WASHINGTON: They came from across America, summoned by President Donald Trump to march on Washington in support of his false claim that the November election was stolen and to stop the congressional certification of Democrat Joe Biden as the victor.
“Big protest in D.C. on January 6th,” Trump tweeted a week before Christmas. “Be there, will be wild!”
The insurrectionist mob that showed up at the president’s behest and stormed the US Capitol was overwhelmingly made up of longtime Trump supporters, including Republican Party officials, GOP political donors, far-right militants, white supremacists, and adherents of the QAnon myth that the government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile cannibals. Records show that some were heavily armed and included convicted criminals, such as a Florida man recently released from prison for attempted murder.
The Associated Press reviewed social media posts, voter registrations, court files and other public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest or who, going maskless amid the pandemic, were later identified through photographs and videos taken during the melee.
The evidence gives lie to claims by right-wing pundits and Republican officials such as Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs rather than supporters of the president.
“If the reports are true,” Gaetz said on the House floor just hours after the attack, “some of the people who breached the Capitol today were not Trump supporters. They were masquerading as Trump supporters and, in fact, were members of the violent terrorist group antifa.”
Steven D’Antuono, the assistant director in charge of the FBI’s Washington field office, told reporters that investigators had seen “no indication” antifa activists were disguised as Trump supporters in Wednesday’s riot.
The AP found that many of the rioters had taken to social media after the November election to retweet and parrot false claims by Trump that the vote had been stolen in a vast international conspiracy. Several had openly threatened violence against Democrats and Republicans they considered insufficiently loyal to the president. During the riot, some livestreamed and posted photos of themselves at the Capitol. Afterwards, many bragged about what they had done.
As the mob smashed through doors and windows to invade the Capitol, a loud chant went up calling for the hanging of Vice President Mike Pence, the recent target of a Trump Twitter tirade for not subverting the Constitution and overturning the legitimate vote tally. Outside, a wooden scaffold had been erected on the National Mall, a rope noose dangling at the ready.
So far, at least 90 people have been arrested on charges ranging from misdemeanor curfew violations to felonies related to assaults on police officers, possessing illegal weapons and making death threats against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi D-Calif.
Among them was Lonnie Leroy Coffman, 70, an Alabama grandfather who drove to Washington to attend Trump’s “Save America Rally” in a red GMC Sierra pickup packed with an M4 assault rifle, multiple loaded magazines, three handguns and 11 Mason jars filled with homemade napalm, according to court filings.
The truck was found during a security sweep involving explosives-sniffing dogs after two pipe bombs were found and disarmed Wednesday near the national headquarters of the Republican and Democratic parties. Coffman was arrested that evening when he returned to the truck carrying a 9mm Smith & Wesson handgun and a .22-caliber derringer pistol in his pockets. Federal officials said Coffman is not suspected of planting the pipe bombs, though he was charged with having Molotov cocktails in the bed of his truck.
His grandson, Brandon Coffman, told the AP on Friday his grandfather was a Republican who had expressed admiration for Trump at holiday gatherings. He said he had no idea why Coffman would show up in the nation’s capital armed for civil war.
Also facing federal charges is Cleveland Gover Meredith Jr., a Georgia man who in the wake of the election had protested outside the home of Republican Gov. Brian Kemp, whom Trump had publicly blamed for his loss in the state. Meredith drove to Washington last week for the “Save America” rally but arrived late because of a problem with the lights on his trailer, according to court filings that include expletive-laden texts.
“Headed to DC with a (s— -) ton of 5.56 armor-piercing ammo,” he texted friends and relatives on Jan. 6, adding a purple devil emoji, according to court filings. The following day, he texted to the group: “Thinking about heading over to Pelosi (C— — ‘s) speech and putting a bullet in her noggin on Live TV.” He once again added a purple devil emoji, and wrote he might hit her with his truck instead. “I’m gonna run that (C— -) Pelosi over while she chews on her gums. … Dead (B— — ) Walking. I predict that within 12 days, many in our country will die.”
Meredith, who is white, then texted a photo of himself in blackface. “I’m gonna walk around DC FKG with people by yelling ‘Allahu ak Bar’ randomly.”
A participant in the text exchange provided screenshots to the FBI, who tracked Meredith to a Holiday Inn a short walk from the Capitol. They found a compact Tavor X95 assault rifle, a 9mm Glock 19 handgun and about 100 rounds of ammunition, according to court filings. The agents also seized a stash of THC edibles and a vial of injectable testosterone.
Meredith is charged with transmitting a threat, as well as felony counts for possession of firearms and ammunition.
Michael Thomas Curzio was arrested in relation to the riots less than two years after he was released from a Florida prison in 2019 after serving an eight-year sentence for attempted murder. Court records from Florida show that he shot the boyfriend of his former girlfriend in a fight at her home.
Federal law enforcement officials vowed Friday to bring additional charges against those who carried out the attack on the Capitol, launching a nationwide manhunt for dozens of suspects identified from photographic evidence
The FBI has opened a murder probe into the death of Capitol Police Officer Brian D. Sicknick, who was hit in the head with a fire extinguisher, according to law enforcement officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the ongoing investigation publicly. He died at a hospital.
The Trump supporters who died in the riot were Kevin D. Greeson, 55, of Athens, Alabama; Benjamin Philips, 50, of Ringtown, Pennsylvania; Ashli Babbitt, 35, of San Diego; and Rosanne Boyland, 34, Kennesaw, Georgia.
Boyland’s sister told the AP on Friday she was an adherent of the QAnon conspiracy theory that holds Trump is America’s savior. Her Facebook page featured photos and videos praising Trump and promoting fantasies, including one theory that a shadowy group was using the coronavirus to steal elections. Boyland’s final post on Twitter — a retweet of a post by White House social media director Dan Scavino — was a picture of thousands of people surrounding the Washington Monument on Wednesday.
“She would text me some things, and I would be like, ‘Let me fact-check that.’ And I’d sit there and I’d be like, ‘Well, I don’t think that’s actually right,’” Lonna Cave, Boyland’s sister, said. “We got in fights about it, arguments.”
The AP’s review found that QAnon beliefs were common among those who heeded Trump’s call to come to Washington.
Doug Jensen, 41, who was arrested by the FBI on Friday in Des Moines, Iowa, after returning home from the riot. An AP photographer captured images of him confronting Capitol Police officers outside of the Senate chamber on Wednesday.
Jensen was wearing a black T-shirt emblazoned with a large Q and the phrase “Trust The Plan,” a reference to QAnon. Video posted online during the storming of the Capitol also appears to show Jensen, who is white, pursuing a Black police officer up an interior flight of stairs as a mob of people trails several steps behind. At several points, the officer says “get back,” but to no avail.
Jensen’s older brother, William Routh, told the AP on Saturday that Jensen believed that the person posting as Q was either Trump or someone very close to the president.
“I feel like he had a lot of influence from the Internet that confused or obscured his views on certain things,” said Routh, of Clarksville, Arkansas, who described himself as a Republican Trump supporter. “When I talked to him, he thought that maybe this was Trump telling him what to do.”
Jensen’s employer, Forrest & Associate Masonry in Des Moines, announced Friday that he had been fired.
Tara Coleman, a 40-year-old mother who lives in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, was arrested at the Capitol for a curfew violation and for unlawful entry. On her Facebook page, Coleman re-posted articles supporting the QAnon beliefs about a “deep state” conspiracy to target children. The AP could not find a working phone number for Coleman and her attorney, Peter Cooper, did not respond to an email seeking comment.
And Jake Chansley, who calls himself the “QAnon Shaman” and has long been a fixture at Trump rallies, surrendered to the FBI field office in Phoenix on Saturday. News photos show him at the riot shirtless, with his face painted and wearing a fur hat with horns, carrying a US flag attached to a wooden pole topped with a spear.
Chansley’s unusual headwear is visible in a Nov. 7 AP photo at a rally of Trump supporters protesting election results outside of the Maricopa County election center in Phoenix. In that photo, Chansley, who also has gone by the last name Angeli, held a sign that read, “HOLD THE LINE PATRIOTS GOD WINS.” He also expressed his support for the president in an interview with the AP that day.
The FBI identified Chansley by his distinctive tattoos, which include bricks circling his biceps in an apparent reference to Trump’s border wall. Chansley didn’t respond last week to messages seeking comment to one of his social media accounts.
The insurrectionist mob also included members of the neofascist group known as the Proud Boys, whom Trump urged to “stand back and stand by” when asked to condemn them by a moderator during a presidential debate in September.
Nicholas R. Ochs, 34, was arrested Saturday after returning home to Hawaii, where he is the founder of the local Proud Boys chapter. On Wednesday, Ochs posted a photo of himself on Twitter inside the Capitol, grinning broadly and smoking a cigarette. According to court filings, the FBI matched photos of Ochs taken during the riot to photos taken when Ochs campaigned unsuccessfully last year as the Republican nominee for a seat in the Hawaii statehouse.
Proud Boys leader Henry “Enrique” Tarrio was arrested Monday in Washington on weapons charges and ordered to stay out of the nation’s capital. Tarrio is accused of vandalizing a Black Lives Matter banner at a historic Black church last month.
Jay Robert Thaxton, 46, was arrested near the Capitol for curfew violations on Wednesday. A North Carolina man with the same name has also been linked to the Proud Boys. He told The Stanly News & Press in 2019 that he was a Proud Boys supporter but wouldn’t say if he was an official member of the group. Another North Carolina newspaper, The Jacksonville Daily News, published a photo of Thaxton wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat at a 2019 protest over the removal of Confederate statues.
A man who answered a telephone number associated with Thaxton hung up on an AP reporter. The recipient of a text message to the same number responded with an expletive.
Also arrested at the Capitol was William Arthur Leary, who owns a manufactured housing business in Utica, New York. In an interview Friday, Leary told the AP that he strongly believes the election was stolen from Trump and that he went to Washington to show his support.
Leary said he doesn’t trust information reported by the mainstream media and that one of his main sources of information was Infowars, the far-right conspiracy site run by Alex Jones. He denied he ever set foot in the Capitol and complained that he was held for more than 24 hours and had his cell phone seized.
“They treated us like animals,” he complained. “They took all our phones. I didn’t get to make a phone call to tell anybody where I was.”
Leary said he remembers seeing a woman, Kristina Malimon, 28, sobbing at the detention center because she had been separated and not allowed to translate for her mother, who primarily speaks Russian. Both women had been charged with curfew violation and unlawful entry. According to a video posted on her Instagram account, the younger Malimon says she was born in Moldova, where her family had faced persecution under the Soviet-era regime for their Christian beliefs.
Malimon, who traveled to D.C. from Portland, Oregon, is vice chairwoman of the Young Republicans of Oregon, according to the group’s website and is also listed as an “ambassador” for the pro-Trump group Turning Point USA. Her social media feeds are full of photos taken at Trump events, including the earlier “Million MAGA March” held in Washington last month. She also posted photos of herself posing with Donald Trump Jr. and Roger Stone, who was convicted of crimes including obstruction of justice and pardoned by Trump on Christmas Eve.
Media reports from Oregon quoted Malimon in August as the primary organizer of a Trump boat parade on the Willamette River, where big waves created by speeding boats flying Trump flags swamped and sank a smaller boat that was not participating, throwing a family into the water to be rescued by the sheriff’s department.
“Oregon, today you came out and showed your love and support for our wonderful President, Donald J. Trump thank you!” Kristina Malimon wrote on Facebook following the parade.
Malimon also served as a Republican poll watcher in Georgia and spoke at an event organized by the Trump campaign in December, claiming to have seen voting machines and tabulation computers in Savannah, Georgia, with suspiciously blinking green lights she interpreted as a sign they were being secretly controlled by outside hackers — a claim debunked as false by GOP election officials in the state.
A phone number listed for Kristina Malimon rang without being answered on Friday. At the address listed for her in southeast Portland on Friday night, her teenage brother answered the door as other family members, including young children, ran around.
The family spoke Russian to each other and the brother, Nick Malimon, translated. He said his sister was still in Washington but had called the family following her release from jail and didn’t seem upset about her arrest.
But others are facing consequences even beyond their arrests.
A Texas sheriff announced Thursday that he had reported one of his lieutenants to the FBI after she posted photos of herself on social media with a crowd outside the Capitol. Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said Lt. Roxanne Mathai, a 46-year-old jailer, had the right to attend the rally but he’s investigating whether she may have broken the law.
One of the posts Mathai shared was a photo that appeared to be taken Wednesday from among the mass of Trump supporters outside the Capitol, “Not gonna lie......aside from my kids, this was, indeed, the best day of my life. And it’s not over yet.”
A lawyer for Mathai, a mother and longtime San Antonio resident, said she attended the Trump rally but never entered the Capitol.
Attorney Hector Cortes said Mathai’s contract bars her from speaking directly with the press but that she welcomes an FBI investigation and that her actions were squarely within the bounds of the First Amendment.
Brad Rukstales, a Republican political donor and CEO of Cogensia, a Chicago-based data analytics firm, was arrested with a group of a half-dozen Trump supporters who clashed with officers Wednesday inside the Capitol. Campaign finance reports show Rukstales contributed more than $25,000 to Trump’s campaign and other GOP committees during to 2020 election cycle.
He told a local CBS news channel last week that he had entered the Capitol and apologized. He was fired Friday and did not respond to calls and emails seeking comment.
Derrick Evans, a Republican recently sworn in as a delegate to the West Virginia House, resigned Saturday following his arrest on two charges related to the Capitol riot. He had streamed video of himself charging into the building with the mob.
“They’re making an announcement now saying if Pence betrays us you better get your mind right because we’re storming the building,” Evans, 35, says in the video, as the door to the Capitol building is smashed and rioters rush through. “The door is cracked! … We’re in, we’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”
On Saturday he issued a statement saying he regretted taking part.
“I take full responsibility for my actions, and deeply regret any hurt, pain or embarrassment I may have caused my family, friends, constituents and fellow West Virginians,” the statement said.
Records show fervent Trump fans fueled US Capitol takeover
https://arab.news/4nch8
Records show fervent Trump fans fueled US Capitol takeover
- AP reviewed social media posts and public records for more than 120 people either facing criminal charges related to the Jan. 6 unrest
- Evidence gives lie to claims by Trump apologists that the violence was perpetrated by left-wing antifa thugs, not Trump supporters
Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief
Trump’s threat to impose tariffs could raise prices for consumers, colliding with promise for relief
- The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent US Census data
DETROIT: If Donald Trump makes good on his threat to slap 25 percent tariffs on everything imported from Mexico and Canada, the price increases that could follow will collide with his campaign promise to give American families a break from inflation.
Economists say companies would have little choice but to pass along the added costs, dramatically raising prices for food, clothing, automobiles, booze and other goods.
The president-elect floated the tariff idea, including additional 10 percent taxes on goods from China, as a way to force the countries to halt the flow of illegal immigrants and drugs into the US But his posts Monday on Truth Social threatening the tariffs on his first day in office could just be a negotiating ploy to get the countries to change behavior.
High food prices were a major issue in voters picking Trump over Vice President Kamala Harris, but tariffs almost certainly would push those costs up even further.
For instance, the Produce Distributors Association, a Washington trade group, said Tuesday that tariffs will raise prices for fresh fruit and vegetables and hurt US farmers when other countries retaliate.
“Tariffs distort the marketplace and will raise prices along the supply chain, resulting in the consumer paying more at the checkout line,” said Alan Siger, association president.
Mexico and Canada are two of the biggest exporters of fresh fruit and vegetables to the US In 2022, Mexico supplied 51 percent of fresh fruit and 69 percent of fresh vegetables imported by value into the US, while Canada supplied 2 percent of fresh fruit and 20 percent of fresh vegetables.
Before the election, about 7 in 10 voters said they were very concerned about the cost of food, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 120,000 voters.
“We’ll get them down,” Trump told shoppers during a September visit to a Pennsylvania grocery store.
The US is the largest importer of goods in the world, with Mexico, China and Canada its top three suppliers, according to the most recent US Census data.
People looking to buy a new vehicle likely would see big price increases as well, at a time when costs have gone up so much they are out of reach for many. The average price of a new vehicle now runs around $48,000.
About 15 percent of the 15.6 million new vehicles sold in the US last year came from Mexico, while 8 percent crossed the border from Canada, according to Global Data.
Much of the tariffs would get passed along to consumers, unless automakers can somehow quickly find productivity improvements to offset them, said C.J. Finn, US automotive sector leader for PwC. That means even more consumers “would potentially get priced out,” Finn said.
Hardest hit would be Volkswagen, Stellantis, General Motors and Ford, Bernstein analyst Daniel Roeska wrote Tuesday in a note to investors. “A 25 percent tariff on Mexico and Canada would severely cripple the US auto industry,” he said.
The tariffs would hurt US industrial production so much that “we expect this is unlikely to happen in practice,” Roeska said.
The tariff threat hit auto stocks on Tuesday, particularly shares of GM, which imports about 30 percent of the vehicles it sells in the US from Canada and Mexico, and Stellantis, which imports about 40 percent from the two countries. For both, about 55 percent of their lucrative pickup trucks come from Mexico and Canada. GM stock lost almost 9 percent of its value, while Stellantis dropped nearly 6 percent.
It’s not clear how long the tariffs would last if implemented, but they could force auto executives to move production to the US, which could create more jobs in the long run. However, Morningstar analyst David Whiston said automakers probably won’t make any immediate moves because they can’t quickly change where they build vehicles.
Millions of dollars worth of auto parts flow across the borders with Mexico and Canada, and that could raise prices for already costly automobile repairs, Finn said.
The Distilled Spirits Council of the US said tariffs on tequila or Canadian whisky won’t boost American jobs because they are distinctive products that can only be made in their country of origin. In 2023, the US imported $4.6 billion worth of tequila and $108 million worth of mezcal from Mexico and $537 million worth of spirits from Canada, it said.
“Tariffs on spirits products from our neighbors to the north and south are going to hurt US consumers and lead to job losses across the US hospitality industry,” it added.
Electronics retailer Best Buy said on its third-quarter earnings conference call that it runs on thin profit margins, so while vendors and the company will shoulder some increases, Best Buy will have to pass tariffs to customers. “These are goods that people need, and higher prices are not helpful,” CEO Corie Barry said.
Walmart also warned last week that tariffs could force it to raise prices.
Tariffs could trigger supply chain disruptions as people buy goods before they are imposed and companies seek alternate sources of parts, said Rob Handfield, a professor of supply chain management at North Carolina State University. Some businesses might not be able to pass on the costs.
“It could actually shut down a lot of industries in the United States. It could actually put a lot of US businesses out of business,” he said.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who talked with Trump after his call for tariffs, said they had a good conversation about working together. “This is a relationship that we know takes a certain amount of working on and that’s what we’ll do,” Trudeau said.
Trump’s threats come as arrests for illegally crossing the border from Mexico have been falling. But arrests for illegally crossing the border from Canada have been rising over the past two years. Much of America’s fentanyl is smuggled from Mexico, and seizures have increased.
Trump has sound legal justification to impose tariffs, even though they conflict with a 2020 trade deal brokered in large part by Trump with Canada and Mexico, said William Reinsch, senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and a former Clinton administration trade official. The treaty, known as the USMCA, is up for review in 2026.
In China’s case, he could simply declare Beijing hasn’t met obligations under an agreement he negotiated in his first term. For Canada and Mexico, he could say the influx of migrants and drugs are a national security threat, and turn to a section of trade law he used in his first term to slap tariffs on steel and aluminum.
The law he would most likely use for Canada and Mexico has a legal process that often takes up to nine months, giving Trump time to seek a deal.
If talks failed and the duties were imposed, all three countries would likely retaliate with tariffs on US exports, said Reinsch, who believes Trump’s tariffs threat is a negotiating ploy.
US companies would lobby intensively against tariffs, and would seek to have products exempted. Some of the biggest exporters from Mexico are US firms that make parts there, Reinsch said.
Longer term, Mary Lovely, a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, said the threat of tariffs could make the US an “unstable partner” in international trade. “It is an incentive to move activity outside the United States to avoid all this uncertainty,” she said.
Trump transition team officials did not immediately respond to questions about what he would need to see to prevent the tariffs from being implemented and how they would impact prices in the US
Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum suggested Tuesday that Mexico could retaliate with tariffs of its own. Sheinbaum said she was willing to talk about the issues, but said drugs were a US problem.
US appeals court grants dismissal of Trump documents case
- The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment
WASHINGTON: An appeals court on Tuesday granted a request by prosecutors to drop the case against US President-elect Donald Trump for mishandling classified documents.
Special Counsel Jack Smith had asked the court on Monday to dismiss the case because of a long-standing Justice Department policy of not prosecuting a sitting president.
A Trump-appointed district court judge in Florida threw out the documents case earlier this year, but Smith had appealed the ruling to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals.
The appeals court granted Smith’s request to dismiss the case without comment.
Smith is continuing, however, to pursue the case against Trump’s two co-defendants, his valet, Walt Nauta, and Mar-a-Lago property manager Carlos De Oliveira.
Trump, 78, was accused of removing large quantities of top secret documents after leaving the White House at the end of his first term and obstructing efforts to retrieve them.
The former president was also accused by the special counsel of conspiring to overturn the results of the 2020 election won by Joe Biden. A judge on Monday granted a request by Smith to drop that case.
The special counsel paused both federal cases this month after Trump defeated Vice President Kamala Harris in the November 5 presidential election.
The former and incoming president also faces two state cases — in New York and Georgia.
He was convicted in New York in May of 34 counts of falsifying business records to cover up a hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels on the eve of the 2016 election to stop her from revealing an alleged 2006 sexual encounter.
Judge Juan Merchan has postponed sentencing while he considers a request from Trump’s lawyers that the conviction be thrown out in light of the Supreme Court ruling in July that an ex-president has broad immunity from prosecution.
In Georgia, Trump faces racketeering charges over his efforts to subvert the 2020 election results in the southern state, but that case will likely be frozen while he is in office.
Trump won about 2.5M more votes this year than he did in 2020. This is where he did it
- Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories
WASHINGTON: It’s a daunting reality for Democrats: Republican Donald Trump’s support has grown broadly since he last sought the presidency.
In his defeat of Democrat Kamala Harris, Trump won a bigger percentage of the vote in each one of the 50 states, and Washington, D.C., than he did four years ago. He won more actual votes than in 2020 in 40 states, according to an Associated Press analysis.
Certainly, Harris’ more than 7 million vote decline from President Joe Biden’s 2020 total was a factor in her loss, especially in swing-state metropolitan areas that have been the party’s winning electoral strongholds.
But, despite national turnout that was lower than in the high-enthusiasm 2020 election, Trump received 2.5 million more votes than he did four years ago. He swept the seven most competitive states to win a convincing Electoral College victory, becoming the first Republican nominee in 20 years to win a majority of the popular vote.
Trump cut into places where Harris needed to overperform to win a close election. Now Democrats are weighing how to regain traction ahead of the midterm elections in two years, when control of Congress will again be up for grabs and dozens of governors elected.
There were some notable pieces to how Trump’s victory came together:
Trump took a bite in Northern metros
Though Trump improved across the map, his gains were particularly noteworthy in urban counties home to the cities of Detroit, Milwaukee and Philadelphia, electoral engines that stalled for Harris in industrial swing states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
Harris fell more than 50,000 votes — and 5 percentage points — short of Biden’s total in Wayne County, Michigan, which makes up the lion’s share of the Detroit metro area. She was almost 36,000 votes off Biden’s mark in Philadelphia County, Pennsylvania, and about 1,000 short in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin.
It wasn’t only Harris’ shortfall that helped Trump carry the states, a trio that Democrats had collectively carried in six of the seven previous elections before Nov. 5.
Trump added to his 2020 totals in all three metro counties, netting more than 24,000 votes in Wayne County, more than 11,000 in Philadelphia County and almost 4,000 in Milwaukee County.
It’s not yet possible to determine whether Harris fell short of Biden’s performance because Biden voters stayed home or switched their vote to Trump — or how some combination of the two produced the rightward drift evident in each of these states.
Harris advertised heavily and campaigned regularly in each, and made Milwaukee County her first stop as a candidate with a rally in July. These swings alone were not the difference in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but her weaker performance than Biden across the three metros helped Trump, who held on to big 2020 margins in the three states’ broad rural areas and improved or held steady in populous suburbs.
Trump’s team and outside groups supporting him knew from their data that he was making inroads with Black voters, particularly Black men younger than 50, more concentrated in these urban areas that have been key to Democratic victories.
When James Blair, Trump’s political director, saw results coming in from Philadelphia on election night, he knew Trump had cut into the more predominantly Black precincts, a gain that would echo in Wayne and Milwaukee counties.
“The data made clear there was an opportunity there,” Blair said.
AP VoteCast, a nationwide survey of more than 120,000 voters, found Trump won a larger share of Black and Latino voters than he did in 2020, and most notably among men under age 45.
Democrats won Senate races in Michigan and Wisconsin but lost in Pennsylvania. In 2026, they will be defending governorships in all three states and a Senate seat in Michigan.
Trump gained more than Harris in battlegrounds
Despite the burst of enthusiasm Harris’ candidacy created among the Democratic base when she entered the race in July, she ended up receiving fewer votes than Biden in three of the seven states where she campaigned almost exclusively.
In Arizona, she received about 90,000 fewer votes than Biden. She received about 67,000 fewer in Michigan and 39,000 fewer in Pennsylvania.
In four others — Georgia, Nevada, North Carolina and Wisconsin — Harris won more votes than Biden did. But Trump’s support grew by more — in some states, significantly more.
That dynamic is glaring in Georgia, where Harris received almost 73,000 more votes than Biden did when he very narrowly carried the state. But Trump added more than 200,000 to his 2020 total, en route to winning Georgia by roughly 2 percentage points.
In Wisconsin, Trump’s team reacted to slippage it saw in GOP-leaning counties in suburban Milwaukee by targeting once-Democratic-leaning, working-class areas, where Trump made notable gains.
In the three largest suburban Milwaukee counties — Ozaukee, Washington and Waukesha — which have formed the backbone of GOP victories for decades, Harris performed better than Biden did in 2020. She also gained more votes than Trump gained over 2020, though he still won the counties.
That made Trump’s focus on Rock County, a blue-collar area in south central Wisconsin, critical. Trump received 3,084 more votes in Rock County, home of the former automotive manufacturing city of Janesville, than he did in 2020, while Harris underperformed Biden’s 2020 total by seven votes. That helped Trump offset Harris’ improvement in Milwaukee’s suburbs.
The focus speaks to the strength Trump has had and continued to grow with middle-income, non-college educated voters, the Trump campaign’s senior data analyst Tim Saler said.
“If you’re going to have to lean into working-class voters, they are particularly strong in Wisconsin,” Saler said. “We saw huge shifts from 2020 to 2024 in our favor.”
Trump boosted 2020 totals as Arizona turnout dipped
Of the seven most competitive states, Arizona saw the smallest increase in the number of votes cast in the presidential contest — slightly more than 4,000 votes, in a state with more than 3.3 million ballots cast.
That was despite nearly 30 campaign visits to Arizona by Trump, Harris and their running mates and more than $432 million spent on advertising by the campaigns and allied outside groups, according to the ad-monitoring firm AdImpact.
Arizona, alone of the seven swing states, saw Harris fall short of Biden across small, midsize and large counties. In the other six states, she was able to hold on in at least one of these categories.
Even more telling, it is also the only swing state where Trump improved his margin in every single county.
While turnout in Maricopa County, Arizona’s most populous as the home to Phoenix, dipped slightly from 2020 — by 14,199 votes, a tiny change in a county where more than 2 million people voted — Trump gained almost 56,000 more votes than four years ago.
Meanwhile, Harris fell more than 60,000 votes short of Biden’s total, contributing to a shift significant enough to swing the county and state to Trump, who lost Arizona by fewer than 11,000 votes in 2020.
Rightward shift even in heavily Democratic areas
The biggest leaps to the right weren’t taking place exclusively among Republican-leaning counties, but also among the most Democratic-leaning counties in the states. Michigan’s Wayne County swung 9 points toward Trump, tying the more Republican-leaning Antrim County for the largest movement in the state.
AP VoteCast found that voters were most likely to say the economy was the most important issue facing the country in 2024, followed by immigration. Trump supporters were more motivated by economic issues and immigration than Harris’, the survey showed.
“It’s still all about the economy,” said North Carolina Democratic strategist Morgan Jackson, a senior adviser to Democrat Josh Stein, who won North Carolina’s governorship on Nov. 5 as Trump also carried the state.
“Democrats have to embrace an economic message that actually works for real people and talk about it in the kind of terms that people get, rather than giving them a dissertation of economic policy,” he said.
Governor’s elections in 2026 give Democrats a chance to test their understanding and messaging on the issue, said Democratic pollster Margie Omero, whose firm has advised Wisconsin’s Democratic Gov. Tony Evers in the past and winning Arizona Senate candidate Ruben Gallego this year.
“So there’s an opportunity to really make sure people, who governors have a connection to, are feeling some specificity and clarity with the Democratic economic message,” Omero said.
Teen who lied about beheaded French teacher’s class says ‘sorry’
- Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history
PARIS: A teenager whose lies about her teacher are accused of contributing to the educator’s murder by an Islamist radical apologized to his family in a French court on Tuesday.
Eight people have been on trial since early November, charged with contributing to the climate of hatred that led to an 18-year-old of Chechen origin beheading teacher Samuel Paty outside Paris in 2020.
They include Brahim Chnina, the 52-year-old Moroccan father of the adolescent testifying Tuesday.
Then aged 13, the adolescent falsely claimed that Paty had asked Muslim students to leave his classroom before showing caricatures of the prophet Mohammed.
She was not in the classroom at the time.
“I would like to apologize to the family,” the 17-year-old, who has not been named, told the court. “I destroyed your lives, I am sorry.”
Also on trial is Abdelhakim Sefrioui, a 65-year-old French-Moroccan Islamist activist.
He and Chnina spread the teenager’s lies on social networks with the aim, according to the prosecution, of “designating a target,” “provoking a feeling of hatred” and “thus preparing several crimes.”
Both men have been in pre-trial detention for the past four years.
The teenager told the court that she lied to her mother to justify why she had been suspended from school for two days over her behavior and repeated absences.
“I was in panic and stress,” she said. “I told her I had been in class and that I wasn’t happy with what went on there and that the teacher excluded me. That we looked at cartoons.”
Sefrioui posted a video describing Paty as a “teaching thug.”
He also staged an “interview” with the teenager outside the school, whispering to her what to answer. The adolescent dutifully reiterated the falsehoods.
“I thought somebody would stop me in my lying, but nobody ever said that I wasn’t in class,” she told the court Tuesday.
She stuck to her story even after Paty’s death. Only following her arrest and 30 hours of interrogation did she admit to investigators that she had made it all up.
The teenager, whose delivery in court was matter-of-fact, showed emotion only when she talked about her father.
“Without my lies, none of us would be here,” she said, sobbing. “I used my father’s naivete and kindness.”
She added that “my father says you must always respect teachers,” a remark that prompted an astonished “really?” interjected by the court’s presiding judge.
The teenager was sentenced to 18 months of probation in December 2023 after being convicted of slander.
Paty had used the Charlie Hebdo magazine as part of an ethics class to discuss free speech laws in France, where blasphemy is legal and cartoons mocking religious figures have a long history.
His killing took place just weeks after Charlie Hebdo republished the Prophet Muhammad cartoons.
After the magazine used the images in 2015, Islamist gunmen stormed its offices, killing 12 people.
After long wrangling, Blinken to testify in Congress on Afghanistan
- Donald Trump drew criticism for shooting video for his campaign at Arlington National Cemetery where he appeared at a ceremony honoring troops killed in the evacuation
- Democrats have insisted some blame for the messy end of the war should be laid at the feet of Trump, who began the withdrawal process by signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020
WASHINGTON: US Secretary of State Antony Blinken has agreed to testify publicly at a House of Representatives committee hearing on the 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan, the panel said on Tuesday, after a long dispute with the Republican-led committee.
House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Michael McCaul said Blinken had committed to appear at a public hearing on Dec. 11 to discuss the committee’s investigation of the withdrawal three years ago.
The committee and the State Department have been wrangling over Blinken’s appearance for months. Panel Republicans voted in September to recommend Blinken be held in contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena.
The State Department had contended that the panel was provided with large amounts of information, with Blinken testifying before Congress on Afghanistan more than 14 times and the department providing nearly 20,000 pages of records, multiple high-level briefings and transcribed interviews.
McCaul released a report on Sept. 8 on the committee Republicans’ investigation of the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal, blasting Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration for failures surrounding the evacuation.
The issue had become intensely politicized before the presidential election on Nov. 5. In his successful bid for a second term, Republican former President Donald Trump drew criticism for shooting video for his campaign at Arlington National Cemetery where he appeared at a ceremony honoring troops killed in the evacuation.
Trump also sought to pin blame for the withdrawal on Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.
Democrats have insisted some blame for the messy end of the war — less than seven months into Biden’s presidency — should be laid at the feet of Trump, who began the withdrawal process by signing a deal with the Taliban in 2020.
The issue could become even more politicized after Trump returns to the White House on Jan. 20, after he spoke during his campaign of firing those responsible for the pullout from Afghanistan.
