FBI Report Says White Chicago Cops Coerced Confessions of Englewood Four

Innocence Project

A Cook County prosecutor admitted that police fed information about a 1994 rape and murder to four men who were coerced into confessing to the crime, according to a report conducted by the FBI.

Michael Saunders, Vincent Thames, Harold Richardson and Terrill Swift—otherwise known as the “Englewood Four”—were convicted as teenagers and served nearly 16 years each for the crime before DNA testing of evidence found on the victim matched to a man with previous sexual assault convictions. A judge exonerated the four men in 2011.

After the exoneration, federal authorities launched a civil rights investigation into the allegations of misconduct by police and prosecutors. During that investigation, Terence Johnson, one of the prosecutors who helped convict the four men, told an FBI agent that police “coached and fed” them details about the crime and forced the teens to sign written confessions, according to court filings by lawyers for the Englewood Four. Johnson also said that the detectives allegedly conspired to lie to cover up their misconduct, but that he and another prosecutor chose not to divulge that information to their supervisor, according to the Englewood Four’s attorneys, reports the Chicago Tribune.

An attorney for Johnson told the Tribune that a jury would have to decide whether the report, which is not yet available to the public, supports the allegations that the Englewood Four were framed.

The Innocence Project helped to exonerate Saunders of the 1984 crime. Richardson was represented by the Exoneration Project of the University of Chicago Law School; Swift was represented by the Center on Wrongful Convictions of Youth and Thames was represented by Stuart Chanen and Hank Turner of the Valorem Law Group.

White Sheriff in Texas county where Sandra Bland died re-elected

Final Call

Voters in a Houston-area county that drew scrutiny when a Black motorist was found dead in jail after a contentious traffic stop will keep their sheriff.

Unofficial election results show Republican Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith won a third term Nov. 8. Democrat Cedric Watson failed in his bid to become the county’s first Black sheriff.

Sandra Bland was pulled over in July 2015 by a Texas trooper in a videotaped stop, which led her to be charged with assaulting a public servant. Days later, she was found hanged in her cell. An autopsy determined Ms. Bland killed herself.

Mr. Watson said Nov. 9 that he believes the investigation and subsequent protests related to Bland’s death did sway some voters in his favor, but not enough. He cited low minority voter turnout, and noted that fewer than 1,500 of the more than 6,500 full-time students at Prairie View A&M University a historically Black university voted in Waller County. [MORE]

Top FBI lawyer argues against requiring warrant for data that tracks people's location

The Intercept

IF LAW ENFORCEMENT was forced to get a warrant to obtain information about a suspect’s whereabouts from the phone providers, it would be “crippling,” according to James Baker, general counsel at the FBI.

“I don’t know how we would handle that,” said Baker, speaking on a panel at the American Bar Association’s annual conference on national security law in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday. The executive branch would suffer from “a huge amount of uncertainty and confusion while we are doing investigations.”

The debate over protection afforded to location information launched several years ago and is likely to make its way to the Supreme Court regardless of the new administration.

Several decades ago when law enforcement first began approaching the major telecoms for information about suspects, the law operated under a central theory known as the third party doctrine. According to this theory, data voluntarily given to a company can be handed over to law enforcement without a warrant, because users have “no reasonable expectation of privacy” once the companies have the data. Investigators have used this doctrine to obtain information about where people have been, who they’ve been talking to, and what websites they’ve been browsing.

“It’s the position of the U.S. government,” Baker said. “We’re exercising those authorities.”

While those authorities may have seemed simple when cell phones contained little more than contacts and billing information — that’s no longer the case. Phones are now constantly pinging cellphone towers — tracking location “every six minutes,” which provides “robust information about you, as good as if not better than the contents of communications,” argued Magistrate Judge James Orenstein, another member of the panel. Orenstein, who serves in the Eastern District of New York, made waves in February when he ruled against the FBI, which was attempting to compel Apple to decrypt information on a suspect’s phone. [MORE]

Security Firm Says Your call logs get sent to Apple’s servers whenever iCloud is on

The Intercept

APPLE EMERGED AS a guardian of user privacy this year after fighting FBI demands to help crack into San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook’s iPhone. The company has gone to great lengths to secure customer data in recent years, by implementing better encryption for all phones and refusing to undermine that encryption.

But private information still escapes from Apple products under some circumstances. The latest involves the company’s online syncing service iCloud.

Russian digital forensics firm Elcomsoft has found that Apple’s mobile devices automatically send a user’s call history to the company’s servers if iCloud is enabled — but the data gets uploaded in many instances without user choice or notification.

“You only need to have iCloud itself enabled” for the data to be sent, said Vladimir Katalov, CEO of Elcomsoft.

The logs surreptitiously uploaded to Apple contain a list of all calls made and received on an iOS device, complete with phone numbers, dates and times, and duration. They also include missed and bypassed calls. Elcomsoft said Apple retains the data in a user’s iCloud account for up to four months, providing a boon to law enforcement who may not be able to obtain the data either from the user’s phone, if it’s encrypted with an unbreakable passcode, or from the carrier. Although large carriers in the U.S. retain call logs for a year or more, this may not be the case with carrier outside the US.

It’s not just regular call logs that get sent to Apple’s servers. FaceTime, which is used to make audio and video calls on iOS devices, also syncs call history to iCloud automatically, according to Elcomsoft. The company believes syncing of both regular calls and FaceTime call logs goes back to at least iOS 8.2, which Apple released in March 2015. [MORE]

Trump’s FEMA to Train Local Police for “Field Force” Crackdowns

Unicorn Riot

Unicorn Riot has obtained a federal training manual, Field Force Operations, from the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s Center for Domestic Preparedness (CDP). The federal government uses this document to train local law enforcement in techniques for quelling protests. It was acquired during our reporting on direct actions against the Dakota Access Pipeline when we filed a records request to the North Dakota Department of Corrections.

An email from the cache released in response to our request shows a copy of this course being forwarded to state correctional employees, presumably in an attempt to bring their personnel up to speed with crowd control techniques after the onset of #NoDAPL protests earlier this year. The manual appears to be very recently revised, having been updated with references to Occupy Seattle “anarchist” protests and the Ferguson crackdowns.

A news clip from 2014 shows Alabama State Troopers practicing crowd control maneuvers as part of the Center for Domestic Preparedness Field Force Training. This FEMA / CDP Field Force Operations manual we are releasing is part of the curriculum for the same training. In the video below, a retired police officer states:

“When they deal with large scale events and crowd management, they have to learn to do work together as a team, very disciplined. So we run it very para-military, they learn to follow strict orders of command and control.” – Thomas Johnstone, Retired Law Enforcement Officer

The 135-page guide has eight sections, covering “Mass Arrest“, “Team Tactics“, “Protester Tactics“, “Crowd Dynamics“, “Riot Control Equipment” and “Riot Control Agents and Less Lethal Munitions“. An appendix has lists of standardized riot control weapons, now commonly found in local police departments across the United States.

This manual summarizes tactics often spotted in recent years, as multi-jurisdiction task forces have utilized these approaches to reassert physical control over restive American communities. During campaign season, President-elect Donald Trump made it clear he wanted to execute policies involving millions of deportations, the cancellation of federal abortion rights, nationwide “stop and frisk” and many other proposals.

After the election Unicorn Riot covered large protests directed against issues like these in Denver, Minneapolis and St. Paul. Activist networks should expect similar tactics against many US communities in 2017 as they resist such policies.

Trump characterized recent protest crowds on Twitter as “professional protesters, incited by the media, are protesting.” The label of “professional protester” is actually formalized in this FEMA training document. In Module 6, FEMA trains local police to believe that “professional protesters” are not like “everyday citizen” or “anarchist” protesters, and take action accordingly.

Module 1 covers pacification strategies to deflect direct goals of protest actions, including:

• Avoid donning police hard gear as a first step. Also avoid the appearance of militarization of law enforcement. [emphasis added]
• Coordinate with demonstration organizers prior to an event to reinforce law enforcement’s role as facilitators rather than confronters
• Isolate, arrest, and remove law violators from a crowd as quickly as possible
• Mutual-aid agencies should receive proper training prior to deployment to the field (Police Executive Research Forum, 2011, p. 34).

A critical fact of the demise of 2011’s Occupy camps was that nationwide police chiefs used Police Executive Research Forum (PERF) conference calls to plan the final wave of raids. PERF here, provides FEMA the imperative for preparing more multi-jurisdiction forces to control the population. PERF’s 2011 “Managing Major Events” guide is heavily referenced. (See more OWS crackdown docs)

Module 1′s Annex A. references a lot of previous protests in detail, including the 2008 Republican National Convention. [MORE]

Trump's pick for CIA, Mike Pompeo, supports virtually no legal barriers to having the NSA spy on Americans

The Intercept

PRESIDENT OBAMA INDICATED on Friday that he won’t pardon NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden, even as President-elect Donald Trump announced his pick to run the CIA: Kansas congressman Mike Pompeo, who has called for “the traitor Edward Snowden” to be executed.

Pompeo has supported nearly unfettered NSA surveillance, has blamed Muslim leaders for condoning terror, and is one of the most hyperbolic members of Congress when it comes to describing the Islamic State, which he has called “an existential threat to America” and “the most lethal and powerful terrorist group ever to have existed.”

In an interview with Obama published on Friday, German newspaper Der Spiegel asked: “Are you going to pardon Edward Snowden?” Obama replied: “I can’t pardon somebody who hasn’t gone before a court and presented themselves, so that’s not something that I would comment on at this point.”

But P.S. Ruckman, editor of the Pardon Power blog said Obama is wrong to suggest he couldn’t pardon Snowden if he wanted to. Ruckman noted that Obama has previously only granted pardons and commutations to people who have already been convicted. “I just think what he may have better said is: ‘I prefer that he present himself to a court and then we’ll talk turkey.’ But technically in terms of the Constitution, there are no restrictions at all.”

The operative Supreme Court ruling, from 1886, states that “The power of pardon conferred by the Constitution upon the President is unlimited except in cases of impeachment. It extends to every offence known to the law, and may be exercised at any time after its commission, either before legal proceedings are taken or during their pendency, or after conviction and judgment. The power is not subject to legislative control.”

Obama said that although Snowden “raised some legitimate concerns,” he “did not follow the procedures and practices of our intelligence community.”

Obama also suggested that the debate is between people holding two extremist positions: people who “think we can take a 100-percent absolutist approach to protecting privacy” and “those who think that security is the only thing and don’t care about privacy.”

Very few people actually occupy either extreme. But Pompeo, a three-term congressman and former Army officer, is about as close as it comes to the latter.

In a 2014 letter, Pompeo accused Snowden of “intentional distortion of truth that he and his media enablers have engaged in.” Pompeo supports virtually no legal barriers to having the NSA spy on Americans, and has alarmed civil liberties advocates with many of the positions he has taken while serving on the House Intelligence Committee. Not only has he argued that the NSA should resume its phone records program, he has called on Congress to “pass a law re-establishing collection of all metadata, and combining it with publicly available financial and lifestyle information into a comprehensive, searchable database.” [MORE]

More Mexicans Leaving Than Coming to the U.S.

Pew Research Center

More Mexican immigrants have returned to Mexico from the U.S. than have migrated here since the end of the Great Recession, according to a new Pew Research Center analysis of newly available government data from both countries. The same data sources also show the overall flow of Mexican immigrants between the two countries is at its smallest since the 1990s, mostly due to a drop in the number of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S.

From 2009 to 2014, 1 million Mexicans and their families (including U.S.-born children) left the U.S. for Mexico, according to data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics (ENADID). U.S. census data for the same period show an estimated 870,000 Mexican nationals left Mexico to come to the U.S., a smaller number than the flow of families from the U.S. to Mexico.

Measuring migration flows between Mexico and the U.S. is challenging because there are no official counts of how many Mexican immigrants enter and leave the U.S. each year. This report uses the best available government data from both countries to estimate the size of these flows. The Mexican data sources — a national household survey, and two national censuses — asked comparable questions about household members’ migration to and from Mexico over the five years previous to each survey or census date. In addition, estimates of Mexican migration to the U.S. come from U.S. Census Bureau data, adjusted for undercount, on the number of Mexican immigrants who live in the U.S. (See text box below for more details.)

Calculating the Flow from the U.S. to Mexico

To calculate estimates of how many people left the U.S. for Mexico, this report uses data from the 2014 Mexican National Survey of Demographic Dynamics, or ENADID and the 2010 and 2000 Mexican decennial censuses. Each asked all respondents where they had been living five years prior to the date when the survey or census was taken. The answers to this question provide an estimated count of the number of people who moved from the U.S. to Mexico during the five years prior to the survey date. A separate question targets more recent emigrants—people who left Mexico. It asks whether anyone from the household had left for another country during the previous five years; if so, additional questions are asked about whether and when that person or people came back and their reasons for returning to Mexico.

To calculate estimates of how many Mexicans left Mexico for the U.S., this report also uses U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (2005-2013) and the Current Population Survey (2000-2014), both adjusted for undercount, which ask immigrants living the U.S. their country of birth and the year of their arrival in the U.S.

Mexico is the largest birth country among the U.S. foreign-born population – 28% of all U.S. immigrants came from there in 2013. Mexico also is the largest source of U.S. unauthorized immigrants (Passel and Cohn, 2014).

The decline in the flow of Mexican immigrants to the U.S. is due to several reasons (Passel et al, 2012). The slow recovery of the U.S. economy after the Great Recession may have made the U.S. less attractive to potential Mexican migrants and may have pushed out some Mexican immigrants as the U.S. job market deteriorated.

In addition, stricter enforcement of U.S. immigration laws, particularly at the U.S.-Mexico border (Rosenblum and Meissner, 2014), may have contributed to the reduction of Mexican immigrants coming to the U.S. in recent years. According to one indicator, U.S. border apprehensions of Mexicans have fallen sharply, to just 230,000 in fiscal year 2014 – a level not seen since 1971 (Krogstad and Passel, 2014). At the same time, increased enforcement in the U.S. has led to an increase in the number of Mexican immigrants who have been deported from the U.S. since 2005 (U.S. Department of Homeland Security, 2014).

A majority of the 1 million who left the U.S. for Mexico between 2009 and 2014 left of their own accord, according to the Mexican government’s ENADID survey data. The Mexican survey also showed that six in ten (61%) return migrants – those who reported they had been living in the U.S. five years earlier but as of 2014 were back in Mexico – cited family reunification as the main reason for their return. By comparison, 14% of Mexico’s return migrants said the reason for their return was deportation from the U.S. [MORE]

M.A.M.O.N. - Latinos VS. Donald Trump short film cortometraje

CNN Uses Copyright To Block Viral Clip Of Van Jones' Impassioned Statement

Tech Dirt

This election year may have been something of a clusterfuck for just about everyone... but it was damn good for CNN. The cable news channel that was generally filled with some of the most idiotic and meaningless banter made out like a bandit, apparently bringing in a billion dollars in profit by being the country's official organ player in a grand circus of political entertainment. The hiring of direct partisans on both sides, the failure to do very much actual deep looking at anything, and the complete pointlessness of whatever a Wolf Blitzer is all seemed to delight in turning anything about issues into horse race he said/she said soundbites. 

And now it's being an annoying copyright asshole too. 

As you may have heard, on election night, as the results rolled in, Clinton surrogate Van Jones made a very impassioned speech about the very real fear that he and many others felt about the results. It's worth watching. [MORE]

Make America White Again: Meet Possible Members Of Trump’s Cabinet

BreakingNewsBlack

Here is a list of some of the possible Executive Branch appointments being touted for President-elect Donald Trump‘s administration.

Meet Team Trump:

• Newt Gingrich – Secretary of State
• Rudy Giuliani – Attorney General
• Reince Priebus – Chief of Staff
• Chris Christie – Commerce Secretary
• Jeff Sessions – Defense Secretary
• Michael Flynn – National Security Adviser
• Steven Mnuchin – Treasury Secretary

Will Trump's Immigration Crackdown Be a "Cash Machine" for Military & Private Prison Contractors?

Democracy Now

By now, global markets have rebounded after plummeting upon the news of Trump’s victory. Stocks of some companies surged, including the largest private prison contractor, Corrections Corporation of America—which recently changed its name to CoreCivic—whose shares are up 43 percent since Trump’s victory. GEO Group, another private prison contractor, is up 21 percent. Meanwhile, stocks also surged for many military contractors, including Raytheon, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Boeing. We speak with William Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, and Seth Freed Wessler, reporter with The Investigative Fund who has been following private detention centers.

CNN’s Final Humiliation: Corey Lewandowski Quits To Work For Trump

Media Matters

Corey Lewandowski, former campaign manager for President-elect Donald Trump turned professional Trump propagandist for CNN, has resigned from the network amid reports that he is seeking a job in the new administration. His resignation just days after Trump’s win underlines the farcical nature of his employment as a “political commentator” for CNN during the election. And the nature of his exit -- proactively resigning to potentially go back to officially working for Trump rather than being fired by CNN for obvious ethical reasons -- should humiliate the network.

CNN hired Lewandowski shortly after he was fired by the campaign in June. His hiring was immediately and widely criticized, both due to his history of open hostility toward -- and even physical altercations with -- the press, and the fact that he was likely prevented from criticizing Trump due to a non-disparagement agreement. The New York Times reported Friday that Lewandowski “has been frequently spotted this week at Trump Tower in Manhattan, chatting with senior aides and attending meetings,” and that he is seeking a senior adviser role in the administration and is in consideration for a leadership role with the Republican National Committee.

CNN president Jeff Zucker repeatedly defended Lewandowski’s hiring, even as it became clear that he was still drawing large “severance” checks from the campaign, advising Trump on strategy, helping to prep him for the debates, and flying on the candidate’s plane while working for the network.

Zucker’s defense for hiring Lewandowski is that he provided needed pro-Trump balance to CNN’s airwaves while supposedly being able to offer expert information from someone who had been inside the campaign apparatus. But CNN’s airwaves were already filled with Trump apologists, and Lewandowski’s reported non-disclosure agreement essentially prevented him from sharing any unique insight into the campaign. So what CNN viewers got instead was a lot of dishonest shilling on Trump’s behalf -- and given the nature of Trump’s campaign, there was no shortage of scandals for Lewandowski to spin to CNN’s audience.

When video of Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women emerged in October, Lewandowski downplayed the seriousness of the comments by telling CNN viewers that “we’re not electing a Sunday School teacher” and stressing Trump’s leadership ability. (In a separate appearance a few days later, Lewandowski announced that “nobody cares” about Trump’s comments before pivoting to talking about Hillary Clinton’s emails.)

When women came forward alleging that Trump had assaulted them, Lewandowski cast doubt on the veracity of the claims, suggesting it was suspicious that they had waited until so close to the election to come forward.

When The New York Times published tax documents suggesting Trump had been able to avoid paying federal income tax for years, Lewandowski tried to obscure the nature of the report by accusing the Times of a “felony” for publishing its article and encouraging the candidate to sue the paper “into oblivion.”

When a fellow panelist questioned Trump's years-long racist crusade questioning President Obama’s birthplace, Lewandowski questioned (to the horror of dozens of journalists) why Obama hadn’t released his college records, asking, “Did he get in as a U.S. citizen, or was he brought into Harvard University as a citizen who wasn't from this country?”

There are plenty of other lowlights from Lewandowski's CNN tenure, but you get the idea.

Lewandowski’s resignation essentially confirms what was already an open secret: he never really stopped working for Trump -- his role just changed. Media Matters had for months been calling for CNN to cut ties with Lewandowski over ethical concerns, but now that he’s resigned, CNN can’t even salvage a small bit of journalistic responsibility over the Lewandowski debacle.

In effect, CNN just paid Trump’s close ally for five months to spin on Trump’s behalf while auditioning for a job in the Trump administration. The network’s journalists should be embarrassed that their executives had so little regard for CNN’s credibility.

CA grants voting rights to people serving felony sentences in jail

Sentencing Project

Despite opposition from some law enforcement officials, Governor Jerry Brown signed a bill into law that will restore voting rights to as many as 50,000 people serving felony sentences in county jails. The legislation is an outgrowth of the state’s Realignment policy, which has diverted many individuals convicted of non-violent felonies from incarceration in state prison to local jails or community supervision. The bill also reaffirms the right for people with felony convictions on probation to vote. Some Republican lawmakers opposed the bill, saying it will compromise the integrity of elections and reward people for bad behavior. Assemblywoman Shirley Brown (D-San Diego), one of the authors of AB2466, said civic participation is critical to reducing recidivism, and this bill will “send a message to the nation that California will not stand for discrimination in voting.” The law goes into effect in 2017.

Federal lawsuit seeks to overturn voting ban for people in Alabama with felony convictions

The Greater Birmingham Ministries and 10 Alabamians with felony convictions filed a lawsuit in federal court, claiming the state’s felony disenfranchisement law is an unconstitutional infringement on the right to vote, racist in its origins, disproportionately impacts people of color, and unfairly punishes people after they have completed their sentence. Alabama law strips people of their right to vote if they commit a “felony involving moral turpitude,” but the state doesn’t provide a definitive list of such felonies. The decision of who gets to vote varies from county to county and is essentially left up to the local registrars. In 1985, the U.S. Supreme Court considered a case of two individuals barred from voting because of misdemeanor convictions involving moral turpitude. The Court ruled unanimously that the arbitrary language of “moral turpitude” was purposely included in the state Constitution as a way to keep blacks from voting. However, a decade after the ruling, the Alabama legislature voted to put the category of moral turpitude back into the Constitution, but only relating to felony offenses.

Alabamians convicted of certain felony convictions can apply to have their voting rights restored after they have completed their prison, parole and probation sentence and have paid all fines and fees associated with their case. Some of the plaintiffs in the suit have applied to have their voting rights restored, while others cannot afford to pay all the fines or have convictions that make them ineligible for restoration. Earlier this year, Republican Governor Robert Bentley signed legislation to speed up the voting rights restoration process, but the process remains “overly burdensome,” the lawsuit argues.

Secretary of state flags thousand of voters in Arkansas for removal from voting polls

In June 2016, Secretary of State Mark Martin’s office sent a faulty list of people to be removed from voting polls due to felony convictions to every county clerk’s office in the state. The list contained a large number of people who had previously had their voting rights restored, and another 4,000 voters who had never been convicted of a felony. Secretary Martin’s office sent a letter in July to the county offices, acknowledging that there may be potential errors in the data, and that it was the responsibility of the county offices to “proceed with caution” before removing voters. However, The Arkansas Times reported that the response to the faulty data has varied drastically from county to county. “Some clerks have reinstated every canceled registration and are now carefully vetting every case. Others, though, have automatically canceled everyone on their list and simply plan to reinstate voters on a case-by-case basis whenever individuals complain of the issue.” It is unclear how many eligible voters will be barred from voting in the upcoming election.

Virginia Supreme Court clears path for governor to continue restoring voting rights

In a unanimous vote, the Supreme Court of Virginia recently rejected a request from state Republicans to find Governor Terry McAuliffe in contempt of court over his ongoing efforts to restore voting rights to people who have completed their felony sentences. In July, the Supreme Court agreed with Republican leadership that Gov. McAuliffe had exceeded his authority under the state Constitution when he restored voting rights en masse to over 200,000 people instead of individually. Republicans then took Gov. McAuliffe back to court after he announced that he had individually restored voting rights to 13,000 people, and stated he would continue to similarly restore voting rights to the rest of the 200,000 Virginians who have completed their felony sentence. “It is my hope that the court’s validation of the process we are using will convince Republicans to drop their divisive efforts to prevent Virginians from regaining their voting rights and focus their energy and resources on making Virginia a better place to live for the people who elected all of us to lead,” said Gov. McAuliffe.

Senate Majority Leader Thomas K. Norment Jr., one of the Republicans who sued Gov. McAuliffe, recently proposed a constitutional amendment to automatically restore voting rights to people convicted of nonviolent felony offenses who have finished their sentences. The amendment would strip the governor’s power to restore rights, meaning that people convicted of violent felony offenses would no longer have a path to regain their voting rights. Some Democratic lawmakers have also proposed a constitutional amendment to completely end all forms of the state’s felony disenfranchisement law, which would align Virginia with Maine and Vermont as the only states that have no restrictions on voting for people in prison.

In U.S., 84% Accept Trump as Legitimate President [same as bush]

Gallup

Eighty-four percent of Americans accept Donald Trump as the legitimate president, about the same percentage who accepted George W. Bush as legitimate in December 2000.

Trump’s Victory Was Built on Unique Coalition of Racist Voters

NY Times

Donald J. Trump’s America flowered through the old union strongholds of the Midwest, along rivers and rail lines that once moved coal from southern Ohio and the hollows of West Virginia to the smelters of Pennsylvania.

It flowed south along the Mississippi River, through the rural Iowa counties that gave Barack Obama more votes than any Democrat in decades, and to the Northeast, through a corner of Connecticut and deep into Maine.

And it extended through the suburbs of Cleveland and Minneapolis, of Manchester, N.H., and the sprawl north of Tampa, Fla., where middle-class white voters chose Mr. Trump over Hillary Clinton.

One of the biggest upsets in American political history was built on a coalition of white voters unlike that of any other previous Republican candidate, according to election results and interviews with voters and demographic experts.

Mr. Trump’s coalition comprised not just staunchly conservative Republicans in the South and West. They were joined by millions of voters in the onetime heartlands of 20th-century liberal populism — the Upper and Lower Midwest — where white Americans without a college degree voted decisively to reject the more diverse, educated and cosmopolitan Democratic Party of the 21st century, making Republicans the country’s dominant political party at every level of government. [MORE]