The Headlines - The Democratic Party Is Hemorrhaging Voters, and a New White-Only Community in Arkansas

Episode Date: August 20, 2025

Plus, censoring prestige TV. On Today’s Episode:The Democratic Party Faces a Voter Registration Crisis, by Shane GoldmacherTrump Revokes Security Clearances of 37 Former and Current Officials, by Julian E. Barnes and Maggie HabermanTrump’s Tactics Mean Many International Students Won’t Make It to Campus, by Anemona HartocollisTrump Says Smithsonian Focuses Too Much on ‘How Bad Slavery Was,’ by Zolan Kanno-YoungsThe Founders of This New Development Say You Must Be White to Live There, by Debra KaminThese TV Hits Are Censored in Putin’s Russia, by Anatoly KurmanaevTune in every weekday morning. To get our full audio journalism and storytelling experience, download the New York Times Audio app — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.Tell us what you think at: [e-mail]. 

From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Wednesday, August 20th. Here's what we're covering. A new Times analysis of voter registration data shows the Democratic Party is hemorrhaging voters. Of the 30 states that track voter registration by party, Democrats lost ground to Republicans in every single one. between the 2020 and 2024 elections, often by a lot. In particular, the party's been losing support with new voters.

For years, more and more first-time registrants have been choosing to be politically independent by not siding with either major party. But for those who do still choose one of the big two, the Democratic share is cratering. Over the last six years, it's dropped 15%. The data, which was compiled by L2, a nonpartisan data firm, also shows the Democrats were losing traction with men, young voters, and black and Latino voters for years, long before analysts started calling that out as a key factor in the 2024 election.

A few caveats. For one, there are still more registered Democrats in the U.S. than Republicans, though that's partly because of which states record that and which don't. Also, voter registration is not a one-to-one predictor for election outcomes. Still, top Democrats. strategists say the overall trend is a crisis for the party. One voter data expert said the falling numbers are coming in month after month, year after year. Quote, I don't want to say the death cycle of the Democratic Party, but there seems to be no end to this. For the full analysis of voter registration trends, including a closer look at what's happening in swing states, go to n.yatimes.com.

Now, three quick updates on the Trump administration. Yesterday afternoon, Tulsi Gabbard, the director of national intelligence, announced that more than three dozen current and former national security officials have been stripped of their security clearances, effectively forcing some of them out of their jobs. Many of the officials worked on Russia analysis or tracked foreign threats to U.S. elections. The deep cuts appear to be part of Gabbard's campaign to push back on what she claims are flawed. reports about Russian interference in the 2016 election. Trump has called those reports a hoax for years, but the administration's focus on them has picked up recently in what critics say

is a blatant attempt to distract from how it's handled the Jeffrey Epstein case. Also, a new survey shows that American colleges and universities are bracing for a major decline in international students following Trump's crackdown on higher ed and immigration. The President has taken a number of steps to target foreign students, and the administration has been more intensely vetting people who want to enroll, claiming they could pose security threats. Now, more than a third of schools say they're expecting a dip in enrollment. According to one analysis, there could be 150,000 fewer international students in the U.S. this fall.

And since many foreign students pay full tuition, that drop-off in enrollment could have a significant impact on the school's budgets. And President Trump has turned up his attacks on the Smithsonian, accusing the institution of focusing too much on, quote, how bad slavery was. He added, quote, woke is broke. In a social media post, Trump said the Smithsonian isn't focusing on what he called the brightness of the country, as he doubled down on his attempts to sanitize American history and minimize the experiences of black people. Just last week, the White House gave the Smithsonian. a deadline to scrub its museums of any content that the administration feels is not in line

with, quote, American ideals. When it comes to real estate, discrimination is not new. There's been discrimination as long as there has been housing. But there's a new community in Arkansas that's really pushing the bounds of what discrimination is. They say that only people who are white can live there. and they believe that they can ban anyone who is black or Latino or doesn't fit what they want. Deborah Kamen covers housing and real estate for the times.

She says the co-founders of a new private community called Return to the Land have made their white-only policy explicit. While legal experts say the project is clearly discriminatory and illegal, the founders argue that they're protected by a clause in the Fair Housing Act of 1968 that lets private groups and religious organizations provide housing for their members. They're just limiting who is a member. Deborah says they have about 40 residents right now who they've screened with questions about their ancestral heritage, even sometimes asking for photographs of people's relatives. I flew to Arkansas and went to this

community. It is about an hour from the closest city in the Ozark Mountains. It is a community that is still being built. The founder has an office with bookshelves filled with philosophy texts, but also Mink was on the shelf. And they believe that not only have they found, a loophole to make their community legal. They also feel that the moment politically in America is right, and if they are challenged, they will win. They look at the Trump administration, not just the president himself,

but also people in the highest positions of power at the Department of Justice on the Supreme Court. They see that the administration has done a way with diversity, equity, inclusion programs, and pardon white supremacists. And they believe that this administration will be supportive of them, and that will allow them,

not just to build this community, but to offer a blueprint to other people who want to build communities like this as well. Deborah says that after other news outlets first reported on the community this summer, Arkansas's Attorney General opened an investigation into potential legal violations. In a statement, Zafas said, quote, we're continuing our review of this matter. And finally, for people watching TV in Russia in the past few years, some of the biggest prestige shows, think all of the HBO stuff,

have been missing some key parts. The Targaryens. Wed brother and sister for hundreds of years, I know. If you were watching Game of Thrones, for example, you might have missed in some of the episodes the kind of big plot point that Jamie and Circey Lannister, brother and sister, were sleeping with each other. Don't nobody want to hear them dirty words, man.

Especially coming from such a beautiful mouth. On the wire, you would not have seen some of the little moments of affection between the gangster Omar and his boyfriend. Putin is an overachiever. And on the White Lotus, season one, you would not have heard Sidney's character comparing her overbearing mother to the Russian president. Your mother is not Putin. Thank you.

That's because censors have been cutting more and more out of Western programs. There's no intimacy between men, no talk about abortion, and again, obviously, no jokes about Putin. According to one count by an independent Russian news outlet, censors have targeted more than 150 shows and sliced out at least 64 hours of content, as the Kremlin has cracked down on freedom of expression in the country. Notably, the government has not laid out any explicit rules or guidelines for what needs to go. So that's left people in the industry just trying to guess what could anger the Kremlin. They often decide to just cut a little extra to be safe,

because if they let the wrong thing through, they could face fines or even be put in jail. And for the audience, the end result can be confusion. One Russian journalist told the Times, it's hard to imagine how people can follow along given how butchered the storylines are, saying, quote, the narratives just don't make any sense. Those are the headlines.

Today on the Daily, why some American parents are shifting away from public education. You can listen to that in the New York Times app or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.