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Inside the minds of older, left-wing women driving new voting bloc of ‘Resistance Grandmas’ opposing Trump

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Inside the minds of older, left-wing women driving new voting bloc of ‘Resistance Grandmas’ opposing Trump

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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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SQUAD 2.0: MEET AMERICA’S NEXT WAVE OF RADICAL DEMOCRATS SHAPING THE PARTY’S FUTURE

A 2024 billboard in Hastings, Minnesota, informing voters to “trust women and vote Democratic.” ((Photo by: Michael Siluk/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images))

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. 

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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. 

CALIFORNIANS EXPERIENCING A ‘RED SHIFT’ OF LOCAL DEMOCRATS BECOMING REPUBLICANS AMID MIGRANT CRISIS, CRIME

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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.”

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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.”

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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. 

DEMOCRATS ARE MAKING A CRITICAL MISTAKE — AND VOTERS ARE LETTING THEM KNOW

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. 

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“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.”

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“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.”

NEW YORK TIMES OP-ED DETAILS HOW DEMOCRATS LOST THE NON-WHITE VOTERS OBAMA GAINED

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)

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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. 

 

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“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. 

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Secret Service Shoots and Wounds Armed Man Near Washington Monument

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Secret Service Shoots and Wounds Armed Man Near Washington Monument

The Secret Service shot and wounded an armed man on Monday afternoon just south of the White House in a burst of gunfire that also grazed a young bystander in an area packed with pedestrians, officials said.

There was no indication that the man, who was taken to a hospital with multiple gunshot wounds, was targeting anyone in the executive complex, Chris McDonald, a congressional affairs official with the Secret Service, wrote in an email to Congress after the episode.

“President Trump was not in any danger, and there is currently no known nexus between the incident and the White House,” Mr. McDonald wrote.

A motorcade with Vice President JD Vance had passed through the area — a heavily trafficked route for official vehicles, as well as people visiting the nearby Washington Monument — shortly before the confrontation took place, officials told reporters.

The condition of the armed man, who was not identified, is not known. A firearm was recovered at the scene. A 15-year-old boy who was shot was being treated for a non-life-threatening gunshot wound, officials said. Matt Quinn, the deputy director of the Secret Service, told reporters that investigators think the boy was shot by the gunman, but he later appeared to hedge his earlier statement when asked again.

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“We’ll let the doctors figure that out,” Mr. Quinn said during a news conference near the scene.

No law enforcement officials were injured.

The episode began around 3:30 p.m. near the intersection of 15th Street Southwest and Independence Avenue, when agents walked up to a man “who appeared to be carrying a weapon,” Mr. McDonald wrote.

As they approached, he ran off and shot at them, Mr. Quinn told reporters.

The agents fired back and then apprehended the man, he said.

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The shooting took place a little more than a week after a gunman stormed a security checkpoint at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner and shot a Secret Service agent in an attack that officials said was targeting administration officials.

On Monday, President Trump was holding an event at the White House around the time of the shooting. The Secret Service ordered reporters who were on the North Lawn of the White House to go into the press briefing room.

The police blocked off a wide stretch of streets east of the Washington Monument until the start of the evening rush hour, frustrating drivers who use the major highway bridges connecting the District of Columbia and Northern Virginia over the Potomac River.

The Metropolitan Police Department had said in a social media post that its officers were on the scene and that roads in the area would be closed for several hours. The police department is further investigating, Mr. Quinn told reporters.

Dozens of law enforcement officials, as well as a substantial contingent of National Guard members in green uniforms, flooded the area after the shooting, snarling traffic and confusing tourists on a postcard-perfect spring day.

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Hundreds of members of the National Guard remain stationed in Washington even after the Trump administration withdrew many of them last year. They were deployed in August following Mr. Trump’s takeover of Washington’s police department.

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Civil rights groups file lawsuit seeking to block Texas law allowing cops to arrest illegal migrants

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Civil rights groups file lawsuit seeking to block Texas law allowing cops to arrest illegal migrants

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A coalition of civil rights groups filed a new lawsuit on Monday seeking to halt parts of a Texas law that would allow police officers in the Lone Star State to arrest migrants suspected of crossing into the U.S. across the U.S.-Mexico border illegally.

The law is set to take effect next week after a federal appeals court vacated a lower court ruling last week that had prevented its enforcement since 2024. In that ruling, he appeals court vacated an injunction that had blocked the law, finding that the plaintiffs did not have standing to sue.

Senate Bill 4 established a state-level crime for entering the country illegally and authorized state magistrates to order certain individuals to leave the country if they are convicted.

Courts have long maintained that immigration enforcement has historically been treated as the responsibility of the federal government, but Texas Republicans attempted to challenge that precedent when they approved S.B. 4.

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TEXAS BILL REQUIRING SHERIFFS TO COLLABORATE WITH ICE GIVEN INITIAL APPROVAL BY STATE HOUSE

Civil rights groups filed a new lawsuit to halt parts of a Texas law that would allow police officers to arrest migrants suspected of crossing into the U.S. illegally. (David Peinado/Anadolu via Getty Images)

The Texas Civil Rights Project, American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Texas argued that the law is unconstitutional, noting that immigration law is exclusively the responsibility of the federal government and that federal law should preempt the state law.

The groups are attempting to block four provisions of S.B. 4 — the creation of a crime for re-entering the country illegally, even if a person has since obtained legal status such as a green card; granting state magistrates authority to issue deportation orders; the creation of a crime for failing to comply with a magistrate’s deportation orders; and the requirement that magistrates continue a prosecution even if a person has a pending immigration case under federal law, such as an asylum claim.

“Our fight against S.B. 4 isn’t over until justice wins,” Kate Gibson Kumar, an attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a statement. “S.B. 4 is not only unconstitutional, but a vile law that uses our Texas resources to harm communities across our state. The Texas Civil Rights Project will keep fighting to protect Texas communities from the wrath of S.B. 4.”

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Cody Wofsy, deputy director of the ACLU’s Immigrants’ Rights Project, argued that S.B. 4 is “cruel and illegal,” adding that the groups “will keep fighting it until it is permanently struck down.”

The Texas Civil Rights Project, American Civil Liberties Union and ACLU of Texas argued that the law is unconstitutional. (Getty Images)

“Every court to have reached the merits of laws like S.B. 4 has found them to be unconstitutional,” he said.

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s office did not immediately respond to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.

The law is scheduled to go into effect on May 15 unless another court takes action.

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“S.B. 4 would transform our police and judges into immigration agents — threatening neighbors who have families here, who have lived here for years, even those who have legal status,” said Adriana Piñon, legal director at the ACLU of Texas. “Immigration enforcement is exclusively the federal government’s arena, and no state has ever claimed the power Texas threatens to wield here. We are taking this back to court to defend our Texas communities.”

TRUMP DOJ DROPS BIDEN-ERA CHALLENGE TO TEXAS BORDER SECURITY LAW

Courts have long maintained that immigration enforcement is the sole responsibility of the federal government. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

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Monday’s lawsuit is the latest legal challenge to the Texas law, which was passed by state lawmakers amid an uptick in migrant crossings at the U.S.-Mexico border during the Biden administration.

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Another lawsuit had been led by some of the same advocacy groups that filed Monday’s challenge. The Biden administration also initially sought to halt the law in 2024 before the Trump administration terminated the Department of Justice’s involvement in the lawsuit last year as part of the president’s mass deportation agenda.

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Fresh attacks in the Gulf spark fears of renewed war with Iran

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Fresh attacks in the Gulf spark fears of renewed war with Iran

Confusion reigned on Monday over the fate of a fragile ceasefire between the United States and Iran after a wave of fresh strikes on the United Arab Emirates and Oman, along with reports of attacks on ships in the Strait of Hormuz, undermined confidence in the truce.

The drone and missile strikes, the first since a ceasefire halted fighting in early April, come after the Trump administration launched a wide-scale naval operation on Monday to “guide” stranded maritime vessels out of the vital waterway.

But fears over a return to war have driven another surge in oil prices, pushing them above $114 per barrel — levels not seen since the ceasefire nearly a month ago. Hundreds of cargo ships from dozens of countries remain stuck in the Gulf. And strikes in Dubai have raised concerns about further disruptions to international air travel at one of the world’s busiest airports.

Iran’s state-run news agency, IRNA, said the new U.S. operation was part of President Trump’s “delirium,” after the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned that passage through the strait required prior approval from Tehran.

“We warn that any foreign armed force, especially the invading American army, will be attacked if they attempt to approach and enter the Strait of Hormuz,” said Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, according to a statement reported by the Iranian state-run Mehr News Agency on Monday.

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The operation, which Trump over the weekend dubbed Project Freedom, is supported by 15,000 U.S. service members and 100 aircraft, according to U.S. Central Command. Their aim is to deny Tehran control over the strait, a narrow, 21-mile-wide passageway through which a fifth of global energy supplies flows.

On Monday, Trump vowed Iran’s forces will be “blown off the face of the Earth” if they attempt to disrupt Project Freedom.

“We have more weapons and ammunition at a much higher grade than we had before,” Trump was quoted as saying in an interview with Fox News.

“We have the best equipment,” he continued. “We have stuff all over the world. We have these bases all over the world. They’re all stocked up with equipment. We can use all of that stuff, and we will, if we need it.”

Iran blocked traffic through the strait soon after the United States and Israel launched their campaign on the country. Last month, days after a ceasefire between Washington and Tehran came into effect, the United States enforced its own naval blockade on Iranian ports in a bid to pressure Iran to make concessions in stalled negotiations.

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On Monday, Central Command said in a statement that two American-flagged merchant ships were able to successfully transit the strait, while Central Command head Adm. Brad Cooper said the U.S. military sank six Iranian boats and intercepted missiles and drones targeting civilian vessels.

“We have defeated each and every one of those threats through the clinical application of defensive munitions,” he said.

“Project Freedom is a defensive operation, and we have deployed anti-ballistic missile destroyers,” he added. “Ships in the Gulf waters belong to 87 countries, and we urge ships to cross the strait.”

IRIB, Iran’s state-run broadcaster, quoted a senior Iranian military official who denied Cooper’s claim of sunken Iranian boats. The IRGC said in a statement on the messaging app Telegram that claims of commercial vessels or tankers traversing the strait were “baseless and completely false.”

Though Cooper did not clarify if the ceasefire between Washington and Tehran was now over, a raft of attacks throughout Monday spiked fears that the war would restart, spurring sharp price increases in already-jittery energy markets.

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The UAE said a fire broke out and three Indian nationals were injured in the Fujairah Oil Industry Zone, a key export hub for the country, after what it described as an Iranian drone attack.

It also accused Iran of targeting a tanker linked to the country’s state oil company Abu Dhabi National Oil Company in the Strait of Hormuz, while the country’s defense ministry also reported four cruise missiles launched from Iran, saying that it intercepted three of them while the fourth fell into the sea.

“These attacks constitute a dangerous escalation and an unacceptable transgression,” said a statement from the UAE’s foreign ministry, adding that it “reserves its full and legitimate right to respond to these attacks.”

Elsewhere, two foreign workers were injured in an attack on a residential building in the Omani coastal province of Bukha, according to a statement from an unnamed security source quoted by the state-run Oman News Agency. Authorities were investigating the incident but did not elaborate on the perpetrator.

The U.K.’s Maritime Trade Operations Center reported on Monday that a commercial vessel was on fire off the coast of the UAE, while a South Korean bulk carrier ship said it suffered an explosion and a fire in its engine room and that the cause was being investigated.

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Bulos reported from Beirut and Wilner from Washington.

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