Last year, for the first time, Kerri Ketchledge voted for Donald Trump. <\/p>\n
The 43-year-old in Birdsboro, Pa., could certainly use the cost-of-living decreases that the once and future president promised on the campaign trail. <\/p>\n
A personal care aide, she is currently out of work and looking for a job. Her partner\u2019s pay as a cook in a retirement home is the only income for her household, which includes two of their children and a grandson. She\u2019s also helping her father, who is battling cancer, navigate the medical system.<\/p>\n
Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Kerri Ketchledge, with her seven-month-old grandson, worries that cutbacks in the second Trump administration are ‘going to hurt a lot of people.’Adrian Morrow\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n But since Mr. Trump returned to office, not only have prices not improved much, Ms. Ketchledge says the President is making them worse. <\/p>\n His signature One Big Beautiful Bill Act takes away US$930-billion from Medicaid, the government health insurance program for low-income Americans, and US$285-billion from food stamps. <\/p>\n His international trade wars, meanwhile, are expected to make a range of goods more expensive.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first time he was in office, he wasn\u2019t bad. Now, he wants to cut everything,\u201d she said as she sat on the front porch of her red-brick rowhouse, bouncing her seven-month-old grandson on her knee. \u201cThat\u2019s going to hurt a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n As she spoke, her son threw a football around with the boy next door. Neighbours gathered on the sidewalks to chat. A golden autumn sunset illuminated the hillside street.<\/p>\n \u201cThe prices were supposed to go down and instead it seems like they\u2019re going up,\u201d said David Hampton, a 67-year-old retired truck driver who also voted for Mr. Trump for the first time in 2024, as he leaned on the low wooden fence separating his front yard from Ms. Ketchledge\u2019s. <\/p>\n \u201cThe rich get richer and the poor get poorer.\u201d<\/p>\n Berks County, where you can find this Pennsylvania town, is one of the places that helped Mr. Trump return to the White House last Nov. 5. It gave him more than 55 per cent of its vote as he captured the country\u2019s most populous swing state after losing it four years earlier.<\/p>\n A year after that victory, the people who supported him here evince a broad continuum of views. Some, such as Ms. Ketchledge and Mr. Hampton, feel the President is failing to live up to his promises. Many others cheer the speed with which he is implementing his sprawling agenda, particularly closing the border to migrants and launching a global trade war.<\/p>\n Still others \u2013 especially among the growing Latino community in Reading, the county\u2019s largest city \u2013 are conflicted, backing Mr. Trump overall but uneasy with parts of his agenda, such as rounding up and deporting undocumented immigrants who have put down U.S. roots, worked hard and paid taxes.<\/p>\n A place of about 430,000 people nestled between steep hills and deciduous forests, Berks County has long navigated the vagaries of the changing industrial economy, the sort of location the President references when he talks about restoring American greatness. <\/p>\n In recent decades, it has also become a magnet for Latino immigration, a poster child for revitalization by people born elsewhere.<\/p>\n A world away from the country\u2019s power centres, the confluence of these two currents places this county somewhere near the heart of the American experience. <\/p>\n The patrons of Homer\u2019s Bar and Grill in Fleetwood were not shy about their support for Mr. Trump. They included retiree Jeff Ehret, at far right, and dental hygienist Sharon Wechezak, beside him.<\/p>\n Adrian Morrow\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n On the main drag of Fleetwood, a 4,000-strong town in Berks County\u2019s northeast, sits Homer\u2019s, a smoky tavern whose dark, cozy interior is lit with strings of orange, green and blue LEDs. Along the bar one recent Monday, patrons expressed unmitigated support for the President.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s kicking out all the people bringing drugs into the country. And he\u2019s stopped all the wars, too,\u201d said Mark Schwartz, a 58-year-old heating and air conditioning technician, referring to the U.S.-brokered ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, as he sipped a Modelo Especial. \u201cHe gets things done,\u201d added Hope Schwartz, 53, an IT worker. \u201cHe\u2019s not a politician.\u201d<\/p>\n YMCA \u2013 Mr. Trump\u2019s signature song \u2013 came on the jukebox. Local news played on the television. A young couple squeezed past to shoot billiards at the back.<\/p>\n Mitch Comes, 26, said he had seen the effect of Mr. Trump\u2019s steel tariffs at the industrial parts company where he works. The price of a ball-bearing, for instance, has gone up by 70 per cent, he said. But to him, it\u2019s worth it if it drives smelters to relocate to the U.S. \u201cAt the end of the day, the price increase has to happen to show that you can\u2019t use foreign steel. You have to make your stuff here,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Jeff Ehret, a tall, broad-shouldered 65-year-old retired New York City firefighter with a grey flat-top crewcut added: \u201cPeople gotta learn to buy things made in this country.\u201d<\/p>\n The popularity of the President\u2019s protectionism is easy to understand in Berks County. This place was built by Industrial Revolution prosperity in railroads, coal and manufacturing. It suffered a prolonged decline in the latter half of the 20th century, in part because of foreign competition. Today, long-abandoned factories dot the area \u2013 the Birdsboro steel foundry, the Reading Hardware Company, the Berkshire Boiler House.<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a>Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Pennsylvania’s steel makers are one of the constituencies Mr. Trump courted to return to power in 2024.MICHAEL MATHES\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Mr. Trump\u2019s clampdown on undocumented immigration is the other issue that comes up most readily.<\/p>\n \u201cIt had to be dealt with. It was horrible before \u2013 to bring millions of people into this country when you have our war vets living in the streets, and those are our people,\u201d said Sharon Wechezak.<\/p>\n The 64-year-old dental hygienist is also concerned about affordability. She says she pays US$640 a month for her health insurance plan, which would be US$1,500 were it not for tax credits. <\/p>\n It\u2019s the sort of thing that might put her on the same page as the Democrats. They are demanding that Mr. Trump\u2019s Republicans agree to extend Obamacare credits due to expire at the end of this year as a condition for ending the federal government shutdown.<\/p>\n Ms. Wechezak, however, is certain that if the opposition party had its way, they would give money to undocumented immigrants. \u201cToo many Democrats like too many wacky things.\u201d<\/p>\n Nor does she have time for the argument that Mr. Trump, with his use of the Department of Justice to prosecute perceived enemies and his deployment of federal forces to major cities, is taking the country down the road to authoritarianism.<\/p>\n \u201cThe other side has a lot of nerve saying that after what they drug him through,\u201d she said, referring to the four criminal prosecutions against Mr. Trump. \u201cIn Chicago, you see how much crime there is. The National Guard needs to go to these places.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Gene Schlegel of Lyons turned away from the Democrats in the Obama era.Adrian Morrow\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n Ms. Wechezak says she voted for Barack Obama in 2008 but was ultimately put off the Democrats by him. It\u2019s a common refrain among Trump voters around the county.<\/p>\n Gene Schlegel, 69, grew up a Democrat and voted for the party for decades. \u201cThey were always known for being on the side of the people,\u201d he said, standing on the back patio of his house in Lyons, the next town over from Fleetwood.<\/p>\n He was rankled, however, that Mr. Obama framed his presidency in racial terms as the first Black person to win the office. \u201cIt was this whole thing about the Black population and all he did was, \u2018This is racist, that\u2019s racist,\u2019\u201d said Mr. Schlegel, a retired cleaning company owner, who is white. It was enough to push him to the Republicans. <\/p>\n Today, he sees the continuation of the Obama era in diversity, equity and inclusion programs \u2013 the ones that Mr. Trump is now dismantling throughout the federal government.<\/p>\n More tangibly, he says, he\u2019s happy that the prices of both gasoline and the oil he uses to heat his home have gone down over the past year. The proximate cause is OPEC increasing supply. But he and many others here relate it to Mr. Trump\u2019s full-throated endorsement of drilling for oil.<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s trying to make things better for the people,\u201d Mr. Schlegel said.<\/p>\n Reading is on the other end of Pennsylvania from Butler, where a would-be assassin grazed Mr. Trump\u2019s ear last July. Memories of that event were fresh when Mr. Trump came to Reading a few months later, and his supporters faced off against Ms. Harris\u2019s.<\/p>\n Jeenah Moon\/Reuters<\/p>\n Feelings about Mr. Trump are more mixed in Pennsylvania\u2019s big cities. Thousands came to Philadelphia\u2019s \u2018No Kings\u2019 protests this past June and October.<\/p>\n Yuki Iwamura\/AP; Matthew Hatcher\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n Since Mr. Trump returned to office, Raymundo Torres\u2019s business has fallen by half at the Ave Maria taqueria in Reading. The threat of getting grabbed off the street by masked agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement has many Latinos spending as little time as possible outside their homes.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re shutting down Hispanic businesses because our customers are immigrants,\u201d said Mr. Torres, 60, as he sat on a stoop in his north Reading neighbourhood, a dense grid of red-brick commercial buildings and rowhouses that wouldn\u2019t look out of place in Brooklyn.<\/p>\n The restaurateur voted for Mr. Trump in 2024 after previously supporting the Democrats. For one thing, he liked Mr. Trump\u2019s opposition to abortion. He also thought Mr. Trump\u2019s experience as a businessman would be good for the economy. The potential effect of the promised mass deportations didn\u2019t really factor in.<\/p>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t think about that,\u201d said Mr. Torres, who immigrated from Mexico in 1984 and moved to Reading from New Jersey eight years ago. \u201cHe was talking about how the country was going to be good. He promised many things on the economy.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a>Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Raymundo Torres, top, gets fewer customers at Ave Maria taqueria in Reading. Many immigrant communities are warier of going out as ICE crackdowns escalate across the country.Adrian Morrow\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n While Berks as a whole is more than two-thirds white, Reading, the county seat, is one of the most Latino towns in the U.S. Nearly 70 per cent of its 95,000 residents identify as such.<\/p>\n And they have revived the place. After losing population from the 1940s to the 1990s, Reading has grown again in the 21st century thanks to this influx, mostly driven by people leaving New York and other major East Coast population centres in search of a lower cost of living.<\/p>\n Despite losing Reading last year, Mr. Trump nonetheless improved on his 2020 performance by nine per centage points, mirroring his inroads with traditionally-Democratic Latino communities across the country.<\/p>\n Tony P\u00e9rez, the pastor at Iglesia Betania, a Hispanic Baptist church here, cites two reasons so many Latinos went over to Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n One was cultural conservatism, including opposition to what he terms \u201cthe gender ideology cult.\u201d The other was the economy. \u201cThe Democrats kept saying \u2018It\u2019s not as bad as you think. Your eyes are lying to you.\u2019 But we knew how it was.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. P\u00e9rez has his reservations about Mr. Trump \u2013 he doesn\u2019t like the President\u2019s penchant for insulting people, for example \u2013 but voted for him three times. \u201cI\u2019m not electing a pastor, I\u2019m electing a president.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n GOP organizers set up a ‘Latino Americans for Trump’ office in Reading in June of 2024. Juan Ojeda, a Puerto Rican, was one of those who came to its grand opening.Joe Lamberti\/The Associated Press<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n Pennsylvania is far away from the U.S.-Mexico border, and the U.S. Army vehicles that now patrol it, but immigration issues are still very present there.Jose Luis Gonzalez\/Reuters<\/p>\n One of Mr. P\u00e9rez\u2019s congregants, Samuel Gutierrez, recalled watching demand for his services as a trucker drop off and the price of diesel rise during Joe Biden\u2019s presidency. The second problem has eased over the past year, he said, but he\u2019s still waiting for the first to resolve.<\/p>\n An immigrant from the Dominican Republic who experienced the glacial pace of the family reunification green card system, it also rankled him to see crowds of people jumping the Rio Grande.<\/p>\n \u201cWe waited 14 years to get here,\u201d the 33-year-old said. \u201cSo how does it feel when someone crosses the border without waiting in line?\u201d<\/p>\n Ana Dole, a fellow Dominican immigrant, said she is \u201cin the middle\u201d on Mr. Trump after voting for him. The waves of people who entered under Mr. Biden caused \u201ca huge crisis with resources,\u201d she said, pointing to the funds New York City spent to house many of them.<\/p>\n Still, she feels Mr. Trump\u2019s deportation campaign has gone too far. \u201cTrump is focusing on the immigrant workers rather than focusing on the criminals like he promised,\u201d said Ms. Dole, a 39-year-old human resources manager. She also knows U.S. citizens who have been detained by the immigration authorities.<\/p>\n Her husband, Frank Dole, doesn\u2019t share their pastor\u2019s discomfort with the President\u2019s communications style. \u201cThat\u2019s what makes him genuine. He doesn\u2019t speak politically correctly, but he\u2019s listening to the things we care about.\u201d<\/p>\n The 40-year-old, who immigrated from Cuba 20 years ago, is also unconcerned that prices are still high. \u201cYou can\u2019t magically fix things in a few months when it was in shambles.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Torres was significantly less optimistic. <\/p>\n \u201cThe economy is bad,\u201d he said on a sunny, dusky, Sunday late afternoon, as neighbours gathered on the sidewalk to play dominoes and a group queued to buy coconuts from a corner stand. \u201cIs Trump going to fix it? No.\u201d<\/p>\n Open this photo in gallery:<\/a>The Trump era: More from The Globe and MailThe Decibel podcast<\/p>\n The killing of Trump ally Charlie Kirk supercharged a debate about American political extremism and free speech, and some young people in red states<\/a> are eager to keep it going. How does U.S. law differ from Canada\u2019s on those issues? The Decibel spoke with<\/a> James L. Turk from the Centre for Free Expression to learn more. Subscribe for more episodes.<\/a><\/p>\n David Shribman on U.S. politics<\/p>\n Trump\u2019s seizure of powers meets little pushback from Congress<\/a><\/p>\n In Israel, Trump is transformed from angry political combatant to happy warrior for peace<\/a><\/p>\n Donald Trump has done everything except unite Americans<\/a><\/p>\n Commentary on Trump\u2019s trade feud with Canada<\/p>\n Shannon Proudfoot: What really enrages Trump in that Ronald Reagan ad he doesn\u2019t want anyone to see<\/a><\/p>\n Stewart Beck: How Canada can use China as a hedge against Trump<\/a><\/p>\n