Politics
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 is an award-winning journalist and the founder of The Latino Newsletter.
‘We are winning elections’: Bernie Sanders on Democrats’ progressive wing
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Politics
Trump wants the Postal Service to radically overhaul mail voting. But ballots are already going out.
President Donald Trump’s controversial demands for the Postal Service to overhaul and monitor millions of mail ballots hit another snag on Friday, when North Carolina became the first state in the nation to start sending out ballots for the November election.
In March, Trump signed the initial executive order, which aimed to crack down on mail-in voting — which he regularly alleges without evidence is a vector for widespread voter fraud — and assert an unprecedented amount of federal control over the upcoming elections.
Under this order and the subsequent rule drafted by the U.S. Postal Service, the USPS would refuse to deliver ballots to states that failed to provide lists of eligible mail voters or did not adhere to an approved envelope design style.
Since then, the order has faced legal challenges, and it remains paused by a federal judge’s orders. But the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to allow the new rule to proceed — something current and former election officials from both parties say would be both a legal nightmare that oversteps the federal government’s traditional role in elections and a logistical one that is happening far too close to the November election to implement even if they agreed with it.
“Why the hell are you rocking the boat this late in the game?” said Stephen Richer, a former Republican recorder of Maricopa County, Arizona, who has clashed with Trump allies for defending the security of the 2020 election.
Still, election officials are trying to project a sense of normalcy for voters, particularly in North Carolina, which serves as a test of whether established local election systems can operate normally amid intensifying federal scrutiny.
“I want to emphasize this point because there has been a lot of outside noise: Our county workers are ready,” Sam Hayes, a longtime Republican lawyer in the state and now executive director of the North Carolina State Board of Elections, said in a Thursday afternoon press conference.
He added, “All we can do is what we’re doing. … It is business as usual as far as I’m concerned.”
Despite the legal challenges, the Trump administration has continued to press the courts to let it proceed. The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to lift an order from a Massachusetts judge which temporarily prevents the USPS from enforcing their rule. It is the second time the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to step in, after winning an earlier victory in which the high court dismissed an earlier hold on the rule as premature.
“The uncertainty is coming from a single activist judge who continues to try and obstruct President Trump from implementing commonsense measures to protect the security of mail-in ballots and ensure only Americans vote in American elections,” White House spokesperson Lauren Bis said in a statement. “These safeguards for mail ballots were proposed months ago giving election officials ample time to prepare for the 2026 election.”
The USPS did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Election officials said that if the rule goes into effect this close to November, it would cause chaos and place added strain on the USPS and election officials. And an anonymous federal whistleblower said in a report circulated earlier this week by Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) that the USPS was moving forward in a “secretive, rushed, chaotic, and fundamentally flawed process” to try to implement the new system ahead of the midterms.
In the coming weeks, states across the country will follow North Carolina’s lead. Nine other states will begin mailing ballots in the next two weeks, according to a tracker from the National Conference of State Legislatures — with the biggest day for mailing coming 45 days before the election in mid-September.
“It would be so outrageous to try to let this go into effect. It’s hard to even imagine,” said Ben Hovland, a senior fellow for democracy at the progressive think tank Center for American Progress and former Democratic commissioner with the Election Assistance Commission who was fired by Trump in July.
He added, “It would be a break-glass moment for our democracy.”
The rule would require meticulous changes to ballot handling and tracking practices that Hovland said are impossible to implement before Election Day in about two months, effectively disenfranchising millions of voters.
“Ballots are printed. Envelopes are printed. You can go on and on with all the practical reasons that show that implementing something like this at this time is not feasible,” he said.
Richer said he doubted the new rules would bring about more security. Even if the USPS received lists from the states, according to the postal service’s final rule, it would not do any additional vetting of the list, Richer said.
“It’s just that the mail ballots have to be on that list, and I don’t see what added value for election integrity that does,” he said.
He added, “It creates a lot of administrative burden, and I think it creates a lot more opportunity for error.”
While a decision looms in the courts, election officials and experts cast doubt on the likelihood of the rules going into effect before November. A more pressing issue, they said, is the confusion and uncertainty surrounding mail-in ballots, which could subvert and change the behaviors of voters.
“It makes things seem messy or difficult, and it can dissuade people from participating or coming out to vote,” Hovland said. “It certainly also helps establish a pretext to make bad faith claims about election results.”
Hovland said that while none of these claims of voter fraud are backed up with facts, they could cause Americans to lose faith in the voting process.
Still, some current officials contended they were well-prepared for whatever happens — and that they’d be able to communicate effectively with voters who have become increasingly buffeted by dramatic rhetoric about the once-unmentioned nuts and bolts of actually running an election.
“There’s always a lot of noise around elections, that’s not going to change, and it can be hard to differentiate that from what’s actually going on on the ground,” said Jason Tyson, director of external affairs for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
As Election Day approaches, Tyson and election officials said they urge voters to check their registration status and make a plan to vote.
He added, “I think we’ve got a really well-trained, solid staff who are ready, and who have gone through all of the checks and balances and points of contact that we need to do to get to where we are.”
Missouri’s Supreme Court suspended a congressional map that state Republicans drew last year that would have netted the GOP an additional House seat, likely keeping the seat in Democratic hands this November.
The court ruled unanimously on Thursday that a referendum petition organized by Democrats to put the new congressional maps to a vote was incorrectly deemed insufficient by Republican Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, and ordered that the gerrymandered map be put to a vote in the fall.
Voters will ultimately decide the fate of the new lines in November. But in the meantime, it cannot be in place for the midterms, meaning Rep. Emanuel Cleaver’s original Kansas City-based district will likely stay in Democrats’ hands this fall.
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