Politics

Latino voters powered Trump’s comeback. Now they’re turning on his economy.

Published

5 months ago

January 14, 2026

In 2024, economic anxiety and immigration concerns drove Latino voters to President Donald Trump. Those same issues are beginning to push them away.

Across the country, the cost-of-living woes and immigration enforcement overshadowing Trump’s first year back in office are souring Hispanic businesspeople, a key constituency that helped propel him to the White House. In a recent survey of Hispanic business owners conducted by the U.S. Hispanic Business Council and shared exclusively with Blue Light News, 42 percent said their economic situation is getting worse, while only 24 said it was getting better. Seventy percent of respondents ranked the cost of living as a top-three issue facing the country, more than double the number that selected any other issue.

That’s a particularly striking number from this group: nearly two-thirds of respondents in the organization’s final survey before the 2024 election said they trusted Trump more than then-Vice President Kamala Harris to handle the economy.

“The broader Hispanic community certainly feels let down,” said Javier Palomarez, the organization’s president and CEO. “It would be different if immigration and the economy had not been principal talking points for [Trump]. On both fronts, we didn’t get what we thought we were going to get.”

The combination of ongoing economic uncertainty and stubbornly high prices driven by Trump’s tariffs — coupled with the economic impact of the Trump administration’s ongoing raids in immigrant-heavy communities — makes the situation increasingly dire for some Hispanic business owners.

Trump and his allies argue that they’re just cleaning up the mess left by the previous president.

“Republicans are putting in the work to fix the Bidenflation mess we inherited. From lowering inflation to creating a housing plan, President Trump is fighting for the working families Democrats left behind,” said Republican National Committee spokeswoman Delanie Bomar.

Monica Villalobos, president and CEO of the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told Blue Light News about a South Phoenix restaurant hit hard by tariffs and labor shortages. Then, a series of ICE raids in the parking lot in front of the restaurant caused customers and workers to stop showing up and forced the owners to shut it down for several days. She predicted this kind of situation will blow back on Republicans in the next election.

“We certainly do sense that our members — our clients in Arizona and across the country — feel a sense of betrayal by this administration, given its excessive overreach,” Villalobos said. “Now that we’ve had a taste of [the Trump administration], I think you’re going to see a big shift [in the vote].”

In 2024, Trump won 48 percent of self-described Hispanic or Latino voters, the highest mark for a Republican presidential candidate in at least a half-century, driven largely by economic anxiety. But polling shows Trump’s approval among Latino voters cratering as their satisfaction with the economy and immigration enforcement plummet.

In a November Blue Light News Poll, a plurality — 48 percent — of Hispanic respondents said the cost of living in the U.S. is “the worst I can ever remember it being,” and a majority (67 percent) said responsibility lies with the president to fix it.

According to a November Pew Research poll, about two-thirds (68 percent) of U.S. Hispanics say their situation today is worse than it was a year ago, and just nine percent say it is better; 65 percent of Latinos disagree with this administration’s approach to immigration, and a majority (52 percent) said they worried they, a family member or a close friend could be deported, a ten-point increase since March.

Trump’s net favorability rating among Hispanics is now at 28 percent, per a recent The Economist/YouGov poll, 13 points lower than it was in February of last year.

“Small business owners are becoming a swing constituency, when you think about the midterms coming up,” said Tayde Aburto, president and CEO of the Hispanic Chamber of E-Commerce. “And not because their values have changed—it’s just because their costs did.”

Latino voters have swung hard back toward Democrats in recent elections as well. In Passaic County, New Jersey, Latinos voted narrowly for Trump in 2024 but in November backed Democratic Governor-elect Mikie Sherrill by double digits. And in Miami, where over 70 percent of residents are Hispanic, a Democratic mayor was elected last month for the first time in 28 years last month.

Those elections are a referendum on Trump’s economy, said Christian Ulvert, a Democratic strategist and adviser to newly-elected Miami Mayor Eileen Higgins’ campaign.

“[Trump’s] agenda literally does little to nothing to help Hispanic families,” Ulvert said. “Worse, it preys on Hispanic families. And what we heard on the campaign trail most pointedly is the old adage: is my life better today than it was yesterday under new leaders? And resoundingly, not only verbally, but through the ballot box throughout the year, Hispanic families are saying, ‘no, my life is actually worse.’”

Joe Vichot, the Republican Party chair in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, said he knows many Hispanic Republicans in Allentown who are supportive of curbing illegal immigration and fighting crime. “But there’s also stories of people who have been here for 10 years or more with their family, but they’ve never been legal, that are now caught up into the [deportation] system,” he said.

“There should be a way to find some type of common ground where that won’t happen.”

The White House has tried to ease the ailing economic sentiment by sending Trump and Vice President JD Vance on the road, delivering a series of stump speeches on affordability in working-class areas, including Vance’s Dec. 16 stop in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, which includes the Hispanic-majority city of Allentown. They insist the economy deserves an “A+++” grade, and are now buoyed by a December consumer price index report released Tuesday that showed inflation rising at a slower pace than expected.

“Joe Biden gave us a colossal catastrophe, but my administration has rapidly and very decisively ended that,” Trump said during a speech in Detroit Tuesday. “We have quickly achieved the exact opposite of stagflation — almost no inflation and super high growth.”

But cooling inflation rates just mean prices aren’t rising as fast as they had been — prices still remain much higher on many goods than they had been in recent years. And improving macroeconomic trends are not yet being felt by consumers, said Massey Villarreal, a business executive in Houston.

“I’m like most Americans. I hear the inflation number and I don’t translate it to my going to the grocery store, when I look at the cost of hamburger meat,” said Villarreal, a former chair of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly.

Palomarez, the U.S. Hispanic Business Council president, compared it to the Biden administration’s insistence that the post-Covid economy was healthy, even as consumer sentiment plunged. “While we were talking about GDP and unemployment and jobs growth rates, people were worried about the rent and the price of gas and the price of eggs. And we’ve got kind of the same thing here,” he said.

In Chicago, where some of the most-publicized immigration enforcement occurred last year, Hispanic-run businesses have been hit hard. Sam Sanchez, CEO of Third Coast Hospitality, said 2025 was the hardest period for business of his four decades in restauranteering, aside from the COVID pandemic.

“It sends a really negative message to the 48 percent of Hispanic voters that voted for President Trump,” Sanchez said. “Everything’s just starting to fall apart.”

Politics

Online safety coalition urges House to reject KIDS Act compromise

Published

50 minutes ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

Children’s online safety groups are pressing House lawmakers to oppose the bipartisan measure, arguing that it weakens safeguards…
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Politics

Trump gets the complete domination he wanted in Louisiana

Published

4 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

President Donald Trump just finished the job in Louisiana.

First, he successfully ousted Sen. Bill Cassidy — a longtime rival who voted to convict Trump on impeachment charges — last month. Then on Saturday, Trump got his preferred pick, Rep. Julia Letlow, over the finish line in the runoff to replace the senator.

It was a return to form after several recent misses in primaries, with Trump’s endorsed candidates going down in Iowa and Georgia and after the Republican he initially endorsed in South Carolina flopped. Saturday’s result reaffirms his grip on the Republican party: With Trump’s backing, Letlow overcame a late surge from rival John Fleming, the hardline conservative state treasurer who was also trying to rally the MAGA base behind him.

Letlow’s win sends another Trump ally to Washington, continuing the MAGA takeover of the party, and shows the continuing power of Trump’s blessing that lifts candidates even when others have conservative credentials of their own. It also bolsters the power of GOP Gov. Jeff Landry, whose steadfast support of Letlow was also crucial to her victory.

This primary was the latest test of an emerging question that will help shape the future of the GOP: How powerful is Trump’s endorsement against opponents who are also MAGA acolytes?

Unlike in primaries pitting MAGA against the establishment or against the president’s enemies — which MAGA is clearly winning — several contests this year have involved multiple candidates all seeking to run in the America First lane. In Louisiana and Alabama, Trump’s endorsees won, though both Letlow and Rep. Barry Moore were given a major run for their money by fellow pro-Trump candidates. But in a pair of governor’s contests, Rick Jackson’s billions helped him clinch the nomination in Georgia and Zach Lahn pulled off a surprise upset in Iowa, as both bear-hugged the president.

Fleming, a House Freedom caucus founder and former White House aide, ran as an unabashed Trump ally and spent the campaign arguing he represented MAGA’s ideological roots. He tried to cast Letlow as the establishment pick powered by elected officials rather than grassroots conservatives.

But Republican primary voters ultimately sided with the candidate carrying Trump’s seal of approval.

“Tonight’s runoff proves one indisputable fact: Donald Trump’s endorsement remains the apex predator of Republican politics,” said Louisiana GOP strategist Lionel Rainey. “Masterclass in raw electoral power.”

In one of the country’s reddest states, Letlow now enters the general as the overwhelming favorite to win in November. She’s up against Jamie Davis, a farmer, who won the Democratic runoff on Saturday.

Letlow’s likely ascent to the Senate marks a rapid rise in Louisiana politics: She won a special election to the House in 2021 to fill the seat of her husband, who died from Covid in 2020 just days before being sworn in. She jumped into the Senate race after Trump publicly endorsed her.

“President Trump, thank you for encouraging me to get into this race, thank you for your endorsement, Louisiana loves you,” Letlow said in her victory speech Saturday night.

Yet Trump’s endorsement of Letlow was not quite a knock-out punch. In the May primary, Cassidy, a top MAGA target, received less than 25 percent of the vote, and Letlow finished far ahead of the others — but she did not get enough to reach 50 percent support to avoid a runoff.

In the Saturday runoff, Letlow ran hard on Trump’s endorsement but Fleming also gained significant ground since his second-place finish in the first round of voting, and finished just 14 points behind Letlow, with nearly all the votes counted.

“Yes I love the heat of battle. I love the combat,” Fleming told supporters in his concession speech. “But it makes us stronger. It really makes us better.”

Letlow, who hails from north Louisiana, benefitted from outside national groups spending on her behalf, including the official political arm of the Make American Healthy Again movement, which pledged $1 million to boost her campaign.

Her victory is a sigh of relief for Landry, who invested tremendous political capital in getting her to the Senate, sometimes to a degree that frustrated fellow Republicans. Landry pressured donors to open their wallets for her campaign, and a super PAC aligned with the governor spent about $6 million on her behalf, mostly toward assailing Fleming with attacks about his stances on carbon capture and the border.

It’s unclear whether Landry will face a serious primary challenger when he’s up for reelection next year, but a Letlow loss would have made him more vulnerable to intraparty criticisms and skepticism about his political strength.

Some Louisiana Republicans immediately speculated that Fleming may now consider running against Landry. One Louisiana Republican, who was granted anonymity to speak freely about party dynamics, called it “payback.”

Landry, in a statement, congratulated Letlow “on her decisive victory,” and said the representative ran “an incredible race fueled by the support of President Donald J. Trump and hardworking Louisianians across our state.”

Politics

How the World Cup became a victory lap for Trump ally El Tigre

Published

4 hours ago

June 28, 2026

Blue Light Newsroom

MIAMI — Colombia’s World Cup run has become a celebration of more than just its national team: For many fans, it’s also a victory lap for the country’s Trump-backed president-elect.

Political rookie Abelardo de la Espriella — a right-wing former defense attorney and businessman who calls himself “El Tigre” — narrowly saw off a left-wing senator last weekend as Colombia swung from far-left to hard-right leadership. De la Espriella ran for president on a tough law-and-order platform, vowing to end outgoing left-wing President Gustavo Petro’s attempts to establish dialogue with armed groups. He also wants to build mega-prisons, emulating those of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, another Trump favorite in Latin America.

Fans who Blue Light News spoke with outside the stadium in Miami on Saturday evening before a key game against Portugal were insistent that de la Espriella is going to make Colombia great again.

With de la Espriella’s victory, “There is no more corruption, there is no more guerrilla, there is security … it’s gonna be great,” said Hugo, a 62-year-old who lives in Miami but is originally from the Colombian capital Bogotá. “Just give him one year, and you will see the new Colombia,” added Alonso, 42, originally from Ibagué, who disputed that the election was as close (around one percentage point) as the official results showed — and said a combination of Trump and de la Espriella would be great for Colombia.

Colombia’s brilliant-yellow soccer jersey, ubiquitous in downtown Miami this week, also became a key flashpoint on the campaign trail, as de la Espriella — running to restore security, shrink the state and promote economic growth through deregulation — clothed himself in the kit.

In the sunshine outside Miami’s World Cup stadium, Juan, from Cartagena, said he liked de la Espriella wearing the soccer jersey because “it shows his whole campaign is about patriotism and to save the country, to give hope to the people.”

A Bogotá judge banned de la Espriella and his movement, Defensores de la Patria (Defenders of the Homeland), from using or displaying the jersey for his electoral campaign, and the left-wing candidate, Iván Cepeda, said, “The Colombian national team belongs to all Colombians. Its use for electoral, personal, and ideological purposes is a clearly opportunistic act, the legal implications of which must be examined.”

In response to a post-match question from Blue Light News about the president-elect wearing the shirt and backing the team, Colombian coach Néstor Lorenzo said, “Football is played in a very passionate way in South America. I think that all the presidents, the South American countries, live in that passion. It is a way for us to identify, beyond the flag, the shirt that represents the most beautiful sport of all. The president wants to show, surely, that he is a real citizen.”

Only one yellow-clad supporter showed any reticence about de la Espriella, shaking his head and saying “it’s crazy” what’s happening in Colombia, before declining to talk more about politics or provide his name.

The Trump administration has embraced de la Espriella. Trump praised him as a “Smart, Strong, and Tough Leader.” At the game in Miami on Saturday evening, two senior U.S. officials — Secretary of State Marco Rubio and FBI Director Kash Patel — were in attendance, flanking FIFA President Gianni Infantino.

Last time Colombia played at the World Cup in the United States, it all ended in tragedy.

Defender Andrés Escobar scored an own goal against the U.S. at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, California — then was shot dead outside a nightclub after returning to Colombia, a country still grappling with violence involving guerrilla groups and criminal organizations.

The dark-horse national team is performing considerably better in 2026 than in 1994, progressing easily to the second round. But political turmoil endures at home, where the bitterly fought election campaign — that came down to a June 21 runoff between de la Espriella and Cepeda — saw an assassination, bombings and kidnappings.

That specter of violence — even soccer-linked violence — is rarely far away in Colombia. The father of star soccer player Luis Díaz was kidnapped in late 2023 by far-left guerrillas, and only freed after 13 days.

As Colombia celebrated what it erroneously thought was a late winner against Portugal, the live broadcast cut to a jubilant supporter, cheering and wearing a red Defensores de la Patria hat.