Hispanic support for Trump raises red flag for Biden

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People walk to the pedestrian crossing at the San Luis Port of Entry, in the heavily Hispanic Yuma County, a Democratic stronghold in the southwestern corner of Arizona along the Mexico border, in San Luis, Arizona. (REUTERS/Rebecca Noble)
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Updated 17 December 2023
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Hispanic support for Trump raises red flag for Biden

  • Recent Reuters/Ipsos survey found Trump narrowly leading Biden in support, 38 percent to 37 percent.
  • Advocacy group UnidosUS poll found that the top issues for Hispanic voters are inflation, jobs and the economy
  • Democrats were focused too heavily on voting rights and how Trump posed a threat to democracy, says political analys

SAN LUIS, Arizona: When Michele Pena ran as a Republican candidate for the Arizona state legislature in a heavily Hispanic and Democratic-leaning district on the Mexican border, few believed she could win. Pena, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant, was a school volunteer and single mother with no political experience. She began with a campaign budget of just $1,600. She nonetheless scored an upset victory last year in the district, which is separated from Mexico by miles of border wall built under former President Donald Trump to keep out “bad hombres.” “Hispanics go hard Democrat there all the time. But they saw me as a regular person, and when we got talking, a lot of people told me things aren’t going well,” the 49-year-old said in an interview from her home city of Yuma.

The predominant concerns for many voters were high food and gas prices, job prospects and the quality of schools rather than issues around minority rights, she added.
Pena’s surprise win underscores how a growing number of Hispanic voters are switching their allegiance to Trump and Republican candidates in Arizona and other election battleground states, according to interviews with five Republican and Democratic analysts.
It’s a worrying trend for Democratic President Joe Biden as he prepares for a likely general election rematch with Trump in November 2024. Hispanics, who have typically leaned Democrat, are the largest minority in the US electorate, making up almost a fifth of the population, and will play a pivotal role in a handful of swing states that will decide the election.
Take Arizona, where a tight race beckons.




A sign shows a projected visualization of the ongoing construction of the San Luis Port of Entry funded by President Joe Biden's Bipartisan Infrastructure Law and Inflation Reduction Act, in the heavily Hispanic Yuma County, in San Luis, Arizona. (REUTERS/Rebecca Noble)

A third of the population is Hispanic in the state, which Biden won by just 10,000 votes in the last presidential race. In the southwest district that Pena won last year, registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by more than 12 percent.
In 2020, Trump’s national share of Hispanic voters rose by 8 percentage points to 36 percent, compared with the 2016 election, according to the non-partisan Pew Research Center.
More recently, a Reuters/Ipsos survey of almost 800 Hispanic adults carried out this month found Trump narrowly leading Biden in support, 38 percent to 37 percent. The survey results had a credibility interval, a measure of precision, of about 4 percentage points in either direction.
“All the data we’ve seen since the 2016 elections suggests there’s considerable weakening of Democratic support among Hispanics,” said Ruy Teixeira, a veteran Democratic political analyst who has spent decades studying Hispanic voting trends.
Teixeira said Democrats have been focusing too heavily on issues including voting rights and how Trump posed a threat to democracy.
“They are dancing around the number one issue — high prices,” he added. “It’s not what working-class voters want out of a political party.”
Such assertions are supported by a November survey carried out by UnidosUS, the largest Latino non-profit advocacy group, which found that the top issues for Hispanic voters are inflation, jobs and the economy.
Democrats reject suggestions they are focusing on the wrong issues. They point to heavy investment by the Biden campaign in the 2020 election, and the Democratic Party in the 2022 congressional elections, to run ads in key states on issues including job growth and improving the economy for working families.

Knocking on doors
Pena used a campaign strategy that Republicans have been executing for several years to attract more Hispanic voters: show visibility in working-class neighborhoods, run more Spanish-language TV and radio ads, open Spanish-speaking offices, and try to convince voters that Republicans can improve their lot more than Democrats.
The Republican National Committee opened Hispanic community centers in 19 states in 2022 — including two in Arizona — where volunteers were trained to door-knock and make calls in Spanish.
In Arizona, Republicans have backed legislation they believe appeals to working-class Hispanics, including the “Tamale bill” that would have relaxed rules around the selling of food made in home kitchens. The state’s Democratic governor vetoed the measure this year on health-and safety grounds.
Pena said she knocked on hundreds of doors in working-class areas in small cities such as San Luis with a message focused on improving schools, lowering prices, and love of family. She heard worries from voters about social policies backed by many Democrats, including gender-neutral bathrooms in schools.
“They saw I was a Republican, and it was a new perspective for a lot of people,” Pena said, because few had spoken at length to a Republican candidate before.
Pena’s victory was a minor political earthquake in Arizona. Democrats expected to win both the district’s seats, which would have created a 30-30 tie in the state House of Representatives, robbing Republicans of their majority.
Pena defeated Democrat Jesus Lugo Jr. by just over 3,000 votes, 4 percent of the vote.
Democrats say they have made similar on-the-ground campaign efforts. Lugo, a social worker, told Reuters he ran on a platform of reducing homelessness, domestic violence, substance abuse, increasing mental health resources and criminal justice reform.
The 30-year-old rejects suggestions he lost to Pena due to the issues focused on. He said she won because the Republicans used a political tactic known as the “single shot“: running only one candidate in a district with two seats, increasing the chance for Republicans to win one seat rather than losing both.
Matt Barreto, the lead Latino pollster for the 2020 Biden campaign, said the playing field in 2024 will be different. He said the 2020 contest was a struggle in some areas because of the COVID-19 pandemic, when Democrats — unlike Republicans — heeded government warnings and did not campaign door-to-door or open offices in Hispanic neighborhoods.
Jason Miller, a Trump campaign spokesperson, said Trump would focus on issues important to Hispanic voters, including the economy, crime, and the southern border. “Hispanic voters will be very important in 2024,” Miller said.

Support for border wall
Democratic analyst Teixeira said his party had made a fundamental mistake in recent election cycles: assuming Hispanic voters would find Trump and fellow Republicans’ tough rhetoric against illegal immigrants as racist.
“Huge proportions of the Hispanic population, especially working-class Hispanics, are actually pretty disturbed by illegal immigration,” Teixeira said, referring to migrants crossing the border into the US without visas.
Many Hispanics do find Trump’s rhetoric offensive and vote for the Democratic Party. Most are focused on which party can best address their economic concerns, according to the UnidosUS poll.
In Reuters interviews with a dozen Hispanic voters in Yuma County, which contains part of Pena’s district, none said they found Trump’s rhetoric about illegal Mexican immigrants — whom he once described as murderers and rapists — as racist or xenophobic.
The people were focused on high prices, which most blamed Biden for. Of the dozen, six plan to vote for Trump, and the rest were undecided. Eight supported a border wall and wanted illegal immigrants kept out.
A large chunk of Trump’s border wall sits close to San Luis, which has a population of around 35,000 and is a mix of big modern stores such as Walmart and scores of small Spanish-language food and clothing shops.
Alma Cuevas, 56, a retired school librarian in the city, came to the US with her family from Mexico aged one.
An independent, she is undecided about next year’s election, but doesn’t think she can back Biden. She feels he has failed to deal with the influx of thousands of migrants across the border.
She is leaning toward Trump, because she felt better off economically when he was president.

’People feel disappointed'
Jaime Regalado, a non-partisan veteran analyst of Hispanic voting patterns and polling, echoed the complaints of some Hispanic rights groups, saying the Democratic Party only courted Hispanics at election time, assuming their support, rather than working full-time for their support.
Biden aides rejected that claim. They said his campaign had already made the largest and earliest outreach to Hispanics for a presidential re-election campaign, including Spanish-language ads targeting Latino voters in battleground states.
One ad tells voters that it’s Biden whose economic policies help Hispanic families, rather than Republicans.
“We refuse to take any vote for granted. That’s why this campaign is investing early and often to mobilize Latinos to again help deliver Joe Biden the White House,” said Maca Casado, a Biden campaign spokesperson.
They will face an uphill task convincing voters like Aracely Mendez, a lettuce picker in San Luis, who said she voted for Pena last year and will back Trump in 2024.
“People feel disappointed with the Democrats,” the 42-year-old said. “Prices went up. It’s tough.”


Singapore PM urges voters to re-elect his cabinet to deal with US, China

Updated 59 min 13 sec ago
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Singapore PM urges voters to re-elect his cabinet to deal with US, China

  • PM Wong urges voters to stick with his team in face of US tariffs, US-China tensions
  • Last day of campaigning ahead of May 3 election

SINGAPORE: Singaporeans need to vote for candidates who have built up trust and close relationships with counterparts in the US and China, said Prime Minister Lawrence Wong on Thursday, urging voters to re-elect his cabinet at a May 3 poll.
Addressing a 1.4 million-strong labor union on the last day of campaigning, Wong warned of economic turbulence and job losses if US tariffs slow global growth. His government has warned the trade-reliant economy may face a possible recession.
“We must expect more pressure on us and to navigate these pressures, it will take experience and skill. It will take people in government who have built up trust and close relationships with their counterparts in both America and China,” Wong said.
He said voters needed to re-elect his whole team to effectively deal with these economic headwinds.
“I have backups, I have reserves, sure. But everyone knows that the team cannot function at the same level. It’s the same in any organization, and it will be so in our next cabinet if we end up with such a loss,” he said, referring to the possible loss of his deputy prime minister.
Singapore’s ruling People’s Action Party, in power since 1959, is widely expected to be easily re-elected, but there is growing unhappiness with its governance in the face of rising costs of living.
Deputy Prime Minister Gan Kim Yong was nominated at the 11th hour in a hotbed contest in a ward in northeast Singapore in an effort to stop the main opposition Workers’ Party, which won 10 seats in the last parliament.
Campaigning in recent days has zeroed in on Gan being new to the area, after an incumbent ruling party candidate called the opposition team strangers. The opposition fired back, asking if Gan was the real stranger to the constituency.
Wong has thrown his weight behind Gan, calling him his “taskforce man” because Gan co-headed the COVID-19 taskforce and is now chairing the “economic resilience” taskforce dealing with the impact of US tariffs.
“The key person in charge of this work is no stranger to you. He is no stranger to the whole of Singapore,” Wong said on Thursday.
This is the first electoral test for Wong, who took over from long-time premier Lee Hsien Loong last year as leader of the People’s Action Party.
Six political parties and an independent candidate have rallies scheduled for Thursday night.
Parties get to fire their last salvos on Thursday before 2.76 million voters go to a compulsory poll on Saturday after a short nine-day campaign season. Friday is designated as a “cooling off” day, meant for voters to decide on their ballot, and parties are not allowed to campaign.


Former VP Harris says Trump’s America is ‘self-serving’

Updated 58 min 10 sec ago
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Former VP Harris says Trump’s America is ‘self-serving’

  • Critics have been appalled at what they say is a vengeful administration carelessly overstepping democratic and constitutional norms
  • Recent polls have shown a majority of the country is becoming disenchanted with the political and economic tumult

SAN FRANCISCO: Former US vice president Kamala Harris hit out at Donald Trump and his backers on Wednesday, in her first major speech since losing November’s election.
The defeated Democrat told supporters the apparent “chaos” of the last three months was actually the realization of a long-cherished plan by conservatives who are using Trump to twist the United States to their own advantage.
“What we are, in fact, witnessing is a high velocity event, where a vessel is being used for the swift implementation of an agenda that has been decades in the making,” she told an audience in San Francisco.
“An agenda to slash public education. An agenda to shrink government and then privatize its services. All while giving tax breaks to the wealthiest.
“A narrow, self-serving vision of America where they punish truth-tellers, favor loyalists, cash in on their power, and leave everyone to fend for themselves.”
Trump’s first 100 days in power have been marked by a dizzying array of executive orders tackling everything from immigration to foreign aid to showerhead pressure.
Critics have been appalled at what they say is a vengeful administration carelessly overstepping democratic and constitutional norms, including clashing with the courts.
While Trump’s supporters have cheered some of the rapid-fire changes, recent polls have shown a majority of the country is becoming disenchanted with the political and economic tumult, particularly from his oft-changing tariffs.
Harris, who is thought to be mulling a run for the governorship of her home state of California in 2026 or a possible White House run in 2028, has largely stayed out of the limelight since leaving Washington in January.
On Wednesday she was a guest speaker at an event run by Emerge, a political organization that recruits and trains Democratic women to run for public office.
She told the crowd that Trump was targeting universities and courts because he wanted to cow the opposition.
“President Trump, his administration, and their allies are counting on the notion that fear can be contagious,” she said.
“They are counting on the notion that, if they can make some people afraid, it will have a chilling effect on others.”
But, she said, there were judges, academics, politicians and regular people who were standing up to the government.
“Fear isn’t the only thing that’s contagious. Courage is contagious,” she said.
“The courage of all these Americans inspires me.”


South Korean prosecutors indict ex-President Yoon for abuse of authority

Updated 01 May 2025
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South Korean prosecutors indict ex-President Yoon for abuse of authority

  • The indictment is in addition to an ongoing trial on insurrection charges
  • The latest indictment is without arrest, Yonhap said, citing the prosecutor’s office

SEOUL: South Korean prosecutors have indicted former President Yoon Suk Yeol for abuse of authority, Yonhap said on Thursday.
The indictment is in addition to an ongoing trial on insurrection charges, brought against Yoon over his brief imposition of martial law in December.
The latest indictment is without arrest, Yonhap said, citing the prosecutor’s office. An official at the prosecutor’s office could not be immediately reached for comment.


Indian FM says Kashmir attackers ‘must face justice’

Updated 01 May 2025
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Indian FM says Kashmir attackers ‘must face justice’

NEW DELHI: India’s foreign minister said Thursday that those who planned and carried out an attack in Kashmir last week that left 26 men dead “must be brought to justice.”
New Delhi blames Pakistan for the gun attack on civilians at the tourist site of Pahalgam in Indian-administered Kashmir on April 22.
Islamabad has rejected the charge and both countries have since exchanged gunfire in Kashmir and issued a raft of tit-for-tat punitive diplomatic measures.
“Its perpetrators, backers and planners must be brought to justice,” India’s top diplomat Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said in a statement following a conversation with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Wednesday evening in which they discussed the attack.
Rubio also spoke to Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, and in a US readout of the call, told Sharif of the “need to condemn the terror attack” in Kashmir.
Indian and Pakistani soldiers fired at each other overnight along the Line of Control, the de facto border in contested Kashmir, the Indian army said.
It was a seventh straight night gunfire was reported by India.
“During the night... Pakistan Army posts initiated unprovoked small-arms fire across the Line of Control opposite Kupwara, Uri and Akhnoor,” the army said in a statement.
“These were responded proportionately by the Indian Army.”
There were no reported casualties and there was no immediate confirmation from Pakistan.
Indian police have issued wanted posters for three men accused of carrying out the Kashmir attack — two Pakistanis and an Indian — who they say are members of the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group, a UN-designated terrorist organization.
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave the military “complete operational freedom” to respond to the attack during a closed-door meeting on Tuesday, a senior government source told AFP.
Pakistan’s government has denied any involvement in the shooting and vowed that “any act of aggression will be met with a decisive response.”
 


Stay as long as you want, Trump says as chief disruptor Elon Musk eyes exit

Updated 01 May 2025
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Stay as long as you want, Trump says as chief disruptor Elon Musk eyes exit

  • At a Cabinet meeting, Trump hinted at Musk giving up his DOGE role “to get back home to his cars”
  • Musk's Tesla car company had been hit by boycott calls over his role in gutting the US bureaucracy

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Wednesday said Tesla boss Elon Musk could stay working for the White House as long as he wanted but understood the tycoon wanted to get back to his businesses.
Musk last month said he will step back from his role as the unofficial head of the administration’s cost-cutting “Department of Government Efficiency” to focus more on his troubled Tesla car company.
“The vast majority of the people in this country really respect and appreciate you,” Trump told Musk during a White House cabinet meeting, which could be his last before giving up his DOGE role.
“And you know you’re invited to stay as long as you want,” Trump said, though added that Musk may want “to get back home to his cars.”
Musk, the world’s richest person, has seen his Tesla car company, which is the major source of his wealth, suffer significant brand damage from his political work.
Tesla showrooms have been hit by vandalism and boycott calls in Europe and the United States in a backlash against public service cuts introduced by Musk in his role as a close adviser to Trump.
“You really have sacrificed a lot. They treated you very unfairly,” Trump said of opponents to Musk.
“They did like to burn my cars, which is not great,” Musk responded.
The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday reported that Tesla’s board had begun procedures several weeks ago to find a successor to Musk as CEO.
The outlet reported — citing people familiar with the matter — that the board had met with Musk and told him that he needed to spend more time with the company, rather than in Washington.
David Sacks, a close Musk ally who is also a member of the Trump administration, last week said that Musk would not be leaving DOGE but reducing his role.
This was the same plan he carried out during his takeover of Twitter in 2022, he said.
“Once he felt like he had a mental model and he had the people in place that he trusted, he can move to more of a maintenance mode,” Sacks told the All-In podcast.