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      The Observer view on US election: lessons for the left in wake of damning defeat

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      Donald Trump’s unexpectedly clearcut victory in last week’s US presidential election is a wake-up call for the progressive left in America and Britain. The hard-right Republican nominee made gains in almost all voter groups, including in swing state cities, middle-class suburbs, working-class manufacturing centres and rural and farming communities. Black, Latino, Native American and younger voters, on whose support his Democratic rival, the vice-president, Kamala Harris, had pinned her hopes, also went for Trump in larger than anticipated numbers. Polling suggesting a dead heat was wrong. Trump scored an undeniable nationwide triumph, winning both the electoral college and the popular vote.The Democratic party’s inquest into what went wrong must honestly confront some uncomfortable truths. One concerns identity. It’s plain, on this showing at least, that membership of racial and ethnic minorities can no longer be blithely assumed to translate into support for a progressive left agenda. Another concerns priorities. Top-down policy agendas pursued by entitled and privileged social “elites” can alienate ordinary voters from all backgrounds. They simply cannot or will not relate to them.Likewise, Harris’s belief that support for abortion rights, while laudable, could be used as a decisive wedge issue to attract female voters was confounded by the 45% of women who backed Trump. For them, bread-and-butter issues mattered more. A CNN exit poll also found Trump’s support among college-educated and first-time voters, who usually favour the Democrats, rose, too. Unsurprisingly, most white men went with the white guy. Again, worries about prices, the economy, jobs and security might have determined their vote. But, sadly, many might have rejected the idea of a woman of colour as president.This was a comprehensive defeat, not only for Harris but for her boss, President Joe Biden, and for the Democratic party, which also lost control of the Senate and has probably failed once again to take the House of Representatives. It’s true that Harris had little more than three months to make her case. It’s possible that had the unpopular president stepped down earlier, as the former speaker Nancy Pelosi suggests, Harris or another candidate might have done better. It’s certain that, as usual, the economy was the top issue, and that most voters blame the Biden-Harris administration for doing a poor job. But if the significance of this debacle is to be fully understood, it is necessary to look beyond such conventional explanations.The heart of the problem is that Democrats have lost touch – and no longer seem to understand where at least half of all Americans are coming from. Harris’s brave show of positivity and her stress on inclusiveness, unity and joy jarred badly with the joyless, negative everyday experience of conflicted and divided voters. They complained that high inflation is ruining living standards, food is unaffordable, secure, well-paid jobs are a rarity amid influxes of cheap migrant labour – and that their current leaders disrespect and ignore them, and simply do not care about them. If this sounds familiar, it’s because similar grievances are fuelling the advance of Reform UK and European rightwing populist parties, which welcomed Trump’s victory.This fundamental disconnect is evident in other areas. One recent poll found that 45% of Americans say democracy does not do a good job protecting ordinary people. Trust in institutions, such as the justice system and the media, is eroding. Long gone are the days when three national TV networks and a clutch of self-important newspapers dictated the news agenda. Trump understood this. He took his campaign to popular podcasters and talk radio. He mostly avoided big set-piece interviews and risky prime-time debates. And, despite attempts on his life, he hosted raucous open-air rallies, defiantly offensive to the end.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionLaced with ever-increasing vulgarity, his speeches offered a deliberately gloomy, dark and angry contrast to Harris’s upbeat vision. He was, Trump said, “mad as hell”. He was going to get even. He would take down the elites. And he would make America great again. This furious narrative of victimhood, unfairness and retribution reflected the nation’s sour mood. Trump said he would fight for them – and enough of them believed him. Most thought the country was heading in the wrong direction anyway. They wanted a change. So, having fired him in 2020, they hired him for a second time – even though, according to the CNN poll, 54% view him unfavourably.“America has given us an unprecedented and powerful mandate,” Trump claimed – and this prospect is truly daunting. His mandate to “save the country” includes mass migrant deportations, unfunded tax cuts, sweeping import tariffs, expanded oil and gas drilling, abandoning the green agenda, repudiation of Nato, a free hand for Israel, betrayal of Ukraine to Russia, and promised Stalinist purges of political opponents, journalists and anybody else he dislikes. Britain, estranged from the EU, now faces a potential collapse of its US “special relationship” despite Keir Starmer’s awkward schmoozing of the president-elect. What a mess!Right now, Trump is in the pink. He has won a famous victory. But let’s not forget for a moment that he remains a fundamental danger to America and the world. At some point, Britain and the other western democracies may have to draw a line, even do the unthinkable and break with the US. As we have said before, Trump is unfit to hold the office to which he has just been re-elected. Proof of that contention will not be long in coming. More

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      We can rage about Donald Trump. Or we can be curious about why he appealed to so many | Peter Hyman

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      How can anyone vote for someone so… fill in the blank… racist, sexist, unconstitutional, hateful, unhinged? This is the question asked frequently in the UK and here in the States, where I have spent the past three weeks trying to understand the Trump phenomenon.Behind the question is an implied superiority; that we, the clever people, have identified the monster that is Donald Trump, but the deluded masses are too stupid to see it. But what I have found at the Trump rallies I’ve been to is not stupidity, but frustration, pain and a longing for respect.Tucker Carlson at Madison Square Garden captured this sentiment with his usual swagger. “They tell you, the people who can actually change a flat tyre, who pay your taxes and work 40 hours a week, that you are somehow immoral. We have a message for them: you are not better than us, you are not smarter than us.”To dismiss this as the politics of grievance is to dismiss what it feels like to be disrespected, to feel “a stranger in your own land”. To feel as though the college-educated are looking down at the non-college-educated.Even now, after his overwhelming victory, many still fume that Trump has returned to power on the back of a pack of lies, sometimes very big lies (like he won the 2020 election). And of course that’s part of the story. But his supporters have some justification for believing that his win has in fact been forged from a powerful truth. The economy is not being run in their interests, government is not working for them, and mainstream political parties have not been up to the job in recent years.This is what appealed to so many people including lifelong Democrats such as Bill, who was the first person I chatted to at a rally in Latrobe, just outside Pittsburgh. “I was a Democrat all my life, a local organiser. I was invited to a fundraiser, bought a new suit to look smart, turned up and listened to all the speeches. By the end of the evening, there had been a programme aimed at everyone – those on benefits, single mothers, new immigrants – but nothing of any kind at me, a dad of two children, trying to pay the mortgage, working hard to get on. I realised the Democrats were no longer for me.”Yes, there was a cultish feel to the mass of red Maga hats and rhythmic chants of USA, USA, and yes, a full buffet of conspiracy theories was often on the menu. But what motivated so many of them was a lack of order and control in their lives. If you don’t know who is coming across the border, you feel uneasy and at risk. If you can’t predict how much your groceries will cost week to week, you feel the pressure.And to solve this? You need a disruptor. Someone who doesn’t go along with the stale, failed, norms of political discourse, someone from outside politics who can hack through the undergrowth even if in doing so he might offend. If Trump was polite, generous, restrained and conciliatory, his supporters would find it impossible to believe he would give the system the good shake they believe it needs.So, Trump’s appeal is there in plain sight. It is not an aberration. It is not inexplicable. And now we know for certain, it’s not going away. The truth is the Democrats lost people – head and heart. They failed at being good technocrats (the head) with high inflation and open borders. And failed at telling a story in which struggling working families could feel seen and heard (the heart).This is now the challenge for the Democrats in the US fighting to win back power, and Labour in the UK trying to make a success of their victory. Trump’s win could be a moment, like Margaret Thatcher’s victory in 1979, where the old rules of politics are turned on their head and where the buildings blocks of a new progressive project need to be rebuilt from first principles.The outlines of what needs to happen will emerge. A project that is squarely back on the side of working people. Where we do the “heavy lifting” to get better and bolder policies on the cost of living, making work pay, securing our borders, providing for the aspirations of those who don’t go to university.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWhere we understand that the way we govern is not working for too many people and needs to change fundamentally if we are to rebuild trust. Where we get to grips with a diffuse and polarised media and communicate far more cleverly. And where we tell a story about the common good, of belonging and respect, that is sufficiently hard-headed to bring people together.Trump won because he was the better candidate with a better message. I believe both his policies and approach will not in the end work, and will probably do a lot of damage on the way. But to millions, whether we admit it or not, he offered real hope – of greater prosperity, more security and fewer wars. Many looked to him as a protector – from a world of change and from patronising elites.We now have a choice: rage at Trump supporters – or curiosity. We can spend the coming months in fruitless intellectual contortions about whether he meets the criteria for being a fascist, or we can properly understand what has just happened and get to work deepening, widening and improving a new progressive agenda with the vim and vitality to mount a serious fightback. Peter Hyman is a former adviser to Keir Starmer and Tony Blair, currently working on a project to rebuild trust in politics and tackle far-right populism

      Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a letter of up to 250 words to be considered for publication, email it to us at observer.letters@observer.co.uk More

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      Joe Biden to welcome Donald Trump to the White House on Wednesday

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      Joe Biden and Donald Trump will meet on Wednesday in the Oval Office, the White House announced on Saturday.Trump will take office on 20 January to become the 47th president of the United States, winning the position back for the Republicans after soundly defeating his Democratic rival and the current US vice-president, Kamala Harris, in the 5 November election.“At President Biden’s invitation, President Biden and President-elect Trump will meet in the Oval Office on Wednesday,” the press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said in a statement.Such a post-election meeting is traditional between the outgoing and the incoming presidents. It is scheduled for 11am.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      But after Trump lost his bid for re-election in 2020 and then refused to concede to Biden and accept the result, wrongly claiming he had won but had been defrauded out of his victory, he did not host Biden at the White House during the transition in administrations.Then, on inauguration day, 20 January 2021, Trump also broke with tradition by again not receiving Biden, the 46th president – and his wife, incoming first lady Jill Biden – at the White House for the handover and accompanying them to the swearing-in ceremony outside the US Capitol.The Trumps left the White House that morning and flew to Florida.It was only two weeks after thousands of extremist supporters of Trump had broken into the Capitol to try in vain to stop the certification of Biden’s triumph, which led to Trump’s second impeachment, when he was accused of inciting an insurrection.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionPreviously, the Obamas followed tradition in 2017 by welcoming Donald and Melania Trump at the White House before accompanying them to Trump’s inauguration, and Barack Obama hosted Trump, the then incoming 45th president, to the Oval Office in late 2016 after he’d defeated Hillary Clinton.This year, Biden had initially sought re-election but dropped out of the race in July after a disastrous debate against Trump, giving his anointed Democratic successor, Harris, a very short campaign for the presidency.The Associated Press and Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Arizona endures tense wait for final election result in last battleground

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      Arizona remained in a tense waiting game on Saturday for its election results, even as neighboring Nevada declared for Donald Trump overnight, giving the president-elect six out of seven swing states after election day on 5 November.In Arizona, official tallies were 83% complete by mid-morning on Saturday with Trump leading at 52.7% and Harris at 46%, or about 180,000 votes ahead. But enough ballots remain uncounted – 602,000 as of late Friday night – for the state to remain undeclared. The state sensationally flipped to Joe Biden and the Democrats in 2020.In the key US Senate race there between Republican Kari Lake and Democrat Ruben Gallego, Lake, who always denied that Biden won the White House fairly in 2020, was trailing the Democrat 48.5% to 49.5%, or by around 33,000 votes, mid-morning on Saturday.The contested primary for the seat sprang from Kyrsten Sinema, who was elected in 2018 for the Democrats, switched to become an independent and then announced she wasn’t seeking re-election this year.Other Arizona races remain close, including the sixth congressional district battle between incumbent Republican Juan Ciscomani and Democratic challenger Kirsten Engel, as the Democrats nationally wait to see if they can come from behind to flip control of the House of Representatives in Washington DC.The delay in reporting the races falls largely on Maricopa county, the fourth largest in the US, where the state capital, Phoenix, lies. The county on Friday evening reported 351,000 ballots yet to count. Some have not been through the first step of verifying the voter signature on the outside of the envelope. Officials expected ballot counting would continue for 10 to 13 days after election day.The long process for counting ballots is in part explained by the lengthy two-page ballot itself with election workers taking nearly double the usual amount of time to separate the two sheets from the mail-in envelope, lay them flat and check for damage, according to Votebeat.In Cochise county, a mechanical problem with tabulators caused them to work more slowly.According to the Arizona Republic newspaper, part of the state’s problem is “early-late” votes – early voting ballot papers that were filled in don’t get dropped off to be counted until election day itself.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We have a substantial number of voters who take their early ballot and they kind of keep it on their kitchen counter for, like, three weeks,” state representative Alexander Kolodin told AZ Central.Kolodin, a Republican, is considering a proposal that would require early ballots to be returned in advance of election day, giving time for election officials to go through the process of verification.But amid heightened security in Arizona, with fears of violence, there has so far been no repeat of unrest over counting and long, drawn-out challenges that followed the 2020 election in Maricopa county – and no claims of election worker intimidation there. More

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      The US has lost faith in the American dream. Is this the end of the country as we know it?

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      A dozen years ago – an eternity in American politics – the Republican party was reeling from its fourth presidential election loss in six tries and decided that it needed to be a lot kinder to the people whose votes it was courting.No more demonising of migrants, the party resolved – it was time for comprehensive immigration reform. No more demeaning language that turned off women and minorities – it needed more of them to run for office.“We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian, and gay Americans and demonstrate we care about them too,” the party asserted in a famously self-flagellating autopsy after Barack Obama’s re-election as president in 2012.Even Dick Armey, a veteran Texas conservative, told the authors of the report: “You can’t call someone ugly and expect them to go to the prom with you.”Just one voice on the right begged to differ: Donald Trump. “Does the @RNC [Republican National Committee] have a death wish?” he asked in a tweet.View image in fullscreenHis objection received little attention at the time, but it wasn’t long before he was offering himself as flesh-and-blood proof of how wrong the autopsy was. In announcing his first campaign for president in 2015, Trump called Mexicans rapists and criminals.He demeaned a female TV moderator, Megyn Kelly, at his first Republican candidates’ debate, saying she had “blood coming out of her wherever” and later implied she was a “bimbo”. He also called for migrants to be deported en masse and for Muslims to be banned from entering the US.No serious presidential candidate had ever talked this way, and for several months, mainstream Republicans regarded his approach as electoral suicide. Even once it became apparent Trump might win the party nomination, they still feared his candidacy would go down in flames because swing voters in the presidential election would “flock away from him in droves”, as party stalwart Henry Barbour put it.Then Trump won – and American politics has not been the same since.The country has not been the same since. It’s true, the US has never been quite the shining beacon of its own imagination.On the international stage, it has frequently been belligerent, bullying, chaotic, dysfunctional and indifferent to the suffering of people in faraway nations – traits that bear some passing similarity to Trump’s leadership style.But it has also, for more than a century, been the standard-bearer of a certain lofty vision, a driver of strategic alliances between similarly advanced democratic nations intent on extending their economic, military and cultural footprint across continents.After one Trump presidency and on the eve of another, it is now clear that a once mighty global superpower is allowing its gaze to turn inward, to feed off resentment more than idealism, to think smaller.Public sentiment – not just the political class – feels threatened by the flow of migrants once regarded as the country’s lifeblood. Global trade, once an article of faith for free marketeers and architects of the postwar Pax Americana, is now a cancer eating away at US prosperity – its own foreign invasion.Military alliances and foreign policy no longer command the cross-party consensus of the cold war era, when politics could be relied upon to “stop at the water’s edge”, in the famous formulation of the Truman-era senator Arthur Vandenberg.Now the politics don’t stop at all, for any reason. And alliances are for chumps.View image in fullscreenLast week’s election was a contest between a unifying, consensus vision laid out by Kamala Harris – and by that Republican autopsy document of the pre-Trump era – and Trump’s altogether darker, us-versus-them, zero-sum vision of a world where nobody can win without someone else becoming a loser and payback is a dish best served piping hot. The contest could have gone either way – there has been much talk of a different outcome with a different Democratic candidate, or with a different process for selecting her.Still, the fact that the zero-sum vision proved so seductive says something powerful about the collapse of American ideals, and the pessimism and anger that has overtaken large swaths of the country.In 2016 and 2020, that anger was largely confined to the white working-class staring down a bleak future without the manufacturing jobs that once sustained them.Now it has spread to groups once disgusted by Trump, or whom Trump has openly disparaged – Latinos, young voters, Black men. Kelly, the TV personality memorably insulted by Trump during his first campaign, stumped for him in Pennsylvania in the closing days of the campaign. Even undocumented migrants, ostensibly facing mass deportation once the new administration takes office, have been voicing cautious support for Trump because they believe his economic policies will improve their prospects, risks and all.At first glance, this is a baffling state of affairs. How could so many Americans vote against their own self-interest, when it is plain – both from past experience and from the stated intentions of Trump and his allies – that the chief beneficiaries of the incoming administration are likely to be the billionaire class? When the depressed, disaffected communities of the rust belt can expect little if any of the relief Trump has been promising but failing to deliver for years?View image in fullscreenThe answer has a lot to do with the zero-sum mentality that Trump has sold so successfully.People across the country have lost all faith in the American dream: the notion that hard work and a desire for self-improvement are all it takes to climb up the social ladder, to own a home, to lay the foundations for the success of your children and grandchildren.They have lost their faith because the dream simply does not correspond to their lived experience.As in Britain and other post-industrial societies, too many lives are a constant struggle to get by month to month, with no end in sight to the bills and day-to-day living expenses and crippling levels of personal debt.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe majority of jobs in the US now require some qualification beyond high school, but college is dizzyingly expensive and dropout rates are high enough to deter many people from even starting. Medical debt in a country without a national health service is rampant. Home ownership is simply out of reach.When people think of prosperity and success, what many of them see is an exclusive club of Americans, recipients of generations of wealth who live in increasingly expensive big cities, who have the financial flexibility to get through college, find a high-paying job and come up with a down payment on a house.The fix is in, as Trump likes to say. The game is rigged, and if you’re not a member of the club at birth, your chances of being admitted are slim to none.Under such circumstances, the Democrats’ promise of consensus leadership rings largely hollow. The consensus arguably broke a long time ago, when the bursting of the housing bubble of the early 00s left many would-be homeowners crippled by debt and led to the deepest economic crisis since the Great Depression.It broke all over again during the Covid pandemic, when the economy ground to halt, unemployment rocketed and prices of everyday goods spun alarmingly out of control. Democrats have controlled the White House for 12 of the past 16 years, yet their idea of consensus has failed to reach much beyond the big-city limits.More appealing by far to those on the outside looking in are Trump’s promises of retribution, of tearing down the entire system and starting again.Those promises may also prove to be hollow over time, but to people only intermittently focused on politics as they struggle to put food on the table for their families, they feel at least fleetingly empowering. In a zero-sum world, blaming migrants for the country’s woes feels like its own kind of victory. It means some other group is at the bottom of the social heap for a change.Overlaid on this grim picture is the slow implosion of the two main political parties. The coalitions held together by Republicans and Democrats were always complicated affairs: an awkward marriage of big business and Christian fundamentalism on the right; a patchwork of union workers, racial minorities, intellectuals and, for a long time, old-guard southern segregationists on the left.Now, though, what is most apparent is not their intricacy but their weakness. The Republican party was as powerless to stop Trump’s hostile takeover in 2016 as the Democrats were to hold on to their bedrock of support in the “blue wall” states in the upper midwest – Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.What drives American politics now is, rather, the unfettered power of money, much of it managed by groups outside party control who do not have to declare their funding sources and can make or break candidates depending on their willingness to follow a preordained set of policy prescriptions.View image in fullscreenThe sway of special interest groups is a longstanding problem in American politics; think of the pharmaceutical industry lobbying to keep drug prices higher than in any other western country, or the American Israel Public Affairs Committee spending tens of millions to keep critics of the Israeli government out of Congress.But it has grown exponentially worse since the supreme court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which has fuelled an unprecedented growth in “dark money” – untraceable lobbying funds that far outstrip anything candidates are able to raise on their own behalf and tilt the political playing field accordingly.This, too, has given an edge to a demagogue such as Trump, whose vulgarity and bluster serve as useful distractions from a corporate-friendly policy agenda driven largely by tax cuts, deregulation and the dismantling of what Trump’s former political consigliere Steve Bannon calls the “administrative state”.The Democrats, meanwhile, can talk all they want about serving the interests of all Americans, but they too rely on dark money representing the interests of Wall Street, big tech companies and more, and are all but doomed to come off as hypocritical and insincere as a result.Two generations ago, the avatars of the civil rights movement were under no illusions about the brutal nature of the forces driving US society – “the same old stupid plan / Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak”, as Langston Hughes wrote in his famous poem Let America Be America Again.The hope then was this was at least a correctable problem, that the oppressed could push back against their oppressors and create a fairer, more just world.What nobody then envisaged was that the oppressed themselves – the working class, disaffected young Black and Latino men, even undocumented manual labourers – would one day support the rise of an autocratic government willing to overthrow every sacred tenet of American public life, and even the constitution itself, with its promise of creating “a more perfect union”.Yet here we are. In January 2021, at Joe Biden’s inauguration, the young poet Amanda Gorman invoked the spirit of the civil rights era in describing “a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished”.It now appears that her faith was misplaced. The US we thought we knew is broken indeed, and may well be finished. More

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      ‘It gave me a new perspective’: student exchange program attempts to bridge divided US

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      For Baltimore native Jessica Osei-Adjei, a week-long trip to Anchorage, Alaska, last summer was more than just her first time traveling solo.“I went hiking on a glacier, camping and paddleboarding for the first time,” she says. “I’m not really an outdoorsy person but doing that was definitely worth it.”Osei-Adjei’s trip to Alaska was organized through the American Exchange Project (AEP), a non-partisan initiative founded in 2019 to facilitate high school seniors’ traveling to and meeting with youth from differing sociopolitical backgrounds in an attempt to help unite what Tuesday’s elections have made clear is an increasingly divided US.“We saw that emerging adults were perfect because they were malleable – we could put them through a shorter, easier-to-scale experience, and have it go much further than if we worked with adults,” co-founder and CEO of the AEP, David McCullough III, said.“And teenagers were also perfect because they were a very quick way into their parents’ hearts. So we thought: ‘Let’s have an exchange program right here in America.’”Over the past six years, the AEP has organized close to 1,000 student exchange trips, with students traveling to 70 towns in more than 40 states across the US.Funded by organizations such as the MacArthur Foundation, Steven Spielberg and Kate Capshaw’s Hearthland Foundation, and other groups, students typically spend a week in a host family’s town free of charge, before hosting a student in their own home or community.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      “Most kids haven’t made up their minds politically. They have issues they care about, but they don’t really know the Democratic party or Republican party platform,” McCullough said.McCullough believes that the political divide that’s so entrenched in US politics – and which is likely to be amplified after Donald Trump’s victory on Tuesday – is in part down to Americans not experiencing life or meeting people from a different geographic region or background.A 2022 YouGov poll found that one in five people Americans had visited fewer than six US states. A 2016 study of 2,000 US adults, meanwhile, found that the average American had visited just a quarter of US states and that 10% had never traveled outside their own state.For Olmert Hirwa, a student from Maine, one of the biggest takeaways from his visit to Longview in east Texas centered on the issue of guns. Before visiting Texas, he had never held a gun – but after spending a week in Longview, he found a new understanding for why people carry weapons.“What I learned is that people have guns because everyone has guns, and that guns are not the problem,” he said. “It’s the environment that people are in. It gave me a new perspective.“I also thought [Texas] would be less accepting of people of color – that was probably the biggest misconception I had going over there. For a small town, [Longview] has a lot of things going on.”Hirwa said he was still in touch with several fellow students he met during his time in Longview.Still, the challenges facing initiatives like the AEP are not inconsiderable in today’s polarized society.The rise of smartphones and the internet has further contributed to a sense of isolation among America’s youth, with researchers suggesting in 2020 that “a poisonous cocktail of othering, aversion and moralization poses a threat to democracy”.Divisive rhetoric at the political level has forced many to take sides, creating a sense that the country is more divided now than in the past. In most states, one party or the other controls the governorship and entire legislature.Some reports suggest Americans are increasingly moving to states that better fit their social and political views, further embedding a sense of division within the US. A report published by the real estate company Redfin in February found that one-third of real estate agents had clients who said they moved primarily because of state or local laws or politics.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotion“We are, at the moment, faced with some really challenging issues and we are talking about them in all of the wrong, most divisive ways,” McCullough said.“I’m wary that our country is doing two things that are really problematic – too often Americans would prefer to be right than to be effective. And [second,] national conversations are so frayed and divisive in a country that is enormous, incredibly diverse and prone to individualism.”He says some of the main challenges the AEP faces surround securing funding, and finding and recruiting more host families.“We have tons of interest across the country, but it’s going to be a lot of work to see all this through,” he said.Still, the program continues to grow.In 2023, about 475 students took part in exchanges. The AEP is planning to recruit 625 for next summer.For Osei-Adjei, the learnings of her 3,000-mile trip to Alaska went both ways.“I think that some people assumed that Baltimore was some extremely dangerous place,” she said. “People [in Alaska] were asking how often do I witness crime.“I told people I pretty much live like a normal citizen; I don’t fear for my life. I think them being here too can make them see that it’s just a normal city.”When other exchange students came to Baltimore, she said they were surprised by the city’s waterfront and the array of activities.Next up for Osei-Adjei? A trip back to Alaska next summer.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      ‘They blew it’: Democrats lost 22,000 votes in Michigan’s heavily Arab American cities

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      Kamala Harris received at least 22,000 fewer votes than Joe Biden did four years ago in Michigan’s most heavily Arab American and Muslim cities, a Guardian analysis of raw vote data in the critical swing state finds.The numbers also show Trump made small gains – about 9,000 votes – across those areas, suggesting Harris’s loss there is more attributable to Arab Americans either not voting or casting ballots for third-party candidates.Support for Democrats also fell in seven precincts around the country with significant Arab American or Muslim populations, according to data compiled by the Arab American Institute. It found a combined drop in the seven precincts, from about 4,900 votes in 2020 to just 3,400 this election.Another analysis, based on nationwide exit polling by the Council on American Islamic Relations, found 53% of Muslim Americans voted for Jill Stein. The same poll showed 21% of Muslims cast a ballot for Trump and 20.3% for Harris.The drop in Democratic support in Hamtramck, Dearborn and Dearborn Heights – three Michigan cities with the nation’s largest Arab American and Muslim populations per capita – represent nearly 27% of the 81,000-vote difference between Harris and Donald Trump’s tallies in the state.Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      The number of votes Harris lost in Michigan over the White House’s Israel policy is almost certainly higher. The analysis only looked at the three population centers, not the large Arab American population scattered throughout the region. Some estimated before the election that Harris could lose as many as 90,000 votes in the state.In Dearborn, a Detroit suburb that is nearly 60% Arab American, Biden received about 31,000 votes in 2020, while Harris received just over 15,000. Trump, who campaigned in Dearborn in the election’s waning days, received about 18,000 votes, up from 13,000 last election. Meanwhile, Stein picked up about 7,600 Dearborn votes this year.Stein and Cornell West, third-party candidates who made inroads with voters frustrated with Harris but unwilling to vote for Trump, combined for about 50,000 votes statewide.Michigan is virtually a must-win swing state, and frustration here with the Biden administration’s Gaza policy was viewed as a major Harris liability. Though the issue accounts for a significant portion of Harris’s loss in the state, she also underperformed with Michigan voters across multiple demographics, and inflation was a top issue for many.But Arab American and Muslim voters who defected from the Democratic party made a “key difference” across upper midwest swing states, said the Muslims for Trump founder Rabiul Chowdhury. He said Trump and his surrogates worked in heavily Arab American areas to make amends for his past anti-Muslim record, and promised peace in Gaza and the Middle East. Harris did not, he said.“Everyone’s ultimate goal was to punish Harris and the best way to do this was to vote for Trump,” Chowdhury said.Representative Rashida Tlaib, who is Palestinian American and Congress’s most vocal critic of US-Israel policy, received more than 24,000 votes in Dearborn, doubling Harris’s total. However, she only slightly outran Harris in neighboring Dearborn Heights.In Hamtramck, a city neighboring Detroit that is about 60% Muslim or Arab American, Biden received about 6,500 votes in 2020, while Harris dropped to 3,200. Meanwhile, Trump’s vote total in the city increased by about 2,000, while Stein received just over 600 votes.Trump increasing his votes in Hamtramck but not Dearborn may reflect that Yemeni and Bangladeshi American immigrants in Hamtramck are broadly considered to be more conservative than Dearborn’s largely Lebanese population, observers say. Dearborn heavily backed Bernie Sanders in the 2016 and 2020 primaries, and its mayor, Abdullah Hammoud, was once among the most progressive representatives in the statehouse.Hamtramck’s mayor, Amer Ghalib, is deeply socially conservative. He endorsed Trump for the presidential election, and on Monday spoke at Trump’s final campaign rally in the state.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Dearborn Heights, a city that is about half Arab American, Biden won with more than 12,000 votes in 2020; this election, Trump won the city with 11,000 votes, and Harris received 9,000.Meanwhile, in a Houston precinct with a significant Arab American population, Democratic support fell from 520 votes to 300 votes. Democratic support in a Minneapolis precinct where Muslim or Arab Americans comprise a majority of voters fell from about 2,100 votes to 1,100 votes.Arab American pollster and Democratic National Committee member James Zogby noted the Harris campaign was repeatedly warned of the votes she would lose if she did not change course on Gaza or meet with key community leaders.“They blew it,” Zogby said. “We gave [the Harris campaign] multiple opportunities and ideas as to how to do this, and they finally started with three days out, but it was way too late in the game.”Mohamed Gula, director of Emgage, a Muslim political advocacy group, said “a lot has to change and there’s a lot Democrats would have to do” to win back Arab and Muslim voters.“There wasn’t a full belief that Trump was better than Harris – it was that the situation was not acceptable and there needs to be change, and we will take whatever comes from that and do what we need to,” he said.Chowdury said Muslim voters in 2028 will support the party that most promotes peace.“We don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “Today it’s a matter of ending the war and supporting the guy who is giving us the assurance of ending the war.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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      in US Politics

      How Elon Musk became Donald Trump’s shadow vice-president

      by

      As Donald Trump watched election results roll in from a party at his Mar-a-Lago compound, Elon Musk sat arm’s length away, basking in the impending victory he had helped secure. In less than five months, the Tesla and SpaceX CEO had gone from not endorsing a candidate to becoming a fixture of the president-elect’s inner circle.“The future is gonna be so 🔥 🇺🇸🇺🇸,” Musk posted to his social media platform, X, just after midnight, along with a photo of himself leaning over to talk with Trump at the Mar-a-Lago dinner.Musk’s place at the head table was the result of months of political efforts by the world’s richest man, and an injection of at least $130m of his own money. Musk campaigned for Trump both online and offline, funded advertising and get-out-the-vote operations for a campaign at a severe financial disadvantage to its opponent. He even temporarily decamped from his home in Texas to the swing state of Pennsylvania, where he appeared at town hall events and held a $1m daily giveaway for voters.Musk wasn’t the only billionaire rooting for Trump. But unlike some of his peers, who preferred operating in the shadows, shielded by Super Pacs and meetings behind closed doors, he became Trump’s most visible surrogate. As so often with his endeavors, Musk was all in. And now, gambling on becoming one of Trump’s most vocal and deep-pocketed supporters has won Musk direct influence and access to the nation’s highest office, making him not only the world’s richest man but also one of its most politically powerful.Musk’s exact role in the coming administration is still unclear. Trump has previously said that the CEO would lead a full audit of the federal government, and make drastic reforms as “secretary of cost-cutting”. Any such position would create immense conflicts of interest, as Musk’s companies hold billions in contracts with the government and are also facing investigations from federal agencies. Under Trump, who has long opposed regulators and ignored ethical conflicts, that may not matter. Musk’s fortune soared by $26bn just two days after the election.Beyond any potential formal government role, Musk has also ingratiated himself as a close ally of the president-elect – who adopted some of Musk’s policy suggestions during the campaign and praised him as a “super genius” during his victory speech. He reportedly joined Trump’s call with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, on Wednesday, signaling broad influence.That same day, Trump’s granddaughter posted a family photo of “the whole squad” taken at the previous evening’s watch party. Standing among three generations of smiling family members, just in front of Eric Trump and Jared Kushner, was Musk.Musk emerges as Trump’s most prominent backerMusk’s ascent to a key player in Trump’s campaign happened rapidly. Back in March, the CEO was adamant he would not endorse a candidate for president. As late as May, he said he was still weighing his options. Then, in July, on the same day that Trump was injured in a failed assassination attempt, he told the world he had changed his mind. He was all in immediately and called on others in the tech industry to throw their weight behind the Republican party. “I fully endorse President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery,” Musk posted alongside footage of Trump throwing his fist in the air after the shooting.Musk’s vow of support was in keeping with his increasingly public embrace of rightwing leaders, and his promotion of far-right views on issues like immigration. In recent years, the billionaire had become convinced of the rightwing conspiracy theory that Democrats were planning to bring in millions of undocumented immigrants to tilt elections in their favor, with the New York Times reporting that he told a group of conservative billionaires in the spring of this year that if Biden won, it would be the end of American democracy. He has since repeated the claim publicly, warning of “the last election” if Trump lost.What would quickly become clear following Musk’s endorsement was that he was planning to do far more than just provide words of support. Behind the scenes, Musk had already begun offering his input into the campaign with a phone call to Trump advising him to select JD Vance as his running mate. When Musk’s preferred choice was confirmed – and the nomination drew criticism over Vance’s fervent anti-abortion stance and ties to extreme Christian nationalists – Musk immediately posted that the ticket “resounds with victory”.Musk would soon go even further, becoming one of Trump’s largest financial backers and ardent cheerleaders..On the campaign trailAfter announcing his endorsement in July, Musk immediately began contributing millions of dollars to the pro-Trump America Pac – which was set up the month prior and functioned as Musk’s personal political organization and war chest for the Trump campaign. Musk donated $15m in July and exponentially increased his funding each month, ultimately contributing more than $118m by election day.Over the next several months, Musk took on the role of a secondary running mate, accompanying Trump at speeches, giving policy ideas and handling campaign strategy.America Pac largely took over the Trump campaign’s ground game in key swing states, hiring hundreds of people across the country to canvass voters. The organization knocked on about 11m doors, according to the New York Times, while also spending millions on digital advertisements and mailers targeting voters.The operations faced numerous allegations of employee mistreatment and labor law violations. In one case first reported by Wired, a subcontractor for Musk’s America Pac allegedly flew in paid door-knockers who had no idea they would be canvassing for Trump and piled them into the back of a rented U-Haul without seatbelts or rear seating. Other canvassers allegedly falsely claimed to have visited homes in Nevada and Arizona, with a Guardian review of leaked data finding that nearly a quarter of door-knocks were flagged as fraudulent on the canvassing app.View image in fullscreenOutside of his financial contributions, Musk also made in-person appearances to support Trump. He appeared on stage in a black Maga hat at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, captured jumping for joy in what has become one of the enduring images of the campaign. He opened for Trump at the Madison Square Garden rally that was maligned for its racist and extremist rhetoric.As the campaign neared its end, Musk’s America Pac also began directly giving money to prospective voters, doling out $1m a day to a selected voter who signed a petition linked to the Pac. At one giveaway in Pittsburgh, he appeared on stage in front of a giant American flag to hand an oversized check to a woman and tell the crowd that he loved them.Musk’s giveaway, which Philadelphia’s district attorney sued to block, has now become the subject of multiple lawsuits and disputes about whether it was really a lottery at all. Lawyers for Musk claimed in a Pennsylvania court hearing earlier this week that the winners were not random but chosen by the organization, an admission that has resulted in a proposed class-action suit from voters who claimed they were falsely led to believe they had a chance at the cash prize.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionOn TwitterWhile some of Musk’s ground operations and electioneering ran into legal challenges, on his own platform, he had carte blanche to promote Trump however he wanted.Viewed purely in financial terms, Musk’s acquisition of Twitter is an obvious failure. Mainstream advertisers have fled the platform en masse as it has further entrenched itself as a haven for far-right influencers, white supremacists and conspiracy theorists. Its algorithm has shifted to promote viral videos, as well as bots spreading pornography, over fact-based news outlets and reliable sources of information. Musk and his investment partners, which include the Saudi prince Alwaleed bin Talal, have lost billions in value, according to a Washington Post analysis, and the company is now worth less than half of its purchase price.What Musk gained from his purchase, however, is control over one of the world’s most influential communications platforms and the ability to make himself its loudest voice there. Musk has tweaked the platform’s algorithm to ensure that his posts reach its users regardless of whether they are among his more than 200 million followers. During the campaign, he turned his account, and by extension the entire platform, into a relentless pro-Trump megaphone.In August, Musk hosted a two-hour audio interview with Trump on X in which the men discussed anti-immigration policies and Musk called Trump the “path to prosperity”. While the interview provided little that hadn’t been said before, it was a sign of how much had changed since Trump was permanently suspended from Twitter in 2021. Not only was Trump back, he was being feted as the future of the country by the head of the platform.Musk’s promotion of Trump, as well as his attacks on Democrats, media and Kamala Harris, became a dominant part of the platform’s user experience. He tweeted over 145 times in a single 24-hour period on the day following his Trump interview, according to a Guardian analysis. His feed in the lead-up to the vote was a near-constant string of invective and misinformation, along with retweets of far-right influencers promoting conspiracy theories about undocumented immigrants committing voter fraud.View image in fullscreenMusk’s influence on the Trump campaign extended beyond policy into the visual representation of the candidate as well. His release of an AI image generator named Grok in August heavily influenced the visuals of the campaign. Lacking the safety guardrails of competitors such as ChatGPT, Grok could be used to create images of public figures and political leaders. Almost immediately, social media platforms became rife with AI images of Trump, Harris and other celebrities – often featuring misogynistic imagery like Harris pregnant with Trump’s baby. Trump reposted AI images from rightwing influencers falsely showing Taylor Swift supporting his campaign, while Musk posted an image depicting Harris as a communist.Along with his own posts, Musk’s America Pac also set up a community on X dedicated to “election integrity”. The community allowed users to share any evidence they found of voter fraud, but without any moderation, it effectively and immediately became a clearing house for false or unverified claims including a fake video of Haitians illegally voting for Harris.While Musk has frequently described himself as a “free speech absolutist”, he also oversaw the suppression of information that would have potentially harmed the Trump campaign. When an independent reporter published a dossier of background research on Vance that was obtained through an alleged Iranian cyber-attack on the Trump campaign, Musk’s X blocked all links to the article and suspended the reporter from that platform.Musk at the White HouseMusk’s bet on Trump has already made him over $26bn richer, as Tesla’s share price surged following the Republican election victory. If Musk remains in Trump’s good graces – not a given for two men with a history of imploding business relationships – he may stand to benefit even further through deregulation policies and the gutting of federal agencies tasked with overseeing his companies.Musk’s profile picture on X now features him in a black Maga hat, with a new bio that declares “the people voted for major government reform”.Musk’s companies such as SpaceX and Starlink, which are already government contractors deeply intertwined with various agencies, may also find even deeper influence. Musk has requested that Trump hire employees from SpaceX to serve in top government roles including at the Department of Defense, according to the New York Times.Trump as of now appears amenable to Musk’s business interests and requests. During his victory speech, he repeatedly praised Musk, saying that he loved him and touting his ability to do what government agencies could not.“A star is born. Elon, he’s an amazing guy,” Trump said on Wednesday.As it became clear late into election night that Trump would win a decisive victory, Musk shared a meme of himself holding a large porcelain sink while standing in the Oval Office. The image was a callback to when he bought Twitter and physically carried a sink into headquarters in order to make a pun, shortly before laying off most of the staff and turning the platform into a largely unregulated space where extremism thrives.“Let that sink in,” Musk posted. More