Tag: small group

Volunteers scour the desert for Nancy Guthrie

The disappearance of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother three weeks ago has inspired a small number of volunteers to launch their own searches in the dense desert near her home in hopes of cracking the case.The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said while it appreciates the concern for Nancy Guthrie, it asked people inquiring about volunteering to give investigators space to do their jobs. Video above: Nancy Guthrie search turns to Mexico”We all want to find Nancy, but this work is best left to professionals,” the agency said in a statement over the weekend.Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her home just outside Tucson on Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities believe she was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will. Drops of her blood were found on the front porch, but authorities haven’t publicly revealed much evidence. Despite the sheriff’s request for people not to search on their own, volunteers have continued to look. A small group reported finding a black backpack on Sunday, but it wasn’t the same brand as one identified in video surveillance that the FBI released of a masked man at Guthrie’s home the night she disappeared. A sheriffs’ spokesperson told Tucson television station KOLD that the bag and its contents didn’t appear to be viable leads. The Associated Press reached out to the sheriff’s department for comment on Monday.Two women from the group Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, or “Searching Mothers of Sonora,” who were carrying digging tools Sunday outside of Guthrie’s home, said they, too, would join the search. They posted fliers on Guthrie’s mailbox with her picture and their contact information.Tony Estrada, the former long-time sheriff in neighboring Santa Cruz County, said volunteer searchers have good intentions in wanting to help and can serve as a force multiplier, but it’s crucial that their efforts be coordinated with law enforcement.”You can’t have people all over the place looking for something and not reporting to anybody or letting them know that they’re going to be in that area,” Estrada said. “They may be trampling into things that may come out to be helpful in the future.”Nearly all search operations for U.S. law enforcement agencies are staffed with volunteers, said Chris Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue.Untrained volunteers who show up to help in a search may mean well, but experts say they could end up contaminating a crime scene.”It’s painful for law enforcement when that happens,” Boyer said. Volunteers should undergo background checks, be trained in things like administering first aid and preserving crime scenes, and work under the direction of law enforcement authorities, said Boyer, whose group provides education, certification and advocacy for search and rescue efforts across the United States and other countries.Several hundred people are working the Guthrie investigation, and more than 20,000 tips have been received, the sheriff’s office has said. The FBI and other agencies are assisting. Video below: United Cajun Navy says it will join search for Nancy GuthrieThe sheriff’s office has watched around the clock lately at Guthrie’s house. It also enacted a temporary one-way flow on the road so that emergency vehicles and trash collection trucks could get through. The constant presence of news crews, bloggers and curious onlookers has drawn mixed reaction from neighbors.Some appreciated the attention the case has been getting. Others have placed traffic cones and signs on their properties to keep people off. Meanwhile, the tribute to Nancy Guthrie outside her home keeps growing, with flowers, yellow ribbons, crosses, prayers and patron saints for older adults and in desperate situations.Aran Aleamoni and his daughter Ariana picked out a bouquet of red, pink and white flowers and placed them at the edge of Guthrie’s yard, alongside a sign that read “Let Nancy Come Home” and a statuette of an angel.”My heart goes out to the entire family,” said Aran Aleamoni, who has known the Guthrie family for a long time. “We are all pulling for you. We’re with you in your corner.”Billeaud reported from Phoenix.

TUCSON, Ariz. —

The disappearance of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie’s mother three weeks ago has inspired a small number of volunteers to launch their own searches in the dense desert near her home in hopes of cracking the case.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said while it appreciates the concern for Nancy Guthrie, it asked people inquiring about volunteering to give investigators space to do their jobs.

Video above: Nancy Guthrie search turns to Mexico

“We all want to find Nancy, but this work is best left to professionals,” the agency said in a statement over the weekend.

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was last seen at her home just outside Tucson on Jan. 31 and was reported missing the following day. Authorities believe she was kidnapped, abducted or otherwise taken against her will. Drops of her blood were found on the front porch, but authorities haven’t publicly revealed much evidence.

Despite the sheriff’s request for people not to search on their own, volunteers have continued to look. A small group reported finding a black backpack on Sunday, but it wasn’t the same brand as one identified in video surveillance that the FBI released of a masked man at Guthrie’s home the night she disappeared.

A sheriffs’ spokesperson told Tucson television station KOLD that the bag and its contents didn’t appear to be viable leads. The Associated Press reached out to the sheriff’s department for comment on Monday.

Two women from the group Madres Buscadoras de Sonora, or “Searching Mothers of Sonora,” who were carrying digging tools Sunday outside of Guthrie’s home, said they, too, would join the search. They posted fliers on Guthrie’s mailbox with her picture and their contact information.

Tony Estrada, the former long-time sheriff in neighboring Santa Cruz County, said volunteer searchers have good intentions in wanting to help and can serve as a force multiplier, but it’s crucial that their efforts be coordinated with law enforcement.

Felicia Fonseca
Neighbors walk by a growing memorial for Nancy Guthrie, the missing mother of “Today” show host Savannah Guthrie, outside her home in Tucson, Ariz., Sunday, Feb. 22, 2026.

“You can’t have people all over the place looking for something and not reporting to anybody or letting them know that they’re going to be in that area,” Estrada said. “They may be trampling into things that may come out to be helpful in the future.”

Nearly all search operations for U.S. law enforcement agencies are staffed with volunteers, said Chris Boyer, executive director of the National Association for Search and Rescue.

Untrained volunteers who show up to help in a search may mean well, but experts say they could end up contaminating a crime scene.

“It’s painful for law enforcement when that happens,” Boyer said.

Volunteers should undergo background checks, be trained in things like administering first aid and preserving crime scenes, and work under the direction of law enforcement authorities, said Boyer, whose group provides education, certification and advocacy for search and rescue efforts across the United States and other countries.

Several hundred people are working the Guthrie investigation, and more than 20,000 tips have been received, the sheriff’s office has said. The FBI and other agencies are assisting.

Video below: United Cajun Navy says it will join search for Nancy Guthrie

The sheriff’s office has watched around the clock lately at Guthrie’s house. It also enacted a temporary one-way flow on the road so that emergency vehicles and trash collection trucks could get through. The constant presence of news crews, bloggers and curious onlookers has drawn mixed reaction from neighbors.

Some appreciated the attention the case has been getting. Others have placed traffic cones and signs on their properties to keep people off.

Meanwhile, the tribute to Nancy Guthrie outside her home keeps growing, with flowers, yellow ribbons, crosses, prayers and patron saints for older adults and in desperate situations.

Aran Aleamoni and his daughter Ariana picked out a bouquet of red, pink and white flowers and placed them at the edge of Guthrie’s yard, alongside a sign that read “Let Nancy Come Home” and a statuette of an angel.

“My heart goes out to the entire family,” said Aran Aleamoni, who has known the Guthrie family for a long time. “We are all pulling for you. We’re with you in your corner.”

Billeaud reported from Phoenix.

Source link

February 23, 2026
‘War-ravaged’ Portland hits back on Trump — with crochet, chicken costumes and farmers markets

PORTLAND, Ore. — There is a rhetorical battle raging here in this heavily Democratic city, known for its delicious coffee, plethora of fancy restaurants, bespoke doughnuts and also for its small faction of black-clad activists.

It started Saturday when President Trump suddenly announced that he was sending the National Guard to “war-ravaged” Portland — where a small group of demonstrators have been staging a monthslong protest at an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building south of downtown.

Oregon officials have pushed back forcefully, flooding their own social media with images of colorful cafe tables, sun-drenched farmers markets, rose gardens in full bloom and parks bursting with children, families and frolicking dogs. Officials would prefer the city be known for its Portlandia vibe, and are begging residents to stay peaceful and not give the Trump administration a protest spectacle.

A protester waves to Department of Homeland Security officials as they walk to the gates of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility after inspecting an area outside in Portland, Ore.

(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)

“There is no need or legal justification for military troops,” Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek has said, over and over again, on her Instagram and in texts to President Trump that have been released publicly. Officials have gone to court seeking an order to stop the deployment, with a hearing set for Friday.

But the president seems resolute. In a Tuesday speech before a gathering of generals and admirals, he sketched out a controversial vision of dispatching troops to Democratic cities “as training grounds for our military” to combat an “invasion from within.” He described Portland as “a nightmare” that “looks like a warzone … like World War II.”

“The Radical Left’s reign of terror in Portland ends now,” a White House press release read, “with President Donald J. Trump mobilizing federal resources to stop Antifa-led hellfire in its tracks.”

Trump’s targeting of Portland comes after he deployed troops to Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles, and threatened to do so elsewhere. The president says he is delivering on campaign pledges to restore public safety, but detractors say he’s attempting to intimidate and provoke Democratic strongholds, while distracting the nation from his various controversies.

As they wait to see whether and when the National Guard will arrive, city residents this week reacted with a mixture of rage, bafflement and sorrow.

A man rests under a public art sculpture in downtown Portland, Ore.

(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)

Many acknowledged that Portland has problems: Homelessness and open drug abuse are endemic, and encampments crowd some sidewalks. The city’s downtown has never recovered from pandemic closures and rioting that took place during George Floyd protests in 2020.

More recently, Intel — one of Oregon’s largest private employers — announced it was laying off 2,400 employees in a county just west of Portland. Like Los Angeles and many other cities, Portland has seen a big drop in tourism this year, a trend that city leaders say is not helped by Trump’s military interventions.

“We need federal help to renew our infrastructure, and build affordable housing, to help clean our rivers and plant trees,” said Portland Mayor Keith Wilson on his social media. “Instead of help, they’re sending armored vehicles and masked men.”

All across the city this week, residents echoed similar themes.

“Nothing is happening here. This is a gorgeous, peaceful city,” said Hannah O’Malley, who was snacking on french fries at a table with a view of the Willamette River outside the Portland Sports Bar and Grill.

Patrons are reflected in the window at Honey Pearl Cafe PDX in downtown Portland.

(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)

The restaurant was just a few blocks from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement building where the ongoing demonstration has become the latest focus of the president’s ire against the city.

A small group of people — a number of them women in their 60s and 70s with gray braids and top-of-the-line rain jackets — have been congregating here for months to protest the federal immigration crackdown.

In June, there were several clashes with law enforcement at the site. Police declared a riot one night, and on another night made several arrests outside the facility, including one person accused of choking a police officer. On Tuesday, the Department of Homeland Security announced that they had arrested “four criminal illegal aliens” who allegedly conducted laser strikes on a Border Patrol helicopter “in an attempt to temporarily blind the pilot.”

But day in and day out, the protests have been largely peaceful and fairly small and nothing the city’s police force can’t handle, according to city officials and the protesters themselves.

On Monday afternoon, a group of about 40 people including grandmothers, parents and their children, and a man in a chicken costume, held flowers and signs. A few yelled abuse through a metal gate at ICE officers standing in the driveway.

People protest outside a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility on Sept. 28 in Portland, Ore.

(Jenny Kane / Associated Press)

“We’re so scary,” joked Kat Barnard, 67, a retired accountant for nonprofits who said she began protesting a few months ago, fitting it in between caring for her grandson. She added that she has found a sense of community while standing against the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown. “I’ve met so many people,” she said. “It’s just beautiful. It makes me happy.”

A few miles away, in the cafe at the city’s famed bookstore, Powell’s Books, a trio of retired friends bemoaned their beloved city’s negative image.

“This is the most peaceful, kind community I’ve ever lived in” said Lynne Avril, 74, who moved to Portland from Phoenix a few years ago. Avril, a retired illustrator who penned the artwork for the young Amelia Bedelia books, said she routinely walks home alone late at night through the city’s darkened streets, and feels perfectly safe doing so.

The president “wants another spectacle,” added Avril’s friend, Signa Schuster, 73, a retired estate manager.

“That’s what we’re afraid of,” answered Avril.

“There’s no problem here,” added Annie Olsen, 72, a retired federal worker. “It’s all performative and stupid.”

Still, the women said, they are keenly aware that their beloved city has a negative reputation nationally. Avril said that when she told friends in Phoenix that she had decided to move to Portland, “People were like: ‘Why would you move here [with] all the violence?’”

Olsen sighed and nodded. “So much misinformation,” she said.

In the front lobby of the famed bookstore, the local bestseller lists provided a window into many residents’ concerns. Two books on authoritarianism and censorship — George Orwell’s “1984” and Ray Bradbury’s “Fahrenheit 451” — were on the shelves. Over in nonfiction, it was the same story, with “How Fascism Works” and “On Tyranny” both making appearances.

The Willamette River runs through downtown Portland, Ore.

(Richard Darbonne / For The Times)

But outside, the sky was blue and bright despite the rain in the forecast and many residents were doing what Portlanders do with an unexpected gift from the weather gods: They were jogging and biking along the Willamette River, and sitting in outdoor cafes sipping their city’s famous coffee and nibbling on buttery pastries.

“Trump is unhinged,” said Shannon O’Connor, 57. She said that Portland has problems for sure — “homelessness, fentanyl, a huge drug problem” — but unrest is not among them.

Sprawled on a sidewalk near a freeway on-ramp, a man calling himself “Rabbit” was panhandling for money accompanied by his two beagle-pit bull mixes, Pooh Bear and Piglet.

Rabbit, 48, said he hadn’t heard of the president’s plan to send in the National Guard, but didn’t think it was necessary. He had come to Portland two years ago “to get away from all the craziness,” he said, and found it to be safe. “I haven’t been threatened yet,” he said, then knocked on wood.

Many residents said they think the president may be confusing what is happening in Portland now with a period in 2020 in which the city was briefly convulsed over Black Live Matter protests.

“We had a lot of trouble then,” said a woman who asked to be referred to only as “Sue” for fear of being doxed. “Nothing like that now.” A lifelong Portlander, she is retired and among those who have been demonstrating at the ICE facility south of downtown.

She and other residents said they have noticed that clips of the riots and other violence from 2020 have recently been recirculating on social media and even some cable news shows.

“Either he is mistaken or it is part of his propaganda,” she said of the president’s portrayal of Portland, adding that it makes her “very sad. I’ve never protested until this go-around. But we have to do something.”

As afternoon turned to evening Tuesday, the blue skies over the city gave way to clouds and drizzle. The parks and outdoor cafes emptied out.

As night fell, the retired women and children who had been protesting outside the ICE facility went home, and more and more younger people began to take their places.

By 10 p.m., law enforcement was massed on the roof of the ICE building in tactical gear. Black-clad protesters — watched over by local television reporters and some independent media — played cat and mouse with the officers, stepping toward the building only to be repelled by rounds of pepper balls.

A 39-year-old man, who asked to be called “Mushu” and who had only his eyes visible amid his black garb, stood on the corner across the street, gesturing to the independent media livestreaming the protests. “They are showing that hell that is Portland,” he said, his voice dripping with irony.

About the same time, Katie Daviscourt, a reporter with the Post Millennial, posted on X that she had been “assaulted by an Antifa agitator.” She also tweeted that “the suspect escaped into the Antifa safe house.”

A few minutes later, a group of officers burst out of a van and appeared to detain one of the protesters. Then the officers dispersed, and the standoff resumed.

Around the corner, a couple with gray hair sporting sleek rain jackets walked their little dog along the street. If they were concerned about the made-for-video drama that was playing out a few yards away, they didn’t show it. They just continued to walk their dog.

On Wednesday morning, the president weighed in again, writing on Truth Social, “Conditions continue to deteriorate into lawless mayhem.”

Jessica Garrison

Source link

October 2, 2025
London protest organized by far-right activist exceeds 100,000 as small clashes break out

A London march organized by far-right activist Tommy Robinson drew more than 100,000 people and became unruly Saturday as a small group of his supporters clashed with police officers who were separating them from counterprotesters.Several officers were punched, kicked and struck by bottles tossed by people at the fringes of the “Unite the Kingdom” rally, Metropolitan Police said. Reinforcements with helmets and riot shields were deployed to support the 1,000-plus officers on duty.At least nine people were arrested, but police indicated that many other offenders had been identified and would be held accountable.Police estimated that Robinson drew about 110,000 people, while the rival “March Against Fascism” protest organized by Stand Up To Racism had about 5,000 marchers.Anti-migrant themeRobinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, founded the nationalist and anti-Islam English Defense League and is one of the most influential far-right figures in Britain.The march was billed as a demonstration in support of free speech, with much of the rhetoric by influencers and several far-right politicians from across Europe aimed largely at the perils of migration, a problem much of the continent is struggling to control.“We are both subject to the same process of the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture, you and we are being colonized by our former colonies,” far-right French politician Eric Zemmour said.Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and owner of X, who has waded into British politics several times this year, was beamed in by video and condemned the left-leaning U.K. government.“There’s something beautiful about being British, and what I see happening here is a destruction of Britain, initially a slow erosion, but rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration,” he said.Robinson told the crowd in a hoarse voice that migrants now had more rights in court than the “British public, the people that built this nation.”The marches come at a time when the U.K. has been divided by debate over migrants crossing the English Channel in overcrowded inflatable boats to arrive on shore without authorization.Numerous anti-migrant protests were held this summer outside hotels housing asylum-seekers following the arrest of an Ethiopian man who was later convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a London suburb. Some of those protests became violent and led to arrests.Sea of flagsParticipants in the “Unite the Kingdom” march carried the St. George’s red-and-white flag of England and the union jack, the state flag of the United Kingdom, and chanted, “We want our country back.”U.K. flags have proliferated this summer across the U.K. — at events and on village lampposts — in what some have said is a show of national pride and others said reflects a tilt toward nationalism.Supporters held signs saying “Stop the boats,” “Send them home” and “Enough is enough, save our children.”At the counterprotest, the crowd held signs saying “Refugees welcome” and “Smash the far right,” and shouted, “Stand up, fight back.”Robinson supporters chanted crude refrains about U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, leader of the center-left Labour Party, and also shouted messages of support for slain U.S. conservative activist Charlie Kirk.Several speakers paid tribute to Kirk, who was remembered in a moment of silence, followed by a bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace.”One demonstrator held a sign saying: “Freedom of speech is dead. RIP Charlie Kirk.”Crowd covered blocks of LondonThe crowd at one point stretched from Big Ben across the River Thames and around the corner beyond Waterloo train station, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (around a kilometer).The marches had been mostly peaceful, but toward the late afternoon, “Unite the Kingdom” supporters threw items at the rival rally and tried to break through barriers set up to separate the groups, police said. Officers had to use force to keep a crowd-control fence from being breached.Counterprotesters heckled a man with blood pouring down his face who was being escorted by police from the group of Robinson supporters. It was not immediately clear what happened to him.While the crowd was large, it fell far short of one of the biggest recent marches when a pro-Palestinian rally drew an estimated 300,000 people in November 2023.Robinson had planned a “Unite the Kingdom” rally last October, but could not attend after being jailed for contempt of court for violating a 2021 High Court order barring him from repeating libelous allegations against a Syrian refugee who successfully sued him. He previously served jail time for assault and mortgage fraud.

LONDON —

A London march organized by far-right activist Tommy Robinson drew more than 100,000 people and became unruly Saturday as a small group of his supporters clashed with police officers who were separating them from counterprotesters.

Several officers were punched, kicked and struck by bottles tossed by people at the fringes of the “Unite the Kingdom” rally, Metropolitan Police said. Reinforcements with helmets and riot shields were deployed to support the 1,000-plus officers on duty.

At least nine people were arrested, but police indicated that many other offenders had been identified and would be held accountable.

Police estimated that Robinson drew about 110,000 people, while the rival “March Against Fascism” protest organized by Stand Up To Racism had about 5,000 marchers.

Anti-migrant theme

Robinson, whose real name is Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, founded the nationalist and anti-Islam English Defense League and is one of the most influential far-right figures in Britain.

The march was billed as a demonstration in support of free speech, with much of the rhetoric by influencers and several far-right politicians from across Europe aimed largely at the perils of migration, a problem much of the continent is struggling to control.

“We are both subject to the same process of the great replacement of our European people by peoples coming from the south and of Muslim culture, you and we are being colonized by our former colonies,” far-right French politician Eric Zemmour said.

Elon Musk, Tesla CEO and owner of X, who has waded into British politics several times this year, was beamed in by video and condemned the left-leaning U.K. government.

“There’s something beautiful about being British, and what I see happening here is a destruction of Britain, initially a slow erosion, but rapidly increasing erosion of Britain with massive uncontrolled migration,” he said.

Robinson told the crowd in a hoarse voice that migrants now had more rights in court than the “British public, the people that built this nation.”

The marches come at a time when the U.K. has been divided by debate over migrants crossing the English Channel in overcrowded inflatable boats to arrive on shore without authorization.

Numerous anti-migrant protests were held this summer outside hotels housing asylum-seekers following the arrest of an Ethiopian man who was later convicted of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl in a London suburb. Some of those protests became violent and led to arrests.

Sea of flags

Participants in the “Unite the Kingdom” march carried the St. George’s red-and-white flag of England and the union jack, the state flag of the United Kingdom, and chanted, “We want our country back.”

U.K. flags have proliferated this summer across the U.K. — at events and on village lampposts — in what some have said is a show of national pride and others said reflects a tilt toward nationalism.

Supporters held signs saying “Stop the boats,” “Send them home” and “Enough is enough, save our children.”

At the counterprotest, the crowd held signs saying “Refugees welcome” and “Smash the far right,” and shouted, “Stand up, fight back.”

Robinson supporters chanted crude refrains about U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer, leader of the center-left Labour Party, and also shouted messages of support for slain U.S. conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

Several speakers paid tribute to Kirk, who was remembered in a moment of silence, followed by a bagpiper playing “Amazing Grace.”

One demonstrator held a sign saying: “Freedom of speech is dead. RIP Charlie Kirk.”

Crowd covered blocks of London

The crowd at one point stretched from Big Ben across the River Thames and around the corner beyond Waterloo train station, a distance of about three-quarters of a mile (around a kilometer).

The marches had been mostly peaceful, but toward the late afternoon, “Unite the Kingdom” supporters threw items at the rival rally and tried to break through barriers set up to separate the groups, police said. Officers had to use force to keep a crowd-control fence from being breached.

Counterprotesters heckled a man with blood pouring down his face who was being escorted by police from the group of Robinson supporters. It was not immediately clear what happened to him.

While the crowd was large, it fell far short of one of the biggest recent marches when a pro-Palestinian rally drew an estimated 300,000 people in November 2023.

Robinson had planned a “Unite the Kingdom” rally last October, but could not attend after being jailed for contempt of court for violating a 2021 High Court order barring him from repeating libelous allegations against a Syrian refugee who successfully sued him. He previously served jail time for assault and mortgage fraud.

Source link

September 13, 2025
Why Politics Has Become So Stressful

No matter which party wins control of the House and Senate next month, the results are virtually certain to reinforce the paradox powering the nation’s steadily mounting political tension.

American politics today may be both more rigid and more unstable than at any other time since at least the Civil War. A politics that is rigid and unstable sounds like a contradiction in terms. But the system’s instability is a direct result of its rigidity. Because so many voters—and so many states—are reliably locked down for one side or the other, even the slightest shifts among the few voters and few states that are truly up for grabs can tilt the balance of power. The consequence is a politics in which neither party can sustain a durable advantage over the other, and political direction for a country of 330 million people is decided by a tiny sliver of voters in about half a dozen states—maybe a few hundred thousand people in all.

These twin forces largely explain why so many Americans now find politics so stressful. People across the country nervously parse the choices of distant voters in a handful of states to see which party will control the federal government. The balance always remains so wobbly that a momentary mood swing in just a few subdivisions outside Atlanta, Phoenix, or Philadelphia can determine whether Democrats are empowered to pass a new law codifying a national right to abortion, or Republicans are positioned to impose a national ban. Everything is always at stake—and nothing seems to break the deadlock.

Barton Gellman: How six states could overturn the 2024 election

Just how few states determine which side prevails? Probably no more than eight, and arguably as few as six. The list of genuine swing states extends no further than Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, with New Hampshire and North Carolina plausibly added to that roster, though at the federal level the former measurably leans toward Democrats and the latter toward Republicans. The parties still dream of occasional statewide wins in other places—say, Colorado or Minnesota for Republicans and Ohio or Florida for Democrats—but they know that such victories will require unusual circumstances and candidates.

This small band of true swing states holds the balance of power between the massive red and blue blocks that are, as I’ve written, behaving as if they constitute different nations. Five states in this small group effectively decided the last presidential election by shifting from Donald Trump in 2016 to Joe Biden in 2020: Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Almost all of the highly competitive Senate races that will determine control of the chamber this year are unfolding in one of those eight most competitive states, too. Partisans who obsessively checked the poll results from those few states in 2020 have found themselves in a political Groundhog Day, scanning the FiveThirtyEight election-outcome probabilities on pretty much the same places two years later. Two years from now, in the 2024 presidential contest, they are almost guaranteed to be fixated on the same states again.

What’s more, the balance of power within those few swing states is also precarious; the outcome of elections teeters on microscopic shifts in turnout and/or voter preferences. Biden won the five states he flipped from 2016 by only a combined 279,265 votes, and more than half of that total came in Michigan alone. Few observers would be surprised if almost all of this year’s major Senate contests across the swing states come down to photo finishes.

In a new book on the 2020 election, The Bitter End, three prominent political scientists describe modern American politics as “calcified,” meaning that the majority of voters are firmly locked into support for one party based primarily on their views about cultural and demographic change. But the UCLA political scientist Lynn Vavreck, one of the co-authors, says that equating “calcification” with “stability” is a mistake. “Being stuck, or calcified, doesn’t mean we are stuck with one outcome,” she told me. “It means that because of that rough partisan parity, we are stuck on the knife’s edge. Anything is tipping these outcomes.”

The best evidence is that the modern Democratic electoral coalition is at least somewhat larger than the GOP’s. Democrats have won the popular vote in seven of the past eight presidential elections, something no party has done since the formation of the modern party system in 1828. But the Democratic edge hasn’t been decisive enough to overcome the party’s inability to compete in large swaths of the country. Nor can Democrats overcome the structural advantages provided to the GOP by its dominance of smaller, preponderantly white and mostly Christian interior states, whose influence is magnified in the Electoral College and the Senate.

Barring a major surprise, next month’s election seems guaranteed to extend the longest period in American history when neither party has been able to establish a lasting advantage over the other.

If Democrats lose the House or Senate, or both, it will mark the fifth consecutive time that a president went into a midterm with unified control of Congress and the White House and then lost it. (That happened to Bill Clinton in 1994, George W. Bush in 2006, Barack Obama in 2010, and Trump in 2018.) No president since Jimmy Carter in 1978 has successfully defended unified control of government through a midterm election. Since 1968, in fact, either party has held unified control in Washington for just 16 of 54 years. In the 72 years before that (from 1896 to 1968), one party or the other held unified control for 58 years.

This isn’t the first extended period of political instability for the U.S. One party or the other managed just eight years of unified control in the tumultuous two decades before the Civil War. The era from 1877 to 1896 may have been the period most like today: The two sides managed just six years of unified control over those two decades, and never for more than two years at a time. Divided government was also the rule through the 1950s. But none of these earlier periods of instability persisted remotely as long as today’s.

Lee Drutman: America is now the divided republic the Framers feared

All of the earlier periods without a dominant party were notable for the lack of clear differentiation between the sides. In the decades before the Civil War, for instance, the need to mollify northern and southern wings prevented either the Whigs or the Democrats from taking a clear position in opposition to the spread of slavery.

Now it’s the gulf between the parties that largely explains their standoff. In their current ideological configurations, neither side can consistently win enough states to sustain an advantage. Democrats dominate the coastal states most integrated into the 21st-century Information Age economy; the heartland states centered on the 20th-century powerhouse industries of manufacturing, energy extraction, and agriculture are a sea of Republican red. Neither side has managed more than idiosyncratic incursions into the other’s terrain (like Republican Glenn Youngkin’s 2021 gubernatorial win in Virginia and Democrat Joe Manchin’s three Senate wins in West Virginia).

Generational and demographic change may strengthen Democrats over time, but as long as attitudes about American identity remain the principal dividing line in our politics, Vavreck, like many others, doesn’t see either side breaking out of today’s trench warfare. And she expects that identity-centered division—what I’ve called the collision between the Republican “coalition of restoration” and the Democratic “coalition of transformation”—to remain the central focus of our politics for years. “This is the dimension of conflict we are fighting on for the foreseeable future,” she said. “COVID didn’t dislodge it; the murder of George Floyd didn’t dislodge it; the Capitol insurrection didn’t dislodge it.”

One way to measure how dug in we’ve become is to look at the consistency of presidential-election results over time. Forty states, or four-fifths of the total, have voted the same way in each of the four presidential elections since 2008: 20 for the Democratic nominees, 20 for the Republicans. That’s a modern peak for consistency. Thirty-four states voted the same way in the four presidential elections from 1992 through 2004. In the four elections from 1976 through 1988, only 25 did. Even in the four consecutive elections won by Franklin D. Roosevelt from 1932 through 1944, only about two-thirds of the states voted the same way each time.

What’s especially relevant for next month’s election is a corollary trend. Not only are more states reliably voting the same way for president; they are also, to a greater extent than earlier, aligning their votes in congressional elections with their preferences for the White House. Republicans hold just one of the 40 Senate seats in the 20 states that have voted Democratic in at least the past four presidential elections (Susan Collins in Maine), and Democrats hold just two of 40 in the four-time Republican states (Manchin in West Virginia and Jon Tester in Montana). Republicans this year might capture a Senate seat in Nevada—a state on the Democratic list—and solidly Republican Utah, of all places, looks reasonably competitive, but otherwise the November results are unlikely to change those numbers.

With each side realistically contesting Senate seats in so few states, it’s no wonder, as I’ve written, that the parties are much less likely than in the past to accumulate comfortable Senate majorities—and thus much more likely to quickly lose control of the upper chamber after winning it. Neither side has held the Senate majority for more than eight consecutive years since 1980, a span unprecedented in American history.

Read: America is growing apart, possibly for good

The fact that control of Congress appears within reach for both sides in virtually every election, as it does again this year, heightens the sense of urgency and intensity around each campaign. So does the awareness that, because the parties have become so polarized in their goals, each shift in control can produce enormous changes in policy, no matter how wispy the change in voter attitudes that precipitated it. “The difference in policy now between the group that has 51 percent and the group that has 49 percent is so enormous because of the polarization and divergence of the two parties,” the longtime GOP pollster Whit Ayres told me. Such big change resting on such small shifts, Ayres added, “is not healthy for democracy.”

Trump’s emergence has further raised the stakes over control of Congress and the White House. Many independent students of democracy and authoritarianism believe that if restored to unified control over government, Trump—and the many Republicans embracing his discredited fraud claims—will seek to tilt the electoral rules in a way that makes it more difficult to again remove him from power. A similar dynamic is already evident in the 21 red states that responded to Trump’s 2020 defeat by passing laws making voting more difficult. “If the Republican Party manages to get control one way or another, including both legal and illegal things, and rig the system a little bit more, we could have a period of more continuity [in unified control of Washington] but it would be minority government,” the political scientist Thomas Mann, a co-author of a seminal 2012 book on congressional polarization, It’s Even Worse Than It Looks, told me.

Which is to say that you can likely add the future of American democracy to the list of issues that will soon be decided by a relative handful of voters in the handful of states at the tipping point of our internal cold war.

Ronald Brownstein

Source link

October 14, 2022
Abortion Could Define California’s Elections

CERRITOS, Calif.—Abortion rights dominated the message when the Democratic congressional candidate Jay Chen sent off a small group who had gathered to canvass for him here early on Sunday morning.

“A right that we had all assumed we would have, the right of a woman to have control of her own health-care decisions, was taken away after 50 years,” Chen told the volunteers. He reminded them that his opponent, Republican Representative Michelle Steel, had co-sponsored “a federal ban on abortion” that would prohibit the procedure even in deep-blue California.

“You name it, she’s on the extreme end of all these issues,” Chen said. “She’d be a complete outlier even in deep-red Kansas because even in Kansas they protected the right to an abortion. So for her to try to represent [this district] does not make any sense.”

Chen’s exhortation captured the outsize role abortion rights could play across this year’s unusually large field of competitive U.S. House races in California, after the Republican-appointed Supreme Court majority overturned Roe v. Wade earlier this summer. The Golden State offers Democrats the nation’s single largest concentration of opportunities to offset losses elsewhere by flipping House seats now held by Republicans. And the abortion-rights issue offers Democrats their best chance to do so—particularly with a state constitutional amendment protecting access to the procedure also on the November ballot as Proposition 1.

“Because we have this on the ballot, Republicans cannot run away from this issue,” says Dave Jacobson, a Democratic consultant who is advising Christy Smith, the party’s nominee against Republican Representative Mike Garcia in another Los Angeles–area district. “Every Republican in a competitive district is vulnerable with this issue at the top of the ballot as a constitutional amendment. I think it is going to drive turnout.”

Read: The Kansas abortion shocker

California will provide a crucial measure of how broadly the abortion issue may benefit Democrats this year. On both sides, there’s agreement that abortion’s increased prominence will strengthen Democrats in districts with a large number of white-collar voters—including the coastal seats south of Los Angeles now held by Democratic Representatives Katie Porter and Mike Levin. Less clear is whether the issue will prove as powerful in districts, such as those held by Republican Representatives Garcia and David Valadao, with larger numbers of blue-collar and Latino voters who may be acutely feeling the effects of inflation. The district in which Chen is challenging Steel demographically falls somewhere in between.

“Presumably you’ll see coastal Republicans split with the party on things like choice,” predicts Darry Sragow, a veteran Democratic strategist and the publisher of the nonpartisan California Target Book, which analyzes state elections. “On the other hand, when you are looking at some inland and Central Valley districts, they are very different,” he told me. Although “there’s all this chatter that abortion is so important,” Sragow added, “I suggest most Americans do not wake up with abortion the thing they are most worried about,” particularly in working-class communities.

Though solidly Democratic at the state level—Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom is cruising to reelection this year without serious Republican opposition after defeating a GOP-backed recall effort—congressional contests in California have proved highly susceptible to swings in the national mood. As part of the “blue wave” in 2018, the party flipped seven Republican-held seats, reducing the GOP to its smallest share of California’s congressional delegation since the 1880s. But in 2020, Republicans recaptured four of those districts—a key part of their unusual success at gaining House seats nationwide while losing the White House.

Earlier this year, when inflation was raging and the Democratic legislative agenda seemed stalled, Republicans were optimistic about advancing farther across California by potentially ousting Democratic Representatives Josh Harder in the Central Valley and Porter and Levin in Orange and San Diego Counties. Although Democrats acknowledge that those races (and another Democratic-held open seat) remain competitive, they now see the opportunity to go on the offensive against Steel, Valadao, and Garcia, as well as potentially Representatives Ken Calvert and Young Kim in Southern California; they also see an opportunity to contest a Republican open seat in the Sacramento area.

Several other issues have also contributed to this reversal of fortune: increased attention to gun violence after the Uvalde, Texas, school shooting; renewed focus on Donald Trump amid the revelations from the House January 6 committee and the firestorm over his mishandling of classified documents; and climate change after the passage of the Democrats’ slimmed-down reconciliation bill. But analysts in both parties see the Supreme Court decision reversing Roe as the pivotal factor shifting the congressional landscape across California. “We are just seeing an unprecedented level of outrage,” Representative Levin told me in an interview.

As in other states, Republicans continue to express cautious optimism that frustration over inflation and disenchantment with the performance of President Joe Biden will outweigh views on abortion. “Of course [abortion] is going to be an issue, way more than it was in May of this year,” Lance Trover, a Republican consultant advising Representative Steel, who ousted a Democratic incumbent in 2020, told me. “But at the end of the day, the fundamentals of the economy are going to be key.”

California Republicans face an unusually powerful headwind in moving beyond the abortion issue. Almost all Republicans holding or seeking congressional seats have staked out hard-line anti-abortion positions that directly collide with polls showing deep and broad support for abortion rights across the state.

Polling in July by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that more than two-thirds of state residents opposed the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe. That included about three-fourths of African Americans and Asian Americans, seven in 10 white voters, and just over three-fifths of Latino voters. About three-fourths of independents, whom Republicans need to compete in California, because they are so outnumbered by registered Democrats, opposed the ruling. Opposition to the decision was greatest in the big blue metropolitan areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco, but even in areas where Republicans have traditionally performed somewhat better, such as Orange and San Diego Counties and the Central Valley, preponderant majorities opposed the decision.

In another survey released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and the Los Angeles Times, more than seven in 10 California voters said they intended to support the constitutional amendment inscribing abortion rights into the state constitution.

“From a public-opinion perspective, it’s a settled issue in California,” Mark Baldassare, the PPIC president, told me. “We have seen what we would describe as overwhelming support for abortion rights in California consistently in our polls over many, many years … That’s pretty consistent across demographic groups and regions of the state.”

The state’s Republican congressional delegation—as well as the party’s challengers in the key races—have placed themselves firmly on the opposite side of that consensus. Four of the House Republicans facing the potentially toughest contests—Steel, Garcia, Valadao, and Calvert—signed a legal brief urging the Supreme Court to overturn Roe. All of them but Calvert have co-sponsored the Life at Conception Act, a Republican bill that would define the unborn as a person under the Constitution from “the moment of fertilization” and effectively ban abortion nationwide, legal scholars say. Representative Kim, another Republican facing a potentially competitive race in an Orange County district, did not co-sponsor that bill, but has described herself as a “proud pro-life woman” who believes “the rights of the child must be respected.” The GOP challengers to Harder, Levin, and Porter have also publicly declared their opposition to legal abortion.

As signs have grown of the backlash to the Supreme Court decision—including the Democratic victory in a New York congressional special election and the resounding defeat of a Kansas ballot initiative that would have opened the door to state abortion restrictions—several of the California Republicans have tried to obscure their positions. For instance, although the Life at Conception Act offers no exceptions and Steel earlier this year said she supported legal abortion only when the mother’s health was endangered, she told me in a statement, “I am pro-life with exceptions for rape, incest, and the health and life of the mother, and baby.” In a statement to the Los Angeles Times this week, Representative Garcia backed the same exceptions—which, again, are not included in the “life begins at conception” bill he is co-sponsoring.

In her statement, Steel downplayed the possibility that a Republican-controlled Congress would seek to ban abortion nationwide, though notably without disavowing the idea: “Discussions surrounding a nationwide ban on abortion are purely hypothetical at this point,” she declared.

But such vague dismissals may not dispel the vulnerability California Republicans face over the possibility of a national ban on abortion, particularly amid the parallel debate over amending the state constitution.

Though neither supporters nor opponents of the constitutional amendment have yet raised much money, Newsom, who is emerging as a national leader for Democrats on cultural issues, is expected to campaign heavily for it and raise its visibility this fall. “I don’t want to give away our plans … but I would expect him to play a very prominent role,” Sean Clegg, a senior strategist for Newsom, told me. Abortion rights and the constitutional amendment to protect them, he added, are “going to have an effect in every single race in California.”

Conor Friedersdorf: Gavin Newsom, the Ron DeSantis of the left

The proposed amendment on the ballot in November represents the third level of protection for abortion rights in California. In earlier rulings, the state supreme court has already decided that the procedure is protected under the state constitution’s guarantees of liberty and privacy. This amendment, placed on the ballot by Newsom and the state’s Democratic-controlled legislature, adds an explicit guarantee that “the state shall not deny or interfere with an individual’s reproductive freedom … which includes their fundamental right to choose to have an abortion and their fundamental right to choose or refuse contraceptives.”

Yet even all those reinforcing levels of protection for abortion rights in the California constitution would be preempted if Congress approved a national ban, legal analysts agree. The Life at Conception Act would surely face legal challenges if a future Republican-controlled Congress passes it, but should the law be upheld, it would override any California action to guarantee abortion rights, according to Cary Franklin, a constitutional-law professor at UCLA and the faculty director of its Center on Reproductive Health, Law, and Policy. “If Congress were to pass a national ban on abortion, that would trump state law, even state constitutional law,” she told me.

That’s a message Democrats are likely to pound across the state in the campaign’s final months. “If Steel has her way, she will pass a federal ban on abortion, which will override our protections here, and I think Californians are coming to realize that,” Chen, a Naval reservist and the owner of a business that manages commercial properties, told me. By contrast, Chen, like the other Democratic incumbents and challengers, supports legislation restoring a national right to abortion.

Opponents of the state constitutional amendment, such as Steel, say it would authorize abortions at any point in pregnancy, ending current state restrictions after a fetus is viable outside the womb (unless the mother’s life is endangered). Its sponsors deny that interpretation, but it will likely become the centerpiece of the campaign against the amendment. “Pro-life people may have had enough,” Susan Swift Arnall, the vice president of legal affairs at California’s Right to Life League, told me. “They may say, ‘This is too far. This is too extreme … And we want to send a message back to the legislature that we don’t support abortion on demand for all nine months and even into the birth of the baby.’”

But the greater likelihood is that the amendment mobilizes turnout among the decisive majority in the state who support abortion rights. “There’s no question the [Supreme Court] decision has really created a great deal of increased interest from women voters for sure, and not just Democrats,” Levin said. “We are talking about independents, even some Republicans. Those who historically haven’t voted in midterm elections, I think, are motivated.”

By solidifying Democrats in suburbia, abortion rights’ growing visibility, like the increased focus on gun violence and renewed attention to Trump, may narrow the range of House districts the GOP can realistically contest both in California and nationwide, and lower the ceiling on their potential gains. But not enough voters may prioritize abortion to neutralize Republicans’ other advantages in economically strained areas. Like so much else in modern American politics, the Supreme Court decision overturning Roe seems likely to further widen the chasm between white-collar and culturally cosmopolitan metropolitan areas trending toward the Democrats and blue-collar, socially conservative smaller places hardening in their support for the GOP, even in staunchly Democratic California.

Ronald Brownstein

Source link

September 2, 2022