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In Milwaukee, Black Voters Struggle to Find a Home With Either Party
Black voters make up roughly 5 percent of the electorate in Wisconsin. But in this swing state where the election is likely to be won by a slim margin, their vote is critical for both campaigns.
We spent several days in the Milwaukee area, the heart of Wisconsin’s Black population, talking to dozens of residents about the issues that loom largest in their lives. They lamented the state of Milwaukee’s mismanaged public schools, the persistent crime and the racial inequities that still influence housing and employment in this deeply segregated city.
Many are disillusioned by the state of national politics, and the sense that life for Black families in Milwaukee has scarcely improved in the last four years. Some described the election in bleak terms and wondered whether they should vote in November at all.
Recent polls show Black support for Democrats slipping, and former President Donald J. Trump has sought to capitalize on that by appealing to Black voters’ economic concerns, framing his time in the White House as one of peace and prosperity.
Voters in Milwaukee will get a closer look at Mr. Trump this week during the Republican National Convention, which began on Monday. At the very least, some said, the convention could bring an economic boost to a city that has lost its footing as a manufacturing powerhouse of the country and is now struggling to find its identity.
Growing Hopelessness Over the Economy
Messages from the Biden administration that the country’s economy is on the rebound have fallen flat in Milwaukee. While tourism and entertainment are on the rise, the city’s population has stagnated, factories that once offered solid middle-class jobs have closed, and for many residents it is hard to glimpse what the future brings. At the same time, high crime and threats of cuts to public services have left some feeling like deeper problems are creeping in.
Michael Patton owns a bistro specializing in Cajun cuisine in the buzzy Bay View neighborhood. He grew up in Milwaukee and wants to see it thriving, but is troubled by its violent crime, which he says is the city’s biggest issue, despite police statistics showing a decrease in shootings and burglaries since the pandemic.
Keeping his three-year-old restaurant flourishing is another challenge. Even with a steady stream of regulars, he feels like he’s barely keeping up. “I worry about my business right now,” Mr. Patton said, “because I feel like we have a lot of customers, but the price of everything is so much.”
Brittney Roundtree, a 31-year-old teacher and single mother, says it’s difficult to pay the bills on her annual salary of $49,000. She hears of frustrated teachers who are leaving the city and moving south in search of a better life. “I think we need a fresh start. Nothing’s really been done in the last four years.”
Some voters we talked to are still bruised from inflation and higher prices, at the grocery store and in the housing market. Many of those pocketbook concerns hit even harder in the Black community, which for decades had been denied the opportunity to build wealth through real estate.
Owning a home, a marker of the American dream, remains a primary goal for many residents of Milwaukee. But property costs are still rising here, leaving homeownership out of reach for many families.
“I’m getting paid more than I have ever been paid,” said Quinton Marks, a 31-year-old property manager who rents a home with his husband, Que Hughes. They would like to buy their own place one day. “Sometimes it still does feel like I’m living paycheck to paycheck,” Mr. Marks said.
James Johnson is 88 years old and retired, with his days of working in a metal-forging factory in a Milwaukee suburb comfortably behind him. But he remembers what it was like when he was young, when he could buy a house and take care of his family of five. That feels impossible today, he says.
Joseph Abujana, a former bus driver, worries about the same thing. He is retired at 63 and living with his wife, a school administrator. “Everything is more expensive,” he said. “My wife and I can’t keep up our standard of living.”
Despite their desire for solutions, Black voters say they doubt that a new presidential election will bring meaningful change. When they think about the outcome in November, many said, it is with a sense of dread rather than hope.
Mixed Feelings About Donald Trump
Many Black voters in Milwaukee are eyeing Mr. Trump and his possible second term with trepidation. Here is a candidate who has already stoked racial tensions, they said, and inflamed divisions in the country.
“I have a bad feeling about the election. Trump and his cult of personality really worries me,” said Thaddeus Hudlon, a 45-year-old former nurse from Chicago who now lives outside Milwaukee and works as an associate for Burlington Coat Factory. “I feel like I’m surrounded,” he added, “by people who are actually oblivious to the choice that we’re making.”
If Mr. Trump is re-elected, some voters fear that Black people will suffer the most.
But others say they see in Mr. Trump an ability to run things, lead with forcefulness and take on the problems of the world. Even his recent criminal conviction in New York endeared him to one Milwaukee resident who is also a felon.
“I feel like Trump’s acceptance among Black people has gone up. You start to see him at Black churches, doing more things for Black people,” said Mr. Patton, 36, the restaurant owner, adding, “People aren’t used to someone just saying whatever he feels.”
Still, some Black voters say they are criticized by their friends and family for supporting the former president. “There’s a lot of pressure to vote Democrat for me,” said Jeffrey Freeman, a landlord outside Milwaukee.
Mr. Marks, the property manager, laments how divided people have become. “It’s sad how there’s so much separation instilled in everybody now,” he said. “The election the last time really brought that out. There was so much negativity that came from these two candidates, and I think they lost sight of the United States.”
One observer of the current Senate race in Louisiana noted that Sen. Bill Cassidy could lose his reelection bid.
Annie Flanagan for NPR
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Annie Flanagan for NPR
Sen. Bill Cassidy lost Saturday’s Louisiana Republican primary according to a race call by the Associated Press.
Cassidy, who served two terms in the Senate, was one of seven Republican senators who voted to convict President Trump after the January 6th insurrection at the Capitol. That vote put him at odds with Trump and his MAGA coalition, ultimately leading Trump to push Rep. Julia Letlow to run against Cassidy.
Cassidy’s bid for a third term was viewed as a test of Trump’s grip on the party–and of what voters want from their representatives in Washington. The primary pitted Cassidy, a veteran lawmaker, former physician and chair of the powerful Senate health committee, against Letlow, a political newcomer and a millennial MAGA loyalist.
A detailed view of a hat that reads, Run Julia Run, is seen at a campaign event for Rep. Julia Letlow (R-LA) on May 6, 2026 in Franklinton, Louisiana.
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Tyler Kaufman/Getty Images
A former college administrator, Letlow won a special election in 2021 for the House seat her late husband, Luke, was set to assume before he died from COVID in 2020.
In Congress, Letlow sponsored a bill to collect oral histories from the pandemic and has focused on education and children. She introduced the “Parents Bill of Rights Act,” which would allow parents to review classroom materials like library books and require schools to notify parents if their child requests different pronouns, locker rooms or sports teams.
She also serves on the powerful appropriations committee and has embraced Trump’s agenda.
Letlow, who came first in Saturday’s primary, will face Louisiana state Treasurer John Fleming in the runoff on June 27. Cassidy came in third.
The election result is a victory for President Trump who has put Republican loyalty to the test on the ballot so far this year in Indiana state senate primaries and in Cassidy’s race.
Another major test of Trump’s influence comes in Kentucky’s primary on Tuesday when Republican Rep. Thomas Massie, who has found himself at odds with the president, faces a challenger endorsed by Trump.
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Brass bands in Beijing make way for sticker shock at home as Trump returns to escalating inflation
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump returned from the spectacle of a Chinese state visit to a less than welcoming U.S. economy — with the military band and garden tour in Beijing giving way to pressure over how to fix America’s escalating inflation rate.
Consumer inflation in the United States increased to 3.8% annually in April, higher than what he inherited as the Iran war and the Republican president’s own tariffs have pushed up prices. Inflation is now outpacing wage gains and effectively making workers poorer. The Cleveland Federal Reserve estimates that annual inflation could reach 4.2% in May as the war has kept oil and gasoline prices high.
Trump’s time with Chinese leader Xi Jinping appears unlikely to help the U.S. economy much, despite Trump’s claims of coming trade deals. The trip occurred as many people are voting in primaries leading into the November general election while having to absorb the rising costs of gasoline, groceries, utility bills, jewelry, women’s clothing, airplane tickets and delivery services. Democrats see the moment as a political opportunity.
“He’s returning to a dumpster fire,” said Lindsay Owens, executive director of Groundwork Collaborative, a liberal think tank focused on economic issues. “The president will not have the faith and confidence of the American people — the economy is their top issue and the president is saying, ‘You’re on your own.’”
The president’s trip to Beijing and his recent comments that indicated a tone-deafness to voters’ concerns about rising prices have suggested his focus is not on the American public and have undermined Republicans who had intended to campaign on last year’s tax cuts as helping families.
Trump described the trip as a victory, saying on social media that Xi “congratulated me on so many tremendous successes,” as the U.S. president has praised their relationship.
Trump told reporters that Boeing would be selling 200 aircraft — and maybe even 750 “if they do a good job” — to the Chinese. He said American farmers would be “very happy” because China would be “buying billions of dollars of soybeans.”
“We had an amazing time,” Trump said as he flew home on Air Force One, and told Fox News’ Bret Baier in an interview that gasoline prices were just some “short-term pain” and would “drop like a rock” once the war ends.
Inflationary pain is not a factor in how Trump handles Iran
Trump departed from the White House for China by saying the negotiations over the Iran war depended on stopping Tehran from developing nuclear weapons. “I don’t think about Americans’ financial situation. I don’t think about anybody. I think about one thing: We cannot let Iran have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said.
That remark prompted blowback because it suggested to some that Trump cared more about challenging Iran than fighting inflation at home. Trump defended his words, telling Fox News: “That’s a perfect statement. I’d make it again.”
The White House has since stressed that Trump is focused on inflation.
Asked later about the president’s words, Vice President JD Vance said there had been a “misrepresentation” of the remarks. White House spokesman Kush Desai said the “administration remains laser-focused on delivering growth and affordability on the homefront” while indicating actions would be taken on grocery prices.
But as Trump appeared alongside Xi, new reports back home showed inflation rising for businesses and interest rates climbing on U.S. government debt.
His comments that Boeing would sell 200 jets to China caused the company’s stock price to fall because investors had expected a larger number. There was little concrete information offered about any trade agreements reached during the summit, including Chinese purchases of U.S. exports such as liquefied natural gas and beef.
“Foreign policy wins can matter politically, but only if voters feel stability and affordability in their daily lives,” said Brittany Martinez, a former Republican congressional aide who is the executive director of Principles First, a center-right advocacy group focused on democracy issues.
“Midterms are almost always a referendum on cost of living and public frustration, and Republicans are not immune from the same inflation and affordability pressures that hurt Democrats in recent cycles,” she added.
Democrats see Trump as vulnerable
Democratic lawmakers are seizing on Trump’s comments before his trip as proof of his indifference to lowering costs. There is potential staying power of his remarks as Americans head into Memorial Day weekend facing rising prices for the hamburgers and hot dogs to be grilled.
“What Americans do not see is any sympathy, any support, or any plan from Trump and congressional Republicans to lower costs – in fact, they see the opposite,” Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York said Thursday.
Vance faulted the Biden administration for the inflation problem even though the inflation rate is now higher than it was when Trump returned to the White House in January 2025 with a specific mandate to fix it.
“The inflation number last month was not great,” Vance said Wednesday, but he then stressed, “We’re not seeing anything like what we saw under the Biden administration.”
Inflation peaked at 9.1% in June 2022 under Biden, a Democrat. By the time Trump took the oath of office, it was a far more modest 3%.
Trump’s inflation challenge could get harder
The data tells a different story as higher inflation is spreading into the cost of servicing the national debt.
Over the past week, the interest rate charged on 10-year U.S. government debt jumped from 4.36% to 4.6%, an increase that implies higher costs for auto loans and mortgages.
“My fear is that the layers of supply shocks that are affecting the U.S. economy will only further feed into inflationary pressures,” said Gregory Daco, chief economist at EY-Parthenon.
Daco noted that last year’s tariff increases were now translating into higher clothing prices. With the Supreme Court ruling against Trump’s ability to impose tariffs by declaring an economic emergency, his administration is preparing a new set of import taxes for this summer.
Daco stressed that there have been a series of supply shocks. First, tariffs cut into the supply of imports. In addition, Trump’s immigration crackdown cut into the supply of foreign-born workers. Now, the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz has cut off the vital waterway used to ship 20% of global oil supplies.
“We’re seeing an erosion of growth,” Daco said.
Dr. Tracy Beth Hoeg, the Food and Drug Administration’s top drug regulator, said she was fired from the agency Friday after she declined to resign.
She said she did not know who had ordered her firing or why, nor whether Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. knew of her fate. The Department of Health and Human Services did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The departure reflected the upheaval at the F.D.A., days after the resignation of Dr. Marty Makary, the agency commissioner. Dr. Makary had become a lightning rod for critics of the agency’s decisions to reject applications for rare disease drugs and to delay a report meant to supply damaging evidence about the abortion drug mifepristone. He also spent months before his departure pushing back on the White House’s requests for him to approve more flavored vapes, the reason he ultimately cited for leaving.
Dr. Hoeg’s hiring had startled public health leaders who were familiar with her track record as a vaccine skeptic, and she played a leading role in some of the agency’s most divisive efforts during her tenure. She worked on a report that purportedly linked the deaths of children and young adults to Covid vaccines, a dossier the agency has not released publicly. She was also the co-author of a document describing Mr. Kennedy’s decision to pare the recommendations for 17 childhood vaccines down to 11.
But in an interview on Friday, Dr. Hoeg said she “stuck with the science.”
“I am incredibly proud of the work we were doing,” Dr. Hoeg said, adding, “I’m glad that we didn’t give in to any pressures to approve drugs when it wasn’t appropriate.”
As the director of the agency’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, she was a political appointee in a role that had been previously occupied by career officials. An epidemiologist who was trained in the United States and Denmark, she worked on efforts to analyze drug safety and on a panel to discuss the use of serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the most widely prescribed class of antidepressants, during pregnancy. She also worked on efforts to reduce animal testing and was the agency’s liaison to an influential vaccine committee.
She made sure that her teams approved drugs only when the risk-benefit balance was favorable, she said.
The firing worsens the leadership vacuum at the F.D.A. and other agencies, with temporary leaders filling the role of commissioner, food chief and the head of the biologics center, which oversees vaccines and gene therapies. The roles of surgeon general and director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are also unfilled.
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