Donald Trump
‘I’m Angry With My President:’ Trump Voters In Florida Confront The Fallout Of His Policies A Year Before The Midterms
A year after Donald Trump’s election win that gave him the key to the White House for the second time, many Latino Trump voters in Florida who sealed the state’s status as a Republican stronghold are now questioning their decision. Trump’s manifesto of economic prosperity and law and order clashes with a reality that continues to punish disadvantaged families. As the months have passed, frustration and regret have grown among those most affected by the rising cost of living, cuts to social programs and an immigration agenda that has torn the Hispanic community apart.
Across Florida, the disenchantment of residents, business owners, and community activists is palpable. The list of complaints includes the disruption to government aid as a result of the government shutdown, the unstoppable rise in the cost of rest, and persistent inflation. Two judges have said that the government should continue to provide food aid that was scheduled to be suspended on Nov. 1. While the government said it will comply with the rulings, the 42 million Americans who rely on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for food are likely to receive the benefits piece meal due to the disruption.
The consequences will be felt especially hard in Miami-Dade County, where the shift of the Latino vote from Democrat to Republican was key to Trump’s victory last year. Here, about 215,000 households (about 24%) rely on SNAP, one of the highest rates in the country. In other words, more than half a million people.
Alexis Maria, a 35-year-old single mother born in West Palm Beach who works as a doctor’s assistant, is among them. She says she voted for Trump because she thought he would be a better leader. “The last time Trump was president, I made more money than ever in my career. Prices were low. Gasoline was cheap. I remember going on vacation. Interest rates were lower. Now everything is out of control. I can’t even afford the air we breathe. Now I see that I made the wrong decision,” she says.
Alexis has been receiving food stamps since her first child was born. She has two children, ages 12 and six. “The government is the reason we’ve been able to eat most of the month, and the other half, I’m counting each cent to survive, what with food prices and rent,” she says. She is concerned that SNAP will be suspended, despite the judges’ ruling. With the high cost of food and no coupons, her children “will have nothing to eat.”
Alexis says she has been looking for information about places where they donate food, such as churches and aid organizations, and has even had to miss work to be able to go get food. “Now I need to go three times a week to feed my family, and the lines every week have been longer. This sums up why I’m angry with the president. His decisions are now [adversely] affecting the lower and middle class. They only benefit the rich,” she says.
Cases like that of Alexis illustrate how citizens have been directly affected by the systematic federal cuts, carried out by the Department of Government Efficiency — Elon’s Musk’s infamous DOGE — and the government shutdown, which has now run for a month with no end in sight. Congress has failed to agree on the budget for the new fiscal year, which began October 1.
In Congress, Democratic lawmakers are pushing for the budget to include an extension of Obamacare otherwise known as the Affordable Care Act (ACA) — which lowers the cost of health insurance, and is about to expire; they also want to reverse the cuts to Medicaid, the public health program for the elderly, low income individuals and those with a disability.
The Trump administration and practically the entire Republican caucus have been blaming the Democrats for the shutdown, falsely accusing them of wanting to give free health care to undocumented immigrants. This message is designed to win over public opinion, although polls suggest that it is not working. The lawsuits that later led to the rulings on the food assistance program have been another blow to the government’s arguments, as they undermine the idea that they are at the mercy of the Democrats.
But real politics is usually not so black and white, even less so in Florida. So, while the parties blame each other for the stalemate that is about to break the record set during Trump 1.0, some voters like Erick Pita, a 51-year-old Cuban who has been in the U.S. for 20 years, sides in this respect with the Republicans. “The fault lies with the Democrats, who are using the hardships of the population as a tool to apply pressure to get something they want politically,” he says. He doesn’t get food stamps, but his parents do.
“I didn’t vote for any of this.”
Others, meanwhile, focus their criticism on the lack of concrete action from both sides. Vanessa Brito, a 42-year-old election analyst and community activist from Miami who has been reporting on social media about what the end of SNAP benefits would mean, says that both political parties “are more concerned with how to win the next election than in helping” those in need — those who have been affected by the policies of this administration. Brito has been a political consultant for both parties but says she has decided to focus her experience on better understanding voters and advising campaigns on how to communicate more effectively with them.
“It’s clear that [people] are confused, and many don’t seem to directly blame the current administration, but they’re also not quick to blame Democrats,” Brito says. “Anger and fear dominate, which depoliticizes everything. For a county like Miami-Dade, which has one of the highest concentrations of seniors receiving SNAP — mostly Hispanic — that’s very telling,” Brito says. “A direct economic impact generates anger and fear, and that creates a space in which voters or residents seek support from whoever can offer it. Right now, they don’t care who is to blame. They care that politicians of both parties are more focused on blaming each other than on helping them.”
Among Brito’s followers there are personal stories that reflect anguish and regret. One is Michael Lyras, a 44-year-old American, who lives in Volusia County, near Orlando, in central Florida. Lyras studied addiction counseling in college but is currently disabled and receiving food stamps. He voted for Trump “all three times” but says he is upset with the way things are going: “I regret my last vote enormously,” he says.
“It was necessary to make changes, but not in this way, sacrificing our civil rights and liberties that are enshrined in our Constitution,” Lyras adds. “He [Trump] is turning this into a police state and he’s acting like an authoritarian. I didn’t vote for any of this” For some voters, the ultimate blow has been seeing neighbors or loved ones caught in the unstoppable machinery of deportation, which they deem unfair. They feel a mixture of guilt, anger and bewilderment.
Cuban Pita says he is “disappointed” by the Trump administration’s immigration agenda, which he considers “a Republican political manipulation… If you say you’re going to deport all criminals, even migrants, like me, they [voters] are happy with that. That is why the Latino vote was oriented towards Trump. People agreed with what the Republicans were saying in the campaign, which was: ‘I’m going to get rid of all criminals.’ But what Trump is doing is something else, and it is very cruel and very bad, and they are going to pay dearly.”
November 2024 was the first time Pita voted for Trump. “I don’t like Trump — either his approach or his ideas. He’s not presidential in the traditional sense of the word, but I thought the previous administration was terrible, things were going very badly, and the country was on the wrong track,” Pita says, referring to the Biden administration.
But not all Republican voters are disappointed. Some, like Kimberly Delgado, 28, maintain their support for Trump despite the difficulties they face. “What motivated me to vote for Trump was the immigration laws he was implementing, and also because the last four years with the Democrats in office were a disaster,” she explains.
A resident of Weston, northeast of Miami, Delgado says that although she works at a funeral home and her husband also works full-time, they can’t afford to feed their two children, and they have been receiving food stamps for four years. Delgado was born in the U.S. to Cuban parents and she assumes that the situation with the government shutdown is going to be difficult for many like them — people who work full-time and yet still need help due to the rising cost of living.
Local reaction
Democrat Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, called on Florida congressmen last week to extend federal health subsidies and use emergency funds for “vital programs such as food, housing and health services.” Miami Republican Congresswoman Maria Elvira Salazar, who represents the 27th District, which includes a vast area of Miami-Dade, co-sponsored the Keep SNAP Funded Act, which advocates using emergency funds to finance the food aid program.
At the same time, major food banks and nonprofits in the Southwest — such as Feeding South Florida, Farm Share and United Way — have stepped up food distributions and donation drives. Dozens of smaller food banks and churches have also braced for a surge in demand.
Brito believes that, although the administration is Republican, deep down both sides of the political spectrum are responsible for the current crisis, and that the most vulnerable are the most affected. The result, rather than repudiation or support for either side, seems to be apathy. “One party goes to the extreme, and the other responds by going to the other extreme, while most people feel like political beggars. The two parties forgot that people kill themselves working simply to survive,” she says.
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Donald Trump
Greisa Martínez Rosas, Executive Director Of United We Dream: ‘This Isn’t Just About Undocumented Migrants, But Whether We’re Going To Be Able To Maintain Democracy’
Greisa Martínez Rosas, the executive director of United We Dream — the largest network of young migrants in the United States — witnessed a group of students, as she was leaving school, place a garbage bag over a friend’s head. “They spun him around and around and yelled, ‘Go back to Mexico.’”
She has another memory from that same time, of a phone call she received during her first year of college, when she was preparing to return home to Texas for spring break in 2007. “My mom told me, ‘They got him.’ That was all. She and I knew what she was talking about. It was the family’s recurring nightmare, that one of us would be separated from our family for being a migrant.”
Her father, a man who at that time was the same age Rosas is now, 37, who brought her to the United States from Mexico as a child, the carpenter who supported her and her three younger sisters, had been arrested for not having a license to drive the old pickup truck he used to get to work every day. He was later deported.
Rosas’ long journey on the path of activism begins there, in those memories, and it’s not over yet. Especially not now: “My story is what gives me the courage and strength to continue, but it’s not unique; millions have experienced it.”
When her father was facing deportation, no one in the family knew anything about the law, lawyers, or how much such things cost. “We had to learn very quickly, and unfortunately, we didn’t have good legal advice.” The $5,000 the family borrowed to avoid deportation was useless. So life changed. “The head of the family, the one who brought money home, was gone. My mom had to start working, the bills were impossible to pay, my sisters were little, it was such a difficult time.” The following year, her mother was diagnosed with cancer, so Rosas had to drop out of school.
Today she is convinced that the burden a migrant carries is built upon the systemic ills of the United States. “It’s the story of how systems are working together to make life difficult for migrants,” she asserts. “It’s not just migration; it’s also about access to healthcare and higher education. That’s why I joined United We Dream.”
Since 2010, the organization, 60% of whose members are women and 20% identify as LGBTQ+, has worked to help, support, and empower young migrants. Now, United We Dream, in conjunction with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and Abundant Futures Fund (AFF), has launched an unprecedented initiative: the Our Neighbors Defense Fund, which aims to raise at least $30 million to financially support legal organizations.
“We set out to do something new for our organizations,” Rosas says. “The hope is that millions of people will feel inspired to do something different right now, to be part of the solution. We know this is an opportunity for those who feel hopeless, who don’t know what to do, or who are perhaps afraid to take to the streets and participate in the protests.”
Less than three months had passed since Donald Trump’s return to the White House when the new administration made an announcement that would leave many in limbo: federal programs that sustained organizations and groups, which in turn helped thousands of migrants navigate the U.S. justice system, were canceled. Many of these migrants were minors who, without resources, have now had to appear before a judge alone. The toll, according to Rosas, is incalculable.
“The price is also some lives we’ve lost while they were in detention centers, waiting for a lawyer to have a hearing with a judge,” she says. “This is a matter of life or death for many people. Every month, we announce the deaths of approximately one or two migrants in detention centers, from different causes, but what they all have in common is that they were detained. It’s not normal. Unfortunately, this is a moment that our history books will record, and we all have to have an answer to the question: What did you do when people were suffering like this? None of us are safe; the only salvation is for us to stand together as a community, to reach out to one another. And this fund and our organization are two answers to how to do that.”
In a country with 11 million households that have at least one family member at risk of detention or deportation, where many lack the funds to afford legal representation, this fund, according to its founders, “will help ensure that immigrant families facing the threat of unjust separation, detention, and deportation have access to lawyers.” To date, they have raised over $12 million. Individual donations have totaled approximately $250,000 from some 10,000 people across the country.
“This is an opportunity for them to take action, to help our families,” Rosas says. “Today there are undocumented youths in detention centers, children forced to represent themselves before an immigration judge. So this is a legal emergency to guarantee due process, which is so fundamental to democracy. Because what is happening is not only going to affect immigrants, it’s going to affect all of us.”
According to Rosas, the money they receive goes immediately to the organizations they support. “What’s striking about this fund is that the money raised has come mostly from individuals, whether they have a lot or a little.” The activist — who has personally felt the impact of deportation and has fought more than one battle for the migrant community in the country, including for the “Dreamers,” which later led her to become a DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) recipient — has no doubt that the United States is experiencing unprecedented events.
“The people in control of this government want unlimited power, without consequences. Many people came to this country fleeing authoritarian governments, and that’s what’s happening here now. It’s something that hasn’t happened at this level before,” she maintains. “This isn’t just about whether you’re undocumented or not; we’re seeing young people born in this country being detained by ICE [Immigration and Customs Enforcement], [and the administration is] using immigration to give unlimited power and money to agencies like that. So we have to act with great courage, with great clarity, and understand that this isn’t just about undocumented people or migrants, but about whether or not we’re going to be able to maintain democracy.”
Rosas has felt the weight of the hatred that keeps American society so polarized today. At the beginning of the year, in front of thousands of listeners, she acknowledged that she had lived as an undocumented immigrant in the country, and that, nevertheless, she “wasn’t afraid.” That was enough for several members of the MAGA movement to turn against her after the talk.
“They used my image, demanded my deportation, and tried to humiliate me. And although I lived in great fear this year, I’m not actually afraid,” she says. “I’ve survived difficult things. I’m not 17 anymore. I’ve been part of a student movement that has had victories and changed the trajectory of this country. My intention is that even if people feel afraid right now, in the future they’ll understand that we survived this together. That’s why I work every day.”
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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Resounding Victories In New York, Virginia, And New Jersey Restore Faith To The Democrats
Democrats woke up Wednesday after a 12-month nightmare with the feeling that their inability to connect with their voters and win elections like the one they lost exactly a year ago against Republican President Donald Trump was nothing but a bad dream.
Faith in the party’s chances of victory returned with resounding wins in New York — where the socialist candidate Zohran Mamdani won the mayoral race in the most anticipated contest of the night — as well as in the gubernatorial elections in Virginia (which Abigail Spanberger turned blue) and New Jersey (which Mikie Sherrill won). In both states, the centrist candidates swept their Republican opponents. The Democrats, moreover, won almost everything where they ran: from the Detroit mayoral race to the vote to stop Somerville, Massachusetts, from investing in Israel.
The dose of good news — and the adrenaline rush after a year of post-mortem examinations of the November 2024 defeat — was completed by Californians voting “yes” on Proposition 50, which put to a referendum the efforts of Democratic Governor Gavin Newsom to redraw voting districts in California. Newsom managed to convince his fellow citizens that only with tactics like this is it possible to defeat Trump, who is pushing to alter electoral maps across the country to favor his supporters in the 2026 midterm elections.
The effect of that vote goes beyond the confines of the most populous territory in the country, because it secures for the Democrats five seats up for grabs in next year’s midterms, in which Republicans risk losing control of one or both Houses of Congress.
Left turn?
The California result arrived around midnight due to the time difference. By then, it was clear what had happened, although there was no consensus on how. The party, which celebrated its victories as a referendum on Trump’s second administration — which is relentlessly advancing down its authoritarian path 10 months after he took office — remains divided on the best way to continue winning. Is Mamdani’s progressivism and shift to the left the key? Or could his phenomenal campaign — from which there is much to learn about how to seduce the electorate in record time and activate young people — never have ended so well in the purple states, a color that comes from mixing Democratic blue and Republican red?
These questions meant that each faction of the party had something to celebrate Wednesday, and, equally, that the victory did not illuminate a single path toward the 2028 presidential elections. “The important thing,” Democratic Congresswoman Nydia Velázquez of New York explains to EL PAÍS, “is that we have sent a signal to the Republicans: there is an erosion of public support for the president, whose approval rating is at rock bottom.” “These elections have made it clear what battles we must fight and what positions we must adopt to win. It’s not about moderates or progressives, but about listening to the voters and fighting again for the working class,” adds Velázquez, who is on the left side of the coalition.
Both Spanberger and Sherrill presented themselves as moderate candidates, and both won by a landslide with over 56% of the vote. Their life stories further reinforced this moderate image. The new governor of Virginia was a CIA agent. The governor of New Jersey was a Navy helicopter pilot. They also share the fact that they entered politics in opposition to Trump and successfully positioned themselves as an alternative to the policies of the Republican president.
Mamdani, for his part, tried to focus on municipal issues such as rent freezes and free buses for New Yorkers, although with Trump in power, everything is inevitably overshadowed by the national circus, with him as its sole ringmaster. The young and proud socialist’s emphasis on affordability in a city ravaged by financial issues, where residents struggle to make ends meet, has proven to be a successful strategy that can be replicated elsewhere. It also stands in stark contrast to the campaign that led Kamala Harris to lose in every key state last year to Trump, whose candidacy successfully convinced voters that only Republicans cared about the cost of living and rampant inflation.
On Tuesday, when the debacle was already apparent, the U.S. president rushed to distance himself from the runners in his party with an all-caps message that once again revealed him as a team player only when the team wins. He wrote: “Trump wasn’t on the ballot, and shutdown [which on Tuesday shattered its all-time record with no end in sight] were the two reasons that Republicans lost elections tonight, according to pollsters.” On Wednesday, he addressed a group of conservative senators at a breakfast at the White House, asking them to examine their consciences, as if the matter had nothing to do with him.
Despite the blatant disclaimer of responsibility, Trump has a point: the results in Virginia — which until Tuesday had a Republican governor and is home to some 150,000 federal workers — indicate that voters blame the president’s party for cutting off public funding. They also show that the Democrats’ risky decision not to vote with their rivals to reopen the government until they receive guarantees that there will be no cuts to healthcare subsidies is proving to be a winning move in the arena of public opinion, despite the harm being done to federal employees who have stopped receiving their paychecks. Many have been forced to rely on food banks to fill their pantries.
Sherrill’s victory in New Jersey, meanwhile, hides hopeful signs for the party, which has seen the return to the fold of some of the Hispanic and African American minority voters who fled in the 2024 presidential elections.
The respite that Tuesday’s elections have given Democrats has not, however, resolved the major outstanding issue: who will lead the party back to the White House? Mamdani cannot run for president because he was born in Uganda and the law prohibits him from doing so. Harris, who has just published a memoir in which she blames everyone but herself for her defeat, has not ruled out the idea. And among the names that have been solidified in the predictions for months, from progressive congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to former Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel, none clearly stands out.
Newsom, who emerged strengthened from the Proposition 50 referendum as someone unafraid to take shortcuts to achieve results, is another prospect. On Tuesday, he strove to make his victory appearance what history may ultimately remember as the first speech of his presidential campaign.
“Tonight was not just a victory for the Democratic Party. It was a victory for the United States of America, for the people of this country and the principles that our founding fathers lived and died for,” Newsom said.
Now it remains to be seen how far this momentum will take the Democrats, and how they plan to regain their momentum after a year in limbo. In a country perpetually in election mode, the campaign for the 2026 midterm elections, in which the entire House of Representatives and a third of the Senate will be renewed, is officially underway a year before they take place.
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