Sunday, November 03, 2024

Donald Trump Wanted A Gender Election — And It Could Be The Reason He Loses

Jonathan Cohn
Fri, November 1, 2024

Election Day is Tuesday. And while plenty of politicos and pundits are out there predicting what will happen, the reality is that … nobody knows. The polls are super close, nationally and in the swing states. Forecasting models see the race as a coin flip.

But you can spot some clear storylines that say a lot about how the two presidential campaigns have unfolded so far, and that might even help explain the outcome after the fact. One of those storylines is the determination and enthusiasm of women who back Democrat Kamala Harris, including women who might be afraid to say so publicly because their husbands support Republican Donald Trump.

I first heard about this last week, in Michigan, while covering a campaign event for Democratic Senate candidate Elissa Slotkin. Slotkin said canvassers were reporting stops at houses with large Trump signs, where women would answer and ― when asked which candidate they were supporting ― would quietly point to a photo of Harris on the canvassers’ campaign literature.

Slotkin went on to say she’d been hearing of an organic campaign to put notes in bathroom stalls, reminding women that their votes are confidential and that they should vote like their daughters’ lives depend on it.

A sticker, spotted in a women's restroom at a Georgia airport, promotes Kamala Harris for president. Jennifer Bendery

It all sounded a little apocryphal. But it turns out that there really is a sticker and sticky note campaign, and it has been underway for at least several weeks, as Ms. Magazine and then NBC News reported in September.

And though the movement appears to have started on its own and spread over social media, lately the underlying sentiment has been getting high-profile support from figures like former first lady Michelle Obama, who in a recent Harris campaign appearance said, “If you are a woman who lives in a household of men that don’t listen to you or value your opinion, just remember that your vote is a private matter.”

Are there enough hidden votes to change who wins a state? Probably not. But the emotional fuel for it, the determination of so many women to elect Harris over Trump, absolutely could prove decisive.

If that happens, it would be one of the more ironic twists in modern political history ― and one of the more fitting ones, too ― because a campaign pitting men against women is exactly the campaign Trump and his advisers wanted.
The Boys vs. Girls Election

It’s no secret that this year’s gender gap is shaping up to be the largest in memory, with polls showing men favoring Trump by double digits, and women favoring Harris by a similar margin. In many ways, that gap was preordained not because of who’s on the ballot, but what’s at stake ― the future of reproductive freedom, and one side that’s actively pushing to regress back toward restrictive gender roles and limited rights.

But instead of trying to counter that, Trump has leaned in.

On the eve of this summer’s Republican National Convention, even before President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid and Harris became their party’s nominee, Trump campaign officials boasted about how they were hoping to create what Axios called a “boys vs. girls election,” with ”Donald Trump’s chest-beating macho appeals vs. Joe Biden’s softer, reproductive-rights-dominated, all-gender inclusivity.”

So powerful was this appeal, Trump’s campaign managers told The Atlantic’s Tim Alberta, that Trump would manage to peel off some of the Black and Hispanic men who would traditionally vote Democratic, enough to offset losses among women. “For every Karen we lose, we’re going to win a Jamal and an Enrique,” one Trump ally had previously told Alberta.

The Trump campaign has unfolded just as his team promised ― which helps explain why, for example, Trump has spent the final weeks before the election appearing alongside former Fox News host Tucker Carlson (who recently suggested that the country needed Trump to be a “dad” who would deliver a “spanking”) while sidelining former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley (who has been popular with independent female voters).

And the strategy may very well work. Polls have shown Harris struggling to hit the margins among Black and (especially) Hispanic men that previous Democrats have.

Former President Donald Trump, the 2024 Republican presidential nominee, sits to the left of conservative pundit Tucker Carlson at an event on Friday, Oct. 31, 2024, in Phoenix, Arizona. Chip Somodevilla via Getty Images

But the Trump gambit depends on winning over more men faster than he alienates women. And that’s hardly a safe bet. In just the last few years, the gender gap has been increasing at a faster pace than before, as my colleague Lilli Petersen explained recently.

Part of the reason for this shift is the Republican Party’s assault on reproductive freedom, culminating in the Supreme Court’s 2022 ruling striking down its 1973 Roe v. Wade decision and the enactment of abortion bans in multiple states. Trump has bragged about appointing the justices who made that ruling possible.

Trump, by all accounts, has come to understand that abortion is a political liability. That’s why over the past year he has, on occasion, suggested that some of the state bans go too far — or promised to protect access to in vitro fertilization, something at risk under abortion bans because it can involve the destruction of embryos. But with Trump being Trump, he’s been inconsistent and vague about what he would or wouldn’t support when it comes to reproductive rights.

And that’s not to mention the message his campaign has been sending about forcing adherence to traditional gender roles, in part with Trump’s selection of Ohio Sen. JD Vance as his running mate. Vance’s past includes statements that women without children are “childless cat ladies” who have too much influence in politics, as well as suggestions that the sexual revolution made it too easy for women to leave bad marriages. After these comments came to light, Vance doubled down — essentially apologizing to cats, but not women.

A campaign determined to win over more women would have made a serious effort to walk back these statements, starting with an apology. Vance never offered one, and neither did Trump.


The Backlash And Its Potential


How is this all shaking out?

Overall, according to a recent Politico analysis, women are accounting for 55% of the early vote across battleground states. And in Pennsylvania, a state that many strategists consider the most important for each candidate, data suggests that early voting includes a relatively high proportion of Democratic women who did not vote there in 2020.

Early voting is a notoriously unreliable predictor of outcomes, for the simple reason that the data about who is voting doesn’t say that much about how they are voting, especially in an environment without solid baselines for comparison. Early voting did not become particularly widespread until 2020, in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic and with Trump advising his supporters not to vote by mail. (This year, he’s generally encouraged them to vote early if they can.)

But women are a larger proportion of the population and, historically, they have voted at higher rates too. Last month, political scientist and Brookings senior fellow Elaine Kamarck ran the numbers on different scenarios to see what would happen if women came out to vote in the same proportion as in 2020, given the latest polling numbers available. She found Harris would win Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — enough to win the election.

The underlying polling numbers are now a month old, plus there’s no way to know how accurate they were. And a significant increase in turnout among men could easily elect Trump, Kamarck went out of her way to note. But, she concluded, “if women’s turnout stays the same as in 2020, it could be a good year for Harris; if it increases, it could be a very good year for her.”

That’s why the intensity of Harris’ support among women is so important, and why I reached out to Nikki Sapiro Vinckier, a Democratic activist in the northern Detroit suburbs.

Sapiro Vinckier, 36, is an OB-GYN physician’s assistant and abortion-rights advocate. She’d volunteered for Democratic campaigns before, but after watching Trump’s 2024 campaign unfold ― and then seeing Harris become the Democratic nominee ― she started making her own lawn signs and, more recently, stickers that she’s distributing locally and through social media.

The stickers say: “Ladies, no one will know who you vote for. Vote for your daughters, your sisters, yourself. Vote Kamala.” Sapiro Vinckier told me she has already ordered more than 30,000 stickers and is on her way to distributing all of them.

Sapiro Vinckier said she knows she’s not the only one getting so involved. “You have women who are coming out in tremendous numbers to vote, but you also have women coming out in incredible numbers to organize,” she said.

There’s no way to know if Harris will end up prevailing. But if she does, stories like Sapiro Vinckier’s will probably be a big reason why.


They’re on their way to cancel their husband’s vote. Will it make a difference come Election Day?

Chabeli Carrazana
Sat, November 2, 2024 


A woman attends a rally held by Gov. Tim Walz and former President Bill Clinton in Durham, North Carolina, for the first day of early voting.
 (Cornell Watson/The Washington Post/Getty Images)


The gender divide this election cycle can perhaps best be summarized by a TikTok trend.

Videos across social media show women who are voting for Vice President Kamala Harris on their way to the polls to “cancel out” votes from their husband, father or other men in their lives who are supporting former President Donald Trump. The majority center on women who feel a vote for Trump, who appointed the justices that helped overturn Roe v. Wade, is an affront to their bodily autonomy.

It’s a trend that has inspired campaign ads on the left and sparked ire on the right, all while giving a glimpse into just how split men and women are about the man and the woman at the top of the presidential ticket. And while it’s unclear just how much it’ll reflect the actual gender gap this election cycle, it’s certainly turning the conversation in the last days of the campaigns toward an often-unspoken reality: Men have long intimidated women in an effort to ensure they vote the same, though women and men have long been split in their politics.

So far, early voting data shows a 10-point divide in voter participation between men and women in battleground states, according to a Politico analysis. Women are more likely to vote Democrat.

But it’s still not clear how significantly different the gender gap is this election compared with past elections, and it won’t be clear until all votes are in. About 20 percent of people are in marriages where their party is different from their spouse’s and there’s evidence that number has actually been declining over time.

“Assuming the trend of mixed-party partnerships is downward, I’m not sure that we should expect the existence of [the videos] to be significant enough to alter the aggregate gender gap in any large way,” said Kelly Dittmar, an associate professor of political science at Rutgers University and the director of research for its Center for Women and Politics.

And the decisions behind votes are often multifactorial, going beyond one identity. For example, White women are far less likely than Latinas or Black women to overwhelmingly vote Democrat.

So far, there are some signs that Harris has been widening her lead with some groups of women, including a 19 percentage point lead with suburban women, according to a late October ABC/Ipsos poll. Men, meanwhile, and especially young men, have been swinging toward Trump by as much as 14 points compared with 2020, according to a recent Harvard Youth Poll.

If the rift between men and women widens, abortion could be part of the reason. Data shows that Democratic and Republican women are more likely than men in those parties to be influenced by a candidate’s stance on abortion, which is often one of the top election issues among women — though not usually the top issue, Dittmar said. During the midterm elections in 2022, which came just months after Roe v. Wade was overturned, women’s stance on abortion was a powerful motivator that led Democrats to a stronger-than-expected showing.

Trump has acknowledged that abortion may be keeping some women from supporting him. “Without abortion, women love me,” he said on Fox earlier this month.

A story in The Cut this week details the stories of four women who are married to men who support Trump. Three of them cite reproductive access as one of the big issues dividing them, including one woman who struggled to get care after a miscarriage in Texas.

“I was at home by myself with my 3-year-old daughter and I thought I was going to die,” she said. “The fact that he didn’t seem to care about that is heartbreaking.”

But in a presidential election where turnout is higher, “it remains to be seen if this issue will yield a markedly different turnout overall or by gender, and if we can attribute it to gender,” Dittmar added.

Nevertheless, campaign ads are seizing on any possible political momentum behind the “cancel out his vote” message.

In one ad out this week, by Vote Common Good, a nonprofit that targets religiously motivated voters, a woman enters the ballot box after her husband, whose bald eagle emblazoned cap and Southern accent seems to be a nod toward him being a Trump supporter. She looks around and locks eyes with another woman before casting her vote for Harris.

“In the one place in America where women still have a right to choose, you can vote any way you want and no one will ever know,” Julia Roberts narrates. “Remember, what happens in the booth stays in the booth. Vote Harris-Walz.”

In another ad, by the Lincoln Project, a political action committee formed by Republicans to defeat Trump, two men chat outside a polling location about how their wives are going to vote for Trump, even though they don’t like the former president. But inside their polling booths, the women exchange a glance and one mouths, “Kamala” before they both — along with other women in the same location — fill the bubble next to the vice president’s name. “Your vote is your secret,” the ad reminds voters. “He’ll never know.”

The ads indicate that keeping opposing votes a secret spares women from their husbands’ anger. Conservative news commentators seemed to confirm this hunch this week as the ads and TikTok trend went mainstream.

Fox News host Jesse Watters said this week that if he “found out Emma was going in the voting booth and pulling the lever for Harris, that’s the same thing as having an affair,” a topic with which he has personal familiarity given that Emma DiGiovini, his second wife, is the person with whom he cheated on his first wife.

Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich also said Thursday night that the ads are an example of Democrats’ dishonesty.

“For them to tell people to lie is just one further example of the depth of their corruption. How do you run a country where you’re walking around saying, ‘Wives should lie to their husbands, husbands should lie to their wives?’” Gingrich said on Fox. Gingrich also had an affair during his second marriage to the woman who would become his third wife.

“The backlash from certain men who are horrified to think their wives might disagree with them actually proves our point,” said Vote Common Good’s Executive Director Doug Pagitt in a statement. “We know the MAGA movement is putting increased pressure on people, but we also know the strong will of Americans when they stand in the voting booth.”

The trend online has drawn emphatic reactions from women who say those at odds with their husbands should divorce them. But as some of the women who have told their stories explain, those decisions are complicated.

“I totally get why some people feel it is a massive deal-breaker. However, not everybody can instantly leave a relationship,” said the woman in The Cut who had a miscarriage. “If I could leave him, I would. But you need two workers to raise a family. I am in this. I have the option to stay and try to change his mind, or I can leave and potentially be homeless with my children. So I’m gonna stick it out and try to get him to come around.”

With days left until Election Day, the trend is now turning to show men who are joining in their wives’ support for Harris. How much that bears out remains to be seen. Men have generally supported the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 2000 save 2008, when they were evenly split on John McCain and Barack Obama.

The newer videos start with the same text, “On my way to cancel out my husband’s vote,” before a jump cut.

“Just kidding,” one says. “This is my husband,” it says over a video of a husband wearing a Little Mermaid costume and a red wig as their daughter passes by in a matching costume. “He would never vote against someone who wants to take away my rights/our daughter’s rights.”

The post They’re on their way to cancel their husband’s vote. Will it make a difference come Election Day? appeared first on The 19th.


These Are The Women Around The US Who Are Proudly "Canceling Out" Their Dad's Votes For Donald Trump

Brittany Wong
Fri, November 1, 2024 at 12:24 PM MDT·9 min read

TikTok

Less than a week before the presidential election, TikTok is full of daughters eager to “cancel out” their dads’ votes by casting ballots for Democrat Kamala Harris.

The videos usually include a jaunty dance and the women slipping on some sunglasses. Some of the tongue-in-cheek videos feature Taylor Swift ― the ultimate avatar for “childless cat ladies” this election season ― carrying one of her Scottish fold cats and superimposed over a voting center.


@thegoodbrowtattoo/TikTok

Sometimes, conservative dads even make an appearance in the videos.


“Just a father and daughter cancelling out each others vote,” says one clip showing a dad and daughter shaking hands before casting divergent votes.

Gia Erichson, a 30-year-old actor who lives in New York City, is among the young women who’ve jumped on the trend. Every general election she’s voted in so far has involved Republican Donald Trump, so Erichson says she’s more than ready for a change.

“I think the ‘on my way to cancel my dad’s vote’ trend is not only hilarious, but reaffirms my belief that women, especially young women, are so incredibly powerful when we all come together,” she said.

@likeachiapet/TikTok

The trend highlights the stark gender divide of this election: A USA Today/Suffolk University survey released last week showed Trump up by 16 percentage points with men nationally, while Harris was up by 17 points with women.

The most obvious reason for that gap is probably the 2022 reversal of Roe v. Wade under Trump-appointed judges, and GOP legislators’ openness to a nationwide ban on abortion. After Senate Republicans blocked legislation designed to protect women’s access to contraception earlier this year, many voters are worried about the future of birth control under a potential Trump administration.

As a left-leaning bisexual woman from southeastern Louisiana, Erichson told HuffPost that she’s no stranger to political arguments over topics like abortion when she returns home.

Her dad ― “a ‘logical’ engineer”― votes Republican and, more pointedly, for Trump because he appreciates the fact that Trump is a businessman. (Her mother isn’t voting for Trump. “My parents could not be more different politically, which I guess makes it track that they are divorced,” Erichson said, laughing.)

“Whenever conversations of politics come up with my dad, it devolves into me being called ‘a lost cause’ or ‘thinking too emotionally,’” she said. “It breaks my heart that my father views logic and emotion as opposites and, even worse, empathy as some kind of weakness. But I will keep having these difficult conversations with him, because I believe real progress lies in the courage to have them.”

Jeanne, a 44-year-old writer from Tucson, Arizona, made a TikTok video, too. (Like others quoted in this piece, Jeanne asked to use only her first name to protect her privacy.)

“Seeing the trend take off made me realize there were so many of us women out there having to grapple with the reality of using our voices and votes to counteract our dads’,” she said. “I posted one [video] to build solidarity and add a little levity to the situation.”


@jeannereneewrites/TikTok

Jeanne said she loves her dad but finds his affinity for Trump to be the “most confusing thing.”

“The man who raised me is old-fashioned in the best way ― generous, loyal and gentlemanly,” she said. “So to watch him become consumed by xenophobic fears is heartbreaking. It makes me deeply angry with the machine of Donald Trump.”

Others are just relieved they don’t have to cancel out a boyfriend’s or husband’s vote, like some women on TikTok say they’re doing this year. (There are plenty of videos in which women brag about how they don’t have to cancel out their dad’s or their partner’s vote since they’re all voting similarly.)

In a related trend, other women in Generation Z are posting reaction videos to Trump’s 2005 Access Hollywood tape. The recording, which surfaced ahead of the 2016 presidential election, included him bragging about being able to grab women “by the pussy.”

The caption to one TikTok video — posted by Soleil Golden, 22, and Alex, a 26-year-old content creator who goes by @awalmartparkinglot on the platform — reads, “this is who fathers. with daughters. are voting for.”

“I see so many people — men in particular on TikTok — talking about how they want to vote for Trump because of the family values that he and Vance claim to stand on,” Golden told HuffPost, referring to GOP vice presidential nominee JD Vance.

“The fact that fathers and women with daughters, sisters, moms, nieces — people who they would want to protect around somebody like that — are still voting for that man really made me think, maybe they haven’t heard this whole tape or maybe they’ve forgotten about it,” she said.

The pair also realized a lot of first-time voters were only 10 or 12 when the Trump audio was released and may not be as familiar with it as other voters.

“It is super important for young women to hear this audio and really understand who this man is,” Alex said of her video, which currently has over 980,00 views.

The TikTok trend is tongue-in-cheek, but it gets at real hurt: ‘MAGA stole my father from us.’

Heather, a 48-year-old from Washington state, posted a TikTok on a similar theme, though hers is more somber in tone. “My father traded the rights and safety of his two daughters and four granddaughters for low gas prices,” she wrote in her video, which has over 300,000 views.

“My father has always been GOP. But over the past nine years, he has morphed into a closed-minded, aggressive MAGA type who spends hours a day online, doing his ‘own research,’” she told HuffPost, referencing Trump’s “Make America Great Again” movement. “I really feel like MAGA stole my father from us.”

When Trump surrendered to authorities last year on charges that he illegally plotted to overturn the results of the 2020 election in Georgia, Heather texted her dad a photo of Trump’s stony-faced booking shot.

“My dad responded only with ‘my hero!’” she recalls.

Heather and her dad are not estranged, but with three Trump election cycles, she said their relationship is hanging on by a thread.

“I’ve shared my feelings with my father, and he mocked my feelings,” she said.

“He told me, ‘You are making decisions on your feelings?’ His tone was condescending and patronizing. I have not brought the topic up since that phone call, approximately three years ago.”

Minna, a 28-year-old from Detroit, Michigan, who describes herself as something of a moderate, said her dad also downplays her political beliefs because she shows her emotions. She tells him she votes for Trump just to avoid drama, but she already turned in her ballot and she, too, canceled out her dad’s vote.

“Another four years of Trump really scares me,” she said. “I worry about my LGBTQ friends, and I worry about access to women’s health care — and by that I mean abortion. I feel so disrespected as a woman that my father doesn’t see those things as being major issues.”

Family estrangements are seemingly on the rise in part due to politics. This is not the average “differences of opinion” debate; the “your dad is voting for George Bush while you’re voting for Bill Clinton” scenario of yesterday seems almost quaint in comparison.

“There’s a lot of fear around the outcome of the election, understandably, because so many people’s lives and futures are hanging in the balance,” said Deborah Duley, a psychotherapist and the founder of the company Empowered Connections in Maryland.

“What my younger clients are telling me is that they’re hearing their parents spouting the virtues of Trump and ignoring that their child could very well be stripped of their rights and bodily autonomy,” she explained.

And as the TikTok trend suggests, this election is deeply impacting the relationships between fathers and daughters especially.

“There’s this dichotomy between young women’s fathers saying they love them, and then actively voting in a way that says otherwise and doesn’t feel like love at all,” said Avonley Whitsitt, a marriage and family therapist in Boise, Idaho.

For women worried about abortion and health care, “not only does it show that their fathers’ actions don’t match their words, but it challenges the trust that daughters have with their fathers,” she said.

“My clients are wondering, ‘What do I mean to my dad when he is willing to put his paycheck before my well-being?’” Whitsitt said. “One of my clients recently said, ‘My dad is actively voting against me and my rights, yet somehow I’m supposed to have dinner with him this weekend?’”

She continued, “Many dads haven’t and wouldn’t want to miss an important event in their daughters’ lives, yet they aren’t realizing that this election is one of them.”

Minna, the 28-year-old from Detroit, had reassurance for young women feeling disillusioned by their families’ votes. It’s the same advice she gives her sister, who tends to get emotional talking about things she’s passionate about.

“Just because you tear up when you talk about issues doesn’t mean it’s not valid or important,” she said. “Your thoughts and voice still matter. I don’t blame young women for getting worked up; these are real hard issues. It scares me what my friends’ and loved ones’ lives will look like based on who my father chooses to vote for.”

Whitsitt said her advice to young women in situations like this is to prioritize self-care ahead of and after an election.

“Self-care looks different for everyone. Connecting with a therapist is a great step, setting and maintaining boundaries, and remembering that the relationship you have with yourself is the most important overall,” she said. “In situations like these, sometimes the best thing we can do is be the people we wish our parents or our fathers were.”This article originally appeared on HuffPost.







U$A

Safe drinking water and wildfire prevention: The election’s biggest climate battles

Julia Musto
Sun 3 November 2024 

A US Geological Survey wildlife biologist holds a juvenile salt marsh harvest mouse. California’s Proposition 4 could fund projects that could help protect the endangered species and its habitat. 
(Shannon Skalos Wildlife Biologist, USGS Western Ecological Research Center)


While this year’s presidential election may not have as much of a focus on climate change as many wish it would, voters can still make a difference when they head to the polls.

Across the US, there are 159 statewide ballot measures in 41 states, according to Ballotpedia. Only a handful of those deal with environmental issues and just a couple are specifically related to climate change.

Unsurprisingly, these measures are on the ballot in states threatened this year by extreme climate events. Earth had its hottest summer on record, bringing historic temperatures across multiple regions.


A grass fire burns above Interstate 580 in Oakland, California, earlier this month. October has seen toasty temperatures made more likely by climate change across the US. California and Washington voters will head to the polls to vote on climate legislation next week. ((AP Photo/Noah Berger))


Washington state and California have continued to feel the heat through October, and dry and windy conditions in the West have sparked additional wildfires less than a week before Election Day.

Washington, which is governed by Jay Inslee, a supporter of climate initiatives, will decide whether or not it will repeal the “Climate Commitment Act.” Inslee signed the law in 2021, which required the state’s largest polluters to reduce planet-warming greenhouse gas emissions.

It went into effect in 2023, raising billions for protections for climate and Tribal programs. The groundbreaking legislation will play a key role in reducing emissions by 45 per cent by 2030.


A voter drops a ballot into a freshly replaced ballot box in Vancouver, Washington, on Tuesday. Voter turnout in Washington is reportedly lagging this year. (REUTERS/John Rudoff)

One of the most progressive climate policies ever passed a state legislature, its fate could have national implications, and other local officials will likely have to consider similar policy to meet future climate targets.

While conservatives have said it has raised energy costs in the state, a recent KING 5 poll showed the majority of respondents won’t vote to repeal the act.

Voter turnout in Washington is lagging this year, according to The Seattle Times. Voting started in the state on October 18. On Wednesday, local officials in two counties said the US Postal Service had failed to deliver mail-in ballots in Whitman County.

In this image made from a video provided by KGW8, authorities investigate smoke pouring out of a ballot box on Monday in Vancouver, Washington. Many ballots inside the box were destroyed. ((KGW8 via AP))

Hundreds of ballots in a box in Vancouver, Washington, were damaged or destroyed when a ballot box was set on fire on Monday. The box’s fire suppression system didn’t work as intended. Six of the ballots were unidentifiable and the exact number of destroyed ballots remains unknown, although it’s unlikely to make or break the climate measure.

California was also burning this week, after wildfires sparked in San Diego on Thursday. The fires minorly damaged some residential properties, according to CBS 8.

Voters in the Golden State are deciding on the fate of Proposition 4, which is also known as the “climate bond.”

Governor Gavin Newsom signed a bill in July seeking voters’ approval to authorize $10bn in bonds for clean water, wildfire prevention, and climate resiliency. Now, Newsom and other environmental advocates have been pushing to spend more toward climate impacts as threats increase in severity.

Opponents say bonds are the most expensive way to pay for these projects and that the state should find other ways to finance such initiatives. Repaying the money could cost $400m a year over 40 years.

Over the past decade, the state has spent about $13bn annually on natural resources and climate activities, according to a legislative analysis. Proponents say the measure would save money in the long term.

The measure would allocate nearly $2bn of those bonds toward making drinking water improvements, $1.2bn toward wildfire prevention, and the same amount for land conservation and habitat restoration.

Another $1.2bn would pay to restore coastal areas and protect them from sea level rise, as well as improving marine habitats. That money could help to protect the endangered salt marsh harvest mouse. A whopping 90 per cent of the mouse’s habitat is gone due to rising sea levels.

Related
Climate change was a major US election issue in 2020. Why has it taken a back seat in 2024?

With reporting from The Associated Press




The Polls Are Underestimating the Importance of Climate Change

Saad Amer and Ro Khanna
Sun, November 3, 2024 


Polls are underestimating the importance of climate change to the average American. Every election cycle, pollsters hone in on core issues top of mind for the American public. These topics can make or break the American family as parents are getting kids ready for school in the morning and trying to figure out how to pay their bills at night.

Traditionally, we call these “kitchen table” issues, and they encompass everything from the economy, to education, to housing, to health care. But this election season, our climate is driving decisions on where to live, how to consume, whether to rebuild, or even evacuate, for voters right now. What pollsters miss from their ranking of top issues is the fact that if we do not address climate change, every other major issue on the American mind will get worse.

Economic and scientific models paint a challenging future. In the era of the climate crisis, costs skyrocket as harvests fail from droughts and extreme heat. Insurance premiums explode as flood and fire risks become guarantees. Real estate values plummet as beach-front properties become submerged by the very beaches they once adorned. As climate change worsens, we can expect human health to take a toll from increased spread of infectious diseases, worsening air quality, and declining mental health from climate anxiety. We see a particular environmental justice burden on women, youth, and people of color, too.

The reality is that climate change is no longer a distant issue. We are living in the era of the climate crisis right now, and we are seeing alarming impacts across our nation. Fatal disasters like Hurricanes Helene and Milton have devastated the Southeast, with ocean warming exacerbating the severity of storms. Fire season continues to spread across the West, displacing thousands of Americans from their homes. At this point, none of this is novel, and Americans are constantly addressing these issues at home.

These intersecting crises have taken a toll on national morale. Young voters are feeling particularly disillusioned as a spring Harvard Poll found that only 9 percent of young Americans felt the nation was generally headed in the right direction. Meanwhile, a July survey from Climate Power found that two-thirds of voters consider extreme weather a kitchen table issue in their household.

As a leading progressive legislator and climate movement leader, we agree with that majority. Concepts of a plan are not enough when the American public is being berated with one climate disaster after the next. It is time to treat climate like the kitchen table issue it is, rather than confine it to the margins.

In the pages of her most recent policy plans, Vice President Kamala Harris is doing just that. As Evergreen Action recently synthesized, Harris has begun to formalize the connections between housing, health care, economics, and climate policy that the American public and climate movement have been making for decades.

For example, her new economic plan advocates for “America Forward” tax incentives that promote cleaner steel and cement, protecting jobs for American unions while simultaneously reorienting our industrial sector around decarbonization. Her housing policy would build 1.2 million units of affordable, energy-efficient homes, expanding American housing access while cutting back on energy consumption. Finally, her plan ties health care, child care, and education to our green future, affirming the fact that we can only raise safe, happy, healthy, children if we protect a planet that fosters those conditions.

In each of these policies, Harris makes a bold step toward centering climate as a major issue this election cycle, as core to the American voter as the schools their children attend and the price of their grocery store haul.

It might seem odd to see a congressman and an activist team up on an essay like this. In some ways, we’re opposites. One of us is on the ground mobilizing a grassroots movement of voters around a systemic climate agenda. The other is a member of Congress representing Silicon Valley, working within the system to affect national change and drive clean tech innovation.

But we are both fighting for bold action on inequality and climate. For both of us, the climate crisis is personal. Like Harris, we are both South Asian, and our communities are experiencing disproportionate environmental justice burdens as disasters unfold. We are unified in acknowledging that we can no longer hesitate on climate action. Together, we are pushing for top-down and bottom-up systemic change.

And that starts with changing our national discourse so that it truly reflects the reality of everyday Americans. Climate justice frames every other issue on the ballot this fall.

The tough decisions that climate change is forcing on American families are not an inevitability or an abstraction. They’re real, they’re ubiquitous, and they’re actively unfolding. We need to start legislating — and voting — accordingly.

In this election, one candidate has a history of fighting for climate justice. The other is deep in the pockets of the oil industry, selling out the American public for campaign contributions. Harris has made great strides on climate policy, and voters should keep pushing her to keep it front and center: right on the kitchen table, where it has already emerged.



CSA WON THAT WAR

Diners at restaurant where Lincoln assassination was planned think US is as divided now as the Civil War

Michelle Del Rey
Sat 2 November 2024 
THE INDEPENDENT

In 1865, five members of the conspirators planned to assassinate Abraham Lincoln at this DC Chinese restaurant (Michelle Del Rey)


Geri Roth, a substitute teacher from North Carolina, was unaware she’d been chowing down on egg rolls in the same place conspirators planned Abraham Lincoln’s assassination in 1865.

“I feel like I should have known that,” said Roth, adding she makes it a point to visit Wok and Roll, an Asian eatery with an adjoining karaoke bar in the heart of Washington DC’s Chinatown, every time she’s in the city visiting her daughter.

In light of two recent assassination attempts against former president Donald Trump ahead of the upcoming election, The Independent headed down to the site where Lincoln’s assassination was plotted to ask diners whether they think the US remains as divided as it was during the Civil War.

Abraham Lincoln, pictured here making his Gettysburg Address, was the first presidential assassination (1863 AP)

“I think so,” Roth said after emerging from the restaurant on an autumn afternoon, stating the recent attempts on Trump’s life are indicative of that division.

“The past always comes to the forefront,” Roth, 63, said. “Everything’s just so divided. And with the election coming up, I think things are getting worse until they get better.”

Lincoln was the first US president to be assassinated. John Wilkes Booth shot him in the back of the head at Ford’s Theater five days after Confederate General Robert E Lee surrendered, the event adding to the chaos of an already fragile state. While many grieved Lincoln’s death, others celebrated.


Pedestrians frequently walk past the building without realizing its significance (Michelle Del Rey)

Since then, three other US presidents — James Garfield, William McKinley and John F Kennedy — have been murdered in office. Trump survived an assassination attempt earlier this year while speaking at a rally in Pennsylvania when a gunman shot the former president in the ear.

In September, the Secret Service shot at a man hiding in the brush along the fence line of the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach with a rifle aimed at Trump. He was later charged with the attempted assassination of a presidential candidate, making it the second alleged attempt on Trump’s life within weeks.


A plaque outside the building commemorates its history. The plaque was paid for by a local community group (Michelle Del Rey)

Ian Thal, a DC-based playwright and theater critic who researches political violence in his free time, said he is concerned about such violence becoming an acceptable way of addressing disputes with the electoral system.

Speaking almost a week out from the election after enjoying a meal of General Tso’s Bean Curd and Hot and Sour Soup at Wok and Roll, he said he’s “honestly fearful of where things are going.”

Thal was oblivious to the historical nature of his dinner location — but had taken note of how complicated this election could be, partially amid widespread polarization.

The US remains separated, but in a manner different from the Civil War era, Thal said. “It’s not like the North versus South thing. There are a number of different groups.”

A 2024 Ipsos survey found that 81 per cent of Americans think the US is more divided than united.


The interior of the Wok and Roll restaurant that used to be the Mary Surratt boardinghouse (Michelle Del Rey)

Matthew Champagne, the manager of education at the Surratt House Museum in Clinton, Maryland, said the country continues to deal with the fallout of what was plotted at that DC restaurant, which back in 1865 was the site of a boarding house owned by Mary Surratt, the first women to be executed by the US federal government for her ties to the assassination.

She and her son, John Surratt Jr, hosted members of the conspiracy in the townhome. The group first planned to abduct Lincoln, but the initial plot failed. Booth started planning the assassination after watching the president give a speech at the White House publicly supporting voting rights for Black men two days after Lee’s surrender.

Three days later, he shot Lincoln in the back of the head at Ford’s Theater, a half-mile walk from the restaurant. Hours after the murder, detectives combed through the boardinghouse. They returned in two days to arrest Mary Surratt and another member of the conspiracy.


A letter from the Surratt Society hangs in the restaurant’s entryway (Michelle Del Rey)

Despite working for a museum that is the former Maryland home of the Surratt family, Champagne doesn’t think the DC site should be turned into a museum preserving the stories of the assassins, whom he called “white supremacist domestic terrorists.”

“This history is very important to preserve and to share, but to do so in a proper context where the conspirators are the antagonists in this story, not the protagonists,” he said.

Otherwise, these locations can become spaces to sympathize with their ideologies.

“If you were going to turn a historic site into anything other than a museum, please let it be a Chinese food restaurant slash karaoke bar,” Champagne said.