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    "original_url": "https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/09\/22\/us\/politics\/americans-distrust-election.html?emc=edit_nn_20260922&nl=the-morning&segment_id=226865",
    "parsed_content": "The Race for CongressPrimary Season TakeawaysVoting by MailLatest PollsCompetitive RacesSeat PickupsAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTSupported bySKIP ADVERTISEMENTNews Analysis\u2018I Was Sold a Bill of Goods\u2019: Americans and the Distrust ElectionAmericans have a pervasive sense they are being lied to. That has created an unpredictability in politics unseen since Donald Trump said he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without losing voters.Listen \u00b7 11:02 min Share full articleThe fight against a data center in Archbald, Pa., has united Democrats and Republicans, and turned voters against leaders in both parties.Credit...Lauren Lancaster for The New York TimesBy Sabrina TavernisePhotographs by Lauren LancasterSabrina Tavernise has been talking to Americans about their lives for months. Distrust kept coming up.Sept. 22, 2026, 5:01 a.m. ETSee more of our coverage in your search results.Encuentra m\u00e1s de nuestra cobertura en los resultados de b\u00fasqueda. Add The New York Times on GoogleAgrega The New York Times en Google Call it the distrust election.For as much as Americans disagree these days, one common denominator runs through American life: a profound distrust of the institutions and industries that make the country run. Whether on data centers, chemicals in food, the Epstein files or the war in Iran, Americans across the political spectrum say they have the feeling that they are being lied to.\u201cI feel like I was sold a bill of goods,\u201d said Paul Carroll, 66, an insulation salesman in New Orleans whose anger at President Trump for starting a war when he said he wouldn\u2019t has gotten worse with the rise in diesel prices. \u201cThe goods I agreed to buy were nothing like what was delivered.\u201dIt\u2019s not just Republicans. Voter distrust is powering support for democratic socialists and other candidates on the left, while the Democratic establishment\u2019s early support for data center development in the critical swing states of Michigan and Pennsylvania is souring some voters there on their elected leaders.Phyliss Paone, 65, a retired utility company worker in Archbald, Pa., said she was a lifelong Democrat, but that she would not vote for Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s re-election because of what she described as his political about-face on a proposed data center in her town.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cI don\u2019t trust him now,\u201d she said. \u201cHe\u2019s just saying what he needs to get votes.\u201dAs for the data center developers, \u201cthey just lie to the people because they think we don\u2019t know anything,\u201d she said.ImagePhyliss Paone, a retired utility company worker in Archbald, Pa., said she was a lifelong Democrat, but that she would not vote for Gov. Josh Shapiro\u2019s re-election because of what she described as his political about-face on a proposed data center in her town. Political scientists and sociologists have said for decades that a healthy society needs trust, both in fellow citizens and in political institutions. It greases the wheels of collective action and political change. Without it, people do not cooperate with each other or with the authorities. That can lead to political paralysis.In the United States, trust in government topped 70 percent in the 1950s, during the post-World War II economic boom, according to the Pew Research Center. It declined dramatically in the following decades during the tumult of the civil rights movement, the Vietnam War and Watergate.It has fallen more in recent years, including during the pandemic in 2020. These days, outbreaks of food-borne intestinal diseases, airplane crashes and flight delays, the proliferation of Flock cameras and internet scams have Americans wondering if anyone has a hand on the rudder.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTPast wars were aired on television, with news conferences at the Pentagon and reporters embedded with troops. Not so with the war in Iran. The \u201cexistential threat\u201d of artificial intelligence is being aired by scientists and billionaire executives in language that is hardly accessible, while others, including Mr. Trump, tell voters to ignore it. People are dying of measles, public health officials say, though the health secretary, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., continues to cast doubts on that fact.A president who returned to the White House as Americans suffered through Covid-era inflation tells Americans \u201caffordability\u201d is a hoax as they experience sticker shock at the grocery store and the gas pump.Pew\u2019s most recent measurement, in September 2025, found that just 17 percent of Americans trusted the federal government.But the collapse in trust has also brought a new fluidity to the electorate \u2014 for the first time in the Trump era, our politics are suddenly, strangely, unpredictable. The less Americans trust the establishment, the bigger the opening for populists and outsiders.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTPerhaps most remarkably, Americans from warring political tribes are now joining forces to fight what they say is the bigger enemy \u2014 untrustworthy politicians working with wealthy industry.ImageThe Democratic establishment\u2019s early support for data center development in critical swing states like Pennsylvania is souring some Democratic voters on their elected leaders.Establishment politicians are feeling the heat. In Pennsylvania, Governor Shapiro told CBS News last month that the executive order he issued in August to restrain data centers was not politics, but instead the result of listening to constituents about how developers were \u201crunning roughshod.\u201d A spokeswoman said the governor came to Archbald, Ms. Paone\u2019s town, in May.The White House is also on the defensive. In a statement, White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers wrote, \u201cPresident Trump has been clear and consistent for decades: Iran can never have a nuclear weapon. President Trump remains committed to unleashing American energy dominance, cutting costs, and putting more money back in the pockets of hard-working American families.\u201dGet updates when new midterm election polls are added to our poll trackers. When new polling data drops we\u2019ll send an update straight to your inbox. Get it sent to your inbox.For more than a decade, Mr. Trump\u2019s brand of outsider politics has dominated precisely because he tapped into voter distrust. The durability of his approval among Republican voters seemed to ratify his brag that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue without denting his popularity.But that seems to be changing, particularly on the issue that voters care most about: the economy. In a poll released last week by The New York Times and Siena College, 60 percent of likely white voters without a college degree \u2014 Mr. Trump\u2019s core base \u2014 disapproved of his performance on the cost of living. Among Republicans overall, just 29 percent said the economy was better than it had been a year ago, down from 72 percent in January.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT\u201cWe drank the Kool-Aid, and we were wrong,\u201d said Ryan Wagner, 41, a conservative in northern Michigan who was once an enthusiastic supporter of the president.Mr. Wagner, a manager with a home restoration company, has had a slow-motion realization that Mr. Trump has been lying to Americans, he said.It began last year with the investigation into the assassination of Charlie Kirk, which Mr. Wagner thought did not add up. It continued when Mr. Trump started a war. Now, Mr. Wagner said, when he hears Mr. Trump talk about how much food prices have gone down, \u201cmy freaking eye is twitching.\u201d\u201cI can\u2019t even listen to him talk anymore,\u201d he said.\u201cHow many times has he said the war is over, the strait is open?\u201d he asked, referring to the Strait of Hormuz. \u201cNo it\u2019s not, you big liar.\u201dMr. Wagner said he had taken down his American flag and considered the Republican Party mostly dead. He doesn\u2019t think he will vote in this election.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHis friend Jeff Sieting, the mayor of Kalkaska, Mich., where they both live, has turned away from Mr. Trump, too, after years of supporting him, even hanging a large banner in town during Mr. Trump\u2019s first term. For Mr. Sieting, 64, a general contractor, it was the Epstein files.\u201cWhen Trump said, \u2018Let\u2019s move on,\u2019 that pierced my heart,\u201d Mr. Sieting said. \u201cI was like, \u2018Are you kidding me?\u2019\u201dHe has even stopped watching Fox News, which he said he could no longer trust to tell the truth.\u201cIf you listen to the media, you\u2019ll hear that New York is in collapse, they\u2019re doing government grocery stores,\u201d he said. \u201cThe reality is, that is absolute bullshit.\u201dImage\u201cIt didn\u2019t take a whole long time for him to march to the same tune as establishment Republicans and Democrats,\u201d Brandon Bell, a veteran who works part time as a security guard, said of President Trump.Mr. Sieting said Mr. Trump\u2019s promise this month of $5,000 if Americans keep Republicans in power these midterms was \u201cthe most insulting, pathetic thing.\u201dAdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTHe said that he did not plan to vote for anyone at the state or federal level in November, and that he had many friends, staunch Trump supporters, who are not planning to vote either. He added: \u201cI full well expect the Democrats to sweep the midterms.\u201dFor many people interviewed, Mr. Trump had essentially become the establishment he once railed against.\u201cIt didn\u2019t take a whole long time for him to march to the same tune as establishment Republicans and Democrats,\u201d said Brandon Bell, a veteran who works part time as a security guard and is a township supervisor in Penn Forest Township, Pa. Mr. Bell, who is 30 and living with his parents, said he felt \u201chopeless\u201d about the economy and being able to start life on his own.Republicans and Democrats are \u201call part of the same system at this point,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s more about benefiting themselves and their donors.\u201dTrust is also at the heart of the data center issue, which has swept the country as technology companies spend hundreds of billions of dollars to build the centers. In Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, people said their opposition stemmed less from a fear of tech and more from a sense that they were being lied to by elected leaders who were at best too weak to stand up to or at worst in cahoots with wealthy industry.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTThe effect has been surprising: a growing mutual trust in one another against a common enemy.Image\u201cI no longer believe in either party. They both abandoned us,\u201d said Tamara Misewicz-Healey, 38, a mother of three, who has become a full-time force behind the 11,000-member Stop Archbald Data Centers Facebook group.Tamara Misewicz-Healey, 38, a mother of three in Pennsylvania, said she usually voted Democrat but otherwise was not politically active. Over the past year, she and her husband, Justin Healey, 36, have become a full-time force behind the 14,000-member Stop Archbald Data Centers Facebook group, doing things they never imagined, like starting a GoFundMe to pay for a lawyer to represent townspeople, and filing government right-to-know requests. She was so fed up with her state representative, a Democrat, that she began a write-in campaign to run against him.\u201cI\u2019m no longer a Democrat,\u201d she said. \u201cI no longer believe in either party. They both abandoned us.\u201dIn neighboring Carbon County, residents were so frustrated with their state representative, a Republican who ran unopposed in the May primary, that hundreds of people wrote in the name of Christian Bartulovich, a 37-year-old manager in the medical device industry and registered Republican, getting him the Democratic nomination for November.\u201cI am getting all these text messages saying, \u2018I\u2019ve never donated to a Republican in my life \u2014 I hope you win,\u2019\u201d Mr. Bartulovich said, speaking to the fluidity of 2026 politics.AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENTJeff Rechten\u2019s house in Bridgewater Township, Mich., is about a mile from a hyper-scale data center construction site. But as an employee of a cybersecurity firm, his distrust is different \u2014 less about being lied to and more about his industry\u2019s hubris. He said he believes the tech companies started out trying to develop A.I. safely, but \u201chave lost their way\u201d over time, with profits and competition crowding out caution.\u201cNow they are rushing toward the finish line without knowing what will happen when they get there,\u201d he said. \u201cAll they are doing is saying, \u2018trust us.\u2019\u201d AdvertisementSKIP ADVERTISEMENT",
    "published_at": "2026-09-22T09:01:33+00:00",
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    "ai_headline": "\u2018I Was Sold a Bill of Goods\u2019: Americans and the Distrust Election",
    "ai_simplified_title": "Americans Distrust Institutions, Fueling Unpredictable Politics",
    "ai_excerpt": "Americans across the political spectrum share a profound distrust of institutions and industries, leading to an unpredictable political landscape. This distrust is turning voters against established leaders and fostering new alliances against perceived common enemies.",
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