DEARBORN, Michigan — Arab American leaders for months warned Vice President Kamala Harris that she needed to separate herself from President Joe Biden’s support of Israel in the war in Gaza — or face an electoral backlash from this influential community in a key battleground.

But those pleas went largely ignored.

Instead, Harris made strategic errors that deeply insulted Arab American voters reeling from intense grief as the death toll in the Middle East climbed. She refused to host a Palestinian American onstage at the Democratic National Convention. She curtly shut down protesters at campaign rallies who criticized her solidarity with Biden over the conflict. She dispatched pro-Israel surrogates to Michigan.

Now, many Arab American residents in Dearborn “feel like they’ve been redeemed,” said Michael Sareini, Dearborn city council president. “They wanted to send a message and they did.”

“This stance on endless wars and killing of innocent women and children has got to end,” he said.

In the initial days after the election, as Democrats despaired over the results, Dearborn residents felt unsurprised by President-elect Donald Trump’s resounding win, according to interviews with nearly a dozen Arab American leaders in this densely populated Muslim city just outside Detroit. Adding to their sense that they were right, their protest vote was not limited solely to Arab Americans, who make up a fraction of the U.S. population. Their furor toward the Biden administration over Gaza spilled out onto college campuses across the nation and among progressives of all ages, amounting to the most significant anti-war protest in a generation.

“While we dealt with that grief, we became much more politically mature,” said Amer Zahr, a Palestinian American activist.

Unofficial results show Trump received the most votes in Dearborn, with 42 percent, while Harris earned 36 percent — a 33 percentage point drop from when Biden won Dearborn in 2020. Green party candidate Jill Stein collected 18 percent.

Zoom into Arab American neighborhoods and you’ll find an even more dramatic crumbling for the vice president. Trump showed up big throughout the Eastern and Southern parts of Dearborn, where a high concentration of the community lives. In one of those precincts, Harris earned only 13 percent while Trump got 51 percent.

Multiple Dearborn leaders said that Trump’s social conservatism and isolationist “America First” foreign policy made Arabs more comfortable with backing a Republican after the community fled from the GOP in the aftermath of 9/11. And, for a population that often feels targeted by the justice system, many identified with Trump’s legal woes.

But those leaders emphasized that the dramatic move toward Trump does not mark a permanent realignment with the Republican party for this demographic historically part of the Democratic base but rather an explicit rejection of Biden and Harris. The top of the ticket was the exception: Democrats won Dearborn at every other level of the ballot, from U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib down to state lawmakers and school board members.

“They didn’t vote for Trump because they believe Trump is the best candidate,” said Osama Siblani, publisher of the Arab American News. “No, they voted for Trump because they want to punish the Democrats and Harris.”

‘I am speaking now’

When Harris took Biden’s place as the Democratic nominee in July, Arab Americans were hopeful. She had given some indications of a softer stance in the Middle East, and Dearborn residents were optimistic that she may be the president who would stand up against Israel. By that point, the war in Gaza had endured for nine months — and Biden repeatedly refused to order an arms embargo against Israel, despite pleas from the community for an end to the bombardment that according to Gaza health officials has killed more than 40,000 Palestinians.

But when Palestinian Americans were denied a speaking slot at the DNC convention a few weeks later, residents in Dearborn started to feel disgruntled. That resentment grew when Harris in August told a pro-Palestinan protester “I am speaking now” — a line that Arab Americans now point to as a difficult moment for Harris to overcome.

As the deaths increased in the Middle East — and images of dead bodies were shared widely on social media — the Arab community felt even more pushed aside by the Biden administration. It started to feel, they said, like a betrayal from Harris herself.

When Israel launched a ground invasion into Lebanon in October, which they stated was in response to military attacks by Hezbollah, Arab Americans’ rage over the response by the U.S. reached its peak.

Opposition to Harris “built up slowly but surely,” as the war continued on, said Abed Hammoud, founder of the Arab American Political Action Committee. A large share of Dearborn’s population comes from South Lebanon, which has been devastated by the military action. Some Michigan residents have seen their entire families overseas killed.

“I wake up in the morning, I turn on the news just to see which village was leveled to the ground and who was killed,” said Sam Baydoun, Wayne County commissioner, who emigrated to America from Lebanon when he was 15. “This is the daily routine we have here in Michigan.”

In the final weeks of the campaign, the Harris campaign dispatched surrogates to Michigan who deeply offended the Arab community. Bill Clinton, speaking at a rally in late October, said Israelis were in the Holy Land “first.” Residents also grumbled about appearances by New York Rep. Richie Torres, a staunch Israel proponent.

Adding to insult, the campaign touted the endorsement of former Vice President Dick Cheney, the mastermind behind the war in Iraq. His daughter, Liz Cheney, who was the former No. 3 Republican in the House and a staunch Trump critic, was featured as part of Harris’ closing message.

By that point, Harris’ repeated statements that she wanted to end the war in Gaza and return hostages felt hollow to this community. She had lost them.

An opening for Trump

The Trump campaign viewed the Arab community’s disdain toward Harris in the waning weeks before the election as an opportunity. Residents were inundated with anti-Harris texts and mailers, which “played big” among voters, said Ali Jawad, founder of the Lebanese American Heritage Club.

Then Trump paid a visit to Dearborn four days before the election. He stood in a restaurant surrounded by a crowd of Arab Americans and declared that under his presidency, “we’re going to have peace in the Middle East — but not with the clowns that you have running the U.S. right now.”

Harris never personally visited Dearborn. Campaign staff and surrogates went in her place instead.

“The Democrats did this,” Zahr said. “They created a situation where Donald Trump was walking around our city, putting his feet up, shaking hands, kissing babies and Harris didn’t even enter our community. She was afraid.”

Arabs in Dearborn were united in anguish but deeply divided on how to express it politically. Factions emerged. Conversations among themselves grew tense. The main PAC representing Arab American interests not only declined to make a presidential endorsement but urged residents not to vote for Harris or Trump. Some residents decided to skip voting in the presidential race entirely.

There was a split among the area’s mayors. Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud emerged as a strong ally of the uncommitted movement, the Michigan-born coalition that galvanized antiwar sentiment on college campuses. Election results revealed that some big liberal college counties seemed to underperform for the Democratic ticket by at least a point.

Hammoud refused to meet with Trump when he was in Dearborn, based on his disagreement with the former president’s enactment of the Muslim ban and arming of Saudi Arabia. But he also declined to endorse Harris.

The mayors in two neighboring cities with similarly large Arab populations, Dearborn Heights and Hamtramck, stumped for Trump throughout Michigan. Dearborn Heights Mayor Bill Bazzi even appeared at Trump’s final campaign rally held in Grand Rapids in the hours before Election Day.

But Trump’s record — like the Muslim ban and his promises to deport millions of immigrants — was enough for some to push aside their misgivings for Harris, like for political organizer Ismael Ahmed, who said he “held my nose and voted for her.”

Yet in the end, Trump “was able to say some things that made them think maybe he’s really on our side,” Ahmed said. “Or maybe he’ll fix the economy in a way that no one else will. And it worked.”

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BBC

Treasury minister Darren Jones has said the UK government’s commitment to Ukraine is “resolute” amid fears incoming US President Donald Trump could push the country into giving up territory to Russia.

Jones told BBC’s Sunday with Laura Kuenssberg, “Ukraine should be able to recover its country as it was previously structured” and that there “shouldn’t be an element of conceding to illegal invasions from Russia”.

He added he would not comment on “hypothetical scenarios” of a future US administration.

Speaking to the same programme, Conservative shadow foreign secretary Dame Priti Patel said the UK had to find a “shared way of working with the US” on Ukraine.

During the election campaign, Trump characterised the Russia-Ukraine conflict as a drain on US resources and said he could end the war between Russia and Ukraine “in a day”.

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The president-elect has not offered details of how he would resolve the conflict,

However, a research paper written by two of his former national security advisers has argued that the US should continue its weapons supply to Ukraine, but make the support conditional on Kyiv entering peace talks with Russia.

To entice Russia, the West would promise to delay Ukraine’s entry into Nato, the military alliance of European and North American nations.

The former advisers argued Ukraine should not give up its hopes of getting its territory back from Russian occupation, but that it should negotiate based on current front lines.

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Asked how the UK government would respond if Trump did compel Ukraine to make territorial concessions, Jones said: “Our commitment to Ukraine as a country here in UK is resolute.

“We continue to support Ukraine with billions of pounds of funding every year and support from our armed forces in line with our commitments through Nato.”

Asked if the UK still respected Ukraine’s desire to get back territories such as Crimea, Jones said: “That is the basis on which the UK is operating.”

Dame Priti, who was appointed shadow foreign secretary earlier this week, agreed Ukraine should not have to concede Crimea.

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“No, of course not,” she said adding: “We’ve been unequivocal as Conservatives in government… we stand shoulder to shoulder with Ukraine.”

She added that Trump “hasn’t entered the White House yet” and it would be wrong to speculate on future US foreign policy.

“I think, take one step back, let’s be mature about this.

“We need to have dialogue and this comes back to having a strong relationship with our closest ally.

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“I would urge our government going forward to be constructive in those discussions.”

Speaking to the same programme, Chief of the UK Defence Staff Sir Tony Radakin said Russia had suffered its worst ever month for casualties since the start of the Ukraine war, with around 1,500 dying or wounded every single day.

Sir Tony said the losses were “for tiny increments of land” but that there was “no doubt that Russia is making tactical, territorial gains and that is putting pressure on Ukraine”.

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“Russia is spending over 40% of its public expenditure now on defence and security – that is an enormous drain on Russia as a country.

“I’m saying the longer the war goes on, the more difficult it is.”

He reiterated the UK government’s stance that Western allies would be resolute for “as long as it takes” adding: “That’s the message President Putin has to absorb and the reassurance for President Zelensky.”

Trump has repeatedly urged Nato members to spend more on their defence, accusing European countries of free-riding on America.

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In February, he said he would let Russia “do whatever the hell they want” to Nato countries that did not spend enough on defence.

Nato countries are expected to spend 2% of their national income on defence. At the moment 23 countries – including the UK – meet the target, compared to just six in 2021.

The Labour government has committed to increasing spending from 2.3% to 2.5% – but has not set a date for hitting the figure.

Jones said the government would not commit to a deadline until it had completed its strategic defence review.

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The review – led by former Labour minister and Nato head George Robertson – is examining how the defence budget is spent. It is due to be completed in the spring.

Jones did not say if the 2.5% target would be met within the current Parliament which can run until 2029.

In their manifesto, the Conservatives said they wanted to get to 2.5% by 2030.

Asked if her party would accept cuts elsewhere in order to meet 2.5%, Dame Priti said there were “efficiencies” that could be made as well as changes around the “performance of the civil service”.

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She added that the government “could have done more in that Budget to put the pathway forward for 2.5% of GDP on defence”.

On Ukraine, former Labour minister Lord Peter Mandelson said: “Whatever happens to the fringes of Ukraine territory – and in that I don’t think anyone should be dictating to the Ukrainians what they do – what is sacrosanct is their freedom. That’s not up for grabs.”

He said the UK should work with the US to secure Ukraine’s freedom and its borders to ensure Russia “can’t invade again”.

He added that would be possible, not by offering Ukraine Nato membership, but by building “stronger, deeper” economic relationships with the country.

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There have been reports that Lord Mandelson could be appointed the UK’s new ambassador to the United States.

Asked if he was in the frame for the high-profile position, he said: “Nobody has spoken to me about this job.”

On whether he would be interested, he said he would be “very interested indeed in giving advice about trade to whoever is appointed”.

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PA Media

When Harold Wilson was Labour prime minister in the late 1960s, up to a third of people in England lived in a council house or flat.

But by the time Keir Starmer became prime minister in July this year, the proportion of people in England living in social housing had fallen to about 16% of the population – about four million.

About two million council-built properties have been sold to their tenants at significantly discounted prices under the Right To Buy (RTB) scheme since it was introduced by Margaret Thatcher’s Conservative government in the early 1980s.

Michael Heseltine described the advent of RTB as “laying the foundations of one of the most important social revolutions of the century”, but was selling off council houses more cheaply than new ones could be built simply laying the foundations of a housing crisis?

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Waiting lists

Historically, money raised from selling off council houses has not gone far towards building new ones – new ones desperately needed, considering about 1.3 million people are on waiting lists for them in England.

Across the north-west of England, for example, about 4,350 council houses have been sold off in the last 10 years, with the money made from the sales going towards building or buying just over 1,400 others, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

While the £336,612,000 raised from those sales may sound a reasonable sum, it works out on average at about £77,000 per house. And, generally, councils have not been allowed to keep the whole amount, instead having to hand a sizeable chunk back to the government.

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About 200,000 people are on waiting lists for social housing in the region.

While housing associations may have built homes, and there may have been schemes funded by cash from other government pots, the fact that the money raised from selling off homes is nowhere near enough to rebuild or buy like-for-like has been a long-standing concern.

And it would seem Labour deputy prime minister and minister for housing Angela Rayner – who famously bought her own council house in Stockport under RTB – has taken on board the views of RTB critics.

Rayner has said recently she may impose restrictions so that people who move into newly built council houses will not be able to buy them in the future.

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It is a decision that is likely to be welcomed by Labour politicians in regions where the need for social housing is arguably as great as ever, but the amount of it available is very low.

PA Media

The Labour metro-mayors of both Liverpool and Manchester regions have both said they want to see more social housing built in their regions.

In May, Andy Burnham, leader of Greater Manchester, called on the-then Conservative government to pause RTB on new builds after losing 500 social homes to the scheme in 2022.

He argued that if planned homes could be bought by their tenants, it would be “like trying to fill a bath without the plug in”.

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On Merseyside, virtually all former council housing stock was transferred to housing associations over the last two decades.

But metro mayor Steve Rotheram says registered social landlords (RSLs) have inherited some of the problems that came with RTB.

He says one Merseyside RSL had lost about a third of its homes through sales to tenants in the decade since the housing stock was transferred.

People who are tenants of RSLs can buy their homes under “preserved” RTB if they lived in their homes when the council owned them.

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And once someone has lived in an RSL property for three years, they can apply for the Right To Acquire.

Rotheram says cheaper borrowing rates for RSLs and a moratorium on sales would help boost growth in social housing.

“You are not going to build a lot of houses for someone to come along in three or four years and buy it below market value,” he says.

“How we deal with this is part of our growth plan going to the government, and we are now trying to see if we can work with [Rayner] to come up with proposals.”

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Blackpool Council’s cabinet member for economy and the built environment, Mark Smith, is clear that while the money generated from RTB sales is used to support various investments in housing, the RTB receipts his council receives are “not sufficient to replace lost social rent housing”.

And he says even with changes such as the government giving councils more flexibility to allow RTB receipts to be used alongside cash from other streams such as funds given by developers who get planning permission for private schemes, there is still some red tape in the way of using different types of funding together to build council housing.

“We do the best we can within the parameters of the policy as it exists currently but there is always room for improvement,” he says.

Under the new Labour government policies, councils and housing associations are being given “more freedom” to decide how to use their RTB money.

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Previously, only 50% of the money a council received from a sale could go towards building or buying a new house.

But in future councils will be able to use all that money, and put money received from private developers handed over as part of planning agreements into projects as well.

These deals, known as Section 106 agreements, see developers give money to councils to mitigate any negative impacts their private schemes might have on local communities or housing markets.

Sources within the social housing sector say that in the past the “policy has never achieved anything like a one-for-one replacement ratio”.

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“If it had then there would be a lot less concern about the policy,” one says.

“Yes, a Right To Buy home continues to be a home after it’s sold, but it contributes to a huge loss of social housing stock and contributes to housing waiting lists, or people having to live in unsuitable accommodation.”

‘Serious shortage’

The Local Government Association (LGA), which represents councils, says there is a “serious housing shortage in this country” and “record numbers of people living in temporary accommodation”.

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Adam Hug, the LGA’s housing spokesman, says: “While the Right To Buy can and has delivered home ownership for many the scheme in its current form does not work.

“Rising discounts, alongside other measures that restrict councils’ use of Right To Buy receipts, mean that the money raised from the sale of property is usually not sufficient to cover the building costs of replacing the property.

“We have long called for the removal of rules and restrictions which disincentivise local authorities from building social homes, at risk of losing them.

“Councils must be given the control, power and flexibility to use receipt monies in a way that works best for their local areas, which includes retaining 100 per cent of the receipts permanently.”

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‘Scandal’

In 2012, the Conservative-led government increased the discount a tenant could receive when buying their home.

Since coming to power, Labour has said the discount will be reduced to between £16,000 and £38,000, depending on the location – a significant reduction from the £136,000 discount currently available in London and the discount of just over £100,000 elsewhere.

Rayner, who bought her Stockport council house under a RTB discount in 2007 and sold it several years later for £48,000 more than she paid for it, said she wanted to see a “fairer” system.

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Her department says it is a “scandal” that only about one third of homes lost to RTB have been replaced since 2012, and that it was “working at pace to reverse the continued decline of social rented homes”.

But while the government stresses there are “no plans to abolish the RTB”, the “social revolution” Lord Heseltine heralded nearly 45 years ago is clearly facing a radical change to everything but its name.

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Thousands of federal bureaucrats have lived through one Donald Trump administration. Many are not sure they can or will survive a second.

POLITICO spoke with more than a dozen civil servants, political appointees under President Joe Biden and recently departed Biden administration staffers in the days since the presidential election was called for Trump, who were granted anonymity due to the sensitivity of the topic and the risk to their jobs. Many are bracing for a wave of departures from key federal agencies in the coming months, amid fears that the next president will gut their budgets, reverse their policy agendas and target them individually if they do not show sufficient loyalty. The result is likely to be a sizable brain drain from the federal workforce — something Trump may welcome.

“Last time Trump was in office, we were all in survival mode with a hope for an end date,” said one State Department official. “Now there is no light at the end of the tunnel.”

The former president and his allies are deeply distrustful of the executive branch bureaucracy and the more than 2 million civil servants who staff it — blaming a federal “deep state” for trying to undermine him in his first term and driving the impeachment efforts against him. As president, Trump named political appointees to various agencies with the purpose of cleaning house — and will again have the chance to nominate people for roughly 4,000 political jobs throughout the administration. In 2021, his White House launched an effort to make it easier to fire civil servants and replace them with political appointees, something he is expected to restart when he returns in January. He’s also threatened to move thousands of federal jobs outside D.C.

Trump-Vance Transition spokesperson Karoline Leavitt did not reply directly to a query about the future of the federal workforce, saying, via email, “President-Elect Trump will begin making decisions on who will serve in his second Administration soon. Those decisions will be announced when they are made.”

Trump’s policy agenda is also at odds with core priorities for a number of agencies under Biden.

Several of Biden’s political appointees at Department of Transportation headquarters near Washington’s Navy Yard were despondent at the prospect of a new Trump administration set on undoing much of their work over the past four years, including airline consumer protections and massive investments in infrastructure.

“There’s a lot of anxiety among Biden appointees, like myself, who need to find new jobs — and also among career staff who are worried about Trump trying to remove career civil servants who had a policymaking role,” a DOT official told POLITICO.

“I am glad that I am retiring soon. … EPA is toast,” said a staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency, whose efforts to fight climate change clash with Trump’s “drill, baby, drill” approach to energy policy.

A number of officials, however, are wrestling with the conflicting desire to stay in government and defend the mission of the agencies they work for.

“We do our best to make sure either administration does what’s legal,” said a Department of Homeland Security staffer in a legal office. “If I leave, I’d be replaced with an enabler.”

The alarm over Trump’s return is particularly palpable among national security officials, environmental agencies and the federal health agencies, who fear the president-elect will follow through on his pledge to let noted vaccine skeptic Robert F. Kennedy Jr. “go wild on health.”

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Trump reiterated that promise. “He’s going to help make America healthy again. … He wants to do some things, and we’re going to let him get to it,” Trump said.

On Wednesday, Kennedy made the rounds on radio and television, saying that he would not seek to halt vaccinations.

Still, one current staffer at the National Institutes of Health said concerns are building inside the research agency about the future of vaccine research in the next administration.

NIH Director Monica Bertagnolli seemed to hint at those fears in an email sent to agency staff Wednesday that was shared with POLITICO.

“With the 2024 election day now behind us, I want to acknowledge that change can leave us feeling uncertain,” she wrote.

“I do not want to dismiss those feelings, but I do want to remind everyone that throughout our 137-year history, the NIH mission has remained steadfast, and our staff committed to the important work of biomedical research in the service of public health.”

A former Food and Drug Administration official told POLITICO on Wednesday that Kennedy’s assertions that he would have heavy influence over health agencies during Trump’s second term is raising the risk of career staff departing the agency responsible for drug oversight and food safety.

“The agency personnel are concerned, especially in light of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s statements and his potential role at the agency,” said the former official. “The reality of that is something the agency has to grapple with.”

“They’re worried, they’ve been through transitions before so they clearly understand how to do that, but they read the news, the same as you and me,” said a separate former senior FDA official. “I think it’s a lot of RFK-driven stuff.”

Staffers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also fear that under Trump, the public health agency — so central to the Covid-19 response — has “a target on its back,” as one person who works with the agency said.

Republicans have outlined clear plans for changes to the CDC — including the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which includes ambitions to split the agency into two. (The Trump campaign has insisted that Project 2025 isn’t its official policy.) And many conservatives, including Trump’s former FDA commissioner, have argued that the CDC should narrow its scope to focus mainly on disease control.

“What is very clear is that in 2016, Trump was completely unprepared, and now he has a plan, and public health is right smack in the middle of it,” the person said.

A national security analyst who recently left the Biden administration shared similar fears and said having lived through a previous Trump administration, many civil servants are even more wary of working for a second one.

“People are sad and frightened. And what makes it worse is this time we know what is coming. It isn’t theoretical. It is real,” the analyst said.

“At State in particular, it is going hard to overstate how targeted people, career officers will be,” they said. “There will be no grace.”

Not everyone shared that bleak outlook. “I actually don’t see the freak-out yet, maybe it will come when the transition begins in earnest, but the folks I’ve talked to seem to have a pretty sober take that Trump’s victory means we carry out his policies,” said another State Department official. “If people disagree with those policies, nobody will hold anything against anyone that opts to leave.”

One Health and Human Services official who has worked under both Republican and Democratic administrations told POLITICO that while individual employees are freaking out about the election results, the overall vibe of her office this week is: “Business as usual. Keep on working. It is what it is.”

She is trying to find a glimmer of hope in the Trump administration’s mixed record on health care.

“There are sometimes weird synergies,” she said. “Like under the first Trump administration, Scott Gottlieb was a very strong tobacco control advocate, and the Center for Tobacco Products was actually able to do more than they could under the Obama administration.”

“So I’m asking myself: Are there pathways to work with people that you disagree with and despise?”

Michael Doyle, Kevin Bogardus and Hannah Northey contributed to this report.

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Donald Trump pledged in one of his final campaign speeches to work with Democratic mayors and governors if reelected. But just hours after the former president was projected to win back the White House, some blue-state leaders were actively plotting against him.

California Gov. Gavin Newsom, one of Trump’s fiercest critics, on Thursday called a special legislative session to funnel more resources toward the state’s legal defenses to preemptively combat Republican policies around immigration, the environment, LGBTQ+ rights and reproductive care.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letitia James — one of Trump’s most aggressive first-term adversaries — pledged to beef up coordination between their offices to “protect New Yorkers’ fundamental freedoms from any potential threats.”

And attorneys general across blue states are prepared to take Trump to court — just as their predecessors did hundreds of times during his first administration.

If Trump’s reelection represented a realignment in American politics, blue-state leaders are choosing to confront it with a return to form, resuming the counterweight roles they played during his first administration as their party reckons with a nationwide repudiation.

“We’ve been talking for months with attorneys general throughout the nation, preparing, planning, strategizing for the possibility of this day,” California Attorney General Rob Bonta said at a press conference in San Francisco on Thursday.

Trump’s two-year campaign to retake the White House — and polls that for months showed he could succeed — gave Democrats the lead time they lacked in 2016 to shore up their defenses against conservative policies. And they are using as a guide his campaign-trail calls for mass deportations and regulatory rollbacks, as well as Project 2025, the conservative blueprint for a Republican administration that Trump has distanced himself from but that dozens of his former administration officials had a hand in crafting.

Governors and lawmakers in several blue states have already passed laws bolstering reproductive rights since the fall of Roe and stockpiled the abortion pill mifepristone in response to further legal threats to reproductive care. While Trump has vowed to veto a national abortion ban, that’s hardly alleviated Democrats’ fears. And as he barreled toward a second term, they raced to address other areas of concern, pushing ballot measures to protect same-sex marriage, labor rights and other liberal causes.

Even as he briefly pledged in the closing days of his campaign to work across the aisle, Trump has also vowed to punish his political opponents — and many blue-state leaders are at the top of his list of adversaries.

And so Democratic governors and attorneys general who have spent months strategizing on how to protect their states’ progressive policies from a possible second Trump term are kicking those efforts into higher gear.

Some governors are discussing how to ensure that federal funding for state projects makes it to their coffers before Trump takes power, potentially with total Republican control of Congress, said one person who works in a Democratic governor’s office, granted anonymity to disclose private conversations. The discussions convey the concerns among some Democrats that Republicans could pause disbursements from, or even repeal, President Joe Biden’s signature programs, such as the CHIPS and Inflation Reduction acts.

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker also said Thursday that he has spoken with other Democratic governors since the election about how to best Trump-proof their states.

“There are many people whose lives and livelihoods are at risk, and there are many people who cried at the [election] result because they know what impact it may have on their families,” Pritzker said at a press conference Thursday.

He also delivered a warning: “You come for my people, you come through me.”

In California, where Democratic leaders became some of the de facto heads of the Trump resistance after his 2016 election, officials spent months working to shore up the state’s climate policies and disaster preparedness in anticipation of an antagonistic federal government even before Newsom called the special legislative session.

“The freedoms we hold dear in California are under attack,” Newsom, who Trump regularly refers to as “New-scum,” declared in a statement. “And we won’t sit idle.”

In New York, Hochul and James created the Empire State Freedom Initiative, a program that is meant to address “policy and regulatory threats” from the incoming Trump administration, including against reproductive and LGBTQ+ rights, as well as gun safety and environmental justice. The New York governor also signaled she will propose legislation as well as take executive action in response to Trump’s victory, but did not provide specifics.

“New York will remain a bastion for freedom and rule of law,” Hochul said. “I’ll do everything in my power to ensure that New York remains a bastion from efforts where those rights are being denied in other states.”

James could have an outsize impact on how Trump’s policies trickle down to New York. The Democrat, who was first elected in 2018, sued Trump’s real estate business for fraud. She won a $450 million judgment, which is being appealed.

Meanwhile, state prosecutors who often served as the first line of defense against Trump’s most controversial executive orders in his last term — banding together to try to block his travel restrictions from some Muslim-majority countries, challenge his plans to roll back vehicle emissions standards, and more — have long been preparing to again serve as a legal bulwark.

In California, state lawyers have meticulously prepared for Trump’s return — down to crafting draft briefings, weighing specific legal arguments and debating favorable litigation venues, Bonta, the attorney general, told POLITICO.

“If he comes into office and he follows the law and he doesn’t violate the constitution and he doesn’t violate other important laws, like the Administrative Procedure Act he violated all the time last time, then there’s nothing for us to do,” Bonta said. “But if he violates the law, as he has said he would, as Project 2025 says he will, then we are ready. … We have gone down to the detail of: What court do we file in?”

In New Jersey, state Attorney General Matt Platkin cited mass deportations, an “aggressive reading of the Comstock Act” to potentially impose an abortion ban and “gutting clean water protection” as potential sources of litigation.

“If you look at the things that have been said by the president and his associates during the campaign, … if you read Project 2025, there are proposals that are clearly unlawful and that would undermine the rights of our residents,” Platkin said in an interview.

And in Massachusetts, first-term Attorney General Andrea Campbell’s office has been preparing to act against threats to reproductive, LGBTQ+ and immigrants’ rights and student loan-forgiveness programs, among other areas.

In response to a request for comment, Trump’s team said in a statement: “The American people re-elected President Trump by a resounding margin giving him a mandate to implement the promises he made on the campaign trail. He will deliver.”

Democrats’ rush to reform their resistance to Trump is partly self-serving. Governors and state prosecutors who took on Trump during his first term burnished their national profiles in the process.

In some cases they were able to parlay their opposition into higher office: Massachusetts’ Maura Healey leveraged her lawsuits against Trump as attorney general to help win the governorship in 2022; California’s Xavier Becerra, the former state attorney general, is now the Biden administration’s Health and Human Services secretary and is eyeing a run for governor. And for Democrats who’ve been chafing for a chance to get off the party’s deep bench, a second Trump term presents a fresh opportunity for a potentially star-making turn ahead of an open 2028 presidential primary.

That jockeying has in some ways already begun. Several blue-state leaders held press conferences on Wednesday and Thursday to reassure anxious constituents that doubled as ways to establish themselves as leaders in the anti-Trump fight. On Wednesday, Healey was on MSNBC vowing that state police would not be involved in carrying out the mass deportations Trump has promised, seizing a national platform in a way she rarely has since challenging Trump in the courtroom as attorney general.

But there was some acknowledgment among top city and state Democrats that they would have to find ways to work with Trump, too — mainly on infrastructure projects which are often reliant on massive amounts of federal funding.

“If it’s contrary to our values, we will fight to the death,” New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy said during a Wednesday press conference about the election results. “If there’s an opportunity for common ground, we will seize that as fast as anybody.”

New York City Mayor Eric Adams similarly pledged to find ways to partner with the incoming administration, naming infrastructure as a target area for future collaboration.

“I communicated with the president yesterday to state that there are many issues here in the city that we want to work together with the administration to address,” Adams said during a news conference Thursday. “The city must move forward.”

Holly Otterbein, Melanie Mason, Nick Reisman, Daniel Han, Maya Kaufman, Shia Kapos and Kelly Garrity contributed to this report.

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BBC

The events surrounding Michael McMonagle’s departure from Sinn Féin have brought an immense amount of scrutiny to the party and its ability to handle child safeguarding issues.

The former party press officer has now been sentenced to 18 months after pleading guilty to a series of sex offences.

The offences occurred on various dates between May 2020 and August 2021when McMonagle was employed by the party.

Since then, Sinn Féin politicians have been pushed to explain how the party dealt with this case.

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During the period in question McMonagle was directly employed in a full-time position by Michelle O’Neill and then Jemma Dolan and paid through the staffing allowance granted to MLAs by the Northern Ireland Assembly.

McMonagle was employed by O’Neill, who was at the time deputy first minister, from 2 March 2020 to 31 May 2020, and then by Dolan from 1 June 2020 to 8 July 2022.

In a previous mandate, McMonagle was employed jointly by former Sinn Féin MLAs Daithi McKay and Mitchel McLaughlin in a full-time position from 6 May 2014 to 31 October 2014.

He also worked as press officer for the party in the north west and at Westminster.

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NI Assembly

In August of 2021 McMonagle was arrested by the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) and the next day he informed the party of this and he was immediately suspended from his role.

About a year later in June of 2022, his employment with Sinn Féin was terminated.

In September of 2022 McMonagle got a job with the British Heart Foundation using references provided by Sinn Féin press officers Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley.

The charity said neither reference had mentioned the ongoing police investigation nor McMonagle’s suspension from his previous employment.

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It was when these references came to light at end of September this year that people started to ask questions of Sinn Féin.

When the references they had written were revealed, Seán Mag Uidhir and Caolán McGinley resigned from the party.

Stormont’s Economy Minister Conor Murphy said it was “inexplicable” the references were provided and Sinn Féin had only became aware of them the previous week.

“No one was informed, no permission was sought, no advice was sought in relation to dealing with it,” he said.

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Murphy was asked by the BBC why the party had not informed the British Heart Foundation of what it knew about McMonagle.

“Seriously, the BBC asking me these types of questions,” he responded.

He added: “We have a legal responsibility not to interfere with the police investigation.”

Meanwhile, Michelle O’Neill denied knowing that McMonagle had taken up a new job with the charity and said there were lessons in terms of “due diligence for an employer when they take on an employee”.

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Sinn Féin’s stance was that it did not know about the references, did not know about his new job, that it was up to the British Heart Foundation to vet their employees and that it could not have alerted the charity to anything without risking prejudicing the case against McMonagle.

Then at the beginning of October, the chief constable of the PSNI Chief Constable said that warning a charity about a potential police investigation into McMonagle would not have prejudiced the investigation, contradicting Conor Murphy.

Murphy later said he was “happy to accept” the chief constable’s view.

Later that month a photo emerged showing Michelle O’Neill and McMonagle attending the same event in Stormont’s Great Hall while he was working for the British Heart Foundation.

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He carried the charity’s banner as they entered Parliament Buildings and mingled inside taking videos for the charity.

Ulster Unionist Party assembly member Doug Beattie said he found it “hard to believe” that O’Neill “didn’t notice her former colleague” at the Stormont event.

O’Neill maintains that she did not.

And then the British Heart Foundation released a statement.

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The charity said that their head, Fearghal McKinney, had a phone call with O’Neill in which she “agreed recent comments by her and party colleagues questioning the BHF’s due diligence process were unhelpful”.

Additionally, the charity said it told a senior Sinn Féin HR official about the McMonagle references in August 2023, contradicting statements made by Murphy and O’Neill.

O’Neill confirmed this and said the contact between the charity and Sinn Féin’s HR department was not brought to the attention of the party’s leadership at the time.

She described this as “a serious omission”.

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Reuters

So why did so much of what senior Sinn Féin figures initially said about how the party handled the issue change?

Speaking in the Dáil on 15 October, Sinn Féin president Mary Lou McDonald that the case has highlighted “issues and shortcomings” in the party’s internal procedures.

She said she has ordered “a complete overhaul of governance procedures” in the party.

“We will do everything necessary to ensure that an incident like this never arises again,” she said.

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McDonald said that this overhaul would “clarify for the avoidance of doubt, for any member of staff or any member of the party as regards procedures, what needs to be communicated and flagged and to whom”.

BBC News NI offered Sinn Féin the opportunity to give a comment for this article.

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