Press freedom groups have a stark warning for Americans: Trump could pose a serious threat to fact-based journalism during his next term in office if he does not change course.

The Committee to Protect Journalists, Reporters Without Borders, and Freedom of the Press Foundation all issued statements in the aftermath of Trump’s win this week, urging the ex- and soon-to-be president and his administration to commit to respecting the free press during the next four years. “Attacking the press is really an attack on American citizens’ right to know,” Reporters Without Borders Executive Director Clayton Weimers said in a statement. “Trump’s new administration can and must change its tune with the media and take concrete steps to protect journalists and develop a climate conducive to a robust and pluralistic news media.”

This will be a tall order for Trump: At a rally just last weekend, he said he would be OK with a crowd of journalists being shot at, as I reported at the time. His communications director, Steven Cheung, tried to clean up his comments by implausibly alleging that Trump “was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!” From early September until the end of October, Trump verbally attacked the media more than 100 times, Reporters Without Borders found in an analysis published last month. Trump has repeatedly derided journalists as “fake news” and the media as “the enemy of the people.” And as my colleague Pema Levy reported, Trump also launched what experts said was a frivolous lawsuit against CBS News last month, alleging that producers unfairly edited a 60 Minutes interview with his Democratic opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris, to make her look better. His campaign also submitted a complaint to the Federal Election Commission claiming that the Washington Post was running a paid advertising campaign to boost stories critical of Trump; a Post spokesperson said the allegations were “improper” and “without merit.” CNN also reported that Trump has called at least 15 times for the Federal Communications Commission to revoke the broadcast licenses of networks he dislikes.

All this makes it no wonder, then, that Reporters Without Borders said Trump’s reelection “marks a dangerous moment for American journalism and global press freedom.” The Committee to Protect Journalists struck a similar tone. “Legal persecution, imprisonment, physical violence, and even killings have sadly become familiar threats for journalists across the world,” its statement said. “They must not now also become commonplace in the United States, where threats of violence and online harassment have in recent years become routine.” And Freedom of the Press Foundation claimed that Trump “will try to destroy press freedom”; as the group noted, Trump will have an ally in Elon Musk, who has spread pro-Trump disinformation on his platform to the tune of billions of views in the lead-up to Election Day. More recently, Musk has taken to telling everyday X users that they are the media now and “citizen journalism is the future.” (Apparently his conception of journalism sees conspiracy theories as acceptable and fact-checks as unnecessary.)

This all comes at a time when Republicans, and young people, are as likely to trust social media as a news source as they are to trust national news outlets, according to data published last month from Pew Research Center. The Trump campaign and the GOP have both contributed to and capitalized on this distrust, with Trump launching his own social media network, Truth Social, in 2022, and eschewing the cable news sit-downs Harris did during the campaign for interviews with right-wing male podcasters, who likely helped him make massive gains among young men this year. Media outlets hoping to win back the trust of these voters, though, will not just have podcasters and social media to compete with: One of their biggest adversaries will likely be Trump himself.

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions from Mother Jones on Sunday.

Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “Election Integrity Community” have turned their attention from stoking paranoia about voter fraud in the presidential race, now that Trump won, to alleging it in Arizona, where a closely watched Senate race looks like it could result in a GOP loss.

As of early Sunday, major news outlets had yet to call the race between Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Republican candidate Kari Lake, though Gallego was leading with an estimated 88 percent of ballots counted. But in the “Election Integrity Community” on X—billed as a space for its 65,000 members to “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election,” and backed by Musk’s pro-Trump PAC—such a close race, and potentially a GOP loss, can mean only one thing: The election was stolen.

One of the main mysteries among members of the X community seems to be how a Democrat could potentially win a Senate seat in a state Trump won. (The Associated Press called Arizona for Trump on Saturday, reporting that he led Harris in the state by about 185,000 votes.) “This is as egregious an example of election fraud as when Biden allegedly had the dead voting for him in 2020,” one user claimed, without evidence. But in fact, split-ticket voting—in which people do not cast all their votes for candidates in the same party—is a thing, and should not come as a surprise in Arizona, given that Lake has long polled poorly in the Senate race and still refuses to concede her 2022 loss in the governor’s race, as my colleague Tim Murphy has written.

Other members point to an alleged clerical error in Pima County—in which the number of uncounted ballots appeared to increase on Friday—as evidence of a conspiracy, urging Lake to “fight” the “election steal.” A lawyer for Lake sent a letter to the county demanding an explanation on Friday; Mark Evans, the county’s public communications manager, told the Arizona Capitol Times it was a “clerical error,” adding, “in this age of conspiracy, everything gets blown up into inserted votes.”

This context, though, appears absent from the X feed—as were fact-checks to false claims of voter fraud that percolated on Election Day, as I reported then. But this is not a surprise, given that research shows Musk’s so-called crowd-sourced fact-checking mechanism on X, known as “community notes,” did not actually address most false and misleading claims about the US elections circulating on the platform during the campaign. And with Musk poised to become even more powerful following Trump’s win, don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

Members of Elon Musk’s so-called “Election Integrity Community” have turned their attention from stoking paranoia about voter fraud in the presidential race, now that Trump won, to alleging it in Arizona, where a closely watched Senate race looks like it could result in a GOP loss.

As of early Sunday, major news outlets had yet to call the race between Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.) and Republican candidate Kari Lake, though Gallego was leading with an estimated 88 percent of ballots counted. But in the “Election Integrity Community” on X—billed as a space for its 65,000 members to “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting in the 2024 election,” and backed by Musk’s pro-Trump PAC—such a close race, and potentially a GOP loss, can mean only one thing: The election was stolen.

One of the main mysteries among members of the X community seems to be how a Democrat could potentially win a Senate seat in a state Trump won. (The Associated Press called Arizona for Trump on Saturday, reporting that he led Harris in the state by about 185,000 votes.) “This is as egregious an example of election fraud as when Biden allegedly had the dead voting for him in 2020,” one user claimed, without evidence. But in fact, split-ticket voting—in which people do not cast all their votes for candidates in the same party—is a thing, and should not come as a surprise in Arizona, given that Lake has long polled poorly in the Senate race and still refuses to concede her 2022 loss in the governor’s race, as my colleague Tim Murphy has written.

Other members point to an alleged clerical error in Pima County—in which the number of uncounted ballots appeared to increase on Friday—as evidence of a conspiracy, urging Lake to “fight” the “election steal.” A lawyer for Lake sent a letter to the county demanding an explanation on Friday; Mark Evans, the county’s public communications manager, told the Arizona Capitol Times it was a “clerical error,” adding, “in this age of conspiracy, everything gets blown up into inserted votes.”

This context, though, appears absent from the X feed—as were fact-checks to false claims of voter fraud that percolated on Election Day, as I reported then. But this is not a surprise, given that research shows Musk’s so-called crowd-sourced fact-checking mechanism on X, known as “community notes,” did not actually address most false and misleading claims about the US elections circulating on the platform during the campaign. And with Musk poised to become even more powerful following Trump’s win, don’t expect that to change anytime soon.

Since Donald Trump won reelection, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have both done what the now-president-elect and his fellow Republicans refused to do in 2020: publicly accept loss and advocate for a peaceful transition of power.

In a Thursday morning speech outside the White House, Biden told Americans, “We accept the choice the country made.”

“I’ve said many times,” he continued, “you can’t love your country only when you win. You can’t love your neighbor only when you agree.” He added, “Something I hope we can do, no matter who you voted for, is to see each other not as adversaries, but as fellow Americans. Bring down the temperature.”

The remarks, both unifying and a call for calm, sharply contrasted with the Trump campaign’s rhetoric in the final stretch of the election, which included Trump just this weekend saying he would be “ok” with journalists being shot at. Biden’s speech was also radically different from the near-constant conspiracy theories Trump and his allies promoted after Trump lost the 2020 election—which, as recently as today, he has continued to insist he won.

President Biden: "Setbacks are unavoidable, but giving up is unforgivable … The American experiment endures. We're going to be okay, but we need to stay engaged. We need to keep going." https://t.co/627FiKv7Sz pic.twitter.com/hZoGsFc7yl

— NBC News (@NBCNews) November 7, 2024

Seemingly alluding to Trump’s attacks on the voting system, Biden on Thursday also added that he hoped “we can lay to rest a question about the integrity of the American electoral system. It is honest, it is fair, and it is transparent, and it can be trusted, win or lose,” he said. Of course, now that Trump has won, the GOP suddenly appears to agree with this, despite the fact that they and their candidate spent years sowing doubt in the electoral system—including up until election night.

The president also told Americans who voted for Harris they had to keep the faith and keep peacefully fighting for what they believe in. “Setbacks are unavoidable,” Biden said. “Giving up is unforgivable.”

“The American experiment endures, we’re going to be okay, but we need to stay engaged,” the president added. “We need to keep going, and above all, need to keep the faith.”

Harris struck a similar tone during her concession speech at Howard University on Wednesday. “The outcome of this election is not what we wanted, not what we fought for, not what we voted for,” Harris told the crowd. “But hear me when I say, hear me when I say, the light of America’s promise will always burn bright as long as we never give up and as long as we keep fighting.”

Harris also acknowledged that “folks are feeling and experiencing a range of emotions right now,” but urged her supporters to still accept the election results.

“A fundamental principle of American democracy is that when we lose an election, we accept the results,” she continued. “That principle, as much as any other, distinguishes democracy from monarchy or tyranny.”

The dual speeches came at a moment of widespread concerns that American democracy and so many civil liberties hang in the balance with Trump’s return to power. But with a future so unknown—and even frightening—to many, both Harris’ and Biden’s post-election remarks reminded Americans what leadership looks like: recognition of, and respect for, the will of the people, and a reminder that the future of American democracy remains worth peacefully fighting for.

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

On Wednesday morning, some of Trump’s favorite fans finally felt comfortable joking about what the next president has long denied: Project 2025 has always been the plan for a second Trump term.

“Now that the election is over I think we can finally say that yeah actually Project 2025 is the agenda. Lol,” right-wing podcast host Matt Walsh wrote in a post on X of the 900-plus-page extremist guidebook. Walsh’s message soon got picked up and promoted by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist who was recently released from prison, where he landed after ignoring a subpoena from the House January 6 Committee. “Fabulous,” Bannon said, chuckling, after reading Walsh’s post out loud on his War Room podcast today. “We might have to put that everywhere.”

Benny Johnson, a conservative YouTuber with 2.59 million followers who has called affirmative action “Nazi-level thinking” and said Trump should prosecute Biden for human trafficking of immigrants, also chimed in: “It is my honor to inform you all that Project 2025 was real the whole time,” he posted on X.

Bo French, a local Texas GOP official who recently came under fire for using slurs about gay people and people with disabilities on social media, wrote: “Can we admit now that we are going to implement Project 2025?”

Walsh, Bannon, and the others are not the only people in Trump’s orbit who have made these promises. While Trump has tried to distance himself from Project 2025, there is a long list of his connections to it, which include many people who have similarly said that Trump plans to enact the policies if reelected. Russell Vought, a potential next chief of staff profiled by my colleague Isabela Dias, said in a secretly recorded meeting that Project 2025 is the real Trump plan and the distancing tactic was just campaign necessity.

Spokespeople for the Trump campaign, the RNC, and the Heritage Foundation—the right-wing think tank behind the plan—did not respond to repeated requests for comment from Mother Jones.

If these claims are true, then Trump could potentially see an erosion of support from his base. As I reported in September, an NBC News poll found that only 7 percent of GOP voters had positive views of Project 2025, while 33 percent held negative views. That is not entirely surprising when you consider the drastic ways it could radically reshape American life if enacted. It calls for banning abortion pills nationwide; using big tech to surveil abortion access; rolling back climate policies; enabling workplace discrimination; and worsening wealth inequality. 

Colorado voters on Tuesday brought to victory a ballot measure that will provide millions of critical dollars to organizations supporting victims of domestic and sexual violence through the creation of a new tax on firearms and ammunition.

With nearly three-quarters of the votes counted as of this morning, the measure, known as Proposition KK, passed with 54 percent of votes. When it takes effect in April, it will impose a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition, which will provide an estimated $39 million in annual revenue. The bulk of those funds, roughly $30 million, will go toward organizations that support victims of crimes, mostly domestic and sexual violence. The rest of the funds will support mental health services for veterans and young people, as well as increased security in Colorado public schools.

The money is especially crucial in light of the yearslong decline in federal funding from the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA), which has forced organizations that support survivors of domestic abuse to cut staff and scale back services, as I recently investigated for Mother Jones. In Colorado, the state went from receiving $31.3 million in VOCA funds in fiscal year 2017 to about $13.6 million in the most recent fiscal year, when the money was used to support more than 125,000 survivors, mostly women who were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, according to Department of Justice data.

When we spoke last month, Roshan Kalantar, executive director of Violence Free Colorado, the statewide domestic violence coalition, told me that at least two programs in the state were on the verge of closing because of funding cuts. Now, thanks to the passage of Prop KK, they have a lifeline that may help keep them open, she said. But the earliest the funds would be disbursed to eligible programs would be January 2026, according to a spokesperson at the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice. In the meantime, “there will be a gap and it will be difficult,” Kalantar said, adding that more federal funding cuts are expected. “We are hopeful that programs can weather this year with minimal impact.”

Democratic state Rep. Monica Duran, who introduced the bill that would become the ballot measure in the legislature earlier this year and who is a survivor of domestic violence herself, said in a statement late Tuesday: “Tonight really is a full circle moment for me; without the support from crime victim services as a young single mother trapped in an abusive relationship, there is no way I’d be here today celebrating the passage of Prop KK.”

“As federal dollars dwindle, Coloradans made the right choice this evening to step up and help fill the funding gaps in crime victim services,” Duran continued. “From navigating the challenging judicial system to helping secure child care, crime victim services play a major role in uplifting survivors by providing them the resources they need to start anew.”

Domestic violence advocates I spoke to said they see the new tax as particularly appropriate, considering the role firearms play in domestic violence homicides. Last year, there were 58 domestic violence fatalities in Colorado, more than three-quarters of which were caused by guns, according to state data. As Kalantar put it when we last spoke: “It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors.

The ballot measure faced strenuous opposition from the gun lobby, which alleged the tax—which will not apply to firearms vendors that make less than $20,000 annually, law enforcement agencies, or active-duty military personnel—is unconstitutional. It could also face legal challenges, like the one California faces after the state enacted a similar measure earlier this year.

A Trump-appointed federal judge on Tuesday harshly rejected an eleventh-hour bid from the Republican National Committee and the Georgia Republican Party that sought to force seven historically Democratic counties in the swing state to stop accepting absentee ballots returned after Friday.

In a telephone hearing on Tuesday, Judge R. Stan Baker of the US District Court for the Southern District of Georgia called the arguments underlying the lawsuit “red herrings” that amounted to efforts designed to “tip the scales of this election by discriminating against [counties] less likely to vote for their candidate.”

The lawsuit, filed Sunday, alleged that seven Georgia counties were violating state law—as well as the 14th Amendment and Elections Clause of the Constitution—by allowing voters to hand-deliver absentee ballots throughout the weekend and, in some cases, into Monday. The lawsuit cited a part of state law claiming that ballots needed to be returned the Friday before the election—but it turns out that’s the deadline for early voting, not for absentee ballots. As the Democratic National Committee and the state Democratic party responded in their court filing, the same state election law the GOP cited also says absentee ballots can be returned in person, which the Georgia Secretary of State also confirmed this weekend. And the state election website says absentee ballots are accepted through Election Day.

But Republicans alleged that county election boards were harming their “strategies and turnout efforts” by forcing them “to quickly mobilize staff and volunteers to ensure a poll watcher presence at election offices across the Defendants’ counties.” (As I have written, the GOP recruited a 200,000 person-strong pro-Trump army of “poll watchers” to “establish the battlefield” to challenge the results of the election, should former president Donald Trump lose.) In other words, through their lawsuit, the GOP seems to be seeking to do what their party has long sought to do: Limit eligible voters, especially those who favor Democrats.

But Baker was not having it: The judge—whom Trump nominated in 2017 and who was confirmed the following year—said in the Tuesday phone hearing that the RNC lawsuit lacked “a basic level of statutory review and reading comprehension,” according to POLITICO. (The transcript of the hearing was not yet immediately publicly available.) At one point, Baker even reportedly urged GOP lawyers to read The Boy Who Cried Wolf, adding, “Please don’t take us any closer to that ledge.” Spokespeople for the RNC and the Georgia GOP did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

This is almost certainly not the last you’ll hear of GOP-led legal challenges in this election. It’s just one of the dozens of pre-election lawsuits the Republican National Committee has filed across the country in a bid to retake the White House through the courts, as my colleague Pema Levy recently reported.

If you look at Elon Musk’s so-called “Election Integrity Community” on X—a crowd-sourced feed of right-wing keyboard warriors turned self-appointed poll watchers—you will have the impression that our voting system is full of pro-Democratic fraud, making a Kamala Harris victory is inevitable.

The feed, which describes itself as a place to “share potential incidents of voter fraud or irregularities you see while voting,” is a project of Musk’s pro-Trump America PAC, which the tech billionaire reportedly pumped with at least $75 million. It’s full of misleading or straight-up inaccurate posts—many of which have not been fact-checked by X’s community note system—that appear meant to stoke Election Day paranoia in Trump’s favor. And its reach is significant: Since I first wrote about it two weeks ago, the day after it launched, the “Election Integrity Community” has grown from about 10,000 members to more than 62,000—and counting.

A few Election Day posts claim to show a ballot that has a stray dot marked in the Harris box. One post says it’s a Kentucky ballot; another says it’s from Pennsylvania. “This tiny dot will confuse the scanner and either flip the vote or nullify it,” the post claiming to show a Pennsylvania ballot says. But as the nonpartisan fact-checking website PolitiFact notes, this claim is false—and the same image has been circulating widely across social media, where users have also claimed the same image shows a ballot from other states, including Ohio and Alabama. After Libs of TikTok, the far-right account with 3.6 million followers, shared the post on X on Sunday, claiming it showed an invalid ballot in Kentucky, the Kentucky State Board of Elections shut down the rumors. “As no one has presented a pre-marked ballot to election administrators or law enforcement,
the claim that at least one ballot may have had a pre-printed mark in Kentucky, currently only exists in the vacuum of social media,” the board said. But in the X feed, this context is nowhere to be found.

Several other posts appear to highlight legitimate—but isolated—issues at or near polling sites as indications of a broader conspiracy to prevent people from voting. Perhaps most disturbingly, many users are dismissing the bomb scares at Georgia polling sites—which Georgia Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger blamed on Russia—as an inside job designed to siphon votes from Trump. “There was no bomb threat,” one member of the feed claimed, with no evidence. “They did that to steal votes guaranteed.” Another user says: “I think Russia is spelled @GaSecofState,” tagging Raffensperger’s X handle. (Raffensperger’s office could not immediately be reached for comment.)

In a few other posts, users cast doubt on a gas leak that reportedly occurred at a polling place in Northville, Michigan, leading city officials to direct voters to another polling place about a mile away. In others, users claim power outages in California were “planned” to prevent people from voting; in actuality, the utility company behind them, Pacific Gas and Electric, said they were planned to decrease the acute risk of wildfires in light of high winds and a low humidity forecast, which could affect power lines, and that the company had been working with election officials for over a month to minimize potential disruptions. The company added that it stationed temporary generators at five polling locations.

In other posts, users call a software malfunction that prevented some voters from scanning their ballots at a polling place in Cambria County, Pennsylvania, “election interference” and a “voter fraud scheme”; what they don’t say is that a local election official has assured residents that “all votes will be counted,” that voters can fill out paper ballots to deposit to a locked box, and that a court order has extended polling hours in the county from 8 to 10 p.m. tonight.

The lies and chaos circulating in the feed seem to be the point: Musk has done pretty much everything in his power to elect Trump, including paying pro-Trump voters millions of dollars and sharing election-related conspiracy theories on his platform, where they have racked up billions of views, as I have reported. The irony, though, is that X’s “civic integrity” policy forbids “manipulating or interfering in elections or other civic processes” by posting false or misleading information or doing anything that could “lead to offline violence during an election.” (And lest you forget, my colleague David Corn just spoke to voters at a Trump rally in Pennsylvania on Monday who said a Trump loss would lead to “civil war” worse than January 6—and that they would take part.)

WATCH: Trump's most loyal fans say they'll refuse to accept a loss—no matter what. At one of his final rallies, Trump supporters predict a civil war and an uprising "10 times worse” than January 6.@DavidCornDC reports on what could be Trump's final rally pic.twitter.com/ea5j2NSiXV

— Mother Jones (@MotherJones) November 5, 2024

“Any attempt to undermine the integrity of civic participation undermines our core tenets of freedom of expression,” the X policy states, “and as a result, we will apply labels to violative posts informing users that the content is misleading.” But as recent research from the Center for Countering Digital Hate (which Musk has also attacked) indicates, X’s “community notes” system—meant to be a form of crowd-sourced fact-checking—has not actually addressed the majority of false and misleading claims about the US elections circulating on the platform.

X did not immediately respond to questions about the lack of community notes on the posts in the feed, and under Musk’s ownership generally does not respond to journalists.

Josh Richman, communications director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit organization focused on defending civil liberties online, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones: “With tempers and fears peaking, this is not the time to be getting your election information from any social media platform, and certainly not from one whose owner has expressed a clear partisan motivation. Voters who want real, fact-based information about how the election is being conducted should consult the webpages of their state and county elections officials, or of a nonpartisan nonprofit such as Verified Voting.”

All this should serve as a reminder: Musk is not a journalist, his platform is not a reputable news source, and his “Election Integrity Community” is anything but.

Yes, you read that headline right.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Donald Trump said he would be OK with someone trying to assassinate him by firing through a group of journalists. “To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” Trump said, when discussing the bulletproof glass protecting him.

Trump, talking about the protective glass around him on stage at his rally in PA: "To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind." pic.twitter.com/s0pDzWAS6z

— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) November 3, 2024

The Trump campaign tried to clean up the Republican candidate’s comments…by suggesting people should not believe what they heard, and repeating baseless claims that Democratic rhetoric was to blame for the assassination attempts against him. Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, claimed in a statement that the ex-president “was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”

When I wrote to the Trump campaign asking for a follow-up statement and pointing out that Trump’s actual statement didn’t match Cheung’s explanation, Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary, resent Cheung’s statement. (Just 2 days ago, Leavitt claimed on Fox News that Trump was running “a positive campaign based on real joy.”)

But several reporters pointed out on social media that the campaign’s statement did not accurately represent Trump’s comments and that his rhetoric has emboldened threats against the press. “This being a joke or not, as someone who has attended dozens of Trump’s rallies—including the assassination attempt in Butler, PA—and has been personally threatened repeatedly, I sincerely hope no one attempts to act on this,” CNN reporter Alayna Treene posted on X.

As my colleague Dan Friedman pointed out, these disturbing comments are the latest in Trump’s escalating threats against the free press as Election Day nears. As Dan reported this weekend, Trump told Fox News on Saturday morning, “To make America great, you really do have to get the news shaped up”; later in the day, at a rally in North Carolina, he called the reporters present “monsters,” and “horrible, horrible, dishonest people.” And as my colleague Pema Levy wrote on Friday, Trump also filed a frivolous lawsuit against CBS News and sent a complaint against the Washington Post to the Federal Election Commission—both of which alleged the outlets were favoring his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. And while it may be easy to dismiss these moves as just the latest Trump absurdities, they foretell the dangers he could pose to the free press. As Pema wrote:

It’s one thing for Trump to sue CBS as a citizen. But if he wins, Trump could make sure this type of suit comes from the Justice Department. It’s a warning shot to the media that any coverage Trump deems unfavorable, including an interview with a rival, could land them in court opposite the US Government.

In a way, though, journalists are not special: They are just one of many groups Trump might target in a second term.

On Sunday morning, Donald Trump made something crystal clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “going to have a big role in the administration” if he wins. And some of RFK Jr.’s wildest ideas—including banning certain vaccines and removing fluoride from drinking water—could be on the table.

Trump made the comments to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, who said she got ahold of him by phone just 48 hours out from Election Day. This is not the first time Trump has indicated that Kennedy could wield a terrifying amount of power: At a campaign rally last Sunday, Trump said he would let the conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate “go wild on health” if he’s reinstalled in the White House. (Kennedy also said recently that Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.) But Trump’s latest comments make clear just how far he’d let RFK Jr. go.

When Burns asked Trump on Sunday if he would, in fact, push to remove fluoride from drinking water—as RFK Jr. claimed on Saturday—Trump reportedly replied: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible.”

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out, fluoride prevents cavities in teeth, and “consistent, low levels of fluoride” are necessary to keep teeth healthy.

And when Burns asked Trump if he’d let RFK Jr. ban certain vaccines, the Republican nominee had this to say: “I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.” As my colleague Julia Métraux reported, RFK Jr. has signaled his opposition to several vaccines, including for Covid-19, Hepatitis B, and the flu.

Trump’s comments are a reminder of both the havoc RFK Jr. could wreak if he is installed in a high-ranking federal position, as well as the kinds of people the Republican nominee plans to appoint to key positions should he win. As David Corn has noted, RFK Jr. has spread anti-vaccine misinformation connected to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

If you think that’s wild, just wait. If Trump wins, there will be RFK-esque figures installed across government, many of whom have ambitious plans to deregulate health in America. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, Project 2025—the extremist right-wing guidebook to a second Trump term—calls for the CDC to be broken up and demonizes the National Institutes of Health. In other words: RFK Jr. banning vaccines and fluoride would be just the start.

Update, Nov. 4: The New York Times Tech Guild began their strike on Monday, just ahead of Election Day. Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of external communications for the newspaper, said in a statement: “We’re in one of the most consequential periods of coverage for our readers and have robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfill our mission and serve our readers. While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, we’re disappointed that colleagues would strike at this time, which is both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.”

With two days until Election Day, the New York Times is confronting a potential crisis: The army of tech workers who keep its digital platforms running is threatening to go on strike.

Nearly 700 members of the newspaper’s Tech Guild—which represents the workers who power the famous election needle, mobile push alerts, Wordle, the audio app, and many other things—voted in September to authorize a strike. Now, just a few days out from an election in which the candidates look locked in a dead heat, the workers say a strike could come to fruition if they do not reach an agreement with management, who they allege “have demonstrated an unwillingness at the table to be reasonable on key contract demands.” They say they have been bargaining for more than two years.

“We have made it clear that we need to reach an agreement before the election in order to avert a strike,” the guild wrote in a Nov. 1 letter to management.

Among the Tech Guild’s demands are just cause for termination with no exceptions, higher wages, and more initiatives to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion among their workforce.

Times management, for its part, says the workers, who are mostly engineers, are already among the highest paid at the company, earning an average salary of $190,000—$40,000 more than journalists in the Times Guild, the union for the paper’s media workers. Their other requests, Semafor reported in September, include a four-day workweek and non-performance-based annual bonuses. The Tech Guild says members who are women and people of color are paid less than men and white people; Times management counters that the methodology behind those comparisons is “misleading” because it does not compare people in comparable roles and that a pay analysis conducted last year “found no evidence of discrimination.”

Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of external communications at the Times, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones: “The election deadline timing is arbitrary and was a decision made unilaterally by the Tech Guild leadership. While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, threatening a strike at this time, feels both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.” 

While the timing may be inconvenient for the country’s most influential paper, the Election Day deadline seems meant to remind management that its sense of journalistic exceptionalism relies upon the workers that power it. Rhoades Ha, for example, said in her statement, “There is no outlet that provides The Times’s depth of reporting and analysis.” The Times has touted its election needle, launched in 2016, as an accurate and early predictor of the election’s outcome; union members say without them, it won’t function.

So could the Times website go dark on Election Day if hundreds of tech workers are on strike? It’s unclear. “We have robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfill our mission and serve our readers,” Rhoades Ha said. She declined to respond to follow-up questions.

Yes, you read that headline right.

At a rally in Pennsylvania on Sunday, Donald Trump said he would be OK with someone trying to assassinate him by firing through a group of journalists. “To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much,” Trump said, when discussing the bulletproof glass protecting him.

Trump, talking about the protective glass around him on stage at his rally in PA: "To get me, somebody would have to shoot through the fake news. And I don’t mind that so much. I don’t mind." pic.twitter.com/s0pDzWAS6z

— Kate Sullivan (@KateSullivanDC) November 3, 2024

The Trump campaign tried to clean up the Republican candidate’s comments…by suggesting people should not believe what they heard, and repeating baseless claims that Democratic rhetoric was to blame for the assassination attempts against him. Steven Cheung, communications director for the Trump campaign, claimed in a statement that the ex-president “was stating that the Media was in danger, in that they were protecting him and, therefore, were in great danger themselves, and should have had a glass protective shield, also. There can be no other interpretation of what was said. He was actually looking out for their welfare, far more than his own!”

When I wrote to the Trump campaign asking for a follow-up statement and pointing out that Trump’s actual statement didn’t match Cheung’s explanation, Karoline Leavitt, national press secretary, resent Cheung’s statement. (Just 2 days ago, Leavitt claimed on Fox News that Trump was running “a positive campaign based on real joy.”)

But several reporters pointed out on social media that the campaign’s statement did not accurately represent Trump’s comments and that his rhetoric has emboldened threats against the press. “This being a joke or not, as someone who has attended dozens of Trump’s rallies—including the assassination attempt in Butler, PA—and has been personally threatened repeatedly, I sincerely hope no one attempts to act on this,” CNN reporter Alayna Treene posted on X.

Ben Wizner, Director of ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones on Monday: “In a tense and polarized political environment, it’s beyond irresponsible to make light of violence against journalists.”

As my colleague Dan Friedman pointed out, these disturbing comments are the latest in Trump’s escalating threats against the free press as Election Day nears. As Dan reported this weekend, Trump told Fox News on Saturday morning, “To make America great, you really do have to get the news shaped up”; later in the day, at a rally in North Carolina, he called the reporters present “monsters,” and “horrible, horrible, dishonest people.” And as my colleague Pema Levy wrote on Friday, Trump also filed a frivolous lawsuit against CBS News and sent a complaint against the Washington Post to the Federal Election Commission—both of which alleged the outlets were favoring his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris. And while it may be easy to dismiss these moves as just the latest Trump absurdities, they foretell the dangers he could pose to the free press. As Pema wrote:

It’s one thing for Trump to sue CBS as a citizen. But if he wins, Trump could make sure this type of suit comes from the Justice Department. It’s a warning shot to the media that any coverage Trump deems unfavorable, including an interview with a rival, could land them in court opposite the US Government.

In a way, though, journalists are not special: They are just one of many groups Trump might target in a second term.

Update, Nov. 4: This post was updated with a statement from the ACLU on Trump’s comments.

On Sunday morning, Donald Trump made something crystal clear: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is “going to have a big role in the administration” if he wins. And some of RFK Jr.’s wildest ideas—including banning certain vaccines and removing fluoride from drinking water—could be on the table.

Trump made the comments to NBC News reporter Dasha Burns, who said she got ahold of him by phone just 48 hours out from Election Day. This is not the first time Trump has indicated that Kennedy could wield a terrifying amount of power: At a campaign rally last Sunday, Trump said he would let the conspiracy theorist and failed presidential candidate “go wild on health” if he’s reinstalled in the White House. (Kennedy also said recently that Trump promised him control of the Department of Health and Human Services and the Department of Agriculture.) But Trump’s latest comments make clear just how far he’d let RFK Jr. go.

When Burns asked Trump on Sunday if he would, in fact, push to remove fluoride from drinking water—as RFK Jr. claimed on Saturday—Trump reportedly replied: “Well, I haven’t talked to him about it yet, but it sounds okay to me. You know it’s possible.”

As the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention points out, fluoride prevents cavities in teeth, and “consistent, low levels of fluoride” are necessary to keep teeth healthy.

And when Burns asked Trump if he’d let RFK Jr. ban certain vaccines, the Republican nominee had this to say: “I’m going to talk to him and talk to other people, and I’ll make a decision, but he’s a very talented guy and has strong views.” As my colleague Julia Métraux reported, RFK Jr. has signaled his opposition to several vaccines, including for Covid-19, Hepatitis B, and the flu.

Trump’s comments are a reminder of both the havoc RFK Jr. could wreak if he is installed in a high-ranking federal position, as well as the kinds of people the Republican nominee plans to appoint to key positions should he win. As David Corn has noted, RFK Jr. has spread anti-vaccine misinformation connected to a deadly 2019 measles outbreak in Samoa.

If you think that’s wild, just wait. If Trump wins, there will be RFK-esque figures installed across government, many of whom have ambitious plans to deregulate health in America. As my colleague Anna Merlan has reported, Project 2025—the extremist right-wing guidebook to a second Trump term—calls for the CDC to be broken up and demonizes the National Institutes of Health. In other words: RFK Jr. banning vaccines and fluoride would be just the start.

Update, Nov. 4: The New York Times Tech Guild began their strike on Monday, just ahead of Election Day. Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of external communications for the newspaper, said in a statement: “We’re in one of the most consequential periods of coverage for our readers and have robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfill our mission and serve our readers. While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, we’re disappointed that colleagues would strike at this time, which is both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.”

With two days until Election Day, the New York Times is confronting a potential crisis: The army of tech workers who keep its digital platforms running is threatening to go on strike.

Nearly 700 members of the newspaper’s Tech Guild—which represents the workers who power the famous election needle, mobile push alerts, Wordle, the audio app, and many other things—voted in September to authorize a strike. Now, just a few days out from an election in which the candidates look locked in a dead heat, the workers say a strike could come to fruition if they do not reach an agreement with management, who they allege “have demonstrated an unwillingness at the table to be reasonable on key contract demands.” They say they have been bargaining for more than two years.

“We have made it clear that we need to reach an agreement before the election in order to avert a strike,” the guild wrote in a Nov. 1 letter to management.

Among the Tech Guild’s demands are just cause for termination with no exceptions, higher wages, and more initiatives to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion among their workforce.

Times management, for its part, says the workers, who are mostly engineers, are already among the highest paid at the company, earning an average salary of $190,000—$40,000 more than journalists in the Times Guild, the union for the paper’s media workers. Their other requests, Semafor reported in September, include a four-day workweek and non-performance-based annual bonuses. The Tech Guild says members who are women and people of color are paid less than men and white people; Times management counters that the methodology behind those comparisons is “misleading” because it does not compare people in comparable roles and that a pay analysis conducted last year “found no evidence of discrimination.”

Danielle Rhoades Ha, senior vice president of external communications at the Times, said in a statement provided to Mother Jones: “The election deadline timing is arbitrary and was a decision made unilaterally by the Tech Guild leadership. While we respect the union’s right to engage in protected actions, threatening a strike at this time, feels both unnecessary and at odds with our mission.” 

While the timing may be inconvenient for the country’s most influential paper, the Election Day deadline seems meant to remind management that its sense of journalistic exceptionalism relies upon the workers that power it. Rhoades Ha, for example, said in her statement, “There is no outlet that provides The Times’s depth of reporting and analysis.” The Times has touted its election needle, launched in 2016, as an accurate and early predictor of the election’s outcome; union members say without them, it won’t function.

So could the Times website go dark on Election Day if hundreds of tech workers are on strike? It’s unclear. “We have robust plans in place to ensure that we are able to fulfill our mission and serve our readers,” Rhoades Ha said. She declined to respond to follow-up questions.

The contrast between the intentions of former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris on reproductive rights could not be clearer—no matter how much Trump tries to suggest otherwise.

Trump appointed three of the five Supreme Court justices who overruled Roe v. Wade and has famously flip-flopped on his stances on abortion. Back in 2016, for example, he briefly floated the idea of punishing women who get abortions, but then, following public outcry even from some anti-abortion groups, his campaign walked that back. At his debate with Vice President Kamala Harris last month, he twice refused to say whether or not he would veto a federal abortion ban if Congress passed one—and then claimed earlier this month that he would. And in August, Trump appeared to suggest he would vote to expand abortion rights on the ballot measure in Florida, where he maintains his Mar-a-Lago estate and where abortion is currently banned at six weeks’ gestation; just a day later, he reversed course following backlash from the anti-abortion crowd.

Harris, on the other hand, has consistently campaigned as a vocal supporter of abortion rights. She has highlighted the fallout of the overruling of Roe for women in need of abortion care, and warned about the likelihood of Republicans’ passing a national abortion ban if Trump is reelected. In her presidential campaign, she has promised voters her administration would pass a law that would “restore reproductive freedom.”

But there’s a problem, even should she win. Any hope for such a law depends on Democrats winning control of Congress, which looks unlikely. (When confronted about this, Harris has called for ending the filibuster to make it easier for such legislation to pass.) For some advocates, the promises Harris makes also lack any details of what protections she would support and how her policies would move beyond Roe—if at all.

Roe was “the ultimate floor, and not the ceiling, of what we need for making abortion affordable and accessible for all who need it,” Nourbese Flint, president of the advocacy group All* Above All, told me. Under Roe, states were still permitted to restrict abortion access after the point of so-called fetal viability, and it did not protect women from criminalization over their pregnancy outcomes, including when they used abortion pills to end their pregnancies without supervision from a doctor.

Even if Republicans do win Congress, as president, Harris would still have options to protect and expand abortion access—options that appear on a reproductive freedom wish list supported by hundreds of advocates. Several told me that they are still waiting to see more specific details on abortion access and justice policies Harris would support—and they are hoping those details would go beyond restoring Roe. “That is not a useful campaign slogan, to say we’re going to restore the bare minimum,” said Renee Bracey Sherman, author of the new book Liberating Abortion.

(A spokesperson for the Harris campaign did not respond to questions from Mother Jones for this story.)

Despite President Joe Biden’s reluctance as a devout Catholic to express full-throated support for abortion rights, legal experts say his administration has gotten behind measures that have prevented some of the most extreme Republican efforts to further criminalize abortion. Biden’s Department of Justice, for example, issued guidance in December 2022 saying that the Comstock Act—a 19th-century anti-obscenity law—cannot be marshaled to ban the mailing of abortion pills, as Project 2025 and anti-abortion Republicans argue it can.

Rachel Rebouché, Dean of Temple University’s law school and an expert in reproductive rights laws, notes that if right-wing judges—including those on the Supreme Court—ruled that Comstock should be applied to criminalize the mailing of medication abortion, a Harris-run DOJ could simply refuse to prosecute such cases. This is a place, she says, where Harris potentially “has the most power.” Meanwhile, Project 2025 explicitly recommends that the DOJ prosecute those who provide and distribute the pills under a Trump presidency.

Her administration could also continue, and even strengthen, Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services attempts to require hospitals—even in states with bans—to provide emergency abortion care when necessary to save the parent’s life or protect their health. Legal challenges took that case to the Supreme Court earlier this year, where the justices ultimately punted on interpreting the federal law’s applicability to abortion care in emergency situations. Project 2025, on the other hand, claims that “EMTALA requires no abortions” and says HHS should stop investigating hospitals that have failed to comply with its interpretation of the law.

Under Biden, the Food and Drug Administration made the two pills used in medication abortion—mifepristone and misoprostol—easier to access by repealing restrictions that required them to be picked up in person. They now can be ordered online and delivered by mail. (As I have reported, this method now accounts for about 1 in 5 abortions nationwide). Under Harris, the FDA could remove even more restrictions that remain on medication abortion—including limits on who can prescribe them—according to Elisa Wells, co-founder of Plan C, a resource that provides information on how to access abortion pills. “All of them need to go,” Wells told me.

While anti-abortion Republicans have baselessly alleged the pills are dangerous, more than 100 scientific studies have confirmed they are overwhelmingly safe and effective—including when they are prescribed virtually and mailed. The FDA, Wells said, should “update the approval to reflect science and not politics.” Project 2025 recommends the exact opposite: It says the FDA should immediately re-instate the in-person requirement to access the pills and in the longer term should revoke approval of the drugs entirely. But the FDA and HHS would likely face continued legal challenges if they did try to enact these protections—and the Supreme Court’s decision in Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo earlier this year, in which the justices vastly limited the power of federal agencies, could make it harder for those agencies to enact regulations protecting abortion rights, as my colleague Nina Martin has reported.

Perhaps the biggest challenge facing abortion access is the repeal of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibits federal funding for abortion with minimal exceptions, leaving millions of low-income people on Medicaid without insurance coverage for abortion. (Paying for an abortion out of pocket can cost upwards of $500, or far more in the second trimester, according to KFF.) This year and since 2016, the Democratic Party platform has called for the repeal of Hyde, and it was one of the campaign promises Harris made the first time she ran for the presidency in 2020. Biden, too, has repeatedly excluded Hyde from his proposed federal budgets over the last few years, but it has always reappeared in the finalized budget passed by Congress. Still, Rebouché says, Harris “could refuse to sign the budget until Hyde is gone.” Conversely, Project 2025 calls for strengthening Hyde and codifying it into law.

Flint, from All* Above All, which has campaigned to overturn Hyde, said the policy shows the ways that abortion can be inaccessible even if it’s technically legalized, as it was under Roe. “If we do not figure out how to get government funding,” she told me, “we are on the precipice of another crisis, where there’s going to be a lot of folks not being able to get abortions, regardless of whether it’s legal or not.”

“We are on the precipice of another crisis, where there’s going to be a lot of folks not being able to get abortions, regardless of whether it’s legal.”

Perhaps one of the most significant ways in which a Harris presidency could alter the reproductive rights landscape is one of the most obvious. “She could shape a Supreme Court that is not the Dobbs court,” Rebouché notes. Three of the current justices—including two conservatives, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito—are in their 70s, and could potentially retire during the next president’s term. As Rebouché sees it, it’s likely that a future liberal-leaning court shaped by Harris could one day undo Dobbs. “We should continue to talk about Dobbs just the way Alito described Roe: ‘Egregiously wrong’ and ‘erroneously’ decided.” The significance of Harris’ ability to pave the way for undoing Dobbs becomes all the more clear when one, again, looks at Project 2025’s plans: “The Dobbs decision,” it says, “is just the beginning.”

This summer, more than 380 reproductive rights and justice organizations and activists—including Flint’s All* Above All—signed onto a 17-page memo called “Abortion Justice, Now: Protecting Abortion At the Federal Level.” The brief primarily calls for passing federal legislation that abolishes the so-called viability line established in Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey. “We know that viability is directly connected to fetal personhood, which is directly connected to the criminalization of pregnancy,” Jenni Villavicencio, a practicing OB-GYN and one of the primary authors of the brief, told me. “We really want to call attention to anybody making policy, including a possible future Harris administration, that is unacceptable to enshrine any sort of limit” for abortion access.

Two pieces of legislation—both introduced last year—are highlighted as model policies that could help expand access. The first is the Abortion Justice Act, sponsored by Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), which would establish a federal right to abortion without limits, provide $350 million in annual grant funding to support abortion access, and increase the number of abortion-providing facilities. The EACH Act, introduced by Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) would effectively repeal Hyde. Spokespeople for both politicians said that they, or their colleagues, plan to re-introduce some version of the legislation in the next session of Congress.

Major medical groups also support abolishing gestational limits from abortion policy, and in August, more than 400 physicians also signed onto a letter, spearheaded by the group Physicians for Reproductive Rights, asking Biden and Harris to support “moving beyond the legal framework created by Roe,” in part by supporting abortion access later in pregnancy. But the issue of gestational limits has long divided the reproductive rights movement, which has struggled to balance where to compromise in its quest for broad abortion rights, as my colleague Madison Pauly has reported. Notably absent from the signatories of the memo, for example, are some of the largest abortion rights groups, including Planned Parenthood Action Fund and Reproductive Freedom For All. (Spokespeople for those groups did not respond to requests for comment.)

For Democrats, this has long been a tough needle to thread. The anti-abortion right has argued that Democrats support abortions later in pregnancy or, as Trump has insisted without basis, “even after birth.” But more than 90 percent of abortions nationwide take place within the first trimester, according to CDC data, and many Democrats, including Harris, have said they support the viability limit that existed under Roe, with later-term exceptions for emergency complications. Harris reiterated that at her debate with Trump, when he repeated his lies about Democrats supporting infanticide.

As Bracey Sherman, author of Liberating Abortion, points out, many of the tragic cases the Harris campaign has highlighted—in which people with wanted pregnancies had miscarriages, nonviable pregnancies, or other health emergencies requiring abortion—may not have had different outcomes under Roe. “There is no evidence that those people would be helped because they would still be stuck with the same viability line and the exception line,” she said. “We need to be pushing for abortion access at any time, for any reason, for anyone, anywhere in this country.”

Villavicencio, for her part, says she recognizes the necessity of compromise in policymaking. “What we patently reject,” she adds, “is compromise when it is for people who are the most marginalized”—specifically the young, low-income people, and people of color, many of whom struggled to access abortion care under Roe. Under Harris, she and other advocates see a possibility for a fresh start. As Flint, of All* Above All, says, “We have an incredible opportunity in the ashes of Roe v. Wade to build the thing that our community needs.”

But that all depends on who wins on Tuesday.

Update, Nov. 1: This story has been updated to clarify the Biden administration’s interpretation that EMTALA requires hospitals to provide abortion care to protect patients’ health—not just their lives.

When Monica Duran, the Democratic majority leader in Colorado’s House of Representatives, was 19 years old, she escaped domestic abuse with her young son and did what many survivors try to do: She fled to a shelter and sought counseling.

“For so long, you hear that you are worthless,” Duran told me. The support she received after leaving, she said, helped her realize that “I was worthy, I did have something to offer.”

As intimate partner violence continues to rise, such services are critical for helping survivors of domestic and sexual violence heal. But as I learned during my recent investigation for Mother Jones, they are becoming increasingly difficult to access due to a yearslong decline in federal funding from a pot of money created by the Victims of Crime Act, or VOCA. Colorado is not exempt. The state went from getting $31.3 million in VOCA funds in fiscal year 2017 to about $13.6 million in the most recent fiscal year, when the money was stretched to help support more than 125,000 survivors—mostly women who were victims of domestic violence or sexual assault, Department of Justice data shows.

Like most states, Colorado has tried to stave off the worst effects of the funding cuts, with state lawmakers allocating millions of dollars to affected programs. But those providers are still struggling after years of plummeting federal funding. Roshan Kalantar, executive director of Violence Free Colorado, the statewide domestic violence coalition, said some have had to close office space and eliminate legal advocacy services, which help survivors file for divorce or obtain emergency protective orders against abusers. More could soon follow. “We have at least two programs that might close,” Kalantar told me last week, “but many more will essentially limit what they can do.”

Duran and Kalantar are trying to avoid those outcomes. They are among the forces behind a ballot measure that, if passed by voters next month, would create a new funding stream for victims’ services in the state by imposing a 6.5 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition as of next April, when it would take effect. The measure, known as Proposition KK, would create an estimated $39 million in annual revenue, the bulk of which—$30 million—would support VOCA-funded services for victims of crime, as well as crime prevention programs in Colorado. The rest of the funds would go toward mental health services for veterans and young people and increasing security in Colorado public schools. The bill that proposed the ballot measure passed in the Colorado General Assembly in May, with most Democrats supporting it and most Republicans in opposition. Should voters support the measure, the tax would not apply to firearms vendors that make less than $20,000 annually, law enforcement agencies, or active-duty military personnel.

Supporters—including Democratic Gov. Jared Polis, the National Network to End Domestic Violence, and Everytown for Gun Safety—say Prop KK would bolster desperately needed services in the state and could serve as a model for other states trying to come up with innovative ways to respond to federal VOCA cuts. Accessing support after intimate partner violence, Duran said, “is a matter of life and death—this is how serious this is.”

The tax on firearms has resulted in strenuous opposition from the gun lobby. The National Rifle Association’s Institute for Legislative Action, the organization’s lobbying arm, said earlier this year that the proposal “should be seen as nothing more than an attack on the Second Amendment and those who exercise their rights under it” and pointed to a similar measure in California, which imposed an 11 percent excise tax on firearms and ammunition earlier this year and has faced a court challenge for being unconstitutional.

Several Colorado pro-gun groups—including the NRA state chapter, the Colorado State Shooting Association; Rocky Mountain Gun Owners; and Rally for Our Rights—have also opposed Prop KK, noting that firearms and ammunition are already taxed at 11 percent on the federal level. Ian Escalante, executive director of Rocky Mountain Gun Owners, said in a video posted to X: “This is the radical anti-gun left trying to punish gun owners for exercising their rights.” Spokespeople for the three state-level groups did not return requests for comment from Mother Jones.

Duran, who said she’s a gun owner, said she’s “disappointed that this has been turned into a Second Amendment issue,” especially because domestic violence and the shortage of resources to support survivors is “a crisis.” Kalantar sees the tax on guns and ammunition in Prop KK as fitting, given the role that firearms often play in intimate partner violence. Research has shown that more than half of domestic violence homicides involve a gun and that access to a firearm makes that outcome more likely. Last year, there were 58 domestic violence fatalities in Colorado, more than three-quarters of which were caused by guns, according to data released this month by the state attorney general’s office. “It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors, Kalantar said.

“It feels very appropriate that people making money off the sale of guns in Colorado should participate in the healing” of survivors.

If the measure passes, the Blue Bench, a sexual assault prevention and support center in Denver that served about 7,000 survivors last year, is one of the organizations that would benefit from this new source of revenue. Executive Director Megan Carvajal says VOCA funds make up half of its budget, paying for counselors who lead therapy sessions for survivors, the 24-hour hotline they can call in a crisis, and case managers who offer support at hospitals and police stations in the aftermath of assaults. In June, Carvajal learned that the Blue Bench’s latest VOCA award would be less than $650,000—a 40 percent cut compared with the previous year’s budget—which will mean laying off three therapists, two case managers, and a community educator who visits schools to talk about informed consent and healthy relationships. The organization will also have to move out of its Denver office space by the end of the year and transition to being mostly remote, Carvajal said.

If Prop KK does not pass and organizations like the Blue Bench face even further funding cuts, Carvajal’s prediction is grim: “People are going to die.” Research suggests that more than 30 percent of women contemplate suicide after being raped and more than 10 percent attempt it. More than half of all suicides involve a firearm, and suicides by firearm are highest in states with the fewest gun laws, according to a KFF analysis of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data. For Carvajal, the work she and other advocates do is essential to reduce those statistics—but is only possible with adequate funding.

“If you pick up the phone and someone says, ‘I believe you,’” Carvajal said, “it can change your mindset from wanting to die to wanting to live.”

If you or someone you care about is experiencing or at risk of domestic violence, contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline by texting “start” to 88788, calling 800-799-SAFE (7233), or going to thehotline.org. The Department of Health and Human Services has also compiled a list of organizations by state.

If you or someone you care about may be at risk of suicide, contact the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988, or go to 988lifeline.org.

Two years after the US Supreme Court ended the federal right to abortion, tens of millions of Americans will go to the polls this November hoping to protect access to the procedure—whether their lawmakers like it or not. Ten states— some already with robust protections, others with near-total bans—have measures on their ballots to enshrine abortion rights in their constitutions. The expected outpouring of voters, including in key swing states, could help determine control of the White House, Congress, state legislatures, and state supreme courts.

Reproductive freedom has proved to be one of the strongest currents shaping the outcome of American elections since 2022. So far, voters in seven states have reacted to the end of Roe v. Wade by passing ballot measures aimed at restoring, and even expanding, Roe’s protections. In a few of those states, the voter-initiative process empowered the public to bypass GOP-dominated legislatures and supersede decades-old restrictions. Reproductive rights organizers are hoping to continue that winning streak on November 5. 

But faced with the broad appeal of abortion initiatives in GOP-led states such as Ohio, Republican officials have gone to sometimes extreme lengths to undermine the latest measures. In Florida, for example, Gov. Ron DeSantis has waged a multifront war on Amendment 4, threatening television stations that air ads favoring the measure and issuing a 348-page report accusing the Floridians Protecting Freedom campaign of “widespread petition fraud.” 

While most of this year’s measures have a common objective—protecting reproductive access—they take very different approaches to reaching that goal. Here is a rundown of what’s on the November ballot, which we will update as election results become available. 

Arizona

In anticipation of the end of Roe, Arizona Republicans passed a 15-week abortion ban in early 2022. But they also left in place an 1864 statute that outlawed nearly all abortions and threatened providers with jail time—a “zombie” law that was moot as long as Roe was in effect. This past April, the Arizona Supreme Court revived that Civil-War era ban by a 4–2 vote. The GOP-controlled legislature quickly repealed the old law, but many Arizonans were outraged at what the court had done, and the campaign to put Proposition 139 on the November ballot exploded. Prop 139 would enshrine a fundamental right to abortion in the Arizona Constitution and prohibit the state from restricting or banning abortion until the point of fetal viability—about 24 weeks. Abortions would be allowed later in pregnancy to save the mother’s life or to protect her physical or mental health. The amendment would also protect anyone who helps another person obtain an abortion.

A coalition of reproductive rights groups certified more than 575,000 signatures this past summer—the most ever validated for a citizens initiative in the state’s history, supporters said. In a New York Times/Siena College poll in late September, Prop 139 was ahead among likely voters by a resounding 58 percent. If it passes, Prop 139 could be used to challenge almost 40 abortion laws on Arizona’s books, including the existing 15-week ban, a prohibition on telehealth abortions, and a parental consent requirement for teenagers.

Colorado

Long before the Dobbs decision, Colorado legislators passed numerous laws safeguarding access to abortion. But after Dobbs, reproductive health advocates in the state concluded that even the strongest statutes weren’t strong enough—Colorado needed to enshrine those protections in its constitution. The measure they put on the November ballot, Amendment 79, wouldn’t just establish a right to abortion; it would repeal a 40-year-old constitutional provision that prohibited the use of state dollars to fund abortion. Sponsored by a coalition called Coloradans for Protecting Reproductive Freedom, the measure needs 55 percent of votes to pass. 

Surrounded by states with bans or heavily restrictive laws, Colorado is a crucial abortion access point for the West. With no gestational limits, the state is also a haven for anyone seeking an abortion later in pregnancy, as it is home to one of four clinics in the US that offer third-trimester procedures. Repealing the ban on state funding would allow Colorado to use its state Medicaid dollars to pay for abortions, making the procedure more accessible for low-income patients.

Florida

Florida’s Amendment 4 would enshrine in the state’s constitution the freedom to seek an abortion before fetal viability, and after viability if a medical provider determines that the procedure is necessary to preserve a patient’s health.

Gov. DeSantis and his GOP administration have done everything they can to sabotage the amendment—including sending “election police” to the homes of people who signed the petitions.

If the measure passes, it would dramatically improve access to reproductive care in Florida, which since May has banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy. Before that, the state permitted abortions up to 15 weeks, and before Dobbs, until 24 weeks. The impact of the Florida vote will be felt throughout the Southeast: Tennessee, Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, and Kentucky all have near-total abortion bans; Georgia and South Carolina have six-week bans, and North Carolina’s 12-week ban is made more burdensome by a 72-hour waiting period. 

The stakes for passage are high, and so are the barriers. Over the last several election cycles, Florida has turned out more conservative voters than liberal ones. While reproductive rights are popular across the political spectrum, the state has a 60 percent threshold to approve constitutional amendments; the other red states that have passed abortion-protective measures since Dobbs—Kansas, Kentucky, Ohio—only required simple majorities. Meanwhile, Gov. DeSantis and his GOP administration have done everything they can to sabotage the amendment—including sending “election police” to the homes of people who signed the petitions, ostensibly to root out fraud. If the measure passes, DeSantis and his allies are widely expected to fight just as hard to overturn the results.

Maryland

Maryland’s Question 1, which was placed on the November ballot by the state legislature, does not mention “abortion”—much to the chagrin of supporters and opponents alike. Instead, the amendment broadly establishes the constitutional right to “reproductive freedom,” including the freedom to decide whether to continue or end a pregnancy. It needs a simple majority to pass.

Maryland already has some of the least restrictive abortion laws in the country: There is no gestational limit, state Medicaid covers the procedure, and a shield law protects patients who travel from states with abortion bans. This has made the state a critical access point for abortion seekers further along in pregnancy, as well as people traveling from the South. Abortion protections are widely popular in the state; in a recent poll by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, 69 percent of respondents said they plan to vote for Question 1.

Missouri

Missouri’s near-total abortion ban took effect mere minutes after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022—making it the first state in the nation to broadly prohibit abortion. Abortion-rights advocates soon set about crafting a ballot initiative to end the ban, inspired by wins in other states. Now, with Amendment 3, voters will decide whether they want the right to “reproductive freedom”—defined as the ability to make and carry out one’s own decisions about contraception, abortion, and healthcare during pregnancy. If approved by a simple majority, the amendment would set up a legal battle to overturn the current ban and challenge the many other Missouri laws that regulated abortion providers nearly out of existence even when Roe was still in effect.

Amendment 3’s proponents, a coalition known as Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, have traveled a rocky road just to get the measure before voters. They’ve overcome blatant obstruction by top state GOP officials, multiple legal challenges, and deep internal divisions over whether the initiative should allow the state to ban abortions after fetal viability. The final text protects abortion rights until viability, and permits later abortions if needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant person.

Montana

Constitutional Initiative 128 establishes the right to make and carry out decisions about one’s own pregnancy, including abortion. If passed, it would allow the state to regulate abortion after fetal viability, so long as those restrictions don’t prevent abortions that health care providers deem medically necessary. The amendment, which requires more than 50 percent of the vote, would also prevent the government from criminalizing patients and anyone who helps a person exercise her abortion rights.

If top Republican state officials had it their way, the measure would not even be on the ballot. State courts intervened at multiple points; the Montana Supreme Court overruled Attorney General Austin Knudsen’s initial rejection of the proposed amendment, nixed Knudsen’s drafted ballot language saying the amendment “may increase the number of taxpayer-funded abortions,” and threatened Secretary of State Christi Jacobsen with a contempt charge because she refused to hand over the sample ballot petition to the campaign behind the amendment, Montanans Securing Reproductive Rights. After abortion rights supporters submitted nearly double the required 60,000 signatures, Jacobsen even tried changing the rules to throw out the signatures of inactive registered voters, until a district court ordered her to stop.

Thanks to the state supreme court, abortion is currently legal in Montana until fetal viability, despite the best efforts of Republican state legislators to restrict access. Montanans have already brushed off one GOP attempt to stigmatize abortion; in November 2022, 52 percent of voters rejected a legislature-initiated statute that would have made it a felony for doctors to not provide care to infants born alive after induced labor, a cesarean section or an “attempted abortion.” (The law wasn’t necessary since Montana, like every other state, already makes infanticide a crime.)

Nebraska

Nebraska voters will see dueling abortion amendments on their November ballots. Initiative 434 restricts abortion rights, banning the procedure after 12 weeks of pregnancy with limited exceptions. That’s essentially the same law already on the state’s books—but the measure would enshrine it as a constitutional amendment, making it much harder to repeal. And because the amendment doesn’t protect abortion before the 12-week mark, state politicians could always go further and pass a complete ban, as Republican Gov. Jim Pillen has pledged to do.

By contrast, Initiative 439 expands abortion rights, creating a “fundamental right to abortion until fetal viability, or when needed to protect the life or health of the pregnant patient.” In practice, the amendment would roughly double the length of time for pregnant people in Nebraska to get an abortion. Crucially, it would block lawmakers from passing a total ban.

If the double initiatives sound confusing, well, that’s the point. Anti-abortion activists have repeatedly tried to muddy the waters about which ballot initiative is which, as Rachel Cohen at Vox has reported. They’ve also tried to get the pro-abortion initiative thrown off the ballot on a technicality, but the Nebraska Supreme Court shot them down.

Given the confusion, it is possible that both measures could pass. In that case, the one with the most votes wins.

Nevada

Nevada, one of the swingiest states in the 2024 election, has its own version of the Equal Rights Amendment, passed by voters in 2022. But it didn’t explicitly mention protections for abortion. Question 6 constitutionally enshrines the right to abortion until fetal viability or for the health or life of the mother, as determined on a case-by-case basis by health care providers. Any pre-viability restrictions must be directly related to promoting the health of the pregnant person and “consistent with accepted clinical standards of practice.” This year’s vote is just the first step in a multiyear process; assuming a simple majority of voters approve it, the measure must be passed again in 2026 to become part of the constitution.

Thanks to a law passed in 1973, abortion has been legal in Nevada until 24 weeks. Because voters passed a referendum on that law in 1990, it can only be changed by a direct ballot measure. Protections for abortion are very popular in Nevada; a University of Maryland poll conducted over the summer found that about 70 percent of state voters oppose criminalizing abortion at any stage of pregnancy. The campaign behind the amendment, Nevadans for Reproductive Freedom, has raised nearly $10 million since January, according to campaign finance reports; the Coalition for Parents and Children PAC, which successfully sued to block an initial version of the amendment that covered reproductive healthcare more broadly, hasn’t raised or spent any money.

New York

New York’s Proposal 1 may not include the word “abortion,” but it would create first-in-the-nation protections for the rights of pregnant people.

The proposal is a broad version of the Equal Rights Amendment, the long-running feminist effort to guarantee women’s rights in state and federal constitutions. Right now, New York’s constitution only forbids government discrimination on the basis of race and religion. Prop 1 adds more protected categories to that list: disability, age, ethnicity, national origin, and sex, including sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression. Those types of discrimination are already banned under state law, but by enshrining protections in the constitution, Prop 1 would make them harder for legislators to attack in the future—for example, if New York politics keep trending rightward.

Here’s where abortion comes in: The amendment also bans discrimination based on “pregnancy status, pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive health care and autonomy.” Not only does that definition go farther than any other state, it leaves little room for judges to interpret in ways that might limit abortion access, according to Katharine Bodde, of the New York Civil Liberties Union.

Yet while New York Democrats initially viewed Prop 1 as a surefire way to boost voter turnout, their right-wing opponents have seized on transphobic messaging to great effect—making this blue-state fight unexpectedly close.

South Dakota

South Dakota’s current abortion ban is one of the most extreme in the country, with all abortions banned except when needed to save a pregnant person’s life. Amendment G, backed by a group called Dakotans for Health, would replace that law with a trimester-based system allowing increasing restrictions on abortion as a pregnancy progresses.  

In the first trimester, the state would be banned from interfering with “a woman’s abortion decision and its effectuation.” In the second trimester, the state could restrict abortion in ways “reasonably related to the physical health of the pregnant woman.” Third-trimester abortions could be banned, except when necessary to preserve a pregnant person’s life or health. The amendment needs a simple majority to pass.

Planned Parenthood and other abortion-rights groups aren’t supporting Amendment G, which they’ve said doesn’t go far enough. But the conservative Republicans who dominate state politics are still so terrified of the measure that they passed an emergency law to let voters revoke their petition signatures—then opponents of the measure led a phone banking effort to dupe signers into pulling their support. Why are state Republicans spooked? “If you can do it in South Dakota, it will strike fear into the hearts of every red-state legislature in the country,” Dakotans for Health co-founder Adam Weiland told the American Prospect.

Madison Pauly, Abby Vesoulis, Julianne McShane, and Nina Martin contributed reporting. This is a developing story. Check back for updates.

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Top image photo credits: Octavio Jones/AFP/Getty; RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post/Getty; William Campbell/Getty; Rachel Aston/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Getty; Getty(3)

In a Sunday morning media blitz, vice presidential candidate Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio) tried to clean up former President Donald Trump’s disturbing comments about his domestic political opponents being “the enemy within.”

In interviews with CNN’s Jake Tapper and NBC’s Kristen Welker, Vance tried to downplay, dismiss, and alter Trump’s repeated characterizations of Democrats as “evil,” “dangerous,” and “enemies.”

Trump has made such comments multiple times. Earlier this month, he told Fox host Maria Bartiromo, “We have the outside enemy and then we have the enemy from within—and the enemy from within, in my opinion, is more dangerous than China, Russia, and all these countries.” Trump added that he considers California Reps. Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Adam Schiff among those enemies. And in a podcast interview with Joe Rogan on Friday, Trump said the “enemy from within” was more dangerous than North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

Tapper, host of CNN’s State of the Union, pressed Vance on those comments from the very start of their interview, as well as John Kelly’s characterization this week of Trump as a fascist who admires Hitler. Vance said Kelly’s comments about Trump were inaccurate. At one point, Vance said, “I believe Donald Trump is the candidate of peace.” Later in the interview, Vance said Trump was reserving his threats to send the military after “people rioting after the election” rather than all Americans.

TAPPER: "He wants to use the military to go after the enemy within."

VANCE: "There's the game that you're playing."

TAPPER: "I’m not playing a game." pic.twitter.com/rvb6GgC3BA

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 27, 2024

At another point, Tapper reminded Vance that Trump shared a social media post saying Liz Cheney—now among the Republicans campaigning for his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris—should be put before a war tribunal. “None of that sounds fascistic to you at all?” Tapper asked. “No, of course it doesn’t,” Vance responded, before alleging Tapper was taking Trump’s statements out of context.

.@jaketapper: "Liz Cheney, [Trump] said, should be put before a war tribunal. None of that sounds fascistic to you at all?"@JDVance: "No, of course it doesn't." pic.twitter.com/3YuiEI3MGH

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) October 27, 2024

When Welker, of NBC’s Meet the Press, asked Vance if he agreed with Trump that Pelosi and Schiff “are more dangerous than Russia and China,” he dodged. “Well, I think what Donald Trump said is that those folks pose a greater threat to United States’ peace and security, because America’s strong enough to stand up to any foreign adversary,” Vance replied.

In his interview with Face the Nation host Margaret Brennan, he gave a slightly clearer answer. While she didn’t ask specifically about his response to Trump’s comments about “the enemy from within,” Brennan did ask Vance, “What price should Moscow pay for trying to manipulate American voters?”—referring to a Friday announcement by the FBI that Russia was behind a fake video of mail-in ballots being destroyed in Pennsylvania.

“A lot of countries are going to try to manipulate our voters. They’re going to try to manipulate our elections. That’s what they do,” Vance replied. After Brennan pressed him, Vance condemned Russia’s actions, but said he would not commit to how the US should or would respond.

Asked what price Moscow should pay for posting fake videos to interfere with the U.S. elections, JD Vance says: "I don't think that we should set American foreign policy based on a foreign country spreading videos on social media. I think we should set American foreign policy… pic.twitter.com/SC1rVgH12o

— Face The Nation (@FaceTheNation) October 27, 2024

As my colleague Inae Oh and I have tracked, Trump has indeed threatened to prosecute, or called for the prosecution of, a long list of political opponents, including Harris, Cheney, President Joe Biden, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and former President Barack Obama, and a slew of others. So—contrary to Vance’s assertions—Trump has given us ample reason to take his threats seriously.

On Sunday, the MAGA crowd arrived in midtown Manhattan.

Their destination? Madison Square Garden, where Trump is holding a Sunday night rally featuring an army of his most loyal acolytes—including his running mate, Sen. JD Vance (R-Ohio); X owner Elon Musk, who has been pulling out all the stops to help reelect Trump; ex-Fox News host Tucker Carlson; Moms for Liberty founder Tiffany Justice; and Ultimate Fighting Championship CEO Dana White, among others.

When I arrived outside the arena just before 11 a.m.—six hours before Trump was to take the stage inside, and an hour before doors opened—the line of MAGA hat-wearing supporters wrapped around the block.

The choice of New York as the location for a massive Trump rally, just over a week from Election Day, is confounding: In 2020, President Joe Biden won 87 percent of votes cast in Manhattan. And just a few miles south of the midtown block where the crowd gathered Sunday are the courthouses where, earlier this year, Trump was found guilty of 34 felony counts in his hush-money case and ordered to pay $355 million in a civil fraud case brought by state Attorney General Letitia James. Add to that that New York has not voted to elect a Republican president since 1984, when Ronald Reagan, the incumbent, beat Walter Mondale.

But the ex-president—who was born and raised in Queens—has never been deterred by facts. “We are going to win New York,” he has said on the campaign trail. His supporters who showed up Sunday were similarly defiant. “I’m voting for the felon,” yelled one man standing near the line, “and I can’t wait.”

That man, who gave his name as George D. and said he lives on Long Island and works in Manhattan, was holding a flag with Trump’s mugshot emblazoned over the Stars and Stripes. He was one of several supporters who told me he thinks Trump will win the election, despite his apparent tie with Vice President Kamala Harris in the polls. (A new ABC News/Ipsos poll out Sunday shows Harris restoring a lead, polling at 51 percent to Trump’s 47 percent.)

“Neck and neck means Trump’s ahead,” George said. “I wear this MAGA hat every day, and I feel the pulse in the streets,” he added. “I went from getting middle fingers to getting thumbs up.”

Like several supporters I spoke to, George preferred Trumpian talking points to my fact-checks, and characterized his candidate as unfairly persecuted by the left. The “lamestream media,” he claimed, is “building a lie” about Trump’s chances of winning. “The only way to beat him is to lock him up or try to assassinate him,” he said, adding that he thinks the attempted assassinations of Trump were “an inside job.” (Trump, Vance, and Trump’s sons have also falsely claimed, without evidence, that Democrats were behind the assassination attempts; threat assessment experts have told my colleague Mark Follman that this could fuel more retaliatory violence.)

The shootings were on his fans’ minds. When I asked a woman in line named Dana about Trump’s shot at winning, a man behind her cut in: “Don’t say ‘shot’!” The group laughed. Dana turned back to respond to my question about whether Trump could win: “100 percent,” she said, unblinking.

She knew, though, that she was something of an oddity in an election that has arguably become as much about gender as about policy: The most recent ABC/Ipsos poll shows Harris with a 14-point advantage among women voters, while Trump has a 6-point advantage among men. Dana, who is from New Jersey, was wearing a pink “Women for Trump” hat. She pointed to it: “I can’t wear this hat when I drop my kids off at school.”

Dana believes women are flocking to Harris due to reproductive rights (fact check: true), but she doesn’t believe Trump actually decimated those rights—he left them to the states. And she doesn’t think he’ll sign a national abortion ban, despite the fact that Trump twice refused to commit to not doing so during the debate (earlier this month, he said in a social media post he would veto it if Congress passed it). “I vote on policy,” Dana said, adding that she was voting for Trump due to his stances on immigration, the economy, and inflation. Under Biden, someone nearby claimed, bacon now costs $12. “I want to eat more bacon!” Dana exclaimed.

A bit behind Dana and her friends, I met a Dutch woman named Gabriëlle Kok who showed up not because she supports Trump, but because she wanted to see who does. The only thing she seemed to have in common with Dana was believing Trump has a shot at reelection. “I think he’s a very dangerous man—for everybody, but especially for women,” Kok said. The Netherlands recently installed its first far-right government, whose leader, Geert Wilders, is known as the ‘Dutch Donald Trump.’ “I think they look up at Trump and Trumpism,” Kok said of the Netherlands’ new government. “There’s inspiration to be gotten for them.”

But Luis Rodriguez, who I met towards the end of the line, feels differently: He sees Trump as a bulwark against the socialism of Cuba, which he emigrated from in 1961, just after Fidel Castro came to power, he said. “I’m much more aware of how fragile democracy is,” Rodriguez, who lives in Manhattan, told me, adding that he’s a registered independent who voted for Obama in 2008.

He had just voted early, before showing up to the rally, he added. “I always get emotional when I vote,” Rodriguez said. “It’s like going to church.” (Trump and his acolytes, of course, still refuse to admit he lost the 2020 election, and are preemptively sowing doubt about this year’s race.)

Rodriguez thinks 2020 was a “troubled election,” he said, and finds the comparisons of Trump to Hitler and other fascists absurd. “Hitler is the cheapest trope you can throw out at someone to shut them up,” he said, adding that the Democrats’ messaging has “become ‘abortion’ and ‘Trump is Hitler.'” He was exasperated. “I’m a Hispanic, immigrant, and I’m gay. I get told I’m supporting a racist, a xenophobe, and an anti-gay bigot.”

His friend Gary Mirkin, of Long Island, was wearing an “I’m Voting For the Felon” t-shirt. He chimed in: “I’m conservative and Jewish, and people tell me I’m voting for Hitler.” Just then, someone in a MAGA cap walked by with a bullhorn, chanting, “F Joe Biden” and “Let’s Go Brandon!”

But these were the theatrics Rodriguez appeared tired of. “Can we discuss the policy?” he asked. Like Dana, Rodriguez said he was voting for Trump based on issues around immigration and the economy. (The ABC/Ipsos poll shows Trump leading Harris on both of those issues, by 12 points and 8 points, respectively.)

More than once during our conversation, Rodriguez claimed that the Biden administration had lost 300,000 migrant children—a Trump-endorsed talking point that experts say is misleading, and refers to unaccompanied migrant children who did not get notices to appear in court, not children who are lost, trafficked or dead. What did Rodriguez make of the separations of immigrant families under Trump, I asked, given that the Trump campaign has not ruled out doing it again? Rodriguez said something that Vance has: Children are separated every day in the US when their parents are arrested.

He also added that the Obama administration built cages to detain immigrant children—which is true, though it did not maintain a policy of systemically separating families, as the Trump administration did. That policy has, as of earlier this year, still left more than 1,300 kids separated from their parents, according to a Department of Homeland Security report.

Regardless, Rodriguez trusts Trump: “I think he’s the only one that has the grit and wherewithal” to confront the “corrupt establishment,” he said. So what happens if Harris wins? “Obama will pull her strings,” Mirkin said, adding that he had signed up to be a poll watcher. (The GOP has recruited 200,000 poll watchers to “establish the battlefield” to challenge the results of the election, should Trump lose.)

But he and Rodriguez weren’t too worried. “Tied,” Mirkin said, “means he’s winning.”