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Donald Trump loves tariffs. Last week, he told a Chicago audience that, “To me, the most beautiful word in the dictionary is ‘tariffs.’ It’s my favorite word.” For Trump, tariffs constitute the proudest achievement of his presidency and the engine of economic and social revival. “You see these empty, old, beautiful steel mills and factories that are empty and falling down,” Trump declared. “We’re going to bring the companies back. We’re going to lower taxes for companies that are going to make their products in the USA. And we’re going to protect those companies with strong tariffs.”

Trump’s tariff obsession flummoxes conventional economists, who see it as a potentially disastrous driver of inflation and trade wars. It also draws disdain and ridicule from Democrats; Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen denounced tariffs as deeply misguided.

But tariffs are about more than economic policy. They are also political and rhetorical tools, ones that played a central role in the development of the Republican Party itself. For the generations of Republicans who steered the party from the 1860s until the Cold War, tariffs were the glue that held together a political coalition. Trump has revived that 19th century Republican tradition, once again turning to tariffs as a central unifying principle. Dismissing his tariff fixation as bad economics can miss the point and underestimates the political and cultural appeal of such a vision.

For William McKinley, whose presidency bridged the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, and his fellow Republicans, the protective tariff functioned as the central icon in their pantheon. Like Trump, they saw the tariff as an economic cure-all. It not only shielded American businesses from foreign competition, but also safeguarded the wages of industrial workers and funded pensions for veterans. “I am a tariff man,” McKinley declared during his 1896 campaign. “I run on a tariff platform.”

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More than anything else, the tariff served a political purpose. It cemented disparate state-level organizations into a potent national coalition. Protection rewarded heavy industry and the regions that supported it: the textile centers of New England, the steel mills and oil refineries of Pennsylvania and Ohio. Special tariff provisions also brought other constituencies, such as Midwestern producers of raw wool, into the Republican fold. Organized labor also worshiped at the altar, finding many of the most protected sectors less hostile to unionization. One union chief, for example, credited the tariff for stable employment and favorable conditions in the glass-workers trade.

And, by liberally spending tariff revenues on pensions for Civil War veterans and their families, the Republican coalition extended far beyond the industrial centers that benefited directly from the high duties. Those expenditures, both on Civil War pensions and on surveying Western lands, managing resources, clearing Native peoples, and protecting white landowners kept Midwestern grain farmers and Western ranchers, who paid higher prices for protected goods and lost access to export markets because of retaliatory tariffs from foreign powers, firmly in the Republican fold.

But for Gilded Age Republicans, the tariff represented much more than a ticket to prosperity. It also formed the foundation of Republican social policy. In their minds, it assured the health of the home and the virtue of young womanhood by sustaining higher wages and abundant employment opportunities that made it possible for men to support their families and women and children to fulfill their domestic roles. “Every woman should be a protectionist,” one GOP broadside proclaimed, because the tariff made “a more self-respecting and womanly life possible.”

While tariffs glued together different factions and interests, they also allowed the Republican Party to situate itself as the party of progress and national greatness—not Make America Great Again, but Make America Great in the first place. Even if the numbers didn’t really add up, the Gilded Age GOP embraced tariffs as an instrument to make people wealthier, safer and better behaved (reflecting the Protestant morality that dominated the party’s outlook). Flourishing business and secure workers would keep the Sabbath, dress neatly, and avoid taverns and other dens of iniquity that preyed on the degraded poor.

Whenever factional rivalries, regional tensions between Eastern and Western Republicans, or conflict between industrial and agrarian sections, threatened party unity, the tariff cemented them together. Leading Republicans like McKinley became adept at adjusting the rates to offer this industry a little extra protection or that veteran’s group better benefits or an area a railroad subsidy to dispel potential conflict.

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In the early 20th century, the party deepened its historic attachment to tariffs. During the 1920s, Republican-led governments passed some of the highest tariff walls in U.S. history, a strategy that many scholars believe set off a wave of foreign retaliation that undermined efforts to relieve the Great Depression.

Several changes came after World War II. Some GOP leaders resisted change. Ohio Senator Robert Taft led an effort to kill plans for an International Trade Organization in the early 1950s, for example. But most GOP politicians embraced international cooperation and more open trade as part of the nation’s Cold War responsibilities to lead the “free world.” Later, with the election of Ronald Reagan and the embrace of free market conservatism in the 1980s up until the inauguration of Donald Trump, the Republicans reversed their historic protectionism to become champions of free trade.

Trump’s almost obsessive emphasis on tariffs, then, is not so much a reversal of economic policy as a revival of a tried-and-true cultural vision and a political strategy. Much like his 19th century predecessors, protection offers Trump an appeal to diverse constituencies: manufacturing interests, union laborers, declining industrial towns in swing states, voters without college educations and access to tech jobs. It also forms a coherent worldview with broad appeal: a nation victimized by insidious outsiders and the supposedly disloyal Americans who abet them.

That’s why neither sober economic analysis nor the outraged ridicule of Democrats will shake Trump’s fondness for and constant repetition of his favorite word. As Kamala Harris works to combat Trump’s appeal to state swing voters, the Harris campaign would do well to remember that tariffs are more a political strategy than an economic policy.

Bruce J. Schulman is the William Huntington professor of history at Boston University and author of The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Politics, and Society.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

If you’ve been diagnosed with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, you probably have shortness of breath during physical exertion. Regular exercise may seem intimidating, but it’s actually a powerful medicine to improve how you feel when you’re active.

COPD is a progressive lung condition occurring in several forms, in which structural changes obstruct airflow, making it harder to breathe. It’s often caused by long-term exposure to tobacco smoke, chemical pollutants, and mineral, wood, or metal dusts that irritate the lungs; examples include emphysema and chronic bronchitis. Around 16 million people in the U.S. have COPD, and anxiety about gasping for air leads many to avoid physical activity altogether. But inactivity can drive a downward cycle that worsens breathlessness and the overall condition. 

With exercise, “people can do more with less shortness of breath,” says Dr. Carolyn Rochester, professor of medicine and director of Yale University’s COPD Program. “It improves participation in daily activities and quality of life.” 

But not just any approach to exercise will do. It’s important to get started under the supervision of medical professionals. A specific program involving exercise, called pulmonary rehabilitation, is proven to help people with COPD. “I can’t recall a patient who didn’t think pulmonary rehabilitation benefited them a great deal,” says Dr. David Mannino, co-founder and chief medical officer of the COPD Foundation. “Typically, they wish they’d done it years ago.”

Research shows that pulmonary rehab is highly effective, with large improvements in endurance and quality of life compared to people’s conditions before the program. Rehab also increases survival rates with fewer hospitalizations. You can locate programs through an online directory.

Why exercise matters

Exercise offers multiple benefits that improve the ability to engage in everyday activities, such as bathing, dressing, walking to the mailbox, grocery shopping, and playing with grandkids. While a COPD patient’s exercise won’t improve the inner workings of their lungs, it does make breathing and daily activities easier by increasing cardio fitness and strengthening muscles throughout the body, particularly the legs and arms, Rochester says.

“Especially with aerobic exercise, you get changes in certain cells of the muscles to become more efficient at using oxygen,” says Kerry Stewart, a Johns Hopkins University exercise physiologist who has worked with many COPD patients. Phyliss DiLorenzo, a 66-year-old from Jersey City, N.J., was diagnosed with severe COPD in 2013. The disease interfered with her ability to walk to meetings as a mental health counselor in Manhattan. But an exercise regimen improved her endurance, letting her resume those walks. “I can keep up the pace, knowing I won’t get short of breath,” she says. “I can get up that hill.”  

Jean Rommes, an 80-year-old Iowan, has one-third of the average person’s lung capacity for her age, but “you can do a lot with that,” she says. “Your body just has to be as efficient as possible. And that’s what exercise really does.” 

Tailoring your exercise program to your body

It’s important to speak with a doctor about personalizing exercise for your specific form of COPD. The disease affects people at different fitness levels, and patients with COPD may have additional illnesses like heart disease, osteoporosis, and anemia that should be considered when crafting an exercise plan. 

If you have moderate to severe COPD, your doctor may refer you to an accredited pulmonary rehab program. Lasting four to 12 weeks, these programs help you manage COPD through exercise, under the guidance of a team of experts. Rehab is covered by Medicare, most Medicaid plans, and many private policies. Yet, studies show that less than 5% of people with COPD who’d benefit from rehab actually receive it—mainly because they never learn about it or have limited access.

“We’re extremely underutilized,” says Debbie Koehl, manager of pulmonary rehab at Indiana University Health Methodist Hospital. DiLorenzo, the New Jerseyan, didn’t hear about pulmonary rehab until four years after her COPD diagnosis. Before rehab, physical activity was often too demanding. “I was depressed and isolated,” she says.

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When rehab starts, specialists will determine your fitness level. For instance, they’ll check your resting heart rate and how far you can walk in six minutes. Initially, rehab seemed like “baby exercises,” DiLorenzo says. With each session, though, “it became more difficult.” The expert team—respiratory therapists, physical therapists, exercise physiologists, occupational nurses, and physicians—monitors your improvement and adjusts your fitness plan based on your progress. 

“We don’t push you too hard at the beginning,” says Kimberly Wiles, a respiratory therapist with the Allegheny Health Network in Pennsylvania. The goal is incremental improvements. If a patient can only walk for six minutes at 1 mile per hour on a treadmill, she’ll edge them up to seven minutes the next time. 

Grace Anne Dorney-Koppel, from Maryland, was diagnosed in 2001 with just 26% lung function and given three to five years to live. During her first rehab workouts, “I was exhausted after 15 minutes,” she says. “But I threw myself into the program.” By the time it ended, she could walk the treadmill for 40 minutes—going 3.5 miles per hour at an incline.

If you have supplemental oxygen, ask your doctor if it should be turned up during exercise. “If you need oxygen at rest, it’s almost certainly needed with exercise,” typically at higher flows, Mannino says.

The best exercises

Try to get cardio exercise at least three days per week, and strength training every other day. For the greatest benefits, aim for moderate activity most days or every day if you can.

“Aerobic training fosters endurance,” Rochester says. This could mean walking on a treadmill or through the neighborhood. Riding a stationary bike occasionally is good for working other muscle groups. “You don’t want to train only one set of muscles,” Koehl explains. It’s beneficial to sustain activity throughout a workout, or you could try intervals, alternating exertion with periods of rest. 

DiLorenzo does cardio, either on a treadmill or a stationary bike, three to five days per week. Rommes, the Iowan, prefers a NuStep, or a seated elliptical machine. Before starting with exercise, Rommes couldn’t walk from the parking lot to a nearby soccer field to watch her grandkids play. “It became easier and easier,” she says, until she could get there without any trouble.

Strength training is essential. “With more strength, any work being done becomes easier,” Stewart says. You can exercise muscles with fitness bands or weights. This helps many patients with COPD who become breathless when lifting their arms above their heads, Mannino explains.

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Rommes benefits from strength training. “It’s nice when I’m on an airplane and can put my own bag in the overhead,” she says. Dorney-Koppel was initially challenged to lift her forearms without any resistance, but she progressed to biceps curls with weights. 

Balance exercises are another priority. “People with COPD often have balance problems as the disease progresses,” Dorney-Koppel says. In 2014, she founded the Dorney-Koppel Foundation to provide pulmonary rehab in places without access. Workouts that improve balance include single-leg stands, chair yoga, and tai chi.

The COPD Foundation website offers further exercise guidance for those who can’t access in-person rehabilitation. Exercise classes for people with COPD are available online, but they often require payment and range widely in effectiveness, Rochester says. 

Make it safe

Before starting a new fitness program, seek expert advice to ensure proper form because “you don’t want to make things worse by causing an injury,” Mannino says. 

The most common setback patients experience from exercise doesn’t involve the lungs, but rather muscle strains or tears, Mannino says. These injuries can interfere with exercise for weeks. During such inactivity, the lungs get worse. To avoid this predicament, warm up for five to 10 minutes before workouts.

If you have other illnesses besides COPD, consult with your healthcare provider to learn if you should limit or avoid any specific exercises, Rochester says. Patients with COPD should also be especially careful to avoid exercising outdoors when air quality warnings have been issued, due to their lung sensitivities.

Push yourself during exercise, but not too hard. COPD experts ask patients to refer to a 10-point scale of effort, fatigue and breathlessness, with 0 meaning the person is at rest. It’s good to exercise mostly at a moderate intensity, about 3 or 4. “We want people to get to 9 or 10 for a short period and then back off,” Mannino says. With excessive exertion, researchers find fewer benefits for COPD patients, and there’s greater risk of falls and related injuries.

Warning signs of too much intensity include extreme shortness of breath, dizziness, chest pain, palpitations, and joint or muscle pain, Rochester says. “We tell people to listen to their bodies,” Mannino says.  

Such self-knowledge requires experience. Stewart notes that patients with COPD often underestimate their ability to exercise. “That’s the most common category of people coming into a program,” he explains. Over time, confidence increases as “they prove to themselves that they’re doing okay,” he says. Other patients are overconfident, which could lead to injuries. In a supervised program, each patient learns the right approach for them, Stewart says.

Breathing and nutrition for exercise

Certain breathing strategies help people with COPD enjoy physical activity. These strategies, primarily pursed-lip breathing and diaphragmatic breathing, move air through their lungs more efficiently. “They really help to minimize the shortness of breath during exertion,” Rochester says.

Pursed-lip breathing is especially effective, according to Rochester. Because it takes longer for patients with COPD to exhale for any given breath, compared to people without COPD, their lungs often don’t fully deflate. This is called air trapping, and the leftover air makes it hard to take a full breath. A slower, deeper breathing pattern reduces the amount of trapped air. It’s fostered when patients practice inhaling through the nose while exhaling slowly through pursed lips, as if whistling or playing the harmonica. In fact, the COPD Foundation runs a program called Harmonicas for Health to improve breathing by playing the instrument.

Through pursed-lip breathing, patients get better at pacing their breaths during exertion. Otherwise, the instinct is to inhale and hold the breath—for example, while climbing stairs. “You want to do the opposite,” Wiles says, breathing slowly in and blowing out through pursed-lips until reaching the top of the stairs. “When in doubt, exhale.”

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With another strategy, diaphragmatic breathing, patients concentrate on distending their abdomen while taking in air. This approach counters a tendency among patients to breathe shallowly, Dorney-Koppel says. 

Box breathing may help as well. With this technique, people inhale, hold their breath, exhale, and hold breath again for equal intervals, such as three or four seconds, repeating the cycle for several minutes. “A variety of breathing exercises, mostly pursed-lip and diaphragmatic breathing, is very important,” DiLorenzo says. “Many of us have trouble exhaling enough. By working on that, we extend our ability to be active.”

For nutrition, avoid large meals and high-carb foods before working out, as they can make breathing harder. Diets high in carbs may increase air trapped in the lungs. Once consumed, carbs release gasses like carbon dioxide that cause this problem. “People without COPD have no problem with these gasses, but with COPD it’s more of an issue,” Mannino says. “I avoid carbs before exercise,” DiLorenzo says.

Achieve exercise goals

Speak with your doctor about setting realistic goals for exercise. Through exercise, some patients improve so much that they no longer require supplemental oxygen but, “I never guarantee that,” Koehl says. As people improve and set their sights on more activity, sometimes it’s actually helpful to increase supplemental oxygen to support this activity, Koehl notes.

Other patients seek improvement on important metrics like walking distances. “There’s nothing better than watching a patient go from walking 200 feet to 1,000 feet,” Koehl says. 

The ultimate goal for COPD patients is to cultivate a lifelong exercise habit that allows them to live their fullest. “By finding exercise, I managed to have the life I had before my diagnosis,” DiLorenzo says. Dorney-Koppel has exercised regularly for 23 years, far surpassing her three- to five-year prognosis. “I’ve been able to travel to give presentations for work,” she says. “It’s a triumph. I have survived.”

NEW YORK — U.S. health officials on Wednesday recommended that people 50 and older get a shot against bacteria that can cause pneumonia and other dangerous illnesses.

The recommendation was made by a scientific advisory panel and then accepted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The decision lowered—from 65—the minimum recommended age for older adults to get the shot.

“Now is a great time to get vaccinated against pneumococcal disease in preparation for the winter respiratory season,” CDC Director Dr. Mandy Cohen said in a statement Wednesday night.

The advisory committee voted 14-1 to make the change during a meeting earlier in the day in Atlanta. The guidance is widely heeded by doctors and prompts health insurers to pay for recommended shots.

Pneumococcal shot recommendations are sometimes called the most complicated vaccination guidance that the government issues. The CDC currently recommends shots for children younger than 5 and adults 65 or older, as long as they have never been vaccinated against pneumococcal disease. Officials also recommend the shots for children and adults at increased risk for pneumococcal disease, such as those with diabetes, chronic liver disease, or a weakened immune system.

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There are more than 100 known types of pneumococci bacteria, which can cause serious infections in the lungs and other parts of the body. Each year, the U.S. sees roughly 30,000 cases of invasive pneumococcal disease, which includes blood infections, brain and spine inflammation, and other illnesses. About 30% of cases are among 50- to 64-year-olds.

The first pneumococcal vaccine was licensed in the U.S. in 1977, and since then pharmaceutical companies have been coming up with newer versions that target a dozen or more types in a single shot. Different vaccines have fallen in and out of favor, including Pfizer’s Prevnar 13, which was once a top-seller but is no longer available.

There are four vaccines now in use. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year approved the newest—Merck’s Capvaxive, which can cost around $300 a dose and protects against 21 types, including eight not included in other pneumococcal vaccines. A Merck spokesperson said it was specifically designed to help protect against the bacteria types that cause the majority of severe disease in adults aged 50 and older.

The CDC advisory panel in June recommended the vaccine as an option for adults at higher risk. At the time, the committee also talked about the possibility of lowering the age recommendation for older adults. They noted that illness-causing infections peak at age 55 to 59 in Black Americans—a lower age than what’s seen in white people. But the committee put off that decision until this week’s meeting.

Some concerns: A booster shot may prove to be necessary, perhaps in about 15 years. And there are some new vaccines in development that could force another update to the recommendations.

“Pneumococcal has been a very confusing recommendation for many, many years and it’s hard to have a new recommendation every two or three years,” said Dr. Jamie Loehr, chair of the committee’s pneumococcal working group. He was the only person to vote against the proposal.

The specter of a possible “October surprise” looms over Kamala Harris and Donald Trump as they hurtle toward the conclusion of their race for the White House. William Safire, the Richard Nixon speechwriter who became a New York Times columnist, once defined “October surprise” as a “[l]ast minute disruption before an election.” The audiotape released in 2016 in which Trump discussed groping women and the Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020 are its most recent examples.

While regarded as a feature of modern politics, the history of the October surprise dates to the late 19th century. Then, as now, embarrassing revelations, last-minute disclosures, or ill-chosen rhetoric threatened to alter the outcome of a closely fought presidential campaign. A letter published in October 1880 over the forged signature of Republican candidate James A. Garfield appeared to endorse the use of immigrant Chinese labor. Republicans exposed the letter as a fraud and Garfield hung on to win in the fall.

In 1884, the surprise emerged when a group of religious leaders endorsed Republican candidate James G. Blaine in late October. Overshadowing the endorsement was a foolhardy rhetorical flourish that insulted key voting blocs courted by the Republican nominee in his campaign against the Democratic nominee, New York Governor Grover Cleveland.

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A former House Speaker and U.S. Senator, Blaine was a well-known but controversial figure. Admirers hailed him as the “Plumed Knight” of the Republican Party for his ability to foil Democrats. Detractors called him a “continental liar” who exploited his power for personal gain.

In 1876, Blaine was the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination until the publication of the “Mulligan letters”—correspondence that detailed Blaine’s involvement with investors in an Arkansas railroad he aided while Speaker. Named for the bookkeeper who kept the correspondence, the Mulligan letters derailed Blaine’s nomination and haunted him for the rest of his career.

Blaine failed in a second bid for the Republican nomination in 1880 but went on to serve as secretary of state under Garfield. In 1884, Blaine finally won his party’s nomination for president, but reform-minded Republicans—derided as “mugwumps”—bolted to Cleveland.

While Blaine had been at the forefront of Republican party politics for decades, Cleveland was a newcomer with a reputation as an upright, honest politician. As governor, he challenged the power of New York City’s Democratic bosses and worked with reform-minded legislators in Albany, including Republican Theodore Roosevelt.

But Cleveland’s image suffered a body blow when a Buffalo newspaper reported in July that he had fathered a child out of wedlock before becoming governor. Cleveland famously urged supporters to “tell the truth” about the episode, but some of Cleveland’s allies went on the attack. They alleged that Blaine falsified the date of his marriage to cover up pre-marital sex leading to the birth of his first son, who died in infancy. Blaine explained his side of the story in a letter to a supporter, but as historian Mark Wahlgren Summers has noted, that only kept the story in the headlines.

With character issues dominating the campaign, Blaine needed the blessing of the religious leaders he met at the Fifth Avenue Hotel in New York on Oct. 29. Taking Blaine by the hand, the Rev. Samuel D. Burchard pledged the backing of the clerics with shots at Blaine’s critics and veiled allusions to Cleveland’s private life.

“Notwithstanding all the calumnies that have been waged in the papers against you, we stand by your side,” Burchard declared. “We have a higher expectation, which is that you will be President of the United States, and that you will do honor to your name, to the United States and to the high office you will occupy.”

Burchard then went too far. He questioned the temperance and patriotism of Democrats and employed a nativist euphemism for Catholicism to slander the faith of immigrant voters, particularly Irish Catholics.

“We are Republicans, and don’t propose to leave our party and identify ourselves with the party whose antecedents have been rum, Romanism, and rebellion. We are loyal to the flag, and we are loyal to you.”

Blaine stood by mutely after Burchard’s declaration. In the years that followed, Blaine—and many historians—suggested he didn’t hear what Burchard said. But in the months after the election, Blaine confided to Supreme Court Justice John Harlan that he stayed silent because he believed Burchard’s provocative declaration would be overlooked.

It was a disastrous miscalculation. Democratic newspapers in New York immediately published Burchard’s statement. Burchard insulted Catholics by referring to their faith as “Romanism,” the Brooklyn Eagle thundered the next day, knowing that the phrase “is offensive to a great number of Christians.” Adding to the aspersion, the newspaper asserted, Burchard linked Catholicism “with intemperance, which he calls ‘rum,’ and with the ‘rebellion,’ which multitudes of Catholic Irishmen gave their lives to suppress.”

It took two days for Blaine to repudiate Burchard’s comments. Meanwhile, Democrats circulated them nationwide. “If anything will elect Cleveland, these words will do it,” Cleveland campaign manager Arthur P. Gorman predicted.

Burchard’s remarks proved particularly problematic for Blaine in New York, where Blaine’s managers believed voters would decide the election. To carry the Empire State, Blaine courted Irish Catholics and hoped to exploit the discontent of New York City’s Democratic bosses with Cleveland.

Blaine’s failure to quickly distance himself from Burchard wasn’t the only blunder he made that day. Blaine attended a lavish dinner at Delmonico’s with millionaires including Andrew Carnegie and Jay Gould. The opulent gathering made headlines nationwide and indelibly fixed Blaine’s reputation as a servant of monied interests.

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But Burchard’s inflammatory alliteration proved especially damaging by dampening enthusiasm for Blaine in New York among disaffected Democrats and Irish Catholic voters, Summers and historian Robert D. Marcus conclude. An immediate, forceful repudiation of Burchard’s comments might have minimized the damage. As it was, Blaine lost New York by 1,047 votes and became the first Republican to lose a presidential election since John Frémont in 1856.

After the election, Blaine cited the ill-chosen remarks of his clerical supporter as a significant factor in his defeat. “[T]he Lord,” Blaine admitted to Republican journalist Murat Halstead, “sent upon us an ass in the shape of a preacher.”

As Harris and Trump sprint to the end of the campaign, they would do well to expect the unexpected. The October surprise emerged in the era of the telegraph and the steam engine, but its potential to alter the outcome of a close election remains as current as today’s headlines.

Robert B. Mitchell is a retired Washington Post news service editor and author of the forthcoming The Partisans: James G. Blaine, Roscoe Conkling and the Politics of Rivalry and Revenge in the Gilded Age (Edinborough Press).

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

MANILA, Philippines — Widespread flooding and landslides set off by a tropical storm in the northeastern Philippines on Thursday left at least 24 people dead, swept away cars and prompted authorities to scramble for motorboats to rescue trapped villagers, some on roofs.

The government shut down schools and offices — except those urgently needed for disaster response — for the second day on the entire main island of Luzon to protect millions of people after Tropical Storm Trami slammed into the country’s northeastern province of Isabela after midnight.

The storm began to move away from the coast of the northwestern Philippine province of Ilocos Sur toward the South China Sea on Thursday afternoon with sustained winds of up to 95 kph (59 mph) and gusts up to 115 kph (71 mph). It was blowing southwestward and could strengthen into a typhoon over the South China Sea, according to state forecasters.

At least 24 people died, mostly due to drowning in the hard-hit Bicol region and nearby Quezon province but the toll was expected to rise as towns and villages isolated by flooding and roads blocked by landslides and toppled trees manage to send out reports, police and provincial officials said.

Most of the storm deaths were reported in the six-province Bicol region, southeast of Manila, where at least 21 people died, including 8 residents in Naga city, which was inundated by flash floods as Trami was approaching Tuesday, dumping more than two months’ worth of rainfall in just 24 hours at high tide, regional police chief Brig. Gen. Andre Dizon and other officials said.

While thousands of villagers, who were trapped in floodwaters, have been rescued by government forces, many more needed to be saved Thursday in the Bicol region, including some on roofs. About 1,500 police officers have been deployed for disaster-mitigation work, Dizon said.

“We can’t rescue them all at once because there are so many and we need additional motorboats,” Dizon told The Associated Press by telephone. “We’re looking for ways to deliver food and water to those who were trapped but could not be evacuated right away.”

Flash floods swept away and submerged cars in some parts of Naga city while mudflows from Mayon, one of the country’s 24 active volcanoes, in nearby Albay province, engulfed several vehicles, Dizon said.

Stormy weather remained in the region, hampering relief efforts, officials said.

The government’s disaster-mitigation agency said more than 2 million people were affected by the storm, including 75,400 villagers who were displaced from their homes and are sheltering on safer ground.

More than 1,000 houses were damaged, mostly in the Bicol region, and nearly 300 roads and bridges were not passable due to flooding, landslides or toppled trees, the government’s disaster-mitigation agency said.

The storm prompted the suspension of inter-island ferry services in more than 120 seaports, stranding nearly 7,000 passengers and cargo workers, the Philippine coast guard said.

About 20 storms and typhoons batter the Philippines each year. In 2013, Typhoon Haiyan, one of the strongest recorded tropical cyclones in the world, left more than 7,300 people dead or missing and flattened entire villages.

DENVER — Missy, Kimba, Lucky, LouLou, and Jambo have lived in Colorado Springs for decades in the elephant exhibit at the Cheyenne Mountain Zoo. Now an animal rights group is trying to release the elephants from what they say is essentially a prison for such highly intelligent and social animals known to roam for miles a day in the wild.

Colorado’s highest court will hear arguments Thursday on whether the older African female elephants should be legally able to challenge their captivity under a long-held process used by prisoners to dispute their detention. The animal rights group NonHuman Rights Project says the animals are languishing while “unlawfully confined” at the zoo, and wants them released to an unspecified elephant sanctuary.

“They are suffering immensely and unnecessarily. Without judicial intervention, they are doomed to suffer day after day, year after year, for the rest of their lives,” a lawyer for the group, Jake Davis, said in a May brief submitted to the Colorado Supreme Court.

The main legal issue is whether or not the elephants are considered persons under the law, and therefore able to pursue a petition of habeas corpus challenging their detention. The NonHuman Rights project argues that legal personhood is not limited to humans.

The lawsuit is similar to an unsuccessful one the group filed challenging the confinement of an elephant named Happy at the Bronx Zoo in 2022. New York’s Court of Appeals ruled that Happy, while intelligent and deserving of compassion, cannot be considered a person illegally confined with the ability to pursue a petition seeking release.

The New York ruling said giving such rights to an elephant “would have an enormous destabilizing impact on modern society” and change how humans interact with animals.

The Cheyenne Mountain Zoo says moving the elephants and potentially placing them with new animals would be cruel at their age, potentially causing them unnecessary stress. It says they are not used to being in larger herds and, based on its experience, they do not have the skills or desire to join them.

In a statement ahead of Thursday’s hearing, the zoo claimed the NonHuman Rights Project isn’t concerned about the elephants but is just trying to create a judicial precedent that would allow the captivity of any animal to challenged.

“We hope Colorado isn’t the place that sets the slippery slope in motion of whether your beloved and well-cared-for dog or cat should have habeas corpus and would be required to ‘go free,’ at the whim of someone else’s opinion of them,” it said.

This is the last editor’s letter we plan to publish prior to Nov. 5, Election Day in the United States. If you have been feeling apprehensive, you are not alone. When asked recently, barely half of Americans said they were confident that their vote would be accurately counted. It is no wonder, given the rhetorical and physical attacks on our democracy these last few years, that many voters share the same fear. For our new cover story, we asked Barton Gellman, a former TIME editor-at-large and Pulitzer Prize-winning national security reporter, for his answer to a simple question: Is your vote safe?

Gellman, who today works at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law School, finds that though there are foreign and domestic actors who are trying to undermine the credibility of the vote in 2024, Americans can be confident that their ballots will be accurately counted and that the election will be free and fair. “[The] arc of the evidence, based on interviews with state, local, and federal election officials, intelligence analysts, and expert observers, bends toward confidence. Since 2020, the nation’s electoral apparatus has upgraded its equipment, tightened its procedures, improved its audits, and hardened its defenses against subversion by bad actors, foreign or domestic.…” he writes. “The system, according to everyone I asked, will hold up.”

We publish this reporting in the spirit of the rest of our coverage of this campaign, aiming to provide trusted guidance so that you can better understand the candidates and the policies they would implement. Last month, we launched TIME Votes, our initiative dedicated to giving readers service-oriented stories that provide context for this election cycle as well as accessible, non-partisan resources for voters. In the next few weeks, we’ll be sharing more of that information with readers wherever they find TIME today. We hope this effort is useful to you as you prepare to vote. We also have worked to lift up those who are making the U.S. election safe and reliable, launching our Democracy Defenders series.

This has been one of the wildest election campaigns in history. A look back at TIME’s cover stories from 2024 shows the path that has taken us to this point. In March, President Joe Biden was stuck in his tracks with more than 30 pollsters, strategists, and campaign veterans telling TIME they believed Biden would lose. In April and June, we offered two companion interviews, the latter with Biden at the White House, the former with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, asking each to explain what the world would look like if they were elected. This summer witnessed Biden freezing at the debate, Trump surviving an assassination attempt at a rally, and then Biden’s eventual decision to step aside from the campaign, leading to Kamala Harris’ moment.

The Vice President locked up her party’s nomination with a speed and force few predicted. This fall, we watched Harris outperform Trump at their only debate—a moment that Democrats now fear could have been the apex of her campaign—and the emergence of J.D. Vance as the face of the New Right. Still, despite all this tumult, if the polling is accurate, the fundamental dynamics of the race appear to have stayed remarkably static, with Harris and Trump effectively tied in the battleground states that will likely decide the election.

Covering all of this has been our indefatigable team of experienced reporters and editors in Washington, D.C.; New York City; and around the world. We are in their debt and are privileged to report on this election for you. Here’s to a safe and secure vote, and to our grand exercise in democracy.

As Nov. 5 approaches, former president Donald Trump has left little room for doubt about his intentions. He will almost certainly declare victory on election night, as the votes are still being counted. He may turn out to be right. But if Vice President Kamala Harris wins, Trump will reject the result as corrupt and launch a scorched-earth campaign to overturn it.

This plot is so well telegraphed that it barely counts as a prediction. Trump has stated repeatedly that he cannot lose unless there is “massive fraud”—and, separately, that the election is “rigged,” with a “bad voting system.” As he told the Fraternal Order of Police on Sept. 6: “We win without voter fraud, we win so easily.” Voters, by that reckoning, can make no other legitimate choice. That upside-down view of elections may still have the power to shock, but after Trump’s response to defeat four years ago it cannot be called surprising.

Perhaps one candidate will win so conclusively that no reasonable person can doubt it. But pollsters continue to assess, as they have for months, that the presidential contest is too close to call, and a narrow win in the current environment is cause for concern. Public opinion surveys show that many Americans are not sure whether to trust the machinery of elections, and many flatly say that they do not. Barely half of those surveyed in a September NORC poll said they were confident of an accurate vote count. That is nothing like a normal number, historically.

We are embarking on a presidential election in which tens of millions of Americans disbelieve the results in advance. The 2020 election, relatedly, was the only one in American history which the loser refused persistently to concede. The partisan split—close to 80% of Democrats, but just 30% of Republicans, have faith in the vote count—reflects the cumulative damage of countless lies.

As the American experiment nears its semiquincentennial, is it capable of holding a secure election with a trusted process and a widely accepted result? If the outcome is not to Trump’s liking, can democracy defend itself against another attempt to overthrow a President-elect?

Questions like these struck some readers as far-fetched when I asked them before the 2020 election in a darkly headlined story for the Atlantic: “The Election That Could Break America.” If then President Trump lost his bid for a second term, the story argued, the lead-up to Inauguration Day could bring a no-holds-barred struggle to prevent the transfer of power. Some of my forecasts came true: Fabricated claims of fraud. Attempts to halt the tabulation of votes. Partisan pressure to block certification. Appointment of fake electors. Incitement of violence. Desperate maneuvers in Congress on Jan. 6.

But for all it may have gotten right, the story was wrong in a deeper sense. I was uncertain that the nation’s electoral machinery could withstand Trump’s frontal assault. The system had not faced that kind of threat before. It might simply fail.

Read more: The Secret History of the Shadow Campaign That Saved the 2020 Election

But it did not. State and federal judges threw out Trump’s baseless lawsuits and eventually sanctioned some of the lawyers who brought them. At critical junctures there were enough principled Republican office holders, none of them famous then—Aaron Van Langevelde on Michigan’s board of state canvassers, Georgia secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, Pennsylvania lawmakers Jake Corman and Bryan Cutler, Maricopa County supervisors Clint Hickman and Bill Gates—who did their legal duty in the face of crushing pressure to go along with a coup. Trump’s party recoiled, if only briefly, from the lawless violence of the mob that attacked the U.S. Capitol.

Now, four years later, I have fewer doubts about the resilience of our core exercise in democracy.

The threat remains acute. Trump, backed this time by Republicans who have adopted his pre-emptive election denial, will try again to defy the voters if they choose Harris. He will have a great deal more help this time from the party apparatus and leaders at all levels. Vote counting in key swing states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin could drag out, opening a window for an army of lawyers seeking to slow or prevent a definitive result. Extremists fueled by disinformation may act on the threats they have made in recent months against polling places, election workers, and other officials.

But the arc of the evidence, based on interviews with state, local, and federal election officials, intelligence analysts, and expert observers, bends toward confidence. Since 2020, the nation’s electoral apparatus has upgraded its equipment, tightened its procedures, improved its audits, and hardened its defenses against subversion by bad actors, foreign or domestic. Ballot tabulators are air-gapped from the Internet and voter-verified paper records are the norm. Bipartisan reforms enacted in 2022 make it much harder to interfere with the appointment of electors who represent a state’s popular vote, and harder to block certification in Congress of the genuine electoral count. Courts continue to deny evidence-free claims of meddling. The final word on vote-certification in key swing states rests with governors from both parties who have defied election denialism at every turn.

The system, according to everyone I asked, will hold up against Trump’s efforts to break it.

At the heart of that system are nonpartisan election officials at the federal, state, county, and local level who are dedicated to delivering a free and fair election. Poll workers will verify the identity and registration of every person who casts a ballot, in person or by mail. When polls close on Election Day, sooner in some states, election workers will begin tabulating early and mail-in ballots and in-person votes, usually on scanning machines. As they proceed, officials will secure counted ballots, compile the results from the tabulation machines, and save worksheets and (for 98% of votes cast) paper records for official and public review. The entire procedure is overseen by poll watchers from both parties.

No human enterprise that spans tens of thousands of polling places, hundreds of thousands of election officials, and more than 150 million projected voters can aspire to be flawless, says Jen Easterly, a former Army intelligence officer who directs the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA). “There could be a ransomware attack on an election office,” Easterly says. “There could be a distributed denial of service attack on a website, so you can’t see election-night reporting. Somebody will forget their key to a polling place, so they could open late. A storm may bring down a power line, so a polling place needs to be moved.”

Read more: Why Hand Counting Ballots Could Create an Election Disaster

What matters, she says, is that election officials have trained for all those contingencies. “They are prepared to meet the moment and to deal with any disruption,” she says. Easterly and her state counterparts play this message of reassurance on repeat, interview after interview and speech after speech. It has the virtue of being true. There really are playbooks and backup procedures and well-designed mitigation plans for every bad thing they have ever seen happen to an election, and none of those bad things pose a genuine threat to the integrity of the vote.

Easterly, a West Point graduate who oversees 2,200 employees, makes a point of talking about what could go wrong because she wants to inoculate voters against propaganda that incorporates minor incidents into a false narrative that elections are corrupt. The trouble is that Easterly and her allies are up against torrents of disinformation that are faster-propagating and incomparably more voluminous than their earnest rebuttals. And the lies are well calculated to stoke outrage and fear, while the truth “sounds like this wonky inside-baseball bureaucratic thing,” she says.

The key period for this disinformation will be the two months between Election Day and the final count of the electoral vote in Congress on Jan. 6, 2025. As they finalize their counts, the officials will send results from individual polling places to a central office by telephone, electronic transmission, or on a memory device. Election officials will then combine those numbers with mail-ballot totals and begin posting publicly available results. Media organizations will assess the partial results, alongside exit polls, and predict winners and losers in key races and states. The Associated Press, relying on an army of reporters at polling places and election offices, will produce the most widely credited unofficial count.

But several battleground states, like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, do not start processing early and mail-in ballots until after the polls close, making a delay in results likely. In very close races, mandated recounts or the tallying of provisional ballots could delay the outcome for days. “It always takes time, but as margins get narrower it takes longer until the media can call the races,” says David Becker, executive director of Election Innovation and Research, a nonprofit that seeks to build trust in elections. “We’ll just have to be patient and wait for that because it’s more important to get it right than get it fast.”

Foreign disinformation about the reliability of the vote is even more pervasive in 2024 than it was in the past several election cycles. Adrian Fontes, the secretary of state of Arizona, says that confidential reports from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have convinced him that malicious foreign-influence operations are accelerating this year. They “make us hate one another so much that we internally tear ourselves apart or we make enemies out of ourselves,” he says.

A senior U.S. intelligence officer, speaking on condition of anonymity, says the Biden Administration made a conscious decision to expand distribution of bulletins from the Foreign Malign Influence Center, an office that reports to the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), to help state and local election officials respond to an active threat. The governments of Russia, China, and Iran, according to an ODNI public update, are likely to call “into question the validity of the election’s results after the polls close.” Russia is doing what it can to help elect Trump, as it did in 2016 and 2020, according to ODNI, while Iran, enraged by Trump’s 2020 decision to assassinate Major General Qasem Soleimani, chief of the country’s Quds Force, is backing Harris. According to the senior U.S. official, China is not trying to boost either candidate but is making “broad efforts aimed at undermining trust in U.S. democratic processes and exacerbating divisions in our society.”

For all the foreign interference, Fontes, a Democrat, sees a graver problem originating from within. Like his counterparts around the country, of both parties, he names no names. “What I think is our biggest threat,” he says, “is the fact that we still have elected officials and candidates who are lying to our voters about the integrity of our elections, who are continually pushing out these stupid lies about fraud and non-citizen voting and all of this other unsubstantiated garbage.” He fears that “it’s working, sadly, because a lot of people can’t see through the bullsh-t.”

Trump is putting almost as much effort into discrediting November’s election as he is into winning it. This time, unlike 2020, he has well-funded and well-organized support for that effort from the Republican National Committee and state parties, allied think tanks, and dark-money operations. Together they are preparing the postelection battlefield for a sustained campaign in courts, in state legislatures, and in Congress to overturn a Harris victory. Trump campaign spokespeople did not reply to questions about why he is attempting to undermine public trust in the election and whether he will try to reverse the results if Harris wins.

“We are in an election unlike any other,” said Wendy Weiser, vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, where I am a senior adviser. “The attacks that we are seeing on the election this year are much more widespread, much better funded, much bigger than we’ve ever seen before, much more sophisticated.”

What Trump lacks in 2024 are the powers of an incumbent President. He cannot send troops or law enforcement officers, as some allies suggested he do last time, to seize voting machines. He has no Justice Department to draft a letter to legislators in a state that he lost, falsely advising them that the department has “identified significant concerns that may have impacted the election” and hinting that they should support “a separate slate of electors representing Donald J. Trump.”

But even out of office, Trump is wielding presidential power prospectively to benefit his campaign—by announcing to supporters and opponents what he will do for them, or to them, if he returns to office. He has frequently promised pardons for the “political prisoners” convicted of storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, another of his hints that violence on his behalf may be rewarded. In September, in a Truth Social post, he warned that “WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences.” He specified among his targets “Corrupt Election Officials,” along with “Lawyers, Political Operatives, Donors, [and] Illegal Voters.” Describing Harris and her supporters as “the enemy from within,” he said on Oct. 13 that the enemy “should be very easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”

Read more: The Huge Risks From AI In an Election Year

Trump’s public disinformation campaign has been amplified on Elon Musk’s social media platform X, a boost that the former President did not have in 2020. It has also been reinforced by more than 90 lawsuits brought by the Trump campaign, RNC, and other supporters to disqualify voters, prevent the counting of votes, or shorten the duration of counting, among other goals. The lawsuits, which already far exceed the number filed in the 2020 election cycle, are concentrated in the seven swing states expected to decide this year’s contest: Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada, North Carolina, and Georgia.

“President Trump’s election-integrity effort is dedicated to protecting every legal vote, mitigating threats to the voting process, and securing the election,” says RNC spokeswoman Claire Zunk in an emailed statement. “While Democrats continue their election interference against President Trump and the American people, our operation is confronting their schemes and preparing for November.” As an example of “attacks on election safeguards” that the RNC fought in court, Zunk cited efforts by Georgia Democrats to extend the voter-registration deadline in parts of the state that were hard-hit by Hurricane Helene.

Many of the Trump-aligned lawsuits seem poorly tailored to prevail at trial—demands for purges of voter rolls, for example, filed after the relevant deadline. Some of the litigation could be seen as an attempt to borrow the authority of a court proceeding for thinly supported allegations of fraud to be levied if Harris wins. Several observers see another dark strategy in the current lawsuits and the preparations for others. While the vote-counting system is resilient and reliable, it must meet several immovable deadlines.

By Dec. 11, top state officials, in most cases the governor, must certify the election results. Members of the Electoral College must vote on Dec. 17. Under the U.S. Constitution, if any states remain contested when the votes are counted in Congress on Jan. 6, and neither candidate wins a majority of the electors, the decision would go to the newly elected House of Representatives. There Trump would likely prevail, thanks to the 12th Amendment’s requirement that each state cast one vote and the fact that Republicans are likely to outnumber Democrats in a majority of state delegations.

Georgia has been a focus of GOP maneuvering to delay or deny certification of the voting results if Harris prevails. After Raffensperger, the secretary of state, refused to alter Georgia’s 2020 vote count in Trump’s favor, Trump tried to defeat his re-election bid. When Raffensperger won his race anyway, the Republican legislature removed him from the state election board and appointed three election deniers to form a new majority.

Trump praised the new board members by name as “pit bulls” for “victory.” They passed new rules that, among other things, would empower partisan county officials to reject election results that they believed to be tainted by fraud. A state judge voided all the new rules on Oct. 16. The board also attempted to reopen a closed investigation that might enable them to fire and replace the officials who oversee elections in Fulton County, a Democratic stronghold that includes most of Atlanta.

Read more: Meet the Democracy Defenders

According to a high-ranking state official, Trump allies on the election board encouraged their county counterparts to refuse to certify election results if they suspected any irregularity in the conduct of the polls. By blocking certification, the state official says, Trump’s allies were looking for a way, if Harris wins the state, to prevent the delivery of Georgia’s 16 electoral votes to Congress. On Oct. 14, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Robert McBurney put a stop to those efforts, ruling that county election officials may not “refuse to certify or abstain from certifying- election results under any circumstance.”

Immediately after that ruling, according to another Georgia official who spoke on condition of anonymity, lawyers representing the Trump campaign and the state GOP asked Raffensperger’s office to rewrite the official certification form. One of the lawyers, Alex Kaufman, had been on the telephone line on Jan. 2, 2021, when Trump demanded that Raffensperger “find 11,780 votes” to reverse Joe Biden’s victory in Georgia.

What Kaufman wanted this election, the officials said, was for Raffensperger’s office to remove the words “true and correct” from the description of the count on the certification form that election-board members have been ordered to sign. They said Kaufman also requested the addition of separate signature lines for board members who wish to convey their dissent, with room for them to specify the precincts in which they object to the count. “All of this is about creating doubt,” the second Georgia official says. “And if you view it from that lens, they don’t necessarily need a county to vote down the certification. They just need some sort of doubt to be on record that they can point to, to dispute the results.”

Raffensperger, in an interview, notes that he has sole authority to certify the state election. And he sounded delighted, all in all, by his removal from the Trump-aligned election board. “I’m not the chair of the mess” anymore, he says. “It’s not my monkey. It’s theirs. It’s up to them to fix it, or a judge will do it for them.” Judges have done so elsewhere. In Arizona’s Cochise County, two election supervisors were indicted last November for refusing to certify a 2022 vote there. On Oct. 21, one pleaded guilty to failing to perform her duty as an election official.

One significant obstacle for Trump, if he tries as he did in 2020 to arrange for “alternative electors” in states he loses, is that he would need active collaboration from a governor to throw out a state’s popular vote. Reforms to the Electoral Count Act give governors the presumptive power to decide which electors represent their states. Five of the battleground states this year—Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina and Arizona—have Democratic governors. Trump’s prospects with the two GOP swing-state governors do not look much better. In Georgia, Governor Brian Kemp refused Trump’s demands in 2020 to convene state lawmakers to overturn Joe Biden’s victory. Nevada Governor Joe Lombardo, a Trump supporter, has nevertheless distanced himself from the six fake electors who face felony charges after trying to substitute themselves for the state’s lawful Biden electors four years ago.

Like election officials in other states, Raffensperger described a long list of recent improvements in the reliability and security of voting in his bailiwick: citizenship verification, photo ID, “the cleanest voter list in the country,” a new technology vendor to “audit 100% of the ballots” using human-readable paper records. As for the ubiquitous accusations of fraud, he says, “We’re trying to head them off at the pass. Trying to get ahead of the curve. And we do that with facts.”

The specter of physical conflict around this election cannot be dismissed. Intimations of violence are regular features of Trump rhetoric, and many of his supporters may be angry enough to respond. The University of Chicago’s Robert Pape, a longtime student of political violence, reported that 6% of respondents in a September survey agreed that “use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” Notably, he says, an additional 8% agreed that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming President.”

Indeed, would-be assassins twice made attempts on Trump’s life this summer. Although no partisan motive for either has emerged, Trump and his allies blame the assassination attempts on accusations from Biden and Harris that he is a “threat to democracy.” But Trump’s political language, Pape and other political scientists say, is qualitatively different from that of the Democrats. He has called his political opponents “vermin” and “human scum,” predicted a “bloodbath” if he is not elected, hinted that execution would be justified for the former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and lavished praise on violent supporters who assaulted police at the Capitol. Pape described the survey respondents who say they support violence as dry kindling, awaiting a spark. “It is generally leaders on one side of America’s partisan divide,” he said, “who are lighting rhetorical matches.”

Election workers and officials are disproportionately on the receiving end of intimidation, doxing, and abuse. In September, Attorney General Merrick Garland described an “unprecedented spike in threats” against them. A recent Brennan Center study showed that 38% reported that they had been threatened, harassed, or abused because of their job, and 54% stated they were concerned about the safety of their colleagues and staff.

One state election official, explaining her insistence on anonymity, says, “I cannot emphasize this enough. I hate being quoted because every time my name gets out there, I get really nasty death threats. Because I’m a woman, they tend to be a little bit more graphic than the death threats that [her boss] gets, and it is jarring.” Asked for an example, she replies, “It’s always rape. Every single time it’s rape.”

Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer has stood at the white hot center of Arizona’s defense against election denial since 2020, and says he sees it gathering momentum again now. “There were some pretty dark moments,” he says, when he had to take daylong breaks away from his phone, doing “grunt labor” to clear his mind. Richer strikes competing notes of exhaustion and perverse pride that he holds the state record, as far as he knows, for death threats that have led to criminal charges. (The number is five.) The defendants have come from California, Missouri, Virginia, Alabama, and, most recently, Texas. One caller, Richer says, promised to kill him and his kids for stealing the election from Trump, saying “Children aren’t off limits.” (Richer has no children.) He also, Richer recalls, said: “I want to throw that Jew in an oven so badly, I can taste it.”

Richer is not sure how well the justice system’s response to these threats is working. “Somebody sends you a grotesque voice message to your personal cell phone,” he says. “You report it. And then what is your reward? You have to go, you know, get prepped for trial. You have to respond to subpoenas. And then you have to fly to Missouri at the beginning of December to get, I don’t know, examined in trial and have to face the jackass who said this.” MAGA Republicans put up a candidate to challenge Richer and successfully ousted him in a primary this summer. The current presidential election will be his last, and he won’t miss the stress of running the next one. “I’m worn out,” he says.

Other veterans of the election-disinformation wars are sticking it out. Pennsylvania secretary of state Al Schmidt, like Richer a Republican, became the target of persistent, personal attacks by Trump when he supervised 2020 election operations in Philadelphia. He found it shocking then. Now he has become inured. “There is a big difference between this election cycle and 2020,” he says. “In 2020, all of this ugliness was new. Election officials had never been portrayed as combatants before. So I think one unfortunate advantage to this election cycle is people are, election officials are fully aware of the level of scrutiny and likelihood of reckless accusations that might come their way.”

Read more: 11 Things to Say to Persuade Someone to Vote

Schmidt adds: “I think everyone that I know, everyone that I’ve met, isn’t going to let any of that [get] in the way of them doing their job.” But that is not entirely true, he admits. “Since 2020, Pennsylvania has lost more than 80 senior-level election officials. We only have 67 counties,” he says.

Neither violence nor the threat of it is likely to have any meaningful impact on the vote count. Since 2020, state and county officials have taken extensive steps to build in layers of security. In Maricopa County, the tabulation center is now surrounded by a sturdy wall, guarded by law-enforcement teams, and surveilled by drones. In Durham County, North Carolina, says elections director Derek L. Bowens, “we also activate our emergency-response center on Election Day and we have patrols of polling locations.” Staff members in every precinct will wear an “alert badge” that summons help at the press of a button. Police officers in all 50 states will be carrying pocket guides to election law, and law-enforcement groups like the National Sheriffs Association are teaming up with election officials for contingency planning.

Law enforcement has already been cracking down as part of an effort to deter violence. More than half of the 700 threats cases brought by the U.S. Department of Justice in the past two years have been for threats against federal and state public officials, judges, prosecutors, law-enforcement officers, and election workers, according to public statements by Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco. Also an effective deterrent, law-enforcement officials hope, are the convictions of more than 1,000 people for their roles in the riot at the Capitol. One received a sentence of more than 20 years in prison.

Trump could win this election outright. Absent that, if he has any path to return to power against the will of the voters, it would rely on an improbable decision by Congress or the Supreme Court to discard the results from one or more states that Harris wins. If those electoral votes are not counted, leaving neither candidate with 270, Trump’s allies could call for what’s known as a “contingent election” decided by the newly seated House. Alternatively, if Republicans win both the House and the Senate, they could attempt to certify Trump’s victory with fewer than 270 electoral votes, provided that he had a majority of the electoral votes that had not been thrown out.

But these scenarios, and others like them, are remote. One way or another, every election administrator I spoke with agreed, voters will be verified and cast their ballots. The ballots will be counted as cast and audited with paper records. The canvass will be certified, even if a partisan election board tries to balk. The popular vote in every state will control the appointment of electors. Congress will certify the electoral vote, with clear new rules laid out in statutory reforms enacted into law in 2022. And nothing will prevent the only outcome that our constitutional democracy can abide: the winner of the election will be sworn in as the 47th President on Jan. 20, 2025.

Meanwhile, the assault on truth will continue unabated in the ceaseless effort by Trump—in parallel with hostile foreign powers—to sow chaos in our electoral system and undermine faith in the results. “We know it’s a psyops campaign,” says Fontes, the Arizona secretary of state. “We’ve known that since 2016. This is an intentional erosion of the binding force of society in the United States of America.”

Easterly, whose predecessor at CISA was fired by Trump for calling the 2020 election secure and accurate, says, “It is incredibly irresponsible for anyone in a position of power to call into question the security or the integrity or confidence in our elections,” she says. “They really are acting as instruments of our foreign enemies.” The only solution she can envision is for everyone “to come together as Americans in a united way and resist these foreign malign adversaries who very clearly want to weaken our nation,” she says. “And it is up to all of us not to let them.”

Democracy, after all, gives more than one power to the people. We not only cast our ballots but exercise our judgment when exposed to the lies of a psychological operation. We don’t have to fall for them. —With reporting by Leslie Dickstein and Simmone Shah

Gellman, a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and author, is senior adviser at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

We’ve all seen the data around phones, social media, and the youth mental health crisis and we know: this generation of children has staggering rates of anxiety and depression. I’m as concerned as anyone, and yet, I’ve been shocked that one key word—really, a key foundational principle in life— has been left out of the conversation: boundaries.

As a clinical psychologist specializing in parenting and family relationships, I have noticed a trend of swapping out important boundaries with keeping kids happy. Here’s the thing: kids have always pushed limits and asked for things that aren’t good for them; in fact, this is part of a kid doing their job, as they’re meant to explore the world and figure out the “edges” or limits. And while kids continue to do their job, parents are really struggling to do theirs—and as a result, the family system is off-balance and mental health is suffering.

The cost of not being able to set boundaries with kids has never been higher. Decades ago, if parents struggled to hold boundaries and tolerate pushback, a child may have had an extra cupcake or stayed out too late. Today the cost of not being able to set boundaries looks more like freely scrolling TikTok at age 8 or playing endless hours of video games at the expense of participating in the real world. I agree that we are facing a crisis—but I don’t see only a crisis of phones and social media. I also see a crisis of what I call “Sturdy Leadership” at a time when our kids need it more than ever.

What do I mean by Sturdy Leadership? Sturdy Leadership is a model of parental authority where parents both hold boundaries and stay connected to a child or, actually, improve connection through these moments. They do this by validating their child’s feelings while holding firm on what is best for everyone. This is the same model that’s effective in the workplace or on a sports team—a leader who can stay true to their principles and who cares about other people’s feelings without being taken over by them.

So what does this look like in practice? Imagine your 5 year old wants you to buy a toy at a toy store—even though you explicitly said you were only going in to buy a birthday present for a cousin. Your 5 year old starts begging for a toy and you feel a tantrum coming on. Sturdy Leadership, in response, would look like: “I get it. It’s hard to see so many fun toys and not get something. Today I’m only buying a toy for your cousin. I can take a picture of what you want so we can remember it later. I love you, we’ll get through this.”

You can think of it like a math equation: Validation of feelings + holding boundaries = Sturdy Leadership.

What about an example with an older child? Imagine you just told your 12-year-old daughter “no” when she asked to have a sleepover, and she is—understandably—annoyed with you about not getting what she wants. In this moment, Sturdy Leadership could look something like this: “One of my main jobs is to make decisions that I think are good for you, even when you’re upset with me. This is one of those times. I get that you’re upset, I really do.” In this example the parent validated their child’s feelings while holding firm on their decision to do what they believe is best.

Here’s why boundary setting—early and often—is so important: When the day comes that our kids ask for a phone or for Instagram, our approach will not be isolated to some universally recognized “media policy” we have as parents; our approach will simply be an extension of the way we’ve always interacted with our kids around their wants and requests.

Read More: How Dr. Becky Became the Millennial Parenting Whisperer

As much as I’m a fan of boundaries, I’m an even bigger fan of this idea: It’s never too late, the right time to change is always right now. So if you’re a parent who already gave your kids a phone or access to social media and you wish you had held back, all is not lost. Think about yourself like a pilot who always has the right to return to base should the skies be more turbulent than expected—in fact, this is something passengers would want a pilot to do, even if they seem annoyed in the moment. You are the pilot of your family plane—and while your kid will never thank you outright for changing your rules, they will, years later, very much benefit from your sturdiness and acts of protection.

The key is to start with small steps. For example, this could be a conversation with your kid that looks something like this: “I’ve been doing a lot of reading on phones, social media and your health. I am responsible for your well-being and safety. I know it will not be easy, but beginning tonight, we’re all going to keep our phones outside our bedrooms when we turn in for the night.” In this example, the parent is embodying their authority with boundaries and warmth, and this new rule is from a place of protection, not punishment.

My life’s work has been to help parents become confident, Sturdy Leaders so they can raise confident, sturdy kids. We know that phones and social media are impeding our kids’ ability to flourish, but parents need more support. We need to expand the conversation so that rather than feeling locked in fear, parents know the practical skills they can build to bring change and support their kids.

With less than two weeks remaining until Election Day, the U.S. presidential candidates are making their final charge to win voters, and one demographic has emerged as a key target: Latinos.

Democratic nominee Vice President Kamala Harris made her pitch in a pre-taped interview with Telemundo that aired on Wednesday, while her Republican rival former President Donald Trump gathered Latino business leaders for a roundtable in Florida on Tuesday. Both participated in Univision town halls earlier this month. 

Making up roughly one-fifth of the U.S. population and 14.7% of total eligible voters, Latinos have the potential to be decisive in the 2024 race for the White House. Longtime GOP consultant Mike Madrid told the Los Angeles Times in June: “In every one of the swing states, the number of Latino voters is bigger than the 2020 margin of victory.” Indeed, in Pennsylvania, which is the biggest swing state in the Electoral College and which Trump won by less than 50,000 votes in 2016 and lost in 2020 by about 80,000 votes, Latino voters number more than 570,000. In Arizona, which has the highest number of Latino voters among swing states at about 1.3 million, Trump won the state by less than 100,000 votes in 2016 and President Joe Biden won by just over 10,000 in 2020.

Read More: The 7 States That Will Decide the Election

While Democrats have historically done better overall with the demographic, Madrid also suggested that Latino voting trends can’t be taken for granted, saying that the demographic has “a much weaker partisan anchor than any other race or ethnicity in the country. We have lower turnout rates in large part because neither party is saying anything that we’re buying.”

Both Trump and Harris are trying to change that, and reports and polling have indicated that Trump has made significant inroads, especially among Latino men. Trump won 28% of Latino voters in 2016, according to exit polls, and 32% in 2020. Recent polls show him earning about 40% of Latino voter support in 2024.

While Trump is known for his anti-immigrant rhetoric, American journalist Paola Ramos, author of Defectors: The Rise of the Latino Far Right and What It Means for America, wrote in an op-ed for TIME this week that issues related to identity and race are less salient for today’s American Latinos as most no longer identify with the immigrant narrative. 

Similarly, Frankie Miranda, president of the Hispanic Federation, and Luis A. Miranda, Jr., chair of the Latino Victory Foundation, wrote in an op-ed for TIME earlier this month that Latino voters are and have never been a monolith and are varied in their priorities. Where Democrats have historically catered their outreach to Latinos around immigration policy, surveys show that checkbook issues are top of mind for most of the community this election year.

Harris, a daughter of immigrants, has deliberately taken an approach that shifts away from identity politics and emphasizes her economic pitch instead. “My agenda around an opportunity economy will benefit all Americans, but I am also aware of the specific impact on the Latino community,” Harris said during her Telemundo interview, referencing her campaign’s proposals on small businesses and homeownership.

Read More: What a Kamala Harris Win Would Mean for the Economy

Before her interview aired, Harris addressed “Latino men” specifically, posting on X, “Donald Trump has disrespected and insulted Latino men and communities. As president, I will invest in them,” alongside an outline of how her economic agenda would benefit Latino families. She made another post that said Trump doesn’t care about Latino men or their families, citing increases in crime and unemployment.

Harris’ running mate Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz on Wednesday appeared on Univision’s radio show El Bueno, La Mala, y El Feo, where he also kept the focus on the economy, saying that he and Harris are working on “creating wealth” in the Latino community. “We know they’re out there working. We know they need to make more money. We know we need to keep prices where they’re at,” he said.

But while the Harris campaign, which is led by the first Latina campaign manager for a general election Julie Chavez Rodriguez, has made significant investments in Latino-specific outreach, the Trump campaign has tried to appeal to Latino voters by not treating them any differently—or at least saying so. “We have the same message for everyone, because regardless of people’s background, demographic, gender or origin, everyone is reeling from the current economic policies,” Vianca Rodriguez, the Trump campaign’s deputy director of Hispanic communication, told NBC News last month.

Like Harris, when it comes to Latino outreach, Trump has emphasized his economic platform. He’s also leaned into his businessman reputation. “Hispanic people—they say you can’t generalize, but I think you can—they have wonderful entrepreneurship and they have—oh, do you have such energy,” Trump said in Las Vegas on Oct. 12. 

When he met with Latino business leaders in a roundtable in Doral, Fla. on Tuesday, Trump referred to his 2017 tax cuts: “We gave you the biggest cut in taxes in the history of the country,” he said. “We have a great foundation to build on.” And in his Oct. 16 Univision town hall, Trump mentioned that he will support greater oil drilling to address inflation, perhaps in an effort to appeal to the significant number of Latinos who work in the oil and gas industry.

Read More: What a Donald Trump Win Would Mean for the Economy

But whereas Harris has prioritized the economy over the border in her pitch to Latino voters, Trump has actually made immigration a focus. “The economy is very important,” he said at the Florida roundtable on Tuesday, “but I really think that the biggest problem this country has is what they’ve allowed to happen to us on the border.”

In speaking to Latino voters, including during Trump’s Univision town hall and campaign events in Arizona, Trump and his running mate Ohio Sen. J.D. Vance have not shied away from the topic of immigration, criticizing the Biden-Harris administration and emphasizing that immigrants “have to come in legally.”

Carlos Trujillo, a senior adviser for Trump’s campaign on Latino issues, said in a New Yorker profile published this week: “One of the biggest insults that you hear from most people in the media is, ‘Oh, Hispanics are in favor of illegal immigration.’ No. Having spent time with a lot of them, what they want is a clear, defined rule of law.”

Harris, for her part, observers have noted, has tried to flip the script when it comes to Democrats being perceived as soft on immigration. “[Trump] talks a big game about border security, but he does not walk the walk,” she said during an August event in Arizona just after her campaign rolled out an ad that claimed: “Fixing the border is tough. So is Kamala Harris.”

Vice President Kamala Harris delivered a rare public speech in front of her official residence in Washington on Wednesday to raise the alarm about Donald Trump’s stated desire to use the presidency to punish his political rivals and deploy the military “as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”

Harris accused Trump of wanting “unchecked power,” citing recently published interviews with John Kelly, a retired four-star general who served as Trump’s White House chief of staff and Homeland Security Secretary. Kelly told The Atlantic that Trump claimed he wanted “the kind of generals that Hitler had.” (The Trump campaign disputes Kelly’s allegations.)

Pointing to a recent Kelly interview with The New York Times, Harris said, “It is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, ‘certainly falls into the general definition of fascist.’”

It is unusual for a Vice President to make a political statement from the official residence on Observatory Hill. Harris is in the final two weeks of a tight race against Trump and her campaign has ratched up its messages about the threat to democracy Trump poses.

“And it is clear from John Kelly’s words that Donald Trump is someone who, I quote, ‘certainly falls into the general definition of fascist,’ who, in fact, vowed to be a dictator on day one and vowed to use the military as his personal militia to carry out his personal and political vendettas.”

In recent months, Trump has increasingly used authoritarian rhetoric, referring to the threat he sees from “the enemy within” and calling for one “violent day” to crack down on crime in the U.S. Trump has also shared messages on social media calling for military tribunals for his political antagonists like the former Rep. Liz Cheney, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, and his own former Vice President, Mike Pence. In December, Trump said he’d only be a dictator on “day one” in order to close the border and expand oil drilling.

Read more: Former Trump Aides Warn of Secret Presidential Crisis Powers

At a White House press briefing on Wednesday after Harris’ speech, Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, said “Yes” when asked if President Biden believes Trump is a fascist. “The former president said he is going to be a dictator on day one. We cannot ignore that,” she said.

Harris underscored that point Wednesday, saying that the question of how to respond to Trump’s ambitions will be put to voters on Election Day. “The bottom line is this. We know what Donald Trump wants. He wants unchecked power. The question in 13 days will be: What do the American people want?”

Once, years ago, I found myself in an ice-cold bath with no memory of walking to the bathroom or running the tub. Another time, I terrified my friend by leaving our hotel room in the middle of the night—then pounding on the door, demanding to be let back inside. Both times, I awoke in the middle of these bizarre incidents. I had been sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking, technically known as somnambulism, is as fascinating as it is freaky. It’s a type of parasomnia, an umbrella term for unusual behaviors that occur during sleep, such as night terrors and “sexsomnia,” when people engage in sexual activity without waking up. Habitual sleepwalking is uncommon: a 2016 research review estimated that only 1.5% of adults had done it in the previous year. But almost 7% of adults have sleepwalked at some point in their lives, according to the same study.

The nighttime possibilities are varied and weird. A 2024 study in the Journal of Sleep Research showcased a range of sleepwalkers’ reported experiences, including waking up naked on a balcony at 5 a.m., crawling into the living room on all fours, smearing on almost an entire pot of expensive face cream, and filling a bowl of water and placing it by the bed for a dreamed-up dog.

What makes people rise from their beds to do all manner of bizarre things? Dr. Francesca Siclari, author of that study and a researcher at Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience, says sleepwalking seems to happen when someone is partially roused from deep slumber, leaving them in a “hybrid state” where they are “both asleep and awake,” capable of doing some awfully strange acts they might not even remember in the morning.

Read More: The Surprising Health Benefits of Pain

Researchers don’t fully understand why some people slip into this limbo state when most people don’t. But sleepwalking tends to run in families, suggesting there’s a genetic component. Certain medications, sleep disorders, and other medical conditions can also make someone prone to sleepwalking, according to the Mayo Clinic.

Kids are more likely to sleepwalk than adults, perhaps because their brains are still developing, says Jennifer Martin, a behavioral sleep-medicine specialist and spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Children also spend more time each night in the phase of slumber when sleepwalking typically occurs: the deep, restorative rest that comes before rapid eye movement and vivid dreaming, explains Dr. Sanford Auerbach, an associate professor of neurology at Boston University Chobanian & Avedisian School of Medicine. Most people outgrow sleepwalking by early adulthood, but some revert back during periods of stress or prolonged fatigue, Martin says.

Studies support the link between sleepwalking and sleep deprivation. Siclari says it seems to happen when an over-tired person finally falls into a deep sleep, only to be disturbed by noise, sound, or motion. It’s hard to wake someone from deep sleep, particularly when they aren’t well-rested, so they don’t rise fully. But the interruption seems to be enough to change brain activity, sometimes resulting in activity similar to what’s observed during vivid dreams, according to Siclari’s research.

Sleepwalking isn’t inherently problematic, Auerbach says. “It’s not a bad thing for your health or a good thing for your health,” he says. “It’s more of an interesting phenomenon” than a real cause for concern—although some research has found that sleepwalkers are more likely than regular snoozers to experience fatigue, daytime sleepiness, and insomnia, suggesting the habit may sometimes mess with the quality of sleep.

Read More: 12 Weird Symptoms Endocrinologists Say You Should Never Ignore

More concerning are the safety issues that can arise when someone is up and about. People can trip or fall when they’re half awake, or worse: a patient of Martin’s once drove a car while sleeping, and a patient of Auerbach’s fell off a second-story balcony. “Usually the things people do when they’re sleepwalking are much simpler behaviors,” Martin says, “but people sometimes do get themselves into trouble.”

When necessary, clinicians sometimes prescribe small doses of sedative benzodiazepine medications to discourage sleepwalking, Auerbach says. Stress reduction is also helpful, since sleepwalking tends to flare during periods of anxiety, he adds.

Regular sleepwalkers should also consider taking safety precautions, like putting a gate at the top of their stairs or installing a security system that makes noise if the front door opens, Martin says. She says it’s also worth seeing a sleep specialist to rule out other conditions, such as REM behavior disorder, which causes people to act out their dreams and can also lead to inadvertent self-harm.

Finally, if you’re the bedfellow of a sleepwalker, you may have heard the myth that you’re not supposed to wake them while they’re on the move. Martin says waking a somnambulist won’t harm them, beyond some momentary confusion—but the best thing you can do for a wandering loved one is gently guide them back to bed for some classic horizontal sleep.

In less than two weeks, we will find out whether the inroads Donald Trump made with Latino voters in 2020 were an anomaly—or a sign of a deeper realignment. Yet the votes Latinos cast this November will tell us more about the way Latinos view themselves in America rather than the way they see Trump.

As Trump has focused the nation’s eyes on remaining fearfully fixated on migrants, a growing number of Latinos have joined the “send them back” chants, perfectly blending into the conservative masses purporting to display patriotism. Among the MAGA crowds, behind their American flags, or inside their homes, many Latinos seem to be finding a sense of belonging in Trumpism’s othering. At the end of the day, nothing is more patriotic than sharing a common enemy.

But what happens when the police flood lights burst on and the ICE sirens blare under a second Trump Administration? What happens when Trump’s wall comes up even higher and the nation’s eyes turn on their neighbors? Who becomes “the other” now?

According to a recent New York Times/ Siena College poll, a majority of Latinos, including those who are foreign-born, are not insulted by Donald Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric. In fact, a majority of Latinos don’t believe Trump is talking about them when he criminalizes migrants.

In fact, it is understandable that a segment of Latinos feels more detached from their homelands and their immigrant roots. Today’s Latino population is more Americanized and assimilated than ever before. Third-generation Latinos are now the fastest growing segment of Latinos in the country, which means the majority of the Latino electorate is now U.S.-born and predominately English-speaking. Many no longer see themselves reflected in the immigrant story—a story that provided a collective sense of allegiance and solidarity for generations of Latinos that once felt foreign in American lands. Many, simply, just see themselves as Americans.

The question is: how does Trump see them? “You guys are the same as me,” Donald Trump recently told a group of Latino and Afro-Latino barbershop patrons during a campaign stop in the Bronx. “It’s the same stuff. We were born the same way…” Trump continued, facing a group of brown men that were looking at him with the utmost admiration.

Read More: We’re Missing the Point About Latino Voters

Therein lies the power of Trumpism: In its transactional ability to convince a group of minorities that they are part of the the fight against the “other.” While this is a powerful political strategy, let’s not forget that Trump’s own record shows that he has never believed that Black and Latinos are, well, the “same” as him.

In the 1970’s the Department of Justice sued Trump’s real estate company for discriminating against renters of color. While the lawsuit ended in a settlement, testimony shows that rental applications filled by Black people were marked with the letter “C” for “colored.” By 2011, Trump was already fueling birtherism, falsely implying President Obama wasn’t born in the U.S. A few years later, Trump launched his 2016 presidential campaign by criminalizing Mexican immigrants. That same year, he implied that Gonzalo Curiel, the U.S-born judge overseeing the fraud case against Trump University in San Diego, couldn’t be impartial because he was “Hispanic” and “Mexican.” According to a recent report from The Atlantic, during his presidency, Trump allegedly said “It doesn’t cost 60,000 bucks to bury a f***ing Mexican!,” while referring to fallen Army soldier Vanessa Guillen.

Now, threatened by the image of a Black woman in power, Trump spends his days calling Vice President Harris “lazy,” “stupid,” and “crazy,” while his immigration advisor, Stephen Miller, looks at America’s evolving diversity with the same innate horror he expressed as a 16-year old student in California—then, already calling for Latinos to assimilate.

So, what degree of assimilation can prove our “Americanness” to Trumpism? According to Dr. Celia Lacayo, from UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center, the white gaze will never fully accept Latinos as their equal. Dr. Lacayo calls this the “perpetual inferiority” theory, which underscores a tendency among white people to see Latinos as a non-white racial group that passes down their “deficient” culture through generations, essentially making us unable to progress, adapt and change. In other words, it is the belief that Latinos will never fully assimilate into American culture.

Undeniably, the perpetual inferiority theory is hard to quantify; but when Trump is in his element, when he’s in his comfort zone—when his tone shifts from courting to affirming—the words speak for themselves. There’s a reason why, amid a nearly all-white campaign audience in Minnesota in 2020, Trump looked at his crowd and vocalized the words he couldn’t get himself to utter in the Bronx: “You have good genes.” The white crowd erupted. They knew they weren’t just the same. They knew they were superior.

In the final days of this election season, some Latinos will continue to fervently join the chorus of “send them back,” driven by the delusion that they would be safe in Trump’s America. But how would Trump determine who is undocumented?  If Trump wins, these Latinos will quickly find out that his promise to enact the biggest deportation program in American history will inevitably unleash mass-scale racial profiling, putting a target on their back.

In that version of America, Trump isn’t “the same” as us—last names, slight accents, skin color, or ancestry serve as distinguishing indicators. In that version of America, it’s not up to us to decide how close we are to our immigrant roots—it’s up to them. In that version of America, most of us end up walking freely through security check-points as we hold our U.S. passports, while we witness others being placed inside ICE trucks. The only thing separating us is thin air, and luck.

Only then will we understand that we, too, were always “them.”

ANKARA, Turkey — Attackers set off explosives and opened fire Wednesday at Turkey’s state-run aerospace and defense company TUSAS, killing four people and wounding more than a dozen, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said.

The two attackers — a man and a woman — were also killed, Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said.

Yerlikaya did not say what organization was behind the attack, as the process of identifying the assailants continued. But Defense Minister Yasar Guler pointed the finger at the militant Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.

“We give these PKK scoundrels the punishment they deserve every time. But they never come to their senses,” Guler said. “We will pursue them until the last terrorist is eliminated.”

The Islamic State group and leftist extremists have also carried out past attacks in Turkey.

“We have four martyrs. We have 14 wounded. I condemn this heinous terrorist attack,” Erdogan said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin on the sidelines of a BRICS meeting in Russia.

Putin offered condolences. A U.S. Embassy statement said Washington “strongly condemns today’s terrorist attack.”

TUSAS designs, manufactures and assembles civilian and military aircraft, unmanned aerial vehicles and other defense industry and space systems. Its UAVs have been instrumental in Turkey gaining an upper hand in its fight against Kurdish militants both on its own territory and across the border in Iraq.

The attack occurred a day after the leader of Turkey’s far-right nationalist party that’s allied with Erdogan raised the possibilitythat the PKK’s imprisoned leader could be granted parole if he renounces violence and disbands his organization.

Abdullah Ocalan’s group has been fighting for autonomy in southeast Turkey in a conflict that has killed tens of thousands of people since the 1980s. It is considered a terrorist group by Turkey and its Western allies.

The country’s pro-Kurdish political party, which also condemned the attack, noted that it had occurred at a time when the possibility of a dialogue to end the conflict had emerged.

Turkish media said the assailants arrived Wednesday at an entry to the TUSAS complex in a taxi. The assailants, carrying assault weapons, detonated an explosive device next to the taxi, causing panic and allowing them to enter.

The Interior Ministry said the attack was carried out by two assailants, and that the situation had been brought under control.

The taxi driver was among the dead, according to HaberTurk television.

Security camera images, aired on television, showed a man in plainclothes carrying a backpack and holding an assault rifle.

The interior minister said security teams were dispatched as soon as the attack started at around 3:30 p.m.

Multiple gunshots were heard after security forces entered the site, the DHA news agency and other media reported. Helicopters were seen flying above the premises.

Vice President Cevdet Yilmaz said the target of the attack was Turkey’s “success in the defense industry.”

___

Associated Press writer Robert Badendieck in Hamburg, Germany, contributed.

Seven minutes of chitchat and one real question into an interview, Mel Robbins begins to cry. Her eyes brim with tears behind her signature glasses; her confident voice gets squeaky. Here’s the question: how would you describe what you do? Not exactly a hardball, especially for Robbins, who has an everything-must-go approach to self-disclosure. This is a woman who on her wildly popular podcast described the appearance of her aging breasts as “dirty gym socks,” and has also given listeners a letter-and-verse account of her urinary incontinence. A job description should be a light lift.

Then again, Robbins, 56, has had so many incarnations, perhaps it’s complicated to sum up for a stranger who she now is. She has been a public defender, a life coach, a syndicated talk-radio host, a CNN legal analyst, an entrepreneur, a motivational speaker, a self-help author, a daytime talk-show host, and now a luminary of the podcast world and mini media tycoon. She has also, famously, been $800,000 in debt. Her high moments have been giddying and her lows desperate.

Robbins’ style, trained as she is for radio, where silence is referred to as “dead air,” is to keep talking until she figures out what she wants to say. She tries to describe what she does in several different ways. “I think a lot about the magic of taking a walk with a friend,” she says, as she chokes up. “When you take a walk with a friend, you feel better.” Switching to business terms, she explains how she’s trying to transform that friend-feeling into content: “I’ve built a production and media company that focuses on the human experience.” As she regains her composure, she adds, “I am on a mission to find as many stories and pieces of science and research and tools that a person can use to make their life a little better.”

Finally, she jumps ahead to the question that lies underneath the question, the one that eventually all motivational gurus (a term she hates) such as Robbins face. “The hardest thing about what I do is that oftentimes the advice and the tools sound dumb or repetitive,” she says. And there it is, the real truth of Mel Robbins, disclosed by herself. She is the queen of stupendously obvious advice, the psychological equivalent of a doctor who suggests you try breathing in and out. But—and here’s the amazingly simple hack that you won’t believe really works!— people listen to her and attempt to do what she suggests. “I spend a lot of time thinking about how I make this information that you’re going to care about, information that you’re going to connect to, and information that you’re going to trust enough to try,” she says.

Her best-selling book, The 5-Second Rule, is about motivating yourself to do something by counting backward from 5 and then doing it, much as one might encourage a reluctant child. Her second best-selling book, The High 5 Habit, coaches people to look at themselves in the mirror in the morning, think about what they have to do that day, and then literally high-five their reflection. It has more than 6,000 five-star reviews on Amazon, many of them calling it transformative. And in December she will release a new book, The Let Them Theory. The premise of this one—already hovering at the top of Amazon’s bestsellers list–is, pretty much, that people will be happier if they quit trying to control other people.

If you’re thinking these insights seem like thin gruel on which to nourish a media company, Robbins in some ways agrees with you. She’s fully aware how basic they seem. What Robbins sells, however, is not just advice. She’s offering her listeners a reason to believe in themselves. On Oct. 23, SiriusXM announced it had reupped her contract in a three-year deal in which she will not only continue to produce The Mel Robbins Podcast, but also launch a second show in early 2025. “Every single player was in the mix for the next ad-sales deal,” Robbins says, “and we were told by three different groups that based on the numbers, this is the single fastest-growing podcast they’ve seen.”

Since the first podcast was launched a mere two years ago, more than 187 million episodes have been downloaded and it has spread to 98 countries. People have spent 22 million hours watching it on YouTube, where she has 3 million subscribers. She has 6.5 million followers on Instagram, 2 million on TikTok, 2.5 million on Facebook, and six audiobooks that have hit No. 1 on Audible. At the end of 2023, her podcast was named the fifth most followed on Apple’s charts, prompting the Kelce brothers (whose podcast was third) to give her a shout-out.

Robbins has become the voice in people’s heads—often literally, since many listen on earbuds—encouraging them to keep going, insisting that they can do it, and shouting down the murmurs of self-doubt. In every podcast she says the same thing: “In case anyone hasn’t told you today, I love you,” a line that’s so corny it could be distilled into ethanol. And yet because it comes from her, people drink it up like syrup.

The morning TIME visits her book-lined Boston studio, Robbins, wearing a cool but relatable ensemble of black shirt, jeans, and Air Jordans, is interviewing Dr. Aditi Nerurkar, an author and physician at Harvard Medical School who specializes in stress. Nerurkar is talking about the difference between hedonic happiness and eudaimonic happiness. She’s expounding on “horizonlessness” where young people can’t get their bearings. Robbins repeats what Nerurkar says, synthesizing it and trying to find a practical application, all while blowing sunshine the doctor’s way. She’s interviewer, translator, therapist, and cheerleader.

Toward the end of the interview, Robbins scribbles a note on a card and draws a box around it several times. She also, she tells me later, presses a tap pad under her desk that sends a message to the mixing desk that this is the key point of the interview. “My role, especially with the experts, is really translating, clarifying, distilling, making it entertaining, making somebody that is steeped in their research relatable and human, so that somebody listening to them doesn’t feel less than or dumb.”

Nerurkar is not just a guest; she’s a fan. “You have an uncanny gift for getting into the head of people,” she tells Robbins after the interview but before they emerge from the studio into a standing ovation from the staff. (Everyone gets that, even reporters.) “I’m sitting across from a hero.” Last time she was on Robbins’ show, her book sales blew up like a case of hives. “You are the ultimate hype woman,” she tells Robbins. Dr. Mary Claire Haver, whose specialty is menopause, had a similar experience. Her interview with Robbins, which is now the most popular episode the show has ever done, aired a few weeks before her first book came out. “It was like a juggernaut,” she says. “It was more powerful than anything I’ve ever done, as far as reach.” By release date, the book had presold 70,000 copies, much of which Haver attributes to Robbins.

Why does it make such a difference to people when Robbins gives the advice? Partly it’s her voice. She has a lively smoky tone, with a lot of empathy and a hint of mischief, like a scandalous but wise aunt. Partly it’s skills honed in years of radio, where you have to keep people from changing the dial as the ads approach by dangling treats that await. Partly it’s her infallible radar for zeroing in on the one nugget in a litany of nuanced observations made by scholarly guests.

A quick study, she can consume a large volume of research material and not only pull out the most compelling takeaway but buttress her advice with findings from the academic, often neuroscientific literature. The reason it works to count to 5 backward and then go, she proposes, is that it counteracts the natural hesitation the brain engages in before doing something new to make sure it’s safe. If you make a move right after the five-second window, you don’t have time to overthink and get anxious.

But mostly people listen to Robbins because she tells stories. One of her most popular podcasts, about how to find out what you want, is illustrative of her methods. She spends the first two-thirds of the show sharing tales of people who are unclear about what they want. She uses whatever material she has on hand, in this case her daughter Sawyer and sister-in-law Christine Harwig. Sawyer talks about moving to New York City; Harwig wishes she had a lake house. Then, after 29 minutes, including five promo spots, Robbins demonstrates the technique of uncovering what you actually want by asking why five times to really burrow into the kernel of the desire. Her daughter wants to fulfill a childhood dream. Her sister-in-law wants more time with her teenage sons. The method takes about three minutes to explain, but a full 45 to make compelling.

Being a content producer is a grind. Robbins throws up two podcasts a week, plus endless social media riffs. She knows how to do this from years of nattering on air and because she cooks all the parts of the chicken. A cat sleeping on her lap becomes a post about not letting other things perturb you. Falling asleep in workout clothes becomes a post about motivation. She uses the most popular of those as a guide to what might be a good podcast and she uses the most popular of those as a guide to what might be a good book. The idea for Let Them went from a moment where she was worrying about how disorganized her son was about prom to an Instagram post and podcast so popular, says Robbins, it inspired tattoos. “What was revelatory to me is that you can’t truly be in control of what you’re doing until you first stop living your life as if you can control what other people are doing,” she says. “When you say, let them, you detach from trying to control that person, and then you remind yourself, let me choose how I’m going to respond to this.”

She noticed echoes of the idea in Buddhism, stoicism, and the work of Dr. Robert Waldinger, the psychiatrist behind the Harvard Study of Adult Development. “It’s the single best thing I’ve ever done,” she says. “It’s got everything that I look for. It is personal. It is backed by just a tremendous amount of research in science. It is so simple, you can teach it to a fifth grader. And in a moment where you are overwhelmed by your emotions, you can remember it. And that’s key, because if you can’t remember what to do, you won’t use the advice.”

Robbin’s richest vein of raw material, however, is her own backstory. Born Melanie Lee Schneeberger to a mother who left college after getting pregnant her freshman year and a father who would go on to become an osteopathic doctor, Robbins grew up in Muskegon, Mich. She excelled at school, particularly at math, was accepted into Dartmouth, “and proceeded to have from college through law school [at Boston College] eight of the worst years of my life,” she says. “I had no idea that I had been struggling profoundly with dyslexia and ADHD.” She was only able to keep up with the workload, she says, because her anxiety disorder made her work so hard.

She was unaware of those conditions at the time; she just knew she was miserable, drinking too much, cheating on boyfriends, and doing too many all-nighters. The memory of it brings her to tears again. “I didn’t know,” she says, weeping. “I didn’t f-cking know. There are so many things that I did that I regret, because I just didn’t know, and I hurt myself.” Part of what drives Robbins, she says, is that other people might be like she was. “I feel like almost every human being has something like that that they just didn’t know.”

Robbins was a public defender in New York City for a few years and represented a lot of people trying to make bail. “I saw how many people don’t have anybody showing up for them, and it left a huge mark on me,” she says. But she didn’t enjoy it, nor family law, and in 1999, after marrying and moving about an hour outside Boston, she started a business as a life coach.

Five years and two children later, her husband, Christopher Robbins, got laid off and decided to open his own business too, a pizza restaurant, which did well. He then opened another and another in quick succession, and there was a cash-flow squeeze, just as Robbins was having a third child and cutting back on her $250-an-hour life-coaching sessions. The couple took on a massive amount of debt. Robbins says she had a rehearsed routine for when her cards were declined at the grocery store. “I would cock my head a little to the left and go, ‘That’s funny, it just worked at the gas station. Hold on, I’m gonna go out to the car. Come on, kids.’ And I’d leave,” she says. But it got to her. “Never in a million years did I think at the age of 41 that I would be struggling with drinking, ready to kill my husband, just unable to get out of bed.”

Robbins, who often reminds listeners that “no one is coming to save you,” got a $25-an-hour gig as a local morning-radio talk-show host on weekends. “It was like a lifeline to talk to people that didn’t know the sh-tstorm that was going on in my life,” she says, and she was good at it. In 2012, five years after starting in radio, she got an official job at WBDO in Orlando. “I remember our very first meeting. It was one of those great meetings,” says Drew Anderssen, the show’s then producer. “Mel wanted to be a star, and she is a star. She had a way of making people feel really good.” When Trayvon Martin was killed by George Zimmerman in nearby Sanford, Fla., in 2012, Anderssen put her on the story and the case that followed. From there CNN hired her as an on-air legal analyst.

To pay the bills, she also developed a side career as a motivational speaker and author and got invited to speak at a TEDx event in San Francisco. At the end of her talk, “How to Stop Screwing Yourself Over,” she almost forgot to mention this little idea she had called the 5-Second Rule. She also gave out her personal email, which eventually she had to ask be edited out. The talk went viral, and she began to focus more on speaking and writing and less on TV. In 2017, she released The 5-Second Rule, which went on to become the best-selling self-published audiobook of all time.

While the past decade has been one of expanding successes, with an ever-growing footprint on social media, bigger paydays (a reported $100,000) for her corporate gigs, and two monster books, it’s been no cakewalk. Her eponymous daytime talk show, launched with some fanfare in 2019, was canceled after just one season. “It wasn’t good,” she says when asked why it was axed. But true to Robbins’ brand, the big public failure was a learning experience. “It taught me that I need to be in control of what I’m doing,” she says. “I am not a player in someone else’s game.”

Thus her podcast is produced by her own company, 143 Studios (named after the address of an apartment in Manhattan the couple lived in), and her new book, like her previous ones, is being released through a self-publishing platform. On the day TIME visits her office, each member of the largely female staff is wearing a magnetic name tag, including Harwig, who is the CFO and COO, and Sawyer, who works in marketing.

It’s safe to say the Robbinses are out of debt now. During the pandemic, the family bought and moved into her husband’s parents’ house on a hill in Vermont. Christopher runs a men’s retreat business, is a death doula, and is, by the looks of his Instagram, gloriously happy. Robbins wears a flashy diamond-encrusted ring, a present from her husband to mark 26 years of marriage. The last time she took Anderssen to lunch and talked about how much money she was making, he regretted suggesting the Magical Dining Month budget-price menu.

But her extremely fast rise in the podcast world has led to oversights. Recently Harwig discovered that Robbins was scammed out of hundreds of thousands of dollars in corporate speaking payments in an elaborate ruse that ensnared her speaking agent. (A business partner’s insurance covered it.) Robbins hadn’t noticed. “I’ve learned in running this business that I am fantastic at business development and fantastic as a creator,” she says. “I am horrendous at operations.”

Robbins believes her whole life has led her to this point. The financial difficulties, the ADHD, the public failures, the private struggles have all primed her to be a beacon pointing the way for people to improve their lives. Her studio location in Boston gives her access to a slate of world-class boffins who have done interesting research but lack the skill set to present it in a meaningful way. Her love of tech and data has helped her adapt to social media and discern what messages resonate with people. In a media race where relatability is more important than authority, her brand of empathetic imperfection is like rocket fuel. And in a world of parasocial relationships, the oversharer is queen.

Robbins cries one last time during our three-hour conversation, as she speaks of a visitor-center attendant in Iceland who recognized her voice when she asked for directions to the bathroom, burst into tears, and shared how her YouTube videos were a lifeline during a painful divorce. “Every time somebody stops me, it’s just a reminder of how that’s all you need, a little encouragement,” says Robbins, taking a moment to steady herself. “It’s really as simple as that.” There will always be people who say she just found a way to make money with extremely basic, even stupid, advice. Let them.