This story was originally reported by Mariel Padilla of The 19th. Meet Mariel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

This story is part of Gen Z at the Ballot Box, a collaboration between States Newsroom and The 19th. 

It was the beginning of her junior year, and 20-year-old Mia Tedesco was setting up a table for the campus open house where more than 200 recognized student organizations were preparing to recruit new students. Tedesco laid out bracelets that read “We are Charlie Kirk” — an homage to the prominent conservative media personality who was fatally shot at an event in Utah last year. 

It was her first semester as president of Turning Point USA (TPUSA) at Butler University, a private school in Indiana, and she wanted to make sure her table looked nice. 

“We are a more left-leaning college and university; we are a liberal arts school — I knew that signing up and coming and committing to college,” Tedesco said. “I knew I wanted to challenge it a little bit.” 

She had civil conversations with many students who approached the table to learn more about TPUSA, the organization founded by Kirk, though some people scoffed or flipped her off. She considered setting up a camera for safety. Tedesco noticed that some people were taking handfuls of bracelets; then a friend told her that there were facetious posts about them on Yik Yak, a hyper-local social media platform for college students that lets users be anonymous. Many of the bracelets ended up in the trash. 

It wasn’t the first time the conservative student organization had faced backlash: The previous semester, their chat on the platform GroupMe was hacked. Someone changed the name to “We love socialism,” updated chat names and photos, and kicked out members. The group chat, which was the main point of communication for the group, went from 70 members to 30. 

“I know with the Democratic Club and many other clubs, there’s been loud dislike with us,” Tedesco said. “But I also know that if we don’t try, then we’re not using our voice like Charlie would want.” 

Founded in 2012, TPUSA has grown to become one of the largest and most prominent conservative youth movements in the country. The September 2025 assassination of Kirk inspired conservative students across the country — many who had not even heard of Charlie Kirk or TPUSA prior — to continue the organization’s mission to champion conservative values. An evangelical Christian, Kirk advocated for gun rights; condemned abortion; held up men as the heads of households; denounced Islam; and called diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives “racist.” Within a year of his death, high school chapters jumped 180 percent and college chapters increased 60 percent  — resulting in more than 1,500 college chapters as of September 2026, according to the organization. 

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Eight days after Kirk’s death, his wife, Erika, was publicly appointed his successor to lead one of the most active organizations in conservative politics. 

That same day, Tyler Bowyer, the chief operating officer of Turning Point Action — a sister organization to TPUSA founded in 2019 and designed for direct political action — and a longtime colleague and friend to the Kirks, posted a prediction of sorts on social media: “Charlie Kirk came and converted the young men. Erika Kirk is coming to convert the young women.” 

While the number of chapters has exploded and thousands of young women have shown up to events, the organization’s influence and ability to mobilize young voters as it has in the past is uncertain. 

The larger Republican base is fracturing, the war in Iran continues and gas prices are still on the rise. Disillusionment with MAGA and the Republican Party is growing among young conservatives. With that backdrop, some TPUSA members describe rising tension on campuses. Some college conservatives — especially Gen Z men — are frustrated with Erika Kirk’s leadership, wondering if she can deliver the same firebrand energy her husband did. 

When Kirk was assassinated on September 10, 2025, Tedesco and a friend were in the process of starting a TPUSA chapter on Butler’s campus. For Tedesco, who grew up Catholic in a small town, it was important to create a space on campus for Christian representation, where students like her could incorporate their faith in day-to-day life and community. The assassination was “the final push” that got the paperwork across the finish line. 

“Charlie was very outgoing when it came to the youth,” Tedesco said. “There was a lot of clickbaiting in his videos, but a lot of it was eye-opening. This person sees this way, that person sees that way — how can we get to a civil conversation? Charlie was able to have that connection as one human being with another.” 

‘I’m not sure I can really trust her’

Andrew Roth, along with three other men, was in the process of filling out the proper documents to start a TPUSA chapter at Taylor University, a private Christian school in Upland, Indiana, when Charlie Kirk was assassinated. 

“Prior to that, we were being very careful with how we were doing the paperwork because we wanted to make sure we got it right,” said Roth, now a junior and president of his TPUSA chapter. “Then Charlie died, and we were like, ‘OK, we just gotta send it.’” 

Roth said 120 people showed up to an informal meeting to gauge interest in the new TPUSA chapter. During the club’s first semester as an official chapter in the spring of 2026, Roth said, he was surprised to see more women than men show up to events. 

“In general, 20- to 21-year-old guys are just statistically more right-wing than girls are at this age,” said Roth, who is now a junior. “So I just kind of assumed it would be more guys than girls.” 

Roth’s analysis bears out: Polling from The 19th and YouGov found that Gen Z women are far more likely than men to identify as liberal (38 percent vs. 28 percent) and as Democrats (37 percent vs. 21 percent). 

Roth said some women were probably drawn to Erika Kirk. In June, she spoke at TPUSA’s annual Women’s Leadership Summit and addressed more than 2,000 young women, encouraging them to embrace their Christian faith and biblical womanhood — a theological concept that defines women’s role as homemakers, nurturers and submissive to their husbands — while critiquing modern feminism.

Nearly 20 percent of Gen Z women consider themself to be a “strong feminist” compared with less than 7 percent of Gen Z men, according to The 19th/YouGov poll. 

“My husband always believed in this event because he could see young women being sold a vision of life that looked empowering on the surface, but left many of them increasingly dissatisfied underneath,” Erika Kirk said in her opening remarks at the summit. “He wanted to create a place for conservative women to connect with like-minded women and be poured into by female voices that would talk to them about the sanctity of life, about fiscal responsibility, about liberty and family.”

Erika Kirk’s message is less overtly political than that of her late husband. Her speeches tend to have fewer policy talking points. When asked in a Vanity Fair interview about her stance on Israel, for example, she responded that she doesn’t “sit around thinking about what Bibi Netanyahu is doing.”

“My brain bandwidth right now is honoring my husband, loving on my babies and building Turning Point to be everything it could be. I don’t really have the bandwidth to go down the rabbit holes of all of it,” Kirk said. 

Erika Kirk did not respond to requests for comment.

By some measures, TPUSA has been wildly successful under Erika Kirk. In the past year, Turning Point PAC, Inc. raised the most political campaign money in its history, raking in around $9 million ahead of the 2026 midterms — compared with the $7 million it raised in the 2024 election cycle, when it became a core part of the Republican Party’s swing state strategy. The group’s nonprofit wing also reported a 30 percent spike in revenue, bringing in $115 million in 2025 on top of its $81 million endowment. 

But her message does not appear to be resonating in the same way with many of the young men her husband appealed to: Roth, who is in a group chat with other TPUSA chapter presidents around the country, said people are frustrated and questioning whether Erika Kirk can be trusted. Roth pointed to one example when Erika Kirk praised the U.S. military’s war efforts in Iran under President Donald Trump — while her husband warned in April 2025 a new Middle East war would be “a catastrophic mistake.”

“People are looking at that and they’re wondering whether she’s just trying to toe the line so she doesn’t alienate Trump,” Roth said. “I’m not sure I can really trust her that much.”

Roth also noted that at least one TPUSA chapter disaffiliated from Turning Point in March, citing concerns with the national organization’s new direction.

Roth said he wants to hear more conversations about Israel’s involvement in U.S. foreign policy, the war in Iran, the Epstein files and government corruption — all topics Charlie Kirk was speaking about before his death. 

“Charlie Kirk was fine to upset the people in power,” Roth said. “He had a more anti-establishment government stance. I feel like without him, they have fallen in line a little bit more.” 

‘The one who was somehow able to hold it all together’

Amy Binder, a sociology professor at Johns Hopkins University, has studied how campuses shape young conservatives for more than a decade. While conducting research in 2008, Binder said the main organization for young conservatives was College Republicans. But things shifted a few years later when Charlie Kirk and TPUSA came to campuses. 

“Charlie Kirk was an incredible entrepreneur who had a real faculty with connecting with donors and big money,” said Binder, who has written multiple books about politics on college campuses. “He was very friendly with the Trump family and had a really good sense of what would excite kids on campus.”

He painted College Republicans as old, fusty and not visible enough. Meanwhile, TPUSA became the “far more expressive, fun, energetic, confrontational group,” Binder added.  

James Yock, a junior at Butler University, is both the vice president of his school’s TPUSA chapter and president of the College Republicans chapter. 

“I think Turning Point resonates more with youth,” Yock said. “It’s easier to relate to someone who is younger like Charlie, more up to date with things compared to someone who our grandparents or parents might resonate with in the College Republicans.” 

In the decade after its launch, Binder said she saw TPUSA’s footprint on American campuses grow. The group was able to raise enough money to funnel resources to campus organizations for events, campaigns and media efforts. 

Binder said that she thinks some young conservatives, particularly young women, are fans of Erika Kirk. But Charlie Kirk was more than the leader of TPUSA — in many ways, he was the heir apparent for MAGA, she said. Without him, there’s a sense that it’s “all falling apart” as the feuding factions within the Republican Party — including the nationalists, post liberals and populists — battle for dominance. 

Binder saw that at the December 2025 AmericaFest, TPUSA’s large annual event. Conservative personalities Tucker Carlson and Ben Shapiro clashed over Carlson’s interview with Nick Fuentes, a far-right commentator known for racist, misogynist and antisemitic views, and Shapiro attacked Candace Owens, a fringe personality, former TPUSA employee and close friend of Charlie Kirk’s, for her conspiracy theories. What united them, she said, was anti-trans and anti-Democrat talking points. 

“If Charlie Kirk were still alive, would the base be fracturing in the same way that it is today?” Binder said. “When I listen to conservative opinion, both on the intellectual right and the more populist right, I hear that attributed to him a lot — that he was the one who was somehow able to hold it all together.” 

‘No longer with Trump’

Erika Kirk took over TPUSA as young conservatives were growing increasingly frustrated with their party and searching for political leadership. 

Polling consistently shows that Gen Z is unhappy with the current political situation, according to Melissa Deckman, political scientist and chief executive of the Public Religion Research Institute. They are far less confident in major institutions, from the federal government to law enforcement to organized religion and the media.

“A lot of Gen Zers feel as though they play by the rules, but yet they’re unable to get ahead,” said Deckman, who also wrote the book “The Politics of Gen Z.” “The price of housing, the price of living, filling up a gas tank — all these things disproportionately hit them harder.”

And young conservative men tend to support more economically populist and sometimes progressive policies than older generations or Republicans of the past. 

“The young men hate cancel culture, but they want healthcare,” Deckman said. 

Roth said he and his peers are frustrated with most of the conservatives up for election. 

“People my age don’t know if we even want to vote because I don’t feel like the Republican Party even represents me,” Roth said. “They just say the right things to get into power, and then they don’t do anything.”

Roth said a lot of people his age became particularly disenchanted and distrustful of government and politicians after living through the COVID-19 pandemic. He was in the eighth grade when the first shutdowns began. 

“We were in favor of the 2024 Trump campaign because it was against all these things, it promised to expose all the secrets and clean up the system,” Roth said, noting Trump’s campaign promise to end forever wars, release the files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and put America first. “So many people my age are no longer with Trump because they didn’t see that happen.” 

Gen Z men who voted for Trump are more likely to say they now regret that decision than men Trump supporters in any other generation, according to polling from Navigator Research.

Some of the biggest conservative women’s voices are also turning on Trump. Influencers Savanna Faith Stone and Alex Clark — keynote speakers at TPUSA’s Women’s Leadership Summit this year — have given multiple interviews describing their sense of being betrayed by the president they helped elect in 2024. 

In a June interview with CBC News, Stone said she’s decided not to vote in the upcoming midterm elections. She said Trump “made it seem like everything was going to become more affordable; now the economy’s worse. He promised no more wars in the Middle East, and we are in a war. So it’s disappointing.” 

Clark, the host of a conservative and wellness podcast with more than half a million followers on Instagram, said in an interview with Politico that young women are considering not voting. She told the White House that people want “fight, fight, fight Trump” — not “ballroom Trump.”

“I feel some of the magic and the spark that helped us win 2024 is missing,” Clark added. 

‘Where does the Republican Party go after Donald Trump?’ 

Eli LaGrange said he was in class at Indiana Wesleyan University, a private evangelical Christian school, when Charlie Kirk was killed. He didn’t know much about Kirk or TPUSA at the time.

“I was really curious to learn: Why did they kill this guy?” LaGrange said. “Political violence is always sad. I started watching his videos and talking to people. He was spreading a good message and encouraging conversations, which I thought was great, and it’s so sad to see a voice get silenced.”

LaGrange decided his campus — which he described as not having too many political clubs — could benefit from a TPUSA chapter. Along with a few like-minded friends, he collected more than 300 student signatures in support, drafted a constitution, and presented it to the student government and a board of teachers and faculty. After he addressed some concerns that a new chapter could cause tensions or make people on campus upset, LaGrange said, his proposal was approved.

Event participation has ranged anywhere from 15 people to more than 200. They’ve had a pickleball night to introduce themselves to new students, coffee meet-and-greets, debate tables and game nights. They’ve invited pastors to do a racial reconciliation night and even brought in the lieutenant governor to discuss faith and local politics. 

“My elevator pitch to get people to join is focused on the importance of having political conversations,” LaGrange said. “Bad things happen when you don’t talk to the people you see, when you’re getting all your information and opinions from social media and the Internet. You need to go talk to people. You need to go have hard conversations with people.” 

LaGrange said some of the hottest topics are immigration, Flock cameras and artificial intelligence. Perhaps most pressing, however, is trying to get conservatives to align on the future direction of the GOP. 

“I think the biggest question is, ‘Where does the Republican Party go after Donald Trump and MAGA?’” LaGrange said. 

LaGrange said that most of his campus TPUSA chapter’s leadership is women and that about half of the people who come to events are women. He sees young conservatives’ voices as critical to the conversation about who will lead the movement. 

Some are pushing to advance MAGA while others call for a return to older, traditional conservative politics, hearkening back to past presidents like President Theodore Roosevelt. LaGrange said he falls in the latter camp. 

“Organizations like Turning Point have a lot of influence, so whoever they give their voice to will probably lead,” LaGrange said. “So I think we need to take the time to decide who really is a good leader for the future of conservative politics.”

The post The uncertain future of Erika Kirk’s Turning Point USA appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

Republicans running for governor across the country are backing away from abortion bans they once endorsed.

U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, the Republican candidate for governor in Wisconsin, calls his state’s 20-week abortion limit “settled law.” Just three years ago, he co-sponsored a bill that would have banned abortion six weeks into pregnancy.

Stacy Garrity, the GOP’s candidate in Pennsylvania, has said during her campaign that she would “respect” the state’s current law, which allows abortion until 24 weeks of pregnancy. Four years ago, she called on abortion opponents “to engage and make a difference” in state laws after the fall of Roe v. Wade. 

In Kansas, where abortion is legal until 22 weeks, Republican Ty Masterson has demurred when asked if, as governor, he would support a statewide referendum to eliminate the Kansas constitution’s abortion protections. Masterson had previously spoken at protests in opposition to reproductive rights and won the backing of state and national anti-abortion groups.

The candidates’ retreat suggests that, even as reproductive rights fade from the national spotlight and polls show voters are far more likely to prioritize cost-of-living concerns, the political ramifications of pushing for new abortion restrictions remain substantial. The rhetorical distancing also moves political conversations away from an issue that overwhelmingly energizes Democrats. 

“That might be their strategy there, to try to demotivate Democratic turnout in the state to take abortion off the table as a voting issue,” said Ashley Kirzinger, a pollster at KFF, a nonpartisan health policy research, polling and journalism organization. That’s especially true in tighter races such as those in Wisconsin and Kansas, she said.

Tiffany’s, Garrity’s and Masterson’s campaigns did not reply to requests for comment. The 19th contacted multiple Republican-aligned pollsters who also did not immediately respond.

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About 60 percent of Americans believe that abortion should be legal in most or all cases, including about two-thirds of independents, according to a poll from The 19th and YouGov. 

That said, pushing for abortion restrictions has never been broadly popular. Even before Roe v. Wade was overturned in 2022, Republicans seeking general election typically would not campaign overtly on abortion bans, said Molly Murphy, a pollster and president of Impact Research, a Democratically-aligned polling firm. 

“It would get discussed in donor meeting hot mics, endorsement questionnaires, etc, but candidates wouldn’t run on the fact that they’d ban abortion,” she wrote in an email.

    

Voters largely don’t consider abortion to be “settled law,” said Celinda Lake, a longtime Democratic pollster, noting that the share of voters opposing abortion bans has increased since the fall of Roe. “They feel like, ‘Wait a minute, it can be taken away again.’” 

In some races, Democrats and their allies are trying to push abortion rights back under the microscope — a strategy geared toward energizing liberal voters, Kirzinger said. 

Wisconsin’s Democratic nominee for governor, David Crowley, has said that, if elected, he would work with the state legislature to enshrine abortion rights into the state constitution — though it’s not clear how expansive that protection would be or whether it might supplant the state’s 20-week cutoff.

Pine Tree State Prosperity, a political action committee associated with the national Democratic Governors Association, is running advertising in Maine that highlights anti-abortion remarks made by Bobby Charles, the state’s Republican pick for governor. The Democratic nominee, Hannah Pingree, has led by double digits in recent polls. Charles’ campaign did not reply to a request for comment. 

Planned Parenthood’s super PAC, called Planned Parenthood Votes, has focused its resources in states such as Michigan, where the Republican candidate, U.S. Rep. John James, has said that abortion is “decided.” Four years ago, James said he opposed abortion in all cases, and he has compared the practice to genocide. His campaign did not reply to a request for comment.

James’ running mate, Jay DeBoyer, recently suggested leveraging a state constitutional convention to enact a 12-week abortion ban in Michigan, according to recordings of the remarks reported by The Detroit News and Michigan Advance. DeBoyer has since said publicly that abortion is a “settled” issue in Michigan, where voters in 2022 amended the state constitution to protect abortion before fetal viability.

Some gubernatorial candidates are still pushing for abortion restrictions, albeit far less ambitious ones. 

In New Mexico, where Democrats are expected to keep control of the governor’s mansion and already control both legislative chambers, Republican candidate Gregg Hull said he was “fully committed” to working with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to reduce the number of Texans coming to the neighboring state for abortions. 

Hull has repeatedly called himself “pro-life” but also said that he would not change the state’s abortion law, which imposes no time limits on the procedure, without legislative support. His campaign did not respond to a request for comment.

Abortion opponents are trying to revive the issue in a handful of states. SBA Pro-Life America, one of the nation’s leading anti-abortion groups, is pushing ads that characterize Democratic candidates for governor as well as the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives as extreme on the issue, including in Ohio, Wisconsin and Michigan.

But generally, voters are less likely to trust conservatives on abortion, Lake said. And talking about abortion, she added, is more likely to generate enthusiasm among key Democratic voting blocs, particularly young women and college-educated women, who typically support reproductive rights.

“We have in our research people who say, ‘I used to be pro-life, I didn’t support abortion, I would never get one, but I think this is a decision that needs to be made by a woman and her doctor,’” Lake said. “People now feel this is just way too dangerous. This has gone way too far.”

The post The GOP candidates walking back some of their abortion stances appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

LA CROSSE, Wisconsin — September is both campaign season and parade season in Wisconsin, as communities across the state celebrate Oktoberfest and the harvest of fall crops like apples and pumpkins. And many Democrats say a candidate can gauge how the November general election will go by the reaction they get along the parade route. 

Democratic congressional candidate Rebecca Cooke was one of the many elected officials out stumping for votes during a late September weekend. She had a packed schedule: first at Oktoberfest in the city of La Crosse and then at the annual Apple Festival in the small town of Gays Mills, about an hour’s drive away. And this year, the crowds’ responses are pointing in her favor. 

At Oktoberfest, she and staffers wearing forest green T-shirts with “Let Her Cooke” on the back criss-crossed the parade route backward at first, shaking hands and passing out campaign literature to voters, before marching with the local Democratic Party and statewide candidates including gubernatorial nominee David Crowley and his running mate, Sarah Godlewski.   

Two years ago, Democrats said the response to their candidates was more tepid, a harbinger of President Donald Trump’s victory. Four years ago, it was split, reflecting a midterm year in which anger over the Supreme Court’s overturning a federal right to abortion helped blunt the usual trend of the president’s party losing seats in midterms, but Republicans still won back the House of Representatives by flipping seats like Wisconsin’s 3rd Congressional District, represented by Rep. Derrick Van Orden. 

        

But this year, Cooke and fellow Democrats got lots of cheering and whooping on the route — and many politely declined campaign literature, saying Cooke already had their vote. 

“I’ve seen her on TV!” exclaimed one child upon seeing Cooke, reflecting what it’s like to grow up in a swing state.  

“Van Orden should be in jail!” shouted one woman along the Oktoberfest route. 

Cooke is facing Van Orden in a rematch for their critical battleground district. It’s one of many rural, Midwestern seats that once voted reliably Democratic before shifting right and voting for Trump in three straight presidential elections. Democrats are betting on voters’ unhappiness with the economy and high prices to flip the seat and make inroads in rural America. 

“It’s a district where Obama’s message and Trump’s message resonated,” said Anthony Chergosky, a professor of political science at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. “I hesitate to make any long-term predictions about the partisanship of this district because we have seen people as different as Obama and Trump do well here.”

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Van Orden, a former Navy SEAL now seeking a third term, has long drawn controversy for his behavior, including an episode in 2021 when he confronted a teenage library worker over a Pride display of LGBTQ+ books in a manner she described as threatening, and a 2023 incident when he unleashed a profane outburst of anger at a group of young Senate pages. He’s also a prolific online poster: the Wisconsin Democratic Party has taken to putting out “Whine Wednesday” news releases rounding up Van Orden’s week of activity on X. 

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Van Orden also has a history of making inflammatory statements about women, including comments appearing to blame single mothers and women being in the workforce for all sorts of social ills. The Wisconsin Muslim Alliance has repeatedly condemned him for remarks he made in September criticizing Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York for wearing a hijab while speaking at a Muslim civic center, when he accused her of “kowtowing to Muslim men because that’s what that culture is all about.” 

Recently, Van Orden has ramped up his use of AI-generated imagery and deepfakes of Cooke, which Cooke and her team have said are misleading and an effort to deceive voters, as the Midwest has become an epicenter for a cross-partisan grassroots backlash against data center construction. 

The district, in western Wisconsin, is a microcosm of many of the dynamics shaping the midterm elections, and Democrats see momentum and enthusiasm on their side, largely due to frustration with the Trump administration’s economic policies. Tariffs have hit farmers and the agriculture industry especially hard. Rising gas and diesel prices, exacerbated by the Trump administration’s war in Iran, are also top of mind for many voters, especially in rural areas.

        

“The unique combination of overall economic anxiety, rising healthcare costs, and gas and diesel prices that are just adding insult to injury in rural Wisconsin,” said Joe Zepecki, a Wisconsin-based Democratic strategist. “All of those ingredients are there for a good year for Democrats in Western Wisconsin.”

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Cooke first ran for Congress in 2022, losing the Democratic nomination to state Sen. Brad Pfaff. After Cooke won the Democratic nomination in 2024, Van Orden defeated her by less than three percentage points, underperforming Trump’s eight-point victory in the district. The fact that Cooke outperformed Vice President Kamala Harris was a sign, she said, that her campaign’s strategy of going everywhere and having meaningful conversations in rural communities was working. 

Cost of living is the top thing she hears about while out knocking doors, she said, and voters are squarely placing the blame on the war in Iran. 

“I think the thing with this administration is they promised a lot of folks an America First agenda, and then this is the opposite of an America First agenda,” Cooke said in an interview after walking in the La Crosse Oktoberfest parade. 

Voters in the district cited both the high cost of living and Van Orden’s voting record as reasons they supported Cooke in November. 

Peter and Keely, a couple along the parade route in Gays Mills who declined to give their last names, said prices were “way too expensive” and that Trump had “overpromised and underdelivered.” Cooke would be “level-headed”, Keely said, at a time when “we need hope.” 

“Democrats have more to offer,” she added. “The GOP is more extreme.”  

Van Orden is “out of control,” said Sue Doeherty, another voter in Gays Mills, citing his vote for Republicans’ major tax-cut and spending bill, which further restricted eligibility for programs like Medicaid and SNAP. 

“None of us care for him,” she said. “He’s for everything Trump wants.”  

Scott Cardinale, the 52-year-old owner of Dantes Bar and Grill in downtown Gays Mills, said he was supporting Cooke because “Republicans suck.”

“Just look at gas prices, inflation and interest rates,” he said while putting burger patties on the grill outside the bar. “Everything Trump has done,” he said, has had a negative impact on small business owners like himself. 

Cooke, a sixth-generation Wisconsinite who grew up on a family dairy farm in Eau Claire, worked in professional politics before returning home, where she started a small business and then a nonprofit focused on economic development and job creation — while also working part-time as a waitress. She’s running as a candidate with working-class roots, focused on the farmers and rural communities she argues both political parties have neglected. 

        

“I’ve lived failed policies of all sorts of administrations,” she said. 

“It sort of doesn’t matter whoever’s in power, it always feels like people in rural America and farm families, in particular, are very much put last, and so I think that having that sort of lived experience allows me to understand a lot of the issues that people are going through,” she said. “And I also think it helps to earn trust with people that I’m going to go to DC and not just play politics as usual, but work to actually get things done. And because I give a shit, you know?”

Cooke has avoided getting pigeonholed ideologically: she’s among a small group of Democratic candidates dubbed the “Bernie Dogs” for earning endorsements from both ends of the Democratic Party’s ideological spectrum: progressive Sen. Bernie Sanders and the political arm of the moderate Blue Dogs caucus. The Bernie Dogs, she argued, will be “the majority makers” if Democrats win back the House, and their votes will be critical to passing policies in Congress. 

While different factions of Democrats have been hashing out their own ideological differences in races across the country this year, Cooke said the key dividing line in the party isn’t left versus center, but about who can build a “big tent.”

“When I say expand a big tent, I don’t mean a Democratic tent, I mean a getting-Trump-voters-to-vote-for-Democrats big tent,” she said. “And that’s what every Democrat should be focused on.” 

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The district, rated a tossup, has drawn national interest — and outside spending — from both parties, with several members of Trump’s Cabinet stumping for Van Orden in the district in recent months. Van Orden and Republicans have painted Cooke as being in lockstep with the far-left flank of the Democratic Party and have attacked her background as fake and “phony.” 

“The only thing worse than paid political operative Rebecca Cooke’s fake waitress act is her radical far-left agenda that is completely out of touch with western Wisconsin values. Commie Cooke has been rejected by Wisconsinites twice and will be rejected once again this November,” Zach Bannon, a spokesperson for the National Republican Campaign Committee, House Republicans’ campaign arm, said in a statement. 

“This election has increasingly become about authenticity, where the two candidates are talking about the issues in their campaign ads, but they’re also accusing the other of being inauthentic — or certainly, that’s been a theme of the Van Orden campaign,” Chergosky said.  

Cooke and her lawyers have increasingly called out Van Orden for posting AI-generated deepfakes of Cooke on social media. 

Cooke supports a federal moratorium on new data center construction and has run ads hitting Van Orden on the issue. Trump has embraced the emergence of artificial intelligence and said communities who don’t get behind new data centers will be “backwards and poor,” even as downballot Republicans in other competitive races have pivoted to opposing data centers.  

The backlash to Van Orden’s posts reached a fever pitch last week, when a lawyer for Cooke’s campaign sent Van Orden a cease-and-desist letter last week over the AI-generated deepfake videos he’s posted of her throughout the campaign. 

        

Van Orden’s campaign called the cease-and-desist a “stunt” and accused Cooke of running ads he said made “blatantly false” claims about his record on tax credits for data centers and on banning members of Congress from trading stocks.

“She is not to be trusted and has proven over the last six years that she will say whatever it takes to get elected to Congress,” Van Orden said in a statement. 

He then responded by doubling down with more AI slop. In two videos Van Orden posted to X and “Made with Grok Imagine,” X’s proprietary AI tool, depict Cooke as an indignant red duck. In one, a cartoon duck wears a blue shirt reading “DSA,” a reference to Democratic Socialists of America (of which Cooke is not a member), and another more realistic-looking duck (apart from its bright red feathers) wears a shirt saying: “I demand DVO cease and desist from telling the truth about me.”

The post In rural Wisconsin, politics is still about meeting voters. Online, it’s getting weird appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Grace Panetta of The 19th. Meet Grace and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

BATH, Maine — Election after election, Republican Sen. Susan Collins has defied national political winds to return to office, representing a state that has backed Democrats in every presidential contest since 1992. But her Democratic opponent, Troy Jackson, is betting that her eight-year-old vote to confirm Justice Brett Kavanaugh and the Supreme Court’s subsequent overturning of federal abortion rights will persuade voters to sweep her out of office. 

Collins, seeking a sixth term, became the last Republican standing in a blue state by cultivating a moderate image, including supporting abortion rights, and leveraging her expertise and seniority to bring federal dollars back to Maine.

“To be effective in the Senate, you need knowledge, experience, seniority and relationships,” she said Tuesday in her first debate against Jackson, the former Maine Senate president. “That combination has allowed me to pass bipartisan legislation.”

But Collins, 73, now faces her toughest race yet, thanks to President Donald Trump’s poor approval ratings and the impact of his administration’s policies on the state. Though even with the impact of tariffs raising prices and the unpopularity of the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement agenda, Maine doesn’t seem to be an easy target for Democrats. Polls show a razor-thin margin between Collins and Jackson, who, according to some surveys, is running a closer race than Democratic Senate candidates in redder states like Texas, Ohio and Alaska. For Jackson to win, the Democratic women who have split tickets to vote for Collins before need to stick with their party — and Democrats think her vote for Kavanaugh might help sway them in the other direction.

A dozen Maine Democratic voters told The 19th they’re hopeful about Jackson’s chances, but they’re not counting Collins out in a state with a strong independent streak and parochial political culture where local issues take precedence over the hyper-polarized national climate.  

“I’m nervous,” said Faith Woodland, a voter who attended a town hall event focused on abortion that Jackson’s campaign held in the seaside town of Bath. “We’re all hoping Troy wins,” she added, but she fears that Collins “may be another Teflon candidate.” 

Concerns over the cost of living and voter discontent with Trump’s second term are the top issues in the race. Jackson, a former logger with deep ties to the labor movement, is running as a champion for working people  — at campaign events, staffers wear T-shirts with phrases like “Solidarity” and “Kicking Ass for the Working Class.” 

Jackson is also making abortion central to his case against Collins, casting her 2018 vote to confirm Kavanaugh, who sided with the majority to overturn Roe, as a major error in judgment that undercuts her image as a measured decision-maker. He argues that it shows Mainers can’t trust her to protect their rights, even though the procedure remains protected in Maine. 

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“She said that she doesn’t regret that vote. Well, most everyone I know does,” Jackson, wearing a bright pink T-shirt that read “I Stand With Planned Parenthood” over his button-down, said at the event on Monday alongside Nicole Clegg, a vice president at Planned Parenthood New England. 

“I mean, she thinks we’re stupid, that’s really what it comes down to,” he said later. “She thinks that we don’t understand the process, that she didn’t know what he was going to do. I mean, everyone in the country knew exactly what he was going to do. It’s not us that’s stupid, it’s her.” 

(At the end of the event, he clarified that he meant that Collins “would have been stupid” if she thought people didn’t know what would happen with Kavanaugh, not that she is stupid.)  

And their first debate on Tuesday fell on the eight-year anniversary of Collins’ vote, which she took after she said Kavanaugh assured her he believed Roe v. Wade was settled law. When the candidates were given the opportunity to question each other, Jackson asked her: “What will it take for you to admit you’re ever wrong?” 

Collins noted she voted to confirm more liberal Supreme Court justices who voted against overturning Roe v. Wade. When pressed by the moderator as to whether she thought Kavanaugh lied to her, she said that she didn’t — but that he “should not have said it was settled law.”  

Outside groups like Planned Parenthood Votes are spending and running ads focused on abortion in Maine, which is home to a considerable number of older women who remember life before Roe v. Wade. Kristin Malin, who lives in Georgetown and attended the event Monday, said she recalled the time before unmarried women could access even contraception. For them, defeating Republicans is an imperative. 

“I’m not in love with Troy Jackson,” former state Sen. Margaret Craven, who served in the legislature for over 20 years, told The 19th while participating in a small anti-Trump demonstration in downtown Lewiston on Tuesday. But Collins, she said, “has let women down” and has been “a total failure.” 

Eileen Coyne, a Jackson supporter who was also out protesting, agreed.  “Young women don’t realize what they’re losing,” she said. 

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Jackson, who placed third in the Democratic primary for governor this year, didn’t plan on running for Senate. But he became the nominee this summer in a fast-tracked party-run process to replace previous nominee Graham Platner, who galvanized a grassroots movement around his campaign but dropped out of the race after being accused of sexual assault. He denied the allegation. 

The switch from Platner to Jackson caused some consternation among the party’s grassroots base.

Lisa Sabatine, 67, was involved with Platner’s campaign from the outset as a volunteer coordinator and is now organizing and canvassing with another group, People Power Maine. She said Monday that she supports Jackson but has been “struggling” with national Democrats and outside consultants’ involvement in his campaign. When Jackson replaced Platner, she said “I thought we just handed Susan Collins a win.”

Both Jackson and Collins have reputations not as expert orators chasing the political spotlight, but as workhorses focused on getting results. While some have expressed concerns about Jackson’s skill as a retail politician, others argue his down-to-earth approach and authenticity are assets. 

“Maine is a really independent-minded state, and Mainers don’t like being told what to do,” Devon Murphy-Anderson, executive director of the Maine Democratic Party, said Tuesday. “Troy speaks like a Mainer, and he has Maine values, and he fights like a Mainer because he is a Mainer. He is not polished like Washington because he has not spent his career in Washington.”

With decades-long careers in public office, both Jackson and Collins are striking a balance between defending their records and acknowledging that voters think the status quo is broken. Each argues that they’re best positioned to fix it.

“Under Troy Jackson’s failed leadership, Maine is less affordable and education scores have plummeted,” Samantha Cantrell, a spokesperson for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, said in a statement Tuesday night. “Mainers already rejected Troy once this year, and they will do it again in November.”

“It’s a very tense time,” said Chris Holden, who said she was “grateful” for Collins’ service in her first two terms in office (Collins initially said she would only serve two terms when she first ran for the Senate in 1996), but believes it’s time for her to move on. She lamented the influence of outside spending in the race, saying, “money talks.” 

Debora Houdek, who lives in Auburn and has been out canvassing and volunteering for Jackson, was also concerned about Democrats’ ground game. 

“I’m starting to get worried,” she said. “We need more people in the streets.”   

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All those factors raised the stakes for Jackson’s first debate against Collins, which Democrats agreed he resoundingly won by landing several sharp attacks on Collins and accusing her of not doing enough to stop the most unpopular elements of Trump’s second-term agenda. When Collins noted that she worked to get road salt, essential for Maine winters, removed from the list of Canadian goods subject to tariffs, Jackson quipped back: “We can’t eat road salt.”    

Collins highlighted the legislation she’s gotten passed and the federal funding she secured for projects in Maine from her powerful position leading the Senate Appropriations Committee. 

“It was clear from the beginning that Senator Collins is running to serve Maine, and Troy Jackson thinks he’s running against Donald Trump,” Blake Kernen, a spokesperson for Collins, said in a statement following the debate. 

But Collins spent much of her speaking time on the defensive, disputing the methodology behind statistics Jackson cited, including an analysis concluding that she votes with Trump 96 percent of the time, and untangling the intricacies of Senate procedure to defend her record in the body. 

Maine Senate President Mattie Daughtry, who attended a watch party state Democrats held in downtown Portland, said after Jackson “definitely dominated” and won the debate. “He had Senator Collins on her back foot,” she added. 

“Statistics don’t fill your fuel tank. Statistics don’t make your grocery bill not $200,” Daughtry said. “She’s wrong with her votes 96 percent of the time, and she’s arguing about parliamentary procedure.”

The post As Susan Collins goes for a sixth term, Maine Democrats worry she’s a ‘Teflon candidate’ appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

When Shannon Taylor became the top prosecutor in a central Virginia county in 2012, she said she found a system that wasn’t delivering justice in the face of complicated sex trafficking cases: Women were being regularly arrested at local motels, while the men who preyed on them, got them engaged in illicit sexual activities and profited from their bodies often faced no accountability. 

In Michigan, Christina Hines said domestic violence and sexual assault are “so ingrained as part of our society” that she’s lost track of the number of doors she’s knocked on where simply sharing about her work putting abusers behind bars has resonated to the point of tears. “These are things so many people have endured,” the former prosecutor said.  

Taylor and Hines are running for competitive U.S. House seats in Virginia and Michigan, tapping into their experiences prosecuting sex crimes, domestic violence and human trafficking to connect with voters who they say are frustrated about corruption and injustice, from the pervasive nature of abuse against women to the government’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case. 

Epstein died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial for federal sex trafficking charges, but the legacy of his alleged abuse remains an ongoing political issue. Survivors of Epstein’s abuse — some of whom are traveling around the country right now demanding transparency and justice — say that they have been failed by the U.S. justice system, from local law enforcement up to the highest levels of government. 

Just weeks out from the midterm elections, voters are facing yet another sex abuse scandal: In New York, a woman known as Jane Doe filed a lawsuit alleging she was gang raped by members of a Cornell University fraternity, and that both the university and local law enforcement botched their handling of the case. 

        

Taylor and Hines are leaning on their records as women prosecutors, telling voters about how they held abusers to account in their own communities, and plan to do the same if elected to Congress. 

Taylor has featured this work in two ads this cycle as she tries to flip Virginia’s 1st Congressional District, a seat held by Republican Rob Wittman. In September, Taylor’s campaign released an ad highlighting her decision to press charges against a Democratic state lawmaker who investigators accused of having sex with an underage clerk. This week, the campaign is out with a second ad featuring Cathy Easter, an advocate against domestic violence and human trafficking who credits Taylor with championing Virginia’s landmark sex trafficking law, which went into effect in 2015 and made it a crime to force someone into prostitution. 

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Virginia was the last state in the country to enact such a law. Easter said in an interview that Taylor reformed the way Henrico County interacted with women victims of sex crimes and domestic violence, not just going after perpetrators but working closely with local nonprofits to make sure they had ready access to legal help and housing. Henrico’s example influenced other local governments around the state, Easter said. 

“I am very proud of the work that we have done being the model for human trafficking investigation and prosecution — understanding the trauma of what women are going through,” Taylor said. 

Virginia’s 1st Congressional District is considered a bellwether for party control of the U.S. House, according to an analysis by the Center for Politics at the University of Virginia. 

Wittman, who has served 10 terms in Congress, won the district by 13 points in 2024, outperforming Donald Trump. To win an 11th term, Wittman will have to overcome the president’s high disapproval ratings in the district, which could dampen enthusiasm — and turnout — among Republican voters. Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger, a Democrat, won this district by two points in 2025, illustrating the potential for a flip. 

Taylor said voters in her district are “terrified” about the rising cost of living, but, she said, “they are equally infuriated with the corruption in D.C.,” and that includes voters who have approached her about the Epstein files. 

“I say to folks, look, the Epstein files is something that is very personal to me,” Taylor said. As a fellow prosecutor who has worked with sex trafficking victims, Taylor said she had a visceral reaction to former Attorney General Pam Bondi’s appearance before the House Judiciary panel. The hearing focused on the Justice Department’s handling of the Epstein files and was attended by women who survived Epstein’s abuse. 

“The attorney general, the person we’re supposed to be able to rely on, could not even turn around to address these women,” she said. “I found that to be the most offensive act I’ve ever seen, and I tell folks, that infuriates me because we are supposed to do better.” 

Taylor said that the Trump administration has failed in its handling of the Epstein case, and she is criticizing Wittman, her opponent, for not pushing for the release of the Epstein files sooner. Both, she said, have failed to “stand up for those women.” 

Wittman’s campaign did not respond to a request for comment. 

        

In Michigan, Hines attended an event with some of the Epstein survivors who are traveling around the country demanding transparency. Hines said she wants them to know that if she wins her election, she’ll be “fighting” on their behalf in Congress, and on behalf of people whose abusers have not been held accountable. 

“Their experiences are obviously really exceptional and horrific, but abuse and corruption are not,” Hines said. 

Hines is running for a seat in the Detroit suburbs that Trump carried by seven points in 2024, and that is now a prime pickup opportunity for Democrats with incumbent Republican Rep. John James running for governor. Hines is facing Republican Mike Bouchard, an Army veteran and the son of a local sheriff who is running on boosting American manufacturing, border security and opposing “far left policies.” 

In 2021, Hines became chief of the Special Victims Unit and Appeals in the Washtenaw County Prosecutor’s Office, which was responsible for handling cases of sexual abuse. According to her campaign, Hines helped reform interviewing practices for child victims, helped expand a program to prosecute hate crimes against LGBTQ+ victims and led an initiative that prosecuted cold-case sexual assaults. 

“I had a lot of family members who had been survivors of sexual assaults or child sexual abuse, and so I did know that I wanted to be in a place where I could advocate for women and children,” Hines said of her career. 

In Congress, she hopes to continue that work by shedding light on how policy decisions can reduce incidents of violence and sexual assault. Hines, who has young children, said that the country’s lack of affordable childcare can force parents into trusting their children “with someone that they shouldn’t,” leading to abuse. She also pointed to the growing number of sexual abuse cases happening online. 

“As policymakers, we need to be on the front end to stop this abuse,” she said. 

To check your voter registration status or to get more information about how to vote and what’s on your ballot, visit vote.org.

The post These prosecutors saw how the justice system failed women. Now they’re running for Congress appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Shefali Luthra of The 19th. Meet Shefali and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

The reopened criminal investigation into an alleged gang rape at Cornell University has sharpened scrutiny on voluntary intoxication laws, which make it harder to protect assault survivors if they chose to drink alcohol or use drugs at the time of the attack. 

A former Cornell student identified as Jane Doe said she arrived intoxicated at the Chi Phi fraternity house in October 2024. In a civil lawsuit filed in September, she said that she was then drugged and sexually assaulted by multiple fraternity members while incapacitated. 

But voluntary intoxication laws, which are in place around the country, say that if the person who was assaulted chose to become intoxicated, they are capable of consenting to sex, so sexual assault laws do not apply. The county’s district attorney, who announced Monday his office would reopen an investigation into the alleged assault, cited New York’s laws around intoxication and consent in explaining why he initially did not pursue criminal charges. These laws are in place in states around the country. 

Here is how these laws work and how they affect sexual assault prosecutions.

What are voluntary intoxication laws?

Individual states handle sexual assault law differently. Most states say that being intoxicated may prevent someone from being able to consent to sex, but not all of them do. Without that explicit provision, it can be much harder to prosecute sexual assault that occurred when the person assaulted was drinking or using drugs.

According to the Associated Press, 19 states say that an intoxicated person is only considered incapacitated — and therefore unable to consent — if they were given drugs or alcohol without knowing. New York, where Cornell is located, is one of those states.

That means that if someone chose to consume alcohol or drugs and then was sexually assaulted, it can be harder to pursue criminal charges.

“In these states where these laws are still persisting for some reason, they still want to continue to be holden to this notion that somebody who is inebriated deserves to be punished, or has it coming for them, so to speak,” said Dr. Chinmoy Gulrajani, a professor at the University of Minnesota Medical School who has studied these laws.

Which states have these laws? 

• Connecticut
• Delaware
• Florida
• Hawaii
• Indiana
• Kentucky
• Maine
• Mississippi
• Missouri
• New Hampshire
• New York
• New Jersey
• North Dakota
• Oklahoma
• Pennsylvania
• Tennessee
• Utah
• West Virginia
• Wyoming

How did this come up in the Cornell case? Has it come up in others? 

Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten — who had authority to pursue criminal charges — cited New York’s voluntary intoxication law in explaining why he initially did not do so.

“Under New York State Law, ‘mental incapacitation’ occurs when a victim is rendered incapable of controlling her own conduct due to the administration of a drug without her consent,” Van Houten wrote in a statement released Monday. “The facts provided by Jane Doe’s statement do not allege that she was either rendered incapable of controlling her own conduct or that any drug was administered to her without her consent.”

This provision has come up in other cases. 

Last year, Texas lawmakers changed their definition of sexual assault to include voluntary intoxication based on the experience of a woman named Summer Willis, who said she was raped at a fraternity party 10 years prior after accepting a drink that she believes was laced. 

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Prosecutors had said that because she accepted a drink, the incident would not, at the time, have been considered sexual assault.

What do we know about alcohol and sexual assault, including on college campuses?

Research shows that drinking alcohol can impair people’s ability to make decisions about or consent to sex. Studies have repeatedly found that in most sexual assaults, someone — the person who committed the assault or the person assaulted — consumed alcohol. The figure is higher for sexual assaults on college campuses. 

One paper, published in 2019 by Johns Hopkins University using data from the American Association of Universities, found that close to 80 percent of men or women who were assaulted said they had been drinking before the incident. About 60 percent of trans, genderqueer or nonbinary respondents said they had been drinking before. In most cases, the person who perpetrated the assault had also been drinking.

People who have been drinking or using drugs can, in some cases, consent to sex. But broadly over the past decade, there has been a societal shift toward understanding that people who are more heavily intoxicated cannot do so, Gulrajani noted.

“With more, better sex education regarding consent, some guidelines have been set down about informed consent, especially when it comes to sexual matters,” he said. 

Have there been changes in sexual assault prosecutions?

It’s not clear what consequences that cultural shift regarding consent has had — including whether it has changed how sexual assaults are handled in the justice system. 

In fact, a paper published in 2022 in the Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law noted that when someone was assaulted after being intoxicated, police and prosecutors are less likely to follow up with rape allegations. Conviction rates are lower than when the person assaulted was sober. 

“Gendered roles about consensual sex and rape myths, such as that intoxicated women are more sexually available than sober women, may alter a juror’s opinion about voluntary intoxication,” the authors of that paper wrote.

But laws are starting to change. In the past five years, at least three states — Minnesota, Michigan and Texas — have changed their laws so that they do not differentiate based on whether someone had voluntarily become intoxicated. Those changes have largely been the result of public scrutiny after high-profile cases of sexual assault, such as in the Texas case.

Bills have been introduced in other states to make similar changes, Gulrajani said. In New York, legislation has been put forth every year since 2019 to make it easier to prosecute these cases. It has never passed. But the attention on the Cornell case could spur action, he said.

“The court of public opinion is the most consequential for politicians and legislatures,” he said.

The post The Cornell case is exposing a legal gap around intoxication and sexual assault appeared first on Salon.com.

This story is part of Gen Z at the Ballot Box, a collaboration between States Newsroom and The 19th. 

WINDHAM, Maine – As 24-year-old Maya Brooks walked winding roads in rural parts of Maine, a water bottle hooked to her fanny pack and a stack of “lit” on absentee voting and candidates her group has endorsed in hand, she was focused on reaching voters who either haven’t voted in recent years or have shown they’re willing to vote for both parties. 

Mainers frequently cross party lines, as evidenced by the fact that U.S. Sen. Susan Collins is the only GOP senator running for reelection in a state Donald Trump lost in 2024. Maine consistently ranks among the highest in the country for voter turnout, even among young voters, despite having one of the oldest populations in the country. 

That’s led Maine to be viewed as the top state where young voters could sway Senate outcomes in 2026. 

While Brooks canvassed for the state’s largest progressive community action organization, she thought about one of her first interactions knocking doors this cycle. A woman — not much older than herself— told her she probably wouldn’t vote. Whoever she voted for, whatever their party affiliation, she felt it would not make a difference, Brooks recalled.

“I don’t blame her,” she said. While a registered Democrat, Brooks would rather do away with the two-party system altogether. “Politicians aren’t delivering.” 

Generation Z, now roughly 14 to 29 years old, is a growing portion of the electorate with about 50 million eligible voters in the upcoming midterm elections. But these young voters have soured on both parties. 

Younger people have long been more likely to identify as independents, but Gen Z is doing so at a significantly higher rate than any previous generation at the same age. 

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Being independent does not mean being moderate. Gen Z’s ideological gender gap is driven more by women moving further left than men moving further right. 

“Really, what’s notable is that Gen Z women are the distinct group compared to both their young male counterparts but also to other American women,” said Melissa Deckman, a political scientist who studies the impact of gender, religion, and age on public opinion. “Simply put, Gen Z women are the most liberal and progressive group of voters in America today.” 

A unifier among Gen Z is a belief that the government is failing to protect and address their needs, notably the high cost of living. 

Trump capitalized on that discontent in 2024, making gains with young voters, particularly young men. Now, Trump’s net approval rating is underwater, especially among Gen Z, with 31 percent of young people who voted for the president saying they regret it, according to an August Navigator poll. 

Both parties are trying to remedy mistakes of elections past in the hopes of winning over the Gen Z vote, launching targeted recruitment efforts, hiring more young people and leaning into social media.

     

No longer taking the youth vote for granted

At a time when many young people were running away from the Democratic Party, Anderson Clayton, chair of the North Carolina Democratic Party, ran to it. 

That is not to say Clayton, who at 25 became the youngest state party chair in the country in 2023 when she ousted an establishment-backed incumbent, has not at times been disappointed.

She wants to see Democrats embrace progressive candidates who win primaries. She wants to get rid of the churn-and-burn cycle of campaigns prioritizing immediate national victories over long-term local sustainability. And she was “so pissed” after Democrats left 44 North Carolina legislative seats uncontested in 2022 that she decided to run for her current role. 

“If you don’t like a party right now, you’re the only one that can change it,” she said in her high-energy cadence.

Clayton got hooked on political work a decade ago, when her county party pushed back on Republicans trying to eliminate the voting site on her college campus. She’s up against similar issues now, after a federal judge ruled against restoring early voting sites on several college campuses in her state earlier this year. 

She has fellows on those campuses to try to turn out the student vote, part of the party’s broader voter protection program, which is in addition to 30 active college chapters and a 100-county, year-round organizing operation. 

“When people look at me and they’re like, ‘Well, young men are leaving the Democratic Party,’ I’m like, ‘Well, let me introduce you then to the leadership that I have right now leading my young Dems, because they are young men,’” Clayton said. “I think that the ability to organize and to help other people see themselves in the party is to also give them that representation.” 

North Carolina Democrats collaborated with Voters of Tomorrow, an entirely Gen Z-led organization seeking to promote political engagement among that demographic, for its national summit in August. Communications director Jessica Siles, 26, said she has seen state parties in particular having more success appealing to young voters. 

“I think in some ways that’s because obviously those ties to the direct local communities are stronger,” Siles said. 

That is borne out in research, which shows relational organizing works because young people trust their neighbors or community networks far more than national parties. Siles sees a sweet spot in engaging Gen Z in events that offer in-person connection in a more social, cultural setting.

That’s an approach being used by the Community Organizing Alliance in Maine, a civic group focused on engaging Black and immigrant voters. Executive director Safiya Khalid, 30, said young people are leading voter registration and education efforts, which include more traditional methods like canvassing, but also events to strengthen community, such as an upcoming concert featuring Somali music, where the alliance will share election-related information to attendees outside the venue. 

The alliance is based in Maine’s 2nd Congressional District. One of the most rural areas east of the Mississippi, it’s an open seat being eyed as consequential for the balance of power in Congress since moderate Democrat Jared Golden is not seeking reelection. 

Another youth-led group in that district, Maine Youth Power, started in 2021 to offer young Mainers clearer paths to engagement in a state with one of the highest median ages. 

“All of our politicians and parties cater towards old people, which is not a bad thing,” said Phoebe Dolan, 28, co-director and one of its founding members. “But it does leave young people often with not a clear sense of a county party that they can join and take leadership in.” 

The nonpartisan organization now reaches roughly 200 young people annually and ahead of the midterms is launching a series of hubs across the state for members to make regional connections. Continuing year-round, the hubs will offer lessons on political history and organizing training, Dolan said. 

In Alabama, GOP chair Scott Stadthagen brought on Brilyn Hollyhand, a 20-year-old content creator from Auburn, who previously advised Trump on youth strategy, to launch Project Future Generation in late July.

The statewide effort to engage teens and young adults in the conservative movement “is not a separate auxiliary group,” Stadthagen said. “We’ve got the young Republicans, the college Republicans. This is creating new Republican members to our county parties.” 

It is a three-pronged approach: a “student strike force” focused on door knocking and registering GOP voters in purple districts, “semester summits” where the party meets with student leaders on campuses, and tours of colleges and high schools. Hollyhand and Stadthagen have ambitions to expand the model to other red states, and eventually swing states.

Comparing the Grand Old Party to a Southern Baptist church, Hollyhand said that without a thriving youth ministry, “when the good ol’ Southern church’s congregation inevitably passes away, the church passes with it.”

     

The social media factor

When Hollyhand worked for Trump’s campaign, he led the initiative that brought content creators to the 2024 Republican National Convention and urged Trump to make appearances on podcasts and TikToks to reach young people. 

That’s being mimicked by Democrats now. The Democratic National Committee is investing in thousands of content creators to aid wins in 2026 and beyond. Former first lady Michelle Obama launched a “Voting Squad” made up of popular content creators to try to encourage young people to get to the polls. 

More locally, too, campaigns have been leaning on influencers. Independent of Brooks’ job as a senior canvass manager for the Maine People’s Alliance, she regularly posts political content for her more than 85,000 followers on TikTok, an account initially spurred as an outlet to air political rage when Trump got reelected. She was invited as an influencer to one of Maine Democratic gubernatorial nominee Hannah Pingree’s events.

Despite this focus, research on the effectiveness of influencers is limited. While some studies find that influencers may help boost political awareness among young people, that doesn’t necessarily translate into action. 

“The sort of influence of influencers, if I can be redundant, has been a little bit overstated,” said Alberto Medina, communications manager at Tufts University CIRCLE.

Less than 1 percent of young people said an influencer had been one of their top three motivations to cast a ballot in CIRCLE’s 2024 post-election youth poll. And in its national pre-election poll this year of 5,549 young Americans aged 18–29, social media posts from influencers or celebrities ranked last for the sources of information they turn to for learning about politics and elections.

Most Gen Z voters do get their news on social media, but mostly through posts from advocacy or news organizations, according to the latest survey. 

“Social media algorithms tend to send young men and young women to different places,” said Deckman, who is CEO of the nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute. 

She attributes some of the gender divide to the fact that the two demographics are often presented with different informational realities, though it is difficult to quantify. Overall, Gen Z women have been raised with a greater sense of agency, she said, and were brought up politically amid the #MeToo movement and the first Trump presidency, during which his sexist comments shaped public discourse.

In addition to being ideologically divided, young men and women have vastly different beliefs about religion and gender. While young women, and Americans overall, have been shedding religious labels, young men have seen essentially no change in Deckman’s research. Young men are also far more likely to support pronatalism, which the Trump administration has embraced in encouraging families to have more children. 

“No generation is monolithic,” Deckman said. “There definitely are conservative young women. There’s lots of liberal young men. But the trends are such that you’re seeing this gap emerging.” 

     

Not party but issue motivated

Nelson Dorsey, 20, voted for Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris in 2024. Now, the Bowdoin College student is campaigning for Collins, explaining in Brunswick after his early morning football practice that her pitch as an independent voice for the state resonates with him. 

“I’m not necessarily afraid to go across a party line if that means doing what I think is best for the country,” said Dorsey, a registered Republican. “At the time, I was drawn to [Harris’] campaign because she really was drawing on the whole idea of ‘Let’s put politics aside, let’s put our parties aside.’”

Dorsey’s refrain from party loyalty is common among his generation, which is continuing to identify as independent at relatively high rates as they have gotten older, a contrast to older generations who had been less likely to identify as independents over time. 

“You have really a story where Gen Z is really put off by party,” Deckman said. “It’s part of a larger distrust of institutions in society.” 

As Gen Zers struggle to make ends meet, a point of common ground regardless of political leanings, they are seeing the rich get richer and the powerful gain more control. They are united in their concern about the abuse of political and economic power, including the United States’ role in foreign wars and lack of accountability for bad actors named in the Epstein files. 

“Growing up in America at this time, there is a significant lack of hope,” said Katya Fromouth, a 17 year old from Yarmouth, Maine, who thinks she will likely never be able to buy a house and questions what her future will look like because of climate change. “That is the sort of thing that young people need — hope when we are envisioning our future.” 

Fromouth was one of the young Mainers who initially saw hope in former Democratic nominee for Senate Graham Platner, who energized voters with a pitch to rally against corruption regardless of their party affiliation. Platner won over many young people by embracing some of the most polarizing issues at the center of the widening generational divide, such as calling to abolish U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Seeing a candidate for national office with those values was “refreshing and frankly exhilarating,” said Cheyenne Hunt, who had initially endorsed Platner while leading the group Gen Z for Change. 

But after several women came forward alleging sexual misconduct, which he denies, Hunt withdrew her support. She helped support his exes in speaking with media, leading to the publication of an assault allegation in Politico that ultimately ended his campaign. 

While Hunt, founder of Reckoning Action, a nonprofit aiming to combat misogyny, said she received pushback because of the hope Platner inspired, she ultimately sees his swift downfall as evidence of the new kind of politics he had tapped into. 

“Young voters are routinely disappointed with the quality of representation that we’ve been offered,” Hunt said. “They are really ready for a class of representatives that across the board — whether it’s with issues of violence against women, with issues of corruption in general — do not believe that they are above the law and that they deserve special treatment.”

Tufts University CIRCLE has found some links between the issues young voters are focused on and their shifting politics. Those moving to the left care most about healthcare and abortion. Those shifting more conservative are prioritizing immigration and housing.

But regardless of whether their politics are shifting, young people are prioritizing economic issues.

“The centrality of economic issues and of those economic struggles that youth are experiencing is one of the big changes that we’ve been tracking in the last couple of election cycles,” Medina said. 

Young people on both sides think their party needs to change how they talk about the economy. Hollyhand said he wants the GOP to outline solutions, not just offer speeches blaming Democrats. And Clayton said Democrats can’t just rely on the buzzword “affordability.” 

“It’s got to be ‘Here is why the minimum wage is set at $7.25 and here is who’s doing that and who can help make it better,’” she said.

Young people are motivated most to cast a ballot in order to take action on issues they care about. In the Tufts University post-election youth poll from 2024, 46% said that was their top motivator. 

Issues are what Brooks starts with when she speaks to voters canvassing across Maine. As she tries to beat the sun knocking doors into the evening, she asks what matters most to them before sharing what she likes about particular candidates, starting with a local race and not mentioning political affiliations. 

After nearly 40 doors, more than 10,000 steps and three hours, mostly what she’s done is listen. 

“People don’t want to be talked at,” she said. That’s also her message for how the party could improve its chances of courting her generation: “I wish they would just ask.” 

The post Gen Z isn’t choosing a political party. They’re choosing issues appeared first on Salon.com.

This story was originally reported by Mel Leonor Barclay of The 19th. Meet Mel and read more of their reporting on gender, politics and policy.

MCALLEN, Texas — Vanessa Ovalle has a “frontline view” of Texas schools as a single mom and a speech pathologist at a local school in McAllen, a city in the Rio Grande Valley bordering Mexico. Ovalle described the state’s education system as “completely disappointing.” 

In nearby Welasco, Catalina Ozuna said her daughter is working in an understaffed kindergarten classroom for little pay while being weighed down by the cost of daycare for her own child. 

Meredith Keller, who for over a decade presided over a local school board south of Austin, calls a new voucher program that allows parents to use public dollars for private school “a slap in the face to everyone who went to public school.” 

These Texas voters all have two things in common: They have backed Republican Gov. Greg Abbott in the past and are now throwing their support behind Democrat Gina Hinojosa in the November election, driven by concerns about the state of public education. 

In this Republican bastion, angst over the state’s public education system has helped fuel Hinojosa’s campaign, giving voters here one of the most competitive governor’s races they’ve seen in decades.

That a Democrat has a chance is a welcome surprise for voters like Maria Colmenero, 32, who stood at the back of an Hinojosa rally this month in Brownsville, a town along the Mexican border, holding one of the campaign’s school-bus-yellow “Save Our Schools” placards. 

Colmenero said the main issue driving her support for Hinojosa is the state of public schools in Texas. She said she’s homeschooling her three daughters because the local public school options just “weren’t up to par.” 

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“That’s the major thing for us, and I truly believe that if you pay the teachers more, if you have a better education curriculum, that it could be so much better for the kids and for everybody,” Colmenero said. 

“We told them that if she wins, ‘Y’all can actually go back to school, a public school,’ and they’re excited. They want her to win. We all want her to win.”

In Texas, the rollout of a $1 billion school voucher program allowing parents to use public school dollars to cover some of the cost of private schools led to backlash as neighborhood public schools closed or shifted to four-day schedules, while others struggled with persistent teacher shortages. Hinojosa has promised to end the voucher program, increase teacher pay and “DOGE” the state’s education agency by ending no-bid contracts to education vendors and curbing the size of the agency. Hinojosa has also promised to stop state takeovers of local school districts and has criticized the use of artificial intelligence in the classroom.

Hinojosa got her start in politics by fighting the closure of her son’s local public school. She ran on the success of that fight to become a member of her local school board in Austin. She now represents a central Austin district in the Texas House, where she’s worked on a wide set of education issues, from directing more tax dollars to neighborhood public schools to curbing standardized testing. 

    

“I was told at the beginning, ‘You talk too much about education,’” Hinojosa told The 19th. “Well, I’m going to talk about it some more. I’m a mom, and I have a son who is 21 and I have a son who is 14, and I have seen the deterioration of our public schools in that time. And I know, I know that the parents and the teachers are just trying to hold it together.” 

Toward the end of her younger son’s time in elementary school, Hinojosa said, during Abbott’s second term as governor, administrators simply couldn’t find a teacher for his class. They ended up splitting the class and assigning more students to other teachers, she said. “That’s how bad it was.” 

In a campaign swing through the Rio Grande Valley, a heavily Latino part of the state, Hinojosa worked to shore up support among Latino voters preoccupied with the state of public education. All of the counties that make up the Valley swung for President Donald Trump in 2024 by double-digit margins, but polling shows that collapsing support for the GOP among Latinos could reverse that trend. 

Ovalle, the speech pathologist, said she previously supported Abbott and typically stands “closely toward the right” politically. But at Hinojosa’s rally in McAllen this month, Ovalle was nodding along with the Democratic candidate, recording clips of her stump speech. Asked which part of Hinojosa’s message resonated the most, Ovalle said it was her comments on education. 

“I work at the school setting … I see what our educators go through, and it is completely disappointing to see how hard they work and how they are being failed by the system,” she said. “I’m not only fighting for myself, but fighting for them as a whole.” 

Ozuna came to see Hinojosa at a breakfast with Tejano Democrats this month — a standing-room-only event inside an Hidalgo County restaurant where voters got to meet the candidate over tacos locos and huevos a la mexicana. Republicans won over a majority of voters in Hidalgo in 2024 with a 20-point swing for the GOP. Ozuna said that her daughter, the kindergarten teacher, holds a college degree and is working toward becoming a certified teacher but has struggled to get through a series of financial hoops. She had to take on a three-month unpaid internship in a classroom and several thousand dollars in fees for her certification. That’s on top of a high daycare bill. 

Watching her daughter’s journey next to headlines about chronic teacher shortages made her pay more attention to Hinojosa, who has promised to boost teacher pay and direct more dollars to public education. Ozuna has supported Abbott in the past, but not this cycle. “We know that she’s not going to let anybody control her, and that’s what we need,” Ozuna said. 

Hinojosa isn’t the only Democrat who has worked to define the issue of public education, avoiding the GOP’s framing of it as a culture war battle. Last fall, Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger flipped control of the governor’s mansion by promising to make the state’s schools “the best public schools in the nation,” while criticizing Republicans for “eroding faith in our public schools” and opposing Republican efforts to bring vouchers to her state. Their playbook could help Democrats chart a path forward on the issue ahead of the 2028 election.

By tapping into frustration with the state’s education system, Hinojosa said, she has been able to attract voters in a state where political loyalties run deep. Keller, the former school board member, said she has long been dissatisfied with the way Republicans have run the state’s public education system. She’s been speaking at campaign events with Hinojosa, hoping to create a permission structure for other Republicans to back the Democrat. 

“I was silent about my choice for a very long time, just because people are so ugly, and then I realized I needed to say it out loud. I needed to tell everybody: ‘I did vote for Greg Abbott, and that was a mistake. This time I am voting for Gina Hinojosa,’” Keller said. 

Hinojosa made clear that the coalition she’s building around her education agenda isn’t about turning Republicans into Democrats. 

    

“I think we are coming into a time when people have been disappointed by both parties, and it creates space and opportunity for people just to vote for the candidate. And I have built credibility on the issue of public education,” Hinojosa said. 

One of those voters is Lynn Davenport, 55, who described herself as a “staunch conservative” in a new campaign ad for Hinojosa that began airing over the weekend across the state. Davenport’s journey from being a Trump supporter who attended his January 6 rally to protest the results of the 2020 election to becoming an Hinojosa voter is a long one, but she made clear that the issue that moved her to the left on this particular race is education. 

Davenport first met Hinojosa when she started advocating in the state legislature to fight back against the sudden expansion of standardized testing in her kids’ schools and other legislation that she says “privatizes” public education by giving contracts to outside organizations for education services. A stay-at-home mom to three kids in Dallas at the time, she grew worried watching her youngest son come home crying after testing, and watching the climate of the school change. Years later, she said the same dynamics have yielded a system of vouchers and charter schools that “divert money from public schools to private hands” and robs parents of their choice school being their neighborhood school. 

Education isn’t the only issue on voters’ minds. The high cost of living, data centers, Trump’s unpopularity and the GOP’s struggles with Latinos have all helped create openings for Democrats here. Recent polling shows Democratic U.S. Senate candidate James Talarico pulling ahead of scandal-plagued Republican Attorney General Ken Paxton. The tight race will be one of a handful that will decide control of the U.S. Senate, which could help lift up Hinojosa.

Davenport isn’t planning to switch parties, and she’s not supporting Talarico in November. (That’s in part due to his comments about giving religions “equal time,” in Texas’ school curriculum when the GOP was working to insert more Christianity.) 

For Davenport, it’s about education, and Hinojosa herself. In the legislature, she said, Hinojosa was among the Democrats who “would listen to the moms and the parents.” 

“I know she more aligns with the Democrat Party, obviously, so we don’t agree on everything,” Davenport said of Hinojosa. “But on this subject, we do.” 

The post Conservative moms are fed up over Texas schools. For Gina Hinojosa, it’s an opening appeared first on Salon.com.