Did You See the Fox News Prequel? It Wasn’t Very Good.

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X, formerly Twitter, released a formal global transparency report Wednesday for the first time since Musk took over the social media platform.

Voters created successful anti-recidivism programs 10 years ago, without borrowing or raising taxes, and they are working well. Proposition 36 will gut them.

Prep football: Week 6 schedule for Southland teams, Oct. 3-5.

The Dodgers open the postseason next week, with the same question hanging over them that haunted them the last three years.

Many of these important financial tasks can be done quickly — and make a big difference.

The Duke of Sussex is in New York City to support several of his charities. The 40-year-old will then fly to London where he’ll attend the WellChild Awards on Sept. 30.

A US F-22 shot the object, which was first tracked flying over Alaska eight days earlier, out of the sky on Feb. 11, 2023.

Joe Buglewicz/Getty ImagesConspiracy theorist Alex Jones’ Infowars will be sold for parts to pay towards the more than $1 billion he owes to families of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.A Houston bankruptcy court said Tuesday that it plans to approve auctions for the assets of Jones’ company Free Speech Systems, Infowars’ parent. Everything from lighting fixtures used on the far-right network’s broadcast sets to the company’s dubious vitamin and supplement store will be up for sale beginning in November.“FSS will now be sold at auction, meaning Alex Jones will no longer own or control the company he built,” Chris Mattei, an attorney for the Sandy Hook families, said. “This brings the families closer to their goal of holding him accountable for the harm he has caused.”Read more at The Daily Beast.

Brandon Bell/GettyDonald Trump was given a briefing Tuesday by intelligence officials about “real and specific threats” from Iran to assassinate him, his campaign said.In a statement, Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence informed the former president about the Iranian plots, which aim to “destabilize and sow chaos in the United States.” The briefing comes after the FBI foiled an alleged Iran-linked plot to kill Trump earlier this year that authorities said was not believed to be related to the Butler, Pennsylvania, rally shooting, which wounded the Republican nominee in July.Cheung said intelligence officials “have identified that these continued and coordinated attacks have heightened in the past few months.” It’s not clear if the briefing concerned threats already known to U.S. intelligence or if new plots from Iran have been detected.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty ImagesSean “Diddy” Combs and Kim Porter’s children have condemned a publisher’s claim that their late mother wrote a 60-page supposedly leaked memoir as “simply untrue.”The Daily Mail reported that Chris Todd, who is based in Los Angeles, published the memoir in early September after he had been given a flash drive of Porter’s writing by her “close friends.” The book, titled KIM’S LOST WORDS: A Journey for Justice, From the Other Side under the pseudonym Jamal T Millwood, has fuelled rumors about Diddy’s sex tapes and Porter’s sudden death in 2018.Christian “King” Combs, twins D’Lila and Jessie, and Quincy Brown, who is the son of Porter and singer Al B. Sure!, took to Instagram as they published a lengthy statement asking for more “respect” to be shown to their late mother.Read more at The Daily Beast.

Which was a total failure, even by the standards he set for himself.

There is one thing Donald Trump’s critics and fans can agree on: He is not an intellectual.  His politics come from the gut, a combination of his own instincts and an animalistic talent for reading his supporters’ emotions and enthusiasms. The idea that Trump is attuned to the debates roiling conservative intellectuals — arguments about Hungarian family policy and concepts with names like “postliberalism” — doesn’t pass the laugh test. Yet in Trump’s first term, his intellectual incuriosity opened up a curious avenue for ideas to matter. With the president in his own world, various senior staffers had the ability to build little fiefdoms, each working to turn their own beliefs into official US policy. In the past, that often meant old-school Republicans obstructing Trump or even slipping their own policies in under his nose.  A second term would likely be different. Since 2020, Trump has purged much of the Republican old guard. Trump-aligned institutions like the Heritage Foundation have put together vast lists of loyal staff who can come in on day one. A second Trump term would likely be a self-consciously revolutionary project: one in which Trump-aligned ideologues work to turn vague outlines of Trumpism into a governing doctrine.  With Trump-aligned ideologues running the show in the White House, the ideological debates inside the Trump movement would be far more than a matter of intellectual curiosity. The ideas that have captured the MAGA world’s imagination could well be shaping the future of the United States — and quite possibly the world.  The six thinkers below have developed some of these influential ideas. Their worldviews are diverse and heterodox, advancing political visions that sound extreme or even outlandish. One is a Silicon Valley monarchist blogger, another a retired Harvard professor who writes on the virtues of “manliness.” A third is a deceased proponent of state-run economies.   Despite their differences, it is impossible to understand the modern Trump-aligned right without appreciating their influence. Studying them closely will do more than clarify what the MAGA movement wants in the abstract; it will help us think through what its return to power might mean for all of us. Patrick Deneen, the regime changer In May 2023, now-vice presidential nominee JD Vance appeared at a book event in Washington for Patrick Deneen, a conservative political theorist at the University of Notre Dame. The book, Regime Change, received an enthusiastic response from the panel; Vance told the audience that he viewed his political mission as “explicitly anti-regime.” But what does that mean, exactly? To understand, it’s worth looking at Deneen’s ideas — and the broader “postliberal” movement he belongs to. Deneen’s first big book, Why Liberalism Failed, argued that the shared philosophy of the American center — a liberalism focused on rights and individual freedom — had produced a miserable world. While claiming to liberate people to pursue their own life plan, liberalism in fact cut them off from traditional sources of community and stability. Americans were depressed, lonely, and immiserated — and they had their governing consensus to blame. After the book’s success, Deneen would become a leader in the emerging “postliberal” movement: a heavily-Catholic group of conservative scholars developing a political vision of an America beyond liberalism. Their basic idea is abandoning liberalism’s core commitment to neutrality about the good life and instead proposing a politics in which the US government uses policy to foster Christian virtue among its citizens. Different postliberals have different ideas of what that looks like. Adrian Vermeule, a Harvard law professor, argues for integralism — an old Catholic idea that essentially merges elements of the Church into the state. Other postliberals, like Gladden Pappin and Rod Dreher, have become champions of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s vision of “illiberal democracy” — literally taking posts in Budapest at government-aligned institutions. Deneen’s own path to postliberalism, presented in Regime Change, is, well, regime change: “the peaceful but vigorous overthrow of a corrupt and corrupting liberal ruling class and the creation of a postliberal order in which existing political forms can remain in place, as long as a fundamentally different ethos informs those institutions and the personnel who populate key offices and positions.” On its face, this is an exceptionally radical proposition. It would require, at minimum, hollowing out the US government by replacing most of its key leadership with dedicated postliberals. These people would then use their posts from within to promote a conservative Christian vision for governance without formally changing the foundations of the American system — in effect, a quiet, invisible overthrow of the government. When Vance declares himself to be a “postliberal” with “explicitly anti-regime” politics, this is the cause to which he’s dedicating himself. But what does that look like in more concrete terms? In Regime Change, Deneen himself doesn’t match his radical rhetoric with radical policy. Most of the specific ideas presented in the book are either widely discussed among the American elite (like national service for teens) or already implemented (like tariffs aimed to improve domestic manufacturing). Those handful that are truly radical tend to be unconstitutional (a total ban on pornography) or narrowly focused on higher education. So, for the most part, Deneen’s work shouldn’t be seen as a policy guide for a second Trump term. However, it can be seen as an inspiration for how some of its top officials see their jobs. Talk of an evil “regime” in Washington is now widespread on the intellectual right; Vance and other like-minded Trump officials will see their task in the second term as moving against it. Their task of rooting out the “deep state” is not merely revenge against Trump’s enemies but a revolutionary Christian act of laying the groundwork for a postliberal America. James Burnham, prophet of “managerialism” Silicon Valley is typically seen as a place obsessed with the new. But in the tech conservative set likely to influence a second Trump term — people like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel — there’s recently been a renewed interest in a 1941 book by conservative intellectual James Burnham. The book, titled The Managerial Revolution, prefigured the current right’s concerns about “wokeness” conquering the American business world. Despite a series of almost comically wrong predictions, it remains an important guide to how a second Trump term might conceive of its role in waging culture war. Burnham’s book predicts a world defined by class war between the capitalist and “managerial” classes (the proletariat, in his view, are too weak and disorganized to seize power). He defines the managerial class as the people who supervise the key functions of a modern economy: “operating executives, superintendents, administrative engineers, supervisory technicians; or, in government … administrators, commissioners, bureau heads, and so on.” In Burnham’s view, a complex modern economy inevitably directs power away from capitalists and toward managers. Because the managers actually understand and direct the technical tasks involved in modern corporate life, they truly control the means of production. Their nominal bosses, the capitalists, only owe their power to little pieces of paper calling them owners; the managers can, and almost certainly will, figure out some way to seize full control. This, for Burnham, meant a future of state-controlled economies. Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union would prove that state-controlled industry, where managers didn’t have to deal with capitalist overlords, would be so efficient that they’d consign democratic capitalism to history’s dustbin. Today, we know Burnham’s predictions were wrong in basically every particular. So why his enduring influence on the right, and especially those conservatives in tech — the sector that singlehandedly has proven that technical experts can become capitalist titans? The answer is the culture war.  Silicon Valley’s conservative CEOs and venture capitalists often have to deal with an employee base with radically different politics. While these tech leaders may be all-in on Trump, your average engineer or programmer is much like other college-educated American urbanites: very liberal. Feeling besieged and hemmed in by their own employees, tech conservatives see Burnham as a prophet of their lived experience. “Most woke ‘labor’ scandals in tech are an entitled middle-management class at odds with founders.” writes Antonio García Martínez, an influential tech conservative. “What Elon is doing [at X] is a revolt by entrepreneurial capital against the professional-managerial class regime that otherwise everywhere dominates (including and especially large tech companies).” Inasmuch as the tech conservative sector wields influence in a second Trump term, we should expect a good chunk of their efforts to be directed along Burnhamite lines. They will want the administration’s assistance not only in slashing taxes and regulations but in ensuring their own control over unruly “woke” employees.  Curtis Yarvin, the monarchist Curtis Yarvin, a blogger also known by the pen name “Mencius Moldbug,” fuses many of the traits of our first two entries.  Like Deneen, Yarvin believes that the liberal American “regime” must be overthrown. He has also been cited by JD Vance as an influence — specifically on the question of seizing control over executive branch staff. And like Burnham, an avowed influence on his thought, Yarvin believes that society is defined by a struggle for power between competing elite groups. Yarvin is likewise widely influential among tech conservatives — he is, in fact, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur himself. But unlike either of them, Yarvin has advanced a clear vision for what 21st century America should look like. Democracy, he believes, should be toppled — replaced instead with a new kind of corporate monarchy. “A well-managed enterprise hires the right people, spends the right amount of money on them, and makes sure they do the right things. How do we achieve effective management? We know one simple way: find the right person, and put him or her in charge,” he writes. In Yarvin’s view, the United States has approximated this system under three presidents: George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Because the country was either young or in crisis, these leaders wielded extraordinary amounts of power — which Yarvin believes was mistakenly taken from our chief executives. “These three Presidents, and to some extent a few more, were almost true CEOs of the executive branch. Their monarchical regimes then decayed into oligarchies, each of which was rebooted by the next monarchy. By the clock, we are about due for another,” he writes. Naturally, Yarvin has implied that Trump might be the man to turn the clock forward. In an interview with Michael Anton, a former senior official in the Trump National Security Council, Yarvin mused about the mechanics of a Caesarist takeover by Trump. This includes setting up an app, “the Trump app,” designed to get millions of supporters out into the streets to support a series of swiftly executed power grabs. At other times, however, Yarvin has expressed skepticism that Trump has the chops to execute this kind of audacious authoritarian coup. “He is who he is. His capacities are what they are,” Yarvin mused resignedly in a 2022 essay. In his mind, someone like Elon Musk would be a better choice for dictator/CEO. Yarvin’s not wrong about Trump’s unserviceability. Nothing that happened between 2017 and 2021 suggests that Trump would be able to competently execute the sort of swift and total fascist coup Yarvin envisions. But Yarvin’s work is still important for understanding how far a second Trump term might go. Here is a person who is openly musing about destroying democracy and who has built up a fan base among people like Vance and Anton in Trump’s immediate orbit because of this work. You can hear echoes of his generalized contempt for democracy in the litany of actual antidemocratic policies being contemplated in a second Trump term. Harvey Mansfield, student of manliness No discussion of intellectual influences on Trump’s second term is complete without a discussion of gender. It’s a topic that, as Vance’s pronouncements about “childless cat ladies” illustrate, has become increasingly central to the modern right’s ideology — and one where the right is rapidly evolving in a more radical direction. And when it comes to gender politics, few on the right command the intellectual influence of Harvey Manfield — a nonagenarian political theorist who recently retired from Harvard.  During his 61-year tenure at America’s most famous college, Mansfield became a conservative institution unto himself: a beachhead in enemy-occupied territory, an Ivy Leaguer who has been mentor to some of the movement’s leading lights. His former graduate students include Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR), leading pro-Trump intellectual Charles Kesler, and the famous Never Trump writer Bill Kristol. Mansfield, an erudite Tocqueville scholar, disdains Trump — describing him as a demagogue and a vulgarian. Yet in a recent interview, Mansfield said he voted for said vulgarian in 2020 “with many misgivings” (Mansfield adds that he “crossed [Trump] off [his] list entirely” after the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot). He has offered striking praise of Trump in one area: gender. Trump, he said in one interview, was “really the first American politician” to win office via “a display of manliness and an attack on political correctness.” He beat Hillary Clinton, per Mansfield, because American elections are “tests of manliness” — and “it’s difficult for a woman to do that in a graceful way, and to maintain her femininity.” Mansfield’s 2006 book Manliness attacks what he sees as the end goal of modern feminism —  a “gender-neutral society” — as willful denial of reality. Enduring inequalities, like women’s disproportionate share of home labor, reflect not discrimination but rather the essential influence of “manliness” on men. Manliness, in his account, is a kind of self-reliant commanding decisiveness — a willingness to blaze a risky path and lead others along it. While women can be manly — Mansfield cites Margaret Thatcher as an example — they generally are not. For Mansfield, “common sense” stereotypes about men and women are mostly true and validated by the evidence. “Women still rather like housework, changing diapers, and manly men. The capacities and inclinations of the sexes do not differ exactly or universally, but they do seem to differ,” he writes.  Mansfield here is giving voice to a bedrock conservative belief that the gender binary is an essential component of human nature. Men are generally one way and women are generally another; this, for conservatives, is an eternal truth about humanity that liberals deny at their peril. This idea doesn’t just shape the way that conservatives think about feminism: It is also central to the way they approach trans issues. So much of conservative rhetoric on the topic is about insisting on the illegitimacy of trans identity and being infuriated that they are now “expected to call a man a woman” because trans people complicated the division between what Mansfield calls the enduring “capacities and inclinations of the sexes.” If we want to understand how a second Trump term will approach hot-button issues surrounding gender, there are few clearer animating spirits than Mansfield-style insistence on the truth of the gender binary — and anger at the ways in which “gender-neutral society” devalues traditional manliness. Christopher Caldwell, the ethnic majoritarian Christopher Caldwell is perhaps the most highbrow right-wing populist in American media today. A New York Times opinion contributor with a literary profile — he is, among other things, on the editorial committee of a prominent French intellectual journal — few have been as successful at bringing Trump-friendly arguments to liberalism’s salons. Overall, Caldwell’s oeuvre is the mirror image of Yarvin’s. While Yarvin advances an openly antidemocratic rule by an elite minority, Caldwell has built an argument for unfettered majority rule. In his most recent book, The Age of Entitlement, Caldwell argues that the 1964 Civil Rights Act is responsible for much of what right-wing Americans find baleful about American culture today (such as “wokeness”). He writes that white people “fell asleep thinking of themselves as the people who had built this country and woke up to find themselves occupying the bottom rung of an official hierarchy of races.” This idea, that America is now a society that formally discriminates against white people, is a major influence on the Trumpist right today. Stephen Miller, Trump’s immigration czar and leading adviser, has founded a law firm — America First Legal — that has dedicated much of its efforts to filing suits alleging anti-white discrimination. If elected, a Trump administration would almost certainly attempt to revamp civil rights law to center this alleged scourge. Of course, Caldwell hardly invented the idea of “reverse discrimination.” But he did break new ground in explicitly linking the problem to the very idea of federal civil rights protections itself, suggesting (albeit not outright owning) a radical remedy to the problem. This is especially important in light of his praise for elected authoritarians abroad. In my book The Reactionary Spirit, I looked at three examples of foreign heads of state who have taken a hammer to the democracies they govern: Viktor Orbán in Hungary, Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, and Narendra Modi in India. In each case, the evidence of their antidemocratic bent is damning, ranging from systematic attacks on the freedom of the press to attempts to undermine the independence of election administration officials and the judiciary. Caldwell has written essays defending each of these leaders from charges of authoritarianism. His work reads like prestige feature journalism but is weak on the merits — ignoring contradictory evidence to the point of dishonesty. What Caldwell seems to admire in these leaders is their ability to turn visions of right-wing ethnonationalist government into reality. He describes them (often misleadingly) as the voices of the true majority, fighting a decadent left that had been imposing its will on an unwilling populace for too long. This core commitment to ethnic majoritarianism is what links his work on foreign governments to his critique of the Civil Rights Act — and what makes Caldwell so important for understanding a second Trump term. He is hostile to civil rights law, and friendly to foreign ethnonationalists, because he believes that there is something fundamentally undemocratic about the enterprise of legally protecting minority rights. “We … like to pretend that protecting minorities always means protecting them against abuse and persecution by majorities. Sometimes it does. But just as often it means claiming prerogatives for minorities against the innocent preferences of democratic majorities,” he writes in his essay on Modi. This spells out, perhaps more clearly than Caldwell intended, the vision of “democracy” that animates Trumpism: The strong do what they will, and the weak suffer what they must. Elbridge Colby, the China hawk Since World War II, American foreign policy has centered around maintaining its core alliances in Europe. We all know that Donald Trump has little interest in keeping those in good shape. But what would a more Trumpy alternative look like? Elbridge Colby, one of the brightest young(er) lights of the GOP foreign policy establishment, has a clear answer: Put fighting China at the top of the to-do list. In his 2021 book The Strategy of Denial, Colby argues that the rise of China has fundamentally changed the nature of international politics. Because of China’s extraordinary size and rapidly advancing armed forces, it poses a geostrategic threat to the United States unlike that of any state in recent memory. Were China to fully displace America as the dominant power in East Asia, Colby writes, it would be a dire threat to “Americans’ security, freedom, and prosperity.” In his view, Beijing aspires to attain dominance by exerting effective control over nearby states — beginning with Taiwan but expanding outward from there. The only way to stop China from doing so is to invest massive amounts of resources in the region, enough to prevent it from believing that it has a chance of simply running over its neighbors with relative ease. Colby’s “strategy of denial” depends on America being selective. In his view, China is so strong that the US must scale down its commitments elsewhere in order to concentrate all attention where it really matters. “Its first, overriding priority must be an effective defense of allies in Asia against China,” he writes. And, as such, “the United States should seek to have European states assume the greater role in NATO.” This worldview has made Colby into one of the most articulate skeptics about America’s ongoing commitment to Ukraine. Every dollar the United States spends on helping the Ukrainian war effort is a dollar less for helping Taiwan prepare to fight a Chinese invasion. We need to avoid “getting bogged down in Europe,” as he put it in a Fox News appearance, and begin pivoting to Taiwan. Colby has real pull in the GOP: He served in Trump’s first-term Department of Defense and, per Politico, currently has Vance’s ear. And his worldview is consistent with Trump’s on more than just Europe. One of the great misapprehensions about the former president is that he is an isolationist or even a critic of American empire. Neither is true: Trump used force aggressively during his first term, but did so less in the name of “protecting democracy” or other such lofty goals than in favor of American interests narrowly construed. In service of this vision, his administration oversaw bombings in Iraq and Syria that killed thousands of civilians. The Trumpian critique has never been that America should voluntarily weaken its military or retreat from the world. Rather, it’s that the United States should focus on its own interests, eschewing any of this “rules-based order” nonsense in favor of taking what’s ours.  In that general sense, Trump and Colby are a perfect fit. But it’s less clear whether Trump shares Colby’s assessment of China as a military threat.  As much as he loves to complain about Chinese trade practices, Trump has also repeatedly expressed admiration for President Xi Jinping — an admiration the Chinese have built up through aggressive flattery. So while Colby’s ideas are almost certain to play some role in shaping a second Trump term, there is a real question over whether they’ll play a dominant one.

The U.S. sanctioned two Mexican businesses for allegedly using proceeds of fentanyl trafficking to finance their operations tied to the Sinaloa cartel.

Emergency officials said styrene was leaking from a rail car in Whitewater Township, Ohio, and warned of a risk of explosion from the flammable chemical.

Local cops previously said none of the men were connected to the gang.

Supporters of former President Donald Trump watch as he holds a rally in the South Bronx on May 23, 2024, in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images Is Donald Trump on track to win a historic share of voters of color in November’s presidential election? On the surface, it’s one of the most confounding questions of the Trump years in American politics. Trump — and the Republican Party in his thrall — has embraced anti-immigrant policies and proposals, peddled racist stereotypes, and demonized immigrants. So why does it look like he might win over and hold the support of greater numbers of nonwhite voters than the Republican Party of years past? In poll after poll, he’s hitting or exceeding the levels of support he received in 2020 from Latino and Hispanic voters. He’s primed to make inroads among Asian American voters, whose Democratic loyalty has gradually been declining over the last few election cycles. And the numbers he’s posting with Black voters suggest the largest racial realignment in an election since the signing of the Civil Rights Act in 1964. There are a plethora of explanations for this shift, but first, some points of clarification. The pro-Trump shift is concentrated among Hispanic and Latino voters, though it has appeared to be spreading to parts of the Black and Asian American electorate. Second, things have changed since Vice President Kamala Harris took over the Democratic ticket in late July. Polling confirms that Harris has posted significant improvements among nonwhite voters, young voters, Democrats, and suburban voters. In other words, Harris has managed to revive the party’s standing with its base, suggesting that a part of Trump’s gains were due to unique problems that Biden had with these groups of voters. Thus, it’s not entirely clear to what extent this great racial realignment, as some have described the Trump-era phenomenon, will manifest itself in November. Still, Democrats aren’t in the clear. That same polling suggests that, despite Harris’s improvements, she is still underperforming both Biden’s support at this point in the 2020 polls and the margins of victory Biden ended up winning on Election Day. These numbers, especially the results among Latino and Hispanic voters, should be worrisome to Democrats: Biden did rather poorly among Latino voters relative to other candidates from the current century, resulting in Trump posting numbers not seen by a Republican since George W. Bush ran for reelection in 2004, and Harris could perform even more poorly. Why? Putting aside environmental factors and shifts in the American electorate that are happening independent of the candidates, there are a few theories to explain how Trump has uniquely weakened political polarization along the lines of race and ethnicity. 1) Trump has successfully associated himself with a message of economic nostalgia, heightening nonwhite Americans’ memories of the pre-Covid economy in contrast to the period of inflation we’re now exiting. 2) Trump and his campaign have also zeroed in specifically on outreach and messaging to nonwhite men as part of their larger focus on appealing to male voters. 3) Trump and his party have taken advantage of a confluence of social factors, including messaging on immigration and cultural issues, to shore up support from conservative voters of color who have traditionally voted for Democrats or not voted at all. Theory 1: Effective campaigning on the economy Trump’s loudest message — the one that gets the most headlines — is his bombastic attacks on immigrants and his pledge to conduct mass deportations. His most successful appeal to voters, though, which he has held on to despite an improving economy under Biden, is economic. Trump claims to have presided over a time of broad and magnificent prosperity, arguing that there was a Trump economic renaissance before Biden bungled it. That pitch doesn’t comport with reality, but it may be resonating with voters who disproportionately prioritize economic concerns in casting their votes, particularly Latino and Asian American voters. Polling suggests that voters at large remember the Trump-era economy fondly and view Trump’s policies more favorably than Biden’s. Black and Latino voters in particular may have more negative memories about Biden and Democrats’ economic stewardship because they experienced worse rates of inflation than white Americans and Asian Americans did during 2021 and 2022. Those memories came up constantly on a recent Black Voters for Trump voter outreach swing this September through predominantly Black neighborhoods in Philadelphia. “We have got to get somebody in the White House that has been there, knows our economy, knows what a bad economy looks like, and will get us where we need to go,” Signa Griffin, who described herself as a Black Trump supporter living in Philadelphia, told me.  Sharita White, another Black voter planning to support Trump, said not enough people want to admit how much better life was when Trump was president. “They talk so bad about him, but they forgot what happened,” she said. “I don’t know too much about politics, but the only thing I know, my income changed, and if I need that man to get in here to fix my income, I’m all down.” Polling suggests Hispanic and Asian American voters are feeling economic concerns especially keenly, and Hispanic voters in particular seem primed for an economic pitch from Trump: More than half said they trusted Trump over Biden to “make good decisions about economic policy,” according to research conducted by the Pew Research Center this summer. It was the topic on which Trump had the biggest advantage. Of course, Trump has long inflated his economic record and conveniently ignores the economic devastation he presided over during the Covid-19 pandemic and recession. That deflection provides an additional point that further complicates the blame Biden has received on the economy. Presidents, in general, have limited ability to control the economy (or inflation), given the independence of the Federal Reserve and how interconnected our economy is with the world at large. But sour perceptions still helped drag down Biden’s approval rating and electoral support as a candidate.  And it hasn’t stopped Trump from making a big deal about the opportunities his administration secured for minority-owned small businesses — he talks about cutting regulations, providing emergency assistance during the pandemic, and keeping unemployment low. All of this resonates with Hispanic and Asian American communities, James Zarsadiaz, a professor of history and researcher on conservatism at the University of San Francisco, told me. “As [these entrepreneurs] feel the punch of inflation, fees, taxes to run a business in very expensive metro areas, the GOP is starting to look more attractive to them again because they’re seen as the party on the side of the small-business owner, as opposed to the Democrats who are seen as the party of protecting workers.” Once again, things have changed since Harris became the nominee, and polls specifically focusing on economic sentiment have tracked an improving national mood and growing trust in Harris’s ability to handle economic issues. But Trump is still benefiting from a sense of nostalgia and has tried his best to tie Harris to Biden’s economic record, asking voters routinely if they are better off today than they were four years ago. Theory 2: Direct appeals to nonwhite men The political realignment of women voters has been one of the major stories of 2024; the gender gap in American politics exploded in 2016, took a break in 2020, and seems like it’s about to be historic in 2024, with a huge pro-Democrat shift among women. At the same time, though, the rightward drift of men, including men of color, is a quiet undercurrent that may end up explaining what happened if Trump wins in November. Plenty of theories have been raised in the past about what kind of appeal Trump might have specifically to men and to men of color: Does his businessman persona resonate with upwardly mobile, financially aspirational men? Is there a “macho” appeal there for Hispanic men? Could his gritty, outsider, everyman posturing and brash rhetoric resonate with Black and Latino men, particularly those living in traditionally Democratic cities? All of those could play a factor, but more significantly, pre-Harris, Trump’s campaign and allies doubled down on reaching out to men, especially men of color, as part of an effort to exploit the growing gender gap and fuel disillusionment with Democrats. It’s the “Jamal and Enrique” strategy that the Trump campaign appears to believe in, that “for every Karen we lose, we’re going to win a Jamal and an Enrique,” as Trump allies explained it to the Atlantic’s Tim Alberta in July. That includes speaking to, campaigning with, and getting endorsements from TikTok stars, sports personalities, and popular Black and Latin musicians who have large young male audiences. Intentionally or otherwise, this strategy could exacerbate movement by traditionally Democratic constituencies that were already slipping. Among young Black, Asian American, and Latino men, loyalty to the Democratic Party has faded. Younger Latinos in general are more likely than older Latinos to identify as independents, and younger Latino men have tended to support Republican candidates at higher rates than young Latinas. An example: A Brookings analysis of the 2022 midterms found Latinos under the age of 30 “supported Republican candidates for Congress (40%) at nearly double the rate of young Latinas (21%).” And Pew Research has routinely found that younger Black men are more likely to identify as Republicans than older Black men.  Theory 3: Championing conservative social issues Trump and the GOP may also have found the right social issues to emphasize and campaign on in order to exploit some of the cultural divides between conservative and moderate nonwhite voters, and liberal white voters who also make up part of the Democratic base (in addition to liberal nonwhite voters). In 2021 and 2022, that looked like fearmongering on gender identity and crime, playing up concerns over affirmative action, and campaigning on the overturning of Roe v Wade. In 2023 and 2024, the Trump focus has shifted strongly toward immigration, an issue that has divided the Democratic coalition as hostility toward immigration has grown. That’s true even for Latino and Hispanic voters — long seen as being the voting group most amenable to a pro-immigrant, Democratic message — and it’s being used as a wedge issue by Republicans among Black voters as well. Though it was seen as a gaffe, Trump’s “black jobs” comment during the first presidential debate got to this tension — the idea of migrants taking jobs, resources, and opportunities from non-white citizens. Florida Republican Rep. Byron Donalds, one of Trump’s go-to Black surrogates, explained the argument to me like this: “If you’re a Black man, Hispanic man, white man, you’re working hard every day, and the money you earn doesn’t go as far. That hurts your family, that hurts your kids. So they look at this situation, this immigration problem. People are saying, ‘Wait a minute. Why are illegal aliens getting food, getting shelter, getting an education, while my family and my child is struggling. It’s not right, and it’s not fair.’” And for Asian American voters, now the fastest growing ethnic segment of the electorate, immigration is also becoming a wedge issue, Zarsadiaz told me. “This feeling, ‘I’ve waited my turn, I waited my time’ — there’s long been Latino and Asian American immigrants who have felt this way. The assumption has long been that if you’re an immigrant, you must be very liberal on immigration, and that’s definitely not the case,” Zarsadiaz said. “Some of the staunchest critics of immigration, especially on amnesty or Dreamers, are immigrants themselves, and with Asian Americans that’s an issue that has been drawing more voters to Trump and Trumpism — those immigrant voters who feel like they’re being wronged.” Democrats are now moderating on immigration, but only after years of moving left. And that shift left has been true on a range of issues, contributing to another part of this theory of Trump’s gains: that Democrats have pushed conservative or moderate nonwhite Americans away as they embraced beliefs more popular with white, college-educated, and suburban voters. The political scientist Ruy Teixeira and Republican pollster Patrick Ruffini have been theorizing for a while now that a disjuncture over social issues in general — and Trump’s seizure of these issues — has complicated the idea that Democrats would benefit from greater numbers and rates of participation from nonwhite America. It may explain why conservative and moderate voters of color, who may have voted for Democrats in the past, are now realigning with the Republican Party. Don’t forget the non-Trump factors These three theories try to describe how Trump specifically has been able to improve his and the GOP’s standing among a growing segment of the American electorate. They place Trump as the central cause for the majority of this racial political shift. But would these dynamics still be happening if he weren’t involved? There are signs that some of this shift may be happening independently of Trump. It could be a product of the growing diversification of America, upward mobility and changing understandings of class, and growing educational divides.  For example, as rates of immigration change and the share of US-born Latino and Asian Americans grows, their partisan loyalties may continue to change. Those born closer to the immigrant experience may have had more of a willingness to back the party seen as more welcoming of immigrants, but as generations get further away from that experience, racial and ethnic identity may become less of a factor in the development of political thinking. Concepts of racial identity and memory are also changing — younger Black Americans, for example, have less of a tie to the Civil Rights era — potentially contributing to less strong political polarization among Black and Latino people in the US independently of any given candidate — and creating more persuadable voters in future elections. At the same time, younger generations are increasingly identifying as independents or outside of the two-party paradigm — a change in loyalty that stands to hurt Democrats first, since Democrats tend to do better with younger voters. Regardless of whether Trump just happens to be the right kind of populist at the right time of racial and ethnic change in America or if he’s a unique accelerator and contributor to the changes America is experiencing, November may offer more evidence that something has fundamentally changed in US politics. As America diversifies, it makes sense for its political parties to diversify too — and that poses a reckoning for Democrats in elections to come.

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Editor’s Note: Read Hanna Rosin’s story, “The Insurrectionists Next Door”. Subscribe here: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | iHeart Media | YouTube | Pocket CastsIn Episode 1, we learned that one of our new neighbors is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of Ashli Babbitt. In this episode, we learn more about why she moved to D.C. Every night without fail, Witthoeft and her housemates hold a vigil outside the D.C. jail where the rioters arrested for their actions on January 6 are held. We begin visiting these vigils and discover an alternate universe, where the people we know as insurrectionists are considered heroes. We also get invited to Witthoeft’s house, which she refers to as the “Eagle’s Nest.” There we learn about how her life and the lives of her roommates were turned upside down after January 6. And Witthoeft, for the first time, tells the story of how she learned about her daughter’s death, and how it radicalized her.This is the second episode of We Live Here Now, a six-part series about what happened when we found out that our new neighbors were supporting January 6 insurrectionists.The following is a transcript of the episode:Hanna Rosin: You know what I’ve always been really curious about? Why you?Lauren Ober: Why me what?Rosin: Like, she’s very suspicious of a lot of things. She really can turn on a dime on anybody.Ober: She has on me.Rosin: And yet, I do have a sense that she specifically trusts you, in some way. Do you have any guesses why?Ober: I mean, sometimes I’ve thought, like, Maybe I remind her of her daughter. I don’t know.Rosin: Wait. Of Ashli?Ober: Yeah. I mean, she described Ashli as, like, basically an acquired taste. Like, people didn’t feel neutrally towards Ashli. You either loved her or you hated her.[Music]Rosin: I’m Hanna Rosin.Ober: And I’m Lauren Ober. And from The Atlantic, this is: We Live Here Now.Rosin: The “she” in that conversation is Micki Witthoeft, the mother of the only person shot and killed on January 6. We introduced you to her in the previous episode. She moved into our D.C. neighborhood to get some sort of justice for her daughter. And that quest takes the form of a vigil held outside the D.C. jail—every night, uninterrupted, for two years.Do you remember the first time you decided to go to the vigils?Ober: I was ramping up to go to the vigil for days. Like, I kept being like, Tonight’s the night I’m going to go to the vigil. Tonight’s the night I’m going to go to the vigil.Rosin: How did you think they were going to treat you or talk to you?Ober: Before I showed up there, I definitely thought that I was going to get kicked out or something. I just figured I would be met, at bare minimum, with intense skepticism. Like, Who is this person? Why are they here?Rosin: Right. Lauren, I have a really good idea. Can you read me that script that you wrote on the notes app, please? Now. Like, right now.Ober: (Laughs.) Okay, in my own defense, I sometimes bumble my words, so I needed a little guidance. So that’s just a caveat. It said, “Hey. I’m Lauren. I make audio documentaries, and I recently heard about your vigils and wanted to know more about what’s been going on down here.”Rosin: That’s good. That’s good. (Laughs.) Thumbs up. Very good.Ober: (Laughs.) Thank you. Glad you approve.Anyway, I got out of my car. I walked towards a bunch of American flags, which were an obvious tell that I was in the right place. I passed a truck that had the words we the people stenciled on it. Then there was another one parked right next to it with a 1776 sticker in the window. So—Rosin: Clearly, you were in the right place.Ober: Because also, you have to understand, the physical geography of the vigil is, like, down at the end of a sidewalk, and the sidewalk starts at the top of this little hill, and you land at the end of the sidewalk where the vigil is. And so it’s like, you know, you can see the enemy coming.[Crowd murmurs and loudspeaker announcement]Ober: When I landed at the vigil, there’s a table set up with some speakers and a sound system, and behind that, a bunch of American flags. There’s another table for snacks and coffee, and a couple of camp chairs strewn about. And the whole of “Freedom Corner” was ringed by metal barricades set up by police.When I arrived, I spotted Micki, gathered up my nerve, walked up to her, and delivered my script. It went about as well as you might expect. But she didn’t kick me out. She just put out her cigarette and walked back towards the various cameras livestreaming the vigil.[Music]Ober: Since that first time I went, I’ve now been to the vigil maybe a dozen times. And this is generally how it goes: The guys in the prison, which they call the “D.C. Gulag,” are in a segregated wing of the D.C. jail, which they call the “Patriot Pod.” Most of them are in there awaiting trial or sentencing for charges like assault and civil disorder relating to January 6. And every night between 7 and 9 p.m., a bunch of them call in to the vigil. But before that, there’s a roll call.Person at microphone: Duke Wilson.Person in crowd: Hero.Person at microphone: Ricky Wilden.Person in crowd: Hero.Person at microphone: Shane Woods.Person in crowd: Hero.Person at microphone: Chris Worrell.Person in crowd: Hero.Ober: During this roll call, someone at the vigil reads off the names of people detained as a result of January 6, plus the people who died on January 6 and the folks who took their lives after the riot. There are so many names that the roll call takes a solid five, six minutes to get through. At the end of this portion of the vigil, the assembled crowd, maybe five to 10 people—maybe more—breaks into a chant.Person at microphone: Now let’s say her name.Crowd in unison: Ashli Babbitt! Ashli Babbitt! Ashli Babbitt! Ashli Babbitt!Ober: Anyway, the combination of vibes is weird. On one hand, it’s like a funeral that never ends. And as such, it’s appropriately somber. A young woman died, and here on this corner, time stands still for her—and for her mother. Every night at the vigil is Ashli Babbitt night.But then, the other vibe is like a MAGA rally or a tent revival, because after the chants, it’s time for the prisoners slash patriots to call in to the vigil and testify.Prisoner James Strand: Hey. What’s going on?Ober: From inside the jail, the J6ers call out to one of the vigil-goers’ phones, and then whoever fields the call broadcasts it through the speakers on Freedom Corner.Person at microphone: Oh, just living—Strand: This is James Strand. Yeah, go ahead.Person at microphone: Living the American dream out here on Freedom Corner.Crowd member: Hey, hey.Strand: Out there on Freedom Corner, right next to the graveyards.Person at microphone: That’s right.Ober: They talk about all kinds of goings-on in the jail—the homemade haircuts, the rank food, the bodybuilding competitions. They send messages to their wives and solicit donations for their legal fees. And almost to a person, they use their nightly phone calls to air their grievances against the government, which are many.That first night I went, one guy called in and said he couldn’t believe that people who love America could be made out as terrorists. Tami, one of Micki’s roommate’s, fielded that call—and commiserated.Tami: I never thought I’d see the day that people would go to jail for thought crimes. But as I’ve been here in D.C. the last several months, I’ve seen it over and over and over again.Ober: Another guy called in to explain that he hadn’t really committed a crime.Prisoner: If you were there, it does not match the narrative that is being portrayed on the outside.Ober: Then this electrician from New Jersey called in with some choice words about America.Prisoner: In 10 years or in five years or in eight years, America’s gonna be a shithole. It doesn’t matter whether it’s 20 years from now or 10 years from now.Ober: Basically, every vigil goes this way.Prisoner: If we don’t win in the next year—Crowd member: That’s over.Tami: That’s true. He’s not lost.Prisoner: That’s it! Who cares?Tami: Obviously, not you.Ober: None of the guys who call in say they did anything wrong. Most of them say they are being mistreated. And they refer to themselves as political prisoners and, more recently, hostages. The folks at the vigil, like Micki’s housemate Nicole, use this language, too.[Music]Nicole: At this point, he is now really a hostage. He’s no longer a political prisoner. He’s done his time. He is a hostage.Ober: “Hostage.” “Political prisoner.” Trump himself has picked up this rhetoric.Donald Trump: I am the political prisoner of a failing nation, but I will soon be free, on November 5, the most important day in the history of our country.Ober: So this little homespun vigil operation organized by our neighbor has somehow transmitted this language—these ideas—from jail payphones to Freedom Corner loudspeakers to YouTube live streams to Trump’s mouth. How did that even happen?But then, that first day I was there, something else happened, too. One of the men who called in was Jeffrey Sabol. He’s a Colorado geophysicist convicted of beating and dragging a law enforcement officer down the Capitol stairs.Jeffrey Sabol: Same old stuff in here. It’s just another day.Ober: He gave a short update on the boring goings-on in the jail: Some guys were working out, some guys were watching TV, and some guys were in need of a lesson on cleaning up.Person at microphone: You know, Jeff always says it’s Groundhog Day in there, but it’s Hotel California for us out here.Ober: And then Micki got on the phone and explained that there was somebody from the neighborhood in attendance tonight.Micki: So we actually have informed the neighborhood tonight.Sabol: One at a time. It’s one at a time.Micki: You gotta take ’em how you get ’em.Ober: Now, you could see this as a cute, little outreach, or you could see it as vaguely menacing. Like, Welcome to our little corner, you spy. We see you. We know you’re here. And I’m telling the guys on the inside, there’s an outsider here.Micki sent a message that night for sure, though just what it meant, I didn’t know. But it did make me want to know more about the woman running this Groundhog Day funeral slash conspiracy-corner mini MAGA rally. Was this vigil the result of grief gone haywire? Or was it some sort of shrewd political movement?[Music in crowd]Ober: At the end of that first visit to the vigil, Micki offered me coffee and a slice of blueberry pie—a nice gesture, for sure. But I don’t drink coffee. And I don’t eat fruit pie. And I definitely do not eat when I’m on a very important reporting mission.But I did appreciate the offer. It felt neighborly. So I kept returning to the vigil.Ober: How are you?Tami: Good. How are you?Ober: Great. What’s going on?Tami: Another beautiful night vigilizing. Vigilizing.Ober: You’re vigilizing.Tami: Vigilizing.Ober: And I got to be pretty friendly with the folks there, including Micki’s housemate Nicole.Nicole: God bless them, but that is not the mastermind that was taking over our government that day. The Proud Boys were not—Ober: I know this is weird, but one day we joked about militias because, during a conversation, I got the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers confused.Nicole: That was the Oath Keepers.Ober: Oh, I’m sorry. (Laughs.)Nicole: I know. You’ve got to get your militias straight.Ober: (Laughs.) “You’ve got to get your militias straight.”Nicole: If you’re going to come down here, you’ve got to know your militias straight.Ober: You know, I can’t—there are too many splinter groups and, you know.Nicole: There’s factions. There’s levels. There’s color coding. (Laughs.)Ober: Listen. When the gay militia happens, I’m there, okay? When that happens. Until then—Nicole: Well, we’re a country of militias, you know. Well, the thing that I find funny about people thinking—[Music]Ober: Because Freedom Corner isn’t exactly a place to have an intimate conversation, what with all the roll calling and patriotizing, I wanted to visit Micki and her crew at the “Eagle’s Nest”—a white row house just down the block. So I asked if I could come over.[Break]Ober: Where are we right now?Nicole: Our common space. Our living area.Ober: Where?Nicole: D.C.Ober: This is the “other White House”?Tami: Yes.Nicole: Okay. I get it.Ober: That’s what I’ve been calling it.Nicole: Okay. I like “other White House.” We like that.Ober: The Eagle’s Nest is a four-bedroom rental with an American flag hanging out front and a red-white-and-blue pinwheel in the yard.Ober: Do you wan to call it the “real White House”?Tami: I would say this White House is way more legitimate than the one over there.Ober: I figured you would say that.Ober: The first thing I noticed, right away, was how devoid the house was of MAGA anything. Bald-eagle stuffed animals? Check.A whiteboard with the names of their enemies, including Lieutenant Michael Byrd, the guy who runs Cowboys for Trump, and quote “That bitch Judge Friedrich”? Check.But no real Trump anything. That surprised me. I thought they were all about MAGA, but judging by their decor, it seemed like they were mostly all about the U.S. of A.Ober: There are, like, 9,000 American flags in here.Micki: Well, we have some.Ober: You have so many flags in here. There’s another one. American flag. Flag. Flag comforter.Micki: Well, it went with our motif.Ober: At the time of my first visit, Micki lived in the house with two other women: Nicole Reffitt, whose husband, Guy, was the first personto be tried and sentenced for January 6–related crimes, and Tami Perryman, whose partner, Brian Jackson, had been held in the D.C. Jail for more than a year as his J6 case made its way through the court.The three women spend their days going to court for trials and sentencing hearings, making jail visits, and meeting with politicians on Capitol Hill.Micki: And then we come home, and then we make coffee and go to the vigil.Tami: We do like to be home around three.Micki: And then we come home, and then we have a pretty late dinner, and then we go to bed, and then we get up and do it all over again.Ober: In the two years that the trio have been in D.C., they’ve become almost like Washington insiders. They know their way around the D.C. federal court docket and congressional buildings way better than I do, and I’ve been a reporter here for more than a decade.Ober: None of you had ever been to a congressional hearing before.Tami: No. I didn’t even know you could go to a congressional hearing. And I thought that the people that were running the country were supposed to be smarter than the average, everyday citizen, and they’re not.Ober: What about you, Micki? Were you this invested in the news and politics?Micki: No. I lived in blissful ignorance.Ober: What does that mean?Micki: That means I was lucky enough to live in the same house for 24 years and raise my children. And then my husband and I moved on to a boat, and we lived in, you know, in the San Diego Bay, and my life was good. I was happy.[Music]Ober: Micki describes her life before Ashli’s death as uncomplicated. She worked in a daycare and read a million books. She gardened, and she hung out with her family. She didn’t have a lot of money, and sometimes things were tight. But she liked her life, even through the pandemic. Her peace was only slightly interrupted by her daughter coming over and going on about mask mandates or missing ballots or whatever.Micki: Ashli would talk to me about politics, and I’m like, You know what, baby? You know, go get them. But not me. I’m gonna go sit on my boat. I’m gonna read my book. I’m gonna eat my popcorn. I’m gonna pet my dog. I’m gonna stick my feet in the water. I’m gonna go work my couple hours in the morning with my little, teeny baby lovables, and then I’m gonna go home, and I’m gonna love my life and live my life.And that is truly what I did. You know, I had no patience for politics. And I kind of had the attitude where, I can’t fix it. You’re kind of stuck in the status quo. Your life’s good. What’s the problem? But then: It’s not anymore.Ober: Micki and her daughter, Ashli, lived about 12 minutes from each other in San Diego—Micki on her boat and Ashli in an old-school hippie surf neighborhood called Ocean Beach. But at the time of Ashli’s death, the pair weren’t really speaking, and they hadn’t seen much of each other in months—the result of a family spat that Micki didn’t want to get into with me. So Micki had no idea Ashli was planning to go to Trump’s “Stop The Steal” rally on January 6. She didn’t really know anything about the event.Micki: I didn’t even realize what was going on in D.C. was going to be such a big frickin’ deal. You know, I was very much removed from that.Ober: Ashli traveled to D.C. by herself. She texted her husband a selfie and wrote, “Tons of Trump supporters on my plane!!!” After Trump’s speech, Ashli walked to the Capitol and made her way inside the building. At some point that afternoon, Micki remembers getting a call from her daughter-in-law telling her that Ashli was hurt.[Music]Ober: The details about what happened next are cloudy for Micki. But in the days that followed January 6, Ashli’s remains were cremated and brought back to San Diego by a family friend. The family grieved and had a memorial, and a debate raged in the country about whether Micki’s daughter was a hero or a monster. It was all too much for Micki.Micki: I spent quite a few months, literally, underwater. It’s a very intense time, Lauren. You know, it can, like, blur one day into another, and next thing you know, you’ve been underwater for six months.Ober: Micki could barely get up to bathe or eat.Micki: I had not watched any television, couldn’t listen to music, couldn’t turn on the radio. But in the process, I had a dream about Ashli.It was about political prisoners. She had been arrested for shooting a red-white-and-blue rocket around the moon. And she said they’re gonna execute her. And she was like, I’m a goner. And I was like, Get in my purse, and let’s go. And she was like no. I said, Well, then just tell them you didn’t do it. And she said, I won’t tell them I didn’t do it. And I’d do it again. And I’m a goner. These are the people you need to worry about. We were in a cell full of people. It was more like a cage—more like a chain-link cage with just a whole bunch of people and her fresh out of the shower, talking about how they were going to kill her.You know, I couldn’t help her, but it fostered my concern for other people that were affected by the situation.[Music]Ober: Even in her haze, Micki was inching towards a different version of herself. This woman who had never cared about politics committed to a task: She would get out of bed and make one phone call every day.Micki: That’s really all I could do. I would get up, and I’d make calls to Nancy Pelosi’s office, Dianne Feinstein’s office, Tad DiBiase, Congressman Issa. Although he’ll argue the point that I didn’t, I know I did. It’s in my death notebook.Ober: Your what, now?Micki: My death notebook. That’s what I call it. Like, after Ashli died, I had notes every time I talked to somebody. I know it’s kind of a morbid thing to say, but that’s what it is.Ober: Micki didn’t get anywhere with those folks, and that’s not surprising. But something else happened.Micki: Probably about three months in, my friend Wilma came over and said, You have got to get up, get in the shower, and get the fuck outside. Get some sunlight. Get some—whatever you need to do, you need to start with the shower, and let’s go. And she would walk with me and listen to me, you know—a true blessing.Ober: Her friend Wilma figured Micki needed to do more than just her one phone call a day, so she suggested an outing.Micki: She decided to take me on a Mother’s Day healing trip. So she has a camper, and off to Sacramento we went. We were going to talk to some people.Ober: You were going there because it’s the capital.Micki: We were.Ober: Not because it’s a cool place to hang out.Micki: Right. But it was actually an amazing trip. The Capitol was closed down, fenced off. But we had little flyers that we handed out and some bracelets. And the city did not receive us well.Ober: People didn’t want the bracelets or the flyers, and they definitely didn’t want to hear about January 6. But then, on the way home—Micki: We were in a campsite, and I heard Paul Gosar had said something about Ashli.Paul Gosar: Was Ashli Babbitt armed?Ober: That’s Republican Congressman Paul Gosar of Arizona.Jeff Rosen: Again, Congressman, I mean to be respectful of your observations, but I just don’t want to talk about individual situations.Gosar: Mr. Rosen, I declare reclaiming my time. Mr. Rosen. No, she wasn’t. She was wrapped in a U.S. flag.Ober: What Micki heard was Congressman Gosar questioning Acting Attorney General Jeff Rosen during a House Oversight Committee hearing on May 12, 2021—just after Mother’s Day.Gosar: Was the death of Ashli Babbitt a homicide?Rosen: Congressman, I’m not trying to be unhelpful here, but I just cannot comment.Gosar: I understand. But I mean—reclaiming my time—as the death certificate says, it was a homicide.Micki: And it was my first glimmer of hope that somebody is paying attention.[Music]Ober: Talking about Ashli this way, Gosar seemed to be trying to tell a different story about January 6. And Hanna was interested in how this retelling evolved.Rosin: At the very beginning, a lot of Republicans, including Trump loyalists, condemned the riots. For example, on January 7, Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma said he had witnessed Ashli’s shooting, and the officer who shot her “didn’t have a choice.” Mullin talked about him with great sympathy, and he called the Capitol Police officers “the real heroes.”Markwayne Mullin: And his actions may be judged in a lot of different ways moving forward. But his actions, I believe, saved people’s lives even more.Rosin: On Tucker Carlson’s show, Representative Jim Banks, a Republican from Indiana, called for the rioters to be prosecuted.Jim Banks: Well, Tucker, this was an absolutely wrenching—heart-wrenching, gut-wrenching—day on Capitol Hill today. As someone who’s worn the uniform and served our country abroad in Afghanistan and now serving my country on Capitol Hill, I couldn’t believe what I was seeing unfold right before my eyes here, in our nation’s capital.Rosin: Even Trump weighed in.Trump: The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy. To those who engaged in the acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.Rosin: Here and there, a Trump supporter—like Congressman Matt Gaetz—would drop a hint that maybe Antifa was involved. But it wasn’t until spring, just as Micki was poking out of her grief hole, that a new line about January 6 started to coalesce. It came, at first, from the fringe—but the powerful fringe. Gosar is a far-right congressman known for his association with white supremacists and his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.If you remember, Micki told us that prior to January 6, she wasn’t at all political. So at the time, she didn’t know Paul Gosar. What she did know was that he’d tweeted a photo of Ashli in her Air Force uniform with the caption, “They took her life. They could not take her pride,” a paraphrase of a U2 lyric, which is actually about Martin Luther King Jr.And then in July 2021, Gosar invited Micki to be his guest at the Turning Point USA Student Action conference in Phoenix, which is a group that trains student leaders to combat liberalism on campus. So Micki and Wilma hopped in the RV and drove to Arizona. And when they arrived, they were escorted to Gosar’s VIP seats.Gosar: On my wrist is a memory wristband: “Who killed Ashli Babbitt?”[Applause]Rosin: Micki had no idea what to expect. But then—Gosar: I want you to hold your applause for one second. I want you to hold your applause for one second. Because that lightning struck again. In our midst, who came all the way over here to tell you thank you, is Ashli Babbitt’s mom, Mick Wilbur.[Music]Rosin: In case you didn’t catch that, he called her Mick Wilbur. Anyway, the point is: After all that time trying to talk to congresspeople, one of them was finally talking back.Gosar: What has she given? She has given everything: her daughter. We need answers. Things weren’t right that day.Rosin: Gosar then walked down to the end of the stage and stopped where Micki and Wilma were seated. The pair stood and held up two huge, homemade signs. The crowd cheered. Someone gave Micki a hug.Afterwards, Gosar followed up with her.Micki: But he made no promises, other than the fact that he was going to go to the jail.Rosin: It was just one thing, but it meant a huge amount to Micki.Micki: I had hopes for some justice for my daughter and for people to have some righteous indignation about her murder and the way that she died, and I felt like people were becoming aware of that. It did feel like there was momentum.[Break]Rosin: After the rally, Micki went back home, to San Diego. And then Trump sent Ashli’s family a video tribute on what would have been her 36th birthday.Trump: It is my great honor to address each of you gathered today, to cherish the memory of Ashli Babbitt, a truly incredible person.Together we grieve her terrible loss. There was no reason Ashli should have lost her life that day. We must all demand justice for Ashli and her family. So on this solemn occasion, as we celebrate her life, we renew our call for a fair and nonpartisan investigation into the death of Ashli Babbitt.Rosin: And in Washington, the momentum continued. In November of 2021, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Louie Gohmert visited the D.C. jail. They soon issued a report called “Unusually Cruel.”Marjorie Taylor Greene: “Unusually Cruel.” That’s the title that we gave this report because this is the treatment that we found of the pretrial January 6 defendants being held right here in Washington, D.C., in the jail.Rosin: The report, the jail visit, the press conference—it was all starting to paint a picture to match what Micki felt and what Gosar had said at the rally: Something was wrong that day.Greene: Right now, what we have happening in America is a two-tiered justice system.Rosin: They mentioned the conspiracy that it was government plants who started the violence—Speaker: If they were gonna charge someone with insurrection, it’s beginning to sound more and more like those would be agents for the federal government that were there stirring things up.Rosin: —and that the defendants were not so much criminals but victims of government overreach.Gosar: My question is this: Mr. Biden, Attorney General Garland, why are you so interested in ruining the lives of these folks instead of equal justice? Why won’t you publicly release the hours and hours of video surveillance taken on January 6? What are you hiding?Rosin: As this alternate reality of January 6 was getting colored in, it wasn’t as hard for Micki to get people to say Ashli’s name. January 6, Ashli Babbitt—these terms were no longer political liabilities.[Music]Ober: Back in San Diego, Micki was getting restless. People around her just wanted her to move on, to move through her grief and come out the other side. They would tell her that the forces she was up against to try to get justice for Ashli were just too big to fight. But she just couldn’t let it go.Micki: Obviously, I just was lost. I was lost. And I’ve never been an extremely religious person, but I do believe in a higher power. And I did need something. So I did go home and pray about it. And then, it was clear to me that I needed to be here in D.C., but I’m not a woman of means, so I had to, you know, get organized and funded to get here.Ober: By August 2022, Micki had raised enough money for a flight and a one-month stay. She didn’t have a plan, but she figured being in the belly of the beast was better than sitting on the sidelines in San Diego, waiting for change. On August 1, she landed in D.C. and drove straight to the federal courthouse.Inside was the first sentencing for a J6er convicted by a jury. Nicole Reffitt’s husband, Guy, had come to the Capitol that day with a handgun in his pocket and an AR-15 stashed in his hotel room. He’d told his fellow Three Percenters that he intended to drag Nancy Pelosi out of the building by her ankles. His then-18-year-old son, Jackson, turned him into the FBI.Nicole had no idea what kind of sentence her husband would get. Would it be a slap-on-the-wrist type of sentence? Or a hard-bitten-felon kind of sentence? Turns out: It was somewhere in the middle—a little more than seven years in federal prison. Nicole’s family was the J6 test case. And Micki wanted to be there to support her, just like Ashli told her to do in that dream.And that’s when the mother of the martyr and the wife of political prisoner #376789 first laid eyes on each other.Micki: She was standing out there with her two girls, and I went like, Are you Nicole Reffitt? She’s like, Yeah, and kind of apprehensive because usually there’s a reason for, Hey. I know you, you know.Nicole: We had never met prior to that. And she came, and it always chokes me because Guy being the first trial and everything was very polarizing, because nobody wanted to touch it in any direction. So we were very alone. And then here comes Micki.Ober: Call it a kinship or a trauma bonding, but whatever their connection was, it was immediate.Nicole: When I met Micki, I knew she was grieving, and I felt that grief. I think Micki and I saw a lot of that in each other—that we weren’t alone, but we felt very alone.Micki: When I first saw Nicole, I knew instantly who she was, and she just had this defiant, “strong-ass woman” look on her face, and I just knew she was somebody I could be friends with.Ober: After Guy’s sentencing, Nicole walked toward a scrum of reporters. Micki watched from the side, shouting support as Nicole told the assembled media.Nicole: All I can say—Micki: Tell them, Nicole.Nicole: —is that y’all can all go to hell, and I’m going back to Texas.Micki: Amen.Ober: Then, Micki and Nicole—complete strangers up to this point—have a sort of ride-off-into-the-sunset moment together. They walk away from the courthouse hand in hand. The online trolls had a field day with the photos that later circulated. But it didn’t matter. They weren’t alone anymore.Nicole: She just looked at me, and I looked at her, and it was just like, Let’s go. They can’t do anything else to us.Ober: On the next episode, Trump really leans in and picks up the cause as his own.Trump: The person that shotAshli Babbitt—boom, right through the head. Just boom. There was no reason for that. And why isn’t that person being opened up? And why isn’t that being studied? They’ve already written it off. They said, That case is closed. If that were the opposite, that case would be going on for years and years, and it would not be pretty.Ober: So it’s time to ask the big question: Did these two hand-holding, strong ass-women divert the course of history?Rosin: That’s next on We Live Here Now.[Music]Ober: We Live Here Now is a production of The Atlantic. The show was reported, written, and executive produced by me, Lauren Ober. Hanna Rosin reported, wrote, and edited the series. Our senior producer is Rider Alsop. Our producer is Ethan Brooks. Original scoring, sound design, and mix engineering by Brendan Baker.This series was edited by Scott Stossel and Claudine Ebeid. Fact-checking by Michelle Ciarrocca. Art direction by Colin Hunter. Project management by Nancy DeVille.Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio, and Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. The Atlantic’s executive editor is Adrienne LaFrance. Jeffrey Goldberg is The Atlantic’s editor in chief.

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