BETHLEHEM, Pa. – What’s a British media mainstay to do when it needs to find a U.S. city that has sway in a political swing state?

Come to Bethlehem, of course.

The London-based Financial Times (FT) has picked the Christmas City to serve as its lens for a multi-year look at the issues that are uniting and dividing modern America.

The Bethlehem Project is an ambitious undertaking, with FT reporters being dispatched to the city every six weeks or so to take the pulse of the community on everything from the economy to immigration enforcement to what it’s like being a young conservative in the time of Donald Trump.

The idea for the project was born after Trump won his second term in the White House in 2024. It will continue until at least 2028, when Americans will once again go to the polls to pick a president.

In looking for its “host” city, FT wanted “a town that was manageable in size,” said U.S. News Editor Derek Brower, “but a place that was central to what happens in U.S. elections.”

Brower met with 69 News at the historic Hotel Bethlehem on Main Street on Thursday to talk about the project.

Even if you take politics out of it, Bethlehem is, literally, a city divided. With a population of just under 80,000, Bethlehem is bisected by the Lehigh River. It has a northside and a southside, and a presence in both Lehigh and Northampton counties.

Kamala Harris won Lehigh County in the 2024 presidential election, but Northampton County was on Trump’s team after going for Joe Biden in 2020.

The multimedia Bethlehem Project, which also includes a podcast, aims to understand why, and how opinions will change or stay the same moving forward.

“We’re not here to try and persuade people to vote one way or the other,” said Brower. “We just want to understand what they are saying to us. And so I think the way we’ve approached it is very humbly as outsiders, wanting to understand what this city can tell us about America.”

Bethlehem has been used as a political bellwether before; the Associated Press, Bloomberg, CNN and NPR have all put the city under the microscope in recent years. Northampton County voters, in particular, have a nearly unblemished record when it comes to correctly picking the next U.S. president, dating back more than 100 years.

Brower oversees an editorial staff of about 90 people scattered throughout FT’s U.S. newsrooms, including locations in New York City and Washington, D.C. Even before the Bethlehem Project was launched, some FT staffers had at least a little bit of knowledge about the city. “Some of the Brits are familiar with Bethlehem from the Bethlehem Steel history,” he said. “We do have somebody in our mothership in London who has family in Bethlehem. So we’re discovering a bunch of connections that we didn’t know about before we chose Bethlehem.” 

The reporters assigned to the Bethlehem Project have produced six pieces so far; they’re still in the “getting-to-know-you” phase in the Lehigh Valley. “We’re just getting to learn about the city, trying to meet as many people as possible,” Brower said.

But so far, the vibe has been welcoming, he added. “I think I’ve been personally pleasantly surprised at how open people are and how invested and interested they are in the project, I think from top to bottom, from the mayor, to schoolteachers, and so on.”

Future series topics will include artificial intelligence, data centers, and the crowded race for the Democratic nomination for the Lehigh Valley’s congressional seat (District 7).

Brower said FT wants to get the pieces in front of as many people as possible; he said he hopes the Bethlehem Project’s audience “feel it’s an honest, fair picture of a really fascinating place. We’re finding it really fascinating.”