A 1,400-County Crisis for Democrats

Summary

Summary of "A 1,400-County Crisis for Democrats" – The Daily by The New York Times

Release Date: June 3, 2025

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Introduction

In this episode of The Daily, host Michael Barbaro delves into a comprehensive county-by-county analysis conducted by reporter Shane Goldmacher. The focus is on the significant shift in the American electoral map over the past four presidential races, highlighting a "1,400-County Crisis" that poses a substantial challenge for the Democratic Party.

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Shane Goldmacher’s Analysis

Shane Goldmacher embarked on an extensive study examining every county in the United States, totaling over 3,100, to understand the evolving political landscape since Donald Trump became a prominent figure in American politics. By comparing election results from 2012—a pre-Trump baseline—to the subsequent three elections in which Trump was a candidate, Goldmacher aimed to uncover the depth and breadth of the Republican Party's gains.

Quote:

“It’s a flashing alarm that’s a sea of red.”
— Shane Goldmacher [04:02]

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Key Findings

1. Massive Republican Shift:

   • Over 1,400 counties have trended continuously Republican since Trump's entry into the political arena.
   • In stark contrast, fewer than 2% of counties have shown a consistent shift toward the Democratic Party, with only 57 counties moving left.

   Quote:

   “Nearly half of the counties in the entire country have trended Republican. And less than 2% of the nation's counties have trended Democratic.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [04:16]

2. Population Impact:

   • The counties gaining Republican strength are home to approximately 42 million people, vastly outnumbering the 8 million residing in the counties shifting Democratic.

   Quote:

   “There’s something around 42 million to 8 million people.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [04:35]

3. Class Over Race:

   • The traditional voting predictors based on race are diminishing. Instead, class has emerged as the predominant factor influencing electoral outcomes.
   • Trump’s appeal has broadened beyond white, rural voters to include working-class, diverse, and urban populations.

   Quote:

   “Class is becoming the greatest predictor, the most important predictor.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [09:48]

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Implications for the Democratic Party

The data presents a dire scenario for Democrats, indicating a systemic erosion of their traditional voter base among working-class and diverse communities. This shift suggests that the Democratic Party must reassess and potentially overhaul its strategies to reconnect with these pivotal voter segments.

Quote:

“The Democratic Party has essentially identified itself as the party of the working class… the results show that working-class voters no longer see the party that way.”
— Shane Goldmacher [12:21]

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Specific County Examples

1. Los Alamos, New Mexico:

   • Serves as a rare Democratic stronghold in a predominantly Republican region.
   • The presence of the Los Alamos National Laboratory, with its highly educated and affluent population, contributes to its Democratic lean.

   Quote:

   “Los Alamos is this one little blue arrow in the Democratic direction in the Southwest because it is one of the highest income, highest educated corners of the country.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [07:31]

2. Starr County, Texas:

   • The most significant county-level shift, transitioning 89 percentage points from Democratic to Republican from 2012 to 2024.
   • Notably the most predominantly Latino county in America, exemplifying the broader trend of Latino voters moving Republican.

   Quote:

   “Starr county is the county that has moved the most in the entire country from 2012 to 2024.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [08:45]

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Internal Debates Within the Democratic Party

The Democratic Party faces internal divisions on how to address the crisis:

1. Populist Wing:

   • Advocates for a shift towards economic populism, focusing on anti-elite sentiments and policies that resonate with working-class voters across diverse backgrounds.
   • Figures like Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez embody this approach by championing economic reforms and grassroots engagement.

   Quote:

   “We can go on the offense and we can even move to the left on policy… We need to tap into where voters are and voters are upset.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [22:33]

2. Moderate Wing:

   • Prefers maintaining centrist positions, fearing that aggressive populist strategies may alienate certain voter groups.
   • Concerns revolve around implementing policies that, while progressive, might not align with the immediate interests and perceptions of the broader electorate.

   Quote:

   “There's a different faction of the Democratic Party that is moderate, that does not want to move that direction.”
   — Shane Goldmacher [22:33]

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Future Outlook

Goldmacher emphasizes the urgency for the Democratic Party to innovate and adapt. Without significant changes, the party risks continued losses and potential definitional crises moving forward into future elections.

Quote:

“There’s no debate that the Democratic Party does not have a future if it can’t make inroads again with working class voters.”
— Shane Goldmacher [24:04]

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Notable Quotes

• Shane Goldmacher [04:16]:
  “Nearly half of the counties in the entire country have trended Republican. And less than 2% of the nation's counties have trended Democratic.”

• Shane Goldmacher [09:48]:
  “Class is becoming the greatest predictor, the most important predictor.”

• Shane Goldmacher [12:21]:
  “The Democratic Party has essentially identified itself as the party of the working class… the results show that working-class voters no longer see the party that way.”

• Shane Goldmacher [22:33]:
  “We need to tap into where voters are and voters are upset.”

• Shane Goldmacher [24:04]:
  “There’s no debate that the Democratic Party does not have a future if it can’t make inroads again with working class voters.”

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Conclusion

The episode underscores a pivotal moment for the Democratic Party, facing a substantial and data-backed electoral shift orchestrated over a decade of Republican gains. As the party grapples with internal strategic debates, the insights from Goldmacher's analysis serve as a clarion call for transformative action to reclaim and stabilize its voter base amidst an evolving American political landscape.

Transcript

[David Marchese]

David I'm David Marchese.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

And I'm Lulu Garcia Navarro, and we're.

[David Marchese]

The hosts of the Interview from the New York Times.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

David and I have spent our careers interviewing some of the most interesting and influential people in the world, which means.

[Shane Goldmacher]

We know when to ask tough questions.

[David Marchese]

And when to just sit back and listen.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

And now we've teamed up to have these conversations every week. We'll try to reveal something about the people shaping our world and we'll get.

[David Marchese]

Some great stories from them, too.

[Lulu Garcia Navarro]

It's the Interview from the New York Times. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

[David Marchese]

From.

[Michael Barbaro]

The New York Times. I'm Michael Barbaro. This is the Daily it's now conventional wisdom that Donald Trump has transformed American politics. But a county by county voting analysis from the Times covering the last four presidential races shows just how drastically Trump has changed the electoral map. Today, the reporter who conducted that analysis, Shane Goldmacher, on why it's a five alarm fire for the Democrats and the debate within the party over what to do about it. Tuesday, June 3.

[David Marchese]

Hey there.

[Shane Goldmacher]

How's it going?

[David Marchese]

Very well. I appreciate that tie.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Thank you. It's just for you, it really shows up on audio.

[David Marchese]

I think people can hear, they can.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Hear the constriction, that there's a tie and the formality. Yeah.

[David Marchese]

Okay, let's get started. Shane, always a pleasure.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Thank you for having me.

[David Marchese]

So you're officially on what I would think of as the what went wrong with the Democrats beat, Democrats in disarray beat on and on week ago, Democrats on a rowboat without a oar beat.

[Shane Goldmacher]

And the people trying to grab an oar. Right, right. How they're trying to rebuild from what went wrong.

[David Marchese]

And this is now becoming a somewhat formal line of coverage for you and for many of our colleagues on the politics desk in the aftermath of the last presidential race, you're making something of a formal study of what went wrong and where the party needs to go. And you started, I think, quite logically with a very deep dive into data.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah. I think that a lot of people have looked at the 2024 election and said this was an outlier for the Democrats, that the Democratic Party lost because Joe Biden was too old, that he stayed in the race too long, that Kamala Harris was a weaker candidate, that she didn't have enough time to prosecute the case.

[David Marchese]

Right.

[Shane Goldmacher]

And on and on. But the 2024 election results were not a one off. They weren't a one off at all. In fact, they really trace an improvement that Trump and the Republican Party have been making since Donald Trump arrived on the political scene. And so I decided to look back over the last four elections at every county election result dating back to the entire time Trump has been running and once before to set a baseline.

[David Marchese]

Hmm. Every county in the United States.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah.

[David Marchese]

So more than counties are in the United States.

[Shane Goldmacher]

There are more than 3,100 counties in the country. And said.

[David Marchese]

So you said dating back to 2012. And why starting there?

[Shane Goldmacher]

Because that's the last election that Donald Trump wasn't on the ballot. So what did the balance between Democrats and Republicans look like in the last snapshot where this wasn't a Trump led Republican Party? And how has Trump transformed the political landscape in the three consecutive times he's been on the ballot? And what I found was really a flashing alarm sign for the Democratic Party.

[David Marchese]

Describe exactly what you found and why. It's a flashing alarm.

[Shane Goldmacher]

It's a flashing alarm that's a sea of red. So more than 1,400 counties in the country have trended continuously in the Republican direction since Trump has been on the ballot.

[David Marchese]

So about half of all of the.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Nation'S counties, nearly half of the counties in the entire country have trended Republican. And less than 2% of the nation's counties have trended Democratic. Only 57 of the counties in the entire country have moved continuously to the left.

[David Marchese]

Wow. Hugely disproportionate.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Hugely disproportionate. And look, the total number of people living in these Republican moving counties way outnumber the number of people living in these continuously Democratic moving counties. There's something around 42 million to 8 million people.

[David Marchese]

Basically, that data suggests that Republicans are improving their relationship to more and more voters in more and more places while Democrats are not.

[Shane Goldmacher]

And I think that while that top line number is scary enough for the Democratic Party, it's actually the complexion of those counties that is most concerning.

[David Marchese]

We'll talk about that complexion for both kinds of counties. Those moving further and further toward the Republican side and the pretty small number that are moving farther and farther toward the Democratic side.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Well, let's start with the Democrats because they're improving in so many fewer places.

[David Marchese]

Right.

[Shane Goldmacher]

They're basically only doing better in the richest corners of the country and the most educated corners of the country. And on the flip side, Trump is doing better in working class parts of the country everywhere. So, yes, we know that Donald Trump has done well in white, rural parts of America. He's doing even better now than he did when he first came onto the political scene. That's part of it. The other part is he is doing better in working class parts of the country that are diverse. Inner cities, black neighborhoods, Latino neighborhoods, big, big cities, smaller towns in the south, all across the country, diverse places. Donald Trump has been doing better, not once, not twice, three times in a row. In 2016, he improved for the party. In 2020, he improved for the party. And then again in 2024, what these maps showed is that his victory was the culmination of a set of improvements that Trump has been making among working class voters and diverse voters for a decade.

[David Marchese]

Can you give us a couple of examples of some of the counties you're talking about? Maybe. Let's start with one of the counties that keeps becoming more and more blue, more Democrat, that is rich, that is highly educated. And then let's move to a county or two where the Republicans keep gaining over the last three elections that seems to be more working class.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah. I mean, so when you look at a map and you see these sort of splotches of blue, they're really concentrated around a few places. One of the places that sort of stood out was Los Alamos in New Mexico. And it was like, oh, this is interesting. Why is this a little beacon for the Democratic Party in New Mexico in the Southwest? There's not a lot of those here. Right.

[David Marchese]

So this was a triple trending, continuously moving towards Democrat counting in a part of the country that, as you just said, is generally quite Republican.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah. So. Well, why is it? Well, it turns out Los Alamos is the home of Los Alamos National Laboratory, which, of course, is famous for helping develop the atomic bomb. It is one of the leading scientific laboratories in the country. And what that means is there's a whole bunch of people there who are making a lot of money and who have a lot of college education. And so Los Alamos is this one little blue arrow in the Democratic direction in the Southwest because it is one of the highest income, highest educated corners of the country. On the flip side is Texas, probably the most alarming single state in the country for Democrats is looking at the Republican gains all along the border in South Texas. And the county that jumps out to me there is Starr County. Starr county is the county that has moved the most in the entire country from 2012 to 2024. This is a county that Barack Obama won overwhelmingly in 2012 and that Donald Trump won comfortably in 2024.

[David Marchese]

So it's moved continuously to the Republican side.

[Shane Goldmacher]

It's moved continuously in the Republican direction. And the sum of that movement is 89 percentage points.

[David Marchese]

Wow.

[Shane Goldmacher]

And what's interesting is Starr county isn't just the county that has moved the most. It also is the most predominantly Latino county in America. And it's not just shifting away from the Democratic Party, it's stampeding away from the Democratic Party. And while Starr county is this one small county in the Texas border, what you see is that same type of movement in counties with broad Latino populations. Whether you're talking about the Bronx, in New York City, Queens, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, places with diverse populations have moved steadily to the right. Even in a lot of them where Democrats are still winning, they're winning by less. And by a lot less, I mean, to use like a fancy political science term, we're talking about racial depolarization.

[David Marchese]

Just translate that.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah. For a long time, one of the most important markers of how a person was going to vote in America was, what race are you? Are you black? Are you Latino? Are you white? That was the single greatest predictor. And it's still an incredibly powerful predictor. But what we see here is that Trump is changing that, and that class is becoming the greatest predictor, the most important predictor. And by laying this out over time, you see that this isn't a one election shift. This is a steady shift.

[David Marchese]

Right. What Donald Trump has done to some degree is created a class based electoral monolith.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah. And this is a threat for Democrats because there are more people in America who didn't go to college than there are people in America who did go to college. There are more people in America who are working class than there are people who are upper class. If you look at education, there is not a single county in the country of the 1400 where Trump has continuously improved. Not a single county that a majority of people had a college degree, not a single county. And on the flip side, there's not a single county where the Democrats have continuously improved, where less than 20% of people had a college degree.

[David Marchese]

It's really Stark.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Of the 1433 counties where Trump has improved continuously, only three had a median income of more than $100,000. So, like, way less than 1% on the Democratic side, only 57 counties have moved to the Democrats. 18 of them have an income of $100,000 per household at the county level. So the Democrats are just improving where these wealthy enclaves are. And Republicans are improving just about everywhere else. Right.

[David Marchese]

And for those of us with some gray in our hair, what is astonishing about what you're describing is, is how much it represents an inversion of the party's reputations and Even self identification 25, 30 years ago, Democrats operated, they told themselves, and their election results demonstrated this as the party of working America and Republicans were the party of wealthy America. And what you're describing is a complete, to some degree, not just an inversion, but a kind of annihilation of those reputations.

[Shane Goldmacher]

I mean, I think it's the scope of the Democratic Party's defeat last fall and the increasing realization that this wasn't a one off that's led to the Democratic Party soul searching right now for what it stands for. For years, the Democratic Party has basically identified itself as the party of the working class. It's a core part of the party's identity. And the results show that working class voters no longer see the party that way. And at the same time, the party has banked on more diversity, helping that a more diverse America was going to be a more democratic America. And both of those things are no longer necessarily true.

[Michael Barbaro]

We'll be right back.

[Megan Lorum]

Hi, I'm Megan Lorum, the director of photography at the New York Times. A photograph can do a lot of different things. It can connect us. It can bring us to places we've never been before. It can capture a story in a universal visual language. But one thing that all these photographs have in common is that, you know, they don't just come out of the ether. We spend a lot of time anticipating news stories, working with the best photographers across the globe. These are photographers who have spent years mastering their technical craft, developing their skills as visual chroniclers of our world. You know, getting certified as a scuba diver and learning how to shoot underwater to document climate change or tremendous cardiovascular training in order to ski on the slopes next to Olympic athletes. This is an effort that takes tons of time and consideration and resources. All of this is possible only because of New York Times subscribers. If you're not a subscriber yet, you can become [e-mail] subscribe.

[David Marchese]

Shane, when you came up with this county by county painstaking data, you shared it with a lot of Democratic strategists and elected officials to get their reaction. So what was their reaction to it and how much did it surprise them?

[Shane Goldmacher]

I think a lot of them were not surprised at the directionality of this information. Right. This sort of fits with our understanding of the most recent election. I think people were more surprised by the depth and the scale of it. And what it captured is the conversation that they're having, which is there is an urgency for the Democratic Party to find ways to stop hemorrhaging support among working class Americans. And there is a crisis for the Democratic Party that the erosion among Latino voters has come as the Republican Party has embraced a leader in Donald Trump who has made border security his top priority, who has demonized, at times Latinos. And so party is looking at this and saying, my goodness, we are losing ground at this moment to this opponent. What does that mean about what our message is right now?

[David Marchese]

Okay, and what's the answer? I mean, how much do the Democrats, surveying the record chair, and looking in particular at the data that you are finding, think of this as a policy matter, as Democrats have chosen the wrong side of a set of issues, for example, like border security and immigration?

[Shane Goldmacher]

I mean, I think that there's two different fights that are happening simultaneously in the Democratic Party around these questions. The first is about policy. Does the party need to shift what it stands for? I think immigration might be the single most important issue where the most robust debate is happening. The other side is, does the Democratic Party need to shift its posture, how it represents itself to the country, how it appears, what it is fighting for. Are you advocating for working people explicitly? Are you focusing on economic programs that are targeted to the needs that people have, the cost that they're experiencing, not talking about things like student loan debt repayment, where you only got this if you went to college? And so this is something that came up in my reporting, talking to voters in 2023 and 2024. People would say, well, like, I didn't go to college. Like, those guys got to go to college. Why are we giving them money? And so even if that program on a policy basis was targeted at lower income earners, was targeted at diverse communities, the feeling was, well, the Democratic Party is the party of college educated elites, and they're giving money back to college educated elites regardless of the specifics of how the policy was crafted.

[David Marchese]

Right. That would be a really vivid example of where Democrats put a lot of their eggs in a basket that mathematically they already had. They weren't gonna reach the voters that, as your reporting shows, they're losing.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yeah, I think that not everyone is totally alarmed about the Democratic Party's future based on these numbers, even if they're concerned. I think one of the more interesting people I spoke to was Richie Torres, who's a congressman from the Bronx here in New York City, who represents one of those triple trending Repub districts, a.

[David Marchese]

Democrat in Congress whose district has gone continuously more to the right over the last three presidential bases. That's a fascinating conversation.

[Shane Goldmacher]

And his district at One point was the single most Democratic district in America. Right. This isn't just a Democratic seat. This is like the heart of a Democratic stronghold.

[David Marchese]

Yeah. So he's at the epicenter of the plates shifting.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Yes. And so Richie Torres said, look, this is a huge deal, and he's really worried about that for his party. But he also said, look, you know, we talk a lot about the Democrats. Like, maybe it's just Trump. Maybe Trump is just a singular figure. And when he goes away, some of these issues go away. What if the Republican Party is defined by somebody else? What if it's the party of J.D. vance or Marco Rubio or basically anyone who's not Donald Trump? Will this outlast? And he very much was unclear on the answer. Whether the Democratic Party's problems can be resuscitated simply by not running against.

[David Marchese]

Yeah.

[Shane Goldmacher]

This is the a candidate like Trump.

[David Marchese]

Blip theory of the Trump era. On its face, it feels a touch naive, with all due respect to Congressman Torres, because this is Donald Trump's Republican Party right now. Right. And it's hard to imagine the next nominee isn't working. Really hard to inhabit his mold. It will be someone who probably embraces all of the same policies.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Well, then you get back to that. Is it policy or is it perception?

[David Marchese]

Ah, I see your point.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Right. Is how Donald Trump perceived by voters because he was the host of the Apprentice, because of his years of being on the public scene. Is there something just to Trump that is driving this more than all of these other demographic factors? That's part of it. There are lots of other demographics.

[David Marchese]

Yeah. What's the other theories?

[Shane Goldmacher]

There are lots of other Democrats, like, the Democratic Party needs to stop talking the way it's talking, because they're not talking in ways that people are connecting to. Look, there are studies after studies. There are groups lining up, focus groups to talk to people all the time. Let's get a sense of how do people feel about the Democrats Democratic Party right now? And, you know, one person I talked to has done a ton of these focus groups for years. She is sitting down with disaffected Democratic voters, swing voters. And she asks these voters, how do you feel about the two parties? But not asking directly. Instead, she asks, what animal do you think the Republican Party is? And the answers these voters have given fall into, like, really clear trends. And the number one trend is that these voters say that Republicans are like lions and tigers and bears that just take what they want and just devour things. Right. They just. If they want it, they take it. They get it? And Democrats are three toed sloths and slugs and tortoises, sort of slow animals, not aggressive, are, not aggressive, are the prey. And they may not like that the Republican Party is lions and devouring things. But it feels pretty revealing about the Democratic Party's brand that it's these other animals.

[David Marchese]

What these focus groups would seem to reveal, and this is in opposition to what Congressman Torres is saying, is that this is a brand wide Democratic image problem, not a question of Trump potentially being a blip. Because Donald Trump can go away. And you still have a lot of these voters telling the focus group leader that the Democrats are the sloth.

[Shane Goldmacher]

And so I think one of the things you're seeing is people fill the void to show that the party is not a sloth anymore. And that looks like Bernie Sanders going all across the country to red states, to places like Idaho and drawing big crowds to blue cities. Alexandria, Ocasio, Cortez. These are Democrats who are saying, go on the offense. We can go on the offense and we can even move to the left on policy. Embrace an economic populism that can appeal to those working class voters of all diversities by saying, the man is oppressing you, corporations are oppressing you. We need to go and take back power. We the people. But there's a different faction of the Democratic Party that is moderate, that does not want to move that direction. This is the policies that Bernie Sanders and AOC are advocating that they might draw a crowd, but they're going to lose you in election because while they are fighting, they're fighting for things that are not ultimately popular in polling. Whether it's immigration, whether it's a whole series of things that they say for Democrats to win back these voters, we need to moderate.

[David Marchese]

What you're describing is a pretty familiar dynamic within the Democratic Party, this binary where a populist movement that positions itself explicitly as anti elite offers itself up and to some degree takes root and the moderate wing is afraid of it and tries to snuff it out and in many cases has succeeded in overcoming the populist wing of the party. But the data that is at the center of our conversation here suggests that the party's greatest need is to recognize that racial depolarization and the fact that its future lies with a working class group of Americans, white, black, Latino, who are drifting further and further away from it and towards Republicans and Donald Trump and who don't like what the Democratic Party has stood for up until now on immigration, where compared to the Republican Party of Trump it's seen as insufficiently law and order or on trade or Democrats are seen as backing free trade policies that destroyed manufacturing jobs or on the government itself or Democrats are seen as the defender of a bloated, ineffectual establishment. So doesn't that suggest that the Democrats future lies and I'm being provocative here, but in a more populist version of itself, doesn't the president's success in all these counties over the last three elections suggest that some form of populism is undeniably effective?

[Shane Goldmacher]

I think that there's no debate that the Democratic Party does not have a future if it can't make inroads again with working class voters. What you do to become that party is very much still up for debate. I also think we should note that like coming up with what the solutions are in the months after an election is like a notoriously hard thing to do. And so no, I don't think you necessarily have to move in one particular direction. I think a lot of the energy right now in the Democratic Party is talking about moving in a more populist direction and finding something that sounds and feels like populism to voters, something that communicates that the party is unhappy with the status quo too, because voters are unhappy with the status quo. So you have to tap into where voters are and voters are upset. The thing I am hearing most from Democrats is a fear that the party won't make any major changes and will still succeed in 2026, this next midterm. This next midterm. Because guess what? In midterm elections, more highly educated, higher income voters turn out in higher numbers. The places that have moved more Democratic, those are the places more likely to turn out. The voters who have moved more Democratic are more likely to turn out. And so the party might win the house in 2026, might do better than expected in some of these Senate races. And the fear is that that over performance could mask the deeper issues that are plaguing the party. And if you don't solve those problems now that you will wake up to another result in 2028 where the country has again shifted to the right and elected another Republican as president.

[Michael Barbaro]

Well, Shane, thank you very much.

[David Marchese]

Thank you for going through thousands and thousands of county data along with an army of colleagues.

[Shane Goldmacher]

I like spreadsheets.

[Michael Barbaro]

Appreciate it.

[Shane Goldmacher]

Thank you.

[Michael Barbaro]

We'll be right back. Here's what else you need to know today. On Monday, the man accused of using a makeshift flamethrower to attack a Jewish group in Colorado was charged with a federal hate crime. The Suspect, who injured 12 people, told investigators that he had been planning the attack for a year and had wanted to kill, quote, all Zionist people.

[Keir Starmer]

And the threat we now face is more serious, more immediate and more unpredictable than at any time since the Cold War.

[Michael Barbaro]

In a major speech, the Prime Minister of Britain, Keir Starmer, announced plans to significantly ramp up the country's ability to wage war. Starmer called it an urgent new priority. At a time when Russia has invaded Ukraine and the United States is stepping back from its commitment to protect Europe.

[Keir Starmer]

We are moving to war fighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces. When we are being directly threatened by states with advanced military forces, the most effective way to deter them is to be ready and frankly, to show them that we're ready to deliver peace through strength.

[Michael Barbaro]

The plan calls for the UK to build up to 12 new attack submarines and to invest billions of pounds into new long range weapons. Today's episode was produced by Asta Chaturvedi. A link Olivia Natt and Alex Stern with help from Nina Feldman. It was edited by Rachel Quester, contains original music by Diane Wong and was engineered by Alyssa Moxley. Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg.

[David Marchese]

And Ben Landsberg of Wonderly.

[Michael Barbaro]

That's it for the Daily. I'm Michael Balvar. See you tomorrow.