A Donald Trump victory and a Kamala Harris victory promised two divergent Americas for towns across the country. Trump clinched the election early Wednesday morning, alongside a red wave, that promises a new vision for every corner of the country. Our columnists, from six different states and many different communities, weigh in on how these elections will affect their communities back home.
A Harris presidency would have meant more affordable housing in California
By Raf Basas, Contributing Opinion Writer
I’m from Elk Grove, Calif., where the median home value is $560,500. This reflects a greater problem throughout the state: home prices are skyrocketing.
Neither of this election’s candidates could make Princeton’s affordable housing ubiquitous among all Americans. But if Kamala Harris had won, her plan could have brought our families closer to affordable housing and the peace of mind which accompanies it that we as Princeton students have.
At Princeton, we’ve been isolated from the extremes of this issue. Our housing, at $11,910 per year, is roughly $18,000 cheaper than California’s average annual rent of $30,000 — $2,500 per month over 12 months. We are privileged with cheap and guaranteed housing, while Californian families struggle to afford homes that are among the most expensive in the nation. Low-income families, in particular, experience a disproportionate impact from the housing crisis. As a result, 68 percent of Californians feel as though housing prices are a “big problem” where they live.
In response to the housing crisis, Kamala Harris had plans to construct three million homes and expand the tax credit offered for low-income housing. Meanwhile, Trump’s plans are much more vague and aren’t as effective. Indeed, he seeks to open federal land, an idea which Harris admittedly shares. However, much of his overall plan relies upon deception and deflection: he exaggerated mortgage rates and used the housing crisis as an excuse to blame undocumented immigrants and justify deporting them, which economists have said would “increase home prices.” A Harris win would’ve been a win for Californians struggling to make ends meet.
Raf Basas is a first-year student from Elk Grove, Calif. intending to major in English. He can be reached at rb4078[at]princeton.edu or @raf.basas on Instagram.
‘Start Spreading the News’: Trump could help the Big Apple
By Preston Ferraiuolo, Assistant Opinion Editor
The press has called New York for Kamala Harris. While expected, Republicans fulfilled their hopes of a red shift in the Empire State after Donald Trump took an unconventional step by campaigning in the South Bronx and hosting a rally in Madison Square Garden. Harris’s decision to skip NYC’s Al Smith Dinner likely bumped Trump in heavily Catholic New York. Since the 70s, Queens-born Trump has shaped the political landscape of the city. Trump’s first term was disastrous for New York: he eliminated the State and Local Tax (SALT) deduction, which ultimately cost New Yorkers thousands more in taxes. Throughout this campaign, Trump has continually made the claim that big cities like New York are being “destroyed” — often blaming Democratic policies — and has indicated a desire to work with the Democratic governor and mayor to help improve the city that raised him.
As a New Yorker, I’m dismayed by the potential threats that Trump poses to our democracy and what his policies might mean for the 38 percent of New Yorkers who are immigrants. But in the case that he is elected, I’m hopeful that his ego will motivate him to provide greater funding to the city and state to address our homelessness and cost-of-living crises and help bring New York back to being the global leader that it is. Even if he says he loves Mar-a-Lago, his heart is in midtown Manhattan. A second-term President Trump might prioritize making New York City “Great Again” just like he did back in the 70s.
Preston Ferraiuolo is a junior from Brooklyn, N.Y. He is an assistant Opinion editor majoring in the School of Public and International Affairs and can be reached at prestonf[at]princeton.edu.
There’s no ‘land of opportunity’ with a Trump Presidency
By Lillian Paterson, Contributing Opinion Writer
In my home county, Montgomery County, Md., 35 percent of residents are immigrants who have come from all around the world in order to take advantage of our “land of opportunity.”
A Trump presidency would mean the devastation of immigrant communities all across the country. The mass deportation plans Trump has will be the “largest domestic deportation operation in American history.” His expansion of workplace raids will prey on industries with high percentages of undocumented employees. On top of that, Trump plans to completely end birthright citizenship — a constitutional right.
The disrespect Trump has for the immigrants of America isn’t just in his policies, it’s in his rhetoric. Trump says immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country” when they are precisely the blood of our country — after all, America is a nation founded by immigrants. He says that they are “rough people” despite the fact that immigrants have lower crime rates compared to natural-born citizens.
Trump’s rhetoric completely disregards the philosophies which America was founded on. Without immigrants, America is not America. We aren’t a “melting pot,” we aren’t champions of social and economic mobility, and we are not “the land of the free.” With a Trump presidency, American identity — in my hometown, and in the rest of the nation — will cease to be.
Lillian Paterson is a first-year from Silver Spring, Md. She can be reached at lp3095[at]princeton.edu.
Trump will decimate trans rights in Texas
By Callisto Lim, Contributing Opinion Writer
Back home, my trans friends are scared for their futures. I am scared for their futures. And I am scared for my future, too. I am scared for the summers when I may return to Houston, Texas, and I will have to place orders for gender-affirming medication through dodgy websites that only take Bitcoin as payment.
For transgender Texans, a Trump victory is our worst nightmare. Our state legislation already places incredible restrictions on trans healthcare. Just this June, the state Supreme Court upheld a state ban on gender-affirming care for trans minors, and Trump’s track record as well as his election policies mean his potential victory would spell certain disaster: if elected, trans Texans will lose Biden-instated federal Title IX protections against discrimination, including the prohibition of gender identity-based denial of medical care.
Trump’s day-one priorities also include “instructing every federal agency to cease all programs that promote the concept of sex and gender transition at any age,” pushing legislation that would limit genders recognized by the U.S. government to male and female as assigned at birth and “[promoting] positive education about the nuclear family.”
These regressive policies signal a perilous change for the safety of trans folk nationally, but most significantly to trans people in red states that lack state-level protections. Trump’s policies and actions reinforce anti-trans rhetoric, galvanize anti-trans violence, and cast a chilling shadow over all of our futures.
Callisto Lim is a first-year from Houston, Texas. She is anxiously trying to figure out if she can do three years of study abroad. She can be reached at callisto[at]princeton.edu.
Miami has lost to conservative McCarthyism
By Juan Fajardo, Contributing Opinion Writer
For the first time since 1988, Miami-Dade county voted for the Republican candidate. I wish that I was shocked, but as someone who has been watching this power shift happen across the state for the last eight years, I am painfully unsurprised.
In a calculated campaign of ideological misinformation, conservatives have capitalized on the Cuban and wider Latin American communities to convince them that anything other than Trump is a vehicle for Communist authoritarianism. For example, public figures like Alex Otaola have amassed hundreds of thousands of internet followers by repeating the myth that Miami is two liberal centrists away from the eradication of the market economy.
This Kennedy-era association of the Democratic Party with communism is a McCarthyite method of disputing progressive policy today. A direct impact of this is the misinformation that leads to the rejection of anything deemed left wing.
This misinformation threatens residents’ futures. In a county where 1 in 5 women live in poverty, Amendment 4, a constitutional protection of abortion, failed today. Miamians wanted individual liberty, and instead women’s access to reproductive health will continue being restricted.
In the coming years, when our sea-level city still has no viable climate solution and the affordability crisis worsens, the compounding effects of this election’s misinformation will halt progress.
The impacts of a Trump presidency will reveal themselves to Miamians in the long-run. When those impacts begin to be felt, far too many of us will wish we had acted differently.
Juan Fajardo is a first-year contributing Writer from Miami, Fla. He can be reached at jf0214[at]princeton.edu
Rural Connecticut is growing more tolerant — but a Trump presidency could undo that progress
By Ryan Moores, Contributing Opinion Writer
In my hometown — a small rural community in eastern Connecticut — a slight Republican leaning is essentially drowned out by the state’s overwhelmingly Democratic population concentrated in wealthy suburbs. Having become increasingly suburban in the past few decades, an equal balance of perspectives exists where I was raised. Acts of hate have always been present, but never completely tolerated. The Protestant church I attended as a child has been the target of anonymous hate and vandalism on multiple occasions since a new pastor declared it to be “open and affirming” to LGBTQ+ members. My small public high school made national headlines after parents yelled racial slurs at an opposing basketball team. But I don’t remember an established culture of hate. These events were always controversial and abnormal.
I see similar values reflected in Trump’s rallies and internet ramblings, and I fear that a Trump victory could mean a validation of these hateful tendencies, and the death of pockets of acceptance in rural towns. While we have the privilege of state-wide democratic policies, it hurts to imagine the youth of my hometown growing up in a world where hate is normalized — or even reinforced — by our president.
Ryan Moores, a member of the Class of 2028, comes from Colchester, Conn. and plans to major in Neuroscience. He can be contacted at rm3719[at]princeton.edu.
The ultimate victory over the establishment
By Thomas Buckley, Associate Opinion Editor
Trump’s victory is the culmination of the anti-establishment movement that in many ways has its roots in a mayor of a town fifteen minutes south of my hometown of Colchester, Vt. The 2016 election unleashed a long-suppressed rage against the establishment that had belittled and talked down to American voters for decades. While some define the start of this era with Trump’s descent down that damn golden escalator, the image that remains clearest in my mind is Senator Bernie Sanders standing on the Burlington waterfront and launching a firebomb into the heart of the Democratic party.
While that election was in many ways the tale of two populists, the divergence of the two parties is striking. Trump has remade the Republican party in his image — the establishment has kowtowed to an unprecedented degree and is fully under his thumb. Today’s Republican politics is almost incomparable to the Republican politics of even a decade ago. Like it or not, the country-club Republican establishment is dead, and Trump killed it.
By contrast, the Democratic party has become, for lack of a better term, the party of Princeton, and the rest of the country knows it. The revolution that swept over the Republican party has yet to come for the Democratic establishment, and they have paid for it. The voters who swept an elderly Brooklyn independent to office in our state still offer a lesson for the Democratic establishment. Will they finally listen?
Thomas Buckley is a junior from Colchester, Vt. majoring in SPIA. He is an associate Opinion editor and his column “This Side of Nassau” runs every three weeks on Thursdays. He remains fundamentally faithful in the American experiment. You can contact him at thomas.buckley[at]princeton.edu
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