Archive for category: VOX

Shaneé Benjamin for Vox

The collapse of America’s middle class crushed department stores. Amazon and the pandemic are the final blows.

In a New Jersey suburb seven miles west of Midtown Manhattan, the American Dream is on shaky ground.

The Dream in question isn’t the mythological notion that upward social mobility is within reach for all hardworking Americans. It’s a $5 billion, 3 million-square-foot shopping and entertainment complex in East Rutherford featuring an indoor ski slope, an ice-skating rink, and a Nickelodeon-branded amusement park. The complex finally opened last fall, but it’s now facing huge new challenges.

The development’s complicated 17-year history, marked by ownership changes, false starts, and broken promises, had already put American Dream in a precarious situation. The Covid-19 pandemic hitting in March made things much worse. Whether the mall makes it in the long term will hinge in part on how it deals with the collapse of three of the marquee department stores that were to anchor the complex and draw foot traffic — Barneys New York, Lord & Taylor, and Century 21 — which all have gone bankrupt and closed, or are planning to close all their stores in the US.

Around 100 storefronts in American Dream opened their doors to customers in October and November, but the complex’s future is not guaranteed. Its owners, Triple Five Group, missed several mortgage payments this summer, and it’s not clear who might fill the enormous holes left by the three fallen department store chains, or which other retail tenants will opt out of their leases now that the development is missing three of its anchors.

While the story of American Dream is unique in many ways, its struggles are emblematic of the bleak future facing many US malls and department stores — whose destinies have long been intertwined. The downfall of these onetime crown jewels of retail will have meaningful impacts on the Americans who work for them and the communities they’ve long called home.

More than half of all mall-based department stores will close by the end of 2021

Across the US, department stores are shrinking or shuttering altogether. In 2011, US department stores employed 1.2 million employees across 8,600 stores, according to estimates from the research firm IBISWorld. But in 2020, there are now fewer than 700,000 employees in the sector, working across just over 6,000 locations.

The reasons for the struggles are both shared and unique. Since the Great Recession began in late 2007, the vast majority of income growth in the US has gone to high-income households, squeezing middle-class households and altering where they spend money. As a result, chains that sell brands at sharp discounts like TJ Maxx, Ross, and Dollar General have become more popular, siphoning away shoppers from full-price department stores like Macy’s and JC Penney that were designed to cater to a stronger middle class of yesteryear.

Department stores are also facing the reality that they are no longer the main way most shoppers discover or access new brands — which was once perhaps their main appeal as onetime innovators. Consumer brands have increasingly become focused on building connections with customers through their own stores, websites, social media platforms, and other online-only marketplaces.

All the while, department stores’ contraction is upending local labor markets and the communities they called home. And rock bottom is not even here yet. More than half of all mall-based department stores will close by the end of 2021, according to estimates by Green Street Advisors, a commercial property research firm. And that will have a massive impact on malls; as of January, department stores accounted for nearly one out of every three square feet in malls.

“The department store genre has been taking the great American shopping mall down with it, slowly but inevitably,” said Mark Cohen, the director of retail studies at Columbia University who was previously the CEO of multiple department store chains in the US and Canada.

What happens when an entire sector of retail, one that employs more than half a million people, is in free fall — and is slowing or dragging down shopping malls like American Dream with it? And what becomes of the local communities across the country whose social identities and local economies rested on, at least in part, now-fallen department stores and the malls they buttressed? We’re about to find out.

What’s killing the department store

For much of the past century, US department store chains played an important role in many Americans’ lives and an innovative role in the retail sector.

For the American middle class of the 20th century, department stores helped shape what successfully living the American dream looked like. These stores were often an entry point into fashion and home furnishing trends once reserved for only the wealthiest, since they offered large selections of name brands at affordable prices all under one roof — first in big cities, and then following population exoduses to the suburbs. And as the main attractions for malls in the suburban US, they played a foundational role in the idea of shopping as a social activity in the second half of the 20th century.

Department store employees also had it pretty good, for a time. The sector was welcoming to women salespeople, providing a path to certain corporate roles for those who found success, according to the book From Main Street to Mall: The Rise and Fall of the American Department Store. A successful salesperson working in one of these stores, especially before large chains came to dominate the sector, could make a career of their role, providing for their family, no college degree needed. Those days are mostly long gone.

Since the Great Recession began in 2007, the middle 40 percent of the US saw its income shrink

But over the past two decades, a confluence of other factors has placed several giants at death’s door and put even the most innovative in a precarious situation. These factors were both external and internal: Amazon led a boom in online shopping, and many brands that once relied on department stores began selling directly to customers online and in their own stores. Meanwhile, many department store chains made the wrong bets, investing more heavily in store expansion while underinvesting in merchandise differentiation and e-commerce strategies.

But perhaps most critically for the chains targeting the middle class — think Macy’s, JC Penney, and Bon-Ton — this category of households has been struggling since the Great Recession began in 2007. According to a 2018 study from the consulting firm Deloitte, “the middle 40 percent” of the country saw its income shrink in the previous decade, while more than $8 out of every $10 in income growth nationwide went to high-income households. As a result, discount chains that sell name brands at a bargain — like TJ Maxx and Ross stores — became much more attractive to middle-class shoppers than department stores selling at full price. The treasure-hunting aspect of stores like TJ Maxx and Home Goods also added to their appeal over many of their department store competitors. Macy’s, the largest traditional department store in the country, said earlier this year that it planned to close 125 of its 800-plus stores — and that was before the pandemic.

“Sears was built for [the] middle-class mall goer,” Web Smith, the founder of the commerce and media newsletter 2PM, wrote in the wake of Sears’ 2018 bankruptcy. “It’s been the thesis of 2PM, Inc. that retailers who’ve built their businesses for this American demo will continue to struggle until the American middle class rebounds.”

But department stores catering to wealthier customers have failed, too. In addition to Sears and JC Penney, higher-end stores Barneys New York, Lord & Taylor, and Neiman Marcus have all filed for bankruptcy in the past two years. Even Nordstrom, viewed by industry insiders as the most progressive traditional department store chain, is facing significant headwinds. While overall US e-commerce sales increased 45 percent year over year from April to June as pandemic shutdowns pushed more shoppers online, Nordstrom registered just 20 percent growth in online sales.

As more Americans came online and as social media platforms rose in popularity, brands started establishing direct relationships online and through their own stores, which chipped away at their reliance on department stores for finding customers. For a while, department stores still could provide a way to reach mostly older consumers who preferred in-person shopping or others who didn’t have internet access, but the chains became more complementary for popular brands rather than remaining a crucial sales channel.

More mid-priced brands such as Levi’s and Adidas started selling on Amazon and other online marketplaces as department stores targeting the middle class began to struggle, meaning chains like Macy’s now had serious online competition, too. And since Amazon and other top online retailers are in many cases more convenient than visiting a large store where salespeople are trained and paid less than they once were, department store advantages further diminished.

Finally, some private equity companies — investment firms that buy up struggling companies in part by saddling them with debt — have taken aim at the sector, and the debt associated with their takeovers has hastened the demise of some department store chains like Neiman Marcus. The Dallas-based luxury chain filed for bankruptcy earlier this year under crushing debt from its PE owner.

The chain was also late to e-commerce — when it finally started getting aggressive around 2014, introducing free shipping and returns to better compete with Nordstrom, it didn’t work and instead crimped its profits. The company’s bottom line was also hurt by some of the biggest brands it sells moving from a wholesale model to a more flexible and lower-risk model that was less profitable for Neiman Marcus. While a private equity owner didn’t force these moves, the fallout from these crises coupled with a heavy debt burden was a recipe for disaster.

How the decline of department stores is reshaping communities

While the pandemic has accelerated contraction of the department store industry, the sector has been in a slow descent for decades. And the communities they call home, which experienced the upside of their presence during the golden years, are now faced with a series of cascading challenges.

“First they become an eyesore; it’s aesthetically damaging,” said Vicki Howard, the author of From Main Street to Mall. “Second, there’s the jobs. … Third, it impacts the consumers themselves that have turned to that area for leisure activities, for places to go in the winter, to go with their kids.”

“It’s quite a big economic and social and cultural phenomenon to have these department stores closing. … They occupy such a physical place as well as a social space.”

“It’s quite a big economic and social and cultural phenomenon to have these department stores closing — and malls also,” she added. “They occupy such a physical place as well as a social space.”

The decline of department stores and the malls they supported has required local governments to get creative. In Bartlesville, Oklahoma, a city of 36,000 near the border of Kansas, local officials have embraced discount chains as the local Washington Park Mall has struggled. The city provided $1.5 million in incentives in 2016 to develop an outdoor shopping center with popular discount retailers TJ Maxx and Ross to help offset the longtime troubles of the mall, once anchored by the department stores Sears, JC Penney, and Dillard’s. (Sears and JC Penney both closed their stores there in recent years, and Dillard’s recently turned its mall location into a clearance store.)

“We’ve been exceedingly fortunate to have replaced the mall’s legacy brands with up-and-coming brands better aligned with today’s consumer preferences,” David Wood, Bartlesville’s economic development chief, told Recode in an email.

The city also provided a $200,000 incentive to divide an old Kmart into five smaller retail establishments, including outlet stores Ollie’s and Burkes Outlet, as well as a Dollar Tree store. The new retail additions, Wood added, “have largely offset the employment loss — with rising sales tax collections, too.” Taxable physical retail sales dropped in 2015 and 2016 in Bartlesville but grew modestly in 2018 and 2019. Of course, department store jobs are different from discount chain jobs, which have lower average hourly pay and rarely offer sales commissions.

In Madison, Wisconsin, local city-planning officials are looking ahead to a possible future where their city won’t have malls anchored by department stores. They have been discussing potential redevelopment plans for the areas around the community’s struggling East Towne Mall and West Towne Mall since 2018, and the discussions took on added significance when the malls’ owner filed for bankruptcy in early November.

Several of the malls’ anchor tenants have closed up shop in the past few years, including the department store chains Boston Store and Sears. While the Madison economy is diverse outside of retail, with a large research university and state government offices calling the city home, city planners believe it is critical to start discussing potential redevelopment plans, whether or not the mall’s owner ends up selling or gets on board with redevelopment, because by the time large commercial properties are in true distress, the ripple effects can be dangerous.

“Longer-term vacancies can sometimes snowball and have the effect of spreading and negatively impacting surrounding areas,” said Ben Zeller, a city planner for Madison.

Madison officials have been studying other mall redevelopment plans around the country for ideas about what to do. If redevelopment of these Madison malls does end up happening and looks anything like projects in other communities that city planners are studying, the retail presence would likely be downsized and supplemented by new residential buildings and non-retail employers. Zeller himself lives in an apartment building built on a former mall parking lot in another part of Madison.

At a high level, Zeller told Recode that such redevelopment plans are complex, which means they take time: 15 to 20 years or longer to complete. One challenge involves the fragmented ownership structure of large mall properties, where the main mall may be owned by one business and the department store anchors and restaurants could be owned by separate entities. Another challenge involves restructuring the public street network around malls.

“It’s very difficult to have a future neighborhood created when there are blocks [in existing mall developments] that are 100 to 200 acres as opposed to a normal city block,” he added. Residential neighborhoods typically need shorter street connections to make public transportation and walking viable.

Zeller added that the city wants to make sure that, no matter who buys in, “we ultimately end up with a connected public street network, adequate parkland to serve new residential uses, integrated transit, an improved bike network, and other components of complete neighborhoods.”

In short, communities can rebound from department store chain failures — and the ripple effect on malls — if they have the time and resources to plan two decades into the future like Madison is starting to. But not every American community does.

What it means for the people who depend on retail jobs

While some of the evolution that the department store sector has gone through marked natural generational shifts in consumer behavior, the industry’s failures have had a significant impact for those who work in retail, extinguishing the idea of retail sales positions as careers — which in the 20th century was an advantage for department stores.

“It’s a negative cycle. If you have less career-oriented employees and higher turnover, you invest less in those employees,” said Jason Goldberg, the chief commerce strategy officer at the global advertising holding company Publicis. “It creates this vicious cycle and then you can’t recruit good employees. They were turned from advisers and very relationship-based salespeople into cashiers.”

With few exceptions, the idea of a department store sales job being a career hasn’t been a reality for decades. In the mid-1900s, they could be steady, family-supporting jobs with fixed schedules. But in the decades following the birth of big-box retailers Walmart, Kmart, and Target — all in 1962 — retail wages began dropping as traditional chains chased the lower-paying labor models of the new discount retailers.

So where are department store employees going? In the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, more started working in discount chains like Dollar General.

“I would have to guess that by 1980 it was not likely that a single-wage earner could support a family while working on the selling floor of a retail store,” said Cohen, the Columbia professor and former department store executive.

Yes, there are still top salespeople at chains like Nordstrom or Neiman Marcus who might pull in six figures, but they are the few exceptions to the rule.

So where are department store employees going as their employers cut jobs, close stores, or go bankrupt? In the five-year period from 2015 to 2019, more started working in discount chains. The category of the retail industry that includes dollar stores like Dollar General jumped into the Top 5 categories of employment that attracted workers who had recently left or were laid off from a department store job. (This job transition data was based on a Brookings Institution analysis of current population survey public-use microdata provided to Recode by Chad Shearer, a former senior research associate at the think tank who is now an economic development consultant.)

That may not be a great thing, as least as it relates to employee earnings. While Dollar General’s stock price has nearly tripled over the past five years, its front-line employees don’t see much of that enrichment. Average hourly base pay at Dollar General is $9, according to the job review site Glassdoor, compared to $11 at Macy’s.

The rise of e-commerce can be seen in this job movement data, too. During the same five-year period, if you combine the “electronic shopping” and “warehousing” job sectors (which both include e-commerce companies) into one category of employment, the combined sector moves into the Top 10 for industries where employees who had recently left department store roles went to work next. It’s possible e-commerce employers should rank even higher in reality, since many e-commerce warehouse employees are technically hired by third-party temporary employment firms.

There are trade-offs to this shift. On the one hand, Amazon warehouse employees in the US make a base wage of $15 an hour, which is a higher base pay than most entry-level department store jobs. But the work is often much more physical in nature than a retail job, requiring workers to pick or stow hundreds of items per hour at a rapid pace and to be able to lift up to 50 pounds of goods. The reality is that when it comes to finding a job in 2020, Amazon and Walmart — already the two biggest private-sector employers in the US — are the retailers offering work. While so many industries have contracted, they’ve added hundreds of thousands of new job openings this year alone. And as department stores continue to cut jobs, the largest players in the new retail economy capture more power in the labor market.

How to rebuild from department stores’ ruins

There is no silver bullet for US department stores to immediately start thriving again, so the best many can do is simply try to adapt and survive. For chains that still have a nationwide presence — like Macy’s or Nordstrom — that means fewer large, full-price stores and more investment in e-commerce sales, potentially supplemented by smaller pickup points for online orders to offset expensive shipping costs. Macy’s executives have also said the company plans to test smaller stores that aren’t attached to malls in an effort to unhitch their destiny from struggling regional malls built for a weakening American middle class.

As department stores fight their uphill battles, they are being replaced by competition that can provide better prices, selection, or convenience to shoppers of all wealth levels

As these chains fight their uphill battles, they are being replaced by a bevy of options that can provide better prices, selection, or convenience to shoppers of all wealth levels. The best discount chains, for example, are still thriving a decade after the Great Recession ended. Even without a strong e-commerce presence, the parent company of TJ Maxx, Marshalls, and Home Goods is moving steadily through the pandemic, with a stock price equal to what it was before Covid-19 hit the US in March. And Dollar General’s stock price hit an all-time high in October; the company is now worth nearly $53 billion.

Brands that sell apparel and cosmetics — key product categories for many department store chains — continue to sell more goods directly to shoppers through their own stores and websites rather than through department store chains. This direct connection gives brands — whether they’re established or new startups — more control over how their goods are displayed, more information about who their customers are, and often better profit margins. Nike, for example, stopped selling through department stores Belk and Dillard’s earlier this year and is no longer available at the online retailer Zappos. Under Armour announced it would cut its wholesale partners in North America by 2,000 to 3,000 stores. New online retailers that attract digital-savvy consumers and, in turn, more brands — like Stitch Fix, Rent the Runway, The RealReal, and ThredUp — were also stealing market share from department stores pre-pandemic.

But Amazon continues to be the titan of the modern retail world. It’s at least seven times bigger than No. 2 Walmart in e-commerce, and it’s continuing to invest in beefing up its physical store presence as well. While the online giant’s direct impact on department stores was minimal for much of its history, things have changed in recent years. Amazon is still not a high-end fashion destination, but it is absolutely a place where a majority of Americans are willing to buy footwear, casual clothing, or basics like underwear and socks. In April, the retail research firm Coresight said that more than 70 percent of apparel shoppers bought clothing or footwear on Amazon in the prior 12 months — an increase of 10 percentage points from 2019 and 25 percentage points from 2018. At the weakest moment for department stores, Amazon is becoming a more powerful direct competitor.

Taken together, the future for department stores is bleak, and for many of the malls they anchor. Yes, the US has too many retail stores — 40 percent more retail square feet per person than No. 2 Canada — and too many subpar malls, considering current shopping trends. Yes, the retailers courting business away from department stores are providing superior products, prices, or experiences that are resonating better with shoppers. Yes, it is normal in capitalism for industry categories to fall while others rise.

But the communities across the country that depended on these stores and malls as job creators will have to get creative to rebuild around their ruins. And the Americans who once saw a department store sales job as a potential career, or at least an entry path to a better-paying retail corporate job, now face a new reality: Many of the biggest retailers hiring today — discount chains and e-commerce giants — are offering less pay, or perhaps better pay but less personable and more grueling work.

Even if you could snap your fingers and return this retail sector to glory, it wouldn’t solve the key societal and macroeconomic problems connected to its decline. While the median US household brought in 48 percent more income in 2018 than in 1970, the vast majority of those gains happened prior to 2000. Along the way, the middle class’s income share — which many of the biggest department store chains catered to — has shrunk by 19 percentage points as the rich keep getting richer. In turn, most shoppers value discounts above all else — who can blame them? And for those who can afford it, the convenience of Amazon Prime delivery and its endless virtual shelves of merchandise is very difficult to beat. If the American dream of department stores wasn’t fully extinguished before 2020, the year of the pandemic will make sure it is.

Miss Navajo Nation Shaandiin P. Parrish distributes food, water, and other supplies to Navajo families on May 27, 2020 in Huerfano on the Navajo Nation Reservation, New Mexico. | Sharon Chischilly/Getty Images

Novelist Tommy Orange on whether racial justice protests and Covid-19 disparities bring a new perspective to the holiday.

The myth of Thanksgiving, a tale of a peacemaking repast between white colonizers and Native Americans, has long been debunked for its historical inaccuracies. But to reckon with the holiday is to understand how it helped set off a painful history of trauma — massacres, abuse, and negligence — that Native Americans still carry 400 years later.

In his 2018 novel There There, a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, Tommy Orange tells the story of the challenges Native Americans, especially those who live in cities, continue to face. He connects the characters’ journeys of cultural and self-discovery through the lens of generational trauma; the book’s prologue captures the gruesome history of Thanksgiving and Indigenous erasure, from the forced removal of Native American communities from their ancestral lands to current instances of cultural appropriation.

Today, much of the truth of Native American history is still left out of the country’s education system. Meanwhile, Indigenous affairs are minimally covered in the media. This is despite a year that has asked for reflection and action in terms of reexamining the country’s racist past — protests for racial justice swept the country this summer, and the Covid-19 pandemic has disproportionately affected Indigenous communities and other communities of color. That many American families are still planning to gather this Thanksgiving, despite the risks to the most vulnerable in our communities, is a flashback for many to white settlers spreading deadly diseases that diminished Native populations.

“If Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude and a communal sense of being together, if we can think that way as a country, Covid-19 is one of the lessons where we can learn to think of other people and not ourselves first,” Orange told Vox. “That would be my biggest hope. But I don’t know how much of that is happening.”

I talked to Orange about self-reflection during a time of racial reckoning, why Thanksgiving is still a widely celebrated holiday, and the upcoming sequel to his novel. Our interview has been edited and condensed.

Rachel Ramirez

In your book There There, the prologue speaks to the true history of Thanksgiving. How should that excerpt, plus the overall message of your book — the generational trauma Native Americans face in their daily lives — translate to people’s understanding of Thanksgiving in relation to Native Americans today?

Tommy Orange

My son’s 9, and we’ve seen him go through public school, and we could see the warning signs and the way they were going to teach Thanksgiving and what it means historically. It’s indoctrination. Creepy is the way I feel about the way the lie is taught as if it’s the truth. We’re still so far from acknowledging something that seems basic to so many of us. So we just pulled him out of school the first year for the whole week, because we didn’t want him to have to interface with that.

For my son, the next three years, we brought up a Native guy from Oakland who powwow dances, he sings and he drums, and his family dances. He had the kids ask questions about Native culture. He was able to, in a really compassionate way, address a lot of these misunderstandings and the way the general population thinks of Native people — a really monolithic version of what being native is.

Knopf

In the book, I was just trying to bring something up that has to do with the way we look at history. Americans didn’t care about Thanksgiving until Abraham Lincoln kind of breathed life back into it in order to mend the nation during the Civil War, to give us something to celebrate together. It could be a really cool opportunity for us to do the same thing now, around another civil discord, Civil War-feeling moment in the country with how divided we are — for us to leave Thanksgiving in the same spirits together and decide it’s a stupid American holiday that is really hurtful to a lot of people and was never founded in anything patriotic or true.

Rachel Ramirez

How do you usually spend the holiday week?

Tommy Orange

Well, I grew up celebrating it. My dad didn’t have any problems with it. My dad wasn’t an activist or overtly political in that way. He’s thoroughly a Democrat and very distrustful of the government, but it’s a really easy holiday to celebrate, because you get to eat great food and hang out with your family. Nobody likes to hate on Thanksgiving, because everyone kind of loves it for those good reasons.

But I stopped celebrating it in the past 10 years, and it’s a struggle with in-laws who don’t understand discontinuing wanting to celebrate it. So it’s always kind of an awkward time, but I think it’s really easy this year because of the pandemic. In the past, we’ve made a point to not do anything in particular, just enjoy the day off — including not supporting the Thanksgiving industry, which is buying all the Thanksgiving food, which is one of the many things that continues to support it as a holiday. We’ve gone to the movies different years. We’ve, like I said, just enjoyed the day together.

Rachel Ramirez

With the protests this summer, and the racial reckoning America is slowly having, how do you think the current climate will inform the holiday this year?

Tommy Orange

Right now, the way it feels to me is it’s fallen beyond surreal into absurd. People are holding on so tightly to their traditions under the guise of patriotism, even willing to die from it. I would hope that a lot is going to change because of what’s come out in 2020. I would hope that … [amid] the sort of economic collapse like the Great Depression, that social change will happen after these devastating historical moments. I’m still holding my breath about a lot, waiting to see what will happen. I’m pretty fatigued.

I can’t say that I’m hopeful that this will mean people will rethink Thanksgiving and Native history. I don’t feel like I’m at a place where I’m allowing myself to hope like that. But I do feel like with all the awareness that’s come up in 2020, for some people, it’s an easy “cancel Thanksgiving” answer. Though I don’t think there is enough progress to be noted, and I’m not trying to be completely cynical. It’s just when we’re divided as we are as a country, and when you still have the people in power that are sort of under the guise of this tradition and patriotism and noble country, it’s hard to feel anything but cynicism.

Rachel Ramirez

How should people take this time to reflect and reexamine the brutal history surrounding Thanksgiving?

Tommy Orange

I’m going to sound cynical again, but anybody who’s taking the time to reflect probably already did enough of reflection this year — if not many, many years before — and is not actively celebrating it in a problematic way that you would need reflection to change. And anybody who does not get into their reflective state, because of what this all means, they don’t give a shit. They’re flying across the country during a pandemic to be patriotic. They’re going to gorge themselves on turkey and gravy.

This is a side of the country I can’t really understand. So I trust that people who are already reflective aren’t doing it in a disrespectful or stupid way, and the people that do will just continue to do that. I don’t see a lot of movement from the other side for this to be an opportunity for them to change their thinking. It feels really hard to reach across and make that kind of gesture during this time.

Rachel Ramirez

Like you said, many American families will be gathering for the holiday, despite health officials’ warnings not to. Meanwhile, Covid-19 is still a major issue disproportionately impacting Indian Country. Can you speak on how historical and current injustices have left Native communities vulnerable in the pandemic and how people can bring light to this?

Tommy Orange

The invisibility of Native issues seems to be a constant. The way that people are thinking about taking the risks — considering the numbers of who it’s affecting more and considering overloading hospitals and affecting people who need medical care and older, vulnerable people — the opportunity to think about vulnerable people in a communal way, it’s really anti-American because we’re so individualistic. Me, me, me and now, now, now. I mean, if Thanksgiving is a time of gratitude and a communal sense of being together, if we can think that way as a country, Covid-19 is one of the lessons where we can learn to think of other people and not ourselves first. That would be my biggest hope. But I don’t know how much of that is happening.

It would be great if this just didn’t become a superspreader event. It’s not just them that’s going to be affected, it’s overloaded hospitals, and it’s going to affect other people.

Rachel Ramirez

Despite the pandemic, Native people turned out this election and were key in swing states like Arizona. How do you see the tribal nations’ relationship with the upcoming Biden administration?

Tommy Orange

Well, it’s good to hear during Joe Biden and Kamala Harris’s speech even just the naming of Native Americans. Sometimes we get ignored, so it was good to hear us acknowledged. And I would hope that with Biden’s language around making the Cabinet and the administration look the way the country does — we are a big part of the country’s story, its narrative, its origins, and its present. We’re a smaller number than a lot of other minorities, but we’re an important part of the country. I would hope that moving forward, we could be included more than we had been.

Rachel Ramirez

What are you working on right now? What’s been keeping you busy?

Tommy Orange

I’m working on a sequel to There There. It’s supposed to come out in 2022, hopefully earlier in 2022 than later. So I’ve been deeply involved in getting that into as good shape as I can. The book goes into more history and also the aftermath of the powwow. It’s called Wandering Stars.

Trump, in a dark suit, white shirt, red tie, and red Make America Great Again baseball cap, is framed against a bright blue sky. His fists are up as if he is boxing.

President Donald Trump raises his fists as he leaves an October rally in Arizona. | Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

The president called some RINOs, as his legal strategy was criticized by friends and foes alike.

President Donald Trump battled members of his own party this weekend, as his critics — and even some allies — called upon him to accept the results of the presidential election.

Following his loss of a major lawsuit seeking to overturn Pennsylvania’s results on Saturday, several prominent Republican leaders gave interviews on Sunday suggesting that it was time for Trump to consider conceding.

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, who has been critical of Trump in the past, said on CNN’s State of the Union that Trump’s behavior has been embarrassing.

“We were the most respected country with respect to elections,” Hogan said. “And now, we’re beginning to look like we’re a banana republic. It’s time for them to stop the nonsense. It just gets more bizarre every single day.”

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, says he is “embarrassed that more people in the party aren’t speaking up” regarding President Trumps’ refusal to concede https://t.co/jw5Aybp5N5 #CNNSOTU pic.twitter.com/wFNFsPP7bJ

— State of the Union (@CNNSotu) November 22, 2020

Also on State of the Union on Sunday, John Bolton — the former White House national security adviser who was ousted acrimoniously in September 2019 — called Trump’s behavior “inexcusable” and likened it to “throwing rocks through windows.”

“We need all of our leaders to come out and say, ‘The election is over,’” he said. “We’re not talking about an abstract right for Trump to use his legal remedies. We’ve passed that.”

Trump’s campaign team has given no indication that he plans to declare the election over, despite the fact that President-elect Joe Biden won the race more than two weeks ago. And Trump summed up his current stance on the matter Saturday, tweeting, “Hopefully the Courts and/or Legislatures will have the COURAGE to do what has to be done to maintain the integrity of our Elections, and the United States of America itself.”

But there is no legal basis for election results to be overturned. No widespread voting fraud has been revealed, and the president’s claims that there were improprieties with vote counting have been debunked as he has raised them. Some close states, like Georgia, recounted ballots by hand — and after doing so, found the recount did not alter the results.

Trump has made it clear that he will not accept this fact, and has attacked anyone — be they members of his party or not — who suggests he should.

Sunday, Trump took to Twitter to lash out at Hogan, who earned Trump’s ire earlier this year when he criticized the president’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic, for his remarks on CNN.

Trump called Hogan a Republican-in-name-only, or RINO — a term he commonly uses for Republicans who disagree with him — and shared an article from the right-wing news site Breitbart suggesting that Hogan had fumbled his own coronavirus response.

Hogan responded on Twitter, and, referring to the fact the president has spent much of the weekend on his Virginia golf course, suggested Trump “Stop golfing and concede.”

If you had done your job, America’s governors wouldn’t have been forced to fend for themselves to find tests in the middle of a pandemic, as we successfully did in Maryland.

Stop golfing and concede. https://t.co/tCXO8etxge

— Governor Larry Hogan (@GovLarryHogan) November 22, 2020

Trump lobbed the same insult at Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger on Friday, after he certified that Biden won the state, while also attacking Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp.

“Georgia Secretary of State, a so-called Republican (RINO), won’t let the people checking the ballots see the signatures for fraud,” Trump tweeted Friday. “Everyone knows that we won the state. Where is @BrianKempGA?”

Attacks like these are hurting party unity — as Politico reports, some fear they could cost the GOP elections in the future by inviting primary challenges to candidates like Kemp and by encouraging further infighting.

At the moment, Trump seems disinclined to stop these attacks — but both Hogan and Bolton encouraged fellow Republicans to ignore them, and to join them in calling on Trump to accept the election results.

“The more who come out and say, ‘He doesn’t represent us — he is not following a Republican game plan here,’ the safer they will be,” said Bolton.

Few Republicans in office are speaking out against Trump

For the most part, it appears that GOP leaders aren’t heeding Bolton’s advice.

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-LA), for instance, said it still only “looks like [Biden] has a very good chance” of being the next president. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) has called for investigations into election irregularities that do not exist. Raffensperger claimed Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) tried to pressure him into illegally discarding ballots. And congressional leaders have largely been silent; Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, said recently that he believes that questions over the election will resolve themselves thanks to “the process” and “our system.”

However, following Trump’s loss in Pennsylvania Saturday, there was a slight shift in tone among certain allies.

That defeat was the most recent of several Trump has faced in his attempts to legally challenge the results of the presidential election. But it may have been the most resounding. As Vox’s Ian Millhiser has explained, the judge in that case, US District Court Judge Matthew Brann, “didn’t just reject the Trump campaign’s legal arguments, he mocked the campaign for its inability to present a coherent argument — or to provide any legal support whatsoever for crucial elements of their claims.”

“One might expect that when seeking such a startling outcome, a plaintiff would come formidably armed with compelling legal arguments and factual proof of rampant corruption,” Brann wrote in his decision. “That has not happened.”

As a result of that decision, retiring Pennsylvania Sen. Pat Toomey, a Republican, said on Saturday that “President Trump has exhausted all plausible legal options to challenge the result of the presidential race in Pennsylvania,” and congratulated Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris on their victory.

Many Republicans were asked about Toomey’s statement Sunday, including on-again-off-again Trump ally former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who responded by calling Trump’s legal team “a national embarrassment” on ABC’s This Week.

“They allege fraud outside the courtroom, but when they go inside the courtroom, they don’t plead fraud and they don’t argue fraud,” he said.

“Yes,” Chris Christie tells @GStephanopoulos when asked if it’s time for President Trump to stop challenging the 2020 election results, adding that the president’s legal team has been a “national embarrassment.” https://t.co/9HKDetYpa5 pic.twitter.com/zuGivUyqYo

— This Week (@ThisWeekABC) November 22, 2020

Christie, however, stopped short of criticizing the president directly.

“I’ve been a supporter of the president. I voted for him twice, but elections have consequences, and we cannot continue to act as if something happened here that didn’t happen,” he said. “You have an obligation to present the evidence. The evidence has not been presented.”

When asked about Toomey’s statement on Meet the Press, Sen. Kevin Cramer (R-ND) attempted to thread the needle of calling for a transition of power to Biden while supporting Trump’s efforts to challenge those results.

“Everyone ought to just relax and let it play out in the legal way,” Cramer said, misleadingly adding that Trump is “just exercising his legal options.”

Cramer added, however, that there should eventually be an end to those challenges, and that it’s “past time” for the Biden transition to begin.

Cramer is correct that all Americans have the option of bringing lawsuits — but filing baseless ones like Trump’s is something not smiled upon by the court system. And efforts like Cramer’s to legitimize Trump’s actions ignore the reality that the clock is ticking on any scheme, legitimate or otherwise, to alter the election’s results.

Key states have begun the process of certifying their results. Georgia did so Friday, and as Michigan Rep. Fred Upton highlighted Sunday on CNN’s Inside Politics, Michigan is set to on Monday.

Upton noted that all Michigan counties had certified their results, and that its 154,000-vote margin in favor of Biden would stand.

“The voters have spoken,” he said. “No one has come up with any evidence of fraud or abuse. … Let the voters, not the politicians, speak.”

And legislators in the state have suggested that they have no plans to attempt to block or overturn that certification when it comes.

All this means that, whether it’s on December 8, the federal deadline for states to certify their results; on December 14, when the Electoral College votes; or on January 20, when Biden will be sworn in, Republicans will have to admit that Trump will not have a second term.

But Trump himself has not signaled when or if he will ever back down from challenging the election’s results. For now, a recount remains underway in Wisconsin, a second recount has been ordered in Georgia, and challenges in Arizona and Nevada are ongoing.

Trump, in a navy suit, white shirt, and red tie stands behind a podium with the seal of the president of the United States. He speaks emphatically, with four US flags behind him.

President Donald Trump delivers remarks at the White House on November 13, 2020. | Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images

Rejecting reality, Trump tweeted he won the election more than a week after it was declared for Biden.

President Donald Trump continued his quixotic fight to overturn the results of the election he lost — by taking to Twitter to encourage supporters who believe the race was rigged and by blatantly ignoring reality.

These efforts came to a head late Sunday night with a tweet that read, “I WON THE ELECTION!”

The president, of course, did no such thing — President-elect Joe Biden won both the popular vote, by 5.5 million, and 306 electoral college votes, 36 more than the 270 needed to win the White House and 74 more than Trump. But that fact has not, and appears as though it will not, stop the president from falsely claiming otherwise.

Trump signaled he would not accept the results of the election before it was held, for instance telling Fox News’s Chris Wallace in July, that he would “have to see” whether he believed the results ought to be seen as valid. And days before Election Day, Axios and others reported Trump planned to declare victory before enough votes had been counted to determine a winner.

He followed through on that plan, and since that time, he has worked to change election results in key states through a series of legal challenges — many of which have been dropped or rejected due to a lack of evidence of wrongdoing — and has spread conspiracy theories about voter fraud, something that election officials have found little to no evidence of.

Democrats and democracy experts have decried this behavior as corrosive, arguing that it weakens America’s system of government and seeds doubt about the country’s electoral process that will linger long after Trump leaves office. Republican lawmakers have been largely supportive of the president, saying they believe there should be investigations into the nonexistent voter fraud.

And, perhaps lending credence to the fears of the president’s critics, much of Trump’s base has been energized by his rhetoric — so much so that several thousand of his supporters traveled to Washington, DC, on Saturday for a “Million MAGA March” at which they incorrectly claimed that the election is not over and that Democrats are trying to steal Trump’s rightful second term from him.

Trump rewarded these supporters with a brief appearance Saturday morning, driving by on his way to golf; he later retweeted scenes and videos from the gathering, including ones that incorrectly claimed the current vote totals in states like Michigan — which Biden won — are wrong.

It was a GREAT honor to speak to TENS OF THOUSANDS of great Americans today at the #MarchForTrump

WE. ARE. THE. MAJORITY.

We are SILENT no longer.

We will ALWAYS fight for @realDonaldTrump and for FREE & FAIR elections.

God bless you ALL!

RT! pic.twitter.com/l2Ni1L98Dk

— Alex Bruesewitz (@alexbruesewitz) November 14, 2020

It seems inevitable that Biden will be installed in the White House — again, he won the election, states are about to certify their results, and electors are on track to cast their votes for or against him as their states dictate. And as Vox’s Andrew Prokop has explained, even Republican leaders like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell — who has said Trump is “100 percent within his rights to look into allegations of irregularities and weigh his legal options” — have suggested that once the Electoral College’s votes are in, the election is settled as far as they are concerned.

“At some point here we will find out finally who was certified in each of these states and the Electoral College will determine the winner,” McConnell said recently.

But Trump does not seem poised to follow McConnell’s lead, and neither do his most passionate supporters, who appear to have suspicions about how the 2020 election was conducted that even assurances of propriety from Trump’s own officials can’t seem to assuage.

And that is because they have their trust in Trump, and he continues to falsely say that many things were amiss with the election.

With lies and conspiracy theories, Trump is spreading doubt in the electoral process

The president spent part of the weekend promoting a conspiracy theory that machines manufactured by Dominion Voting Systems, a company that also makes voting software, were altered to misread ballots in order to ensure a Biden victory. It’s a lie that was spread by QAnon adherents and amplified by far-right networks that have curried favor with the president, like the One American News Network (OANN). It has been repeated by Trump’s personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani and has been heavily featured on the president’s Twitter account.

The New York Times notes the conspiracy theory appeared to gain traction following Dominion machine user errors in Michigan and Georgia that led to the miscounting of a few thousand ballots in the former state and delayed results in the latter. Those errors were found and swiftly corrected, but that did not stop the president and his allies from falsely claiming that something sinister was happening — in the president’s words, that the race was the “Most fraudulent Election in history!”

That the president has been so effective in planting doubts about the election led to hope among some observers that he would be able to convince his supporters that the election was over on Sunday, when he appeared to acknowledge — albeit alongside more conspiracy theories — for the first time that Biden won the election.

“He won because the Election was Rigged,” Trump tweeted.

He won because the Election was Rigged. NO VOTE WATCHERS OR OBSERVERS allowed, vote tabulated by a Radical Left privately owned company, Dominion, with a bad reputation & bum equipment that couldn’t even qualify for Texas (which I won by a lot!), the Fake & Silent Media, & more! https://t.co/Exb3C1mAPg

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 15, 2020

The disinformation about the election aside, many — including, reportedly, at least one White House official — took the tweet as a concession, and incoming Biden officials seemed cautiously optimistic about the message, particularly given the president’s refusal to concede has held up the start of the official transition process.

But Trump followed that tweet with another a few hours later that made his intentions clear, writing, “I concede NOTHING!”

That tweet was prefaced by a promise that “WE WILL WIN!,” a sentiment that was disregarded shortly before midnight on Monday, replaced by Trump’s stronger, and factually incorrect assertion, “I WON THE ELECTION!” — one that was reiterated Monday morning:

I won the Election!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 16, 2020

Nearly two weeks after voting concluded, Trump’s latest tweets put the president essentially where he was on election night: denying reality.

Early on November 4, Trump said Democrats were trying to steal the election from him, and said the Supreme Court would help ensure his victory. He suggested then that his legal challenges would help make this possible, but lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Arizona, and Michigan have failed, and it appears outstanding cases yet to be heard will fail as well.

The legal route looking increasingly dubious, Trump is now trying to steal the election by saying what happened didn’t actually happen at all and that election officials, voting companies, and the media are all lying to the American people.

His assertions are in one way futile. States are working to certify their results and are scheduled to submit them to the federal government by December 8. The Electoral College plans to vote on December 14. And Biden’s inauguration is still scheduled for January 20. Nothing Trump says on Twitter can stop time from progressing toward these events.

But what he says clearly has sway over many Americans, from those who marched on Washington on Saturday to those who used rhetoric similar to the president’s in explaining to ABC’s This Week on Sunday why they don’t believe Biden won.

If these feelings take permanent root, Trump’s disinformation campaign won’t have been ineffectual at all. Instead, it will mean one of his last acts as president will have been to create an alternate reality inhabited by many of his supporters in which the 2020 election was illegally stolen from him and in which elections cannot be trusted to be free and fair.

Signs reading “you’re fired” and other anti-Trump slogans, along with an American flag.

Signs supporting President-elect Joe Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris are seen near the security fence surrounding the White House on November 8, 2020. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

For now, they’re focused on the future Joe Biden administration.

Before the election, activists around the country prepared for the possibility that President Donald Trump would refuse to concede and attempt to cling to power, even if he lost.

Groups including the Sunrise Movement, the Movement for Black Lives, and United We Dream Action PAC planned marches, strikes, and other actions if the president tried to stop the counting of votes or failed to accept the results of the election.

As it turned out, Trump didn’t stop states from counting ballots. But he has refused to accept the fact that President-elect Joe Biden won the election, and his allies in Congress have followed suit, with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell saying in a speech on the Senate floor Monday that “President Trump is 100 percent within his rights” to investigate supposed “irregularities” in the election results. And Secretary of State Mike Pompeo raised concerns about an orderly transfer of power during a press briefing Tuesday, when he said there would be “a smooth transition to a second Trump administration.”

Many have pointed out that what Trump and his allies are doing looks a lot like an attempted coup. But some activists say it’s not time to put their plans for a coup scenario into action — yet.

“Right now there’s a lot of talk from Donald Trump,” Stevie O’Hanlon, who coordinates campaign strategy for the Sunrise Movement, told Vox. “We’re looking to see whether he starts to cross those lines.”

Choose Democracy, a group formed ahead of the election to challenge a potential power grab by Trump, sounded a similar note of caution Wednesday in a statement posted to its website. Despite concerning statements by Trump and some Republicans, the group said, “Trump’s efforts aren’t building momentum in the institutions that determine the election outcome.” The group advised vigilance but said it “[doesn’t] believe this is the moment for activation in the streets.”

Overall, these activist groups are sending a message similar to that of leaders around the world: that the American people voted for Biden, not Trump, to be the next president of the United States. And while Trump’s behavior certainly bears watching in the coming weeks, it’s also time to start planning for the new administration, rather than giving the outgoing president the attention he constantly seeks.

Before the election, activists were ready for a Trump coup attempt

Trump has been falsely claiming for months that the election would be rigged in Biden’s favor, while also refusing to say whether he would accept the results. So groups like Choose Democracy, the Women’s March, the Movement for Black Lives, and Sunrise got ready in case Trump tried to interfere with the election.

Choose Democracy, part of a larger coalition called Protect the Results, called for marches on November 4 and 7 to ensure that all votes were counted. The Frontline — a campaign organized by the Working Families Party and the Movement for Black Lives Electoral Justice Project — organized a virtual town hall on November 4 to plan post-election actions. The youth coalition Count On Us, of which Sunrise is a part, called for a mass strike if Trump refused to give up power.

As states continued to tally votes last week, some of those plans took place as scheduled — Sunrise, for example, organized actions around the country on Saturday.

Meanwhile, Trump supporters protested at vote-counting facilities around the country, demanding that officials stop counting ballots (or in some cases, keep counting them, if that was potentially more favorable to Trump).

But officials just kept doing their jobs. And on Saturday, all the major networks — including Fox News — called the election for Biden.

Notably, Trump was unable to stop any of that from happening. Instead of interfering with the actual counting of votes (beyond tweeting things like “STOP THE COUNT”), he has tried to overturn the election after the fact, filing a series of lawsuits in swing states, apparently pressuring the Justice Department to investigate baseless allegations of fraud, and convincing McConnell and other high-ranking Republicans to go along with his claims and refuse to recognize Biden as president-elect.

The behavior has many liberals — and many advocates of democracy, regardless of their political persuasion — concerned. But it’s also not quite the coup that groups such as Choose Democracy were planning for. “What we have seen has been slow, poorly rolled out, and has none of the surprise elements associated with a traditional coup,” Choose Democracy’s statement read. Activists from that group and others say there are good reasons to wait and see, rather than jump into direct action.

Progressive groups are focused on Biden — for now

For example, even though some Republicans are acting as though Trump could still win, there is a general consensus across sectors of America that he can’t.

“Trump’s campaign is putting out a narrative, but it’s not being validated by mainstream media or election officials,” Choose Democracy wrote on its site. “While Trump continues to insist that there is massive voter fraud and that he has won the election, virtually every mainstream news outlet and election official remains unanimous in agreeing that the election has been conducted fairly and that Biden has been declared the winner.”

A majority of Americans also “see Joe Biden as the legitimate winner of this election,” O’Hanlon said. Indeed, a recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that 79 percent of people, including six in 10 Republicans, believe Biden won.

Overall, “Trump’s efforts aren’t building momentum in the institutions that determine the election outcome,” Choose Democracy stated. “Consistent with the will of the voters, Biden appears fully on track to be this country’s President.”

Given this, the group is advising that Americans, instead of taking to the streets right now, write to their elected officials to ensure they continue supporting the certification of the election results and an orderly transfer of power. And, the group says, it’s also time to prepare for a Biden presidency: “This is a good time to consider what pressure will the Biden administration need to assert your values and repair the Democratic fabric that’s been ripped apart right now.”

Sunrise is taking a similar tack. “We’re watching what Donald Trump is doing and we’re ready to mobilize if needed,” O’Hanlon said. For example, if Trump begins pressuring state electors to change their Electoral College votes — a scenario outlined in more detail by Vox’s Andrew Prokop — the movement might renew its calls for direct action and protest.

But for now, “We can’t miss this opportunity to set the agenda for the Biden administration,” O’Hanlon said. For example, the group, together with the Justice Democrats, issued recommendations on Tuesday for progressive, climate-focused appointments to Biden’s cabinet, including Rep. Deb Haaland (D-NM) for secretary of the interior and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) for secretary of the treasury.

The Frontline, meanwhile, will be holding an event Saturday — but not to protest Trump. “The people have already spoken, and no amount of tweets or frivolous lawsuits from failed politicians can change that,” Maurice Mitchell, a leader of the group and a strategist with the Movement for Black Lives, told Vox in a statement. “On Saturday, we’ll be coming together in community for a virtual rally about what our nation can look like post-Trump. That’s where we’re focusing our attention right now.”

President Trump smiles during the State of the Union address in the chamber of the US House of Representatives on January 30, 2018, in Washington, DC. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

Trump isn’t yet conceding. But sources close to the president are telling reporters he knows he can’t win.

President Donald Trump is still refusing to concede that Joe Biden won the election and continuing to try to challenge the results in court— but a series of recent leaks suggests he might see the writing on the wall.

The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker, Josh Dawsey, and Ashley Parker reported Wednesday that “in an indication [Trump] may be starting to come to terms with his loss, he is talking privately about running again in 2024.”

Steve Holland of Reuters similarly reported, per “a source familiar with internal discussions,” that Trump has been “telling allies he planned to run for president in 2024 and could announce it by the end of the year.”

Peter Alexander of NBC News reported that, per a top White House aide, Trump is “very aware there is not a path to victory” and is only contesting the results as a form of “theater.”

And the Wall Street Journal’s Rebecca Ballhaus and Rebecca Davis O’Brien write: “An official said Mr. Trump understands that the fight isn’t winnable but characterized his feelings as: ‘Let me have the fight.’”

Other reports, such as one from Mike Allen of Axios, say Trump is telling friends he wants to start a media company as a competitor to Fox News.

All these cite anonymous sources and contrast with Trump’s public statements. But if accurate, they suggest that, while Trump may never openly admit he lost and may continue to claim the election has been “stolen” from him, he is not going to keep actually trying to block a Biden presidency indefinitely. (CNN’s Dana Bash cites a source who says Trump won’t publicly acknowledge his loss until the Georgia recount, expected to end November 20, has concluded.)

As I wrote Wednesday, the next important steps in the electoral process are for the states to certify their results, and for the electors to officially be chosen. For Trump to have any shot at overturning the results, he has to somehow block either certifications or electors from multiple states Biden won.

The president is currently not on track to accomplish either, and his prospects for doing either appear dim. Trump’s legal team has filed suits in various states to try to block the certification of results, but those suits look to be frivolous. They have also discussed the possibility of getting GOP state legislators to appoint pro-Trump electors, but Ballhaus and O’Brien write that “it isn’t known how seriously the campaign has considered this idea.”

None of this is to say that Trump would turn down an opportunity to stay in office should it present itself, whether through friendly judges or partisan state legislators.

But top Republicans like Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell have said that, while Trump is within his rights to pursue legal options now, the states’ results certifications and the Electoral College will settle things.

Particularly if Trump is now talking about a 2024 presidential campaign, it would appear his thoughts are turning to ways he can remain in the spotlight and at the forefront of the political scene once he is no longer the president.

Republican North Carolina House Speaker Tim Moore (left) speaks to reporters about Election Day results, with Republican Senate leader Phil Berger and Republican House Majority Leader John Bell at state GOP headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, on November 4. | Gary D. Robertson/AP

Democrats point to gerrymandering as Republicans successfully fend off state legislative challenges.

Ten years ago, Republicans routed Democrats in state legislative races across the country — gaining control of more seats than they had since 1928 and earning control of 54 of the 99 state legislative chambers, their highest total in 58 years, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL).

State house races are extremely important every cycle — they can decide to expand Medicaid, pass restrictions on abortion, enact criminal justice reform, or any array of policy decisions. But every 10 years, their importance is magnified after the census is taken and they are tasked with the process of redistricting legislative and congressional boundaries (which can decide partisan control of state legislatures and the US Congress for the next decade).

This year, banking on a blue wave, Democrats staked out an ambitious map aiming to spend $50 million to win legislative majorities in GOP-held chambers and gain control of key chambers in advance of next year’s redistricting fights. The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee (DLCC) targeted both chambers in Arizona, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Kansas as well as the Iowa and Michigan Houses and the Minnesota Senate.

In the end, Democrats raised $88 million to Republicans’ $60 million — but they don’t have much to show for it.

Votes in Arizona are still being counted, but if those chambers remain in GOP hands, Democrats will have failed to flip a single state chamber. In fact, the only chambers that will have changed hands are the New Hampshire House and Senate, which flipped to Republican control. This is a surprising defeat for Democrats — particularly as New Hampshire voters overwhelmingly reelected Democrats to the US Congress and voted for former Vice President Joe Biden by a wide margin.

According to the NCSL, this means that out of 98 chambers (not counting Nebraska’s unicameral and facially nonpartisan body), “59 are held by Republicans, 37 by Democrats.” And when it comes to unified control — meaning one party controls both the legislature and the governorship — Republicans have the edge holding 23 states to Democrats’ 15.

Democrats likely weren’t the only ones surprised by this outcome. In its October overview, Cook Political Report wrote: “ominously for Republicans, the GOP holds 14 of the 19 vulnerable chambers on our list. This suggests that the Democrats are well-positioned to net up to a half-dozen new chambers this fall, and more if it’s a genuine blue wave.” Cook pointed to Biden’s “strong” running in key states, expecting this to “boost down-ballot candidates.”

But that didn’t happen.

Austin Chambers, president of the Republican State Leadership Committee (RSLC), told the Wall Street Journal on a press call Wednesday: “We beat the hell out of them, and they have nothing to show for it.”

Democrats blamed 2010’s heavy losses and the resulting redistricting by Republicans for this year’s defeats: “The reality is that Democrats are still paying for the mistakes that we made in 2010,” DLCC national press secretary Christina Polizzi told Vox. “It’s disappointing, but not surprising.”

The upcoming redistricting fights remain in Republican control

Redistricting is the process of redrawing legislative and congressional geographical boundaries. Every decade, following the census, each state has to redraw its electoral boundaries with the updated demographic information. According to the NCSL, “when legislatures redraw maps, the majority party controls the process” — both parties do their best to gain political advantage, but it’s much harder for the minority party to do so.

If Democratic losses this year are due to 2010’s redistricting at the hands of the GOP, it’s hard to see their path forward as Republicans are yet again set to spearhead the redistricting process next year. The DLCC believes their losses are due to the map being “rigged” and point to gerrymandering and voter suppression efforts as proof.

This year’s most surprising state legislature election outcome in New Hampshire could be a result of that. As results were being finalized yesterday, New Hampshire Public Radio reporter Josh Rogers pointed out that the legislative maps were “drawn by Republicans a decade ago and are by design intended to favor Republicans.” Rogers highlighted polling by University of New Hampshire political scientist Andy Smith, who has found that for “Democrats to break even with Republicans in legislative races, they need to start with more than 50 percent of the popular vote.”

These issues aren’t unique to New Hampshire.

A 2018 report by the Citizens Research Council of Michigan found that “Michigan’s maps are beyond the threshold for what is considered gerrymandering.” And as for Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, Ari Berman wrote for the Washington Post on similar trends:

Political geographers from Stanford and Carnegie Mellon found, for instance, that there was “less than a one in one thousand chance” that the map passed by Wisconsin Republicans, which gave them 60 percent of the seats in the State Assembly, was based on where Democrats lived. “The partisan asymmetry in the existing map,” they wrote, “. . . was carefully and deliberately created, not a result of the natural clustering of voters in Wisconsin.”

The same was true in Pennsylvania, where University of Michigan political scientist Jowei Chen discovered “a small geographic advantage for the Republicans, but it does not come close to explaining the extreme 13-5 Republican advantage” in the state’s congressional delegation. Indeed, Pennsylvania Republicans went to almost comic lengths to contort political boundaries for partisan advantage, drawing one district, nicknamed “Goofy Kicking Donald Duck,” that spanned five counties and 26 municipalities, and at one of its narrowest points ran through the parking lot of a seafood restaurant in the town of King of Prussia.

Beyond gerrymandering, laws restricting voting, some of which are written to specifically target low-income voters and people of color, have been passed by legislatures in the wake of the 2010 Republican victories.

An egregious example of this is in North Carolina, where, as NPR reports, the Republican-controlled legislature passed a strict voter ID law that also “cut back dramatically on the number of early voting days, eliminated same-day registration and declared that votes cast in the wrong precinct, even if the result of poll worker error, could not be counted.” Federal judges went on to throw out the law, writing that it “target[ed] African-Americans with almost surgical precision.”

If Democrats are right and their losses down-ballot this year are due to redistricting and laws designed to suppress turnout of traditionally left-leaning demographics, it’s hard to see how they will fare better in the decade ahead.

As NCSL policy specialist Ben Williams told Vox: “The landscape is not the same as 2010, but it is fair to say that the fact that Republicans were able to hold their ground in competitive legislative chambers across the country … means that they will have the majority, say, when it comes to redistricting in the coming cycle.”

Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus task force coordinator. | Getty Images

Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, issued a blunt memo to officials about America’s Covid-19 crisis.

President Donald Trump is publicly declaring that the United States is “turning the corner” on the Covid-19 pandemic.

Privately, a top official involved in the president’s coronavirus response is warning the opposite.

Dr. Deborah Birx, coordinator of the White House coronavirus task force, warned in an alarming internal memo that the United States is “entering the most concerning and most deadly phase of this pandemic.”

The Washington Post first reported the existence of the memo, which was shared with top White House officials Monday. “Cases are rapidly rising in nearly 30 percent of all USA counties, the highest number of county hotspots we have seen with this pandemic,” Birx’s report read, according to the Washington Post. “Half of the United States is in the red or orange zone for cases despite flat or declining testing.” The memo also warned that the US could see days where the number of new Covid-19 cases exceeds 100,000.

Birx’s warning comes as some states are seeing record-level infections and hospitals are on the verge of being overwhelmed — a reprise of what some parts of the country saw in the earliest days of the pandemic. On, Friday, the US hit more than 99,000 new cases in a single day, breaking the previous record. More than 48,000 Americans are currently hospitalized with Covid-19. Deaths usually lag behind new cases and hospitalizations, but those are up, too; on average, roughly 800 deaths are being reported each day, according to the Covid-19 Tracking Project. Experts have said they believe it will get worse as winter approaches, as more people gather indoors.

Birx, an esteemed AIDS expert named to the White House coronavirus task force role in February, has been reluctant to criticize Trump or publicly push back on some of his false statements. But the warnings in the memo are some of her bluntest yet. In the report, she says that the White House is putting too much emphasis on lockdowns, which are not really an issue anymore. Instead, she argued, the US needs “more aggressive action” on everything from testing to messaging. Consistent messaging, she wrote, was essential.

With the memo, Birx joins the chorus of scientists and experts who are warning of a possible “dark winter.” Anthony Fauci, the nation’s top infectious disease expert, said in an interview Friday that the United States is in for “a whole lot of hurt.” Only an “abrupt change” in public practices and behaviors would change that, he said.

The memo argued that the White House could play a role in urging that change. “There is an absolute necessity of the Administration to use this moment to ask the American people to wear masks, physical distance and avoid gatherings in both public and private spaces,” the report warns.

Those alarms apparently have not reached Trump, who has repeatedly downplayed the virus in the closing days of his campaign, often at large (if outdoors) rallies, where mask-wearing is spotty among attendees. The president has falsely accused doctors of profiteering off Covid-19 deaths and falsely claimed the United States has more cases because it’s doing more tests, and implied that he might fire Fauci after the election.

Meanwhile, Covid-19 continues to spread unabated in the United States, with more than 230,000 dead and with many of the most common-sense public safety measures, including mask-wearing, now politicized. Though other places around the world — specifically, European countries — are seeing a resurgence of Covid-19, unlike those governments, Trump has avoided any sort of national interventions or mandates. While states have always played a role in managing the public health crisis, their measures have become harder to implement amid the president’s claims that Covid-19 is basically over. Trump has said “you won’t hear about” Covid-19 after November 4. Instead, this latest surge of Covid-19 might be the most devastating yet.

Democratic Presidential Nominee Joe Biden Campaigns In Georgia

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden speaks during a drive-in campaign rally on October 27, 2020, in Atlanta, Georgia | Drew Angerer/Getty Images

He desperately wants to run against “the radical left” instead.

President Donald Trump on Sunday morning tweeted that he is making gains with young Black voters (which seems to be true), and that the reason for this is that Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden “called Black Youth SUPER PREDATORS,” which didn’t happen (Trump followed up that Biden used the phrase “according to my sources”).

Joe Biden called Black Youth SUPER PREDATORS. They will NEVER like him, or vote for him. They are voting for “TRUMP”.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

Trump has said this many, many times on the campaign trail — presumably because his campaign wielded the “superpredators” attack against Hillary Clinton in 2016. And while there’s no real evidence that it was a particularly effective strategy, Trump’s now-former campaign manager Brad Parscale touted it as effective. But whether or not it worked in 2016, it is true that Hillary Clinton used the word in reference to Black youths.

Joe Biden, by contrast, has not. In fact, he is on record saying most youth, Black or not, “are not the so-called ‘superpredators.’”

This is just one example of a consistent feature of Trump’s closing argument against Biden. Rather than attacking the candidate for his actual proposals, he’s invented a different person to run against: one who is too conservative — on matters like race — but simultaneously too liberal.

Trump is running against the “radical left” — of which Biden is not a part

Back in February, it briefly seemed like Sen. Bernie Sanders would win the Democratic nomination, and Trump planned to run for reelection as a firewall protecting America from the threat of a socialist takeover.

But that didn’t happen. Biden won the nomination, and unsurprisingly so, given that he was in the lead for the vast majority of the 2020 primary cycle. And while he did tack left on a couple of issues — notably promising a short-term moratorium on deportations until some Trump-era policies could be reviewed (before backing off this position), and reversing his longstanding support for the Hyde Amendment to align his position with Barack Obama’s — he mostly took heat from the left and beat them.

Trump has responded to this triumph of meliorist liberalism by basically ignoring that it happened. When Biden isn’t being painted as a knuckle-dragging racist based on fake quotes from the mid-1990s, he’s being cast as an avatar of the radical left.

To the extent that there’s an actual argument here, the notion is that Biden is too “sleepy” to make decisions for himself, and thus will be manipulated by “the Radical Left” behind the scenes.

Our numbers are looking VERY good all over. Sleepy Joe is already beginning to pull out of certain states. The Radical Left is going down!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

Trump also wants to argue that it’s suspicious that Biden has not released a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, creating another vector for the alleged takeover by the radical left.

People have long been voting but Joe Biden has still not released his Supreme Court List of Radical Left Judges that he would like to put on the Court. Also, is he going to Court Pack? He thinks he can bluff his way through these two important questions. Can only vote against!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

In fact, no major party nominee other than Trump has ever released such a list — and Brett Kavanaugh did not appear on it, so it’s not clear what value such a list would have. (If you are curious, Biden has promised to nominate a Black woman, and here’s a brief list of plausible candidates.)

Trump is also closing with the argument that Biden wants to “ban fracking” (he does not) and even “ban mining,” which to the best of my knowledge nobody has proposed.

“A vote for Biden and Harris is a vote to Ban Fracking, Ban Mining, and Completely Destroy Pennsylvania.” –@realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/xic6MI8kGc

— GOP (@GOP) November 1, 2020

Trump’s basic problem is that while Biden’s policy agenda is extensive and constitutes the most progressive platform any Democrat has run on in generations, this largely reflects a leftward movement of public opinion. Political scientists create an aggregate measure of public views on policy issues that they call “policy mood,” and in the most recent update, Americans’ preference for liberal policies reached a 60-year high. That made the victory of a true left-winger like Sanders or Sen. Elizabeth Warren at least plausible. But it also means that a more cautious, paint-by-numbers politician like Biden who follows the polls pretty closely can run on a fairly expansive agenda.

Trump’s plan to counter this shift in opinion is just to make things up.

Trump’s distortions extend to Covid-19

The Covid-19 pandemic does not have a particularly close connection to traditional ideological battles.

But here, too, Trump’s plan is to rely on fabrication. He says that Biden wants to “LOCKDOWN our country, maybe for years” as his approach to the pandemic.

Biden wants to LOCKDOWN our Country, maybe for years. Crazy! There will be NO LOCKDOWNS. The great American Comeback is underway!!!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 1, 2020

That would be awfully extreme if true, but of course it’s not true. Biden’s actual Covid-19 plan includes no calls for a national lockdown. It does include the idea of more financial relief for business and state governments, so that local decisions about business restrictions can be made more on the basis of public health, and less on staving off bankruptcy. Conversely, Trump has taken to not just arguing against a fake Biden’s national lockdown but falsely claiming that America’s doctors are inflating Covid-19 death numbers for profit.

Lying about things is not new to Trump, and to be honest it’s worked pretty well for him throughout his career. But trying to BS his way through a pandemic may just exceed the domain of what flimflam can accomplish.

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Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey testifies before the Senate Commerce Committee on October 28, 2020. | Greg Nash/Getty Images

In the end, the Section 230 hearing didn’t have much to do with Section 230.

CEOs from two of the biggest companies in the world (and Twitter) testified in front of the Senate Commerce Committee on Wednesday in a hearing that was billed as a deliberation over Section 230. It ended up being more about castigating social media platforms both for censoring voices too much and for not censoring them enough.

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Google’s Sundar Pichai, and Twitter’s Jack Dorsey appeared before an almost entirely virtual panel of legislators, none of whom seemed particularly thrilled with the CEOs’ work. But their complaints differed depending on their political party. Republicans generally used the hearing to scold the companies for censoring conservative voices to the extent that they may influence the outcome of the election in Biden’s favor. Democrats objected to having a hearing at all and asked the CEOs what they were doing to suppress violent extremism and election interference on their platforms.

If nothing else, the hearings showed a bipartisan dislike and mistrust of social media platforms and a desire to do something about them.

The hearing was titled “Does Section 230’s Sweeping Immunity Enable Big Tech Bad Behavior?” — that bad behavior being, to its vocal conservative opponents, social media platforms censoring political viewpoints with which they disagree. But the law is much bigger than that. Section 230 allows websites to host content from users without being liable for it. For instance, you can sue a Twitter user for a defamatory tweet, but you can’t sue Twitter itself. This is what enables these sites to exist in the first place. Without immunity from lawsuits over third-party content, platforms wouldn’t allow it at all.

The law also allows platforms to moderate user content as they see fit without losing that immunity, a fact that has become a major sticking point for conservatives who feel that platforms are unfairly censoring them. While Attorney General Bill Barr and several Republican legislators want to change Section 230 to require websites to be “politically neutral” in moderation decisions, President Trump has called for an outright repeal of the law. In fact, the president repeated that demand while Wednesday’s hearing was still in progress:

The USA doesn’t have Freedom of the Press, we have Suppression of the Story, or just plain Fake News. So much has been learned in the last two weeks about how corrupt our Media is, and now Big Tech, maybe even worse. Repeal Section 230!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 28, 2020

Democrats have their own issues with Section 230 and Big Tech in general. But in the hearing, those concerns took a back seat to their grievances against its timing and the pro-Trump messages they believed committee Republicans were using it to convey.

Most Republicans barely mentioned Section 230 and instead focused on social media moderation and a perceived silencing of conservative voices, the oft-noted examples of such being President Trump’s fact-checked tweets and the New York Post’s story on Hunter Biden, which Twitter and Facebook initially limited the spread of. There were also several questions about the political ideologies of employees and people who make moderation decisions, with the implication being that very few of them are conservative.

Sens. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Ron Johnson (R-WI) were especially emphatic about these points. Cruz, a frequent critic of Section 230, even advertised his appearance at the hearing on Twitter and Facebook the night before, calling it a “Free Speech Showdown,” complete with custom art that resembled a poster for a boxing match. Cruz opened his questions by saying the CEOs testifying before him “collectively pose the single greatest threat to free speech in America and the greatest threat we have to free and fair elections.” His use of his time didn’t really get better from there.

“Mr. Dorsey, who the hell elected you and put you in charge of what the media are allowed to report and what the American people are allowed to hear, and why do you persist in behaving as a Democratic Super PAC?” Cruz demanded. Dorsey responded that he is not in charge of those things. Cruz then retweeted several news articles containing his quote as well as posting his own video of it, indicating that his question to Dorsey was meant more for political theater than anything else.

Johnson tried to nail the CEOs down on how many of their employees are liberal and how many are conservative. In response, Dorsey said his company doesn’t keep track of employees’ politics, Pichai said he believed his employees have many different viewpoints, and Zuckerberg said he didn’t know for sure but assumes Facebook skews liberal — which was the only answer Johnson seemed to believe.

Several Republicans also pointed out that Twitter let untrue or violent tweets from other world leaders stay up while punishing Trump for his tweets, even though, as Sen. Roger Wicker (R-MS) said, they are “true.” One example was a series of tweets from Iranian Ayatollah Ali Khamenei that seemed to promote violence against Israel, which are still on the platform.

“We did not find those to violate our terms of service because we consider them sabre-rattling, which is part of the speech of world leaders in concert with other countries,” Dorsey said. “Speech against our own people or a country’s own citizens, we believe, is different and can cause more immediate harm.”

Some Democrats used their time to criticize the timing and subject of the hearing, calling it part of a coordinated Republican effort to bully platforms into keeping conservative-leaning content up, even if it violates their policies, as well as to amplify the New York Post’s story to try to influence the outcome of the election. Others brought up how social media platforms have facilitated violent extremist groups to meet and organize and foreign powers to influence the elections. They asked the CEOs what they plan to do to prevent or squelch this content on their respective platforms as the election approaches, and whether they would pledge to stop or prevent election interference on their platforms. Dorsey, Pichai, and Zuckerberg all pledged to do so.

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) noted that Facebook makes more money when people spend more time on it, and divisive political content has been shown to contribute to that engagement.

“Does that bother you, what it’s done to our politics?” she asked.

Zuckerberg said the platform is designed to show users the content that’s most important to them.

“Most of the content on the systems is not political, it’s things like making sure you can see when your cousin had her baby,” he said.

“That’s not what I’m talking about, the cousins and the babies here,” Klobuchar said. “I’m talking about conspiracy theories … I think it’s been corrosive.”

But some senators actually took the time to ask the CEOs seemingly genuine questions about their moderation policies and algorithms as well as how Section 230 could be re-written to provide more clarity to users. Sen. Shelley Capito (R-WV) asked if giving Section 230’s “otherwise objectionable” rule for the type of content platforms are allowed to moderate more specific guidelines would be a solution. Zuckerberg noted that having to spell out which content is objectionable and which is not would limit their ability to moderate bullying or harassment. Dorsey and Zuckerberg said multiple times during the hearing that they would be open to increased transparency on their platforms with regard to moderation decisions.

Sen. Brian Schatz (D-HI), who proposed a bipartisan bill about Section 230, said he hoped to have “good faith” discussion about the law after the election. A future hearing about Section 230 is certainly possible regardless of the election’s outcome, as Trump’s feelings are well-known and Biden has said he is in favor of revoking the law — a stance that a campaign official told Recode hasn’t changed.

The co-author of Section 230, Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) is not a member of the Commerce Committee and so wasn’t at the hearing. But he wasn’t quiet about it, issuing a statement along the lines of many Democrats’ complaints.

“After watching the hearing today, I don’t believe my Republican colleagues have read the First Amendment, let alone Section 230,” Wyden said. “Their obsession with forcing private companies to print misinformation, lies and hate speech is unconstitutional and lays bare how little this is about Section 230 and how much it is a transparent attempt to work the refs a week before the election.”

Wyden added, “Today’s sad spectacle shows how far this body is from having a rational debate about how to make the internet a better place.”

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