressman, has proposed completely repealing the Home Rule Act, while Andy Ogles, a Tennessee congressman, has talked publicly of abolishing the office of DC mayor.The current mayor, Muriel Bowser, was a thorn in Trump’s side first time around. But she and other local officials are seeking ways to work with the Trump administration on issues such as bringing federal workers back to the office. Unlike Democratic state governors, who are already coordinating on how to resist Trump on issues such as immigration, the mayor’s reach is limited.Meagan Hatcher-Mays, a senior adviser for United for Democracy, a coalition of more than 140 organisations, said: “We have a Democratic mayor but we’re not a state and so the federal government can interfere with our local politics and our local decisions in a way that they can’t with the states. Whether Trump is physically present here or not, we’re in for a bumpy ride with a lot of his policy folks and administration.”Hatcher-Mays also warned that DC could also prove a laboratory for Project 2025, a radical policy blueprint drawn up by the Heritage Foundation, a conservative thinktank. “Pretty much everything that’s in Project 2025 that they might not be able to get through Congress to go national could become real and exclusively apply just to DC.”Republicans’ clean sweep of the White House and both chambers of Congress was also a heavy blow to the long-running campaign for DC statehood. Advocates argue that this is the only way to ensure full democratic rights for DC residents, who pay federal taxes but lack voting representation. Republicans, however, are fiercely opposed to the idea of adding two senators likely to be Democrats.Paul Strauss, the “shadow” senator for DC who does get a vote in the Senate chamber, admitted: “We’re on defence. Most of what I expect I’ll be doing in the next two years is defending attacks on DC autonomy without a majority in either chamber. There’s not going to be much of a chance to move a bill forward. We are going to be trying to preserve what little self-determination we have.”The storied culture of DC includes the Washington Post, a newspaper founded in 1877 and famed for its investigation into the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. It spent the first Trump term locked in an old fashioned newspaper war with the New York Times over a seemingly endless series of revelations about his administration.But since then the Post has suffered deep financial losses, job cuts and reports that its publisher, Will Lewis, tried to pressure Post staff not to report on questions of whether he was involved in covering up crimes more than a decade ago at Rupert Murdoch’s British tabloid newspapers. The paper, owned by the billionaire Jeff Bezos, declined to endorse a candidate for president, reportedly prompting more than 250,000 readers to cancel subscriptions.Hatcher-Mays commented: “This is not a knock on any of the reporters who work at the Post. I know they’re independent and all great but it’s going to be a tough uphill climb to report out the various misdeeds of this administration when the owner of your paper is more interested playing footsie with a person who’s been impeached twice, is under indictment and has no interest in the product of democracy.”During his first term, Trump spent many weekends at his clubs in Florida or New Jersey but, when in Washington, was often driven to his golf club in Sterling, Virginia, where he played rounds. An accompanying pool of reporters would kill time at Lucia’s, an Italian restaurant nearby.Its owner, David Hackett, is preparing for their return after a four-year hiatus and prefers to not reveal his political allegiance. “It was definitely a nice Saturday and Sunday boost,” he said. “I’m looking forward to the journalists coming back. That might be the only plus to the whole deal for me.” More

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      Republicans take aim at subsidies that help tens of millions of women

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      As they prepare to take control of the White House and Congress next month, conservatives are eyeing cutbacks to federal programs that help tens of millions of women pay for healthcare, food, housing and transportation.Slashing or overhauling social support programs, long a goal of Republican lawmakers, could be catastrophic for women experiencing poverty. Supporters contend the social safety-net programs are already grossly underfunded.“With this new administration that is coming in … I really am concerned about the lives of women. We are seeing so many policies, so many budget cuts,” said Christian Nunes, president of the National Organization for Women.Republicans say they want to keep campaign promises to cut government spending, and three major programs make easy targets: Medicaid, the joint state/federal health insurance program for people with lower incomes; Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), a cash-allowance program that replaced welfare; and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (Snap), widely known as food stamps.While conservatives frame cuts as making government more efficient and even restoring freedom, advocates for and experts on families with little or no income say reducing these programs will throw more people – especially women and children – further into poverty.“It is going to fall heavily on women,” said Elaine Waxman, a senior fellow in the Income and Benefits Policy Center at the Urban Institute, a non-profit research organization.Predicting precisely what Republicans in Congress and the Trump administration will do is difficult. Congressional leaders are close-mouthed about negotiations, and the president-elect has not finished putting together his advisory team. None of the spokespeople contacted for this story returned calls or e-mails.But organizations known to advise top leaders in Congress and the previous Trump administration have laid out fairly detailed roadmaps.Project 2025, the conservative Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the incoming administration, denies its proposed changes will harm women, saying instead that marriage and “family values” will improve their economic situations. “Marriage, healthy family formation, and delaying sex to prevent pregnancy are virtually ignored in terms of priorities, yet these goals can reverse the cycle of poverty in meaningful ways,” reads the section on proposed changes to TANF and Snap.Numerous other groups that have studied the problem say forcing or even encouraging marriage will not make poverty disappear. And a recent study by a team at the University of South Carolina found that when state laws make it harder for pregnant women to get divorced, they’re more likely to be killed by their partners.Trump has promised not to attack the two most expensive and popular government programs: social security and Medicare. But he and Congress are up against a deadline to extend his 2017 tax reforms, which raised the federal deficit. They’ll have to cut something, and social spending programs, especially the $805bn Medicaid program, are low-hanging fruit for conservatives.Trump repeatedly tried to slash Snap during his last tenure in office: his 2021 budget proposal would have cut the program by more than $180bn – nearly 30% – over 10 years. Conservatives in Congress have continued these efforts and, with majorities in the House and Senate, they may be able to get them through next year.The Republican Study Committee, whose members include about three-quarters of the House Republican caucus, recommends more work requirements for Snap and TANF.“SNAP and our welfare system should embrace that work conveys dignity and self-sustainment and encourage individuals to find gainful employment, not reward them for staying at home,” their plan, released in March, reads.A large body of research questions whether widening work requirements does anything other than force people off benefits without helping them find employment. “I think there is a misperception that people in need of help are not working,” said Mei Powers, chief development and communications officer at Martha’s Table, a non-profit aid organization in Washington DC. “People are a paycheck, a crisis, a broken-down car away from needing services.”Snap currently helps 41 million people buy groceries and other necessities every month. Women accounted for more than 55% of people under 65 receiving Snap benefits in 2022, according to the National Women’s Law Center, a gender justice advocacy group. About one-third of them were women of color, the NWLC said.Among other things, cutting these programs will trap women in dangerous situations, the NWLC said: “SNAP helps survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault establish basic economic security.”TANF, which provides cash assistance, overwhelmingly benefits women. In 2022, 370,000 TANF adult recipients were female and 69,000 were male, according to the Department of Health and Human Services.Perhaps Medicaid is the most tempting target for conservatives because they can use it to undermine the Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare. The GOP has been gunning for the ACA since it was signed into law without a single Republican vote in 2010.The federal government shares the cost of Medicaid with states. The ACA aimed to make Medicaid cover more people by offering to pay for virtually all the extra costs. Many Republican-led states resisted for years, but as of November, all but 10 states had expanded coverage to an extra 21 million people, or about a quarter of all Medicaid recipients.Medicaid pays for more than 40% of births in the US, plus it covers new mothers for post-pregnancy-related issues for 60 days. It also pays for medical care for 60% of all nursing home residents, more than 70% of whom are women.According to the health research organization KFF, expanding Medicaid helped improve care for women before and during pregnancy and after they gave birth.But most Republicans in Congress have never approved of this federal spending. Proposed cuts to Medicaid funding, which would save hundreds of billions of dollars, are laid out by the Paragon Health Institute, a conservative health thinktank headed by Brian Blase, a top health adviser to the first Trump administration.Experts predict states would be unable or unwilling to make up the difference. “Facing such drastic reductions in federal Medicaid funding, states will have no choice but to institute truly draconian cuts to eligibility, benefits and provider reimbursement rates,” Edwin Park, research professor at Georgetown University, wrote in an analysis.That would mean women, children, older adults and people with disabilities would lose coverage as facilities closed and providers stopped seeing patients.The effects, says the National Organization for Women, “will be widespread, devastating, and long-lasting”.This story is published in partnership with the Fuller Project, a non-profit newsroom dedicated to the coverage of women’s issues around the world. 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      ‘What a circus’: eligible US voters on why they didn’t vote in the 2024 presidential election

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      The 2024 US presidential election had been widely characterized as one of the most consequential political contests in recent US history. Although turnout was high for a presidential election – almost matching the levels of 2020 – it is estimated that close to 90 million Americans, roughly 36% of the eligible voting age population, did not vote. This number is greater than the number of people who voted for either Donald Trump or Kamala Harris.More than a month on from polling day, eligible US voters from across the country as well as other parts of the world got in touch with the Guardian to share why they did not vote.Scores of people said they had not turned out as they felt their vote would not matter because of the electoral college system, since they lived in a safely blue or red state. This included a number of people who nonetheless had voted in the 2020 and 2016 elections.While various previous Democratic voters said they had abstained this time due to the Harris campaign’s stance on Israel or for other policy reasons, a number of people in this camp said they would have voted for the vice-president had they lived in a swing state.“I’m not in a swing state, and because of the electoral college my vote doesn’t count. I could have voted 500,000 times and it would not have changed the outcome,” said one such voter, a 60-year-old software developer with Latino heritage from Boston.Having voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016, he voted in 2020 but left the presidential slot blank “as a Quixotic protest against the electoral college and my preference for Bernie Sanders”, he said.He said he felt “heartbroken” over Joe Biden and Harris’s stance on Gaza. “If I were in a swing state I would always vote for Dems, though,” he added, echoing several others.A 40-year-old carpenter from Idaho who voted in the previous two elections because he then lived in the swing state of Arizona – giving his vote to Clinton and Biden – also said he did not vote this time because he felt his vote did not matter due to the electoral college system.“I didn’t find Harris compelling, just more of the same. Politicians from both parties seem unwilling to make the kind of fundamental economic and political changes that would make a meaningful difference for all people, namely a move towards a more democratic socialist system. That being said if we didn’t have the electoral college I probably would have voted for Harris,” he said.A large number of people said they abstained because no candidate represented working- or middle-class interests and people such as themselves, including several people who voted in the previous two elections but did not vote this time.Some people from swing states said they did not vote because both parties were too similar and did not address concerns of the common voter, among them John, a 29-year-old financial professional from Pennsylvania who is a registered independent, but voted for Clinton and Biden in the previous two elections.“What is the point [of voting]?,” he asked. “Aside from a handful of weaponized issues, the parties are nearly identical. They both hate the poor and serve only their donors.”A number of former Trump and Biden voters said they had not voted in this election as they disliked both candidates, among them Jared Wagner, a 34-year-old from Indiana who works in the trucking industry and said he had voted for Trump in 2016 but had abstained in both the 2020 and 2024 election.“I refuse to put my name on either candidate when I know neither of them are truly the best we have to offer. We need a major overhaul to the two-party system,” he said.
      “As a man with young children I worry about what kind of country they will grow up in. It terrifies me; we deserve better.”John, a 58-year-old from West Virginia, said he had voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and Biden in 2020, but had decided that not voting this November “felt most authentic and appropriate”.“I wasn’t apathetic about this election, I followed it closely,” he said. “But most of the candidates and issues left me cold and disinterested and seemed to be simply perpetuating the existing system, especially the status quo of authority and law and order, or rampant human development on the land.“On the presidential level, I was shocked and disgusted that the Harris campaign chose to completely ignore discussing climate change. Fundamentally, this election seemed to have very little to do with my interests and concerns.”Anne, a 65-year-old retired white woman from California, was among various people who said they had voted but not for any presidential candidate.She said she had always previously voted for the Democratic candidate, but could not bring herself to do so this time.“I did vote for all other down-ballot candidates and initiatives,” she said. “I would have voted for Harris had my vote made a difference, but I could not vote for a president who will continue the complete destruction of Gaza and annexation of the West Bank.”Various people said they did not vote for a presidential candidate in the 2024 election because they had only wanted to cast a positive vote for a candidate rather than merely an opposition one, and that neither candidate had offered a compelling vision for change.Among them was a 62-year-old professional working in process planning from Texas, who said he had voted for the Republican presidential candidate at every election between 1984 and 2016.“In 2020 I voted Libertarian as a protest vote,” he said. “This year I was so turned off by Trump’s low character, economic ignorance, disregard of our national debt, hostility to Ukraine and so on that I was trying to convince myself to vote for Harris. But her economic policy was just a grab bag of voter payoffs and she doesn’t care about the debt either.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“So I did not vote for president. I voted for Senate, congressman, and many other down ballot races. I split my ticket, too. I just no longer want to vote against anyone. I want to vote FOR someone. And none of the candidates for president wanted my vote enough.”A 35-year-old Black male voter from Portland, Oregon, who works at a gas station, said he disliked Kamala Harris but now regretted not voting for her, as he had thought Trump would lose the election.“I did not vote in 2016 or 2020 either because I did not like any of the candidates in those elections either. I last voted in 2012, for Obama,” he said.“I felt both candidates fell well short of the presidential standard, and didn’t feel I could cast a vote for either,” said a 47-year-old engineering manager and registered Republican from Texas.“VP Harris failed to demonstrate she was ethically or intellectually capable of executing the office, repeatedly failing to detail out her policies and generally running her campaign like a popularity contest – ‘collect enough celebrity endorsements, by paying them, and the masses will elect you,’” he said.Trump, he felt, “cares about the US and believes his own ideas will ‘save’ the country – but he’s a terrible human being. I don’t feel he represents a majority of Americans at all, but is more a reaction to some of the issues we face as a country.”Various people who did not vote in other recent elections either said that again this time no candidate was leftwing enough, among them 37-year-old Elly, a mother of four daughters from the midwest.“Bernie Sanders was the last candidate I was excited to vote for,” she said. “This election came down to two parties who have utterly abandoned everyday people and their problems with affordability and worries about climate change, but one party, the Republicans, were savvy enough to pretend they felt the collective pain of the common folks, whilst the Democrats mostly said ‘all is well.’ I couldn’t in good conscience support either side on the national level.”Several people who usually always voted Democrat in the past said the Harris campaign had been overly focussed on progressive identity politics for them to be able to lend it their support this election, such as Simon, a father from California in his 60s who had voted for Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020 in protest against Trump, but had abstained this year due to Harris’s embracing of “trans ideology”, among other reasons.“I am not a fan of the Democrats, but I would have voted to keep Trump out of office if there was an economically literate, competent, law and order candidate who was willing to challenge the excesses of ‘woke’,” he said. “The Dems are out of touch on social issues, and have tacked too far to the left to appease a minority of progressives.“I support some policies that would be considered rightwing on immigration, but also investing in social housing, so I’m looking for candidates capable of taking difficult decisions based on rational analysis.”Leigh Crawford, a 56-year-old hedge fund manager from California, who had voted for Barack Obama in 2012, for Clinton in 2016 and for Biden in 2020, said he had abstained this time as both candidates were fiscally irresponsible in his view, because he strongly disliked Trump’s anti-immigration and pro-tariffs stance, and because Harris had been “pro-censorship” and “too tolerant of antisemitism”.Several people said they did not vote this time because of a growing disillusionment with the extreme polarization in US politics, including Chris, an architect in his 40s from Tennessee who had voted twice for Obama, and once for Trump in 2016, but had abstained in 2020 and 2024 as he had lost hope in politics.“Skip the debates, what a circus,” he said. “I’m so sick of hearing about politics.“The political system in the US is broken. Things are so polarized, there is no cooperation for the good of the people. There is just so much hate, even in everyday conversation with average people.“There is just so much of this ‘if I don’t win, I’m taking the ball and going home’ mentality. It just causes nothing to get accomplished.” More

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      Luigi Mangione is the median American voter | Peter Rothpletz

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      The vast majority of the US population rarely – if ever – lapses into murderous fantasies wherein they gun down an unsuspecting father of two. One need not possess the telepathic powers of Professor Charles Xavier to consider this a fact. That said, the heterodox, ostensibly incoherent potpourri of political views expressed by the alleged UnitedHealthcare CEO assassin, Luigi Mangione, is more representative of the average American than many elites would care to admit.Mangione’s Twitter/X account is a kaleidoscopic fever dream with no clear ideological rudder. It seems he has a genuine interest in health and wellness. “Wokeness” and masculinity are occasionally discussed; so too are climate change, psychedelics and the potential risks and rewards of artificial intelligence. Pornography, in Mangione’s mind, “should be regulated no less than alcohol, cigarettes, and travel” – and certain sex toys should be banned. He likes Joe Rogan but disdains Jordan Peterson. He also appears to be particularly fond of Pokémon, baby elephants, gorillas and Japan’s Indigenous religion, Shintoism.More interesting than Mangione’s posts themselves are the personalities he follows. They run the political gamut. The right-leaning “manosphere” is well-represented by folks such as Rogan, Patrick Bet-David and Andrew Huberman. The only member of Congress on the list is Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez, a democratic socialist. RFK Jr serves as a conduit for both the environmental and Maga movements. Even center-left, wonkish liberalism makes a cameo with Ezra Klein.Some have voiced befuddlement as to where the connective tissue lies between all these figures. They’re confused because they still believe the dominant divide in US politics is liberalism v conservatism. It’s not, and it hasn’t been for some time. Increasingly, even if they lack the exact language to explain it, voters do not identify foremost as Democrats or Republicans, progressives or traditionalists, or even left or right. They identify as pro-system or anti-system. As put by Jeet Heer in The Nation: “Pro-system politics is the bipartisan consensus of establishment Democrats and Republicans: It’s the politics of Nato and other military alliances, of trade agreements, and of deference to economists (as when they say that price gouging isn’t the cause of inflation).” Anti-system politics, he continues, is “a general thumbing of the nose at this consensus”.Rogan, Bet-David and Huberman’s anti-system bona fides are manifest; one can argue AOC’s are too given her status as Bernie Sanders’ heir apparent. RFK Jr is the scion of a Democratic dynasty, but his musings about vaccines, chemtrails, and tap water turning children gay are miles outside the Overton window. Yes, the New York Times’s Ezra Klein feels like a pro-system figure, but one must not forget his February audio essay calling on Joe Biden to pass the torch. Not only did his call land like a bomb, it arguably provided the initial momentum for Democrats to finally force the president out of the election following his disastrous debate performance in late June. Klein was the first man in mainstream media to observe that the emperor has no clothes. Such courage earns one anti-system credibility.Considering all this, Mangione’s digital media diet is arguably quite coherent – and in line with what most non-elites consume. As explained by Rachel Kleinfeld, average Americans are far less ideologically polarized than they think they are – and misconceptions around polarization are greatest among the most politically engaged people. Unfortunately, if you’re reading this essay, you’re likely very, very out of touch.Before November’s election, Blueprint Polling conducted a number of surveys in an effort to define the views of swing voters of swing states. They found these Americans, predictably, defy conventional political categorization. They believe immigration should be decreased, abortion should be legal, the criminal justice system is not tough enough, the government should crack down on price-gouging, and same-sex marriage is just dandy. They practice hodgepodge politics, and they aren’t bothered by what elites would call ideological inconsistency.Mangione is cast in the same mold. Insofar as Mangione can even be called an “ideologue”, he merely believed the American system was fundamentally flawed. He isn’t some pinko, dolled up in Che Guevera revolutionary regalia; nor is he an SS leather fetishist. He’s a highly educated, heterodox, politically homeless moderate – and that fact should terrify us all. Unlike the political violence of old, committed by dyed in the wool radicals, the assassination of Brian Thompson was carried out by a young man with no movement encouraging his extremism. He, on his own, came to the conclusion that the US is so broken and corrupt that murder is the only solution.

      Peter Rothpletz is a freelance writer More