A collection of opinionated commentaries on culture, politics and religion compiled predominantly from an American viewpoint but tempered by a global vision. My Armwood Opinion Youtube Channel @ YouTube I have a Jazz Blog @ Jazz
and a Technology Blog @ Technology. I have a Human Rights Blog @ Law
F.B.I. agents outside the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Sunday evening.Credit...Saul Martinez for The New York Times
“Ryan Wesley Routh wanted to fly Afghan veterans to fight against Russia in Ukraine, an endeavor he seemed ill prepared to orchestrate.
Last year I was working on an article about foreign fighters and volunteers in Ukraine. The piece focused on people who were not qualified to be allowed anywhere near the battlefield in a U.S.-led war and yet were fighting on the front against Russia, with access to weapons and military equipment.
I was put in touch with Mr. Routh through an old colleague and friend from Kabul, Najim Rahim. Through the strange nexus of combatants as one war ended and another began, he had learned of Mr. Routh from a source of his in Iran, a former Afghan special operations soldier who was trying to get out of Iran and fight in Ukraine.
Mr. Routh, who had spent some time in Ukraine trying to raise support for the war, was seeking recruits from among Afghan soldiers who fled the Taliban. And so the former Afghan soldier reckoned Mr. Routh could get him to the Ukrainian front. (Anything, even war, was better than the conditions in Iran for Afghans after the Taliban retook Kabul in August of 2021.)
There were a few complications. Mr. Routh, a former construction worker from Greensboro, N. C., said he never fought in Ukraine himself — he was too old and had no military experience.
But like many foreign volunteers who showed up at Ukraine’s border in the war’s early months, he was eager to cast aside his former life for something far more exciting and make a name for himself.
“In my opinion everyone should be there supporting the Ukrainians,” he told me, his voice urgent, exasperated and a little suspicious over the phone.
When I talked to Mr. Routh in March of last year, he had compiled a list of hundreds of Afghans spread between Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan whom he wanted to fly, somehow, to Ukraine. Mr. Routh told one Afghan he was helping: “I am just a civilian.”
My conversation with Mr. Routh was brief. He was in Washington, D.C., he said, and had planned for a two-hour meeting with some congressmen about Ukraine. (It’s unclear if that meeting ever happened.)
By the time I got off the phone with Mr. Routh some minutes later, it was clear he was in way over his head.
He talked of buying off corrupt officials, forging passports and doing whatever it took to get his Afghan cadre to Ukraine, but he had no real way to accomplish his goals. At one point he mentioned arranging a U.S. military transport flight from Iraq to Poland with Afghan refugees willing to fight.
I shook my head. It sounded ridiculous, but the tone in Mr. Routh’s voice said otherwise. He was going to back Ukraine’s war effort, no matter what.
Like many of the volunteers I interviewed, he fell off the map again. Until Sunday.
Workers at a polling site on Sept. 10 in Providence, R.I. (David Goldman/AP)
“The U.S. presidential election system — with winner-take-all states and the electoral college — warps the political process and even the way people see their own country. I would prefer the United States move to a national popular vote to choose its president. But even if that never happens, it’s critically important that Americans not understand the country based on our weird, distorting presidential campaigns.
The most obvious problem with our system is that we end up portraying states and even entire regions as politically monolithic. All states but Maine and Nebraska are winner-take-all in presidential elections: The candidate who finishes in first place gets all the electoral votes. So Texas and the rest of the South is firmly red, you learn from political coverage. But 5.3 million people in Texas voted for Joe Biden in 2020, more than the total he received in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont combined (4.9 million).
The 3.3 million New Yorkers (state not city) who voted for Donald Trump are more backers than he had in Indiana and Kentucky (3.1 million) put together. Trump won about the same amount of votes (around 1 million) in Oklahoma and Los Angeles County.
Yes, big cities and states have lots of people, and many of them back the nondominant party where they live. Duh. But these red-blue stereotypes seep into our perceptions more than we admit. When I moved from D.C. to Louisville a few years ago, I repeatedly had to explain to my friends and professional contacts who lived on the coasts that my life had not dramatically changed. I was still surrounded by people who hated Trump; a coffee shop was a four-minute walk from my new home. Kentucky is not one land mass of Republicans, but instead many small masses of liberals and even more masses of conservatives.
Follow Perry Bacon Jr.
I suspect Republicans in California and New York are similarly sick of hearing their states described as entirely Democratic.
There is a real red-blue state policy divide, because Republican politicians have almost no power in states such as Massachusetts; same for Democratic officials in Tennessee. But American voters are less divided by the state they live in than other factors, such as urban versus rural, Black versus White and evangelical versus nonevangelical.
The second problem caused by our state-by-state, winner-take-all system is that the interests of a few swing states become the center of presidential politics and therefore national discourse, while tens of millions of other Americans are ignored because they live in the wrong place. No offense to their residents, but Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin aren’t special. There are people in the 43 other states who wish Trump or Vice President Kamala Harris would campaign where they live, instead of making another stop in the Atlanta or Philadelphia areas.
We are in the middle of a presidential campaign in which fracking is being discussed more than education, an issue that affects way more people, because Pennsylvania is a major hub of natural gas production. If Kentucky were a swing state, candidates would end up talking about coal too much.
Michigan and Wisconsin are among the states with the highest percentages of people working in manufacturing, which in part explains why presidents and presidential candidates are constantly touting the creation of new factory jobs, as opposed to focusing on hospitality and other industries that employ millions of Americans.
A third problem is that we link regions and states to one another based on their voting patterns in presidential races, as opposed to more logical and stronger connections. The best way to understand the United States in 2024 is that we have more than a dozen booming metropolitan areas (think Atlanta, Boston, Dallas, New York and San Francisco) that companies and people are flocking to; other metro areas that aren’t seeing such economic gains (Baltimore, Louisville, St. Louis); and many rural places and states that are struggling.
You could also think of the country by race and region: New England and Appalachia are disproportionately White; the Southeast has more Black residents than other parts of the country; the Southwest is heavily Latino.
But in presidential elections, Wisconsin is connected to Pennsylvania, because they are both swing states, even though Wisconsin has more in common economically and culturally with Minnesota and Iowa. When I lived in D.C., no one thought their trip on Amtrak to Philadelphia was an adventure to the Midwest. It drives me crazy to read about the “Rust Belt” (Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin) and “Sun Belt” (Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina and Nevada.) Do Arizona and Nevada have much in common? Not really.
I assume we will keep our current system for the long term. Change would be controversial, and a constitutional amendment would be needed to get rid of the electoral college. So it’s vital, particularly in these last weeks before the presidential election, to remember that the America of the campaign trail, the debates and political news is not the real America. You are normal if you don’t have strong views on fracking or the best way to woo rural voters in Wisconsin. No one in Atlanta or Charlotte talks about their life in the Sun Belt.
Follow the campaign, vote for your favorite candidate — and then forget basically everything that was said about America during election season by the politicians and the people who cover them.“
A mural adorns a wall in the city of Springfield, Ohio, on 11 September 2024.Photograph: Julio-Cesar Chavez/Reuters
WhileDonald Trumpmade baseless, dangerous claims that immigrants in Ohio were eating people’s pets in front of millions of viewers at Tuesday night’s presidential debate, Johnson Salomon, a Haitian man who moved to Springfield in 2020, was watching cartoons with his kids before putting them to bed.
He got a text from a friend telling him to turn on the debate. When he saw the headlines about what the former president and Republican nominee in November’s election had said, he was in total shock.
“This was a false claim. I couldn’t believe that such a high official could make such a claim,” Salomon said.
Trump’s running mate JD Vance,Elon Muskand prominent OhioRepublicanshad already spread the false rumors, lying about how Haitian immigrants had been killing and eating people’s pets in Springfield, a blue-collar town of 60,000 people in western Ohio. But the rumors, leaving Salomon and other Haitians in fear of being targeted for violence and discrimination, didn’t start with them.
They were initiallyspread online in Auguston social platforms used by far-right extremists and by Blood Tribe, a neo-Nazi hate group.
Springfield officials and police say they have received no credible reports of pets being harmed by members of the immigrant community, instead suggesting the story may have originated in Canton, Ohio,where an American womanwith no known connection to Haiti was arrested in August for allegedly stomping a cat to death and eating the animal.
Both Donald Trump and his running mate, JD Vance, have repeated the unfounded claim that immigrants in Ohio are eating pets.Photograph: Yuki Iwamura/AP
But that hasn’t prevented Republican party politicians from scapegoating Springfield’s 15,000 Haitian immigrants as Trump and others attempt to propel immigration to the center of their fall political campaigns. In addition to Tuesday’s debate, Trump held a news conference Friday in which herambledwithout evidence about how Haitians had descended on Springfield “and destroyed the place”.
When Haitian immigrants began trickling into Springfield to work in local produce packaging and machining factories in 2017, some thought the new residents could help the city regain its former vigor as a once-thriving manufacturing hub. Once home to major agricultural machinery companies in the mid-20th century, Springfield has lost a quarter of its population since the 1960s.
“They came to us for one reason: they were looking for ways to find out how to work,” Casey Rollins, executive director of the St Vincent de Paul Society’s Springfield chapter, said of those who came to theOhiocity from Haiti.
“So we got together immigration lawyers and interpreters to figure out how to help them work. We are getting them online and getting them to apply [for work permits]. We wanted workers here [in Springfield] – they want to work.”
Members of the neo-Nazi Blood Tribe and Goyim Defense League groups rally in Altamonte Springs, Florida, on 2 September 2023.Photograph: Dave Decker/Shutterstock
Haitians and immigrants from Central American countries have been in high demand at Springfield’s Dole Fresh Vegetables – where they’ve been hired to clean and package produce – and at automotive machining plants whose owners were desperate for workers due to a labor shortage in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.
New Caribbean restaurants and food trucks have opened across south Springfield where once abandoned neighborhoods are now bustling with residents. A popular Haitian radio station has been broadcasting for several years. And every May, thousands turn out for Haitian Flag Day that’s celebrated at a local park.
But the glut of new arrivals has also stretched hospitals and schools in the area, angering many locals who resented their presence. The outragereached a crescendo last August, when an11-year-old boy was thrown from a school busand killed after its driver swerved to avoid an oncoming car driven by a Haitian immigrant who didn’t have an Ohio driver’s license.
The child’s death fueled anger and racism on Facebook and at Springfield city commission meetings, where public comments about immigration have often run for more than an hour. Locals upset by the growing immigrant community wondered if they were being taken over – if Springfield had become ground zero for the baseless “great replacement theory”.
Soon, rightwing extremists seized on Springfield’s unrest.
Armed neo-Nazi members of Blood Tribe – a hardcore white supremacist group,according to the Anti-Defamation League– flew flags bearing swastikas and marched through a prominent downtown street while a jazz and blues festival was taking place nearby in August.
One witness to the march, who declined to be interviewed by the Guardian due to fearing for their family’s safety after being doxed by rightwing extremists online,reported thatmembers of the group pointed guns at cars and told people to “go the fuck back to Africa”.
A Springfield police representative, however, appeared to downplay the scene,telling local mediathat the hate group’s march was “just a little peaceful protest”.
Several days later, a leading member of Blood Tribe who identified himself as Nathaniel Higgers, but whose real name is Drake Berentz, spoke at a Springfield city commission meeting.
“I’ve come to bring a word of warning. Stop what you’re doing before it’s too late,” BerentztoldSpringfield’s mayor, Rob Rue. “Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in.”
Berentz was promptlykicked outfor espousing threatening language. Nonetheless, on Thursday morning,a bomb threatprompted Springfield’s city hall, a school and other government offices to beevacuated.
Last year, having turned up to protest a drag story time event in Wadsworth, Ohio, where white supremacistsgave Nazi salutesand shouted “Sieg heil”, the organization allegedly set up a chapter in the state. Last year, Blood Tribe members were driven out of Maine havingattempted to set upa compound and Nazi training camp in the rural north-eastern part of the state.
White supremacist demonstrators clash with drag queen story hour members in Wadsworth, Ohio, on 11 March 2023.Photograph: UPI/Alamy
“Blood Tribe celebrated Donald Trump bringing up the [immigrants killing cats] lie during the debate,” said Maria Bruno of Ohioans Against Extremism, a non-profit founded last month in part due to a rising presence of extremists in Ohio. “They are thrilled that there are politicians willing to echo their talking points.”
JD Vance hasregularly claimedthat “illegal immigrants” are “generally causing chaos all across Springfield” on the campaign trail in recent weeks. Ohio’s Republican attorney general, Dave Yost, said he plans to direct his office to “research legal avenues to stop the federal government from sending an unlimited number of migrants to Ohio communities”.
However, the vast majority of Haitians in Springfield are in the US legally through a temporary protected status (TPS) that’s been allocated to them due to the violence and unrest in their home country. Citizens of 16 countries, including Afghanistan and Myanmar, are eligible for TPS. It is not a pathway to US citizenship and is valid for only 18 months, at which point it must be renewed by the federal homeland security department for a status holder to remain in the country legally.
“They are entrepreneurs, they want to innovate,” Rollins said of Haitian people in Springfield. “They just work excessively once they are eligible.”
But many Haitians have been targeted in Springfield.
Philomene Philostin, a naturalized US citizen of Haitian origin, shelves merchandise in her store in Springfield, Ohio, on 13 September 2024.Photograph: Roberto Schmidt/AFP/Getty Images
In December, a Springfield man wassentenced to 20 years in federal jailfor hate crimes after attacking eight Haitians earlier in 2023. Last year, the local Haitian church was broken into and damaged twice. Longtime Black residents of Springfield have reported being verbally abused when walking on the city’s streets, having been confused with members of the Haitian community.
The effect is plainly obvious.
“Normally, when I drive through south Springfield, where a lot of Haitians live, you see people walking on the streets, at the Haitian markets and restaurants,” Salomon said.
“For the past few days, I have seen far fewer people.”
Rollins said she has received threats that the St Vincent de Paul branch would be destroyed for its support of Haitians.
“People are messaging me, telling me that I’ve destroyed Springfield,” she said. “We’re just trying to help people.”
A post-debate Reuters/Ipsos poll had Harris ahead by five points, 47 to 42%.Composite: Zuma/Rex/Shutterstock, EPA
Kamala Harrishas re-established a crucial polling advantage overDonald Trumpfollowing this week’s debate, which a clear majority of votersbelieve she won, according to a range of surveys.
The latest Guardian polling trends tracker shows the US vice-president regaining a small lead over the Republican nominee since Tuesday’s encounter in Philadelphia, a shift from surveys at the start of the week when the pair were essentially tied.
The movement is supported by individual polls, some of which show Harris with a bigger lead than the 0.9% advantage displayed in the Guardian tracker.
A Reuters/Ipsospoll, the first to be conducted since the debate, had Harris ahead by five points, 47 to 42%, a 1-point rise on the lead recorded in the week after last month’s Democratic national convention.
A separate Morning Consultsurveypublished on Thursday showed a similar lead, 50 to 45%, up from the three- to four-point advantage Harris was registering before the debate. Tellingly, the poll reflected a loss of support for Trump, perhaps supporting some pollsters’ argument that hiserratic performancein Tuesday’s encounter – which was watched by67.1 million viewers– damaged his credibility.
Two other polls by YouGov and Leger give Harris a four- and three-point lead respectively. Generally, the post-debate polls present a rosier outlook for the vice-president than surveys beforehand, which suggested that the surge in popularity she experienced after replacingJoe Bidenas the Democrats’ nominee had stalled, allowing Trump to draw close to even in national polls, and even edge ahead in one New York Times/Siena survey.
All available indicators suggest that the turnaround has been triggered by the events of the debate, where Harris was broadly seen as cutting a calm, controlled figure while getting under the skin of Trump – who repeatedly veered off policy message to go onwild tangents about immigrantsand crowd sizes at his rallies.
Survey respondents beg to differ. The Reuters/Ipsos polls showed 53% who had heard something about the encounter believed that Harris had come out on top, as opposed to 24% thinking Trump had prevailed. The Morning Consult poll showed a similar margin, 55-25%, in favour of thinking Harris had won.
That is broadly in line withthree earlier post-debate polls– conducted by CNN, YouGov and CNN – which gave Harris an average debate-winning margin of 23%.
“She definitely got a bump – and if those polls are accurate, a little more of a bump than I thought,” said John Zogby, a veteran pollster who believes key moments in some debates had small but decisive impacts on the outcomes of past presidential elections.
“ClearlyKamala Harriswon the debate. There are enough polls out to show that and other observers beyond the polls also believe that she won. I think, more importantly, Trump lost the debate. He lost a lot of credibility, in addition to having lost the debate.”
The burning question, however, is whether one lost debate translates into a lost election.
Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster and strategist who forecast in advance of the debate that its winner would prevail in November, suggested that the sour nature of Trump’s showing had sealed his electoral fate.
“It was a pretty negative performance. Pretty pessimistic, cynical, contemptuous and I think that this will cost him, yes,” hetoldthe interviewer Piers Morgan. “I think that he loses because of this debate performance.”
Although eight weeks separate Tuesday’s debate from election day on 5 November, the wafer-thin polling margins – particularly in key battleground states – mean the ripples emanating from Trump’s multiple miscues are likely to have an outsize effect, Luntz argued.
“There are very few undecided voters left,” he said. “It’s about 5% of the vote – and they only matter in seven states. And those states are too close to call. So essentially we are looking at less than 1% of America. But they heard nothing from Trump to give them a sense of anything that would be different going forward.”
Zogby, by contrast, said it was “too early to tell” the debate’s electoral impact and identified weaknesses in Harris’s performance that may return to haunt her.
“She lost some points on substance,” he said. “Right from the very beginning [when she was asked] can you tell the American people that they’re better off than they were three and a half years ago … she jumped right into the future. That’s going to dog her because three-quarters of the US voters think the country is headed in the wrong direction – and the blame goes to the party on top and the president on top. She owns the administration’s successes, but she also owns inflation and the economy.
“So I will say advantage to her on presentation and being cool, but there was no knockout blow.”
One additional piece of fallout from Tuesday’s debate might tilt the balance in Harris’s direction – the intervention of Taylor Swift.
The singerendorsed Harrisimmediately after the event, a move that prompted about 400,000 people to visit a voter registration link she posted on her Instagram, which has 284 million followers.
A late young voter registration surge favouring theDemocratscould significantly affect the electoral role played by the age 18-29 voter demographic, among which Harris’s current 15% lead over Trump compares unfavourably with the 28% advantage Biden held in his 2020 election victory.
In asegmenton CNN, Harry Enten, the network’s polling specialist, illustrated a trend towards Republican registration among voters under 30 in battleground states that are key to winning the White House.
In Pennsylvania and North Carolina, two fiercely contested swing states, the GOP had drastically whittled back the Democrats’ lead among young voters of four years ago, thanks to a superior registration drive, he said, the effect of which Harris could only hope Swift’s endorsement could reverse.
“Kamala Harris will absolutely welcome in the support of Taylor Swift if she can move young voters at all,” Enten said. “The bottom line is [Harris] is not doing as well among young voters as you might expect the Democrat to necessarily be doing, based upon history.”
