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    Supreme Court to Hear Catholic Charity’s Bid for Tax Exemption

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    The justices agreed to hear an appeal from a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the charity’s activities were insufficiently religious to qualify.The Supreme Court agreed on Friday to decide whether Wisconsin was free to deny a tax exemption to a Catholic charity on the grounds that its activities were not primarily religious.The court has been notably receptive to arguments from religious groups, and the new case will give the justices another opportunity to explore the limits of the First Amendment’s protection of religious liberty.The case concerns a Wisconsin law that exempts religious groups from state unemployment taxes so long as they are “operated primarily for religious purposes.”Catholic Charities Bureau, the social ministry of the Catholic Diocese in Superior, Wis., has said its mission is to provide “services to the poor and disadvantaged as an expression of the social ministry of the Catholic Church.” State officials determined that the charity did not qualify for the exemption because it “provides essentially secular services and engages in activities that are not religious per se.”The Wisconsin Supreme Court said it accepted the charity’s contention that its services were “based on Gospel values and the principles of the Catholic social teachings.” But the court ruled that the group’s activities were “primarily charitable and secular” and did not “attempt to imbue program participants with the Catholic faith nor supply any religious materials to program participants or employees.”The court added that “both employment with the organizations and services offered by the organizations are open to all participants regardless of religion.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Wisconsin files more charges against Trump allies who led ‘fake electors’ plot

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      Wisconsin’s justice department filed 10 additional charges on Tuesday against three Donald Trump allies who spearheaded the “fake electors” scheme to help the president-elect in his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The three men, Kenneth Chesebro, Michael Roman and James Troupis, already faced felony forgery charges in June for their role in the plot. The additional charges include conspiracy to commit a crime and numerous counts of fraud.In Wisconsin, the individual false electors have faced civil penalties and agreed to never serve as electors while Trump is on the ballot and to issue a public statement acknowledging that their votes had been cast in an attempt to disrupt Joe Biden’s 2020 victory.Republicans submitted false slates of electors in seven swing states, but only some have faced civil and criminal penalties.Unlike in Michigan, Georgia and Arizona, where electors were charged with crimes for participating in the false elector scheme, Wisconsin’s false electors have not faced criminal charges. Instead, the state has hit the architects of the scheme with the most serious penalties.According to the complaint and documents released previously in civil court, Chesebro led the effort, circulating a memo titled “The Real Deadline for Settling a State’s Electoral Votes”, which made the case for Trump’s electors to submit false electoral certificates – despite the fact that Trump did not win the election.The complaint lays out how Chesebro and Troupis, both attorneys, coordinated with Roman, a Trump aide, to establish the plot in states across the country. It notes that while in some states, the false electors submitted qualifying language in their certificates to indicate that they had submitted their names in case Trump was ultimately declared the winner of the election, Wisconsin’s electors included no such language.Troupis, Roman and Chesebro have faced prosecution for their involvement in the 2020 false elector schemes in other states including Arizona and Georgia, where Chesebro pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit filing false documents. Troupis continued to serve on a Wisconsin judicial ethics panel following the false elector episode and was only suspended from his role in June, when he was first charged with felony forgery in connection with the plot. More

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      Wisconsin’s Ben Wikler joins race for Democratic National Committee chair

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      Wisconsin Democratic leader Ben Wikler joined the race to lead the Democratic National Committee on Sunday, promising “to take on Trump, Republican extremists, and move our country forward”, as the party looks to rebuild from its losses in the November election.In a video posted on social networks, Wikler, 43, touted his state party’s success in organizing to flip 14 state legislative seats and send Senator Tammy Baldwin back to Washington DC in November, and in previously campaigns to win control of the state supreme court and re-elect governor Tony Evers. Wikler, a former podcaster, Air America radio producer and headline writer for The Onion, also stressed his new media expertise.Wikler who has been involved in Democratic party politics since age 11, previously served as a producer on comedian-turned-politician Al Franken’s radio show and as Washington director for the progressive action group MoveOn, where he played a role in the successful battle to save the Affordable Care Act.“Our values – the core belief that our economy should work for working people, and that every person has inherent dignity and deserves freedom and respect – are American values,” Willer wrote on Bluesky. “But they’re not MAGA values. The richest and most powerful people want to divide us and enrich themselves.”“We’ve got to make sure that we are reaching people with the message that we are on their side and fighting for them,” Wikler told Reuters in a telephone interview.Wikler, who has served as chair of the Democratic party of Wisconsin since 2019, is among several candidates looking to replace Jaime Harrison, the current chair who is not seeking re-election when the party votes early next year.Former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, Minnesota Democratic chief Ken Martin and New York state senator James Skoufis also are vying to become the new Democratic chair.Democrats are trying to chart the way forward after losing the White House and control of the Senate, as well as failing to retake the House of Representatives.Wikler said the national party could learn from organizing efforts he has overseen in Wisconsin, even though Kamala Harris narrowly lost the state to Trump.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionWikler said Democrats also need to focus on the president-elect’s economic agenda, which he claimed will favor wealthy Americans rather than working families.“For Democrats, this is a critical time to unite and fight back against Trump’s plans,” Wikler said.Wikler’s entry into the race was welcomed by the teachers union leader Randi Weingarten, who wrote that he “understands how to organize and communicate”, and journalist Connie Schultz, who knows Wikler from his time as spokesperson for her husband, Senator Sherrod Brown. More

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      Wisconsin Democratic Chair Says He Is the One to Revive a Distressed Party

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      Ben Wikler, who has led the Wisconsin Democratic Party since 2019, announced a bid to be national party chair with a platform to “unite, fight, win.”Ben Wikler, the Wisconsin Democratic chairman and a prolific party fund-raiser with deep connections in Washington, announced on Sunday that he was entering the race to lead the Democratic National Committee.Mr. Wikler, 43, has led Wisconsin Democrats since 2019, and he has served as a top official at MoveOn, the progressive advocacy group. He said in an interview that he aimed to do for the national party what he did in Wisconsin, where he presided over the rebuilding of a party weakened by years of full Republican control of the state’s government.Mr. Wikler, whose start in politics came in part as a research assistant for Al Franken, joins a field of party-chair hopefuls that includes Ken Martin, the Minnesota Democratic chairman; Martin O’Malley, the former Maryland governor; and James Skoufis, a little-known New York state senator. While Mr. Martin has said he has endorsements from 83 of the 448 voting members of the D.N.C. (and Mr. O’Malley has said he has endorsements from three, and Mr. Skoufis does not have any), Mr. Wikler would not say his level of support when asked.That was not the only question Mr. Wikler declined to answer in an interview this weekend. He would also not say which state he thinks should vote first in the 2028 presidential primary or whether President Biden should have sought re-election.“My platform in this race is unite, fight, win,” Mr. Wikler said. “Uniting starts not with recriminations but with reckoning and with curiosity and data. And then you use all that to inform the way that you fight the next battle.”Jaime Harrison, the departing party chairman, is not seeking re-election. Others considering entering the race include former Representative Max Rose of New York; Chuck Rocha, a strategist who worked on Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign in 2020; and Mallory McMorrow, a Michigan state legislator. Mr. Harrison has scheduled the meeting for the vote to replace him for Feb. 1 in Oxon Hill, Md.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Reasons for hope as Democrats prevent Trump-led red wave in state races

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      After watching Kamala Harris lose the White House and Republicans wrest back full control of Congress, Democrats were bracing for disaster in state legislatures. With the party defending narrow majorities in several chambers across the country, some Democrats expected that Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential race would allow a red wave to sweep through state legislatures.Yet, when the dust had settled after election day, the results of state legislative elections presented a much more nuanced picture than Democrats had feared.To their disappointment, Democrats failed to gain ground in Arizona and New Hampshire, where Republicans expanded their legislative majorities, and they lost governing trifectas in Michigan and Minnesota.But other states delivered reason for hope. Democrats held on to a one-seat majority in the Pennsylvania house even as Harris and congressional incumbents struggled across the state. In North Carolina, Democrats brought an end to Republicans’ legislative supermajority, restoring Governor-elect Josh Stein’s veto power. Perhaps most encouragingly for the party, Democrats made substantial gains in Wisconsin, where newly redrawn and much more competitive maps left the party well-poised to gain majorities in 2026.The mixed results could help Democrats push back against Republicans’ federal policies at the state level, and they offer potential insight on the party’s best electoral strategies as they prepare for the new Trump era.“We must pay attention to what’s going on in our backyard with the same level of enthusiasm that we do to what’s happening in the White House,” said Heather Williams, the president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC). “And I feel like that’s never been more true.”The implications of the state legislative elections will be sweeping, Williams said. Democratic legislators have already helped protect abortion access in their states following the overturning of Roe v Wade, and with Republicans overseeing the federal budget, state legislatures could play a pivotal role in funding critical and underresourced services for their constituents.Those high stakes have made Democrats increasingly aware of the importance of state legislatures, where Republicans have held a significant advantage in recent years. In 2016, when Trump first won office, Republicans held 68 legislative chambers compared with Democrats’ 29, according to the DLCC. Following the elections this month, Democrats expect to control 39 chambers, down from 41 before the elections but still a notable improvement since the beginning of Trump’s first term.As Democrats have turned more of their attention to state legislative races, outside groups have joined the fight. The States Project, a Democratic-aligned organization, poured $70m into legislative elections this cycle, while the Super Pac Forward Majority devoted another $45m to the effort. The funding provided a substantial boon beyond the resources of the DLCC, the party’s official state legislative campaign arm that set a spending goal of $60m this cycle.View image in fullscreen“It’s not rocket science that dollars, tactics and message are potent ways to communicate with voters,” said Daniel Squadron, co-founder of the States Project. “We provide the dollars to candidates that let them get off the phones, separate themselves from in-state special interests and allow them to talk to voters and to treat these campaigns like the big-league contests they are.”Historically, Democratic state legislative candidates have trailed several points behind the party’s presidential nominee, but early data suggests legislative candidates actually outperformed Harris in some key districts. Squadron believes face-to-face interactions with voters, as well as the high quality of many Democratic state legislative candidates this cycle, helped stave off larger losses down ballot even as the party suffered in federal races.“That is the only way it was possible to hold the Pennsylvania house when the statewide results were so disappointing. It’s the reason the North Carolina house supermajority was broken,” Squadron said.Democrats’ strategies appear to have proved particularly potent in Wisconsin, where the party picked up 10 seats in the state assembly and four seats in the state senate. Andrew Whitley, executive director of the Wisconsin senate Democratic caucus, credited the wins to savvy candidates who combined a message about the importance of abortion access with hyperlocal issues important in their specific districts. The strategy allowed candidates to outperform Harris and/or Senator Tammy Baldwin in four out of five targeted senate races, according to data provided by Whitley.“It’s very rare when you have bottom-of-the-ticket state legislators over-perform Kamala and Senator Baldwin,” Whitley said. “They worked their asses off.”In senate district 14, which stretches north-west from Madison, Democrat Sarah Keyeski appears to have benefited from some of Trump’s supporters failing to vote down ballot for the Republican incumbent, Joan Ballweg. But in senate district 8 in the Milwaukee suburbs and district 30 in Green Bay, a small yet decisive number of voters split their ticket between Trump and Democratic legislative candidates.The results suggest that Trump’s playbook may not be enough to elevate Republican state legislators to victory, presenting an opening for Democrats in future election cycles. As further evidence of that trend, Democrats managed to hold four Senate seats in states that Trump carried on election day.“The Maga [‘Make America Great Again’] playbook doesn’t work at the state legislative level,” said Leslie Martes, chief strategy officer of Forward Majority. “Trump is Trump, and he’s incredibly masterful at what he does, but as we see time after time, Republicans struggle to duplicate it.”The next big test for Republicans will come next year in Virginia, where Democrats hope to flip the governor’s mansion and maintain control of both legislative chambers.“This will be Trump’s first task after this election, to see if he can push that playbook,” Martes said. “He’ll want that to keep his mandate going.”Williams and her team are already gearing up for 2025 and 2026, when Democrats will have another chance to expand their power in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Although the 2026 target map is still taking shape, Williams predicted it would look quite similar to this year’s map.“I feel like we can all kind of expect to see some of those familiar faces back,” she said. “They are really competitive states, and that is where we are going to be focusing our attention.”Even though Democrats remain in the legislative minority in Wisconsin, Whitley expressed enthusiasm about the results and the road ahead. This year marked the first time since 2012 that Wisconsin Democrats had the opportunity to run on competitive maps, and they broke Republicans’ iron grip on the legislature.“It’s going to be truly historic,” Whitley said. “Gone are the days where a manufactured majority can override vetoes and pass super-regressive policies. We’re actually going to have some balance, and we’re on the cusp of not only having a balanced legislature, but a trifecta.”Democrats’ performance in Wisconsin may offer a silver lining to party members who are still reeling from the news of Trump’s victory and terrified about the possibilities of his second term in office.“It’s very easy to get lost in that hopelessness,” Whitley said. “But then on the state legislative front, it’s also very easy to be inspired by these folks who are just regular, everyday people, who are standing up for their communities and fighting.” More

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      Trump fake-elector scheme: where do five state investigations stand?

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      After the 2020 election, a group of 84 people in seven states signed false documents claiming to be electors for Donald Trump. This year, despite the fact that four states have brought criminal charges against the fake electors, 14 of them will now serve as real electors for the president-elect.The 14 once-fake-and-now-real electors were selected by state Republican parties in Michigan, Pennsylvania, New Mexico and Nevada. They will meet in their state capitols on 17 December to cast their ballots for Trump.Prosecutors in many of the states where fake electors signed false documents are moving forward with charges, as the federal charges against Trump for election subversion and other alleged crimes are up in the air after his re-election.Five of the seven states pursued charges related to the issue. Authorities in New Mexico and Pennsylvania did not pursue charges because the documents the false electors there used hedged language that attorneys said would likely spare them from criminal charges.The fake electors in some instances are high-profile Republicans: people in elected office, in official party roles, prominent members of external conservative groups.Here’s where the state cases stand.ArizonaKris Mayes, the Democratic attorney general for Arizona, said on Sunday that her office will not be dropping any charges related to the fake electors.A grand jury in Arizona charged 18 people involved in the fake electors scheme, including the 11 people who served as fake electors and Trump allies Mark Meadows, John Eastman, Boris Epshteyn, Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, Christina Bobb and Mike Roman. Some of the fake electors are high profile: two state senators (Jake Hoffman and Anthony Kern), a former state Republican party chair (Kelli Ward) and a Turning Point USA executive (Tyler Bowyer).“I have no intention of breaking that case up. I have no intention of dropping that case,” Mayes told MSNBC. “A grand jury in the state of Arizona decided that these individuals who engaged in an attempt to overthrow our democracy in 2020 should be held accountable, so we won’t be cowed, we won’t be intimidated.”Arizona charged people in April 2024, so the case is still in its early stages.GeorgiaGeorgia’s case will be the most watched, especially if all federal charges against Trump are dropped. It is the only state case where Trump himself is charged, though he will seek to have the charges dropped because of the supreme court’s presidential immunity ruling, or at least paused until he’s no longer in office. Several of the 19 people charged pleaded guilty and received probation and fines.Fake electors David Shafer, Cathleen Latham and Shawn Still were charged in the criminal racketeering case, but not all of the fake electors in Georgia were charged – many were granted immunity to cooperate with the case.The US supreme court rejected an attempt by Meadows on Tuesday to move the case to federal court.The next step is set for December: the Georgia court of appeals will hear arguments on whether prosecutor Fani Willis can continue on the case herself despite a romantic relationship with the special prosecutor on the case. A lower court previous ruled that she could continue.MichiganSixteen fake electors were charged in Michigan in mid-2023. One of them agreed to cooperate with the prosecution and had his charges dropped in return.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe case is working its way through the court process, with the last of the defendants sitting for examinations in October as the judge decides whether the case should go to trial.Six of those charged will serve as Trump’s actual electors this year. Attorneys for those fake and now real electors have said their role this year shouldn’t have any bearing on their legal cases.NevadaSix Trump electors in Nevada were charged at the end of 2023 with state forgery crimes for their roles in the scheme.In June, Clark county district court judge Mary Kay Holthu dismissed the case, saying it was in the wrong venue and should not have been filed in Las Vegas. Democratic attorney general Aaron Ford vowed to appeal the ruling, but defense attorneys have said the charges are now outside the statute of limitations.“My office’s goal remains unchanged – we will hold these fake electors accountable for their actions which contributed to the ongoing and completely unfounded current of distrust in our electoral system,” Ford said. “Our drive to seek justice does not change with election results. We are committed to see this matter through, either through winning our appeal or filing anew before the new year. This is not going away.”Two of the fake electors will again serve as Trump electors this year: Michael McDonald, the chair of the Nevada Republican party, and Jesse Law, chair of the Republican party of Clark county.WisconsinThe fake elector scheme allegedly began in Wisconsin, where pro-Trump attorney Kenneth Chesebro is from.Those who served as fake electors did not get criminally charged in Wisconsin, though three people involved in the scheme – Chesebro, Roman, and James Troupis – were charged in June by the state attorney general for their role in orchestrating the scheme.The state’s fake electors settled a civil lawsuit in 2023 that required them to agree not to serve as electors when elections involve Trump and to acknowledge Joe Biden’s victory in 2020. Some of the electors have publicly claimed they were misled about the purpose of the alternate slates. More

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      Wisconsin supreme court seems hostile to 1849 abortion ban in oral arguments

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      During heated oral arguments on Monday morning, the Wisconsin supreme court appeared poised to find an 1849 law banning most abortions cannot be enforced.The legal status of abortion in Wisconsin has been contested since the US supreme court overturned Roe v Wade and ended the right to abortion nationwide, triggering bans across the country – including in Wisconsin, where a 175-year-old ban immediately went into effect.Democrats in Wisconsin have seized on abortion as a campaign issue, with Justice Janet Protasiewicz expressing her support for abortion rights and winning a seat on the court in spring 2023. Protasiewicz’s election to the court helped flip the ideological balance on the bench, which is now controlled by a narrow liberal majority.It is highly unlikely the liberal-controlled court will uphold the ban.The 1849 statute, which was nullified by Roe v Wade and then reanimated when the landmark decision was overturned, declares that ending “the life of an unborn child” is a felony, except when required to save the life of the mother. In July 2023, a Dane county judge ruled that the 1849 ban applies only to feticide and not “consensual” abortion, citing a previous ruling that interpreted the statute as an anti-feticide law, and in September, providers including Planned Parenthood resumed offering abortion care.The Sheboygan county district attorney Joel Urmanski appealed the ruling, which is now before the Wisconsin supreme court.“The position of the circuit court below … is ultimately indefensible,” said Matthew Thome, an attorney representing Urmanski, during his opening argument. Thome argued that the 1849 law should be interpreted to “prohibit consensual abortions from conception until birth, subject to an exception when it is necessary to save the life of the mother”.Justice Jill Karofsky interrogated Urmanski’s interpretation of the law, asking if it would provide exceptions for rape, incest, the health of the mother, or fetal abnormalities.“Just to be clear, a 12-year-old girl who was sexually assaulted by her father and as a result, became pregnant, under your interpretation … she would be forced to carry her pregnancy to term?” asked Karofsky. She noted that the “penalty for aborting after a sexual assault would be more severe than the penalty for the sexual assault”.In response to a question about the medical consequences of a ban, Thome responded that he was unsure, given that he is “not a doctor”.“I fear that what you are asking this court to do is to sign the death warrants of women and children and pregnant people in this state, because under your interpretation, they could all be denied life saving medical care, while the medical professionals who are charged with taking care of them are forced to sit idly by,” said Karofsky.The court weighed the question of whether laws that were passed regulating abortion while Roe was in effect “impliedly repealed” the 1849 ban and rendered it unenforceable.“All of those statues” passed after 1973 and before it was overturned, “just go to the dust pile?” asked Karofsky.Justice Brian Hagedorn, a conservative-leaning judge, argued, of the 1849 ban, that “the law is still there”, adding that “the judiciary doesn’t get to edit laws, the judiciary doesn’t get to rewrite them, we didn’t delete it, we prevented its enforcement”.The assistant attorney general Hannah Jurss disagreed, arguing that “there is nothing in the text of these statutes that says in the event that Roe is overturned we somehow go back to the old law and throw out all of the new ones,” drawing a distinction between Wisconsin’s more than a century old law and “trigger” laws passed in certain states that were specifically designed to go into effect after Roe v Wade was overturned.A separate case, which the Wisconsin supreme court has also agreed to hear, would decide whether the right to abortion is protected under the state’s constitution – possibly opening the door to challenge other laws regulating abortion in the state. More

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      Swing state voters process Trump win with hope and fear: ‘This is a powder keg moment’

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      “I am still processing my feelings, but what I do know is that my country keeps finding ways to break my heart,” said Adrienne Pickett, a 42-year-old single mother of two who lives in suburban Detroit.The Kamala Harris voter lives in one of seven states that helped decide the US presidential election on Tuesday. All appear to have voted in Trump’s favor by small but significant margins .Like many Democrats in these states, Pickett is coming to terms with a victory by Donald Trump and a new political reality for America. Republicans in these states are also looking ahead – some with excitement, but not all. We spoke with voters for both parties to hear their reactions.These are Pickett’s worries for the future: “We can expect exactly what Trump promised: mass deportations, pardoning criminals who destroyed the capitol and injured and killed police officers on January 6th, vendettas carried out against his perceived enemies, and maybe most frightening of all, a Project 2025 house of horrors brought to life.”In North Carolina, meanwhile, Jess St Louis, 34, a trans woman in Greensboro who canvassed during the election with the progressive group Carolina Federation, said she was nervous and scared about the future under a second Trump presidency. But she also drew comfort from the defeat on Tuesday night of the Republican gubernatorial candidate Mark Robinson who has been embroiled in a scandal over his alleged racist and sexist comments on a chat board, which he has denied.“It’s a mixed bag,” St Louis said. “I am scared, but I’m also proud about the governor’s race and about breaking the Republican supermajority in the North Carolina House. I can feel a rising tide of folks in North Carolina actually pushing back against hatred and extremism.”There had been fears that the devastation wrought by Hurricane Helene would suppress turnout, in the western part of North Carolina, where 23 of the 25 stricken counties were won by Trump in 2020. But record-breaking early voting and the creation of makeshift polling stations in areas devastated by floods and landslides appeared to have mitigated the problem.While Trump grew his base in North Carolina’s large rural areas, Harris failed to build on Joe Biden’s showing in 2020 in the big cities, despite significant investment in ad spending and field operations.View image in fullscreenWinning should have felt better, thought Jen Dopke, 51, a retail worker from north-east Wisconsin, as the results came in on Tuesday night. Counting still continues Thursday, but Trump has a lead of about 1% – 30,000 votes out of 3.4m cast. Dopke hopes Trump will usher in an improved economy and end American involvement in foreign wars. But she isn’t celebrating yet.“I don’t feel like this was a big win, because we’re not all on the same page,” Dopke said. She watched nervously as people in her life blocked each other on social media the day after Trump secured a second term in office. Dopke supported Trump, but her friends who voted for Harris don’t know that, and she’s wary about them finding out — worried her support for the former president could jeopardize a friendship.“I [hear] what they’re saying, and I think, ‘I just totally don’t believe the same thing, and I don’t think you’re ever going to be able to hear where I’m coming from,’” said Dopke. “It’s terrifying to me. I don’t know what we’re going to do to come together.”Georgia proved a political comeuppance for Trump on Tuesday after his razor-thin loss by 11,799 votes in 2020. This year he was winning by well over 100,000 votes at press time.Alejandro Lopez, a military veteran and social services advocate from Stone Mountain, Georgia, said he was “pissed off at the Republican party for not holding up the rule of law against one of their own,” he said.“To have seen all these members of congress in support of a felon just made me sick to my stomach. The laws created by the US congress now seem to apply to the people and not the legislators themselves.”View image in fullscreenLopez, who has been a close observer of Georgia politics for years, was also with Democrats – in Georgia the Trump campaign pitted Latino citizens against the undocumented with a deftness that went unrecognized by the Harris campaign. Nationally, too, there was a collapse in Democratic turnout and a realignment of Latino voters from a Democratic bloc to a near 50-50 split, which provided the margin of Trump’s victory in swing states even as other demographic groups largely held steady.“I just did not see the Democrats engaging the Latino community as much,” Lopez said.He fears being targeted for his sexual orientation, ethnicity and politics.… “I will keep my nose down so not to create any attention to myself.”The Associated Press has yet to project a winner in Nevada, as the state continues to tally mail-in ballots in its most populous counties. But early results suggest it may be poised to select a Republican for president for the first time since George W Bush in 2004.James, 23, who had cast a vote for Kamala Harris – unbeknownst to his family and coworkers, who are die-hard Trump supporters – said he yearned for a time when he and his loved ones could have civilized conversations about politics.“I would love to say I think things will calm down after this,” said James, who didn’t want to provide his last name so he could avoid further conflict over politics. “But I my heart I know it won’t.”“This is a powder keg moment,” he added.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionIn Pennsylvania, Rick Carrick, a 69-year-old retiree, was walking his dog Elvis outside the Lackwanna county courthouse in downtown Scranton as he processed the election results on Wednesday. He said he was ready to move out of the country.“I just told my daughter, I said guarantee first thing he does when he’s sworn in is he gives everybody from January 6 a full pardon,” said Carrick.Lackawanna county, home to Scranton, was one of several key areas in Pennsylvania where Donald Trump improved his performance compared with 2020. Joe Biden carried the county by eight points in 2020, Kamala Harris carried it by about three points this year. The county was once a Democratic stronghold – Barack Obama won it by nearly 28 points in 2012.Carrick said he had no idea why Trump had been able to do so well in the county.“I’m just looking at the big picture. OK, maybe Trump is better on the economy, and to be honest with you, the first time he ran I liked a lot of his ideas, like we can’t be the bank for the entire world,” he said. “But then other things that he does, it’s like he wants to be king.”Debbie Patel, a retired attorney and progressive activist from the Milwaukee area, said she sees a “dark road ahead” – “for Americans generally”.“The first targets will be the ones he’s been vocal about, and then, because he lacks the capacity to empathize with others. it’s anybody’s guess who he will go after next.”Still, Patel is hopeful about the possibility of establishing common ground among “all people”. She cited efforts by groups like Braver Angels, a nonprofit that seeks to depolarize US politics through facilitated conversations between Democratic and Republican Party voters, as exemplary models for seeking common ground.Ali Asfari, 33, lives in Dearborn, Michigan, which has a large Arab American population. The Biden-Harris administration’s response to Israel’s war on Gaza influenced his decision to vote for Trump, but that wasn’t the only issue.“When he [Trump] was in office there were no wars, and inflation nowadays is bad because of the Joe Biden administration. But hopefully now, with the promises that Donald Trump has given us, it’s going to be better,” Asfari said.“We’re going to have a better economy. We’re going to have better family values, in schools, especially. And we’re going to make this country great again. We’re going to have the entire planet to respect this country again as usual. Because with the Biden administration, nobody had respect for us.”Asfari , who voted for Biden in 2020, added:“She did a terrible job, her and Joe. Look at the wars around the world. Look at the economy over here, with inflation. You know, we middle classes, we go for groceries, everything is double the price. The jobs, we barely find jobs, they’re barely hiring and everything is expensive. Family values went down, down, down, especially in schools. You know, they want to join the boys and girls in one bathroom. They’re doing terrible stuff. So that’s why we have to end all this kind of things and go back to Republicans.”Read more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

      Harris urges supporters to ‘never give up’

      With Trump re-elected, this is what’s at stake

      Abortion ballot measure results by state More

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      A polarized America goes to the polls: ‘I’m in a house divided’

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      America had previously always been “somebody else’s country,” said Christopher La Rose, a health researcher, as he waited just before 7am in Pine Lake, a village that’s too small for postal delivery just outside of Atlanta, Georgia.But that changed recently for La Rose, who is of Guyanese descent, when he became an American citizen. He had the jitters on Monday night, before using his first-ever vote in a US election to back Kamala Harris.View image in fullscreen“I am sincerely concerned about the way that the country could devolve if the other chap got into office,” La Rose said. “I’m concerned about the political party that has coalesced around him, and how they have, in my mind, lost their way, and I’m voting to protect my kids.”Georgia is one of the seven swing states where election results are close enough to fight over and voters in all of those states say they definitely feel fought over.At a busy polling place in Scottsdale, Arizona, the conservative youth organization Turning Point brought out a bright pink party bus adorned with “Trump train” signs, which they will use to take voters to other Scottsdale polling places if the lines become too long. The group also put up signs imploring voters to stay put: “stay in line, don’t leave your country behind,” one sign said.View image in fullscreenA man was also gathering signatures for America Pac, Elon Musk’s group that is paying circulators to sign up other people who could win a $1m prize. “Elon Musk needs our help,” the man told one voter.Musk’s controversial effort to drive turnout is late to the race. In many swing states, most people who are going to vote have already done so. More than 80 million people cast ballots before election day across the country, with 4 million in Georgia alone – 80% of Georgia’s 2020 vote total.Georgia’s in-person votes will be counted and announced about an hour after polls close at 7pmlocal time, elections officials said last week. Georgia officials have meticulously tried to avoid giving election integrity denialists something to wrap a grievance around this year. The election interference attempts of 2020 still resonate.View image in fullscreenGabriel Sterling, election operations chief for Georgia’s secretary of state, at midday on Tuesday that all polling locations were working smoothly, with an average wait – if there is a wait – of two minutes and an average check-in time of 49 seconds.Cyndi Keen, a lifelong Republican, voted a straight Republican ticket on Tuesday. “When it comes down to looking at having a better life for my children, for my grandkids and for myself, I like the Republican policies better,” she said. She thought the results will be close – and her household had voted for different candidates. “I’m in a house divided, my sweetie went the other way. He’s straight Republican but he voted for Harris.”View image in fullscreenCathy Garcia, an activist with the Working Families party from Santa Fe, New Mexico, flew to Atlanta this week. Tuesday morning with eight hours to go, she was beating on doors in Atlanta’s south-eastern suburbs, looking to put the last voter in line. She was accompanied by a far-flung team visiting from safe Democratic states – Massachusetts, California, New York – putting in work where it might count the most.They wrestled with the cellphone app showing them where to find clusters of registered voters who had not yet voted. The apartment complex in south DeKalb county gave them some density to work with, but low-income people tend to be more transient … and less likely to be at home in the middle of the day.Their effort demonstrates the effort the campaigns are making to get every last voter they can to a poll.Kamala Harris was spending the day on Tuesday at the Naval Observatory, the vice-president’s residence in Washington. The public is not expected to see the Democratic nominee until Tuesday night, where she is poised to deliver remarks at Howard University, her alma mater, in Washington DC. But she has been blitzing radio stations with calls across the country in a last-effort push for votes.Trump has ratcheted up outrage in the waning days of the election, wrapping himself and Republican voters in the politics of extreme grievance over descriptions of himself and his supporters as “garbage”, Nazis and fascists. And yet, his comments at rallies have included increasingly strident attacks on undocumented people, who he has called “animals” and “monsters”, and personal attacks on Harris.Trump partisans have cheered him on and adopted his tone.“He’s a big daddy. He’ll smack you if you’re an asshole,” said Joanne Kelchner, 77, a retiree from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who voted for Trump had harsh words for Harris. “Why is she not proud of her Brahmin heritage?” Kelchner asked. “I mean the elite class of India and pretending that she’s not Black, whatever … God bless us all.”View image in fullscreenBut partisan rancor abounds.“Donald Trump is crazy. I mean, he’s a lunatic and the people I think that vote for him are lunatics because he is crazy,” said Jeannie Strickland, a retiree from Georgia. “He’s trying to get people revved up to fight for him. I think if they put his butt in jail, like they should have done at least two years ago, it might calm him down a little bit, but they don’t do anything to him. I’m scared he’s going to win, and I might have to find an island somewhere and go live somewhere else, because he likes Hitler, and he liked the things Hitler did.”View image in fullscreenBoth sides have armies of lawyers in anticipation of legal challenges on and after election day. And law enforcement agencies nationwide are on high alert for potential violence.Tensions briefly flared outside a polling site in a library in downtown Phoenix, where a group of men decked out in American flag T-shirts had gathered to wave “Union Yes for Harris Walz” signs. As another man in a truck drove past, he hollered at the men: “Fuck you!”Angel Torres Pina, a 21-year-old who serves in the military and who voted for the first time on Tuesday, wanted politics to become less divisive and fear-based. He was somewhat nervous about voting at the library at all. “Am I making the right decisions? Am I making the wrong decisions? Are people gonna bad-talk about me because I voted for what I believe in?” said Torres Pina, an independent who voted for Harris. “I keep seeing on the news about these riots, these protests, these chaos, and it makes me a bit scared for if I’m voting right or wrong.”While many Americans have described how stressful this election is, Dawn Alter, a 50-year-old sales representative from New Berlin, Wisconsin, was in good spirits on Tuesday morning. Alter was supporting Harris, and thought the vice-president stood a chance in Wisconsin – a key swing state.Alter believes Trump has shed support here since 2020, and viewed herself as evidence: she abandoned Trump after supporting the former president in 2020, saying she was tired of the division and “negativity” he has sowed.“It’s a lot of discord, there’s too much misinformation,” said Alter. “There needs to be change and unity – I think those are the two biggest things for me.”In 2016, Wisconsin voters elected Donald Trump by less than a percentage point, and in 2020, the state flipped for Joe Biden by a similarly narrow margin. Polling suggests the presidential race in Wisconsin is essentially a toss-up, and voters were acutely aware of the uncertainty they face.View image in fullscreenMatt Steigerwald, a college lecturer from Wisconsin, said he was “cautiously optimistic”, adding: “Wisconsin is probably going to be pretty tight.” Steigerwald, who joked that he was a “bleeding-heart liberal”, said that even as a left-of-center voter, he found Trump “especially abhorrent”.“I just don’t know how you can support somebody who’s said and done so many awful things, who treats women so poorly, who treats people of different races so poorly – he’s just an awful human being from my perspective,” said Steigerwald. Additional reporting by Carter Sherman, Alice Herman, Sam Levine and Rachael LeingangRead more of the Guardian’s 2024 US election coverage

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