FIRST ON FOX: A Trump-aligned political consulting firm set out to investigate the ideological swing of affluent, college-educated white women who were once considered moderate, but have since moved farther to the left, uncovering what researchers describe as a new voting bloc of left-wing women: “Resistance Grandmas.”

“We are so knowledgeable about everything,” one woman said in a Northern Virginia focus group video reviewed by Fox News Digital, referring to herself and the other women who joined the session while slamming President Donald Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.” “When [Trump voters] start being personally impacted, that’s when I’m hopeful that a little bit of something is gonna change.”

“It’s gonna be a catastrophe,” another woman chimed in, as another middle-aged woman added, “However, they will find a way to blame Democrats.”

Fox News Digital exclusively obtained a report conducted by the National Public Affairs (NPA), the polling arm of Trump campaign-aligned American Made Media Company, in September, as well as the full two-hour focus group session in northern Virginia that showcased the beliefs of 10 white, liberal, middle-aged, college-educated, upper–middle-class suburban women.

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The women who participated in the focus group were not informed it was conducted by a Trump-aligned polling firm, only told that they were brought in to discuss political topics for a focus group commissioned by another research firm. The researcher leading the focus group told the women at the start of the meeting that she had “no stake” in their comments “one way or the other,” and that the women “could say whatever comes to mind.”

“Pretty much anything is fair game,” the focus group leader told the women. 

Fox News Digital is not publishing footage of the video or names of the women, but reviewed extensive footage of the session for the purposes of this article. 

Justifying ‘ugly’ racist Virginia sign, using N-word analogy 

The focus group was conducted to study how affluent middle-aged and older white women have increasingly shifted to the political left in recent years, and was sparked by a racist sign displayed outside a Northern Virginia school board meeting in August targeting Republican gubernatorial candidate Winsome Earle-Sears. 

“In the year since President Trump’s historic victory, commentators have obsessed over what they call the radicalization of young white men. But a quieter, just as revealing transformation has swept another group once known for moderation and civility: older, affluent white women. This change came into sharp focus last August in Arlington, Virginia,” NPA’s report outlines. 

The Virginia gubernatorial cycle is at a fever pitch, with the election just over two weeks away pitting ex-CIA agent and former Democratic Rep. Abigail Spanberger against Republican Earle-Sears. In August, a white woman was spotted holding a Jim Crow-era-reminiscent sign targeting Earle-Sears, who is Black, when the candidate attended a school board meeting. 

“Hey Winsome, if trans can’t share your bathroom, then blacks can’t share my water fountain,” the sign read, igniting outrage from conservatives and others who called it racist. 

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Lt. Gov. Winsome Earle-Sears was the subject of a sign condemned by Virginia leaders as offensive and inappropriate. (Winsome Earle-Sears Campaign)

The women in the focus group overwhelmingly characterized the sign as written in poor taste, describing its words as “ugly,” but also justified it by arguing Republicans have “already taken it too far with their trans bans.” Another woman used the N-word while comparing the sign to those of the segregated Jim Crow era of the late 19th to the mid-20th centuries in the American South. 

“What’s the best analogy for a trans person not being able to use a particular bathroom in our recent modern history?” one participant asked the group. 

Another woman chimed in: “You used to have hotels that said ‘No n—-rs, no Jews, no dogs at these hotels. Is that… I don’t know if that’s the same thing.”

“Like, I don’t think I would feel uncomfortable, and I definitely wouldn’t hold up that sign,” the first woman said in response. “But this person, I think, was just trying to find an appropriate analogy.”

Recent voting history of white women 

The NPA report explained that polling data since the 2012 election, which pitted former Democrat President Barack Obama against Republican Mitt Romney, showed “voting patterns among white voters and women haven’t moved much in a decade.”

The shift to the left, the report argued, is not due to gender or race, but rather income and education. 

“In 2012, college graduates leaned Republican, 51-47, while postgraduates favored Democrats 55-42. By 2024, that pattern had flipped and widened: Harris won college grads 53-45 and postgrads 59-38. Non-college voters went the other way. High-school grads and those with some college, once evenly split, gave Trump a 56-43 lead,” the report found. 

“Income followed suit. Voters earning under $50,000, once a 60-38 Obama bloc, shifted to a 50-48 Trump edge. Those earning over $100,000 flipped from a 54-44 Romney majority to a 51-47 Harris win,” it continued. 

The report took issue with the media asking and diving into explanations on “what ‘broke’ young white men” to move farther to the right and help re-elect Trump in 2024, but argued the question should instead be: “What radicalized rich white women, and whether they even realize it.”

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is seen as a guest on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert on July 31, 2025. (Scott Kowalchyk/CBS via Getty Images)

‘Luxury’ of studying the news 

The women in the focus group overwhelmingly presented themselves as arbiters of knowledge, reporting that they have the “luxury” of reading news articles from different outlets, while other voters are more concerned about costs of living and putting food on the table. 

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One woman in the group recounted that her cousin living in a Heartland state was a lifelong Democrat who announced ahead of the 2024 election that he was leaning towards voting for Trump, which the woman said made her nearly fall “off my chair.” 

The cousin, a male farmer, reported to her that the Biden administration had not helped U.S. farmers. 

“He doesn’t know. He’s not paying attention to China’s not buying wheat or soybeans,” the female voter said. “He’s just concerned about his daily life and making enough money to support his family. And so I don’t think they’re paying attention.”

“I think a lot of times people are just very focused on … how it impacts them on that day and not reading The Washington Post or The New York Times or other things that we all have access to and, you know, have the luxury of doing,” she added. 

Scene from the Jan. 6 2021 Capitol riot. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana, File)

Turning in a friend who breached U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6

Another woman reported to the group that she turned in her longtime friend after she found out she breached the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The FBI launched a tip line shortly after Jan. 6, 2021, where people could report those who were “instigating violence in Washington, D.C.” 

“She said, ‘We were just walking around,’” the woman in the focus group recounted of the conversation with her friend about Jan. 6. “And I know she slipped. I know she didn’t mean to tell me she was in the Capitol.”

“And I said, ‘It wasn’t a f—ing open house. You weren’t, you weren’t buying the Capitol,’” she continued, as other women in the group remarked, “Wow” and “Good for you.”

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The woman said she has not spoken to her former friend since, and submitted a tip to authorities that she was in the Capitol the day of the protests. 

“And then I had that whole inner turmoil of, ‘do I go on that website and say I think that she would’ …. I went back and forth on that for probably two weeks and asked some people. And finally, I just went on and said ‘she was there, and I don’t know what role she had, what it was,’” she said.  “‘She was in that building by her own admission.’” 

A new report published by a Trump-aligned pollster examined how educated, wealthy white women have move more to the left. (Getty Images)

A more cohesive future 

“As the session ended, they voiced a small hope that the country might still find a way back to calm and common purpose. Whether that hope can survive a culture built on outrage is uncertain. But their conversation left one clear lesson. Beneath polls and party lines, the real contest for the nation’s future is over how Americans think, speak, and live with one another,” the report concluded. 

The women in the group called on the Democrat Party to find cohesion and to disseminate their message to party leaders across the country in order to win upcoming elections. 

“Democrats need to stop primarying for the lesser Republican. So what’s happening is … Democrats are voting between two Republican primary candidates, and they’re voting for the idiot, crazy, right-wing guy so that they don’t have to compete against this actual intelligent person. And that’s where we’re getting these nutcases,” one woman said. 

Another woman said the DNC should combat everything Trump says, including when the president pinned blame on radical liberal violence for the assassination of Charlie Kirk in September. 

“I think it comes from the DNC. I think they need to organize. I think they need a cohesive message. I think they need to be vocal every time Trump says something, even about Charlie Kirk. Yes. No one should be killed for what they believe in. A hundred percent. But they are turning him into a martyr,” one woman said. 

LAS VEGAS — Aaron Mahan is a lifelong Republican who twice voted for Donald Trump.

He had high hopes putting a businessman in the White House and, although he found the president’s monster ego grating, Mahan voted for his reelection. Mostly, he said, out of party loyalty.

By 2024, however, he’d had enough.

“I just saw more of the bad qualities, more of the ego,” said Mahan, who’s worked for decades as a food server on and off the Las Vegas Strip. “And I felt like he was at least partially running to stay out of jail.”

Mahan couldn’t bring himself to support Kamala Harris. He’s never backed a Democrat for president. So when illness overtook him on election day, it was a good excuse to stay in bed and not vote.

He’s no Trump hater, Mahan said. “I don’t think he’s evil.” Rather, the 52-year-old calls himself “a Trump realist,” seeing the good and the bad.

Here’s Mahan’s reality: A big drop in pay. Depletion of his emergency savings. Stress every time he pulls into a gas station or visits the supermarket.

Mahan used to blithely toss things in his grocery cart. “Now,” he said, “you have to look at prices, because everything is more expensive.”

In short, he’s living through the worst combination of inflation and economic malaise he’s experienced since he began waiting tables after finishing high school.

Las Vegas lives on tourism, the industry irrigated by rivers of disposable income. The decline of both has resulted in a painful downturn that hurts all the more after the pent-up demand and go-go years following the crippling COVID-19 shutdown.

Over the last 12 months, the number of visitors has dropped significantly and those who do come to Las Vegas are spending less. Passenger arrivals at Harry Reid International Airport, a short hop from the Strip, have declined and room nights, a measure of hotel occupancy, have also fallen.

Mahan, who works at the Virgin resort casino just off the Strip, blames the slowdown in large part on Trump’s failure to tame inflation, his tariffs and pugnacious immigration and foreign policies that have antagonized people — and prospective visitors — around the world.

“His general attitude is, ‘I’m going to do what I’m going to do, and you’re going to like it or leave it.’ And they’re leaving it,” Mahan said. “The Canadians aren’t coming. The Mexicans aren’t coming. The Europeans aren’t coming in the way they did. But also the people from Southern California aren’t coming the way they did either.”

Mahan has a way of describing the buckling blow to Las Vegas’ economy. He calls it “the Trump slump.”

::

Mahan was an Air Force brat who lived throughout the United States and, for a time, in England before his father retired from the military and started looking for a place to settle.

Mahan’s mother grew up in Sacramento and liked the mountains that ring Las Vegas. They reminded her of the Sierra Nevada. Mahan’s father had worked intermittently as a bartender. It was a skill of great utility in Nevada’s expansive hospitality industry.

So the desert metropolis it was.

Mahan was 15 when his family landed. After high school, he attended college for a time and started working in the coffee shop at the Barbary Coast hotel and casino. He then moved on to the upscale Gourmet Room. The money was good; Mahan had found his career.

From there he moved to Circus Circus and then, in 2005, the Hard Rock hotel and casino, where he’s been ever since. (In 2018, Virgin Hotels purchased the Hard Rock.)

Mahan, who’s single with no kids, learned to roll with the vicissitudes of the hospitality business. “As a food server, there’s always going to be slowdowns and takeoffs,” he said over lunch at a dim sum restaurant in a Las Vegas strip mall.

Mahan socked money away during the summer months and hunkered down in the slow times, before things started picking up around the New Year. He weathered the Great Recession, from 2007 to 2009, when Nevada led the nation in foreclosures, bankruptcies soared and tumbleweeds blew through Las Vegas’ many overbuilt, financially underwater subdivisions.

This economy feels worse.

Over the last 12 months, Las Vegas has drawn fewer visitors and those who have come are spending less.

(David Becker / For The Times)

With tourism off, the hotel where Mahan works changed from a full-service coffee shop to a limited-hour buffet. So he’s no longer waiting tables. Instead, he mans a to-go window, making drinks and handing food to guests, which brings him a lot less in tips. He estimates his income has fallen $2,000 a month.

But it’s not just that his paychecks have grown considerably skinnier. They don’t go nearly as far.

Gasoline. Eggs. Meat. “Everything,” Mahan said, “is costing more.”

An admitted soda addict, he used to guzzle Dr Pepper. “You’d get three bottles for four bucks,” Mahan said. “Now they’re $3 each.”

He’s cut back as a result.

Worse, his air conditioner broke last month and the $14,000 that Mahan spent replacing it — along with a costly filter he needs for allergies — pretty much wiped out his emergency fund.

It feels as though Mahan is just barely getting by and he’s not at all optimistic things will improve anytime soon.

“I’m looking forward,” he said, to the day Trump leaves office.

::

Mahan considers himself fairly apolitical. He’d rather knock a tennis ball around than debate the latest goings-on in Washington.

He likes some of the things Trump has accomplished, such as securing the border with Mexico — though Mahan is not a fan of the zealous immigration raids scooping up landscapers and tamale vendors.

He’s glad about the no-tax-on-tips provision in the massive legislative package passed last spring, though, “I’m still being taxed at the same rate and there’s no extra money coming in right now.” He’s waiting to see what happens when he files his tax return next year.

He’s not counting on much. “I’m never convinced of anything,” Mahan said. “Until I see it.”

Something else is poking around the back of his mind.

Mahan is a shop steward with the Culinary Union, the powerhouse labor organization that’s helped make Las Vegas one of the few places in the country where a waiter, such as Mahan, can earn enough to buy a home in an upscale suburb like nearby Henderson. (He points out that he made the purchase in 2012 and probably couldn’t afford it in today’s economy.)

Mahan worries that once Trump is done targeting immigrants, federal workers and Democratic-run cities, he’ll come after organized labor, undermining one of the foundational building blocks that helped him climb into the middle class.

“He is a businessman and most businesspeople don’t like dealing with unions,” Mahan said.

There are a few bright spots in Las Vegas’ economic picture. Convention bookings are up slightly for the year, and look to be strengthening. Gaming revenues have increased year-over-year. The workforce is still growing.

“This community’s streets are not littered with people that have been laid off,” said Jeremy Aguero, a principal analyst with Applied Analysis, a firm that provides economic and fiscal policy counsel in Las Vegas.

“The layoff trends, unemployment insurance, they’ve edged up,” Aguero said. “But they’re certainly not wildly elevated in comparison to other periods of instability.”

That, however, offers small solace for Mahan as he makes drinks, hands over takeout food and carefully watches his wallet.

If he knew then what he knows now, what would the Aaron of 2016 — the one so full of hope for a Trump presidency — say to the Aaron of today?

Mahan paused, his chopsticks hovering over a custard dumpling.

“Prepare,” he said, “for a bumpy ride.”