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      Portland’s first ranked-choice vote elects progressive outsider as mayor

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      In 2022 it appeared the political winds in Portland, Oregon, one of the US’s most progressive cities, were beginning to shift. Residents who had grown frustrated over the city’s approach to homelessness rejected the incumbent, Jo Ann Hardesty – the first Black woman to serve on the city council – in favor of the “law-and-order” Democrat Rene Gonzalez, who pledged to back an expanded police force and “clean up” Portland.But this month, as swaths of the US electorate moved to the right, the Pacific north-west city took a markedly different approach. Residents elected the most diverse city council in Portland history, opting for more progressives, and rejected Gonzalez as mayoral candidate. Instead, they chose Keith Wilson, a businessperson who has never before held office and has promised to end unsheltered homelessness in a year.Wilson had large leads over his competitors in the election, the first in which the city used ranked-choice voting and in the latest results was leading the second place candidate 60% to 40%.The most conservative candidates for mayor and the county board, who took hardline stances, lost, Richard Clucas, a political science professor at Portland State University, pointed out.“Both were defeated significantly because Portland remains a very progressive city despite what people may have heard elsewhere,” Clucas said.The results came as the city was in the midst of what officials have described as a “once-in-a-generation” change to its government system and major voting reforms. This month, for the first time ever, Portland used ranked-choice voting to elect a mayor and a larger, more representative city council. The new officials will have different roles as Portland moves from a commission form of government to one overseen by a city administrator.Voters approved the overhaul two years ago – the same year Gonzalez won – as the city of 630,000 people grappled with a declining downtown, rising homelessness, a fentanyl crisis, growing public drug use and a sluggish recovery from the pandemic. Voters appeared to take out their dissatisfaction with crime, homelessness and drug use on Hardesty, the most progressive member of city council, said Ben Gaskins, a political science professor Lewis & Clark College in Portland.Some have speculated the city was beginning to recoil from its progressive values, particularly after voters in the county ousted the progressive district attorney for a challenger endorsed by police groups. That came shortly after Oregon moved to reintroduce criminal penalties for the possession of hard drugs, in effect scrapping the state’s groundbreaking drug decriminalization law.Claims the city is turning away from progressivism are significantly overstated, Gaskins said – instead, the shifts indicate an electorate that is more focused on tactical concerns rather than ideological ones.Gonzalez was widely considered a frontrunner in this year’s mayoral race. Calling it a “make-or-break election”, the commissioner said that as mayor he would add hundreds of officers to city streets and stop “enabling the humanitarian crisis on our streets by ending the distribution of tents and drug kits”.Wilson, who serves as the chief executive of a trucking company and founded a non-profit to expand shelter capacity and ultimately end homelessness, made the issue the center of his campaign, pledging to reform the city’s approach to alleviating the crisis. He insisted the issue could be addressed with “care and compassion”, the Oregonian reported, and said he would increase the number of night-time walk-in emergency shelters available in churches and community centers.That approach appealed to city voters, Clucas said, over harsher remedies. “They don’t simply want a crackdown, arrests and other things; they want to find some way to compassionately address it.”At a debate in October, Wilson said he would give city leaders an F for their efforts to address homelessness, according to the Oregonian. “Letting people suffer and die on our streets is unacceptable … I believe that every person in Portland deserves a bed every night,” he said.The progressive Carmen Rubio, a city council member, was also a frontrunner in the race. But she lost endorsements after reporting from the Oregonian revealed that she had received about 150 parking and traffic violations since 2004, many of which she failed to pay for months and years, and that she had her license suspended multiple times.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionGonzalez’s campaign was hurt by reporting from the Willamette Week that showed the “public safety champion” had also received seven speeding tickets between 1998 and 2013, and had his license suspended twice.Wilson was once considered a long-shot candidate, but he was probably bolstered by the city’s new ranked-choice voting system, experts said.His position as a businessperson coming from outside the political system allowed him to be a “compromise candidate”, Gaskins said. Wilson fit the gap of someone who is progressive but still represents a change to the status quo, he said.“I think the fact Keith Wilson was able to win shows Portland wants someone who is clearly on the left but who is focused on policy solutions and getting things done versus just being the most ideologically pure candidate in the race,” he said.“He is a candidate of this particular moment.”In an acceptance speech last week, Wilson pledged to build trust and take advantage of a “transformative opportunity”.“It’s time to end unsheltered homelessness and open drug use, and it’s time to restore public safety in Portland,” he said. “Voters aren’t interested in pointing fingers. They just want us to get things done.”Along with Wilson, residents also elected 12 city councillors, nearly half of whom are people of color, Oregon Public Broadcasting reported – a remarkable shift given that just seven years ago, only two people of color had ever been elected to city government. At least four of the new councillors identify as LGBTQ+, the outlet reported, and five received endorsements from the Democratic Socialists of America chapter in Portland. More

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      Oakland mayor and county’s district attorney ousted in historic recall

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      Voters have ousted Oakland’s mayor and the region’s progressive district attorney, in a major political shake-up for the northern California port city. It’s the first time in modern history that voters here have ousted leadership from either position.Sheng Thao, the mayor, and Pamela Price, the district attorney for Alameda county, were both the target of recall campaigns, launched amid discontent over the city’s challenges: a spiralling housing crisis, rising costs and the departure of the city’s last remaining major league sports team.But the recall campaigns particularly centered on residents’ enduring frustrations about the area’s crime rates. Like many cities in the US, Oakland experienced a surge in violent crime during the pandemic, one that took longer than elsewhere to subside. Statistics had shown both violent and non-violent crime finally trending down – before the election, the Oakland police announced a 30% drop in homicides this year compared to 2023. Non-fatal shootings were down 20% and robberies were down 24%. Still, many residents remained deeply frustrated.The overwhelming support for both recalls came amid a broader sentiment in the state that crime had become out of control. Californians also supported a tough-on-crime measure, Prop 36, to enact harsher penalties for retail theft, property crimes and drug offenses and undo some of the landmark criminal justice reforms from a decade ago. They also voted down Prop 6, a measure to ban forced prison labor. Foundational Oakland Unites, a committee set up to fund signature gathering before the mayoral recall, sent residents a “Common Sense Voter Guide” that encouraged a yes on 36 and no on 6.While the campaigns tapped into deep frustrations among residents, they were funded in large part by a handful of the region’s wealthy residents. Over the summer, the local news site the Oaklandside revealed that Philip Dreyfuss, a hedge-fund manager who lives in the wealthy enclave of Piedmont, had been the biggest funder to the effort to recall the mayor. Ron Conway, a billionaire tech investor, was another major funder.Thao, the mayor, came into office just two years ago, the first Hmong American to lead a major city. She faced opposition from the start of her tenure, including from the city’s police department – she fired the police chief early in her term – and her moderate opponent in the mayoral contest.“People are fed up with crime and homelessness,” Dan Lindheim, a former Oakland city administrator and now professor at UC Berkeley’s Goldman School of Public Policy, told the Guardian in October. “And they want to hold somebody accountable. It was like: ‘We don’t like what they’re doing, so – symbolically – it’s off with their heads.’”Criticism intensified after the FBI raided Thao’s home in a sprawling corruption investigation. The agency has neither implicated the mayor in any wrongdoing, nor absolved her of involvement. Thao has maintained her innocence.“It was just piling one thing on top of another,” Lindheim said. “That was the seal of death for her mayoral position.”In a statement last week, Thao said she was proud of her administration’s accomplishments and was “committed to ensuring we stay on track by supporting a smooth transition”.Price, the district attorney for Alameda county, which includes Oakland, was also ousted in a recall campaign that began just months after she took office. She was the first Black woman to hold the job. A former civil rights attorney, Price had come into office promising to reform the justice system, stop “over-criminalizing” young people and hold law enforcement to better account.The Alameda county board of supervisors is expected to appoint an interim district attorney.Thao must vacate the office as soon as election results are certified on 5 December and the Oakland city council declares a vacancy at its next meeting, Nikki Fortunato Bas, the city council president, said in a statement.A special election for a new mayor will be held within 120 days, or roughly four months.Until then, Bas will serve as interim mayor, unless she wins a seat on the Alameda county board of supervisors. As of Monday, Bas was trailing in that race. More

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      Trump reportedly picks Kristi Noem to run homeland security department

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      Donald Trump has picked the South Dakota governor, Kristi Noem, to serve as the next secretary of the homeland security department, US media reported on Tuesday, in a further sign of his determination to launch a no-holds-barred crackdown on immigration.Noem’s pending nomination was reported by CNN and NBC, which said it had confirmed it with four sources.She is the third anti-immigration hardliner in two days to be chosen to be part of the president-elect’s administration after he clinched a return to the White House in the 5 November election.Tom Holman, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, has been selected to fill the role of border czar. And Stephen Miller, an adviser and speech writer in Trump’s first presidency, is expected to become deputy chief of staff, responsible for policy.The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is responsible for everything from border protection and immigration to disaster response and the US Secret Service.Noem’s selection is an apparent reward for being one of the most vocal communicators of Trump’s immigration policy during the election campaign, often voicing uncompromising rhetoric that echoed his.It is also a statement of confidence in her being stern enough to help oversee Trump’s planned mass deportation of 11 million undocumented immigrants, a priority he has vowed to address as soon as he takes office.Last January, in a speech to a joint sitting of South Dakota’s legislature that she requested following a visit to the southern border, she said the US was “in a time of invasion”.“The invasion is coming over our southern border,” she said. “The 50 states have a common enemy, and that enemy is the Mexican drug cartels. They are waging war against our nation, and these cartels are perpetuating violence in each of our states, even right here in South Dakota.”She offered to send razor wire and agents to help shore up the border.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHer posture ingratiated her with Trump even while he removed her from the running as a possible vice-presidential candidate after an outcry over her admission in a book she published last May that she once shot a pet dog, as well as a family goat.In the book, titled No Going Back: The Truth on What’s Wrong with Politics and How We Move America Forward, Noem recounted shooting the dog, Cricket, after it attacked chickens belonging to a family she stopped to talk to.She wrote that she included the story to show that she was prepared to do anything “difficult, messy and ugly”, in politics and in life, if necessary. She said she “hated” the dog.Yet the tale provoked an angry backlash that seemed to have damaged Noem’s political prospects but for Trump’s victory.She also aroused the anger of Indigenous tribes in her own state after suggesting that tribal leaders benefited from Latin American drug cartels. She was banned from seven of nine tribal reservations – amounting to one-fifth of South Dakota’s territory – over the remarks.But while her vice-presidential hopes took a nose dive, Trump apparently kept faith with Noem, who occasionally accompanied him on the campaign trail.She shared the stage with him and acted as a moderator in October at one of his most unusual campaign events, a town hall meeting in Pennsylvania at which he stopped taking questions after two attenders fainted and ordered some of his favourite songs to be played, while he – and Noem – swayed along.Both Trump’s campaign and Noem’s office did not respond to requests for comments outside regular business hours.

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      Trump builds hawkish team with Rubio and Waltz tipped for top jobs

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      Donald Trump has chosen a pair of establishment Republicans from Florida for senior roles in his administration as he builds a national security team that looks more hawkish than the isolationist America First brand of foreign policy that he has championed in public.Trump was expected to select the senator Marco Rubio as his secretary of state, the US’s top diplomat, and has asked the congressman Mike Waltz, a retired Green Beret known as a China hawk, to become his national security adviser, a powerful role that would help shape his policies on the conflicts in Ukraine and Gaza, as well as around the world.Rubio is a noted foreign policy hawk with hardline policies on China, Iran, and on Venezuela, where he has led US efforts to unseat the president, Nicolás Maduro. He was one of the earliest China hawks in Washington, where Beijing is now viewed with extreme scepticism by both parties, and has served as a co-chair of the bipartisan Congressional-Executive Commission on China.On Ukraine he is likely to tailor his views to Trump’s and those around him, including Elon Musk and Donald Trump Jr, who have voiced sharp criticism of continued funding for Ukraine’s defence against the Russian invasion. Rubio was one of 15 Republican lawmakers to vote against a $61bn supplemental aid bill in the Senate earlier this year that led to a months-long delay of crucial funding for the Ukrainian military.Rubio said earlier this month on national television: “I think the Ukrainians have been incredibly brave and strong in standing up to Russia. But at the end of the day what we are funding here is a stalemate war, and it needs to be brought to a conclusion, or that country is going to be set back 100 years.”Rubio, whom Trump nicknamed “Little Marco” during his first presidential run, has gone from a regular target of Trump’s insults to a loyal surrogate to the Republican president-elect.Trump had regularly denigrated him in the past as a member of the Republican establishment, calling him a “puppet” and saying he was a “nervous basket case”. But he has been in lockstep with Trump during the campaign and has worked with Democrats and fellow Republicans in the Senate foreign relations committee and intelligence committee, making it likely he will have an easy confirmation process in that body.That stands in sharp relief to a reported rival for the role of secretary of state, Ric Grenell, Trump’s former acting director of national intelligence and ambassador to Germany, who has proven himself as a loyalist but was known in Washington and Europe as combative and would have faced a tough confirmation process.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWaltz, Trump’s choice for national security adviser, has argued that Trump should move quickly to end the wars in Gaza and Ukraine in order to transfer US focus and military assets back to the Indo-Pacific region and counter China.Those policies dovetail with Trump’s isolationist tendencies in terms of seeking a speedy resolution to the war in Ukraine, even if it is achieved by forcing Ukraine to make concessions to Russia.“Supporting Ukraine for ‘as long as it takes’ in a war of attrition against a larger power is a recipe for failure,” Waltz and a co-author, Matthew Kroenig, wrote in an op-ed for the Economist this year. “The next administration should aim, as Donald Trump has argued, to ‘end the war and stop the killing’.” They said the US should use economic leverage on energy sales to “bring Mr Putin to the table”.“If he refuses to talk, Washington can, as Mr Trump argued, provide more weapons to Ukraine with fewer restrictions on their use,” they continued. “Faced with this pressure, Mr Putin will probably take the opportunity to wind the conflict down.”With regards to Israel’s war in Gaza, the pair appeared ready to give Benjamin Netanyahu carte blanche to “let Israel finish the job”, as Trump has said. They also suggested launching a “diplomatic and economic pressure campaign to stop [Iran] and to constrain their support for terror proxies”.“Washington should maintain a military presence in the region, but with the war in Gaza and Lebanon concluded, it can transfer critical capabilities back to the Indo-Pacific,” they wrote. More

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      ‘Democrats presented no alternative’: US voters on Trump’s win and where Harris went wrong

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      “It’s like being sucked into a tsunami,” said Vivian Glover, a Kamala Harris voter from South Carolina, about the realisation that Donald Trump had been re-elected as president.“The contrast between the two campaigns couldn’t have been more stark. On the one hand an intelligent, highly qualified public servant with a unifying message, and the opponent someone who epitomizes corruption, immorality, dishonesty, incompetence, racism, misogyny, tyranny and has clearly indicated his willingness to embrace authoritarianism.”View image in fullscreen“This election felt like a chance for real change, and I was inspired by the idea of having a female president,” said Sydney, 40, a teacher from New York. “I believed in her vision for a more inclusive and just America, and it’s difficult to let go of that hope.”Despite Sydney’s disappointment, Trump’s decisive victory and remarkable political comeback did not surprise her. “I think the biggest issue for a lot of Americans is simply the economy,” she said.Glover and Sydney were among many hundreds of US voters who shared with the Guardian via an online callout and follow-up interviews how they felt about the outcome of the presidential election, what had decided their vote and what their hopes and fears were for Trump’s second presidential term.Among those who had voted Republican, many said they had expected a Trump win, and that the polls had never properly reflected the atmosphere on the streets of their communities. They had voted for Trump, many said, because they felt he would handle the economy and international geopolitics better than Harris would have done, and because they wanted a crackdown on illegal immigration.Various Trump voters, among them young first-time voters, women and citizens with immigration backgrounds, said they had voted for the billionaire this time because they saw a vote for Trump as a “vote against woke” and against what they saw as leftwing extremism, a vote for “common sense”, and as a vote against “biased” media, which they felt had unfairly persecuted Trump for years and could no longer be trusted.Scores of Trump voters expressed outrage about Democrats including Harris and Hillary Clinton likening Trump to Hitler and calling him a fascist.Some male respondents said they had voted for Trump because they were tired of men being “vilified”, unfairly called “misogynist” and “blamed for everything”.Although Trump was far from perfect, many supporters said, his second term would hopefully lead to more peace globally, economic stability and an improvement to their financial situation, more secure borders, and a return to meritocracy and “family values”.Of those who said they had voted for the Harris-Walz ticket, many were shocked by the election result and had expected a Democratic victory, citing extremely tight polls and Harris’s perceived strong pull among younger people and women.Various Democratic voters blamed Trump’s landslide victory on a lack of education among his supporters, as well as on social media platforms such as X and YouTube, where the “manosphere” has become highly effective at undermining progressives, their policies and campaigns.Becky Boudreau-Schultz, 50, a receptionist and the mother of a teenage boy from Mason, Michigan, felt the Democrats had underestimated the sway of these platforms.Trump, she said, “put on a show” that sought to tap people’s fears about immigration and loss of independence.“His followers eat that up. Kamala ran on civility but, obviously, that is not America’s mood. Mainstream media seemed to warn people of Trump’s horrible potential but his supporters weren’t and aren’t watching.”Instead, she felt, voters were turning to “social media echo chambers that masquerade as actual news sources”.Many Democratic voters were highly critical of the Harris campaign, which, scores felt, had been out of touch with the average voter, did not sufficiently connect with concerns of young men and ethnic minorities, and had failed to address Americans’ most pressing worries. It had been a mistake, many said, that the campaign had centered on vague, abstract slogans such as “saving democracy” and “not going back”.“What I’m reading and watching suggests the Harris team and many others misjudged much of the electorate,” said Judith, a retired Harris voter from Vermont.“The population needed more attention on food prices, gas prices. Hearing how robust the economy is does not buy their groceries. The Hispanic and Black populations feared their job security would be threatened by allowing more immigrants into this country. These things mattered more than Trump’s reputation and criminal record. I get it, sadly.”View image in fullscreen“We lost it because we’re not speaking to the issues that Americans are so concerned about,” said 77-year-old Bill Shlala, from New Jersey, a Democrat who has voted Republican in some races over the years, and who worked in special education.“We’re not talking about, how do I not lose my house to medical bills? How do I afford to send my child to college? Joe Biden has attempted to correct that a little bit, especially with outreach to unions, but we became the party of the elites.“The Republicans and the extremists understand the angst of the American people, and they’re calling on that angst without any real plan. But then we presented no alternative.”Many Harris voters felt that the vice-president had not been a good candidate, but mostly reckoned that it had been too late to find another one, citing Biden’s late decision to pull out of the race.“Harris had an impossible job with minimal time to reach voters,” said Carla, 71, a retired professional in the legal sector from Ohio.“Biden should have never run for re-election. There would have been a different outcome if Democrats had had the time to run primary elections and pick a strong candidate.”Various people suggested that Tim Walz, the Minnesota governor, had been a poor running mate. Others defended Harris.View image in fullscreen“I feel Kamala Harris did an excellent job of campaigning,” said 81-year-old Pat, from Colorado, who holds a college degree in journalism and is retired. “But too many felt that ‘they were better off four years ago than now’.”Pat is now plagued by concerns about Trump firing experienced federal workers, deporting immigrants, exposing pregnant women to severe health risks, ignoring climate change and rolling back support for Ukraine.“I’m appalled. I’ll never understand why someone as vulgar and unhinged as Trump is so popular with voters, including my sons in Missouri,” she said. “I can only hope that his bark is worse than his bite regarding democracy, immigration and abortion.”Jack, a 19-year-old college student from Minnesota, was among a string of Democrats who said they had only reluctantly turned out for Harris, citing a lack of clear policy and the party’s move to the right on some issues, such as immigration.“This was my first election, and I voted for Kamala with minimal enthusiasm,” he said.“I don’t think Kamala was the right candidate, but this [loss] is owed to the complete strategic failure of the Dems in focusing on getting votes of independents and moderate Republicans. A [moderate] Democrat will lose to a real Republican every time.”View image in fullscreenHe was “not at all surprised that Trump won”, as the economy had “not improved for the average American on the ground”, he said.“I also believe this nation is too fundamentally misogynistic to elect a female president. We can elect a rapist before we can elect a woman.”“I completely reject the accusation that men like me voted for Trump because of misogyny,” said a male professional with Hispanic roots in his mid-40s from Florida who wanted to stay anonymous.“My wife and I did not vote for Trump because we could not live with a female president, but because we wanted Trump to be our president. We think he’ll do great things for our country and the world, and as a family with grandfathers on both sides who fought the Nazis in [the second world war], we are outraged by claims that Trump voters are fascists.“We are decent citizens who are very active in our community. We just want less crime, secure borders, a strong economy driven by entrepreneurial growth not state handouts, affordable prices, and fairness in the labor market. We believe President Trump will deliver on those.”Although he felt “vindicated” by the election result, he and his wife remained “afraid to come out publicly as Trump supporters”, he said. “We fear social and professional repercussions. That’s why the polls keep getting it wrong.”skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionView image in fullscreen“I voted for Trump and consider myself a moderate,” said Hayden Duke, 45, a teacher from Maryland. “I’ve voted for all parties in the past.“I couldn’t be happier that we have rejected the Biden-Harris wokeness, weakness and lack of common sense which have destroyed our economy and allowed wars to take place all over the world. I have been called a Nazi, a fascist, a nationalist and more by supporters of Harris. Normal people are so tired of being lectured by these suffocating moral guardians, looking down on us and speaking down to us and shoving their viewpoints on everyone else.“This crowd has likened Trump to Hitler – but Hitler killed [millions of] Jews and others, Trump hasn’t killed a single person. They say Kamala Harris lost because of misogyny, but I’m ready for a female president. I voted for [would-be Republican presidential candidate] Elizabeth Dole all the way back in 2000.”Had Harris chosen the, in Duke’s view, the more broadly appealing Pennsylvania governor, Josh Shapiro, as her running mate, Duke felt she might have won Pennsylvania and possibly the election – an opinion that was shared by various people.Others took the opposite view. “The Democrats refused to listen to the public on Gaza which I think lost them support,” said Tom, 28, a higher education professional from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, who “had a feeling” Trump would win. Having voted “unenthusiastically” for Biden in 2020, he did not vote at all in 2024.“I think the assassination attempt on Trump really solidified and unified his base, while the Democrats have gotten deeply fractured over Gaza and didn’t have strong messaging,” he said.“I don’t think that Kamala Harris ran a strong campaign. It was unclear what her values and policies actually were, other than ‘I am not Trump.’ I do not think that is enough for many people, but that’s what Harris was banking on – people rejecting Trump again. What was the Harris plan for healthcare? I don’t think she did enough to differentiate herself from Biden.”Tom was among a number of people who said they were actively looking into moving abroad now. “This Trump term is going to be terrible,” he said. “I want to finish my master’s degree and then look into moving to another country.”“This election proves that centrist, pro-war Democrats weren’t the answer,” said Margarito Morales, 40, from Austin, Texas, who works in tech and said he had voted for Harris. “Biden won the popular vote with over 80m votes, and now Trump won it with much fewer votes.”View image in fullscreenMany younger people, Morales felt, chose to abstain or to vote for Jill Stein in the absence of strong leftist policies that would have excited them, such as universal healthcare, student loan forgiveness or lowering the cost of going to college.“The Democrats went with the status quo, and it isn’t working. People didn’t feel inspired. People with immigrant parents did not know what may happen to their families under the Democrats,” he said, citing the party’s recent moves to tighten border restrictions.Several people who got in touch said they had backed Trump for the first time in 2024, despite having concerns about him and his Maga movement.A 25-year-old mechanic from Iowa who wanted to stay anonymous “disliked both candidates in 2020 – their policies, personalities, and campaigns.“This year,” he said, “I voted for Donald Trump.”A key point in his decision had been his financial stability, which has been crumbling over the past few years, he said.“I believe Donald Trump’s administration will do a better job helping the American people financially and improving international stability. I do, however, have concerns for young adults who are pro-choice, and those in the trans community whose rights may be under attack under the new presidency.”Milly, in her 40s, from Washington state, was another first-time Trump voter. “I voted for Obama twice, but the liberal movement in America has lost me, because it completely changed,” she said.“The DEI [diversity, equity and inclusion] movement has completely radicalized itself, from initially wanting to push back against actual sexual and racial discrimination to pursuing an absurd, deeply unfair equality-of-outcome agenda. These extremists are alienating so many people with pretty liberal views.”Being pro-choice, Milly said she was planning on lobbying the Republican party to soften its stance on harsh abortion bans in some states.“I still identify as a liberal, but I’m a liberal with limits: society’s norms can’t be overhauled entirely just to suit tiny minorities and extreme political fringe movements. I hope Donald Trump will bring common sense and realism back into American political discourse.”Jacqueline, 63, a retired photographer and writer from Arizona who described herself as disabled, fears that the new reality under Trump may become unsurvivable for people like herself who depend on the social security net, which she believes the new administration wants to get rid of.“We’re talking about social security for the elderly, for disability, for veterans, death benefits for widows, food stamps. I live in a very poor area. People can’t feed their families without food stamps. People like me, my neighbors, this whole community, many people that voted for them, will have no way to survive.”Another huge worry of hers is Trump’s possible environmental policy. “Climate change affects everything, and if we don’t fix that, nothing else matters. He’s going to reverse everything that the Biden administration has set up to mitigate climate change and to make the transition to renewable energy.”Jacqueline also struggles to wrap her head around the new reality that America now has a president with a criminal conviction.“If you’re a felon, you can’t get a good job, you have to put that on every job application, that label follows you around. But you can be president of the United States. It’s literally insane.”Josh, an engineer in his 50s from Pennsylvania, has an answer for people who cannot understand why more than 74 million Americans were not put off by Trump’s criminal record.“The people calling Trump ‘a convicted felon’ need to understand: many people like me voted for Trump not despite this kangaroo court conviction, but because of it. His trial was a shameful persecution of a political opponent by a Democratic prosecution. It fired me up.”JT, 28, a full-time employee from Texas, was one of various people who said they considered Trump “the lesser evil”, and voted Trump in 2020 and 2024, despite disliking the available candidates in both elections.“I voted for Trump based on two reasons,” he said. “I feel I was better off economically when he was in charge. And I’m originally from California, and watched as the Democratic party’s rule there made it so much harder for people like me to get ahead.”Alongside exploding prices, high taxes, and higher crime and homelessness rates, he pointed to California having become “way too focused on identity politics.“Harris is from California, and I don’t want the USA to become like California. I’m a mixed-race person of colour and have never liked identity politics. I don’t care about race or gender or orientation; I want results.”He wants stronger borders and immigration enforcement, considering it “insulting” that people like his foreign-born family had to wait for years in difficult circumstances before being able to immigrate legally while others cross the border illegally.“Harris fixated on democracy being in danger and abortion, ignoring the two huge concerns of economy and immigration,” he said.“I have a ton of concerns about Trump, mostly about his personality and lack of morals, his weird tirades and personal attacks. He outright lies, a lot. But as long as he is able to improve the economy like in 2016 and improve on the immigration issue, I’ll consider it a win.”View image in fullscreenElizabeth McCutchon, 61, a psychiatric nurse practitioner and mother of five, voted for Harris, but is married to a Republican.“The mistake of the Democrats has been to keep asking the question, ‘How could you?’ rather than, ‘What did we not understand about American voters?’” she said.“There are some Harris voters who are now saying they will have nothing to do with people who voted for Trump. I think this sort of behavior will be used by Trump voters to demonstrate how out of touch Harris voters are.“I don’t think Trump will provide the change that his voters were promised. But he is different than the status quo.” More

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      Will the American project survive the anger of white men? | Carol Anderson

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      A friend recently asked: “Do you think the United States will survive the anger of white men?” As blunt as the question is, the core element is not so far-fetched. In fact, the majority of white men (and women) who voted in the presidential election in 2024 have rallied around a man who has called for the “termination of the constitution”, vowed to be a “dictator”, and threatened to deploy the US military against Americans. They support a man who is a convicted felon, an adjudicated rapist, a proven liar, who has been fined nearly half a billion dollars for fraud, who incited an insurrection that injured 140 police officers, and who mismanaged the Covid-19 pandemic causing hundreds of thousands to die needlessly.The fact that Donald Trump’s candidacy was even viable, given that horrific track record, was because of the support of white men. White men, whose anger was on full display at Madison Square Garden as they spewed racist, misogynistic venom. White men who attacked poll workers and also voters of Kamala Harris. White men who chafed at the thought that their wives and girlfriends would not vote for the man who thought it was “a beautiful thing” that reproductive rights had been destroyed. And, as the New York Times reported, the downwardly mobile, frustrated “white men without a degree, [who] have been surpassed in income by college-educated women”.And let’s be clear. Trump has laid out an agenda that will provide the “wages of whiteness” to his male supporters but very little else. The racist hate that undergirds Maga can only provide threadbare comfort. The planned enormous tariffs, the rollback on workplace, food and environmental safety regulations, the dismantling of labor protections, the planned deportation of tens of millions of undocumented people and naturalized citizens, the assault on reproductive rights and alignment with dictators – all of this will destroy the economy, explode the deficit and leave the United States severely isolated and weakened.This is nothing new. White male anger, especially at the nation’s inclusion of African Americans, has repeatedly privileged white supremacy over the viability of the United States. During the war of independence, when the nation was fighting to become the United States, South Carolina’s government fumed at Congress’s request to arm the enslaved and give them their freedom in exchange for fending off a British force that was more than 10 times the size of what those in Charleston could muster. Government officials flat out refused and barked that they weren’t sure that the US “was a nation worth fighting for” and would rather take their chances with the king of England. In short, enslaving those of African descent was infinitely more important than the United States.Later on, during the subsequent battles over drafting the constitution, far too many white slaveholding men were willing to hold the United States hostage unless they got their way. That meant reinforcing slavery and the power of slaveholders, despite the document’s language about “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness”. They threatened. They raged. They schemed. And they succeeded.The three-fifths clause, which partially counted each enslaved human being by that fraction, gave the slaveholding south disproportionate and unearned power in the US House of Representatives. The Fugitive Slave Clause allowed them to hunt down beyond their state borders those seeking that elusive freedom from bondage. The additional 20 years of the Atlantic Slave Trade meant they could secure more human cargo directly from Africa to engorge the coffers of those placing racialized slavery above democracy.The disastrous contradictions embedded in the founding of the United States could not help but erupt into civil war. Once again, a group of white men were angry. Angry that the country had elected a man who did not want to see slavery spread beyond the South. Angry that Abraham Lincoln’s position meant a diminution of the south’s national political power. Angry that Lincoln was a Republican, a party founded on anti-slavery. So, in cold, calculated anger they attacked the United States of America. They set out to destroy it.They did not succeed. But that war sowed the dragon’s teeth that undermined the promise of a true multi-racial democracy and led to the horrors of Jim Crow. When the need for correcting the US’s decidedly unequal democracy ran headlong into the threat of nuclear annihilation during the cold war, the choice should have been obvious. But, once again, white men’s anger put the United States in jeopardy.In 1957, the Soviets launched Sputnik, a satellite, which proved that the USSR unexpectedly had the capabilities to launch its nuclear arsenal across the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. The US was no longer safe. President Dwight Eisenhower responded by proposing the National Defense Education Act, which would pump hundreds of millions of dollars into universities so the US would have the “brainpower to fight the cold war”.The bill was shepherded through Congress by two Alabama legislators, the representative Carl Elliott and the senator J Lister Hill. Both wanted the money but neither wanted what came with it. In other words, they wanted to continue to deny admission to African Americans to their racially exclusive universities, such as Ole Miss, LSU, the University of Georgia and the University of Alabama. If this was about educating those who could give the US an edge in the cold war, then limiting that access by race was folly.Yet Elliott and Hill, both signatories to the virtually insurrectionist Southern Manifesto, which vowed to use every weapon at the congressional membership’s disposal to stop Brown v Board of Education from darkening their states’ doorsteps, refused to move the bill forward. They demanded, instead, that Eisenhower provide assurances that those hundreds of millions of dollars would be as whites-only as their universities. Faced with the dilemma of Jim Crow or possible nuclear annihilation, the angry white men chose to protect Jim Crow, not the United States.Similarly, today, despite the warnings from generals who served with Trump, police officers who endured the attacks on January 6, and a God-fearing then vice-president Mike Pence who was targeted for a hanging with gallows constructed during the insurrection, the angry white men who propped up Trump’s return to the White House ignored everything they say they valued – the military, law enforcement and God – to give into the rage of white grievance, the “pastiche of sweaty anger” that the Trump-Vance campaign peddled, and to the fear and violence embedded in the “great replacement” theory.Once again, unfortunately, the anger about a multi-racial democracy has put the viability of the United States in jeopardy.

      Carol Anderson is the Robert W Woodruff Professor of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide More

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      Make no mistake: this Trump presidency will continue to attack abortion rights | Moira Donegan

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      Abortion rights initiatives were on the ballot in 10 states on Tuesday, and won in seven of them. One of the losers was prop 4, Florida’s abortion rights measure, which received a whopping 57% of the vote but failed to meet the state’s unusually high 60% threshold, meaning that the state’s six-week ban will remain in place. Asked about the Florida abortion rights proposition ahead of the election, Trump said that when he went to cast his ballot near Palm Beach, he would vote against it.It has always been a little hard to believe that Donald Trump personally hates abortion, even if it is abundantly clear how little he thinks of women. Trump, after all, has claimed to have numerous conflicting positions on abortion rights throughout his life. And his brand of masculinity is boorish, vulgar, and above all, sexually entitled – far from the priggish, repressed moralism of more classical anti-abortion figures like Mike Pence.Maybe this is why, though Trump appointed three of the six justices who overturned Roe v Wade and has boasted about his role in ending the right to an abortion, many voters seem to not quite believe that he will continue to suppress the procedure further in his coming second term. Abortion rights measures won in several states that Trump carried on Tuesday – including Arizona, Nevada, Montana and Missouri, all states that Trump won. A lot of people, it seems, voted for abortion rights in their own states, and then also voted for Donald Trump – who, make no mistake, will move to restrict abortion access nationwide when he returns to the White House next year.Trump, of course, has insisted that this will not happen – which on its own might be a decent indication that it will. But there is evidence that the new Trump administration will pursue a broad agenda restricting women’s rights, including nationwide attacks on abortion access, even beyond that offered by Trump’s habitual pattern of self-serving dishonesty.Republicans have won control of the Senate and are likely to capture the House of Representatives; if they do, they may well advance legislation to ban abortion nationwide. (And to pass it: there is no reason to believe that a Republican governing trifecta will preserve the filibuster.) A bill like this would probably not be termed a “ban” by its sponsors: Republicans, wary of the public disapproval of abortion bans, have started calling their new abortion restrictions by chillingly imprecise euphemisms, such as “standard” or even “protection”. But the effect of the laws are the same: to outlaw abortions. This could take the form of a gestational limit, or of the federal recognition of fetal personhood. Trump may well sign such legislation into law, eliminating abortion rights even in Democratic-controlled states and those that have recently passed abortion rights referendums with the stroke of a pen.But Republicans do not even need to manage to pass a bill through Congress to make abortion much more difficult to get. Trump can simply restrict abortion through federal agencies. He will soon be in control of the FDA, for example, which regulates the abortion drug mifepristone, part of a two-drug regimen that now accounts for most abortions in the United States. Mifepristone is a safe, effective drug that allows abortions to be performed in the privacy of patients’ homes, with little of the expensive clinical involvement and overhead that makes surgical abortions more time-intensive and costly for providers and patients alike.Naturally, the anti-abortion movement hates it. Since Dobbs, a coalition of anti-choice groups and Republican attorneys general have been suing the FDA, seeking to overturn the agency’s 2000 approval of the drug. Trump will be able to rescind access to it almost immediately, taking the drug off the legal US market. If he gives the anti-choice movement what they want, he may also direct the FDA to revoke approval of the most reliable forms of female-controlled contraception, like Plan B, IUDs, and certain birth control pills, which the anti-choice movement falsely claims cause abortions.Trump is likely to also revive enforcement of the Comstock Act, a long-dormant 1873 law that bans the shipment of anything that could be used to induce an abortion through the US mail. The Comstock Act has not been enforced in decades – parts of it were repealed in the 20th century, and other sections were long rendered moot by supreme court precedents like Roe and Casey – and would have the effect of criminalizing much abortion care. Since Dobbs, several Democratic-controlled states have passed what are called shield laws, which protect doctors who mail abortion drugs from states where the procedure is legal into states that have bans. This mail-order abortion operation is, for now, technically legal: it has preserved women’s independence and dignity and no doubt saved thousands of lives.But when the Comstock Act is enforced, much of this sector of abortion provision will disappear. Combined with the revocation of FDA approval for mifepristone, this will inevitably mean that many women seeking abortions will turn to black market surgical abortion providers, and suffer the risks attendant to such procedures. A return to pre-Roe levels of abortion ban-related mortality could probably follow.Trump is also likely to reverse the Biden administration’s guidance on Emtala, the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, a federal law that requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care to all patients facing health crises. Emtala has been the subject of much post-Dobbs litigation, as states like Idaho and Texas have sought to argue that their abortion bans supersede the federal law, thus requiring hospitals in their states to withhold emergency abortions from women in medical emergencies who will suffer or die without them. The US supreme court declined to decide the issue last summer; a Trump administration may help to resolve it for them.This is all just what Trump could do on his own in his first years back in office. But the impact of a Trump term on American women’s access to abortion will be felt long after Trump himself is no longer with us. Trump will probably appoint at least two supreme court justices to lifetime seats in his coming term; he will also fill an unknown number of vacancies on the lower federal courts, whose judges also serve for life. These judges are all likely to be anti-abortion zealots, as are the federal bureaucrats Trump will bring in to staff agencies such as the FDA, CDC and Department of Health and Human Services.We are already living in an era when abortion access is restricted more than it has been in decades. Now, it will be restricted more. We may well never have as much reproductive freedom as we do now ever again.American women are well advised to prepare for this, to not wait for the Trump administration to restrict the tools they use to control their own bodies. Sterilization and long-acting birth control remain accessible, for now; women who want these should move quickly to get them. Plan B and abortion pills can both be purchased ahead of time and kept on hand in the privacy of a medicine cabinet; such purchases may provide security and peace of mind to those staring down the barrel of another Trump term. Abortion, as we know, will never be eliminated; it can only be less safe, and less dignified. But there are few things as strong as women’s determination to control their own lives. That determination is certainly stronger than the law.

      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist More

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      The great danger is that this time, Trumpism starts making sense | Randeep Ramesh

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      Donald Trump’s unpredictable style and electoral success reflect a turbulent era when neither progressives nor authoritarians have secured control. Far from signalling an autocratic takeover, his rise shows a political landscape in flux. The 2008 crash and its uneven recovery marked the decline of the old economic order. But in 2016, the rise of Trump on the right and Bernie Sanders on the left highlighted a real shift, as neoliberalism’s grip loosened, making space for once marginalised ideas.Since then, two US presidencies have acknowledged the need to rebuild an economy that supports blue-collar workers affected by free trade, immigration and globalisation. While neither administration succeeded – and paid for it at the ballot box – the result has been a growing constituency on both sides of the American political divide that takes seriously, albeit often rhetorically, economic injustice. But for any political movement to become dominant, it has to shape the core ideas that matter to everyone, not just its diehard supporters.A subtle shift is taking place: once-taboo “protectionism” is now a bipartisan issue, with Joe Biden upholding Trump’s tariffs on China. The two presidents have encouraged US companies to reshore manufacturing. Industrial policy, missing since the 1990s, and antitrust actions now find advocates on both sides of the aisle. Both Trump and Harris gauged voters’ indifference to near-trillion-dollar deficits, promising on the campaign trail to protect social security and Medicare.While the methods are shared, the goals diverge. The US became the world’s top oil and gas producer in the last decade. Biden sought to cultivate a green economy, while Trump promoted fossil fuels so aggressively that it bordered on self-parody.Biden fell short of delivering the transformation he had promised. He set out to tackle inequality, improve public services and address the climate crisis with a $4tn plan funded by taxing the wealthy – a mission to unite social liberalism with economic fairness. But his ambitious plans were shrunk by lobbying by corporate interests and resistance from centrist Democrats.After Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Biden shifted away from economic radicalism. When inflation surged, instead of controlling prices, he allowed the cost of essentials to soar, causing the steepest food-price hike since the 1970s. In 2022, the poorest 20% of Americans spent nearly a third of their income on food, while the wealthiest fifth spent just 8%. Biden avoided emergency price controls, unlike Richard Nixon who implemented them in 1971 – and won a landslide reelection the following year.Biden learned the lesson too late, promising to tackle “greedflation” as part of his reelection campaign. Once he dropped out, Harris said she would enact the “first ever federal ban” on food-price gouging. That was slamming the stable door shut long after the horse had bolted. However, in a sign that price controls were becoming mainstream in national politics, Trump promised to cap credit card interest rates.Trump’s populist rhetoric resonated with disillusioned voters, yet his first term’s policies had often mirrored the establishment he criticised, blending and betraying the US’s pro-market ideals. As the historian Gary Gerstle writes in his book The Rise and Fall of the Neoliberal Order: “If [the administration’s] deregulation, judicial appointments, and tax cuts pointed toward the maintenance of a neoliberal order … Trump’s assault on free trade and immigration aimed at its destruction.” Trump presents free trade and open borders as threats to US prosperity, advocating for strict controls that admit only goods and people aligned with American interests.The president-elect has abandoned the neoliberal tradition of keeping markets shielded from direct political influence, openly using his power to favour allies and enrich elites. While centrist Democrats support corporate interests by blocking progressive reforms, Trump aligns directly with billionaires, promoting a culture where justice serves the wealthy, prejudice is trivialised and power diminishes equality. This trickle-down bigotry will ultimately create a system where servility to power and social division become normalised, eroding fairness for everyone.Whether Trump can mobilise popular discontent over social and economic inequalities without alienating the oligarchs who support him remains an open question. In the months ahead, a struggle will unfold among factions within Trump’s circle. Economic populists such as the Republican senator Josh Hawley and the vice-president-elect, JD Vance, will differ from libertarians such as Vivek Ramaswamy and the self-interested deregulatory agenda of Elon Musk. Trump’s aim isn’t to lift all boats, but rather to lift enough to convince voters to tolerate the corruption, consumer scams and environmental degradation that enrich a plutocratic class. This strategy, boosted by a pliant mediasphere, enables him to present a party of private power as the voice of the ordinary voter.American political life often oscillates between “normal” and “revolutionary” phases – periods of stability interspersed with upheaval, where ideological shifts reshape public policy. After the crash but before Trump, the Tea Party was a rightwing populist movement frustrated by globalisation yet anti-worker in orientation. Revolutionary moments – such as the rise of nativist populism or democratic progressivism – trigger profound ideological shifts that reshape public values and policy. Trump’s victory was historic, but it is not yet ideologically cohesive or triumphant.If that changes, it could permanently shift certain constituencies. In 1948, Democratic support for civil rights led African Americans to abandon their traditional allegiance to the Republicans. They left the party of emancipation for the party of Jim Crow. Betting that working-class voters have nowhere else to go is a gamble centrist politicians will profoundly regret.For Democrats, the traditional strategy of pairing social liberalism with modest economic reform no longer connects with today’s voters. While social equality is a moral imperative, it requires bold, egalitarian economic policies to truly resonate. Until such policies take shape, political dysfunction and public frustration will persist. The pressing question now, for the US and beyond, is what vision and leadership will meet these urgent demands. More