Update, November 21: Sen. Bob Casey conceded the Pennsylvania Senate race to Republican Dave McCormick.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a stalwart moderate who rose to power on the heels of his late father’s political legacy, seems likely to lose his reelection bid. Shortly after Election Day, the Associated Press called the race for his opponent, former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who had a narrow lead in returns. Even though McCormick has declared victory and was invited by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to the US Senate orientation, Casey has not conceded, citing thousands of uncounted ballots. 

The two candidates are engaged in ongoing legal battles over how counties are handling certain ballots, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruling that undated or misdated mail-in ballots are not valid. There are still thousands of provisional ballots pending, some of which are subject to legal challenges, but it seems unlikely that enough will break for Casey. A recount is currently underway and should be completed by November 26—though this too is unlikely to significantly alter vote counts. On Thursday morning, McCormick was leading by just over 16,000 votes. 

After unsuccessful efforts by hardline MAGA Republicans like Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 election, McCormick was a return to a more traditional Republican candidate. But he still managed to win over GOP voters and ride President-elect Donald Trump’s coattails. Casey’s campaign emphasized his moderate sensibilities and long-standing ties to the state—his father, Bob Casey Sr., was a popular two-term governor—but he ultimately underperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in crucial Democratic strongholds. 

In a cycle where Democrats lost up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania, 2024 was “like no race Casey had run before,” said Berwood Yost, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College. Casey was last up for reelection during a presidential cycle in 2012, when Barack Obama won Pennsylvania by five points.

“He needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

“Casey had a difficult needle to thread because he had to distance himself from the policies of an unpopular president to be viable,” Yost said. “But at the same time, he needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

On the day before Election Day, I watched Casey make his final appeal to voters in Bucks County, one of the closely watched suburban “collar counties” surrounding Philadelphia. Around 60 supporters—mostly white and almost all of them appearing to be of retirement age—gathered in the small town of Warrington. The mood was cautiously optimistic, despite polls showing a virtual tie. It seemed difficult to imagine that Casey, who had become an institution in Pennsylvania, was subject to the same shifting political waters that would decide the presidency for Trump.

In the summer, polls showed Casey with around a five-point lead over McCormick, but that gap narrowed as Election Day approached. When I asked rallygoers why it was so close, one man rubbed his fingers together—money. Around $283 million was spent on the race in total, according to a PennLive analysis, making the matchup among the most expensive Senate contests—likely second only to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s unsuccessful reelection bid. McCormick lagged behind Casey in fundraising and sunk at least $4 million of his own wealth into the race. But spending in support of McCormick mostly came from super-PACs and far outpaced Casey: The Senate Leadership Fund and Keystone Renewal PAC, whose largest donor is the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, each spent about $50 million on McCormick’s behalf. WinSenate, a Democratic-aligned PAC, spent about $54 million on Casey’s behalf.

Casey first was elected to the US Senate in 2006, winning by 15 points and ousting tea party star Rick Santorum. Since then, Casey has enjoyed comfortable reelection margins, winning by 9 points in 2012 and 13 points in 2018. The senator grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Scranton and has an enduring homegrown appeal. At the Warrington rally, voters repeatedly told me that Casey was a “good man” and described him as a familiar presence—though they were vague on the particulars of his congressional accomplishments.  

Casey has a reputation for being understated—Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman, calls Casey “Mild Thing”—which often has been considered an asset. He is seen as principled and dependable. But Casey has shown that he can move on issues when the political moment arises. He shifted his position on gun control after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and became an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s family separation policies in 2017.

But the most notable change came regarding abortion. Casey has described himself as a “pro-life Democrat,” and his father was, at one time, a national face of the anti-abortion movement. As governor, Casey Sr. signed laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period for abortion and parental consent for minors. The legislation led to the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Casey Jr. voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act and has attacked Republicans for their extreme restrictions on abortion care.

Republicans used this evolution to create the narrative that Casey had become dangerously progressive. Even though his moderate image had won him crossover support in previous elections, he struggled this year with an association with the Biden administration—particularly on inflation and border security. He made fentanyl smuggling across the southern border a key issue and ran an ad claiming he had sided with Trump on fracking and trade. But as a longtime friend of President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic, and a Scranton native, it was difficult to create any credible distance from his administration. 

McCormick was Casey’s strongest political challenger. A West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, McCormick earned a PhD in international relations at Princeton. After a stint in George W. Bush’s administration, McCormick rose in the ranks at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based hedge fund giant, to become CEO. In 2022, he left Bridgewater to compete in the Republican primary to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate. He was ultimately no match for Oz, the controversial physician and television personality, whose Pennsylvania residency was widely questioned (and whom President-elect Trump has recently named the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). After McCormick refused to say that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump all but sank his candidacy by endorsing Oz and dubbing McCormick “not MAGA.” Oz won the nomination by fewer than 1,000 votes, then lost to Fetterman by almost five points. 

During the 2024 campaign, McCormick leaned heavily into the more ruggedly patriotic aspects of his biography. His website is peppered with photos of him in military uniform, and the campaign’s most frequently used headshot features McCormick standing in front of a pastoral barn backdrop wearing a chore coat and a denim button-up. But Bridgewater is also presented as a point of pride, with his website describing it as “one of the largest, most successful investment firms in the world” that manages the pensions of “teachers, firefighters and law enforcement.” 

McCormick had the difficult task of triangulating within today’s Republican Party, where Trump remains the gravitational center of power. Though Trump acolytes have previously succeeded in Republican primaries in Pennsylvania’s statewide races, like Oz, they tended to fail in the general election. In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Trump loyalist and election denier Doug Mastriano also lost badly. McCormick distanced himself from the party on some issues: He is against a national abortion ban, for instance, and in favor of exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. 

But there was no path to victory without Trump, and, this time around, McCormick did his best to remain in the former president’s good graces. He spoke at Trump’s rally in Butler shortly before the attempted assassination, and he has amplified some of Trump’s favorite culture-war talking points. In early November, McCormick told a group of veterans that the country needs “a military that’s not woke and focusing on millions of hours of DEI training.”

“He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks.”

Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, called McCormick the “Goldilocks Republican”—occupying a comfortable middle in the party. “He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks,” Borick said. 

Casey’s campaign strove to paint McCormick as an out-of-touch “Connecticut mega-millionaire.” (McCormick grew up in Pennsylvania. He lived for many years in Connecticut and still has a home there.) Casey also tried to drive a wedge between McCormick and working-class voters by highlighting Bridgewater’s extensive investments in China and the fund’s bets against American-owned steel companies. But McCormick’s high-finance background ultimately didn’t alienate as many voters as Casey might have hoped. 

At the rally in Warrington, Casey’s remarks were narrowly focused on what he’s “delivered for the people of this county”: funding for public education and infrastructure. Wearing a navy gingham button-up and blue jeans, he was even-keeled and self-assured. In a political landscape dominated by whoever can shout the loudest, Casey wasn’t a remarkable orator or a natural showman—and he’d never had to be. After all, he was Pennsylvania’s native son. 

But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to put him over the top. Casey ended up winning fewer votes than Harris—current vote counts show him with about a 40,000 vote deficit—and the dropoff was particularly notable in traditionally Democratic areas like Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Yost said that early analysis shows that Casey lagged four and a half points behind Harris in Philadelphia. In such a narrow race, those Harris-only voters could have made the difference not only for the incumbent but also for the balance of the Senate.

It looks as if Casey also lost many of the split-ticket voters who, in 2012, punched their ballots for both him and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In comparison, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Ohio Sen. Brown both ran significantly ahead of Harris in states where Trump won by wide margins. (They both lost.) Tester and Brown are Democrats who were elected to the Senate the same year as Casey and similarly leaned on reputations as salt-of-the-earth moderates. 

Despite his familiarity with the state, it seems like Casey was unable to break out of the mold of a “generic Democrat,” as Brian Rosenwald, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, explained. “If anything, I think it was less about a moderating campaign,” he said, “and more about a lackluster campaign in general.”

It looks as if McCormick, with the help of Trump, had seized onto a more compelling narrative. In October, he went on Fox Business and described his “blessed” ascension from a small-town upbringing to West Point and through the ranks of the world’s largest hedge fund. “I’ve really lived the American dream,” McCormick said, “and I think that dream is slipping away.”

Pennsylvania voters appeared to agree.

Update, November 21: Sen. Bob Casey conceded the Pennsylvania Senate race to Republican Dave McCormick.

Pennsylvania Sen. Bob Casey, a stalwart moderate who rose to power on the heels of his late father’s political legacy, seems likely to lose his reelection bid. Shortly after Election Day, the Associated Press called the race for his opponent, former hedge fund executive Dave McCormick, who had a narrow lead in returns. Even though McCormick has declared victory and was invited by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer to the US Senate orientation, Casey has not conceded, citing thousands of uncounted ballots. 

The two candidates are engaged in ongoing legal battles over how counties are handling certain ballots, with the Pennsylvania Supreme Court recently ruling that undated or misdated mail-in ballots are not valid. There are still thousands of provisional ballots pending, some of which are subject to legal challenges, but it seems unlikely that enough will break for Casey. A recount is currently underway and should be completed by November 26—though this too is unlikely to significantly alter vote counts. On Thursday morning, McCormick was leading by just over 16,000 votes. 

After unsuccessful efforts by hardline MAGA Republicans like Dr. Mehmet Oz in the 2022 election, McCormick was a return to a more traditional Republican candidate. But he still managed to win over GOP voters and ride President-elect Donald Trump’s coattails. Casey’s campaign emphasized his moderate sensibilities and long-standing ties to the state—his father, Bob Casey Sr., was a popular two-term governor—but he ultimately underperformed Vice President Kamala Harris in crucial Democratic strongholds. 

In a cycle where Democrats lost up and down the ballot in Pennsylvania, 2024 was “like no race Casey had run before,” said Berwood Yost, a political science professor at Franklin & Marshall College. Casey was last up for reelection during a presidential cycle in 2012, when Barack Obama won Pennsylvania by five points.

“He needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

“Casey had a difficult needle to thread because he had to distance himself from the policies of an unpopular president to be viable,” Yost said. “But at the same time, he needed Democrats to turn out to vote for him, and clearly, some people who voted for the top of the ticket abandoned him.”

On the day before Election Day, I watched Casey make his final appeal to voters in Bucks County, one of the closely watched suburban “collar counties” surrounding Philadelphia. Around 60 supporters—mostly white and almost all of them appearing to be of retirement age—gathered in the small town of Warrington. The mood was cautiously optimistic, despite polls showing a virtual tie. It seemed difficult to imagine that Casey, who had become an institution in Pennsylvania, was subject to the same shifting political waters that would decide the presidency for Trump.

In the summer, polls showed Casey with around a five-point lead over McCormick, but that gap narrowed as Election Day approached. When I asked rallygoers why it was so close, one man rubbed his fingers together—money. Around $283 million was spent on the race in total, according to a PennLive analysis, making the matchup among the most expensive Senate contests—likely second only to Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown’s unsuccessful reelection bid. McCormick lagged behind Casey in fundraising and sunk at least $4 million of his own wealth into the race. But spending in support of McCormick mostly came from super-PACs and far outpaced Casey: The Senate Leadership Fund and Keystone Renewal PAC, whose largest donor is the CEO of the hedge fund Citadel, each spent about $50 million on McCormick’s behalf. WinSenate, a Democratic-aligned PAC, spent about $54 million on Casey’s behalf.

Casey first was elected to the US Senate in 2006, winning by 15 points and ousting tea party star Rick Santorum. Since then, Casey has enjoyed comfortable reelection margins, winning by 9 points in 2012 and 13 points in 2018. The senator grew up in an Irish Catholic family in Scranton and has an enduring homegrown appeal. At the Warrington rally, voters repeatedly told me that Casey was a “good man” and described him as a familiar presence—though they were vague on the particulars of his congressional accomplishments.  

Casey has a reputation for being understated—Pennsylvania’s junior senator, John Fetterman, calls Casey “Mild Thing”—which often has been considered an asset. He is seen as principled and dependable. But Casey has shown that he can move on issues when the political moment arises. He shifted his position on gun control after the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting and became an outspoken critic of the Trump administration’s family separation policies in 2017.

But the most notable change came regarding abortion. Casey has described himself as a “pro-life Democrat,” and his father was, at one time, a national face of the anti-abortion movement. As governor, Casey Sr. signed laws requiring a 24-hour waiting period for abortion and parental consent for minors. The legislation led to the 1992 Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey. But in the wake of the overturning of Roe v. Wade, Casey Jr. voted for the Women’s Health Protection Act and has attacked Republicans for their extreme restrictions on abortion care.

Republicans used this evolution to create the narrative that Casey had become dangerously progressive. Even though his moderate image had won him crossover support in previous elections, he struggled this year with an association with the Biden administration—particularly on inflation and border security. He made fentanyl smuggling across the southern border a key issue and ran an ad claiming he had sided with Trump on fracking and trade. But as a longtime friend of President Joe Biden, a fellow Catholic, and a Scranton native, it was difficult to create any credible distance from his administration. 

McCormick was Casey’s strongest political challenger. A West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, McCormick earned a PhD in international relations at Princeton. After a stint in George W. Bush’s administration, McCormick rose in the ranks at Bridgewater Associates, a Connecticut-based hedge fund giant, to become CEO. In 2022, he left Bridgewater to compete in the Republican primary to represent Pennsylvania in the US Senate. He was ultimately no match for Oz, the controversial physician and television personality, whose Pennsylvania residency was widely questioned (and whom President-elect Trump has recently named the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services). After McCormick refused to say that the 2020 election was stolen, Trump all but sank his candidacy by endorsing Oz and dubbing McCormick “not MAGA.” Oz won the nomination by fewer than 1,000 votes, then lost to Fetterman by almost five points. 

During the 2024 campaign, McCormick leaned heavily into the more ruggedly patriotic aspects of his biography. His website is peppered with photos of him in military uniform, and the campaign’s most frequently used headshot features McCormick standing in front of a pastoral barn backdrop wearing a chore coat and a denim button-up. But Bridgewater is also presented as a point of pride, with his website describing it as “one of the largest, most successful investment firms in the world” that manages the pensions of “teachers, firefighters and law enforcement.” 

McCormick had the difficult task of triangulating within today’s Republican Party, where Trump remains the gravitational center of power. Though Trump acolytes have previously succeeded in Republican primaries in Pennsylvania’s statewide races, like Oz, they tended to fail in the general election. In the 2022 gubernatorial race, Trump loyalist and election denier Doug Mastriano also lost badly. McCormick distanced himself from the party on some issues: He is against a national abortion ban, for instance, and in favor of exceptions in the cases of rape, incest, and the life of the mother. 

But there was no path to victory without Trump, and, this time around, McCormick did his best to remain in the former president’s good graces. He spoke at Trump’s rally in Butler shortly before the attempted assassination, and he has amplified some of Trump’s favorite culture-war talking points. In early November, McCormick told a group of veterans that the country needs “a military that’s not woke and focusing on millions of hours of DEI training.”

“He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks.”

Christopher Borick, a political science professor at Muhlenberg College, called McCormick the “Goldilocks Republican”—occupying a comfortable middle in the party. “He just doesn’t draw the same type of animosity that more traditional Republicans receive from the populist element within the ranks,” Borick said. 

Casey’s campaign strove to paint McCormick as an out-of-touch “Connecticut mega-millionaire.” (McCormick grew up in Pennsylvania. He lived for many years in Connecticut and still has a home there.) Casey also tried to drive a wedge between McCormick and working-class voters by highlighting Bridgewater’s extensive investments in China and the fund’s bets against American-owned steel companies. But McCormick’s high-finance background ultimately didn’t alienate as many voters as Casey might have hoped. 

At the rally in Warrington, Casey’s remarks were narrowly focused on what he’s “delivered for the people of this county”: funding for public education and infrastructure. Wearing a navy gingham button-up and blue jeans, he was even-keeled and self-assured. In a political landscape dominated by whoever can shout the loudest, Casey wasn’t a remarkable orator or a natural showman—and he’d never had to be. After all, he was Pennsylvania’s native son. 

But that doesn’t seem to have been enough to put him over the top. Casey ended up winning fewer votes than Harris—current vote counts show him with about a 40,000 vote deficit—and the dropoff was particularly notable in traditionally Democratic areas like Philadelphia and its surrounding counties. Yost said that early analysis shows that Casey lagged four and a half points behind Harris in Philadelphia. In such a narrow race, those Harris-only voters could have made the difference not only for the incumbent but also for the balance of the Senate.

It looks as if Casey also lost many of the split-ticket voters who, in 2012, punched their ballots for both him and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In comparison, Montana Sen. Jon Tester and Ohio Sen. Brown both ran significantly ahead of Harris in states where Trump won by wide margins. (They both lost.) Tester and Brown are Democrats who were elected to the Senate the same year as Casey and similarly leaned on reputations as salt-of-the-earth moderates. 

Despite his familiarity with the state, it seems like Casey was unable to break out of the mold of a “generic Democrat,” as Brian Rosenwald, a scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, explained. “If anything, I think it was less about a moderating campaign,” he said, “and more about a lackluster campaign in general.”

It looks as if McCormick, with the help of Trump, had seized onto a more compelling narrative. In October, he went on Fox Business and described his “blessed” ascension from a small-town upbringing to West Point and through the ranks of the world’s largest hedge fund. “I’ve really lived the American dream,” McCormick said, “and I think that dream is slipping away.”

Pennsylvania voters appeared to agree.

Hours before the results started coming in on November 5, when Democrats were still full of hope, the exit polls released by the major news networks contained a striking piece of data that gave supporters of Kamala Harris reason for optimism. 

Voters chose the “the state of democracy” as their top priority over any other issue. Harris, taking notes from President Joe Biden, had spent much of the campaign portraying former President Trump as an existential threat to American norms, echoing the dominant message of her party for the past eight years. 

In some ways, this worked. The 34 percent of voters who chose democracy as their deciding issue favored Harris by 62 points. But the problem for her campaign was that, with the exception of abortion, voters who cited other issues as their top priority, such as the economy, immigration, and foreign policy, broke heavily for Trump. 

This failure of the Democrats’ focus on democracy points to a bigger problem: many voters do not believe that democracy is benefitting them or that the American political system is worth preserving. (Republicans also care about democracy for different reasons, believing that the 2020 election was stolen and Trump was prosecuted by “the deep state.”)

The warning signs were flashing—and top Democrats ignored them. 

A Pew Research poll from September 2023 found that only 4 percent of US adults believed that the political system was working extremely or very well. More than six in 10 expressed little to no confidence in its future. At the same time, only 16 percent of the public said they trusted the federal government always or most of the time, the lowest level of faith in Washington in nearly seven decades. A poll by the New York Times days before the election found that 45 percent of the public did not believe American democracy did a good job of representing ordinary people. 

“People care about democracy but it needs to be more than just ‘elect me and not the other person.’ That’s not democracy, that’s just a campaign.”

By talking so much about preserving democracy without outlining an alternative vision for improving it, or showing how democracy can tangibly improve people’s lives, Harris and other Democratic leaders were perceived as defending a status quo that many Americans revile. “Democrats walked into the trap of defending the very institutions—the ‘establishment’—that most Americans distrust,” Ben Rhodes, Obama’s former national security adviser, wrote after the election. 

The pre-election New York Times poll found that 58 percent of voters thought that the country’s political and economic system needed major changes or a complete overhaul. By largely defending that system, Democrats allowed Trump to run as the change candidate. As former Obama aide Dan Pfeiffer pointed out, “Trump won the voters who said that the ‘ability to bring about change’ was the most important quality in a candidate by 50 points.”

In his first major speech of the 2024 campaign, which coincided with the third anniversary of the January 6 insurrection, President Biden described democracy as “America’s sacred cause.” At the outset of his presidency, Biden said that the nation, and indeed the world, was facing a battle between democracy and autocracy. His goal was to “prove democracy still works.”

But many voters don’t view American democracy that way. They see a system that is plagued by money and corruption, one dominated by elites and self-interested politicians who skew the rules to benefit themselves.

The policies Biden thought would restore public faith in democracy—like the Inflation Reduction Act and the infrastructure bill—proved unpopular or were ignored by a skeptical public. The administration also did a terrible job of selling and explaining these policies—nearly a year after the IRA’s passage, 7 in 10 voters said they had heard little or nothing about the law’s provisions. Biden even seemed to predict the trouble ahead. He worried that the IRA’s benefits would not come fast enough to convince voters that “Joe did it.”

As we noted in 2022, during the January 6 hearings, the idea of running on democracy “doesn’t work as well if everything, the very system itself, is broken. The material benefits of democracy must flow to people from the institutions to earn all this defense.”

There is an ongoing and worthwhile argument about whether Biden delivered on his economic promises. But, the basic facts remain the same. Biden began a campaign, and Harris followed it through, that was all about defending the basic norms of American democracy. This won in 2020, when voters were eager to regain a sense of normalcy. But, in 2024, it began to feel—fairly or not—like the promises had not materialized. Bidenonomics might pay off someday. It didn’t seem to help enough people right now.

This failure went beyond just economics. When Democrats had control of Washington for the first two years of Biden’s presidency, they failed to pass policies on voting rights, abortion, and gun control that a majority of Americans favored because they could not overcome the structural impediments to majority rule, namely the Senate filibuster, that are deeply embedded in America’s political system. 

Biden stubbornly resisted calling for filibuster reform during the first year of his presidency, failing to use his political capital when it might have mattered. When Harris said, on the campaign trail, that she would sign legislation reinstating Roe v. Wade or restoring the Voting Rights Act, voters were left to wonder why Democrats hadn’t already done that. Harris gave few indications of how she would differ from a Biden presidency on that score.

Too often, the Democrats’ message of saving democracy began and ended with defeating Trump. “The Biden campaign’s defense of democracy was not about a bold agenda of better democracy, it was about electing Joe Biden instead of Donald Trump,” said Lee Drutman, a senior fellow in the Political Reform program at the New America Foundation. “Harris inherited that and didn’t have time or energy to reframe it, other than some nods in her speeches to the voting rights bills. People care about democracy but it needs to be more than just ‘elect me and not the other person.’ That’s not democracy, that’s just a campaign.”

Democrats also actively shut down any discussion of the structural flaws to American democracy. At a pair of fundraisers in early October, Vice Presidential candidate Tim Walz said that “the Electoral College needs to go. We need a national popular vote.” Two-thirds of the public favors that position. But Walz was forced by the Harris campaign to quickly disavow the remark and the comment was portrayed in the press as yet another gaffe by an unscripted and inexperienced candidate. It was immediately deemed off-limits to criticize a system that devalued the votes of 85 percent of Americans, violated basic notions of one person, one vote, and was rooted in slavery and white supremacy. 

Other cracks in the system were dismissed as well. In the 2023 Pew poll, the number one thing that Americans hated about the US political system was the amount of money in politics and the corruption it breeds. Eighty-five percent of Americans believed that “the cost of political campaigns makes it hard for good people to run for office” and 80 percent said big campaign donors have too much influence on decisions made by members of Congress. 

Yet Democrats, instead of running against the unchecked power of the moneyed elite, actively worked to further deregulate campaign-finance laws to compete in the oligarch arms race, petitioning the Federal Elections Commission to allow political action committees to coordinate directly with campaigns. That ended up benefitting Republican billionaires like Elon Musk, who gave hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump’s campaign. When Harris raised $1.5 billion, and her allied Super PAC took in $900 million, it was viewed as a sign of enthusiasm for her candidacy, with little acknowledgment that Democrats might be bragging about the very thing that voters disliked most about the political process.  

The Democrats’ failure to show how they would not only preserve, but ultimately strengthen and reform American democracy, boxed them into the unenviable position of defending the skewed institutions that the public blames for their everyday problems. Because they were presented with no alternative vision for how to improve a broken democratic process, Americans chose the candidate who they believed was more likely to tear that system down. “If the message of democracy is just we’re going to keep this system of democracy that people feel isn’t working, you can see why that doesn’t resonate with a lot of people,” Drutman said.

A majority of voters in 2024 weren’t convinced that voting for Democrats would save democracy or that the real-life consequences of losing democratic rights would be worse than the status quo. Going forward, Democrats have to go back to being the party of political and economic reform that challenges rather than celebrates a political system that is leaving too many people behind.

Trump owns Washington once again and if his early nominations are any indication, he’ll do a disastrous job of running it. But Democrats can’t just be anti-Trump. They can’t just be pro-democracy. They need to convince skeptical voters that democracy is worth saving in the first place and that a better system can ultimately replace the flawed one we’ve got now. 

Last Thursday, workers with the Democratic National Committee (DNC) were told they would be laid off without severance and with little notice, according to the DNC’s union. The cuts included some longtime workers of the organization, the union said.

With the election over, the DNC intends to downsize from about 680 staff to fewer than 200. Some degree of seasonality is expected in political campaign jobs. But this degree is unusual—and has affected DNC staffers who’ve stayed with the organization across several campaigns, or even multiple decades, according to the union.

One former DNC union member, whose last day was Friday, said she was shocked. “For a lot of folks, this is life-altering,” said the laid-off employee, who spoke with Mother Jones on the condition of anonymity.

“Amongst the members that were laid off includes one deeply beloved union member who worked at the DNC for 38 years,” the staffer said. “So I push back against the claim that this is normal, because we have members who have been here for decades who are shocked and angry and trying to figure out how they’re going to survive this layoff.”

In a statement to the Washington Post, the DNC said that “while the DNC has met the terms of the union agreement negotiated by the CBA, we share the entire DNC family’s frustration and continue to provide resources to all members of the team to support them in this transition.”

A DNC official told Mother Jones that all workers were informed of the possibility of layoffs as early as September 13, and that 95 percent of those being let go had a post-election end date in their offer letter.

But one laid-off worker who spoke with Mother Jones said that she, like some other employees, felt pressured into leaving a full-time role for a temporary contract position prior to the election. 

“I was told in order to get a title change or a promotion or any raises, it would only be if I agreed to sign a contract that had an end date of November 15,” she said. The staffer said management had said an extension was expected.

“We tried to get answers about why this was happening, and we were stonewalled over and over again by management,” she said. DNC representatives would not comment on specific workers’ cases, but stated that all of the terms of the workers’ collective bargaining agreement are being upheld.

The DNC workers are not trying to get their jobs back. Instead, the union is organizing for a severance package, similar to what workers on the Harris-Walz campaign got. (Run for Something, a major Democratic campaign support PAC, also faced a wave of post-election layoffs in recent weeks, letting go off 35 percent of its staff—and well over half of its staff union.) A DNC spokesperson told Mother Jones that the DNC is in ongoing communication with SEIU Local 500, the union representing DNC workers.

Among those DNC employees who have not been laid off, the mood is uncertain, said one employee who was unaffected by the layoffs but requested anonymity for fear of retaliation from the DNC. 

“One thing that has been a common thread during my employment has been that we’re trying to break the boom and bust cycle of democratic infrastructure. So I’d say this feels very antithetical to that,” she said. She plans to look for another job soon—but calls that decision “heartbreaking” as someone who’s spent years working in Democratic electoral politics. 

Workers said that DNC donors have reached out to them, concerned about how, exactly, the money the Harris campaign raised is being spent, if not to allow them severance pay. 

“We find it very cruel that DNC management is trying to claim that layoffs are just part of the job,” a DNC union member said. “And we feel strongly that losing an election has not absolved the organization of its responsibility to treat its workers with basic dignity.”

Correction, November 21: An earlier version of this article misstated the conversation between SEIU Local 500 and the DNC. They are in communication, not negotiations.

On Tuesday, exactly two weeks after the November 5 election, the Republican-controlled legislature in North Carolina reconvened in Raleigh, ostensibly to pass disaster relief for areas affected by Hurricane Helene. But, with no public notice, they snuck provisions into the bill stripping power from the state’s incoming Democratic governor and attorney general and dramatically changing how elections are administered. The bill passed the state House Tuesday night, just hours after it was publicly released, and is expected to be approved by the state Senate on Wednesday.

“It’s a massive power grab,” says Melissa Price Kromm, executive director of the pro-democracy group North Carolina for the People Action. “They didn’t like what happened in the election, and they want to overturn the will of the people. That’s not how democracy is supposed to work.”

Though Trump carried North Carolina, Democrats won five statewide offices—governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, and school superintendent. They narrowly lead in a pivotal state Supreme Court race that is headed to a recount.

Democrats also broke the GOP’s supermajority in the state legislature, which they had held due to extreme gerrymandering. This means that unlike in previous sessions, come January, Republicans will no longer be able to override the vetoes of the state’s incoming Democratic governor, Josh Stein, who easily defeated scandal-plagued Republican candidate Lieutenant Gov. Mark Robinson.

So, in a lame-duck session, Republicans preemptively stripped power from these Democratic officials before they are sworn in.

Most notably, the bill prevents the governor from appointing members of the state election board and transfers that authority to the state auditor, who, for the first time in more than a decade, is a Republican. Under North Carolina law, the governor, a position held by Democrat Roy Cooper for the past eight years, appoints a majority of members on the state election board and county election boards. The auditor will now have that authority, giving Republicans the power to appoint majorities on the state board and 100 county election boards.

These appointments will likely have major ramifications for elections in the state. The state board administers elections and issues guidance to county officials, who in turn have the power to decide where polling places go and the number of early voting locations. In addition, both the county and state boards must certify election outcomes. That raises the possibility that the new bill will enable Republicans to cut back on voting access and refuse to certify election results should a Democrat narrowly win. Price Kromm noted that the bill was introduced only one day after results showed Democratic Supreme Court Justice Allison Riggs leading her GOP opponent by just 623 votes after trailing by more than 10,000 votes on election night.

“Legislators have put forward a bill that fails to provide real support to communities hit hard by Hurricane Helene and instead prioritizes more power grabs in Raleigh,” Cooper said in a statement.

For years, Republicans have been trying to prevent Democratic governors from appointing a majority of election board members, but they have repeatedly been blocked by voters and the courts. So now they have bypassed the precedent and handed the power over to the state auditor—a position with no expertise or previous authority in elections.

“This makes no logical sense other than he has an R next to his name.”

“No other state has that,” says Price Kromm. “This makes no logical sense other than he has an R next to his name.”

Other Democratic officials will also see their power stripped under the new legislation. The bill prevents the state’s incoming attorney general, Jeff Jackson, from filing lawsuits that contradict the positions of the legislature or joining lawsuits that originate in other states or with private actors, which state attorneys general frequently do.

The bill also changes the composition of the state courts. It eliminates two judicial seats held by judges who ruled against the legislature in voting rights cases and creates two new judicial positions that will be appointed by the GOP legislature. And, it specifies that the governor can only fill judicial vacancies with members of the same party, which would prevent Stein from appointing a Democratic judge to fill the position of an outgoing Republican judge.

This is not the first time Republicans have convened a lame-duck session to strip power from Democrats—and not just in North Carolina. They did so when Cooper beat Republican Gov. Pat McCrory, preventing him from appointing members to boards of University of North Carolina schools, restricting the number of state employees he could hire or fire, and subjecting all of his nominations to confirmation by the GOP-controlled state Senate, which was not previously required.  

Back in 2018, after Democratic Gov. Tony Evers defeated Republican Scott Walker in Wisconsin, Republicans also held a lame-duck session before Christmas to strip Evers of power and pass new laws making it harder to vote. Democrats called it a soft coup, and Evers viewed it as a precursor to the January 6 insurrection. “There hasn’t been a peaceful transition of power,” he told me.

The latest power grab in North Carolina could foreshadow the next few years in Washington under GOP control—and how the Republican Party’s antidemocratic tendencies have become more institutionalized, going much deeper than Trump. As Price Kromm puts it, “It’s batshit crazy down here right now.”

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has proven time and time again that she will do nearly anything to make headlines.

But on Monday, she reached a new low, introducing a resolution seeking to bar transgender members and employees in the House of Representatives from using the bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity in the Capitol building. Echoing Republican talking points grounded in paranoia, the resolution alleges that allowing trans women to use women’s bathrooms “jeopardizes the safety and dignity” of cisgender women. It would task the House Sergeant-at-Arms with enforcing the resolution if passed.

The move comes just weeks after Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) became the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress. Though it does not directly mention McBride, the bill represents a clear attempt to attack her: Mace told reporters this explicitly on Tuesday, confirming that the bill is “absolutely” meant to target McBride. And in a post on X after announcing the resolution, Mace said McBride “does not get a say in women’s private spaces.”

McBride appeared to respond to the resolution in a post on X, stating: “Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.” In a follow-up post, McBride called Mace’s effort “a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”

Other Democratic members also blasted the effort: Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), the first openly gay person to represent her state in Congress and co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said in a post on X that Mace’s effort was a “petty, hateful distraction,” adding, “There’s no bottom to the cruelty.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio (D-N.Y.) said: “This is not just bigotry, this is just plain bullying.” Laurel Powell, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, called Mace’s resolution “a political charade by a grown-up bully” and “another warning sign that the incoming anti-equality House majority will continue to focus on targeting LGBTQ+ people rather than the cost of living, price gouging or any of the problems the American people elected them to solve.” And GLAAD CEO Sarah Ellis said in a statement: “Everyone in Congress might try focusing on solutions to improve people’s lives and leading with kindness, and see what progress you might make for every American.”

“Manufacturing culture wars,” as McBride put it, is, indeed, an apt way to describe the transphobic paranoia Mace and supporting members in the GOP appears to be stoking with this resolution—an especially ironic development given that Democrats have been chastised for having been too concerned with trans issues since losing the election.

When it comes to GOP panic about trans people using bathrooms alongside cisgender people, the evidence around the issue does not support the panic. A 2018 study published in the journal Sexual Research and Social Policy found there is no link between trans-inclusive bathroom policies and safety, and that reports of “privacy and safety violations” in bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms are “exceedingly rare.” This is probably why most states—37, plus DC—do not have any laws on the books regulating trans peoples’ use of bathrooms or other facilities, according to the Movement Advancement Project. (Mace’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that research or other questions for this story.) But these facts have not stopped the GOP from pumping millions of dollars into anti-trans ads and filing hundreds of anti-trans bills in state legislatures across the country.

And as for the claim that it’s trans people who pose a danger to cisgender people in bathrooms? The GOP appears to be the party who poses a physical threat. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) went so far as to reportedly say in a private House GOP Conference meeting that she would fight a transgender woman if she tried to use a women’s bathroom in the House.

For all the drama this is stirring up, though, Mace’s latest effort may not go any further than the headlines: At a press conference Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, “This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before and we’re going to do that in a deliberate fashion…and we will accommodate the needs of every single person.” He added that he would not commit to including the language of Mace’s resolution in the rules package the House will vote on in early January. A spokesperson for Johnson did not immediately respond to a question about the consequences if Greene fought another member of Congress or the lack of evidence to support Mace’s resolution.

Update, November 19: This post was updated with a statement from GLAAD.

Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.) has proven time and time again that she will do nearly anything to make headlines.

But on Monday, she reached a new low, introducing a resolution seeking to bar transgender members and employees in the House of Representatives from using the bathrooms that correspond to their gender identity in the Capitol building. Echoing Republican talking points grounded in paranoia, the resolution alleges that allowing trans women to use women’s bathrooms “jeopardizes the safety and dignity” of cisgender women. It would task the House Sergeant-at-Arms with enforcing the resolution if passed.

The move comes just weeks after Rep.-elect Sarah McBride (D-Del.) became the first openly transgender person to serve in Congress. Though it does not directly mention McBride, the bill represents a clear attempt to attack her: Mace told reporters this explicitly on Tuesday, confirming that the bill is “absolutely” meant to target McBride. And in a post on X after announcing the resolution, Mace said McBride “does not get a say in women’s private spaces.”

McBride appeared to respond to the resolution in a post on X, stating: “Every day Americans go to work with people who have life journeys different than their own and engage with them respectfully, I hope members of Congress can muster that same kindness.” In a follow-up post, McBride called Mace’s effort “a blatant attempt from far right-wing extremists to distract from the fact that they have no real solutions to what Americans are facing. We should be focused on bringing down the cost of housing, health care, and child care, not manufacturing culture wars.”

Other Democratic members also blasted the effort: Rep. Becca Balint (D-Vt.), the first openly gay person to represent her state in Congress and co-chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus, said in a post on X that Mace’s effort was a “petty, hateful distraction,” adding, “There’s no bottom to the cruelty.” Rep. Alexandria Ocasio (D-N.Y.) said: “This is not just bigotry, this is just plain bullying.” Laurel Powell, spokesperson for the Human Rights Campaign, called Mace’s resolution “a political charade by a grown-up bully” and “another warning sign that the incoming anti-equality House majority will continue to focus on targeting LGBTQ+ people rather than the cost of living, price gouging or any of the problems the American people elected them to solve.” And GLAAD CEO Sarah Ellis said in a statement: “Everyone in Congress might try focusing on solutions to improve people’s lives and leading with kindness, and see what progress you might make for every American.”

“Manufacturing culture wars,” as McBride put it, is, indeed, an apt way to describe the transphobic paranoia Mace and supporting members in the GOP appears to be stoking with this resolution—an especially ironic development given that Democrats have been chastised for having been too concerned with trans issues since losing the election.

When it comes to GOP panic about trans people using bathrooms alongside cisgender people, the evidence around the issue does not support the panic. A 2018 study published in the journal Sexual Research and Social Policy found there is no link between trans-inclusive bathroom policies and safety, and that reports of “privacy and safety violations” in bathrooms, changing rooms, and locker rooms are “exceedingly rare.” This is probably why most states—37, plus DC—do not have any laws on the books regulating trans peoples’ use of bathrooms or other facilities, according to the Movement Advancement Project. (Mace’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on that research or other questions for this story.) But these facts have not stopped the GOP from pumping millions of dollars into anti-trans ads and filing hundreds of anti-trans bills in state legislatures across the country.

And as for the claim that it’s trans people who pose a danger to cisgender people in bathrooms? The GOP appears to be the party who poses a physical threat. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) went so far as to reportedly say in a private House GOP Conference meeting that she would fight a transgender woman if she tried to use a women’s bathroom in the House.

For all the drama this is stirring up, though, Mace’s latest effort may not go any further than the headlines: At a press conference Tuesday, House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said, “This is an issue that Congress has never had to address before and we’re going to do that in a deliberate fashion…and we will accommodate the needs of every single person.” He added that he would not commit to including the language of Mace’s resolution in the rules package the House will vote on in early January. A spokesperson for Johnson did not immediately respond to a question about the consequences if Greene fought another member of Congress or the lack of evidence to support Mace’s resolution.

Update, November 19: This post was updated with a statement from GLAAD.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The United States’s blossoming emergence as a clean energy superpower could be stopped in its tracks by Donald Trump, further empowering Chinese leadership and forfeiting tens of billions of dollars of investment to other countries, according to a new report.

Trump’s promise to repeal major climate policies passed during Joe Biden’s presidency threatens to push $80 billion of investment to other countries and cost the US up to $50 billion in lost exports, the analysis found, surrendering ground to China and other emerging powers in the race to build electric cars, batteries, solar and wind energy for the world.

“The US will still install a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines, but getting rid of those policies would harm the US’s bid for leadership in this new world,” said Bentley Allan, an environmental and political policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, who co-authored the new study.

“The energy transition is inevitable and the future prosperity of countries hinges on being part of the clean energy supply chain,” he said. “If we exit the competition, it will be very difficult to re-enter.

“Without these investments and tax credits, US industry will be hobbled just as it is getting going.”

“This was our chance to enter the race for clean technologies while everyone else, not just China, but South Korea and Nigeria and countries in Europe, do the same.”

Under Biden, the US legislated the Chips Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act, all aimed in varying degrees to deal with the climate crisis while also bolstering American manufacturing.

The IRA alone, with its major incentives for clean energy, is credited with helping create around 300,000 new jobs, with the vast majority of $150 billion in new manufacturing investment flowing to Republican-held districts.

Trump, however, has called this spending wasteful and vowed to erase it. “I will immediately terminate the green new scam,” the president-elect said shortly before his election win. “That will be such an honor. The greatest scam in the history of any country.”

Doing this may be politically fraught, even with Republican control of Congress, due to the glut of new jobs and factories in conservative-leaning areas. But should Trump’s plan prevail, planned US manufacturing projects would be canceled, according to the new report, leaving American firms reliant upon overseas suppliers for components.

“Without these investments and tax credits, US industry will be hobbled just as it is getting going, ceding the ground to others,” the report states.

Exports would also be hit, the analysis predicts, allowing US competitors to seize market share. “These plans suggest a complete misunderstanding of how the global economy works,” said Allan. “If we don’t have a manufacturing base, we aren’t going to get ahead.”

Trump has talked of forging “American energy dominance” that is based entirely upon fossil fuels, with more oil and gas drilling coupled with a pledge to scrap offshore wind projects and an end to the “lunacy” of electric cars subsidies. The president-elect is expected to lead a wide-ranging dismantling of environmental and climate rules once he returns to the White House.

These priorities, coming as peak global oil production is forecast and pressure mounts to avert climate breakdown, could further cement China’s leadership in clean energy production.

“China already feels puzzled and skeptical of the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Li Shuo, a climate specialist at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Throw in Trump and you deepen Chinese skepticism. This is political boom and bust. When it comes to selling clean energy to third country markets, China isn’t sweating at all.”

But even Trump’s agenda is not expected to completely stall clean energy’s momentum. Renewables are now economically attractive and are set to still grow, albeit more bumpily. Solar, which has plummeted by 90 percent in cost over the past decade, was added to the American grid at three times the rate of gas capacity last year, for example.

“We will see a big effort to boost the supply of fossil fuels from the US but most drilling is at full blast anyway,” said Ely Sandler, a climate finance expert at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. “That’s quite different from demand, which is how power is generated and usually comes down to the cheapest source of energy, which is increasingly renewables. If Donald Trump eases permitting regulations, it could even lead to more clean energy coming online.”

At the UN Cop29 talks in Azerbaijan, which started on Monday, countries are again having to grapple with a bewildering swing in the US’s commitment to confront the climate crisis. The outgoing Biden administration, which is trying to talk up ongoing American action at the talks, hopes its climate policies have enough juice to outlast a Trumpian assault.

“What we will see is whether we’ve achieved escape velocity or not and how quickly the booster packs are about to fall off,” said Ali Zaidi, Biden’s top climate adviser, at the Cop summit.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has debuted a new—and implausible—reason that the House Ethics Committee’s report into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) should not be released: Gaetz is now a private citizen.

In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday morning, Johnson claimed that since Gaetz resigned from Congress on Wednesday, he does not deserve to be subject to the scrutiny of lawmakers. Yet Johnson neglected to provide the full context: Gaetz resigned shortly after Trump announced he would nominate him for the post of attorney general—which is about as far from “private citizen” as one could get.

“There’s a very important protocol and tradition and rule that we maintain, that the House Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction does not extend to non-members of Congress,” Johnson said. “I think that would be a Pandora’s box. I don’t think we want the House Ethics Committee using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens.”

"The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report. Not once."

.@SpeakerJohnson lays out why he opposes the release of a House Ethics Committee report on Attorney General pick former Rep. Matt Gaetz. pic.twitter.com/gQbvi7LoMh

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) November 17, 2024

As Tapper pointed out, Johnson’s claim is untrue: In the past, the committee has released reports focused on former Rep. Bill Boner (R-Tenn.), former Rep. Buz Lukens (R-Ohio), and former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), all after their resignations.

Johnson’s latest stance comes after he initially said, at a Wednesday news conference, that he would not be—and could not be—involved in decisions about whether to release the Gaetz report. Two days later, after reportedly spending time with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Johnson changed his tune and said he would “strongly request” that the committee not release its findings. That was on Friday, the same day the committee was reportedly set to vote on the matter.

When Tapper asked Johnson if Trump asked him to change his position and advocate against the release of the report, the Speaker denied it. “The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report, not once,” he claimed.

Whether Gaetz actually stands a chance at running the Department of Justice is uncertain: NBC News reported Saturday that more than half of Senate Republicans, including some in leadership roles, do not believe he’ll survive the Senate confirmation process.

The fact that Johnson is still defending him is ironic for more reasons than one: The House Speaker’s hardcore Christian beliefs—which include urging a return to “18th century values”—are well known. Gaetz, on the other hand, was investigated over sex trafficking allegations by the department Trump has tapped him to lead. (Gaetz has denied the allegations and the DOJ opted not to file charges.)

But when Tapper pressed the issue, asking whether the Republican party still cared about electing leaders who are “moral in their personal lives,” Johnson dodged the question. Trump’s nominees, he declared, “are persons who will shake up the status quo.”

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For people involved with research and advocacy about climate change, the results of last week’s presidential election sting.

To get a sense of what’s to come and what’s needed to ensure domestic climate action continues, I spoke with Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and author who teaches at Texas Tech University and is chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy.

She is one the country’s best-known communicators about climate change and often talks about how her religious faith informs her views about protecting the environment. Her 2021 book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, was not written for this moment, but might as well have been.

She specified that she was speaking for herself and not for her employer or any organization. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you feeling about the election results?

Disappointed and concerned. I was a lead author of the National Climate Assessment under the last Trump administration, and, as you know, I am firmly of the conviction that a thermometer does not give you a different answer depending on how you vote. A hurricane does not knock on your door and ask you which political party you’re registered with before it destroys your home.

Climate change is no longer a future issue. It’s already affecting us today. It’s affecting our health. It’s affecting the economy, which was a big factor in this election. It’s affecting the safety of people’s homes, the cost that they’re paying for insurance and for groceries, and it’s putting our future and that of our children on the line.

I want to see politicians arguing over who has the best solutions to climate change. I want them arguing over how to accelerate the clean energy transition. I want them to have competing proposals for how to build resilience and how to invest in the infrastructure and the food and the water systems that we need to ensure that people have a better and more resilient future. And unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what we’re going to see with this administration. Of course, I would be absolutely delighted to be proved wrong.

What’s a good mindset going forward for people who care about supporting the energy transition?

That’s a great question, because our mindset really determines what we focus on and what we can accomplish. So in terms of our mindset, I am an advocate for recognizing, first of all, that the situation is dire, and on many fronts. It’s already getting worse. People might be surprised to hear me say that, because often I’m tagged as a relentless optimist. But for me, hope begins with recognizing how bad the situation is, because you don’t need hope when everything’s fine. And I’m a scientist, so I have a front row seat to what’s happening in terms of climate impacts, and the biodiversity crisis, the pollution crisis and more. So our mindset has to begin with a realistic look at what’s happening and how it is already affecting us. We cannot sugar coat it.

But that is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin has to be focused on what real solutions look like. And when we lose hope, we tend to look for silver bullets, for one solution that if everybody did this, it would fix the problem. There are no silver bullets, but there’s a lot of silver buckshot, so to speak. If we put it all together, we have more than enough of what we need.

And often, too, when we lose hope and when we’re discouraged and frustrated, I see a tendency to turn on each other, to say, ‘Well, you know, you’re not doing exactly what I think should be done, so I’m not going to talk to you or even work with you. I’m going to criticize what you’re doing.’ Now, more than ever, is a time to come together, to focus on what unites us rather than what divides us, to be focused on what we can accomplish together, even if different people come at it for different reasons. 

I really feel like, in the next four years, we need to lean into collaborations and partnerships and solutions that have multiple wins for both people and the planet. So one group of people might be advocating for solutions because it has an immediate health benefit. Others might see the immediate economic benefit. Others might see the benefit for nature. For too long, we’ve worked in silos, and now we don’t have time for single wins. We need multiple wins. We need partners that are in it for multiple reasons, and the more we focus on what we can accomplish together, I think the more positive outcomes we’re going to see, and the more allies we’re going to gain, especially at the local to regional level.

You’ve talked about your faith and how it informs your thinking about climate. Does that help when facing the potential for adversity like we’re seeing now?

Oh yes, it definitely does. If you’re familiar with the Bible, you know that there are many, many passages that talk about incredibly negative circumstances and our mindset when confronting and addressing those. All through the Bible, whether you’re looking at David or whether you’re looking at the apostle Paul, there are so many stories and histories of people who confronted suffering and felt discouraged and frustrated at the situation that they were in.

I love the fact that you’re bringing up mindset multiple times. The most important part of my faith is not what it says about nature, but what it says about our attitudes and our mindsets. For example, there’s this one verse in Second Timothy, where Paul’s writing to Timothy, who he mentored, and he says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, rather a spirit of power, of love and a sound mind.” And for me, that’s so impactful, because when I start to feel overcome or overwhelmed by fear, as many of us do when we’re dealing with these situations, I remind myself that that’s not coming from God.

What God has given us is a spirit of power, which is a bit of an old-fashioned way to say that we should be empowered, because research shows that when people are overwhelmed with fear it will paralyze us, and that’s the last thing we need right now. We need to be empowered to act.

The second part is the spirit of love, because love considers others. It’s not just about ourselves, it’s not selfish. It’s about other people and other things that are being affected, in most cases, more than we are.

And then the last part is about a sound mind. Our sound mind can use the information that we have to make good decisions, and so that is really my own litmus test for how I’m making decisions…not out of fear, but out of power, love and a sound mind.

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

The United States’s blossoming emergence as a clean energy superpower could be stopped in its tracks by Donald Trump, further empowering Chinese leadership and forfeiting tens of billions of dollars of investment to other countries, according to a new report.

Trump’s promise to repeal major climate policies passed during Joe Biden’s presidency threatens to push $80 billion of investment to other countries and cost the US up to $50 billion in lost exports, the analysis found, surrendering ground to China and other emerging powers in the race to build electric cars, batteries, solar and wind energy for the world.

“The US will still install a bunch of solar panels and wind turbines, but getting rid of those policies would harm the US’s bid for leadership in this new world,” said Bentley Allan, an environmental and political policy expert at Johns Hopkins University, who co-authored the new study.

“The energy transition is inevitable and the future prosperity of countries hinges on being part of the clean energy supply chain,” he said. “If we exit the competition, it will be very difficult to re-enter.

“Without these investments and tax credits, US industry will be hobbled just as it is getting going.”

“This was our chance to enter the race for clean technologies while everyone else, not just China, but South Korea and Nigeria and countries in Europe, do the same.”

Under Biden, the US legislated the Chips Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, and the Inflation Reduction Act, all aimed in varying degrees to deal with the climate crisis while also bolstering American manufacturing.

The IRA alone, with its major incentives for clean energy, is credited with helping create around 300,000 new jobs, with the vast majority of $150 billion in new manufacturing investment flowing to Republican-held districts.

Trump, however, has called this spending wasteful and vowed to erase it. “I will immediately terminate the green new scam,” the president-elect said shortly before his election win. “That will be such an honor. The greatest scam in the history of any country.”

Doing this may be politically fraught, even with Republican control of Congress, due to the glut of new jobs and factories in conservative-leaning areas. But should Trump’s plan prevail, planned US manufacturing projects would be canceled, according to the new report, leaving American firms reliant upon overseas suppliers for components.

“Without these investments and tax credits, US industry will be hobbled just as it is getting going, ceding the ground to others,” the report states.

Exports would also be hit, the analysis predicts, allowing US competitors to seize market share. “These plans suggest a complete misunderstanding of how the global economy works,” said Allan. “If we don’t have a manufacturing base, we aren’t going to get ahead.”

Trump has talked of forging “American energy dominance” that is based entirely upon fossil fuels, with more oil and gas drilling coupled with a pledge to scrap offshore wind projects and an end to the “lunacy” of electric cars subsidies. The president-elect is expected to lead a wide-ranging dismantling of environmental and climate rules once he returns to the White House.

These priorities, coming as peak global oil production is forecast and pressure mounts to avert climate breakdown, could further cement China’s leadership in clean energy production.

“China already feels puzzled and skeptical of the Inflation Reduction Act,” said Li Shuo, a climate specialist at the Asia Society Policy Institute. “Throw in Trump and you deepen Chinese skepticism. This is political boom and bust. When it comes to selling clean energy to third country markets, China isn’t sweating at all.”

But even Trump’s agenda is not expected to completely stall clean energy’s momentum. Renewables are now economically attractive and are set to still grow, albeit more bumpily. Solar, which has plummeted by 90 percent in cost over the past decade, was added to the American grid at three times the rate of gas capacity last year, for example.

“We will see a big effort to boost the supply of fossil fuels from the US but most drilling is at full blast anyway,” said Ely Sandler, a climate finance expert at Harvard University’s Belfer Center. “That’s quite different from demand, which is how power is generated and usually comes down to the cheapest source of energy, which is increasingly renewables. If Donald Trump eases permitting regulations, it could even lead to more clean energy coming online.”

At the UN Cop29 talks in Azerbaijan, which started on Monday, countries are again having to grapple with a bewildering swing in the US’s commitment to confront the climate crisis. The outgoing Biden administration, which is trying to talk up ongoing American action at the talks, hopes its climate policies have enough juice to outlast a Trumpian assault.

“What we will see is whether we’ve achieved escape velocity or not and how quickly the booster packs are about to fall off,” said Ali Zaidi, Biden’s top climate adviser, at the Cop summit.

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) has debuted a new—and implausible—reason that the House Ethics Committee’s report into allegations of sexual misconduct and drug use by former Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) should not be released: Gaetz is now a private citizen.

In an interview on CNN’s State of the Union with Jake Tapper on Sunday morning, Johnson claimed that since Gaetz resigned from Congress on Wednesday, he does not deserve to be subject to the scrutiny of lawmakers. Yet Johnson neglected to provide the full context: Gaetz resigned shortly after Trump announced he would nominate him for the post of attorney general—which is about as far from “private citizen” as one could get.

“There’s a very important protocol and tradition and rule that we maintain, that the House Ethics Committee’s jurisdiction does not extend to non-members of Congress,” Johnson said. “I think that would be a Pandora’s box. I don’t think we want the House Ethics Committee using all of its vast resources and powers to go after private citizens.”

"The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report. Not once."

.@SpeakerJohnson lays out why he opposes the release of a House Ethics Committee report on Attorney General pick former Rep. Matt Gaetz. pic.twitter.com/gQbvi7LoMh

— State of the Union (@CNNSOTU) November 17, 2024

As Tapper pointed out, Johnson’s claim is untrue: In the past, the committee has released reports focused on former Rep. Bill Boner (R-Tenn.), former Rep. Buz Lukens (R-Ohio), and former Rep. Mark Foley (R-Fla.), all after their resignations.

Johnson’s latest stance comes after he initially said, at a Wednesday news conference, that he would not be—and could not be—involved in decisions about whether to release the Gaetz report. Two days later, after reportedly spending time with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago estate, Johnson changed his tune and said he would “strongly request” that the committee not release its findings. That was on Friday, the same day the committee was reportedly set to vote on the matter.

When Tapper asked Johnson if Trump asked him to change his position and advocate against the release of the report, the Speaker denied it. “The president and I have literally not discussed one word about the ethics report, not once,” he claimed.

Whether Gaetz actually stands a chance at running the Department of Justice is uncertain: NBC News reported Saturday that more than half of Senate Republicans, including some in leadership roles, do not believe he’ll survive the Senate confirmation process.

The fact that Johnson is still defending him is ironic for more reasons than one: The House Speaker’s hardcore Christian beliefs—which include urging a return to “18th century values”—are well known. Gaetz, on the other hand, was investigated over sex trafficking allegations by the department Trump has tapped him to lead. (Gaetz has denied the allegations and the DOJ opted not to file charges.)

But when Tapper pressed the issue, asking whether the Republican party still cared about electing leaders who are “moral in their personal lives,” Johnson dodged the question. Trump’s nominees, he declared, “are persons who will shake up the status quo.”

This story was originally published by Inside Climate News and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

For people involved with research and advocacy about climate change, the results of last week’s presidential election sting.

To get a sense of what’s to come and what’s needed to ensure domestic climate action continues, I spoke with Katharine Hayhoe, an atmospheric scientist and author who teaches at Texas Tech University and is chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy.

She is one the country’s best-known communicators about climate change and often talks about how her religious faith informs her views about protecting the environment. Her 2021 book, Saving Us: A Climate Scientist’s Case for Hope and Healing in a Divided World, was not written for this moment, but might as well have been.

She specified that she was speaking for herself and not for her employer or any organization. The following has been edited for length and clarity.

How are you feeling about the election results?

Disappointed and concerned. I was a lead author of the National Climate Assessment under the last Trump administration, and, as you know, I am firmly of the conviction that a thermometer does not give you a different answer depending on how you vote. A hurricane does not knock on your door and ask you which political party you’re registered with before it destroys your home.

Climate change is no longer a future issue. It’s already affecting us today. It’s affecting our health. It’s affecting the economy, which was a big factor in this election. It’s affecting the safety of people’s homes, the cost that they’re paying for insurance and for groceries, and it’s putting our future and that of our children on the line.

I want to see politicians arguing over who has the best solutions to climate change. I want them arguing over how to accelerate the clean energy transition. I want them to have competing proposals for how to build resilience and how to invest in the infrastructure and the food and the water systems that we need to ensure that people have a better and more resilient future. And unfortunately, I don’t think that’s what we’re going to see with this administration. Of course, I would be absolutely delighted to be proved wrong.

What’s a good mindset going forward for people who care about supporting the energy transition?

That’s a great question, because our mindset really determines what we focus on and what we can accomplish. So in terms of our mindset, I am an advocate for recognizing, first of all, that the situation is dire, and on many fronts. It’s already getting worse. People might be surprised to hear me say that, because often I’m tagged as a relentless optimist. But for me, hope begins with recognizing how bad the situation is, because you don’t need hope when everything’s fine. And I’m a scientist, so I have a front row seat to what’s happening in terms of climate impacts, and the biodiversity crisis, the pollution crisis and more. So our mindset has to begin with a realistic look at what’s happening and how it is already affecting us. We cannot sugar coat it.

But that is only one side of the coin. The other side of the coin has to be focused on what real solutions look like. And when we lose hope, we tend to look for silver bullets, for one solution that if everybody did this, it would fix the problem. There are no silver bullets, but there’s a lot of silver buckshot, so to speak. If we put it all together, we have more than enough of what we need.

And often, too, when we lose hope and when we’re discouraged and frustrated, I see a tendency to turn on each other, to say, ‘Well, you know, you’re not doing exactly what I think should be done, so I’m not going to talk to you or even work with you. I’m going to criticize what you’re doing.’ Now, more than ever, is a time to come together, to focus on what unites us rather than what divides us, to be focused on what we can accomplish together, even if different people come at it for different reasons. 

I really feel like, in the next four years, we need to lean into collaborations and partnerships and solutions that have multiple wins for both people and the planet. So one group of people might be advocating for solutions because it has an immediate health benefit. Others might see the immediate economic benefit. Others might see the benefit for nature. For too long, we’ve worked in silos, and now we don’t have time for single wins. We need multiple wins. We need partners that are in it for multiple reasons, and the more we focus on what we can accomplish together, I think the more positive outcomes we’re going to see, and the more allies we’re going to gain, especially at the local to regional level.

You’ve talked about your faith and how it informs your thinking about climate. Does that help when facing the potential for adversity like we’re seeing now?

Oh yes, it definitely does. If you’re familiar with the Bible, you know that there are many, many passages that talk about incredibly negative circumstances and our mindset when confronting and addressing those. All through the Bible, whether you’re looking at David or whether you’re looking at the apostle Paul, there are so many stories and histories of people who confronted suffering and felt discouraged and frustrated at the situation that they were in.

I love the fact that you’re bringing up mindset multiple times. The most important part of my faith is not what it says about nature, but what it says about our attitudes and our mindsets. For example, there’s this one verse in Second Timothy, where Paul’s writing to Timothy, who he mentored, and he says, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, rather a spirit of power, of love and a sound mind.” And for me, that’s so impactful, because when I start to feel overcome or overwhelmed by fear, as many of us do when we’re dealing with these situations, I remind myself that that’s not coming from God.

What God has given us is a spirit of power, which is a bit of an old-fashioned way to say that we should be empowered, because research shows that when people are overwhelmed with fear it will paralyze us, and that’s the last thing we need right now. We need to be empowered to act.

The second part is the spirit of love, because love considers others. It’s not just about ourselves, it’s not selfish. It’s about other people and other things that are being affected, in most cases, more than we are.

And then the last part is about a sound mind. Our sound mind can use the information that we have to make good decisions, and so that is really my own litmus test for how I’m making decisions…not out of fear, but out of power, love and a sound mind.

As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. 

Subscribe to Mother Jones podcasts on Apple Podcasts or your favorite podcast app.

For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. 

“He said his administration’s going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”

But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week, the Reveal team looks at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here Now; Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. The show delves into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Some of the votes Americans cast on Tuesday that may have mattered most for the climate were quite a bit down-ballot from the presidential ticket: A handful of states held elections for the commissions that regulate utilities, and thereby exercise direct control over what sort of energy mix will fuel the coming years’ expected growth in electricity demand. In three closely watched races around the country—the utility commissions in Arizona, Montana, and Louisiana—Republican candidates either won or are in the lead. While they generally pitched themselves to voters as market-friendly, favoring an all-of-the-above approach to energy, clean energy advocates interviewed by Grist cast these candidates as deferential to the power companies they aspired to regulate.

Arizona is, in a word, sunny. Its geography makes it “the famously obvious place to build solar,” said Caroline Spears, executive director of Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit that works to get clean energy advocates elected. But its utilities have built just a sliver of the potential solar energy that there is room for in the state—and the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates the state’s investor-owned utilities, is partly to blame for that. That commission’s most recent goal for renewable energy, set in 2007, was an unambitious 15 percent to be reached by 2025. “Their goals are worse than where Texas currently is and where Iowa currently is on clean energy,” Spears said. What’s more, the current slate of commissioners is in the process of considering whether to ditch that goal altogether.

Louisiana’s Public Service Commission is described as “one of the most reviled utilities in the country by its customers.”

Those commissioners have held a 4-1 Republican majority on the commission since 2022, and in that time they’ve approved the construction of new gas plants, imposed new fees on rooftop solar, and raised electricity rates. Tuesday’s election, in which three of the commission’s five seats were on the ballot, gave voters a chance to reverse course. The race hasn’t yet been officially called, but three Republican candidates are in the lead, ahead of three Democratic candidates, two Green candidates, and a write-in independent. (The election is structured such that candidates don’t run for individual seats or in districts; rather, the seats go to the three top vote-getters.)

So far, the Republican candidate who’s gotten the most votes is Rachel Walden, a member of the Mesa school board who’s made a name for herself in Arizona politics with transphobic comments and a failed lawsuit against the Mesa school district over its policies on student bathroom usage. “She’s a candidate who doesn’t have a lot of specific energy experience but seems to be very diehard to the kind of MAGA movement more broadly,” said Stephanie Chase, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog nonprofit.

In Montana, three seats were open on the Public Service Commission, but one in particular—District 4—captured the attention of clean energy advocates, because it was the only one in which a non-Republican candidate was running. Elena Evans, an independent, began her campaign after learning that the incumbent commissioner in her district, Jennifer Fielder, was running unopposed. The race focused less on clean energy than affordability: Evans said in interviews she decided to run because of the 28 percent rate hike that the all-Republican commission had approved. In the closest of the commission’s three elections, Fielder beat Evans with 55 percent of the vote.

Like in Arizona, the Montana PSC has neglected to take advantage of its state’s untapped potential for renewable energy—wind. A Montana commissioner was captured on a hot mic in 2019 candidly acknowledging that the purpose of a rate cut for renewable energy providers was to kill solar development in the state.

“He says he cares about storm protection…in Louisiana, but the very thing that’s creating these storms is climate change—which is being caused by carbon emissions.”

While one independent on the commission wouldn’t have likely swayed the course of its decisions, Evans would have had the opportunity “to be a consumer voice,” in Chase’s words, as the commission deliberated not only over future decisions on renewable energy, but also the looming question of the future of a coal plant in eastern Montana.

The Colstrip power plant has been co-owned by utilities in nearby states, which, in anticipation of those states’ renewable energy targets kicking in, are selling their shares of its energy to the Montana utility NorthWestern Energy. These deals could saddle ratepayers in Montana with new costs, both for the purchase and for compliance with environmental regulations.

In Louisiana, the largest utility regulated by the Public Service Commission is Entergy, which Daniel Tait, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, described as “one of the most reviled utilities in the country by its customers.” Louisiana’s utilities are legally permitted to donate directly to the campaign funds for commissioners who regulate them—and they do so in great volume.

The race to replace Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Craig Greene, who is retiring at the end of his term, commanded attention because, though a Republican representing a deep-red part of the state, Greene is considered the swing vote among the five commissioners, two of whom are Democrats. In his eight years in office, he’s become known for “his willingness to hold Entergy accountable,” according to Tait—voting with the progressive commissioner Davante Lewis on issues like energy efficiency programs and limiting utilities’ political spending.

On Tuesday, Greene’s seat was won by Jean-Paul Coussan, a state senator from Lafayette who accepted utility donations, supports an expansion of gas infrastructure, and has criticized renewables for “driv[ing] out oil and gas jobs.” Tait described Coussan as less hostile to clean energy than his Republican opponent in the race, Julie Quinn, but further right than the Democrat he defeated, Nick Laborde.

In an interview with the Louisiana Illuminator, Coussan cast his energy policies as based on free markets. “It’s critical that we look at the most affordable options. I think renewables are currently part of the matrix and will be in the future,” he said. “We also need to address the reality that we’ve got an abundant supply of natural gas.”

Coussan has also spoken of the needs of Louisianans who are suffering from repeated hurricanes and rising rates. “The things that he has said since being elected are contradictory in nature,” Tait said of Coussan. “He says he wants affordable and reliable energy, and that he cares about storm protection, because there are so many issues in Louisiana, but the very thing that’s creating these storms is climate change—which is being caused by carbon emissions.”

“You can’t make the problem worse and say you want to work hard to solve the problem,” Tait added.

In the days before the election, when too many stories about deadlocked polls and undecided voters and the MAGAfication of young men began to wear on my soul, I turned to TikTok to see what women were thinking. Soon enough I was swimming in a sea of female excitement and angst. I watched videos of ordinary women of all ages and races—in deep blue districts and deep red ones—describing what this election meant to them. Women who had just voted, sitting in their cars and sobbing about what it would mean to elect the first female president, what it would mean to defeat a vitriolically sexist candidate who’s been found liable for sexually assaulting one woman and who stands accused by dozens more, whose campaign gleefully demeaned women as “trash” and “childless cat ladies.” What it would mean to elect someone who’d spent the last three months, and the two years before that, connecting reproductive freedom to economic concerns. What it would mean to elect someone taking the stress of caring for both kids and parents seriously, who recognizes the housing crisis is hurting all but the richest, who has more than a concept of a plan for how to address such problems.

I watched one young woman driving 10 hours to her home state because her absentee ballot never arrived, muttering “10 and 2, 10 and 2” as she stared out at the road ahead. I watched women flying across the country to vote. I watched women take part in the “They both reached for the gun” Chicago meme as they talked about canceling out the vote of their Trump-supporting father, brother, or husband. Or bragging on husbands or dads whose vote they didn’t have to cancel. One who said she wouldn’t have to cancel out her husband’s vote because he’d forget to do it if she didn’t remind him.

One woman told of breaking off her engagement when she found out her fiancé was for Trump. (“I can’t share my life with someone who is going to vote in that direction…Ladies, we need to stick together.”) I watched as young woman after young woman testified that they’d never, ever consider dating anyone who voted for Trump. I watched as women who were in middle or high school in 2016 reacted in horror at seeing, for the first time, Trump bragging on an Access Hollywood bus about grabbing women by the pussy and moving on them “like a bitch,” or stalking Hillary Clinton around a debate stage, or seeing the testimonies of the more than 25 women who have reported being sexually assaulted by him. “Dads voted for this?” read one incredulous caption.

There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women.

I was well aware that algorithmic offerings are not reality, particularly on TikTok, which serves you things akin to the things you’ve engaged with. But the videos seemed to be representative of a record gender divide, clocked by pollsters at about 30 points nationally at the time and even higher in key districts and among certain demographics. Would women, horrified by Trump’s and Vance’s statements and actions, furious that their reproductive rights were rolled back, foreclose another Trump term? Would enough white women finally cleave from white men, and vote for a woman who was also Black and Asian?

We know the answer now, and while conclusive demographic data will take months to emerge, exit polls in 10 historic battleground states indicate that women there favored Harris by 8 points overall—less than the margin for Hillary Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020—resulting in an 11 point gender gap. (The exit polls’ ongoing inclusion of Florida, Ohio, and Texas might being warping our conclusions, but we don’t yet know.) Black women, Democrats’ most loyal constituency, voted for her in those states at a rate of 91 percent. Latinas, 60 percent. Young women, 61 percent. Other age groups, 49–54 percent. Harris won 57 percent of women with college degrees and 66 percent of women with even more education. But she lost white women with little or no college education by a mile. Only 35 percent of them supported her, and since those women constitute about one-fifth of the total electorate, they drove down her margins with women overall.

The questions that feel most burning right now—like what is up with those who voted against abortion bans but also for Trump, and which part of his gains can be attributed mostly to racism and/or sexism—are complex and will take more data and analysis to really understand. But it’s safe to say Trump’s margin of victory was powered by men, who, those same polls found, voted for him by 55 percent—a few points more than went for him in 2020. Trump looks to have made gains with almost every type of man, especially younger men and Latino men. (Despite a lot of pre-election angst, Black men overwhelmingly backed Harris, though Trump increased his margins there, too.) White men of all education levels went for Trump, but white men who didn’t go to college overwhelmingly so.

The Trump campaign knew that men were his ticket back to power, and it targeted them—pointedly young men, and men of color—with a sophisticated campaign of grievance and disinformation. And in that, they were massively aided by the manosphere and its billionaire mascot: Elon Musk.

Since he bought Twitter in 2022, Musk has been on a mission to turn it into an amplifier of toxicity. He allowed hate-mongers—including virulent misogynists such as Andrew Tate—back on the platform, now called X, and dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans, foremost himself. He personally promoted disinformation of all kinds—about voting, about transgender kids (despite, or because of, having one), about Harris (his PAC literally called her a “c-word”), about science—to his more than 204 million followers. Who can forget his promise to impregnate Taylor Swift after she announced her support for Harris? His misleading election posts, including ones falsely claiming Democrats were “importing” millions of migrants to vote for Harris, were viewed 2 billion times according to the Center for Countering Digital Hate, which estimated his posts were worth $24 million to the Trump campaign. (Musk, who likes to claim he’s a defender of free speech, sued the center in 2023; a federal judge tossed the case, ruling it was an obvious attempt to both stifle criticism of X and bankrupt the organization.)

Musk gave, directly and through super-PACs, about $200 million to help Trump’s campaign in the final months, and mounted a parallel ground game in Pennsylvania, which Trump carried. He stumped for Trump, made the “brocast” rounds for Trump, and urged other tech billionaires to support Trump. He gave millions—possibly tens of millions—to Building America’s Future, a group focused on dividing communities of color and wooing Black men to vote for Trump.

Musk dismantled tools to help users fight harassment while making sure everyone was far more likely to see posts and replies from MAGA fans—foremost himself.

Musk’s efforts are both part of and indicative of the fact that more and more men are cocooned in a YouTube/podcast/Twitch information ecosystem that connects sports, gaming, and other male-dominated hobbies to politics. And in that space, algorithmic forces and concerted efforts by far-right influencers and adjacent grifters are normalizing disdain or hate for women, part of a conveyor belt of extremism. A good example of that came immediately after the election, when neo-Nazi Nick Fuentes (who famously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago) posted “Your body, my choice.” Soon that slogan was screamed at high school girls all over the country by their male classmates, many of whom had likely never heard of Fuentes himself. (Similarly, Black people, including kids at my son’s school, were subjected to a decentralized but nationwide campaign of racist texts.)

There can be no doubt that there is fertile ground for those who find prominence and profit in nurturing resentment of women. For decades, men have been losing ground relative to women, be it in education or job opportunities. Women are increasingly likely to be a household’s primary breadwinner or raise families by themselves. The MeToo movement was a massively needed corrective for sexual harassment and abuse, but the ferocity of it (and some occasional overreach) did destabilize many men. 

This has all happened before. Women in the 1940s were sent to the factories and then back to the kitchen. The feminist movement of the 1970s led to big gains—we finally got those credit cards, ladies!—and then to a backlash, as Susan Faludi famously chronicled. An “anti-PC” movement arose too. But eventually the pendulum swung back, and new waves of female empowerment began to swell. Hopefully this election will do the same, and figuring out how to reach young men before they calcify into hardened misogyny needs to be a big part of that.

After the 2016 election, I wrote that Trump’s victory was a “brutal affront to women” and “all who value kindness and tolerance.” His administration plumbed new depths of chaos, corruption, and cruelty, and while some voters are too young to fully remember, his 2024 campaign made sure that no one could say they didn’t get what he stands for. 

The women who voted for Harris know that—and they are not okay. About one-third of women now live in states with abortion bans, and anybody who believed that Trump won’t try for a national ban, or revive the Comstock Act to stop distribution of mifepristone or even contraception, is likely to be bitterly disappointed. Even if nationwide prohibitions don’t come to pass, women in red states, and their doctors, will be further surveilled to prevent abortions, and women trying to have children will continue to die in hospital parking lots because doctors are too afraid to provide lifesaving care. What else do the “pronatalist” policies that JD Vance and Elon Musk have been so eager to enact hold for women? 

Women are suspicious, guarded, and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status.

When I went back to TikTok after the election, I saw sorrow and disbelief and terror, but also incandescent rage. Women are furious—in a Greek mythology sort of way. Black women are especially flattened and yet unsurprised that white women didn’t break for Harris. Some young women began shaving their heads and embracing the South Korean feminist 4B movement, in which women swear off dating, sex, and childrearing. (“The good news is that men hate us, so there’s no point in catering to them,” posted one.) Not many are likely to go that far, but it was clear even before the outcome that this election could have far-reaching impacts on dating and marriage and divorce. Certainly sex: If women can’t get abortions and are prevented from obtaining contraception, young men will awake to a very different world, soon enough. “If his ballot was red, his balls stay blue,” posted one woman. (And guys? Project 2025 wants to come after porn, too.) 

Will the backlash, once the election’s consequences become fully apparent, help power a reckoning with misogyny and racism once more? Perhaps. But right now, so many of us fear for ourselves, fear for our daughters, fear for women whom we’ve never met, and all others with a target on their backs, and we are walking around, suspicious and guarded and apoplectic, knowing that some in our families or neighborhoods voted us back into second-class status, and wondering what else they’re ready to go along with.

On Wednesday, President-elect Donald Trump announced former Fox News host Pete Hegseth was his pick for secretary of defense. The choice is iconoclastic to say the least. Although Hegseth served as an Army National Guard officer, he has no experience in government leadership that could inform the management of the federal government’s largest agency.

What Hegseth does have are connections to the TheoBros, a group of mostly millennial, ultra-conservative men, many of whom proudly call themselves Christian nationalists. Among the tenets of their branch of Protestant Christianity—known as Reformed or Reconstructionist—is the idea that the United States should be subject to biblical law.

Last year, the magazine Nashville Christian Family ran a profile of Hegseth, in which he mentioned being a member of a “Bible and book study” that focused on the book My Life for Yours by Doug Wilson, the 71-year-old unofficial patriarch of the TheoBros. Patriarch is the right word: When I interviewed Wilson a few months ago, he said that he, like many other TheoBros, believes women never should have been given the right to vote.

Wilson presides over a small fiefdom in Moscow, Idaho, where he is the head pastor of the flagship church of the denomination he helped found, the Communion of Reformed Evangelical Churches (CREC). In Moscow, Wilson has also helped to establish a college, a printing press, and a classical Christian school. In addition to his Moscow ventures, Wilson is also extremely online—he blogs, he posts on social media, and he makes slickly produced YouTube videos. Once a fringe figure, famous mostly among reformed Christians, last year Wilson’s star power brightened considerably in an interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson and a speaking slot at the National Conservatism conference alongside then Ohio senator, now vice president-elect, JD Vance.  

Wilson is also the founder of the Association of Classical Christian Schools, a national network of private K–12 schools that focus on religious education and the Western canon. (I wrote about the classical education movement here.) As it turns out, this is another point of intersection. Hegseth, who did not respond to requests for comment from Mother Jones, has strong connections to the Association of Classical Christian Schools. He told Nashville Christian Family that his family decided to move to Tennessee so his children could attend the Jonathan Edwards Classical Academy, a school in that network he describes as “a small, country, blue-collar classical Christian school.” During a recent appearance on insurance executive Patrick Bet-David’s podcast, Hegseth said he’d never send his kids to Harvard, but he would send them to New Saint Andrews, the college the Wilson helped found in Idaho.

Hegseth’s involvement with Wilson’s schools goes beyond his own children’s education. In 2022, he co-authored Battle for the American Mind, with the group’s president, David Goodwin. In the book, they argue that Americans have “ceded our kids’ minds to the left for far too long” and promise to give “patriotic parents the ammunition to join an insurgency that gives America a fighting chance.”

In a thread on X this week, Matthew Taylor, a religion scholar at the Institute for Islamic, Christian, and Jewish Studies, noted that Hegseth has been a guest on “Reformation Red Pill,” a podcast hosted by pastors at the Doug Wilson-affiliated Tennessee church that Hegseth attends. Hegseth has also appeared on Veritas Vox, a podcast produced by a Pennsylvania-based publisher called Veritas, which is also connected to Wilson’s network of churches. Veritas was the publisher of Hegseth and Goodwin’s book on education.

Then there are his tattoos. First is the prominent Jerusalem cross tattoo that Taylor noted is a nod to the Christian crusades, and an important symbol for TheoBros. (Looked at closely, part of the logo of the real estate and investment firm New Founding, owned and operated by several TheoBros, has a kind of a riff on it.) Reconstructionists believe that Christians are called to expand the territory they control—along the lines of the Crusades of the Middle Ages. “It is about building the kingdom of God on earth and in a way that you can actually draw borders and boundaries around it,” Taylor told me.

Hegseth also has a tattoo of the words “Deus Vult” (“God wills it” in Latin); which, writes Taylor, has come to signify the idea for TheoBros that “God mandated Crusaders’ violence.” Because of the extremist nature of his tattoos, Hegseth wasn’t allowed to participate as a guard in Biden’s inauguration.

In 2020, Hegseth turned his obsession with the Christian Crusades into a book, American Crusade. In a piece this week, Media Matters noted that one of its central themes is the destruction of Muslim holy sites in order to reclaim them for Christianity. Hegseth also rails against Muslims’ “well-documented aversion to assimilation.” Julie Ingersoll, a University of North Florida religious studies professor who has studied the Reconstructionist tradition that the TheoBros are part of, told me she finds Hegseth’s fixation on the Crusades “really troubling—but also it’s completely consistent with the Christian Reconstructionists. That’s particularly troubling for someone who might have the biggest military in the world under his control.”

Taylor, too, said he was concerned about the idea of Hegseth controlling the military. He pointed to Hegseth’s urging Trump to pardon Edward Gallagher, the US Navy SEAL who was accused of killing an Iraqi prisoner and posing for pictures with his dead body. Taylor noted that the US military has recently struggled to control the radicalization of its members. He told me he worried Hegseth’s appointment “will only allow this far-right radicalization in the military to fester and grow unregulated, if not even encouraged.”

Hegseth’s latest book, The War on the Warriors, decries what he sees as the infiltration of the military by the “radical left.” Troops, he complains, are “being harassed by obligatory training…grounded in Critical Race Theory, radical sex theories, gender policy, and ‘domestic extremism’ that are designed to neuter our fighting forces.” As my colleague Stephanie Mencimer has noted, that focus on culture war issues is likely part of what prompted Trump and his advisers to choose him—he’s well-suited to advance the anti-woke agenda laid out in the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. When Trump announced Hegseth as his pick for defense secretary, the X account of the podcast CrossPolitics, cohosted by a lead pastor at Wilson’s Moscow, Idaho, church, posted, “HUGE WIN! @PeteHegseth is a godly Christian man. He is a member at a CREC church and classically educates his kids. He’ll get the wokeness out of the military which will unfathomably bless our nation.”

Trump has called Hegseth “tough, smart, and a true believer in America First.” As the AP reported, Trump praised Hegseth’s book about the military at a rally in June. He promised the crowd that if he was reelected, “The woke stuff will be gone within a period of 24 hours. I can tell you.”

As Donald Trump prepares to enter the White House for a second term, the reasons people voted him into office are becoming more clear. 

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For Micki Witthoeft, it’s cause for celebration. Her daughter, Ashli Babitt, was shot and killed by a police officer after storming the US Capitol on January 6, 2021. Today, Witthoeft is confident Trump will stand by his word and pardon everyone involved. 

“He said his administration’s going to be one on ‘promises made and promises kept,’ ” she said. “I felt like he was talking right to me.”

But it’s not the same sentiment for all voters. This week, the Reveal team looks at the many contradictions behind Trump’s victory, with stories from hosts Hanna Rosin and Lauren Ober of the new podcast from The Atlantic, We Live Here Now; Mother Jones reporter Tim Murphy; and Reveal producer Najib Aminy. The show delves into January 6ers seeking pardons, “messy middle” voters who split their ballots, and members of the Uncommitted movement who wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris despite being opposed to Trump.

This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Some of the votes Americans cast on Tuesday that may have mattered most for the climate were quite a bit down-ballot from the presidential ticket: A handful of states held elections for the commissions that regulate utilities, and thereby exercise direct control over what sort of energy mix will fuel the coming years’ expected growth in electricity demand. In three closely watched races around the country—the utility commissions in Arizona, Montana, and Louisiana—Republican candidates either won or are in the lead. While they generally pitched themselves to voters as market-friendly, favoring an all-of-the-above approach to energy, clean energy advocates interviewed by Grist cast these candidates as deferential to the power companies they aspired to regulate.

Arizona is, in a word, sunny. Its geography makes it “the famously obvious place to build solar,” said Caroline Spears, executive director of Climate Cabinet, a nonprofit that works to get clean energy advocates elected. But its utilities have built just a sliver of the potential solar energy that there is room for in the state—and the Arizona Corporation Commission, which regulates the state’s investor-owned utilities, is partly to blame for that. That commission’s most recent goal for renewable energy, set in 2007, was an unambitious 15 percent to be reached by 2025. “Their goals are worse than where Texas currently is and where Iowa currently is on clean energy,” Spears said. What’s more, the current slate of commissioners is in the process of considering whether to ditch that goal altogether.

Louisiana’s Public Service Commission is described as “one of the most reviled utilities in the country by its customers.”

Those commissioners have held a 4-1 Republican majority on the commission since 2022, and in that time they’ve approved the construction of new gas plants, imposed new fees on rooftop solar, and raised electricity rates. Tuesday’s election, in which three of the commission’s five seats were on the ballot, gave voters a chance to reverse course. The race hasn’t yet been officially called, but three Republican candidates are in the lead, ahead of three Democratic candidates, two Green candidates, and a write-in independent. (The election is structured such that candidates don’t run for individual seats or in districts; rather, the seats go to the three top vote-getters.)

So far, the Republican candidate who’s gotten the most votes is Rachel Walden, a member of the Mesa school board who’s made a name for herself in Arizona politics with transphobic comments and a failed lawsuit against the Mesa school district over its policies on student bathroom usage. “She’s a candidate who doesn’t have a lot of specific energy experience but seems to be very diehard to the kind of MAGA movement more broadly,” said Stephanie Chase, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, a utility watchdog nonprofit.

In Montana, three seats were open on the Public Service Commission, but one in particular—District 4—captured the attention of clean energy advocates, because it was the only one in which a non-Republican candidate was running. Elena Evans, an independent, began her campaign after learning that the incumbent commissioner in her district, Jennifer Fielder, was running unopposed. The race focused less on clean energy than affordability: Evans said in interviews she decided to run because of the 28 percent rate hike that the all-Republican commission had approved. In the closest of the commission’s three elections, Fielder beat Evans with 55 percent of the vote.

Like in Arizona, the Montana PSC has neglected to take advantage of its state’s untapped potential for renewable energy—wind. A Montana commissioner was captured on a hot mic in 2019 candidly acknowledging that the purpose of a rate cut for renewable energy providers was to kill solar development in the state.

“He says he cares about storm protection…in Louisiana, but the very thing that’s creating these storms is climate change—which is being caused by carbon emissions.”

While one independent on the commission wouldn’t have likely swayed the course of its decisions, Evans would have had the opportunity “to be a consumer voice,” in Chase’s words, as the commission deliberated not only over future decisions on renewable energy, but also the looming question of the future of a coal plant in eastern Montana.

The Colstrip power plant has been co-owned by utilities in nearby states, which, in anticipation of those states’ renewable energy targets kicking in, are selling their shares of its energy to the Montana utility NorthWestern Energy. These deals could saddle ratepayers in Montana with new costs, both for the purchase and for compliance with environmental regulations.

In Louisiana, the largest utility regulated by the Public Service Commission is Entergy, which Daniel Tait, a researcher at the Energy and Policy Institute, described as “one of the most reviled utilities in the country by its customers.” Louisiana’s utilities are legally permitted to donate directly to the campaign funds for commissioners who regulate them—and they do so in great volume.

The race to replace Louisiana Public Service Commissioner Craig Greene, who is retiring at the end of his term, commanded attention because, though a Republican representing a deep-red part of the state, Greene is considered the swing vote among the five commissioners, two of whom are Democrats. In his eight years in office, he’s become known for “his willingness to hold Entergy accountable,” according to Tait—voting with the progressive commissioner Davante Lewis on issues like energy efficiency programs and limiting utilities’ political spending.

On Tuesday, Greene’s seat was won by Jean-Paul Coussan, a state senator from Lafayette who accepted utility donations, supports an expansion of gas infrastructure, and has criticized renewables for “driv[ing] out oil and gas jobs.” Tait described Coussan as less hostile to clean energy than his Republican opponent in the race, Julie Quinn, but further right than the Democrat he defeated, Nick Laborde.

In an interview with the Louisiana Illuminator, Coussan cast his energy policies as based on free markets. “It’s critical that we look at the most affordable options. I think renewables are currently part of the matrix and will be in the future,” he said. “We also need to address the reality that we’ve got an abundant supply of natural gas.”

Coussan has also spoken of the needs of Louisianans who are suffering from repeated hurricanes and rising rates. “The things that he has said since being elected are contradictory in nature,” Tait said of Coussan. “He says he wants affordable and reliable energy, and that he cares about storm protection, because there are so many issues in Louisiana, but the very thing that’s creating these storms is climate change—which is being caused by carbon emissions.”

“You can’t make the problem worse and say you want to work hard to solve the problem,” Tait added.