Older Arizona voters are closely watching Trump's tariffs

News

Older Arizona voters are closely watching Trump's tariffs — and their retirement accounts

2025-04-16 19:56 Last Updated At：20:21

SUN CITY, Ariz. (AP) — Susan Hemphill said she's always been frugal with her spending. But the recent volatility in the stock market caused by President Donald Trump's on-again, off-again tariffs and an escalating trade war with China have made her even more cautious.

These days, Hemphill is staying closer to home in Sun City, Arizona, a 55-and-older community near Phoenix. No more day trips to Sedona, the retired union organizer said, fighting tears as she wondered aloud whether she could run out of money.

“I’m so tired of Trump playing with our lives,” said Hemphill, who voted for Democrat Kamala Harris in November. “I’m too old for this. I just really want to be retired. I want to enjoy — I don’t want to worry.”

Trump was elected with a promise to improve the economy, lower taxes and control inflation, addressing voters who said overwhelmingly that the economy was the top issue facing the country. But for retirees like Hemphill, the Republican president's economic stewardship has been defined by the roller coaster of the stock market and fears his tariffs will lead to higher inflation.

“Some are considering curtailing their spending, such as saving their tax refunds instead of spending them, while others are adjusting their investment strategies by moving money into more conservative allocations like bonds and gold,” said Prudence Zhu, a Phoenix-area financial adviser, in an email. “While this is often an emotional response, it’s not necessarily the optimal strategy in most cases.”

How all of those issues shake out could have a notable impact on the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential election, as the center of political gravity shifts increasingly toward battleground states in the South and the West, places like Arizona that are popular with retirees.

Like other emerging political battlegrounds Nevada, Georgia and North Carolina, Arizona's population has exploded over the past half-century, welcoming newcomers who have transformed its politics.

Though Arizona has moved from reliably Republican to a battleground, Trump enjoys overwhelming support in Sun City, where Hemphill is among the 40,000 residents in a community that sprouted from the desert in the 1960s. Trump won every precinct in Sun City, most of them by double digits.

Trump supporters like Paul Estok said they’re confident that the president has a handle on the situation and that things will stabilize with time.

“I’m real happy about what’s going on,” said Estok, who gets three pensions from the various government agencies where he worked as a union stationary engineer in the Chicago area. He’s confident the pensions are secure.

The tariffs Trump announced on much of the world sparked turmoil in the stock market earlier this month, before the president abruptly hit pause on most of them. But the drama isn't over. Trump said the 90-day pause would be used to negotiate over tariffs with other countries, but he increased the tax rate on Chinese imports to 145%.

Estok said he's thrilled to see a president tough enough to impose tariffs despite the economic consequences. Echoing Trump, he said other countries “have been taking so much advantage of us.”

“No one’s ever stepped up and said, ‘Hey, enough’s enough,’” Estok said, climbing into his truck after stopping at a grocery store on his way home from the golf course.

Don Welling, an 82-year-old Trump voter, said those alarmed by the tariffs are misguided. He didn’t enjoy seeing his portfolio take a dip, but he wasn’t worried.

“If people would pay attention to what he said when he was campaigning, things would be better,” Welling said as he loaded groceries into his golf cart.

Some retirees said they're worried about the effect Trump’s federal cost-cutting is having on Social Security. While Trump insists he will not cut benefits, his administration has eliminated thousands of jobs at the Social Security Administration, leading to complaints about long call wait times.

Karl Feiste winced to see his investments fall 20% in the days after Trump announced his tariffs, but he said, so far, his losses are only on paper.

“If that turns around, then I can still continue to do what I’ve been doing,” said Feiste, a Vietnam War veteran who voted for Harris. “But I’m not planning on buying a car. I’m not planning on moving. I’m not planning on taking extravagant vacations. I’m wondering what’s going to happen to the market because that basically dictates what leisure money I have.”

He worries his Social Security checks, which make up half his income, could eventually fall victim to Trump’s aggressive government cost-cutting.

“That smarts," Feiste said. “Because I can’t live if he takes my Social Security.”

Trump carried Arizona voters who were age 65 or older, winning 52% of this group compared with Harris’ 47%, broadly in line with his national margin among seniors, according to AP VoteCast, an extensive survey of voters and nonvoters that aims to tell the story behind election results.

Older Arizona voters were less likely than voters overall to consider “the economy and jobs” the most important issue facing the country, and they were more likely to consider immigration the top problem. About 3 in 10 seniors said the economy was the biggest problem, compared with about 4 in 10 Arizona voters overall.

Hans Vinge, 62, took a prime golf cart parking spot during a grocery store run one recent morning. A former Republican disillusioned by the party’s ideological shift under Trump, he thinks the president is doing too much, too fast, with unrealistic expectations for what his tariffs can accomplish.

“We’re not ready right now. These companies aren’t going to come from offshore into America,” Vinge said. “It’s going to take 10, 15 years to get these companies in to Americanize everything, which is great. But it’s just it’s too disruptive right now.”

Vinge, who is retired from the Air Force and splits his time between North Dakota and Arizona, said it’s too stressful to follow the news day to day, but it’s hard to avoid. When he last peeked at the balance of his retirement account, it had fallen $23,000 in one week, he said.

“It’s disappointing to see something that’s been doing well for you,” Vinge said. “I wish I would’ve invested more in gold.”

Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed.

The Latest: Trump administration asks Supreme Court to strip protections from Venezuelan migrants

2025-05-02 20:39 Last Updated At：20:42

The White House is planning on Friday to unveil President Donald Trump’s 2026 budget, a sweeping framework that's expected to propose steep reductions, if not a wholesale zeroing out, of various federal programs as part of his administration’s priorities.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has asked the Supreme Court to strip temporary legal protections from 350,000 Venezuelans, potentially exposing them to being deported.

Here's the latest:

“We are going to be taking away Harvard’s Tax Exempt Status,” he wrote on his social media site Friday morning. “It’s what they deserve!”

Trump and his White House have repeatedly gone after Harvard. In addition to threatening its tax-exempt status, the administration has halted more than $2 billion in grants to Harvard and wants to block the school from being able to enroll international students.

The detailed Army plans for a potential military parade on Trump’s birthday in June call for more than 6,600 soldiers, at least 150 vehicles, 50 helicopters, seven bands and possibly a couple thousand civilians, The Associated Press has learned.

The planning documents, obtained by the AP, are dated April 29 and 30 and have not been publicly released. They represent the Army’s most recent blueprint for its long-planned 250th anniversary festival on the National Mall and the newly added element — a large military parade that Trump has long wanted but is still being discussed.

The Army anniversary just happens to coincide with Trump’s 79th birthday on June 14.

While the slides do not include any price estimates, it would likely cost tens of millions of dollars to put on a parade of that size.

▶ Read more about the Army’s military parade plans

As Trump faces significant pushback from federal judges, a new poll shows U.S. adults are more likely to believe the president is the one overstepping his power rather than the courts -- although Republicans largely think the opposite.

According to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, about half of Americans say the president has “too much” power in the way government operates these days. On the other hand, Americans are more likely to believe the federal courts have an appropriate amount of authority. Only about 3 in 10 U.S. adults say that federal judges have “too much” power.

Republicans see it the other way: Roughly half say the federal judiciary has too much power, and only about 2 in 10 say the president does.

▶ Read more about the latest AP-NORC poll

When the Justice Department lifted a school desegregation order in Louisiana this week, officials called its continued existence a “historical wrong” and suggested that others dating to the Civil Rights Movement should be reconsidered.

The end of the 1966 legal agreement with Plaquemines Parish schools announced Tuesday shows the Trump administration is “getting America refocused on our bright future,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon said.

Inside the Justice Department, officials appointed by Trump have expressed a desire to withdraw from other desegregation orders they see as an unnecessary burden on schools, according to a person familiar with the issue who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

Dozens of school districts across the South remain under court-enforced agreements dictating steps to work toward integration, decades after the Supreme Court struck down racial segregation in education. Some see the court orders’ endurance as a sign the government never eradicated segregation, while officials in Louisiana and at some schools see the orders as bygone relics that should be wiped away.

▶ Read more about the end to the desegregation order

— Collin Binkley

Trump on Thursday signed an executive order aiming to slash public subsidies to PBS and NPR as he alleged “bias” in the broadcasters’ reporting.

The order instructs the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and other federal agencies “to cease Federal funding for NPR and PBS” and further requires that that they work to root out indirect sources of public financing for the news organizations. The White House, in a social media posting announcing the signing, said the outlets “receive millions from taxpayers to spread radical, woke propaganda disguised as ‘news.’”

It’s the latest move by Trump and his administration to utilize federal powers to control or hamstring institutions whose actions or viewpoints he disagrees with. Since taking office, Trump has ousted leaders, placed staff on administrative leave and cut off hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to artists, libraries, museums, theaters and others, through takeovers of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

▶ Read more about the executive order

Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only longstanding policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch.

Trump’s appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national security adviser is the first major leadership shake-up of the nascent administration, but Waltz’s removal had been rumored for weeks — ever since he created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the conversation where top national security officials shared sensitive military plans.

So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America’s top diplomat, Rubio now becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of state and national security adviser for two years under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford in the 1970s.

▶ Read more about Rubio’s new role

The Justice Department asked the high court to put on hold a ruling from a federal judge in San Francisco that kept in place Temporary Protected Status for the Venezuelans that would have otherwise expired last month.

The status allows people already in the United States to live and work legally because their native countries are deemed unsafe for return due to natural disaster or civil strife.

A federal appeals court had earlier rejected the administration’s request.

Trump’s administration has moved aggressively to withdraw various protections that have allowed immigrants to remain in the country, including ending TPS for a total of 600,000 Venezuelans and 500,000 Haitians. TPS is granted in 18-month increments.

The emergency appeal to the high court came the same day a federal judge in Texas ruled illegal the administration’s efforts to deport Venezuelans under an 18th-century wartime law. The cases are not related.

▶ Read more about the Trump administration’s request