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      Mexico president vows to retaliate with own tariffs against Trump’s tax threat

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      Mexico’s president, Claudia Sheinbaum, has rebuked Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on Mexico, arguing the plan would do nothing to halt the flow of migrants or drugs bound for the US border, and vowing that Mexico would hit back with tariffs of its own.“One tariff would be followed by another in response, and so on until we put at risk common businesses,” Sheinbaum said, warning that tariffs would cause inflation and job losses in both countries. “What sense is there?”Sheinbaum’s comments came after Trump said on Monday that, as one of his first actions as president, he would impose a 25% tax on all imports from Mexico and Canada in an effort to stop the flow of migrants and narcotics into the United States.“This Tariff will remain in effect until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social page.It is unclear if the president-elect’s proposal would even be legal or possible, given that the three countries share a free trade agreement known as the USMCA that was negotiated during his previous term in the White House.But as analysts pointed out, Trump has never been one to abide by the rules.“Did we really think that Trump was going to become more institutional or more formal?” said Valeria Moy, a Mexican economist and director general of IMCO, a public policy analysis firm. “The Trump that the United States and the world will have, at least in the signs he’s given, is a Trump that will be more dictatorial, tougher, more emboldened.”Even if they are legally questionable, the tariffs could provide Trump with a quick win upon taking office in January, said Viri Ríos, a Mexican public policy expert.“I don’t rule out that he would implement them temporarily to give a result to his electoral base, which would be happy to see that Donald Trump is being consistent with his campaign promises,” she said. “But from that to this being a long term strategy, it seems to me that it would not be good for the United States itself.”Mexico is the United States’s top trade partner as of September, representing 15.8% of total trade. According to Ríos, a 25% tariff on Mexican goods would cost the US economy $125bn over 10 years, while costing its GDP between 0.5 and 0.74%.With such steep tariffs, US companies importing Mexican goods would undoubtedly have to raise their prices.“The main victim will be the American consumer, because at the end of the day, tariffs are more or less reflected in prices,” said Moy.That could end up costing Trump politically, given the role consumer prices played in his election win.“One of the main reasons why Trump’s campaign was successful, was that people felt that inflation had increased during Biden’s last term,” said Ríos. “So I think he’s playing with fire.”Analysts also questioned whether Trump’s plan would even have its desired impact, given that the flow of drugs to the US is driven by American demand, not by the flow of goods.“It’s a bit like scapegoating,” said Ríos. “The key to this problem isn’t in Mexico, it’s in the United States.”Ultimately, analysts viewed Trump’s proposal as a threat to force Mexico on to the negotiating table and implement policies on migration and security that could have some meaningful impact on the flow of drugs and migrants to the United States.“We’ve already seen this [from Trump] – first you threaten, then you negotiate,” said Moy. “He’s using it as a threat to sit down and negotiate and say ‘Ok, you, president of Mexico … What are you going to do to contain the flow of migrants and what are you going to do in terms of security? What are you going to do to prevent fentanyl from passing from Mexico to the United States? And if you don’t do it, I’ll put tariffs on you.’” More

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      Trump’s tariff threat sets stage for bitter global trade war

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      Donald Trump’s threat to impose steep tariffs on goods imported into the US has set the stage for a bitter global trade war, according to trade experts and economists, with consumers and companies warned to brace for steep costs.The president-elect announced on Monday night that he intended to hit Canada, Mexico and China with tariffs on all their exports to the US – until they reduce migration and the flow of drugs into the country.As officials in the three countries scrambled to respond, Keith Rockwell, a former director at the World Trade Organization, predicted that Trump’s move could spark a trade war. “The United States exports hundreds of billions of dollars worth of goods to these countries,” he said. “Anyone who expects that they will stand pat and not retaliate has not been paying attention.”China promptly suggested that both sides would lose from an escalation in economic tensions. “No one will win a trade war or a tariff war,” Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson at the Chinese embassy in Washington, wrote on X, formerly Twitter. Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s deputy prime minister, and Dominic LeBlanc, its public safety minister, touted the country’s “balanced and mutually beneficial” economic ties with the US.Hours after Trump issued the announcements on Truth Social, his social media platform, economists at ING released research that estimated his broader campaign proposals on trade – including a universal tariff of between 10% and 20% on all goods imported from overseas, and a 60% tariff on all goods from China – could cost each US consumer up to $2,400 each year.“This potential increase in consumer costs and inflation could have widespread economic implications, particularly in an economy where consumer spending accounts for 70% of all activity,” James Knightley of ING said.It is unclear whether Trump, who has described “tariff” as “the most beautiful word in the dictionary”, will follow through on this plan. Tariffs – levies paid for by the company importing foreign goods – are not popular with voters, even Trump’s voters. A Harris poll conducted for the Guardian found 69% of people believe they will increase the prices they pay.And while he threatened universal tariffs while campaigning for the White House, this proposal – a 25% duty on all goods from Mexico and Canada, and a 10% duty on China, on top of existing duties – is more targeted.“Trump’s statements clearly herald the dawn of a new era of US trade protectionism that will sweep many US trading partners into its ambit,” said Eswar Prasad, former head of the IMF’s China division. “Such tariffs will have a disruptive effect on US as well as international trade, as countries around the world jockey to soften the blow of US tariffs on their own economies and try to find ways to evade the tariffs.”On the campaign trail, Trump and his allies claimed such measures would help strengthen the US economy and “make America wealthy again”. Many economists took a different view, warning that sweeping tariffs would increase the price of goods for US consumers, and risk prompting other nations to retaliate, hitting US businesses exporting goods to the world.But in his announcements on Tuesday, Trump did not focus on the economic benefits has claimed tariffs would bring. Instead, he blamed Mexico and Canada for “ridiculous Open Borders” he alleged were prompting an immigration crisis, and China for “the massive amounts of drugs, in particular Fentanyl” arriving in the US – and pledged to impose tariffs on these countries until they addressed his concerns.“Trump apparently sees tariffs as a tool with broad uses in tackling a variety of malign external factors that have adverse effects on the US economy, society and national security,” noted Prasad, now a professor of trade policy at Cornell University.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe billionaire hedge fund manager Bill Ackman, who endorsed Trump, wrote on X that the president-elect “is going to use tariffs as a weapon to achieve economic and political outcomes which are in the best interest of America”, in a bid to deliver on his “America First” policy strategy.Making such announcements on social media “is a great way for Trump to effect foreign policy changes even before he takes office”, Ackman claimed.As Trump builds out his broader trade strategy, Rockwell, formerly of the WTO, said a 10% universal tariff would me “more manageable” than 20%. “But if you raise it 20%, that creates a different dynamic,” he said. “You’re going to see much, much less demand for these products coming in.“There will also be, without any doubt, retaliation,” he added. European officials “have got their list drawn up”, he said. “It’s the most closely guarded secret in Brussels, but it’s drawn up.”Countries will hit back with tariffs on “political pinch points”, Rockwell predicted. Under the last Trump administration, the European Union targeted US exports including Harley-Davidson bikes, Levi’s jeans and Kentucky bourbon. More

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      The Democrats’ next campaign should appeal to their base, not swing voters | Steve Phillips

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      Many people are drawing the wrong conclusions about what happened in the 2024 election. The conventional wisdom is that large swaths of population groups shifted their political allegiances to Donald Trump, propelling him to victory over Kamala Harris.A more careful reading of the data, however, shows that those conclusions are inaccurate, and the biggest problem for Democrats was a failure to turn out Democratic voters. Coming to terms with the unfounded faith in voter persuasion – at the extent of tried and true voter turnout programs – will have profound implications for the future of the Democratic party and the country.The cause of the confusion is the fact that Trump won dozens of counties across the country that voted for Joe Biden in 2020. Seeing that the Democratic margin had shrunk or evaporated in these places, most in the media rushed to report a massive national shift to the right, replete with graphics showing maps with red arrows pointing rightward.Looking more closely at the results and comparing them to the data from the 2020 election, one can see that while the counties did swing, the voters, for the most part, did not. What leaps out from a careful comparison is the finding that Democratic voter turnout fell through the floor. Trump didn’t win those counties because people switched their votes to him; he won because significant numbers of people who voted for Biden in 2020 did not vote at all in 2024.The decline in voter turnout is first visible from the simple fact that the total number of votes cast in 2024 is smaller than the number cast in 2020 (153m in 2024 versus 155m in 2020). This is despite the fact that the size of the US population has increased by 4.5 million people since the last election.It is when one takes a closer look at the underlying data that the picture comes into sharper focus. In nearly a third of the top 50 counties that flipped from Democrat to Republican, Trump’s vote actually declined from his 2020 numbers. If Democratic voters are coming over to the Republican ranks, their vote total should go up, not down. In Pinellas county, Florida, for example, Trump got nearly 7,000 fewer votes than in 2020, but the Democratic vote total plummeted by 35,000 votes.This pattern is evident in nearly all of the counties that flipped. Even in the counties where Trump’s vote increased marginally over 2020, that increase was generally dwarfed by the Democratic decline. In Erie county in the critical swing state of Pennsylvania, Trump improved on his 2020 showing by 801 votes, but the votes for Harris dropped by 2,618 votes, more than enough to have carried the county had those voters cast ballots.Just as is the case in medicine, an effective treatment requires an accurate diagnosis. The anemic Democratic voter turnout is the result of a cataclysmic failure of theory of change, strategy and spending, most notably by the Democratic Super Pac Future Forward.Super Pacs have great freedom and flexibility in that there are no limits on the size of contributions they can receive and few restrictions on their electoral activities. I helped create one of the country’s first such committees, Vote Hope, in 2007 to help Barack Obama, and our theory of change was that boosting Black voter turnout would help elect the country’s first Black president. Accordingly, we spent our money on hiring canvassers to knock on doors and buses to drive voters to the polls.Future Forward embraced the view that they could devise clever television and digital ads that would persuade Trump-leaning voters to back the Democrats. Accordingly, they poured nearly $700m into an advertising avalanche that was redundant to Harris’s ads and obviously ineffective. In a fawning New York Times profile, their effort was described as “animated by the idea that a blend of data science, political science and testing can usher in a new era of rigor in advertising”.There were seven battleground states where the parties concentrated their time, energy, and resources. Imagine if Future Forward had spent $100m in each state, hiring canvassers, investing in community-based civic engagement organizations, and funding the labor-intensive and expensive yet effective work of getting out the vote. Such a program would have boosted voter turnout, bringing back out the coalition that defeated Trump in 2020.A failure of this magnitude demands soul-searching and brutal re-assessment of prior assumptions and strategies. The work of defending and ultimately taking back the country starts now, and a sober assessment of the election results makes clear that 2024 marks the requiem for the widely held but thinly supported view that it makes more sense to invest in persuasion over the power-building program of getting out the vote.

      Steve Phillips is the founder of Democracy in Color, and author of Brown Is the New White: How the Demographic Revolution Has Created a New American Majority and How We Win the Civil War: Securing a Multiracial Democracy and Ending White Supremacy for Good More

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      Democrats decry ‘sham for justice’ after prosecutors drop Trump charges

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      Responding to news that the special counsel Jack Smith had dropped all charges against Donald Trump for his attempt to overturn the 2020 election and retention of classified information, Dan Goldman, a prosecutor turned New York Democrat and member of the House oversight committee, lamented “a shame for justice in this country”.“It establishes that Donald Trump is above the law,” Goldman told CNN. “The supreme court put him above the law [by ruling that he had ‘absolute immunity’ for official acts] but now he appears to escape full accountability for what were crimes charged by a grand jury.”Goldman rejected the argument that by re-electing Trump, the American people had acquitted him of all charges.“I think what was very clear is that people voted for Donald Trump because they thought that he was going to improve the lives of the middle class, and perhaps in addition that he would secure the border,” Goldman said. “They did not vote for him to dismantle our democracy, to attack the constitution, to politicize all of our agencies, and certainly not as a referendum on his criminal cases.“Those cases should have been played out in a court of law … and Donald Trump should not have been able to run out the clock.”Elsewhere, Aquilino Gonell, a former Capitol police sergeant who testified memorably about his experiences and injuries on 6 January 2021, when Trump sent a mob to attack Congress, lamented a simple “miscarriage of justice”.“‘No one is above the law’ is a great slogan,” added Gonell, who suffered injuries to his hands, shoulder, calf and foot, as well as psychological trauma, in the Capitol attack.To many Americans on Monday, “no one is above the law”, however, no longer seemed like a legal reality. Three weeks after Trump defeated Kamala Harris, Smith dropped 44 charges against him: four for election subversion and 40 for retention of classified records.Smith said he was following Department of Justice policy, which says a sitting president cannot be charged. He also said he was acting “without prejudice”, which meant the cases could be refiled after Trump leaves power.That was an echo of the situation in New York, where sentencing on Trump’s 34 felony convictions related to hush money payments to a porn star has been postponed. In Georgia, eight election subversion charges remain on the docket.Nonetheless, among Trump’s opponents, the mood was one of despond. The writer Tom Nichols, a conservative Trump critic, summed up: “Mission accomplished. He ran for [president] to stay out of jail, and here we are.”Steven Cheung, Trump’s spokesperson, celebrated “a major victory for the rule of law”, adding: “The American people and President Trump want an immediate end to the political weaponization of our justice system and we look forward to uniting our country.”Democrats, however, expect Trump to seek revenge, not unity – and immediate comments from both the president-elect and JD Vance, the Ohio senator and incoming vice-president, did little to calm such fears.Vance said: “If Donald J Trump had lost an election, he may very well have spent the rest of his life in prison. These prosecutions were always political. Now it’s time to ensure what happened to President Trump never happens in this country again.”In a post to his own social media platform, Trump said all cases against him, including civil suits in New York resulting in multimillion-dollar penalties, were “empty and lawless”, orchestrated by his Democratic foes.“It was a political hijacking,” Trump said, “and a low point in the history of our country that such a thing could have happened, and yet, I persevered, against all odds, and WON.” More

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      Ireland prices corporation tax loss from Trump policies at €10bn

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      Ireland’s prime minister has said the country could lose €10bn (£8.35bn) in corporate tax if just three US multinationals were repatriated to America under a hostile Donald Trump administration.His remarks come just days after Trump nominated the Wall Street investor Howard Lutnick to lead the Department of Commerce with direct responsibility for trade.While Trump has already warned he would impose tariffs on EU imports, Lutnick has singled out Ireland for criticism saying “it is nonsense that Ireland of all places runs a trade surplus at our expense”.Simon Harris said if he was returned as taoiseach in Friday’s general election, he would immediately seek engagement with Trump. He has also proposed an early EU-US trade summit to avert damage in trade ties with the overall European trade bloc.“If three US companies left Ireland it could cost us €10bn [£8.5bn] in corporation tax,” Harris said on Monday while canvassing in Dundrum, Dublin.“I’m not pre-empting it, I’m not saying that’s going to happen, I’m not predicting it, but that is the level of risk that our economy is exposed to,” he said.Ten multinationals account for 60% of Ireland’s corporate tax receipts, with Microsoft, which books some global as well as EU revenues through Ireland, thought to be the single biggest contributor.Ireland’s goods trade surplus with the US is now a record €35bn with Irish goods exports up by 8% in the first eight months of 2024, boosted by the pharmaceutical and chemical sectors.Goods exported to the US totalled €45.5bn between January and August, according to the government’s Central Statistics Office, compared with imports of €11bn for the same period.Harris said he had no reason to believe that Trump was not “serious about pursuing the policies that he has campaigned on”, which includes repatriating jobs and profits that he believes should be homegrown.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionHe also referenced the Wall Street Journal article on what it said was the “US tax system blows a windfall into Ireland” fuelling savings into not just one but two sovereign wealth funds, including a €14bn windfall in back tax from Apple on the foot of a European court of justice ruling.“The Wall Street Journal front page gives an indication here” that Trump is intent on action, said Harris.However, he said Ireland would be prepared and would cope just as it did with “Brexit, Covid [and the] cost of living crisis”. More

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      Keir Starmer played the China card in Rio – and sent a message to a hawkish Donald Trump | Simon Tisdall

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      Both were lawyers before they became politicians, but that’s where the similarities between Keir Starmer and Richard Nixon end. The former US president resigned in disgrace at the height of the Watergate corruption scandal exactly 50 years ago. Britain’s prime minister may have been unwise to accept free tickets from Arsenal FC – but he’s not in Nixon’s league.Except, perhaps, was there just a touch of Tricky Dicky about Starmer’s meeting with China’s president, Xi Jinping, at last week’s G20 summit in Rio de Janeiro? Watergate aside, Nixon is famous for his groundbreaking 1972 visit to Beijing, which opened the way to normalised relations between the US and Red China.Nixon’s surprise démarche had another purpose: to show the Soviet Union, America’s cold war adversary, that the US and China could act in alliance against Moscow, which broke with Beijing in 1961. Nixon’s move, known as “playing the China card”, had significant geopolitical consequences. Starmer, dealt a weaker hand, had no aces up his sleeve.All the same, the prime minister’s eagerness to reset what, under previous governments, became a very rocky relationship was striking. Starmer said he sought “consistent, durable, respectful, predictable” ties. “A strong relationship is important for both of our countries and for the broader international community,” he said.It was a pointed statement. Doubtless Starmer was thinking primarily about boosting UK trade, investment and growth. But were his words also designed, Nixon-style, to send a message to a third party – namely, Donald Trump?skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe US president-elect is a vociferous foe of China, which he believes threatens American global hegemony. He plans to impose sweeping, punitive tariffs on Chinese imports, re-igniting the trade war he began in his first term. Conservative backers, such as commentator Ionut Popescu, egg him on. Containment of China must be “the driving principle of US foreign policy in the new cold war”, Popescu wrote.Leading China hawks are being offered senior positions in the new administration, which takes office on 20 January. They include Marco Rubio as secretary of state. As a senator, Rubio railed against human rights abuses in Xinjiang and the suppression of Hong Kong’s democracy – dramatised by last week’s jailings of activists and the show trial of British media entrepreneur Jimmy Lai. Rubio reviles “the wealth and corrupt activities of the leadership of the Chinese Communist party”.Trump’s choice of Pete Hegseth, a rightwing TV personality, as defence secretary, and Michael Waltz, a fierce defender of Taiwan’s independence, as national security adviser, reinforces a strong anti-China bias. These men constitute what the New York Times calls “a new class of cold warrior, guns pointed at China”. And, like Trump, they will be unimpressed by Starmer’s cosying up to Xi.Starmer surely knows that, which makes his repositioning all the more interesting. Many in Britain, Labour and Tories, share American concerns. A House of Commons Library briefing in July traced a “sharp deterioration” in China ties in recent years, pointing in particular to Beijing’s “expansive” foreign policy and cyber-attacks and espionage in the UK. It noted Britain formally deems China a “systemic competitor” and “the greatest state-based threat to the UK’s economic security”.Speaking in Rio, Xi was adamant that his stance on Taiwan, democracy and other core issues would not change. But he also offered reassurance with a smiley face, stressing that he sought “stable, healthy and sustainable” relations with the west – words that, like Starmer’s, may have been partly aimed at Trump.Very deep differences remain. But Chinese and UK geostrategic interests may actually be converging in the face of Trump’s prospectively disruptive, costly, dangerous return. Climate change and post-pandemic health are two key areas of cooperation. Ongoing confrontation between the world’s top two economic and military powers would not be to Britain’s advantage. If Trump, the disquieting American, cannot be befriended and influenced, perhaps Xi can?Other countries are making similar calculations. Germany, with its huge Chinese exports, wants to keep things friendly. The EU prefers “de-risking” to open, Trump-like ruptures, though it is divided and inconsistent. Hungary and Greece hold China close, Lithuania feuds. Europe as a whole would suffer greatly in any US-initiated global tariff war.Emmanuel Macron was another leader making nice with Xi in Rio. France’s president raised China’s support for Russia’s war in Ukraine, then claimed, mysteriously, to have achieved a “convergence of views”. Distancing himself from Trump, Macron said France would continue to promote European strategic autonomy, “precisely to be able to talk with China in complete independence”.Not to be left out, Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, set aside thorny bilateral disputes and, like Starmer, shook hands with Xi on a new start. Australia, too, valued steady “calibrated” ties. Trade was flourishing again, Albanese said. “Dialogue is critical, and we’ve made encouraging progress.” Jolly Xi hugged him right back (figuratively speaking).All this must be music to Xi’s ears. He has long dreamed of China supplanting the US as the 21st century’s foremost superpower. Beset by economic problems and a “wolf warrior diplomacy” backlash, he has launched a foreign charm offensive. Last month, he patched up a festering Himalayan border dispute with India, an old rival wooed by the US.Trump’s victory was initially assessed as bad news for China. It may be the exact opposite. He’s unpredictable. His views change. But if “America first” means putting everyone else last, if Trump’s isolationism, aggressive nationalism and trade war threats end up screwing America’s allies, then those allies, including Starmer, may ultimately swallow their misgivings and look elsewhere for reliable friends – if only to achieve some balance. If Xi’s dream of dominance comes true, he will know who to thank. Donald Trump: Making China Great Again. 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