Politics

It was a long time coming; 140 years, in fact.When Republicans seized control of both chambers of North Carolina’s General Assembly, in 2010, for the first time in more than a century, they quickly set about remaking a politically moderate state that Barack Obama had carried in the presidential election just two years earlier.Buoyed by a Tea Party backlash against the nation’s leftward drift, Republicans redrew voting districts and pushed socially conservative proposals that hardened political battle lines. A ban on same-sex marriages passed in 2012. Several years later came a “bathroom bill,” restricting transgender people’s access to restrooms. (Both

They went to college in surreal times, bookended by a brutal election in which a reality-TV star upended American politics, and a global pandemic that derailed their in-person graduation plans. They were all college freshmen when Donald Trump was elected president, and they all supported the businessman in 2016.Bobby Gannon, a physics major at North Central College, in Illinois, thought Trump’s trolling of liberals was funny. Kayla Bailey, from Liberty University, lamented Trump’s personal conduct but felt he was the best candidate for her beloved West Virginia, a state torn by poverty and drug abuse. Regan Stevens, from the University

With a passing phrase during a speech in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Donald Trump seemed to open a wide, new chasm among the American electorate.“I love the poorly educated,” then-candidate Trump said at a rally celebrating a victory over his rivals in the Nevada caucuses. The candidate was, at the time, enumerating some of the voting blocs that were paving his path to the nomination.That simple sound bite signaled a clear connection between education levels and political affiliation rarely articulated so explicitly by a presidential candidate. Everything falls along partisan lines now. Less-educated white voters embraced Trump’s particular brand