On today’s show: A look at just how far to the right the country has shifted since Trump’s first term in office. New York magazine focuses on one surprising place: New York City. Under Tennessee’s school-threats law, kids with disabilities have been arrested for rumors and jokes. ProPublica’s Aliyya Swaby and Nashville Public Radio’s Paige Pfleger investigated the pattern. NPR explains a surprise attack in Syria by rebel groups. Plus, how to make your donations count on Giving Tuesday, the Supreme Court hears oral arguments on e-cigarettes, and Apple Podcasts announces its pick for 2024 Show of the Year. Today’s episode was hosted by Shumita Basu.
Full Episode
Good morning. It's Tuesday, December 3rd. I'm Shamita Basu. This is Apple News Today. On today's show, how a boy who brought a stuffed bunny to school ended up in handcuffs, major new developments in Syria's years-long, somewhat dormant civil war, and a few ideas on how to give back on this Giving Tuesday.
But first, a look at just how much this country has shifted to the right since Trump's first term in office. According to a recent New York Times analysis, nearly 90 percent of counties in America moved to the right in this last election. It's a remarkable shift, with all 50 states moving some degree to the right. And one place where Trump made significant gains was deep blue New York City.
Now, to be clear, Kamala Harris handily won both the city and the state overall. But Trump won 30 percent of votes cast in the city. That's seven points higher than in 2020 and the biggest share of votes won by a Republican in New York since 1988. And it's worth zooming in more to understand where those gains were coming from.
As you look closer, it wasn't really where the media class or the elite wing of the Democratic Party resides. It was actually in the most multi-ethnic working class neighborhoods in New York.
Simon Van Zylen Wood is a features writer for New York Magazine, and he tracked Donald Trump's rising popularity in New York City after the election. Nationally, blue-collar voters of every ethnicity drifted right. And in particular, Trump was able to pick up a significant share of voters from families earning between $30,000 and $50,000 a year. Biden won those same voters by 13 points in 2020.
The neighborhood where Trump did the best in New York City was Corona, Queens, an area emblematic of those types of voters.
So if anyone in New York has ever been to a Mets game at Citi Field or ever been to Flushing for the U.S. Open, you've been so close to this very interesting but very different slice of New York.
Corona is part of the district represented by Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. She won reelection easily, but many voters split their ticket voting for her and for Trump. So why in a neighborhood like this are we seeing this huge shift from Biden four years ago to Trump today?
It's the epicenter of the migrant crisis. Ever since 200,000 plus migrants arrived since 2022 in New York City, a lot of them went to Corona and Elmhurst, which are heavily Latino immigrant neighborhoods in New York City.
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