<....Paul Shumaker, a Republican strategist in North Carolina, told me he thought the discrepancy I was witnessing was a result of more efficient targeting. He noted that he and several other longtime GOP voters he knows were seeing their mailboxes filled with attacks on a Republican candidate for the state supreme court—a sign of wasteful spending.

“I’m not gonna go into too much detail on this, because this is where I think Democrats have missed the mark, and I don’t want to help try to start educating them on how to quit missing the mark,” he said. “Other Republican voting efforts are more data driven and more strategic in who they talk to and how they talk to them. Democrats have not seemed to have dialed in on that.”

What Trump is doing is holding a lot of rallies in the state. These events are not cheap, but they are cheaper than running a large ground game, and they are powerful motivators for Trump voters. At a rally in Greenville, North Carolina, this month, I spoke with Dawn Metts, who lives some 45 minutes away, in Kinston. A friend got tickets to the rally and then invited her. “I said, ‘Heck yeah, we’re there, baby!’” she told me. She’d camped out overnight to make sure she got a good spot in the arena. Metts was feeling optimistic about Trump’s chances.

“As long as he wins, I feel good about it,” she said. “I think he’s gonna win.”

Turnout, like football, is a game of inches. Both campaigns’ plans for North Carolina were disrupted in late September, when Hurricane Helene ravaged the western part of the state. Devastation from the storm upended preparations by election officials and partisan operatives, but, more important, meant that people who might otherwise have been focused on politics were focused on finding food, water, and a safe place to sleep.

The area affected by the storm is predominantly Republican; a quarter of Trump’s 2020 vote in North Carolina came from counties declared federal disaster areas. But Helene also hit Buncombe County, home to the liberal enclave of Asheville, hard, and Democrats there expressed concerns about their ability to turn out votes, according to the political outlet NOTUS.

Focusing on the minutiae of field offices or storm effects can be a distraction. Turnout can swing only a few votes here and a few votes there. Yet the 2024 election appears to be close enough that any of these factors could decide who wins North Carolina and, with it, the White House.>

<The hurricane split pine trees like toothpicks. It chewed up chain link fences and laid highway billboards flat on their faces. It peeled the roof off Tropicana Field, where the Tampa Bay Rays play, and uncorked dozens of tornadoes, including one that ripped through a retirement community in St. Lucie County, Florida, killing six.

By the time Milton was finally over the Atlantic, it had left some $50 billion worth of damage behind, at least 24 dead, and one-third of the state's gas stations empty.

But in a state where residents have become inured to the existential threat under which they live, Milton was, in the words of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, "not the worst-case scenario."

I visited Florida in October, after the hurricane - and in the midst of an accelerating climate crisis and reproductive health crisis both of which DeSantis doesn't just refuse to acknowledge, but seems intent on actively making even worse.

DeSantis has barred local governments from implementing heat protections for laborers, and signed into law a bill that strikes all mentions of "climate change" from state law. The policy was adapted from one pioneered by his predecessor, Rick Scott, who banned the phrases "climate change" and "global warming" from state correspondence. DeSantis has separately worked to discourage financial firms from factoring environmental risks into their investment decisions.

Asked, shortly after Milton, if he would attribute the storm - the second most intense hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico - to "climate change," DeSantis said bluntly: "I don't subscribe to your religion." It was an interesting way to put it, as DeSantis appears hell-bent on imposing his religion, as it relates to abortion, on Floridians.

This November, two of the most consequential races for reproductive freedom in the country are taking place in Florida. The first is Amendment 4, the popular initiative that would enshrine the right to an abortion in the state constitution, and the second is a key Senate race.

Abortion has never lost when it has appeared on the ballot since the Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion in 2022 - even in staunch Republican strongholds like Kansas, Ohio, and Kentucky. But this November, there's a real possibility that Florida puts that winning streak to an end. And if Amendment 4 loses, it won't just be the roughly 4 million women of reproductive age who live there who lose, but millions of other women across the South who lose too.

Passing Amendment 4 is a tall order. For one thing, the threshold to amend Florida's constitution is extraordinarily high: Ballot measures require the support of 60 percent of the electorate, the highest bar for any abortion-related measure to go before voters so far. For another, DeSantis - the man who signed back-to-back abortion bans into law here - has thrown the full force of the state government behind coordinated efforts to tank the measure.

On the same ballot this November is a Senate race that will be critical for Democrats to clinch in order for the party to have any hope of making good on their promise to restore the protections of Roe v. Wade at the federal level any time soon. That race looks even tougher to win, even though it shouldn't be.

The Democratic candidate, former Congresswoman Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, is challenging sitting Sen. Rick Scott, the state's deeply and uniquely unpopular former governor. And even though Scott doesn't appear to be putting in much effort to win this election, he has managed to maintain relatively consistent lead in polls - anywhere between 4 and 10 points - according to tracking by 538.

How is it possible that Florida - a state whose voters hold some of the most supportive views of abortion in the country, and a state that, historically, provided more abortions than almost any other (just behind California, New York, and Illinois) - could end up in this position?

"There is a combination of a [fatalistic] mindset in Florida that has squashed out hope, and a difference in infrastructure: You have 30 years of Republicans investing very heavily in sophisticated infrastructure in Florida, and in on the Democratic side, it's atrophied in the last 20, with the exception of the Obama campaigns," says Aaron Bos-Lun, deputy executive director for the national group Men4Choice, which is organizing and mobilizing its members in support in both Amendment 4 and Mucarsel-Powell's Senate campaign.

"I think that the real question here - and it's an interesting test for democracy - is: Can political operations funded by large amounts of money, that create a sense of inevitability, defeat someone like Debbie [Mucarsel-Powell], whose views are more in line with the people's? Can that defeat something like Amendment 4 that is overwhelmingly supported by the people?".....>

<...."It's not a question if people want this amendment. People want this amendment," Bos-Lun says. "It's a question of whether the tricks and the lies and the use of the infrastructure they built, both within the state [government] and their campaign activity, is going to be enough to drown out the will of the people."

THE HEIGHT OF HURRICANE SEASON has always coincided with the height of campaign season in Florida, but as stronger hurricanes have become more frequent in the state, they've become an unavoidable feature of the political landscape. On a practical level, a major hurricane means door-to-door canvassing operations are suspended for an unknown period of time, organizers end up with fewer days to register voters, and there's the reality that, as people return to their homes, their thoughts are consumed by clearing debris, filing insurance claims, and not - in most cases - the political campaigns competing for their attention.

Instead, campaigns are, increasingly, folding relief efforts into their broader strategy. On a Tuesday in mid-October the week after Milton, Debbie Mucarsel-Powell's schedule included a stop at the Democratic Party of Pinellas, a small office packed with stacks of diapers, boxes of mini flashlights, disposable plates, plastic forks and knives, and other disaster relief supplies. She's here for a conversation about climate change and how it is worsening Florida's looming insurance crisis, which began when her opponent, Rick Scott, was governor. After this she's dropping supplies off at another Democratic campaign office, before heading to Tropicana Field to give out meals to Floridians affected by the storm.

Mucarsel-Powell was born in Ecuador, and moved to the United States as a child. She worked her way through high school and college, eventually rising to become the first South American immigrant elected to Congress - a hopeful story in a state with 5 million immigrants, including 3 million from Latin America. A native Spanish speaker, Mucarsel-Powell represented the Miami area for two terms in the House before she was tossed from office in 2022 by the red wave that washed across Florida, even as voters furious over the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision kept Democrats in power most everywhere else. (The midterm races were expected to wipe out Democrats across the country, but instead they kept the Senate, and only narrowly lost the House.)

But even more compelling than Mucarsel-Powell's personal story is what her potential victory would represent: the possibility of a Democratic majority in the Senate big enough to finally codify federal protections for abortion. Hers is one of three Hail Mary races - along with Texas and Montana - that national Democrats are shoveling money into in the last stretch of the 2024 election, in hopes of maintaining their fragile grip on the Senate majority as obstructionists like Kyrsten Sinema and Joe Manchin retire.

Like Colin Allred, her counterpart in Texas, Mucarsel-Powell is running against a deeply disliked Republican who lacks support even from members of his own party.

Rick Scott is widely despised in Florida: A recent survey found 49 percent of Floridians hold a negative view of him, with a scant 35 percent viewing him favorably. Among independents his rating is even worse - 58 percent disapproval to just 28 percent approval. Even Republicans are lukewarm: 59 percent of them approve of Scott's record, while a quarter disapprove. There isn't anywhere in the state - including Florida's conservative panhandle - that Scott's approval rating isn't underwater, but it is worst in South Florida, where, the survey says, his approval rating is -26 points.

None of this should be surprising to those who know much about Scott, a former top executive at a hospital chain found liable for what was then the largest Medicare fraud case in history. The $300 million golden parachute he accepted on his way out helped Scott to purchase his first public office: He ran for governor in the Tea Party wave, spending $150 million of his own money and railing against the Affordable Care Act. As governor, he signed legislation that hastened the state's current property insurance crisis, lowering coverage and increasing rates for private property insurance companies while working to move Floridians off the state's public property insurance program.....>

<....Scott appears confident in his position this year. Unlike his previous races, he has barely spent any money on this year's campaign: Scott spent $64 million to dispatch Bill Nelson in 2014. This year he's spent just $24.5 million. He's not getting outside help either: Both the Senate Leadership Fund, Mitch McConnell's elections piggy bank, and the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the fund overseen by Sen. Steve Daines (a member of McConnell's leadership team), have stayed on the sidelines. In fact, Republicans and their allies have spent the least amount on Florida of any Senate race this cycle - just $10 million, compared to say $148 in Ohio - even though, on paper, it should represent one of the most competitive matchups.

As unpopular as he is in Florida, Scott keeps getting reelected. The problem is that the Democratic Party has all but imploded in the once-competitive state. Once upon a time, Florida was a state split almost evenly between Republicans and Democrats. Democrats famously lost the presidential election in Florida by hundreds of votes in 2000, after the Supreme Court stopped the recount, but even as recently as 2018, the state was still evenly matched. That's the year DeSantis defeated Andrew Gillum by half a percentage point, or less than 33,000 votes.

"When you lose by 30,000 votes, you can pick any data point and be like: If only we had done better with left-handed, red-headed college professors, we would have won the election. But, really, we lost the election in South Florida," says Joshua Karp, Gillum's deputy campaign manager that year. "Turnout in Broward County and Miami-Dade was s***ty in 2018."

Since then, however, the longtime swing state has shifted dramatically to the right. After winning by a narrow margin, DeSantis transformed the state into a grievance-fueled laboratory for Republicans' regressive agenda. New residents who moved to South Florida during the Covid pandemic - enticed, in part by DeSantis' rejection of mask and vaccine mandates - seem to have helped chip away at Democrats' margins in their former strongholds.

Part of the logic behind Mucarsel-Powell's candidacy is that she is well-positioned to help shore up support in the beleaguered stronghold. "Florida Democrats have needed to focus more on Miami-Dade and with Debbie, we have a nominee who can do it right. All of her ads are in English and in Spanish… We've never tried this: having a candidate from Miami."

Karp sees signs of hope in the facts that Scott has never won a race by more than 1 percent of the vote, and he's never run in a year with a high-turnout presidential election. And, of course, there's the fact that Mucarsel-Powell's race is taking place amid another, expertly-organized and well-funded campaign working to turn out an army of pro-choice voters: Organizers behind Amendment 4 will be spending $100 million dollars in their effort to get 60 percent of voters to the polls. If they can do that, it could be good news for Mucarsel-Powell, who only needs a plurality of votes to beat Scott.

FLORIDIANS WHO HAVE SURVIVED under the increasing threat of hurricanes, as well as rising sea levels and property insurance rates, are now contending with a different threat to their existence: an artificial disaster manufactured almost single-handedly by Ron DeSantis - one that is having devastating consequences for families like Deborah and Lee Dorbert.

Deborah Dorbert was five months pregnant with her second child, when she learned his kidneys and lungs were not developing properly. Her doctors diagnosed her son with Potter syndrome, a condition that meant he would not survive more than a few hours after birth. They recommended inducing her labor early to terminate the pregnancy, but, because of a 15-week abortion ban championed by DeSantis, she was not able to get the care that she needed in Florida. She and her husband couldn't afford to leave the state, and they feared legal repercussions if they did. Deborah ended up carrying her son, Milo, for three additional months, dreading labor while planning his funeral. He lived for 94 minutes. The family - including their four-year-old son, Kaiden - is still processing the trauma.

That was before DeSantis replaced Florida's 15-week ban with an even more regressive 6-week ban.

The Dorberts are one of the families supporting Amendment 4, and they agreed to share their story in television ads for the campaign to enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. Caroline, whose last name Rolling Stone agreed to withhold for privacy, is another: Caroline was pregnant with her second child when she began experiencing problems speaking. She was diagnosed with glioblastoma, the deadliest form of brain cancer, and told she could only begin treatment when she was no longer pregnant. She was able to get an abortion in Florida, before DeSantis' first abortion ban went into effect....>

<....Like the Dorberts, Caroline shared her experience in a TV ad supporting Amendment 4, a cautionary tale about how abortion care is more difficult, if not impossible, for cancer patients like herself to obtain under Florida's current law.

DeSantis' office reportedly went nuclear over the ad, drafting a cease-and-desist letter that it ordered Florida Department of Health's general counsel, John Wilson, to send to any stations airing the ad. The letter called Caroline's assertions "false" and "dangerous," and the ad itself a "sanitary nuisance," and threatened criminal penalties against any stations that did not take it down within 24 hours.

(Wilson resigned a week after sending the first letter, he later said in an affidavit, to avoid being forced to send additional letters to other television stations. "A man is nothing without his conscience," Wilson wrote in his resignation letter. "It has become clear in recent days that I cannot join you on the road that lies before the agency.")

Floridians Protecting Freedom - the group behind Amendment 4 - sued the state, saying the threats amounted to "viewpoint discrimination." Chief U.S. District Judge Mark E. Walker of the Northern District of Florida agreed, blocking the DeSantis administration from issuing any more such threats. "To keep it simple for the State of Florida: it's the First Amendment, stupid," he wrote as he issued an injunction.

The threat letters, though, are just one component of a full-scale assault DeSantis has mounted to take down Amendment 4. Before it was officially placed on the ballot, he worked with the Heritage Foundation to add language to the ballot measure implying that relegalizing abortion would have a negative fiscal impact on the state. His election police have made house calls to individuals who signed the petition to place Amendment 4 on the ballot - a list, by the way, that included roughly 150,000 Republicans.

State agencies have been spending millions of dollars in public money on TV and radio ads peddling misinformation about the measure, and the state also put up a website that claims Amendment 4 "threatens women's safety." DeSantis' official Faith and Community Initiative has promoted campaign stops by a "No on 4" bus tour.

All of that was before Florida Secretary of State's Office of Election Crimes and Security published a lengthy report accusing organizers of submitting "large number of forged signatures or fraudulent petitions" - the report was released in October, just weeks before the election, and months after organizers paid the state of Florida to validate those signatures.

Alan Lawson, a former Florida Supreme Court justice, has filed a lawsuit using the report as basis to declare Amendment 4 null and void - even if the proposal is ratified by voters. (Lawson has declined to say exactly who is financing the suit, describing his client as an "angel financier;" the DeSantis administration has paid Lawson's law firm $838,000 since he retired from the court in 2022.)

"This is unprecedented," says Anna Eskamani, a state representative who has advocated against DeSantis' abortion bans. "To threaten that they're going to potentially try to invalidate election results? This is fascism. It is really unsettling, regardless of your position on Amendment 4, and everyone should express concern."

She adds: "It's every agency, every entity, all this public money is being weaponized in ways that are really, really unsettling, undemocratic, and everyone should, should be concerned. It erodes our democracy. It erodes trust in the public institutions. And it demonstrates how far DeSantis is willing to go, and if he gets away with it, it just gives permission for other politicians to do the same."....>

<....The most confounding thing about DeSantis' attempt to tank Amendment 4 is the pitch is broadly popular with Floridians: A September poll showed the measure attracting support from 76 percent of voters.

And it's not just women in Florida who would be impacted: The state, surrounded by other states with onerous bans, is one of the few with any remaining clinics that provide abortions. Even after the imposition of DeSantis' initial 15-week ban, the number of abortions performed in Florida increased in the first six months of 2023 compared to 2020, according to a survey by the Guttmacher Institute, whose experts attribute the increase to the even more onerous bans passed by neighboring states.

DeSantis, she says, sees Amendment 4's popularity as a direct threat to his political future. "He sees [his abortion bans] as being a major, major component to his ability to be relevant in the Republican Party," she says. "He holds this personal viewpoint 100 percent. But I do think a bigger part of it is this risk to his political career, and I think that's fundamentally why we're seeing every agency be weaponized in this way."

"Losing to Trump already hurt his political future," Eskamani says. "He and others have tried to paint Florida as the promised land for Republicans. The Republican Party of Florida chairman said, ‘There will be no elected Democrats in Florida.' That's their attitude. That's the arrogance, that is the power-hungry political agenda they are setting for themselves, and a successful Amendment 4 - and Amendment 3, but I think more so Amendment 4 - puts an end to that entire narrative."

The question is whether or not voters in Florida are committed to delivering that message to DeSantis and Rick Scott - or whether they're too demoralized, too busy putting their lives back together after another destructive hurricane season to show up.

"When you think about the everyday voter, they don't have power, they lost their home, they're experiencing flooding. They're going through a lot of real life stress and chaos and trying to get their life back, out of survival mode, into a place of stability," Eskamani says. "That just takes time.">

<Donald Trump has a taste for hyperbole. But if he wins Tuesday, he will have pulled off the greatest comeback in American political history. What other man could survive two impeachments, a congressional committee investigation stacked against him, two special prosecutors, dozens of state and federal felony indictments and opposition from a significant chunk of his own party, including his former vice president and a chief of staff?

But in a democracy, the first question to ask about an election is this: What are the American people telling us?

In our system “we the people” are the ultimate arbiter of a candidate’s fitness for office. But while polite society deems Mr. Trump beyond the pale, he retains an inconvenient popularity with racial and ethic minorities—e.g., black men and Latinos—that Democrats regard as rightfully theirs and most Republicans never really appealed to. When Democrats have to bring out Barack Obama to lecture African-American men about their insufficient enthusiasm for Ms. Harris, it means Mr. Trump has upset the traditional alignments.

One temptation, at least for Never Trump Republicans, is to read a Trump victory as a sign that his voters are low-IQ dupes bamboozled by Mr. Trump’s populism. Of course, if Mr. Trump loses, they will take it as a sign they were right all along and that the American people finally came to their senses.

That’s more charitable than the Democrats’ take heading into Election Day: Not only are they stupid, they’re a bunch of Nazis.

As many have noted, this line of attack started with Hillary Clinton, who at a 2016 Manhattan campaign fundraiser featuring a performance by Barbra Streisand famously dismissed half of Mr. Trump supporters as “a basket of deplorables . . . racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamophobic—you name it.”

At first Joe Biden looked as though he was rejecting attacks on Trump voters, promising instead to unify the nation. But in 2022 he used a prime-time address in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall to denounce MAGA Republicans as threats to the nation who “fan the flames of political violence.” Today he and Ms. Harris both say Mr. Trump is a fascist.

The unpopular record of the Biden-Harris administration certainly has made Mr. Trump a more plausible candidate. But his campaign has also benefited from a constant stream of snide and disdainful anti-Trump news articles, television panels and declarations by so-called political experts. The memo to these elites from MAGA-hat-wearing voters is this: Your condescension comes through loud and clear.

Trump supporters have mostly reacted with humor, because they aren’t as self-serious as their self-appointed “betters.” Again this began with Mrs. Clinton. The deplorables themselves happily embraced the label. We saw it again last week after the press made a huge stink over a comedian’s idiotic crack about Puerto Rico being a floating island of garbage—then covered for President Biden when he repeated the slur by saying Mr. Trump’s supporters were the only garbage he could see. The gaffe launched a thousand memes, as Republicans started dressing up in garbage bags, and Mr. Trump himself addressed a rally wearing a reflective vest.

So maybe what Americans who vote for Trump are saying is that they don’t believe the whole lot of you: the press that created a narrative of nonexistent Russian collusion, the scientists and health experts who misled us about Covid, the 51 former intelligence officials who released a statement three weeks before the 2020 election saying the Hunter Biden laptop had “the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation,” the federal and state prosecutors who tried to kill the former president’s re-election by piling up criminal indictments, the FBI that lied to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court in an application for a warrant to spy on Trump campaign adviser Carter Page, etc.

Whatever Mr. Trump’s offenses, his voters have concluded that Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are worse, if only because they can count on the media and many of the nation’s most important institutions to back them up.

Trump voters also don’t like being called transphobic because they oppose letting boys play in girls’ sports. They don’t like when Mark Cuban says the only women who could be for Mr. Trump are weak or stupid. Or when the president insists Bidenomics is a smashing success and they would know that if they were only smart enough to appreciate how good they have it.

Mr. Trump doesn’t look down on these Americans, which is why he can work a McDonald’s window or ride in a garbage truck though he never did those jobs growing up. A popular meme features a stern-looking Mr. Trump over the tag line, “They’re not really after me. They’re after you. I’m just in the way.”

<From media claims that we are a hopelessly divided country to ceaseless personal attacks on the presidential candidates’ characters and track records, it’s not surprising that most folks believe the American electorate is more polarized than ever. A closer look at the two parties’ respective platforms, however, reveals a story of a homogeneous citizenry, and a nation unified in its temperament and values.

Political polarization oscillates back and forth depending on various social and political factors, both domestic and international. Since the mid-2000s, the Democratic and Republican parties have tended in opposite directions along the political spectrum on a variety of issues. Nevertheless, in this election, we are witnessing a return of both parties and their presidential candidates towards centrist political positions.

Let’s start with illegal immigration. Donald Trump has emphasized his prioritization of border security. And Kamala Harris has followed suit with a pledge to increase resources and personnel, to stem the tide of unlawful border-crossings. Whereas Trump has stated his clear intentions to deport those who have entered this country illegally, Harris’s plans have been more ambiguous. She has been reticent to use the word “deport,” with all its heavy-handed implications, yet it is difficult to imagine the societal and legal ramifications of granting instant citizenship to tens of millions of illegal immigrants.

On second amendment rights, an issue classically touted by the GOP, both Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, have gone to great lengths to demonstrate their affinity for personal gun ownership and usage. On health care, Trump and the Republican Party have made little effort to overturn ObamaCare, and Harris has backtracked from her prior position in favor of a single-payer system. Thus, these two perennial battles have been relegated to the background.

Despite attempts by Democrats to label the GOP as homophobic, sexist, racist, antisemitic and Islamophobic, the party has celebrated its commitment to equality and diversity. Given the libertarian spirit of many Republicans, there has been no serious attempt to overturn same-sex marriage. The final contender for the Republican presidential race was a woman, Nikki Haley, and the party convention featured a host of female speakers.

And it is hard to deploy the racism card when Trump appoints a running mate whose wife is neither white nor Christian, and proudly displays Usha Vance as a symbol of American success. Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, Harris and the Democratic Party have notably stopped employing the canard that it is racist to have a well-funded and effective police force.

Republicans in Congress passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, and the gargantuan efforts of Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) and others highlighted the antisemitic climate on many campuses today, even forcing several university presidents to resign. Arab and Muslim Americans no longer identify singularly with the Democratic Party. Indeed, in recent weeks many prominent Muslims have endorsed Trump. In addition to his accomplishments in fostering Middle East peace and regional stability, conservative social values are resonating with this demographic.

On trade and economic issues, Trump has been labeled protectionist and isolationist. However, the Biden administration did not remove any of the restrictions placed on Chinese imports under its predecessor. While Trump likes to focus on populist notions of boosting domestic industry, the truth is that America did not start this trade war. The reason for the parties’ consensus vis-à-vis China is that it has never been a fair player in the international market.

Despite its ascension to the WTO, China has managed to sidestep its global agreements and commitments. When Donald Trump promises to boost tariffs on Chinese goods, he is only leveling the playing field to avoid a Chinese takeover of the American economy. And in other economic news, Harris seems to have backtracked on her opposition to fracking, while fiscal conservative tea party voices in the GOP have quieted their alarm bells of a decade ago....>

<....Support for Ukraine was a line in the sand differentiating the two finalists in the Republican Party presidential race. After the dust settled, however, Trump and even his more isolationist running-mate JD Vance have both drifted closer to the center, decrying Russian aggression, and signaling their support for a free Ukraine.

While the two presidential candidates may not be on exactly the same page regarding Israel, they have both emphatically declared, and undeniably demonstrated, which side America is on. The State of Israel maintains bipartisan support in a way unmatched by any other country on the planet. Trump can point proudly to his unprecedented efforts and successes at normalization between Israel and Arab countries. And the Democratic convention’s refusal to include the pro-Palestinian voice is likewise a sign of the party’s unconditional commitment to Israel and its people.

While abortion has been a polarizing issue in America, the gap between the two candidates’ positions is less striking. At the behest of Donald Trump, the Republican Party softened its position on abortion. The final party platform only opposes late-term abortion. Trump has expressed his opposition to a nationwide abortion ban. And the party platform commits to advancing prenatal care as well as access to birth control and in vitro fertilization. Meanwhile, the Democratic Party has shifted its terminology away from the strong language of “pro-choice,” preferring to use words like “reproductive rights.” This shift similarly suggests a move towards more centrist and inclusive language that would appeal to a broader swath of the American public.

The greatest issue dividing the candidates may be broadly dubbed “wokeism.” While conservative pundits criticized the presidential debate moderators, perhaps the better critique concerns not what they said to Trump, but rather, what they did not say to Harris. Where was the question, “How do you feel about transgender athletes?” The vast majority of Americans today are opposed to biological males competing in female sports. Or appearing in female locker rooms.

In addition, opposition to arcane diversity, equity and inclusion regulations that stymie growth, creativity and prosperity is on the rise. Companies that experimented with woke practices and marketing saw their revenues plummet. Americans are tired of identity politics, cancel culture and having their speech policed.

The people of this blessed country simply want to see a return to traditional, patriotic American values. The candidate who is seen to represent these values will be the next president.>

<A senior adviser to current US Senate hopeful Kari Lake has called for journalists to be “sent to the gulag” over a seemingly mundane conversation one reporter recounted having with a Democratic election canvasser getting out the vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.

Pressed on the issue, top GOP operative Caroline Wren — who was intimately involved with the January 6, 2021 “March to Save America” rally that incited the subsequent riot at the US Capitol — referred to the media as the “enemy of the people,” disparaging reporters as humorless drones who can’t take a joke and reiterating her wish to see them imprisoned in labor camps if Donald Trump retakes the White House.

Wren posted her original comment Sunday night on X, in response to a tweet by Brahm Resnik, a journalist at Phoenix, Arizona NBC affiliate KPNX/12 News, who said he had answered a knock on his door at home a few minutes earlier.

“Convo w Dem canvasser: ‘Is (your son) at home?’” Resnik’s tweet read. “Me: ‘No. He moved out of state several years ago. How many doors have you knocked?’ Her: ‘Thousands. We’re down to voters who moved or dead people.’ #BattlegroundAZ”

While others shared similar experiences, with one area canvasser saying he had come across a “[l]ot of empty houses, folks who had moved etc,” Wren apparently interpreted things quite differently, tweeting, “Brahm Resnik just out here blatantly promoting election fraud. He should be the first journalist sent to the gulag.”

When The Independent asked Wren on Monday to comment on the post, she first texted three “rolling on the floor laughing” emojis, followed by a swipe at the media at large.

“I know humor is lost on journalists, but the gulag reference is a running joke among those of us with a sense of humor,” Wren replied.

In response to a follow-up query about how this sort of talk might be misconstrued as a call to action rather than a joke, amid Donald Trump’s unceasing rhetoric about the press being “the enemy of the people,” and saying at a recent rally that he wouldn’t mind if the reporters covering the event were to get shot, Wren texted back, “The press are the enemy of the people.”

“Where has Trump said he wants to put journalist [sic] in the gulag?” Wren wrote. “If he does, I hope Brahm is first.”

To the notion of reporters being assassinated for doing their jobs, Wren responded by texting an “eye-roll” emoji, followed by, “Thoughts and prayers.”

Resnik declined to comment.

Trump has long applauded the specter of violence against members of the media. Over the course of his political career, Trump has described a reporter getting hit with a police officer’s rubber bullet as “a beautiful sight,” basked in reports of then-GOP Rep. Greg Gianforte’s body slamming a journalist in 2018, has openly fantasized about jailing journalists who protected the identities of their sources, and regularly turns his rally crowds against reporters there to cover the goings-on. In the past eight weeks alone, Trump launched more than 100 attacks against the press, according to Reporters Without Borders (RSF).

“Trump’s tirades against the press have become so commonplace that we risk not even noticing them anymore,” the nonprofit said in a statement. “But the regularity of Trump’s abuse only adds to the urgency to call them out. The dangers of growing numb to Trump’s attacks on the media cannot be overstated – what starts as a verbal insult can easily turn into something far more serious if left unchecked. RSF is deeply concerned that violent rhetoric can easily lead to violent actions.”

Some 75 journalists in the United States have been physically assaulted so far in 2024, according to the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Since 2017, the organization’s data shows that 321 journalists have been shot or shot at, 374 have been attacked by private citizens, and seven have been assaulted by politicians.>

<About 3,400 voters in a key Georgia county received their mail-in ballots just days ago, or not at all — and on Monday, the state’s Supreme Court reversed a lower court’s ruling that gave them extra time to get their ballots in.

That means thousands of voters have to turn in their mail-in ballots in person by 7 p.m. Tuesday, vote at a polling place on Election Day — or risk being disenfranchised.

Gregory, who asked that his last name not be used, received his mail-in ballot on Friday, even though he requested it in time. The Postal Service and election officials previously recommended mailing in ballots at least a week before Election Day.

Gregory delivered his mail-in ballot in person to the Cobb County elections office Tuesday. But he was worried about others who may be affected.

“Especially if they don’t have a car, it’s going to be hard,” he told HuffPost after dropping off the ballot. “It’s going to be a problem for them.”

Sheena Grantz, who also dropped off a ballot Tuesday, said her and her wife’s ballots had arrived on time, but her brother’s never arrived at all. Luckily, she said, “We found a TikTok [video] about it, so I sent it to him.”

“I just found out about that stuff last night,” Grantz told HuffPost of the legal fight over the ballots. “I sent him everything, told him he needs to follow up about it. I think he’s on the way [to vote in person] now.”

Another voter, who declined to give his name, said his ballot arrived in the mail Saturday.

According to the county, the issue was a surge of requests for mail-in ballots in the final days of the application window, as well as timing issues with a state-approved vendor and other problems with county printing equipment. More than 1,000 of the affected absentee ballots were being sent out of state, the county said.

After the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center filed an emergency suit over the late-delivered ballots last week, a judge ruled Friday that affected voters whose ballots were postmarked by 7 p.m. on Election Day would still be counted, as long as the ballots arrived at election offices by Friday.

But on Monday afternoon, the state’s Supreme Court reversed that ruling in a 5-3 decision, saying in response to an appeal by the state and national GOP that even affected voters would only have until the end of Election Day to turn in their ballots. Ballots postmarked on time but received by Friday, the court said, should be segregated but not counted, “until further order of the Court.”

Suddenly, county officials as well as local political parties, who received lists of affected voters, are scrambling to let them know that deadlines have changed for the worse.

Stacy Efrat, a Democratic Party appointee on the Cobb County Election Board, told HuffPost Tuesday that volunteers from various organizations had been calling voters all weekend telling them to get their ballots “postmarked by Tuesday, and that these ballots would be accepted by Friday.”

“We spent all weekend giving them that information, which was true at the time, and then last night, we learned that that decision was overturned, and they have to be received by Tuesday, not postmarked by Tuesday,” Efrat said. “So all of these people who had gotten that instruction — we’re trying to call them back. But we don’t know if it’s too late for some.”

County Board of Elections Chair Tori Silas told HuffPost that the county acknowledged its mistake and initially communicated the extended deadline to voters. After Monday’s Supreme Court order, she said, “we’ve taken every step we can to communicate with those voters that that extended deadline is no longer extended.”

For Essence Johnson, chair of the Cobb County Democratic Committee, “its [sic] just another one of those GOP tactics.” (Eight of nine justices on the Georgia Supreme Court were appointed by Republican governors, and Republican Party plaintiffs opposed the extended deadline for the ballots that were mailed out late.)

Johnson emphasized the out-of-state voters who were advised over the weekend to express-mail their ballots home to Georgia given the lower court’s ruling, trusting they would be counted as long as they were postmarked on time. But now, ballots that arrive late, even if they are postmarked on time, will be segregated and potentially discarded. “It’s all about voter suppression,” she said.

With hours to go, Johnson said Democratic Party volunteers and others are doing everything they can to spread the word about the 7 p.m. Tuesday deadline to turn in ballots or vote in person.

<South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham has sent an ominous message to special counsel Jack Smith as Donald Trump was on the precipice of being announced as the winner of the 2024 election.

Early on Wednesday morning, mere moments before Trump took the stage in West Palm Beach, Florida, to give his victory speech, Graham posted a note on X “to Jack Smith and your team”.

“It is time to look forward to a new chapter in your legal careers as these politically motivated charges against President Trump hit a wall,” Graham wrote.

“The supreme court substantially rejected what you were trying to do, and after tonight, it’s clear the American people are tired of lawfare. Bring these cases to an end. The American people deserve a refund.”

The US attorney general Merrick Garland appointed Smith in November 2022 to determine whether Trump should face criminal charges stemming from investigations into the former’s president’s alleged mishandling of national security materials and his role in the 6 January attack on the US Capitol.

Smith charged Trump last year in Florida over his retention of classified documents at his Mar-a-Lago club, and in Washington over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.

With the election mere months away, Trump’s legal team tried to stall the proceedings as much as possible.

Their case was aided in July, when the supreme court conferred broad immunity on former presidents and narrowed the scope of the prosecution.

Smith and his team detailed their case against Trump in a 165-page filing that was unsealed in October, in which they argued that Trump should not be entitled to immunity from prosecution. In the filing, federal prosecutors said that Trump “resorted to crimes” in a failed bid to cling to power after losing the 2020 election and that he is not entitled to immunity from prosecution.

The charges filed by Smith and his team were not the only one vexing Trump since leaving office in 2021. When he takes office in January, Trump will be the first convicted criminal to win the White House and gain access to the nuclear codes.

In May, Trump was found guilty of 34 counts of falsifying business records relating to a hush-money payment to the adult film performer Stormy Daniels. Sentencing was originally scheduled on 18 September, but delayed to 26 November after a request from Trump for it to be postponed until after the election. It’s unclear if the date will stand.

Since the unsealing of Smith’s case in October, Trump has spoken publicly about how he would immediately fire Smith if he were re-elected.

In a conversation with the conservative podcast host Hugh Hewitt, who asked whether Trump would pardon himself or fire the special counsel, Trump said: “Oh, it’s so easy. It’s so easy … I would fire him within two seconds.”>

<The same man who said former President Donald Trump should “hang up his hat & sail into the sunset” is now one of his biggest champions.

Tesla CEO Elon Musk has had quite the change of heart about the former president in the past couple of years since that July 2022 post on X. Indeed, the SpaceX founder had donated at least $132 million to the Trump campaign as of Oct. 26, making him one of Trump's biggest financial supporters.

Musk has also become increasingly outspoken about Trump over the past month or so, even appearing at Trump campaign rallies. He also infamously began a $1-million-a-day giveaway, in which voters in swing states could be eligible to win the cash prize up until Election Day if they signed a petition in support of the Constitution’s First and Second Amendments. The Philadelphia district attorney’s office tried to shut that scheme down by suing Musk, alleging the sweepstakes violated consumer protection laws and was designed to interfere with the election, but a Philadelphia judge on Monday allowed the giveaway to proceed.

Not much has seemed to slow Musk down. He’s continued to campaign for Trump and posted on X about the election innumerous times. On Tuesday, he even insinuated he had a massive crowd backing him and Trump.

“The cavalry has arrived,” Musk posted on X Tuesday afternoon. “Men are voting in record numbers. They now realize everything is at stake.”

Trump’s appearance on Joe Rogan’s podcast likely appealed to young male voters, a popular demographic of the podcast.

“I think Trump is trying to drive up his vote among men," Whit Ayres, a veteran Republican pollster, told ABC News. "I haven't seen a whole lot of outreach to women."

However, women outpaced men in early voting this year, according to national polling firm TargetSmart. Plus, its data shows early voting among males has only slightly increased since the 2020 election. In 2020, 43.8% of males voted early, with 44.2% casting their ballot early this year. By comparison, 53.3% of women voted early this year.>

<Lots of MSNBC viewers on here drink that racist cool aid, no doubt. It comes as such a shock when they get educated the hard way as to how wrong they are in part because they refuse to diversify their news sources. So many left-wing zealots had Trump in jail years ago w/all that ridiculous malicious prosecution by partisan state attorney generals. The FBI and the DOnJ rolling in tanks and calling up CNN to film the invasion of Trump's Florida home in the early morning dark. So unfair, but Trump fought through it all and stands tall.>

The author of the above screed, <fredthepissant>, who has oft proclaimed himself a libertarian, thus proves himself as much a liar as Hump--then again, we already knew that.

<The markets are already taking off in response to Donald J. Trump's decisive victory. (Well, the Woke left got their illicit assess [sic] royally kicked to the curb as the Republicans took control of the House of Representatives and the Senate. It seems a whole lot of upset parents around the country did not appreciate runaway inflation draining their budgets, the sexual exploitation of their children in schools, and illegals/ fentanyl/crime taking over their communities.) Investors know that Trump is GOOD for business, and that's GOOD for the economy.

Look out, now that the 2024 election is over, Communist China is gonna make a move soon under the watch of a feeble lame duck Biden. Will it be Taiwan, another WW virus, more spy balloons, or assisting rogue nations?>

<fredthewhoreson> has everything upside down, of course, in this vision: The Red Chinese will be given everything they could ever desire to prop up their tottering regime by Hump, in return for cash considerations, for a start. He is the most stupid m*****f***** to come down the pike here, and with his boy <the irrelevancy> hard at it as a liar every day, that's going some.

<Democratic figures have hit out against Vice President Kamala Harris, her choice of running mate, and how she ran her campaign following the vice president's crushing election defeat to Donald Trump.

The nature of the presidential election loss, as well as the party losing control of the Senate and possibly the House to the GOP, has left some Democrats angry and questioning the future of the party.

A number of Democratic lawmakers, operatives, and aides have now given their views on why Harris suffered such a heavy loss in the November 5 election. These range from her choosing Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as the vice presidential candidate, failing to distance herself enough from President Joe Biden, to the party abandoning working class voters.

Others have laid the blame purely on Biden for not dropping out of the 2024 race sooner and for giving Harris the difficult job of winning over voters after he recorded at times historically low approval ratings. Biden's term in office saw high levels of inflation and a cost of living crisis, with voters frequently citing the economy as their number one election issue.

Newsweek has contacted the White House and Harris' campaign team for comment via email.

Independent Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2016 and 2020, blamed the party and its leadership for ignoring working class voters during the "disastrous" campaign.

"It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working class people would find that the working class has abandoned them," Sanders said in a statement.

"First it was the working class, and now it is Latino and Black voters as well. While the Democratic leadership defends the status quo, the American people are angry and want change. And they're right."

David Sirota, a senior adviser for Sanders' 2020 presidential campaign, expressed a similar sentiment about why Harris and the party had a "very bad night" in the election.

"Some of us spent years warning Dems to take working-class politics more seriously and to not tout neocons," Sirota posted on X, formerly Twitter. "We did so in hopes of avoiding this, and yet we were vilified as traitors by Dem elites and liberal pundits. There's a lesson here."

Lindy Li, a political commentator and Democratic National Committee member, suggested that Harris made a mistake in picking Walz over Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro as her running mate.

Shapiro was seen as one of the front-runners for the vice presidential candidate position to help Harris win the crucial battleground state of Pennsylvania. Trump managed to flip the Keystone State, as well as the other key blue wall battleground states of Wisconsin and Michigan, which were crucial for Harris' hopes of election victory.

"I know a lot of people are probably wondering tonight what would have happened had Shapiro been on the ticket," Li, who is also Pennsylvania commissioner, told Fox News. "And not only in terms of Pennsylvania. He's famously a moderate. So that would have signaled to the American people that she is not the San Francisco liberal that Trump said she was."

"In the eyes of the American people, [Walz] was the governor who oversaw the [George Floyd] protests in Minnesota and probably let it go on longer than he should have. So that has been seared in the minds of the American people," she added.

Li also said Harris made a mistake during her appearance on ABC's The View in October. When the vice president was asked what she would have done differently over the past four years compared to Biden, she replied: "Not a thing comes to mind."....>

<...Li told Fox News: "That was the opener for her to show Americans that she's going to get tough on the border, that she's going to take drastic measures to bring down inflation. That was her chance."

Others also suggested Harris failed to distance herself enough from Biden and attempt to offer a change of direction for the country going forward.

Biden was considered an unpopular president among voters who spent months seeking reelection despite concerns about the 81-year-old's ability to run for a second term in office. By the time Biden ended his 2024 bid and endorsed Harris, the vice president had around 100 days to convince voters to support her own campaign.

"We ran the best campaign we could, considering Joe Biden was president," one unnamed Harris aide told Politico. "Joe Biden is the singular reason Kamala Harris and Democrats lost."

Massachusetts Representative Seth Moulton, who was one of the first Democrats to urge Biden to end his reelection bid after the president's disastrous CNN debate performance, said it "would have been better" if Harris had taken part and won the 2024 Democratic primary.

"[I]t was necessary for the Democratic nominee to separate him or herself from an unpopular incumbent, as much as we love Joe Biden," Moulton told Politico. "None of those things happened."

Jamal Simmons, the vice president's former communications director, said Harris fully breaking from Biden for her campaign would have been a "trap" and seized upon as another Republican attack line.

"You can't really run away from the president who chooses you," Simmons told the BBC.

MSNBC's Joy Reid defended Harris, suggesting the vice president had a "historic flawlessly run" campaign which included the endorsement of several high-profile celebrities such as Taylor Swift and Beyoncé.

"You could not have run a better campaign in that short period of time," Reid said.

Harris formally conceded the election to Trump during a speech at Howard University in Washington, D.C, on Wednesday, urging her supporters "do not despair" at the results.

"This is not a time to throw up our hands. This is a time to roll up our sleeves," Harris said. "This is a time to organize, to mobilize and to stay engaged for the sake of freedom and justice and the future that we all know we can build together.">

This a problem, <f***headfred>? Don't visit then, worthless twat.

<Another typical mischaracterization of another. I nominate George Halas of the Chicago Bears.

<WannaBe: I only buy cage-free eggrolls...>

You are missing the point of this page... *sigh*>

<Vice President Kamala Harris became the face of the Democratic Party in July after President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.

However, she failed to convince voters that her presidency would be different than Biden's, who holds an average job approval rating of 43%.

For the next two years, Republicans will have full control of the White House and Senate and are projected to retain their majority in the House. The trifecta control is a major reversal of fortunes for Democrats, who have held two of the three arms of government since Biden beat President-elect Donald Trump in 2020.

Harris's performance in handing control of the government back to Trump and Republicans almost definitely means her future in national politics is done, at least in the short term. A lot will change between now and the next presidential election in 2028, but some Democrats are already jockeying for position at the front of the line to replace Biden and Harris as the party's standard-bearer.

Without an incumbent candidate or partner, the 2028 Democratic primary is expected to be a wide-open contest that looks more like the slugfest in 2020 than the stifled affair this year.

Here is an advanced look at five people who are likely to be in the running for the presidential nomination and the job of representing the Democratic Party.

Gretchen Whitmer

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) was first elected Michigan's governor in 2018 and reelected in 2022 for a final term.

While previously floated as a vice presidential candidate for Harris, Whitmer publicly declined, saying she would not be leaving Michigan. However, with her second term as governor ending in 2026, Whitmer will be freed up to pursue politics on the national stage.

Whitmer was also floated as a possible replacement for Biden before he tapped Harris to step into the job. Her performance as governor has been well-received by her constituents but it might be a difficult portfolio to present to the broader electorate.

However, Michigan voters did just flip back into the red column and supported sending Trump back to the White House for another term.

Gov. Josh Shapiro (D-PA) appeared to have the position of being Harris's running mate locked down until the final hour when she picked Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN).

Shapiro, another swing state governor, was elected during the 2022 midterm elections and has made a name for himself as a popular executive whom Republicans acknowledge would be a formidable foe. His election was notable, given that he was the first governor to succeed a member of his party since 1966.

His 2022 win not only kept the line of Democratic succession intact but was also a major personal victory, as he holds the record for receiving the most votes in a single election in Pennsylvania.

Pennsylvania was yet another blemish on Harris's record, as her final day on the trail stumping in the state wasn't enough to put her over the top. Democrats selecting Shapiro to lead the national party could give them a leg up in a vital state that will almost certainly be as important four years from now as it was this cycle.

Wes Moore

Like Shapiro, Gov. Wes Moore (D-MD) was elected in 2022, making him the state's first African American governor and the third African American governor in the nation.

When Biden faltered in his debate with Trump, sparking his eventual downfall, Moore was a clear replacement option on insiders' lips.

He quickly shut down those discussions, insisting Biden was the future of the party.

Moore could have leaned into his resume. He's the youngest Democrat running a state in the country and is the only black governor. He has also received praise from the Left and Right for how he handled the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in March.

Instead, he stood behind Biden, saying, “The president has always had our backs. We’re going to have his back as well.”....>

<....Pete Buttigieg

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg burst onto the national scene in 2020 when he first made his run for the presidency. The contest was short-lived as he dropped out in March of that year, though that was months longer than Harris lasted.

The former mayor of South Bend, Indiana, then landed a position in the Biden administration as secretary of transportation.

After a shaky start to his tenure, he settled into his position and has played a similar role for the Biden administration that Vice President-elect J.D. Vance played for the Trump campaign. He's comfortable going on Sunday shows, including Fox News, to spar with Republicans and be an active voice speaking up in defense of Biden and his policies.

He also played an important role in the Harris-Walz campaign. He was even dubbed the Democratic Party's "debate guru" when it was reported that he was coaching Walz ahead of his vice presidential debate against Vance.

Gavin Newsom

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) has had his sights on the White House for years. There was a raft of speculation that he might challenge Biden in the primary fight, but it never really took off.

The California governor denied he ever had any intention of displacing the president or trying to strongarm Harris out of the way once she became the presumptive nominee. Like Moore, Newsom was careful to make it clear he was more comfortable being an attack dog for Biden and Harris than a replacement.

However, in four years, both Biden and Harris will be out of the picture, and his time leading California will be at a close, leaving the road to the White House wide open.

Newsom shares a similar problem with Whitmer in that his record running California might not play well outside the confines of a deep-blue electorate.

However, he appears to have acknowledged that he must use the end of his tenure to prove to voters outside the Golden State that he is aware of how his state's politics don't map perfectly onto the rest of the country.

He has worked to appeal to more moderate voters by addressing the homelessness crisis and has tried to staunch the fiscal bleeding his state is experiencing.>

<Much will be studied, analyzed and written for years to come about why Americans voted an openly authoritarian leader back into power in apparently greater margins than they did eight years ago. What's clearer and more important at this moment is what millions of our fellow citizens did by putting Donald Trump back in the White House.

Today we must reckon with the harsh reality that authoritarianism has arrived in America, that it’s broadly popular and that millions of our fellow citizens have given it their votes. We are entering a dark and dangerous time. But while this is a moment of reckoning that we must acknowledge, we should also refuse to give in to despair and continue to assert and rely on our rights and protections as Americans.

Over the next four years, the world’s most powerful office will be inhabited by a twice-impeached convicted felon with a history of flouting laws and norms — a narcissist who fomented the violent Jan. 6 insurrection and has promised to make decisions based on retribution and prejudice rather than what's best for the country. Americans are right to be frightened and disillusioned by the resurgence of a man who ran on racism and sexism. Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, spent the closing days and weeks of their campaign spewing racist vitriol and calling Vice President Kamala Harris a “b—.”

Though large swaths of the country, chief among them California, rejected Trump's fearmongering, it was not enough to overcome his appeal across much of the nation. Huge segments of American voters, some concerned about immigration and the rising cost of living, preferred Trump, with all his glaring flaws and demonstrated incompetence, to a more qualified woman of color. His victory has us wrestling with the question of how two such starkly different visions of the United States coexist.

Trump's agenda is poised to further erode many of our rights, especially those of women, LGBTQ+ Americans and immigrants. We can expect him to use the office in blatantly transactional ways and be easily manipulated by opportunistic actors, foreign and domestic. He has promised to abandon U.S. allies, including Ukraine, and give Israel free rein to, as he told Benjamin Netanyahu last month, “do what you have to do.”

We can also expect the weaponization of basic government services, including aid for disasters such as wildfires, which Trump has said he could withhold from California. He has always been eager to undo environmental and climate protections. There will be more attacks on science, as evidenced by his willingness to give Robert F. Kennedy Jr. control of health policy. And he has threatened to round up millions of immigrants in deportation camps.

Thanks to a deferential Supreme Court, a subservient Republican Party that won a Senate majority and a determination to assemble a more pliant administration, there will be fewer checks on his power.

Many of Trump's former staff members who have worked closest with him have warned that he is unfit for office and a grave threat to our democracy. His election does not change any of that. History has shown that dictators often come into power through democratic means.

Times like these test the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous words that "the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice” — even as modified by former President Obama, who added that “progress is bumpy. It always has been.”

But we still enjoy safeguards in the state and federal constitutions, the courts, the rule of law, the free press and democracy — even if they are tested like never before. We still have legions of elected officials, civil servants, advocates and journalists who will use their positions to resist the next administration's excesses.

California will once again play an indispensable role in defending individual liberties and protecting vulnerable communities as well as defending environmental protections. We endured Trump’s tumultuous first term and we will get through the next one.>

<More of the infamous unjust Chessgames double standard on full display. Your two-faced buddies delete my posts and vandalize my collections but allow your worthless harassments to litter decades of pages. Obviously, you had nothing of honest value to add to this subject, and most subjects for that matter, so try shutting up whenever you find yourself entertaining a cheap useless comment on your way to sloppy six figure posts. Quality reigns supreme over quantity.

Oh, and had you bothered to actually read my entire post, you'd realize that I provided ample evidence of "mating nomenclature" as used by a host of others. Checkmate is the object of the game, fool! Some members find my posts informative, and others are mildly entertained. Your lazy cyberstalking statements are just a waste of our time, killing off the link conversation.>

<1. They're easily influenced by others

2. They have limited curiosity

3. They want quick solutions to problems

4. They avoid challenging themselves

5. They stay in their comfort zone

6. They're not self-reflective

7. They rely on dualistic thinking

8. They're overly trusting>

<Donald Trump will be serving a second presidential term, and with both chambers of Congress likely under Republican leadership—though the House is still to be decided— the future of education in the U.S. could starkly change.

Trump has pledged to dismantle the Department of Education, cut federal funding for schools teaching critical race theory, and bar transgender female athletes from participating in school sports.

“The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver,” Trump-Vance Transition Spokesperson Karoline Leavitt told TIME in a statement.

Trump’s transition team did not respond to specific questions regarding which of his policies will take priority come January.

Here’s what to know.

On the campaign trail, the President-elect vowed to eliminate the Department of Education, which has been a cabinet-level agency since 1980. The Department takes on numerous functions: designating federal aid through Title I, which gives state and local funding for schools serving low-income families, handing out Pell Grants, and regulating student loan relief through the Public Service Loan Forgiveness program or income-based repayment plans.

Experts tell TIME that dismantling the Department of Education is likely improbable. “It is entirely feasible to close down the Department of Education, but the functions of the Department of Education will need to continue,” says Ted Mitchell, president of American Council on Education, an organization that convenes higher education associations to discuss student issues.

That’s because the Education Department has numerous moving parts. It houses the Office of Civil Rights, which enforces federal civil rights laws across schools to protect students against discrimination. Regulations by the Education Department also affect college sports, which Josh Cowen, an education policy Michigan State University professor and author of The Privateers, How Billionaires Created a Culture War and Sold School Vouchers, says Republicans would likely not want to see impacted.

Grants or funds designated by Congress would also need a new federal home. “They're going to have to also take the federal programs and the funding streams that they want to continue to reauthorize, and find new institutional homes for that,” Cowen adds.

On his campaign website, Trump promised to “cut federal funding for any school or program pushing Critical Race Theory or gender ideology on our children.” (Critical race theory refers to academic frameworks that teach systemic racism is embedded in American society.) Trump has also spoken out against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) measures at colleges and universities across the country.

Campaigning against DEI has proven popular across Republican strongholds, as already some 10 states have passed restrictions on DEI that have shut down offices at public universities—including Kentucky and North Carolina.

“It's absolutely accurate and fair to say that the Trump administration will be looking to penalize any institution, whether K-12 or higher ed, for administering DEI programs,” says Cowen. “How much money they can remove, how hard they can make life bureaucratically, those are still slightly open questions, but they're absolutely going to try that.”

Amy Loyd, CEO of nonprofit All4Ed, says that the Trump Administration could target funding for such programs through avenues such as the Higher Education Act or Congress. “[The Trump Administration] could work with Congress on the reauthorization of any of the foundational funding streams for education,” she says....>

<....Experts predict the rights of LGBTQ+ students would suffer under a Trump Administration due to the changes that would likely be made to Title IX, which prohibits sex-based discrimination in education. The Biden Administration attempted to expand protections under Title IX to include the LGBTQ+ community, and particularly transgender students, in April. But the expansion has faced legal challenges from Republican-led states, blocking the protections from being implemented across 26 states.

Trump would not need Congressional authority to make changes on Title IX’s guidance.

Trump has also said on numerous occasions that he would ban transgender female athletes, who he refers to as “men” from participating in sports that match with their gender identity. “We will of course keep men out of women’s sports,” he said during a speech on Nov. 2 in Virginia.

During Trump’s first term, Education Secretary Betsy DeVos announced regulations that would better protect people being accused of campus sexual harassment and assault under Title IX. Biden reversed parts of that guidance—in particular, the Trump-era definition of sexual harassment, which critics argued made victims less likely to report crimes—this spring, but some experts like Mitchell predict that sexual assault victims could become vulnerable yet again under Trump.

To understand what would change regarding education under a Trump Administration, experts say people can also glean what is happening in Republican states with the parental rights movement. The push has been behind book bans—which are forecasted to have nearly tripled from the previous school year— and ‘Don’t Say Gay’ laws in states such as Florida and Texas.

Trump vowed to “adopt a Parental Bill of Rights, and implement the direct election of school principals by the parents” on his campaign website.

While Trump has distanced himself from Project 2025, the policy agenda outlines plans to use federal education funding for private schools. State legislators have been unsuccessful in passing bills that would do so. “Three states had this exact thing on the ballot on Tuesday, and voters rejected them in all three states, including two states, Nebraska and Kentucky, that went for Donald Trump,” says Cowen. A similar measure did not pass in Colorado.

Debates around free speech earned momentum across college campuses amid pro-Palestinian encampments and protests earlier this year in the U.S. Trump has previously called himself the “president of law and order” and vowed to restore free speech, end censorship, and bar federal funding for nonprofit and academic programs that engage in censorship. But, In 2020, Trump threatened to use federal force to end protests following the murder of George Floyd. He praised police crackdowns on student protestors and told wealthy donors that he would remove student demonstrators from the country, if elected, according to the Washington Post.>

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/poli...