Black People across US Receive Racist Text Messages after Trump’s Win

THE GUARDIAN: FBI investigating after people report texts saying they were selected to pick cotton and go to nearest plantation

Just hours after Donald Trump’s election win on Tuesday, Black people across the US reported receiving racist text messages telling them that they had been “selected” to pick cotton and needed to report to “the nearest plantation”. While the texts, some of which were signed “a Trump supporter”, varied in detail, they all conveyed the same essential message about being selected to pick cotton. Some of the messages refer to the recipients by name. » | Adria R Walker | Friday, November 8, 2024

‘These People Are Diehard’: Iowa Trump Supporters Shrug Off Indictments

Donald Trump speaks at the Iowa Republican Party's 2023 Lincoln Dinner on 28 July. Photograph: Brian Cahn/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock
THE OBSERVER: Many in the state see prosecution of Trump as a Democratic political move – and they say it will backfire

From his corner of rural Iowa, Neil Shaffer did more than his fair share to put Donald Trump in the White House and to try to keep him there.

Shaffer oversaw the biggest swing of any county in the US from Barack Obama to Trump in 2016, and increased the then president’s share of the vote four years later. But the chair of the Howard county Republican party is not enthusiastic at the prospect of yet another Trump presidential campaign, and he blames the Democrats for driving it.

“Honestly, the Democrats are shooting themselves in the foot with these prosecutions,” he said. “Why is Trump doing so well? Because people feel like they are piling on him. If this is the Democrats’ effort to make him look bad, it hasn’t. It’s probably going to make him the [Republican] nominee and, honestly, he may win the general election again. And then whose fault would it be?”

After pleading not guilty on Thursday to federal charges over his attempts to steal the 2020 presidential election, Trump denounced the indictment as “a persecution of a political opponent”.

“If you can’t beat him, you persecute him or you prosecute him,” he said.

There are plenty who buy that line in Iowa and the rest of Trump-sympathetic America. » | Chris McGreal in Cresco, Iowa | Sunday, August 6, 2023