Will Biden’s ‘Saving Democracy’ Message Resonate With Swing State Voters?

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BETHLEHEM, Pa. — Just blocks from the shuttered Bethlehem Steel plant, the Hispanic Center Lehigh Valley was bustling on a recent day with scores of older people eating lunch. Downstairs, out of sight, a constant stream of visitors was shopping in its massive food pantry.

Over the past seven months, the number of visitors to the pantry has risen by more than a third. The center’s executive director, Raymond Santiago, sees that as a stark sign of something he has felt over the past couple years: Many in the area’s Latino community are struggling to meet their basic needs.

Northampton County, which includes Bethlehem, is a traditional bellwether for Pennsylvania, one of the most important presidential swing states, and Latinos are a key part of the coalition that President Joe Biden is trying rebuild as he embarks on his campaign for a second term. In doing so, the Democrat might have challenges selling a crucial part of his reelection strategy.

One of the messages he has delivered in previous visits to Pennsylvania is that former President Donald Trump, the front-runner for the GOP nomination, is a danger to American democracy. Biden is hoping that message energizes the same voters who turned out four years ago, when Northampton County narrowly flipped to him after supporting Trump by a thin margin in 2016.

Based on his interactions with visitors to the Hispanic center, Santiago isn’t so sure. It’s the price of groceries and lack of affordable housing that dominate conversations there.

“I think so many people are already immune to that messaging, it won’t land as cleanly this election as it did in 2020,” he said. “If he keeps pushing that message, it might turn voters away.”

Biden chose a location near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, with its deep symbolism for the country’s struggle for freedom, for his initial campaign event for 2024, portraying Trump as a grave threat to America and describing the general election as “all about” whether democracy can survive. It was a message similar to one he gave before the 2022 midterm elections at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, where the nation’s founding documents were created. Biden warned that Trump and his followers threatened “the very foundation of our republic.”

Hours after Biden’s speech, Trump responded by accusing Biden of “pathetic fearmongering.”

Biden has continued the theme during the early primary season, telling supporters winning a second term is essential for maintaining the country’s democratic traditions.

Over the course of several days, The Associated Press interviewed a cross section of voters in Northampton County to ask whether Biden’s messaging around the fate of democracy was resonating. These voters represented parts of the very coalition Biden will need to win Pennsylvania again — Black voters, Latinos, independents and moderates from both parties.

Their overarching response: The president’s warning that a second Trump presidency will shred constitutional norms and destroy democratic institutions is not one that, alone, will motivate them and get them out to vote.

Like people across much of the rest of the country, most of those interviewed would prefer avoiding a rematch of the 2020 contest, and several suggested they would seriously consider a serious third-party candidate with a strong message and a chance of winning.

Evelyn Fermin, 74, who regularly visits the Lehigh Hispanic center, has lived in the county for two years after spending most of her life in New Jersey. Her opinion about Trump has been set since January 6, 2021, when the former president’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in a violent bid to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win. But she doesn’t think reminders of that day will be sufficient to persuade voters in November.

For the daughter of parents who immigrated from the Dominican Republic, her concerns are border security and spending abroad.

“Rather than sending it out to foreign countries, I think we should use it for our people,” she said.

As a divorced mother who supported her son as he worked his way through school to become a lawyer, she also doesn’t support Biden’s attempt to waive student loan debt: “If I was able to to do it, I feel that they should.”

Curt Balch, 44, worked in the health care industry and is now a stay-at-home dad. He was weathering a two-hour school delay with his 5-year-old daughter in his home in Hellertown, in a more rural part of the county. He registered Republican so he could vote in primaries but describes himself as more libertarian.

Balch said the messaging by both sides is “pretty toxic” when they warn that the other is “a threat or a danger to the fundamentals of the country moving forward.”

He supported Trump in the past two elections but is open to considering other candidates this year, especially if he thinks there is an appealing third-party or independent candidate.

Balch believes the dire warnings about a potential second Trump term are overblown. Balch notes that even during the COVID-19 pandemic, Trump let states decide for themselves how to handle it.

“I understand the rhetoric, ‘Oh, he’s going to be a fascist dictator,'” Balch said. “I don’t think it’s a message that’s getting people to the polls. I don’t think people are legitimately thinking that they need to be afraid of Donald Trump.”

Christian Miller was a lifelong Democrat but became an independent in 2022 out of frustration with political gridlock and a sense that as he got older, he was growing more conservative.

He said he might one day consider switching to the Republican Party, but not as long as Trump is leading it. That’s not out of any worry that Trump would become a dictator if he wins a second term.

“I don’t know that I fear it as much as it’s being made out to be in the media from either side,” said Miller, a 53-year-old bank executive who lives in Nazareth. “I feel that the institutions are safe and and are strong enough to withstand the challenges.”

Miller cited the dozens of failed court challenges seeking to overturn the 2020 presidential results by Trump and his allies as an example of the institutions holding firm.

Surveys indicate concern about the state of democracy, but it’s not clear how that will translate in November’s election. A Biden campaign spokesperson said the democracy message is central to the campaign, but it is not the only one the campaign will use to reach voters. Protecting abortion rights and fighting for higher wages will be among the issues essential to the president’s pitch.

Northampton County, especially Bethlehem, has been slowly emerging from the economic shock that followed the collapse of the local steel industry. The plant produced the steel that built the Golden Gate Bridge during the Great Depression and a decade later, during World War II, became the country’s largest shipbuilder.

The blast furnaces, which fell silent nearly 30 years ago, are still visible for miles as they sit alongside the Lehigh River. But Bethlehem has been enjoying a revival in recent years as it has evolved into a hub for health care and technology companies. New shops, an art center, museum, performing arts stage and a casino, among other developments, have added vibrancy to a picturesque city dotted with historical structures dating to the 18th century.

Northampton also is a historical bellwether. As the county has gone in the presidential election, so has the state, said Christopher Borick, a political science professor and director of the Institute of Public Opinion at Muhlenberg University in Allentown.

The last time they split was 1948, when the county voted for Democrat Harry Truman, but the state went for Republican Thomas Dewey.

“It’s about as great a benchmark county as you’ll ever find,” Borick said.

Biden narrowly carried the county in 2020, four years after Trump had narrowly prevailed in his victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton.

Anna Kodama, 69, is the type of voter who traditionally has swung back and forth between the parties.

She grew up in a Republican household in Ohio but switched parties during college. She recalls voting across party lines frequently since she moved to the Lehigh Valley in 1977 — until 2016 when Trump was making his first run for the presidency and she voted a straight ticket for Democrats.

The people Kodama encounters are not listening to Biden’s messages about a dark future under Trump. Instead, she would like him to speak more about what he is doing to improve the economy and forge stronger ties with Europe. She paid attention to a Biden visit earlier this year to a nearby town, Emmaus, where he stopped at local stores to discuss the importance of supporting small businesses.

She said Biden seems to connect better with people when he promotes a positive message, rather than a negative one that she believes will not motivate people in the fall.

“That’s where I find it compelling — look what we can do together,” said the artist and former teacher who was sipping coffee at Café the Lodge in Bethlehem. “That message resonates with me and with people I know.”

For Esther Lee, the 90-year-old president of the local NAACP, the threat-to-democracy message is not generating much concern among the people she contacts. She already plans to vote, but not because she is fearful of another Trump presidency.

“We already know who he is,” she said.

Getting Black voters engaged is going to take more from Biden, she believes, because so far his campaign messages have not resonated. She questions whether the Black community in Northampton County is the target audience: “I’m not seeing evidence of it,” she said.

Lee said the issue she hears about most in her circle is homelessness: “It’s No. 1,” she said, adding that the resources don’t seem to be sufficient to address the local problem. The companion to that, she said, is affordable housing.

“With Biden’s campaign, they need to reach down further,” with the messaging, she said.

At the Lehigh center, Guillermo Lopez Jr., 69, recalls his deep ties to the area and the many members of his extended family who worked at Bethlehem Steel. He worked at the plant for 27 years, following a father who worked there for 36.

He is now on the center’s board of directors and a local leader in the Latino community. A Democrat who said he leans independent, he plans to vote for Biden in part because of how he thought Trump’s rhetoric, beginning with is campaign announcement in 2015, made targets of Latinos and other minorities.

“It just speaks to me that there’s so much misguided hatred toward people like me,” he said.

But Lopez thinks messages of fear and Trump imperiling American democracy are essentially meaningless for many of the county’s working-foclass voters. Their concern, he said, is finding steady work with good pay.

“I actually think that harms the vote,” he said of the democracy warnings. The average person who “just puts their nose to the grindstone and goes to work, I don’t think that motivates them. I think it scares them and freezes them.” 
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Nigeria Grapples with Soaring Inflation, Plummeting Currency

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ABUJA, Nigeria — Nigerians are facing one of the West African nation’s worst economic crises in years triggered by surging inflation, the result of monetary policies that have pushed the currency to an all-time low against the dollar. The situation has provoked anger and protests across the country.

The latest government statistics released Thursday showed the inflation rate in January rose to 29.9%, its highest since 1996, mainly driven by food and non-alcoholic beverages. Nigeria’s currency, the naira, further plummeted to 1,524 to $1 on Friday, reflecting a 230% loss of value in the last year.

“My family is now living one day at a time (and) trusting God,” said trader Idris Ahmed, whose sales at a clothing store in Nigeria’s capital of Abuja have declined from an average of $46 daily to $16.

The plummeting currency worsens an already bad situation, further eroding incomes and savings. It squeezes millions of Nigerians already struggling with hardship due to government reforms including the removal of gas subsidies that resulted in gas prices tripling.

A snapshot of Nigeria’s economy

With a population of more than 210 million people, Nigeria is not just Africa’s most populous country but also the continent’s largest economy. Its gross domestic product is driven mainly by services such as information technology and banking, followed by manufacturing and processing businesses and then agriculture.

The challenge is that the economy is far from sufficient for Nigeria’s booming population, relying heavily on imports to meet the daily needs of its citizens from cars to cutlery. So it is easily affected by external shocks such as the parallel foreign exchange market that determines the price of goods and services.

Nigeria’s economy is heavily dependent on crude oil, its largest foreign exchange earner. When crude prices plunged in 2014, authorities used its scarce foreign reserves to try to stabilize the naira amid multiple exchange rates. The government also shut down the land borders to encourage local production and limited access to the dollar for importers of certain items.

The measures, however, further destabilized the naira by facilitating a booming parallel market for the dollar. Crude oil sales that boost foreign exchange earnings have also dropped because of chronic theft and pipeline vandalism.

Monetary reforms poorly implemented

Shortly after taking the reins of power in May last year, President Bola Tinubu took bold steps to fix the ailing economy and attract investors. He announced the end of costly decadeslong gas subsidies, which the government said were no longer sustainable. Meanwhile, the country’s multiple exchange rates were unified to allow market forces to determine the rate of the local naira against the dollar, which in effect devalued the currency.

Analysts say there were no adequate measures to contain the shocks that were bound to come as a result of reforms including the provision of a subsidized transportation system and an immediate increase in wages.

So the more than 200% increase in gas prices caused by the end of the gas subsidy started to have a knock-on effect on everything else, especially because locals rely heavily on gas-powered generators to light their households and run their businesses.

Why is the naira plummeting in value?

Under the previous leadership of the Central Bank of Nigeria, policymakers tightly controlled the rate of the naira against the dollar, thereby forcing individuals and businesses in need of dollars to head to the black market, where the currency was trading at a much lower rate.

There was also a huge backlog of accumulated foreign exchange demand on the official market — estimated to be $7 billion — due in part to limited dollar flows as foreign investments into Nigeria and the country’s sale of crude oil have declined.

Authorities said a unified exchange rate would mean easier access to the dollar, thereby encouraging foreign investors and stabilizing the naira. But that has yet to happen because inflows have been poor. Instead, the naira has further weakened as it continues to depreciate against the dollar.

What are authorities doing?

Central Bank of Nigeria Gov. Olayemi Cardoso has said the bank has cleared $2.5 billion of the foreign exchange backlog out of the $7 billion that had been outstanding. The bank, however, found that $2.4 billion of that backlog were false claims that it would not clear, Cardoso said, leaving a balance of about $2.2 billion, which he said will be cleared “soon.”

Tinubu, meanwhile, has directed the release of food items such as cereals from government reserves among other palliatives to help cushion the effect of the hardship. The government has also said it plans to set up a commodity board to help regulate the soaring prices of goods and services.

On Thursday, the Nigerian leader met with state governors to deliberate on the economic crisis, part of which he blamed on the large-scale hoarding of food in some warehouses.

“We must ensure that speculators, hoarders and rent seekers are not allowed to sabotage our efforts in ensuring the wide availability of food to all Nigerians,” Tinubu said.

By Friday morning, local media were reporting that stores were being sealed for hoarding and charging unfair prices.

How are Nigerians coping with tough times?

The situation is at its worst in conflict zones in northern Nigeria, where farming communities are no longer able to cultivate what they eat as they are forced to flee violence. Pockets of protests have broken out in past weeks, but security forces have been quick to impede them, even making arrests in some cases.

In the economic hub of Lagos and other major cities, there are fewer cars and more legs on the roads as commuters are forced to trek to work. The prices of everything from food to household items increase daily.

“Even to eat now is a problem,” said Ahmed in Abuja. “But what can we do?”
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How Trump’s Civil Fraud Case Decision Is Likely to Impact His Business

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NEW YORK — Donald Trump won’t face the “corporate death penalty,” as one of his lawyer’s called the potential outcome, after all.

A New York judge on Friday spared the ex-president that worst case punishment as he ruled in a civil case alleging Trump fraudulently misrepresented financial figures to get cheaper loans and other benefits.

Still, Trump was hit hard, facing big cash penalties, outside supervision of his companies and restrictions on his borrowing.

In a pretrial ruling last year, the same judge threatened to shut down much of the Republican presidential front-runner’s business by calling for the “dissolution” of corporate entities that hold many of his marquee properties. That raised the specter of possible fire sales of Trump Tower, a Wall Street skyscraper and other properties.

But New York Supreme Court Judge Arthur Engoron called off the dissolution.

Instead, he said the court would appoint two monitors to oversee the Trump Organization to make sure it doesn’t continue to submit false figures.

“It’s a complete reversal,” said real estate lawyer Adam Leitman Bailey. “There’s a big difference between having to sell your assets and a monitor who gets to look over your shoulders.”

In his ruling, Engoron banned Trump from serving as an officer or director in any New York corporation for three years, prohibited him from taking out loans with New York banks and said his company and other defendants have to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

Here is how the decision is likely to impact his business:

Cash drain

This is possibly the worst hit from the ruling.

Trump and his businesses were told they would have to pay $355 million for “ill-gotten gains.” Trump’s sons, Eric and Donald Trump Jr., who help run the business, were ordered to pay $4 million each. Trump’s former chief financial officer was ordered to pay $1 million, for a total judgment of $364 million.

“I don’t think there is any way Trump can continue to operate his business as usual,” said Syracuse University law professor Gregory Germain. “It’s a lot of money.”

The penalties will hit Trump’s finances at a moment he is facing other steep legal bills stemming from several criminal cases. Trump separately was hit with $88 million in judgments in sexual abuse and defamation lawsuits brought by writer E. Jean Carroll.

Trump is also required to pay interest from the dates when he received benefits from his alleged fraud. That so-called pre-judgment interest adds another $100 million to Trump’s bills, according to New York’s attorney general.

Trump lawyers have said they will appeal. That means he won’t have to hand over the whole amount yet, though he will have to post a bond or escrow, which could tie up cash while waiting for the appeal.

In any case, Trump already has enough in cash to pay much of that penalty, assuming he is telling the truth about his finances. In a deposition in the fraud case, he said he had more than $400 million in cash.

No Trump property fire sale

The judge’s summary ruling in September was vague in exactly what he meant by a “dissolution” of Trump businesses. But several legal experts told The Associated Press that in the worse-case scenario, it could have led to a sale of not only of his New York properties, but his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, a Chicago hotel and condo building, and several golf clubs, including ones in Miami, Los Angeles and Scotland.

One of Trump’s lawyers, Christopher Kise, called that potential outcome a “corporate death penalty.”

Not even the New York attorney general, who filed the lawsuit against Trump, had asked for a “dissolution.”

An Associated Press investigation confirmed how unusual such a punishment would have been if carried out: Trump’s case would have been the only big business in nearly 70 years of similar cases shut down without a showing of obvious victims who suffered major financial losses. The main alleged victim of the real estate mogul ‘s fraud, Deutsche Bank, had itself not complained it had suffered any losses.

But Engoron on Friday backed down, saying monitors were good enough, basically handing New York Attorney General Letitia James most of what she had sought: bans, monitors and a massive penalty.

Three-year ban

The ban on Trump serving as an officer or director for a New York corporation suggests a big shakeup at the Trump Organization, but the real impact isn’t clear.

Trump may be removed from the corner office, but as an owner of the business his right to appoint someone to act on his behalf has not been revoked.

“It’s not that he can’t have influence at these enterprises,” said University of Michigan law professor William Thomas. “He just can’t hold any actually appointed positions.”

Thomas added, however, much depends on how the monitor will handle Trump’s attempt to run his company by proxy.

“He might want to walk in the office and tell them what to do, but there will be pushback,” he said. “It could limit the avenues through which he can exert control.”

Two obvious candidates to help Trump maintain control, his two adult sons, are already off-limits. The judge’s ruling barred Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump from being officers of New York companies for two years.

Business loans

Trump is also banned from getting loans from New York-chartered banks, a potentially devastating blow given so many major lenders are based in the city.

Luckily for Trump, he has cut his debt by hundreds of millions in recent years and so won’t need to refinance as much. He also has pushed out the maturity of many loans still on the books by several years.

The impact on funding for future businesses could be crushing, though. Without access to banks, he may be forced to use cash to finance new ventures, something that real estate moguls are loath to do and that won’t be easy, given his cash payments.

Still, only banks appear banned in the ruling, leaving Trump free to borrow from fast-growing alternative financiers, the private equity and hedge funds that make up the so-called shadow banking world.

“I could imagine a load of private equity funds with very little prospects sitting on a bunch of dry powder saying, ‘Hey, we’ll lend you $300 million,'” Columbia law school professor Eric Talley said. 
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Foreign Minister Says Cutting China Out of Trade Would Be Historic Mistake

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MUNICH — China’s foreign minister told a gathering of international security policy officials Saturday that trying to shut China out of trade in the name of avoiding dependency would be a historic mistake.

Wang Yi spoke at the Munich Security Conference. Host Germany wants to avoid over-reliance on trade with an increasingly assertive China and diversify its supply of key goods in an approach it calls “de-risking.” That’s in line with the approach of other industrial powers in the Group of Seven, which has stressed that it doesn’t seek to harm China or thwart its development.

Beijing has criticized the strategy.

“Today … more people have come to realize that the absence of cooperation is the biggest risk,” Wang said through an interpreter. “Those who attempt to shut China out in the name of de-risking will make a historical mistake.”

“The world economy is like a big ocean that cannot be cut into isolated lakes,” he said. “The trend toward economic globalization cannot be reversed. We need to work together to make globalization more universally beneficial and inclusive.”

His comments came amid calls over the last year from the United States and the European Union to reduce their dependence on China.

Wang also renewed China’s pushback against allegations of forced labor in the western Xinjiang region, where it is accused of running labor transfer programs in which Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities are forced to toil in factories as part of a longstanding campaign of assimilation and mass detention.

He complained of “fabricated information from different parties” and asserted that the aim is “to stop the development of China.”
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Algeria’s Black Market for Foreign Currency Underlines Its Economic Woes

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ALGIERS, Algeria — In a square near the center of Algiers, currency traders carry wads of euros, pounds and dollars, hoping to exchange them to those worried about the plummeting value of the Algerian dinar.

This black market for foreign currencies is among the signs of the economic woes plaguing Algeria. The state, reluctant to allow the exchange rate to adjust fully, has proven incapable of limiting demand among the population as confidence in the dinar remains low.

The widening parallel exchange rate underscores how everyday Algerians have lost buying power as the government has juggled competing priorities, trying to combat inflation and maintain state spending, subsidies and price controls that keep people afloat.

In the oil-rich North African nation, business owners are rumored to be dumping their assets and scrounging up euros on the black market so their wealth isn’t stuck. Middle-class people also rely on euros and dollars to buy things in short supply like medicine, vehicle parts or certain foods.

Last week, the official exchange rate allowed one euro to be sold for 145 Algerian dinar, while on the same day, currency traders were selling one euro for nearly 241 dinars on the black market — 66% higher than the official exchange rate.

Rabah Belamane, a 72-year-old retired teacher from Algiers, told The Associated Press that the official rate is a fiction and that his pension doesn’t go as far as it used to in either dinar or euro.

“The real value of the dinar is on the informal market, not in the bank, which uses an artificial rate to lie to the public,” Belamane said.

Algeria has long been known for having among the region’s most closed economies. It limits the amount of foreign currency its citizens can access to a modest tourism allowance that amounts to less than needed to carry out one of Islam’s pilgrimages to Mecca or visit family in Europe’s large Algerian diaspora.

The government estimates roughly $7 billion worth of foreign currency trades hands on the country’s black market.

From Lebanon to Nigeria, experts warn that having two parallel exchange rates can distort a country’s economy, discourage investment and encourage corruption. Algeria has historically been reluctant to lower the official value of the dinar, worried that devaluation will spike prices and anger the population.

Traders are intimately aware that the gap between the official and black market exchange rate can narrow or widen by the day. They expect it to swing up as Ramadan approaches.

“In recent days, the supply of euros has been lacking, which explains how it has shot up,” trader Nourdine Sadaoui told the AP as he took a pause from yelling “Change!” at people passing by.

That shortage may make purchasing certain goods difficult for Algerians. But some in government believe it reflects the success of import restrictions and laws limiting how many euros can be brought into the country.

Hicham Safar, the head of a finance committee in the lower house of Algeria’s Parliament, said last week that he “welcomed” such concerns. The growing chasm between the official and black market rates meant fewer euros are getting into the country, he said.

“There’s no more overcharging on imports,” he said on television station Echourouk, citing efforts by customs officials to better regulate imports through the Bank of Algeria and minimize the use of foreign currency.

For decades, steady revenue from oil and gas allowed Algeria to import everything from toothpicks to industrial machinery. The country’s large import market concentrated economic power in the hands of a small group of businessmen known to overbill clients and stash profits abroad, including in European and Emirati banks.

Since President Abdelmajid Tebboune took power, the country has targeted the so-called “oligarchs,” including businesses active in imports. Throughout his tenure, the costs of basic goods in Algerian dinars have swung and imports have been further limited.

Algeria emerged as an unexpected beneficiary of the war in Ukraine, as energy prices rose and Europe sought non-Russian suppliers of oil and gas. But the country has experienced food crises and rising anger as the prices of necessities like chicken, cooking oil and legumes have risen.

Economist Karim Allam said the strength of the euro had worked to Algeria’s detriment, cutting into the purchasing power of those who make money in dinars. He is skeptical of the idea that a shortage of foreign currencies reflects the government’s success, but also doubts that business people are fleeing the country in droves or sending money abroad.

“I don’t think they’ll take the risk of smuggling currency out of the country, which is considered an economic crime punishable by 20 years’ imprisonment,” he said.

Regardless, the falling value of the dinar on the black market is one indicator of how Algerians continue to lose purchasing power despite governmental efforts to stabilize the economy while keeping government spending and subsidies high.

“Inflation has destroyed the buying power of Algerians, who are falling into poverty. The dinar has become worthless,” said Belamane, the retired teacher.
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«Ми продовжимо доносити чесну журналістику до російського народу» –президент Радіо Свобода після смерті Навального

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«Олексій Навальний боровся за право росіян вільно висловлювати свою думку без страху – цінності, які RFE/RL відстоює вже понад сім десятиліть»
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95% аудиторії довіряють Радіо Свобода – опитування

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Більшість респондентів заявили, що Радіо Свобода поглиблює їхні знання про події в Україні та решті світу, допомагає сформувати думку про важливі питання, при цьому користувачі планують і надалі звертатися до цього джерела інформації
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