Politics

Ignore Trump’s tale of a gang taking over this apartment building and hear the residents

Published

2 years ago

November 12, 2024

Ignore Trump’s tale of a gang taking over this apartment building and hear the residents

We might expect former President Donald Trump, in Tuesday night’s debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, to claim that Tren de Aragua, a gang based in Venezuela, has taken over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado. That’s not true, as firsthand accounts from residents of the apartment complex, the Aurora Police and an editorial in The Denver Post attest.

But the truth doesn’t matter to Trump.

Trump and the Republican Party are determined to scare us all, and they intend to do all they can do to conjure up images of marauding brown invaders who are here to destroy the United States.

“If you look at Aurora, Colorado, they’re taking over the place; they took over buildings,” he said last Friday. “This is just the beginning.”

“Getting them out will be a bloody story,” he said this weekend at a rally in Wisconsin. “They should never have been allowed to come into our country. Nobody checked them.”

Trump and the Republican Party are determined to scare us all, and they intend to do all they can do to conjure up images of marauding brown invaders who are here to destroy the United States.

The idea that members of Tren de Aragua, TdA, are taking over an apartment complex in Aurora originated with a video posted by a Denver news station that went viral. The images of gun-toting Venezuelans was confirmed by Aurora Police. Nobody is disputing the fear that residents are facing from the violence they are seeing. However, interim Aurora Police Chief Heather Morris visited the complex and saidcontrary to reports and even a statement from Aurora’s mayor, that members of the gang had not taken over and weren’t forcing residents there to pay rent to them.

After residents of the building held a news conference to dispute the claims of a gang takeover, Republican Mayor Mike Coffman, a former congressman, acknowledged that he was “not sure where the truth is in all of this” and he said that reports that Aurora is unsafe are not true.

But despite that fuller context, the video suggesting a TdA takeover was picked up by Trump-friendly outletsand Republicans amplified it.

“Kamala Harris has managed to import the worst of Latin American gangs right in Colorado,” Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Col., said on X. “And we’re not even a border state. This is pure insanity. I was raised in Aurora. This is something that we never had before. How are children supposed to grow up with this mess around them?”

“Colorado is under violent attack,” the Colorado Republican Party said in a fundraising email about the news, noting that “Tren de Aragua, or TdA, a transnational gang based out of Venezuela, is terrorizing Aurora residents.”

“The gang, which boasts about 5,000 members, has a motto of ‘real until death.’’ Law enforcement is largely allowing TdA terrorists to do whatever they want,” the email added.

Republicans want us to believe that Venezuelans are taking over. Republicans want us to believe that the United States isn’t safe. That is the narrative Trump wants. It is the narrative his supporters want to hear, and the right-wing media distribution network has helped make that narrative go mainstream.

But here’s what The Denver Post argued in a Sept 3. editorial: “The Denver Post and other mainstream news outlets have covered the emergence of this gang in America, but also have maintained perspective on the size, threat and activities of the gang, unlike some who are using incidents in Aurora and Denver to fuel fear of other Venezuelans and asylum seekers.”

The owners of an apartment beset with crime in Aurora are using the gang as a scapegoat for the unsanitary, unsafe and unhealthy conditions of their apartments that were condemned by the city this month

editorial in the denver post

The editorial continues: “Others, like the owners of an apartment beset with crime in Aurora, are using the gang as a scapegoat for the unsanitary, unsafe and unhealthy conditions of their apartments that were condemned by the city this month.”

It’s all coordinated. Whipping up fear about a Venezuelan gang taking over is a campaign strategy, and the Aurora example is not just an isolated incident. Days after the Venezuelan gang video got millions of views, there was a similar misrepresentation, from Libs of TikTok, that TdA had taken over a building in Chicago. That lie caught Elon Musk’s attention, who responded on X with two exclamation points. Though there have been reports that members of the gang are in Chicago, police say there was no attempted takeover of a building and that police responded to a “call of service” at the building that was logged as a noise disturbance with “no police service necessary.”

With less than two months before the presidential election, such narratives must be confronted. As much as Republicans want you to believe the opposite, rampant migrant crime is a myth. Homicides and violent crime in the U.S. continue to decrease.

Still, no matter how many facts are presented to counter Republican hysteria, the online push has already convinced people to accept falsehoods as truth. Stories get picked up. Then we have to prove why a falsehood is a falsehood.

Oscar Rojas, a Venezuelan tenant in the Aurora apartment complex in question, told local Denver7 last week that he “was scared to go out” because “they’re accusing all of us at the complex of being in gangs, and this is completely false.”

“It’s completely false. There are good people here, families. There’s always going to be crime everywhere,” Rojas said.

“There weren’t 32 armed people here last night. That’s a lie. Look, there’s no one outside,” a resident from Venezuela told the Chicago Tribune about the building in question there. “We all know each other. No one is hurting anyone.”

No matter how many facts are presented to counter Republican hysteria, the online push has already convinced people to accept falsehoods as truth.

Who are you going to believe? A right-wing media machine known to share misinformation to prop a Republican presidential candidate who continues to say that immigrants have “poisoned” the countryor actual brown and Black people who live in the places that are allegedly being “overrun?”

The right-wing media machine knows that fear of a changing country is an outrage winner. That machine will keep manufacturing and amplifying it in hopes of electing Trump.

If Trump repeats the lie about Aurora or Chicago tonight, then Harris needs to be ready to counter with the facts and demonstrate that we can never let such lies become accepted truths.

Julio Ricardo Varela

Julio Ricardo Varela is an award-winning journalist and the founder of The Latino Newsletter.

Politics

Poll: Republicans’ gas price problem is even worse than it seems

Published

3 hours ago

July 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Gas prices are high. Americans think they’re even higher.

Three in five Americans believe gas prices in their area have risen by more than they actually have, according to an analysis of new results from The Blue Light News Poll. It’s those perceptions that candidates will be running against this fall.

Voters’ anxieties about fuel prices could give Democrats a boost ahead of the midterms, further strengthening the Democratic voting base and putting strains on the MAGA coalition as the increasingly unpopular war in Iran drags on. A plurality of Americans — 46 percent — say the change in gas prices will impact how they plan to vote come November.

Most voters overestimated the change in gas prices in their area, according to the analysis of polling and granular pricing data provided by OPIS, a Dow Jones company that tracks gas prices. That includes majorities of voters who supported President Donald Trump and also those who supported former Vice President Kamala Harris.

Roughly one in four Americans say gas in their local area has risen by $3.00 or more. But no zip code has actually seen that degree of change on average in the year and a half since Trump took office, as of early July.

Frustrations over cost of living could be reinforcing existing negative views of the Trump administration: Harris voters are far more likely to overshoot the cost jumps than Trump voters, making it harder for Republicans to peel off Democratic voters.

And the analysis shows a fracture among Trump voters. Self-identified MAGA Republicans were more likely to underestimate cost increases than non-MAGA Republicans — another crack in the president’s winning coalition as Republicans scramble to hold it together for the midterms.

“It is a particularly tough dance that many Republican candidates will have to endure for the next three months,” said Arizona GOP strategist Barrett Marson. “How do you feel the pain of your voters without feeling the wrath of Donald Trump?”

What’s more, American’s perceptions do not quickly change even when prices do. The Blue Light News Poll asked about gas prices in both May, when they were near their peak, and July, when they had dipped.

The results were the same in both.

“President Trump and his energy team anticipated these temporary market disruptions, communicated them openly to the American people, and implemented an aggressive plan to mitigate any impacts,” said White House spokesperson Taylor Rogers. “As the U.S. military degrades the terrorist Iranian regime’s ability to attack commercial vessels and disrupt the free flow of energy through the Strait of Hormuz, oil and gas prices will plummet back to pre-conflict levels.”

Gas prices could swing votes

Americans’ frustrations with prices and the economy overall are changing how they say they will vote in the fall.

Of the 46 percent of Americans who said gas prices will have an impact on their vote, just under 40 percent said they are considering voting for a different party than they normally would, including 49 percent of MAGA Republicans and 57 percent of non-MAGA Republicans.

“Three quarters of the country is confronting higher gas prices and feeling it,” said longtime Democratic strategist Jesse Ferguson. “That leaves them … very vulnerable to the economic pain and very vulnerable to the economic argument the Democrats are going to make.”

To better understand public perception of gas prices, The Blue Light News Poll asked Americans how the price of gas in their area had changed since Trump took office. Respondents could choose between buckets like “$1 to $2 higher per gallon,” “$1 to $2 lower per gallon,” or say prices had stayed roughly the same.

More than three-fourths said gas prices in their area have gone up.

Using OPIS data, Blue Light News compared each respondent’s answer against the actual average cost of regular gas in their zip code during the first week Trump was in office and the week prior to the July poll, which was conducted by the independent polling organization Public First from July 12 to July 15.

That comparison revealed the difference between the pain the American public is feeling and where actual gas prices stand — and, in particular, how that pain is expressed differently among Democrats and Republicans. Roughly 70 percent of Harris voters and 54 percent of Trump voters overestimated the increase in gas prices in their area, according to Blue Light News’s analysis.

“Democrats are highly motivated,” as a voting base, Marson said. “The longer the war goes on, probably the less motivated Republicans will be.”

The perception of higher gas prices is linked to how people see the economy — and who they blame for it.

Across the country, 57 percent of Americans say the cost of living is worse than they “can ever remember it being.” Those who overestimate gas price increases had more than twice the odds of agreeing with that statement, even after controlling for demographics and their 2024 vote.

Similarly, a plurality of Americans — 43 percent — blame Trump more than former President Joe Biden for the state of the economy overall. Those who overestimated their local increase in gas prices had nearly twice the odds of saying the same, compared with those who perceived the change in gas prices correctly or who underestimated the change.

It’s already affecting the battlegrounds

In the country’s most competitive races, Republicans will have to answer for the perceived cost pressures of rising gas prices more often than Democrats.

Thirteen of the most competitive districts have experienced gas price increases higher than the national average, according to Blue Light News’s analysis. Of those, nine are currently represented by Republicans.

In California’s 22nd District, where Republican incumbent Rep. David Valadao will face off against progressive political newcomer Randy Villegas, average prices across the district had gone up $1.17 by early July — the third highest increase of any district, according to Blue Light News’s analysis.

Villegas said in an interview that he thought frustration over gas prices would mobilize turnout in the fall, driven by how the cost of gas is “tied to every other thing.”

“It’s the cost of gas when you’re driving to the grocery store, when you’re driving to, you know, see a doctor,” he said. Or, the cost of gas when driving 7 to 8 hours away to “go get cheaper health care.”

Valadao did not respond to requests for comment.

In Colorado’s 8th District, where gas prices have risen by $0.73 on average since Trump took office, Republican incumbent Rep. Gabe Evans blamed local Democratic policies for increased costs more than the Iran war.

While “what’s happening halfway around the globe has some impact on global energy prices,” Evans said, high gas prices in the district are “a direct result of the local economic policies — the anti-energy policies — of the state Democrats who run the state of Colorado.”

But The Blue Light News Poll results from this month show voters don’t necessarily feel the same. Roughly 63 percent of Americans selected “the war with Iran” as the primary reason why gas prices have increased since Trump took office, including 59 percent of Trump voters and 70 percent of Harris voters.

By the middle of May, the average price of gas across the country reached its highest point of the Trump administration to date: $4.50 per gallon, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. In July, average prices dipped to $3.78 per gallon, the lowest average price since March.

Still, in both months, more than 75 percent of Americans said gas prices had gone up, Blue Light News’s polls show. And in both months, roughly 23 percent said prices had gone up by $3.00 or more.

This week, Trump said the upcoming midterms would not impact how he goes about fighting the war with Iran. “I can’t think about that having to do with this,” he said, referring to the elections. “I think people are very impressed.”

Politics

Capitol agenda: House GOP budget faces Senate reality check

Published

10 hours ago

July 24, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Capitol agenda: House GOP budget faces Senate reality check

Senate Majority Leader John Thune has been frank about the rocky road the reconciliation effort faces and careful not to guarantee he’ll be successful…
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