“Trump’s share of the Black and Latino vote increased by 8 points each between 2020 and 2024.
Analysts have proposed several different explanations for those shifts, including sexism within communities of color, pessimistic views of the economy and inflation, disinformation, social class and the ongoing ideological sorting of nonwhite conservatives into the Republican Party. While there’s probably merit in some of these, my analyses suggest that one of the biggest factors behind Trump’s growing support from nonwhite voters may be opposition to immigration.
There are two main reasons for this. First, nonwhite Americans’ attitudes about immigration moved sharply to the right during President Joe Biden’s term. That resulted in a much larger pool of Black and Latino voters who were receptive to Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. Second, voters of color with conservative immigration attitudes were especially likely to defect from Biden in 2020 to Trump in 2024 — even after accounting for other plausible reasons for these changes.”
“because of its winner-take-all nature, the Electoral College isn’t a good measure of closeness. Imagine an election where one candidate wins every state and district 50.1 percent to 49.9 percent. That candidate would romp to a 538-0 victory in the Electoral College, but that election was obviously still very close. The same principle was at play in the 2024 election: Trump won six of the seven major swing states (Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin) by 3.2 points or less. And he won Wisconsin by just 0.9 points, Michigan by just 1.4 points and Pennsylvania by just 1.7 points.
That’s important because if Harris had won those three states (plus all the states and districts she actually did win), she would have gotten exactly 270 Electoral College votes.”
…
“if Harris had done just 1.8 points better across the board — or even just in those three states (although that’s not usually how elections work) — she would be the president-elect right now.”
…
“There have been 20 presidential elections since the end of World War II, and in only six of them was the tipping-point state decided by a smaller margin than Pennsylvania was decided by this year.”
…
“the same is true if you look at the Electoral College margin, Trump’s main claim to landslide status. His likely 86-electoral-vote margin over Harris is larger than the 77 electoral votes he won by in 2016 or the 74 electoral votes that President Joe Biden won by in 2020. But it’s smaller than the 126 electoral votes that Obama won by in 2012 and the 192 electoral votes that Obama won by in 2008. And once again, it is only the 14th-biggest Electoral College victory since the end of World War II.”
…
“Another way to assess the closeness of an election is, of course, the national popular vote. While the popular vote doesn’t affect who actually wins the election, it can be relevant in discussions of how big of a mandate the winner has to govern. By this measure as well, 2024 was a historically close election. Since the end of World War II, only three elections had popular-vote margins smaller than Trump’s current 1.6-point lead: 1960, 1968 and 2000.”
“Heading into 2026, Republicans have about as favorable of a Senate map as they could hope for under the circumstances. This is true despite the fact that the incoming presidential party must defend 22 of the 35 seats that will likely be up for election (including Vance’s and Rubio’s seats). Strikingly, though, only one of those 22 Republican-held seats — held by Sen. Susan Collins of Maine — is in a state that outgoing Vice President Kamala Harris carried in the 2024 presidential election. The other 21 seats are all in states that Trump won. In contrast, Democrats will be defending just 13 seats overall, but two of them are in states that Trump won this year.”
“The Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians have a land trust, the Qualla Boundary, which straddles parts of Swain and Jackson counties in the Smoky Mountains, in the western part of the state. In the mid-1990s, they greatly expanded the gambling facilities on the Boundary to include a large casino. Some of the profits from the casino are ploughed back into the tribal community in the form of community services –roads and sewers, hospitals and clinics, gymnasia and schools. But some of the money goes straight back to the individual tribal members in the form of a payment every six months, the amount dependent on the profits from the casino. The “per cap”, as it is called, goes to everyone, young or old, healthy or sick, working or unemployed, law-abiding or not, as long as they are members of the tribe. (Money for children goes into a bank account for them until they graduate high school or reach age 21, whichever comes first.) In recent years the amount of the supplement has been around $4,000 a year.”
…
“In 1993 my Duke University colleagues and I began a study of the mental health care needs of 1,420 randomly selected children living in the 11 western-most counties of North Carolina. We were especially interested in the American Indian community, because it provided strong access to mental health care. So we ensured that a quarter of the study sample were American Indian children – 350 of them.”
…
“All of the American Indian children in the study, but none of the children in the surrounding counties, lived in families that had received a considerable boost in income.”
…
“Four years after the casino opened, Indian children had fewer behavioral and emotional problems than did neighboring children. Moreover, the effect continued into adulthood. At age 30, one in five of the American Indians had mental health or drug problems, compared with one in three of those in surrounding communities. The Indians had less depression, anxiety and alcohol dependence. The payments had no effect on extremely severe but rare mental illnesses like schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. But those who had received the supplement had better overall health and fewer economic problems. The younger the participants were when their families started getting the casino payments, the stronger the effects on adult mental health.”
…
“some individuals spent their extra money foolishly, on drugs and drink, just as was true outside the reservation. Most people used their income supplement wisely, however, and there was no evidence that people worked fewer hours. And, of course, it is much cheaper to give people a check than to administer all the complex means tests that go with government welfare programs such as Supplementary Security Income benefits.”
Demographic collapse is a huge problem! We are self-annihilating by not having enough children. Working to solve this doesn’t need to threaten women’s rights or force anyone to have children.
“Zoning cops have a knack for blocking affordable housing, but in Troy, New York, regulators greenlit an 11-unit apartment building on a vacant lot. Just as construction was about to kick off, however, the project ran up against a different, familiar hurdle.
Concerned neighbors—who already have housing—filed a lawsuit to keep outsiders out. Rather than challenge the developer directly, the project opponents instead took the city to court, insisting regulators hadn’t done enough research before granting a zoning change. The city won a trial court victory in 2023, but opponents appealed and scored a reversal on October 24, 2024.
What have the “concerned citizens” given as reason for legal action? Evidence of a nearby quarry allegedly used by Native Americans in the distant past. Strangely, proximity to this site was not an issue when these residents secured housing for themselves. The “high archaeological sensitivity,” as they frame it, came later.
New York’s State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) makes it easy for citizens to stall or kill housing in New York with almost any excuse they can cook up. Courts can be swayed by vague concepts like “community” or “neighborhood character.” Project opponents can even cite generic concerns without showing specific harm.
In Guilderland, New York, a citizen group raised alarms about global climate change when developers proposed five apartment buildings and a Costco. This group, represented by the same lawyer now working to derail housing in Troy, won at the trial court level. But an appellate court reversed the decision in 2022 noting that construction would result in less driving, not more, producing a net gain for air quality.
But these NIMBY (“not in my backyard”) activists don’t need a win in court to achieve their goals. Even when they lose, they can use SEQRA to freeze construction for months or longer. In Old Westbury, Long Island, developers waited 25 years for permission to build religious facilities. The legal labyrinth is also expensive. SEQRA litigation added $2 million to a single housing project in Hempstead, New York.”
“America needs minerals like copper and silver to make things. Even President Joe Biden made a speech saying America will need 400-600 percent more such minerals to make “solar panels, wind turbines, and so much more!”
An iPhone alone requires aluminum, iron, lithium, gold, copper.
But when investors dare try to dig up such minerals in America, the NRDC objects and uses political connections to stop them.
Twenty years ago, entrepreneurs tried to open a mine in Alaska. Before they even got the application in, the Environment Protection Agency (EPA) vetoed it.
Why? Because groups like the NRDC say the mine “would be a catastrophic threat to the wildlife and…fragile ecosystem.”
They get their way because when Democrats run the EPA, they not only support NRDC’s positions, they even hire NRDC employees.
The next Republican administration removed the EPA’s veto. The Army Corps of Engineers then studied the mine and concluded that it wasn’t an environmental threat.
So, is Pebble a bustling mine today? No.
Democrats got elected and vetoed it again.
Physicist Mark Mills wonders why anyone would try to open a mine in America today. “Why in the world would you put millions, maybe billions of dollars at risk, spending those decades to get a permit, knowing there’s a very good chance they’ll just cancel a permit? How in the world do you build mines in America knowing that that’s the landscape you have?”
Well, you don’t.
America now ranks second to last in the time it takes to develop a new mine—roughly 29 years. Only Zambia is worse.
“You start applying for permits,” says Mills, “You’re going to be waiting not months, not years, but decades!”
Waiting while the NRDC sues and runs frightening anti-mine ads, saying nature will be “destroyed by a 2,000-foot gaping hole in the ground!”
Mills points out their deceit. Today’s mines disturb “a tiny infinitesimal pinprick in the landscape” and we do need to disturb the landscape a little, because “we need metals and materials and minerals to build everything that exists to make society possible!”
I confronted NRDC spokesman Bob Deans, saying the NRDC killing mines also kills people’s opportunity. He responded that “clean” energy creates jobs.
“We created 50,000 new jobs in this country, putting up wind turbines, solar panels, building the next generation of energy efficient cars. This is where the future is!”
“But also, you need copper and gold,” I point out.
“That’s right,” says Deans, “And we have to weigh those risks.”
But the NRDC doesn’t weigh the risks. They just oppose American mines.”
“Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to replace Christopher Wray as director of the FBI, has threatened to “come after the people in the media who lied about American citizens” and “helped Joe Biden rig presidential elections.” What exactly does he mean by that? Given the position that Patel will hold if he is confirmed by the Senate, the answer could have serious implications not only for the anti-Trump journalists he has in mind but also for freedom of the press generally.”