Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s killing plays into Shiite Islam’s reverence for martyrs, but not for all Iranians

A banner with the image of Ali Khamenei during a memorial vigil in Tehran, Iran. Majid Saeedi/Getty Images

Eric Lob, Florida International University

The day Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed, the Iranian government called for 40 days of public mourning in line with Shiite tradition. It also praised the supreme leader for his martyrdom – a concept considered sacred and significant in the Islamic Republic and Shiite Islam.

While some Iranians came out to commemorate Khamenei, others celebrated his demise. The scenes reflected the contradictions in how Khamenei was perceived: by some as a martyr, and by others as an oppressor.

Demonstrators mourn the death of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei outside the Israeli consulate in Istanbul, on March 1, 2026. AP Photo/Khalil Hamra

The theology of martyrdom

The roots of Shiite reverence for martyrdom date back centuries. After the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632, a dispute emerged over who would inherit the leadership of the Muslim community. On one side was the prophet’s senior companion and father-in-law, Abu Bakr. On the other was his cousin and son-in-law, Ali ibn Abi Talib, who became the first Shiite imam.

In 680, the Battle of Karbala took place in present-day Iraq between Hussain ibn Ali – the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and the third Shiite imam – and Yazid ibn Mu'awiya. Yazid was the second Umayyad caliph, which means deputy of God, and the ruler of the early Islamic empire.

Before the battle, negotiations had failed between Hussain and Yazid’s governor. Hussain refused to swear allegiance to Yazid, believing him to be unjust and not the rightful successor. In a 10-day battle that followed, most of Hussain’s army, including some of his closest companions and relatives, was slain. Hussain’s followers, who believed him to be the third Imam – after his father Ali and older brother Hasan ibn Ali – came to be called Shiites. Since then, martyrdom has held a central place among Shiites. They comprise the smaller of the two main branches of Islam, with Sunni being the larger one.

Iran has become the epicenter of Shiite Islam, which is the official state religion. Ninety to 95% of the population identify accordingly.

Every year on the 10th of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar and the same day as the Battle of Karbala, Shiite Muslims inside and outside of Iran observe Ashura and commemorate the slaying of Hussain by reenacting his death and performing self-flagellation, among other rituals.

Iranian political rhetoric

In Iran and other parts of the Muslim world, contemporary politics is often framed in this seventh-century language of moral resistance.

After the Islamic Republic of Iran was established under Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1979, martyrdom appeared as a central theme. This was particularly the case during and after the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted eight years in the 1980s and was perceived and portrayed as a holy war.

During the war, the Islamic Republic suffered hundreds of thousands of casualties. After Khomeini reluctantly accepted a United Nations-brokered ceasefire, he compared the decision to drinking a “poisoned chalice.” In other words, he considered the compromise a crushing defeat that contradicted his goal of overthrowing Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, even if it enabled the Iranian regime to survive.

After the war, public space in Iran was increasingly filled with revolutionary and religious symbols related to wartime sacrifice and martyrdom. They included street signs named after prominent people who died in the war, murals and posters of the fallen, and media programs and publications dedicated to the conflict – symbols which were still prominent when I visited Iran between 2009-2011.

The Islamic Republic’s Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs – Bonyad-e Shahid va Omur-e Ithargaran – provided services for veterans and families of the fallen in the war and other conflicts. Like other foundations under the purview of Khamenei, who succeeded Khomeini after his death in 1989, it also participated in profit-seeking activities.

It is against this backdrop that Khamenei’s actions leading up to the American and Israeli strikes on Feb. 28 that cost him his life must be seen.

During the three rounds of U.S.-Iran negotiations in Oman and Geneva before the current conflict, Khamenei refused to capitulate to President Donald Trump’s demands. They comprised curbing not only Iran’s nuclear enrichment, but also its missile program and support for its regional proxies. Khamenei directed his negotiators not to yield ground, particularly on those last two points, seen as red lines in Tehran – even as Trump amassed the most military assets in the region since the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

Authoritarianism, protests, polarization

Iranian demonstrators living in Cyprus attend a protest outside the presidential palace in Nicosia on Feb. 14, 2026. AP Photo/Petros Karadjias

For over three decades, Khamenei subjected Iranians to severe authoritarianism and repression, culminating in him ordering the security forces to shoot and kill thousands of Iranians during the protests in January 2026, not to mention those in previous years.

He deprived the families of deceased protesters from holding funerals for their loved ones. His regime also reportedly required them to pay for the ammunition that had been used to kill their relatives before receiving the body for burial.

And despite recurrent waves of protests – the January unrest followed similar waves in 2017-18, 2019-20 and 2022-23 – Khamenei refused to listen to the demands of demonstrators for political, economic and social change. The furthest he was willing to go was to make cosmetic concessions while ruthlessly repressing citizens.

He also refused to reform the system from within and placed the political elites who pushed him in that direction under house arrest or in prison.

During his almost 37-year rule, Khamenei accumulated massive power and wealth. As supreme leader, he commanded the armed forces, appointed the head of the judiciary, supervised the state media, and possessed a parallel body that vetted electoral candidates and vetoed parliamentary legislation.

Although Khamenei appeared austere in public, he held sizeable assets. Setad, a quasi-state organization under his direct control, was estimated to be worth US$95 billion as of 2013.

He continued support for regional proxies, such as Hamas and Hezbollah, while maintaining a confrontational rhetoric toward the U.S. and Israel. Since 2024, these actions led to Israeli and American intervention in Iran that brought death and destruction to the country, and ultimately the strikes that killed him. The strikes also killed some of his closest relatives, including his daughter, son-in-law, grandchild and daughter-in-law.

In the end, some Iranians will remember Khamenei as a martyr – someone who stood firmly by his principles and faced a more powerful enemy, even if it meant losing his life.

But others, now rejoicing in the streets, will remember him as an oppressor who put personal power and profit above the public interest.

Eric Lob, Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations, Florida International University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

How to prevent elections from being stolen − lessons from around the world for the US

Research has found that voter fraud is rare in the United States. AP Photo/Bryon Houlgrave

Shelley Inglis, Rutgers University

President Donald Trump in his State of the Union address on Feb. 24, 2026, doubled down on his false claims that the U.S. elections system is compromised. He asserted that “the cheating is rampant in our elections. It’s rampant.”

These pronouncements follow the January 2026 FBI seizure of 2020 ballots from Fulton County, Georgia, and the president’s recent call for the Republican Party to nationalize elections. The Trump administration is also suing 24 states and Washington, D.C., for voter lists to monitor voter registrations.

In his speech, Trump asked Republicans to pass the SAVE America Act. Approved by the House on Feb. 11, 2026, the measure would require that voters provide documentary proof of U.S. citizenship, effectively ending all online voter registration. “They want to cheat. They have cheated,” he said of Democrats.

These calls spread distrust in the U.S. electoral process, despite extensive evidence showing that voter fraud is rare, especially by noncitizens.

All this has led to speculation about how much further the Trump administration and Republican Party might go to tilt the 2026 midterm and 2028 presidential elections in their favor.

After decades of working internationally on democracy and peace-building, I know that efforts to undermine elections are not uncommon. Citizens of many affected countries have learned various techniques to help protect the integrity of their elections and democracy that may be helpful to Americans today.

International electoral assistance

Leaders, even in established democracies such as India, have used increasingly sophisticated and wide-ranging means to manipulate elections in their favor. Those means vary from legal changes that suppress votes to harassment and prosecution of the opposition, to promoting widespread disinformation campaigns.

These methods have evolved despite international efforts to counter rigged elections and improve election integrity. These countering efforts are called electoral assistance, and they support societies to develop electoral systems that reflect the will of the people and adhere to democratic principles.

Electoral assistance has been shown to strengthen transparency and election administration in countries such as Armenia and Mexico. It has also improved voter registration and education in countries such as Ghana and Colombia.

It’s mostly provided by international nonprofits, such as the National Democratic Institute and The Carter Center in the U.S. Multilateral organizations such as the United Nations also provide electoral assistance.

House Majority Leader Steve Scalise, R-La., speaks to reporters about the SAVE America Act alongside Republican leadership and supporters on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 11, 2026. AP Photo/Tom Brenner

Five international responses to electoral manipulation

Here are five areas of electoral assistance that have shown some success internationally.

Early warning and community resilience: Early warning efforts track threats of violence and intimidation against election officials, candidates and voters. They seek to mitigate risks and prepare for crises. This happens from the early stages of an election through election day in countries such as Sri Lanka and Liberia.

Law enforcement, civic groups and election officials usually undertake these efforts together. But where such direct cooperation with government authorities is not feasible, civic groups can help by undertaking risk assessments and tracking coercion and threats. They can also raise alarms with officials and the media.

Indicators, or established metrics, can track sophisticated coercion tactics such as the misuse of government funds for campaign purposes. They also can track vote buying, like civic groups in North Macedonia did during 2024 parliamentary and 2025 local elections.

For these efforts to be successful, it’s critical that networks of trusted leaders urge early action to put in place greater safeguards long before election day. Raising alarms and urging action was done successfully by religious leaders in Kenya during general elections in 2022.

Real-time disinformation and local media reaction: Real-time fact-checking and debunking of false or manipulative information has proven critical to election integrity in countries such as Mexico and South Africa.

A highly organized and fast-moving approach involving media, technology companies and authorities successfully countered disinformation to ensure a competitive democratic election in Brazil in 2022. A coalition of Brazilian media outlets, for example, fact-checked political claims and viral rumors during the election period, using innovative tools such as online apps.

Robust local media play a particularly important role. In the 2024 presidential election of Maia Sandu in Moldova, a new investigative newspaper uncovered a Russia-backed network that paid people to attend anti-Sandu rallies and to vote against the president. That outlet had received training by an expert nonprofit group. It also received free legal advice and human resource management that were critical to its effectiveness.

Neutrality, transparency and systems reform: Amid efforts to sow doubt in elections, increasing transparency and ethical standards can help build awareness and deepen trust.

Various tools, such as codes of conduct that detail ethical standards, can be formulated for candidates, media and businesses. This has been done in Nigeria and the Philippines.

International groups, including the the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, published model commitments for advancing genuine and credible elections in 2024, which have been used for preelection assessments in Bangladesh.

Additionally, major technology companies such as Google and Meta in 2024 helped draft the international Voluntary Election Guidelines for Technology Companies. Meta also helped target false content and deepfakes during Australia’s 2025 election.

The neutrality of election officials is critical to tackle distrust. In New Zealand, high levels of public trust in elections align with robust neutrality rules for public officials. The key is to develop public awareness of such commitments and how they can be useful to hold election officials, media and businesses accountable.

More profoundly, the design of the electoral system can also be linked to levels of public trust and polarization. New Zealand, South Africa and Northern Ireland, for example, reformed from winner-take-all elections to proportional representation elections to address deep internal divisions and dissatisfaction with unrepresentative results.

Broad-based mobilization and civic campaigns: Significant voter turnout that delivers large winning margins make efforts to manipulate results more difficult.

In Zambia, for example, a landslide victory for the opposition candidate in the 2021 presidential elections was driven by high youth turnout and people switching parties in urban areas.

Mobilization efforts can span from public campaigns to digital tools and voter registration and education. These efforts can motivate key groups, such as youth, minority or overseas voters. Participation of diaspora groups in Poland’s 2023 parliamentary elections was a key factor in the opposition’s win.

Proactively building public awareness of election security measures, called prebunking campaigns, has demonstrated results in increasing trust in elections in Brazil and the U.S. Additionally, civic education has shown to have positive impact on voter choice of pro-democracy candidates over their preferred party.

Strategic coalitions and nonpartisan monitoring: Nonpartisan monitoring and observation of an electoral process is a key tool in the electoral assistance tool kit. Effective monitoring often involves coalitions of nonpartisan civic groups, which Senegal has used, and faith-based organizations, as in the Philippines, to ensure adequate coverage of polling stations and consistent application of standards.

Key tools, such as parallel vote tabulation, or “quick counts,” which provide independent and statistically accurate reports on the quality of voting and counting process, have helped verify official election results in Ukraine, Ghana and Paraguay.

International observation by entities such as the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe assesses whether elections meet global standards. Where it identifies serious flaws or fraud, such scrutiny can help justify mass protests or mobilization, such as in Serbia’s parliamentary and local elections in 2023, trigger new elections, such as in Bolivia’s general elections in 2019, or support international condemnation, such as in Georgia’s 2024 parliamentary elections. They also make recommendations on reforms, such as changes to elections laws and systems, to strengthen integrity and align with democratic principles.

Shelley Inglis, Senior Visiting Scholar with the Center for the Study of Genocide and Human Rights, Rutgers University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

Supreme Court’s decision on deportations gave both the Trump administration and ACLU reasons to claim a victory − but noncitizens clearly lost

A prison officer guards a gate at the Terrorism Confinement Center in El Salvador, where hundreds of migrants from the United States were deported by the Trump administration. Alex Pena/Anadolu via Getty Images

Rebecca Hamlin, UMass Amherst and Paul M. Collins Jr., UMass Amherst

President Donald Trump has claimed victory at the Supreme Court in his campaign to deport Venezuelan migrants accused by the government of being part of a foreign terrorist organization.

“The Supreme Court has upheld the Rule of Law in our Nation by allowing a President, whoever that may be, to be able to secure our Borders, and protect our families and our Country, itself,” Trump posted on April 7, 2025, calling it, “A GREAT DAY FOR JUSTICE IN AMERICA!”

A 5-4 majority of the U.S. Supreme Court had just overruled a lower court that had temporarily barred the deportations, deciding the U.S. could move ahead with its plans to send those Venezuelans to a prison in El Salvador.

Eight minutes after Trump’s post, the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy Forward and the ACLU of the District of Columbia, three advocacy groups that represented the Venezuelan nationals in the case, also claimed the decision was a win.

In a press release, lawyers from these organizations said that the case was “an important victory” in which the court determined that the “Trump administration acted unlawfully when it removed people from this nation with no process.”

Can both sides legitimately say they won a Supreme Court victory?

As professors of legal studies, we study the Supreme Court, including how the court approaches cases involving immigration law and presidential power.

Here’s why both sides are claiming a win in the case known as Trump v. J.G.G., what the court’s opinion actually said, and what you can take away from it.

The Supreme Court decision lifted the temporary restraining order blocking the deportations imposed by James Boasberg, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Drew Angerer/AFP via Getty Images

Why both sides are claiming victory

The complexity of the court’s per curiam opinion – an unsigned opinion of a majority of the court – allows the Trump administration and the ACLU to view the ruling in Trump v. J.G.G. from different perspectives.

This has led them both to claim victory.

Trump sees the case as a win because the justices vacated a lower court decision that had temporarily barred the deportation of the Venezuelans. This means that the federal government was victorious in the case: His administration does not have to immediately stop deporting Venezuelan nationals.

At the same time, the ACLU claims the case is a victory for them because the Supreme Court’s opinion said that the government must give people the opportunity to challenge their removal under the Alien Enemies Act – which the government had not done. The Venezuelans’ right to due process was one of the key arguments advanced by the ACLU and its partners.

On April 9, judges in New York and Texas agreed, just two days after the Supreme Court’s decision, temporarily halting the deportation of five Venezuelans until the government can clarify what type of notice it will be giving to people it intends to deport.

Eventually, the Supreme Court will need to speak definitively about whether the Trump administration can use the Alien Enemies Act to deport those it alleges to be part of a foreign terrorist organization. The court has not yet addressed that issue.

This means the court will have to deal with some tricky questions down the road. These include whether a drug cartel can be said to be engaging in an “invasion” or “predatory incursion” into the United States, which the Alien Enemies Act requires if it is to be invoked. Another issue is the extent to which the Alien Enemies Act can be used when Congress hasn’t declared war.

And a big unanswered question is whether the Supreme Court, or any court, should even answer these questions at all. The political questions doctrine, which dates to 1803, is a principle saying that courts should avoid tackling thorny political questions that are best left to Congress or the president.

Venezuelans deported from the U.S. sit aboard the plane as they arrive at Simon Bolivar International Airport in Maiquetia, Venezuela, on March 28, 2025. Jesus Vargas/picture alliance via Getty Images

What the court decided and what it means for noncitizens’ rights

The court’s brief opinion, to which five members signed on, repeats the very basic constitutional premise that noncitizens are entitled to due process of law, even as they are being removed from the United States. Most significantly, due process includes the ability to protest their deportations before a court of law.

Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s concurrence emphasized the idea that the disagreement between the majority and the dissents is not about whether the noncitizens should have the opportunity to challenge their removal; all nine justices agree they have that right. Rather, Kavanaugh said, the justices disagreed on the question of venue, meaning the location in which these challenges should occur.

Kavanaugh’s focus on venue obscures the fact that what the justices granted to potential deportees is a significantly less robust type of judicial review than the one they were asking for.

The Venezuelans were challenging their removal as a class, because Trump had declared in a presidential proclamation that all Venezuelans over the age of 14 who were believed to be members of the Tren de Aragua cartel “are subject to immediate apprehension, detention, and removal.”

The Supreme Court majority made a group-based approach much more difficult in its April 7 ruling. It allowed for only individual, case-by-case appeals in which each potential deportee must retain legal counsel, file what’s known as a habeas corpus petition challenging their detention, and then try to convince a judge in the district where they are being held that they are not a member of Tren de Aragua in order to prevent their removal.

For most detainees, that would mean filing a petition in the Southern District of Texas, in the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, known as the most conservative federal circuit in the country.

Unless more courts step in to prevent it, the impact of the decision will be more removals to El Salvador’s notorious CECOT prison, perhaps of people who are not actually gang members, or even Venezuelan. This has already happened in the previous round of removals under this program.

Further, at least 200 people have already been flown out of the U.S. to CECOT. Because they’ve been accused of no crime in El Salvador, they have no right to due process or legal counsel there, and no trial date set where they might prove their innocence. A recent CBS exposé also found that three-quarters of them had no criminal record in the United States either.

In the meantime, there is a separate but related case of a man, Kilmar Abrego Garcia, wrongly deported to El Salvador, despite having legal protection in the U.S. preventing his removal to his home country of El Salvador. The Trump administration is currently arguing before the Supreme Court that when it makes an error in the process of carrying out these removals, it does not have to correct it.

Not all due process is created equal. The court’s April 7 decision allowing the bare minimum process protecting people being removed makes errors more likely and thus raises the stakes for the outcome of the Abrego Garcia case tremendously.

Many parties have claimed victory in the Trump v. J.G.G. decision, but one thing is clear: It was a defeat for the rights of noncitizens in the United States.

Rebecca Hamlin, Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst and Paul M. Collins Jr., Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science, UMass Amherst

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

As the Kremlin eyes a thaw with the White House, Russia’s pro-war hawks aren’t too happy

Russian President Vladimir Putin attends a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Moscow on Feb. 23, 2025. Sergei Bobylyov/AFP via Getty Images

Adam Lenton, Wake Forest University

At face value, the Kremlin has plenty to celebrate after U.S. and Russian officials held high-level bilateral talks on the war in Ukraine for the first time since the full-scale conflict began in 2022.

Russian delegates at the meeting, which took place on Feb. 18 in Saudi Arabia, struck an ebullient tone. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov concluded that “the American side has begun to better understand our position,” while Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and an envoy for Moscow, noted that the delegates managed to loosen up enough to laugh and joke. President Vladimir Putin did not attend the meeting, but he characterized it the following day as “very friendly,” going as far as to describe the American delegation as “completely different people” who were “ready to negotiate with an open mind and without any judgment over what was done in the past.”

And the talks are far from the only reason for optimism in Moscow. In statements that echoed Kremlin propaganda, U.S. President Donald Trump blamed Ukraine for being invaded and described Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy as a “dictator.” The U.S. then sided with Russia in two United Nations votes on the conflict and opposed language describing Russia as the aggressor in a draft G7 statement marking the anniversary of the war.

This perceived rapprochement between Washington and Moscow has many critics on both sides of the Atlantic.

Within Russia the reaction has been mixed. And not everybody in Moscow is celebrating the apparent shift in U.S. policy.

Favoring pragmatism

Of course, many Russians would welcome a thaw in relations. In January, Russia’s leading independent polling group found that 61% of Russians favored peace talks over continuing the war in Ukraine – the highest level yet. Meanwhile, the number of web searches for “When will the ‘Special Military Operation’ end?” on Yandex, a Russian tech firm, reached its highest-ever weekly total in the wake of the U.S.-Russia talks.

While public opinion is unlikely to shape the Kremlin’s approach given Putin’s sole control over major foreign policy decisions, evidence suggests that a rapprochement with the United States could also be a boon for Putin at home.

In a recently published article in the peer-reviewed journal International Security, my co-author Henry Hale and I found that while most Russians view the U.S. and NATO as threats, they largely prefer a pragmatic, measured response from the Kremlin – an approach they believed Putin delivered prior to the war in 2022.

High-level summits between Russia and the U.S. have tended to be well received, we found. This is because they tap into a widely held preference for cooperation as well as depicting Russia as a geopolitical “equal” to the U.S.

Pro-war hardliners speak out

Yet not everyone is pleased with the prospect of closer U.S. ties. Russia’s vocal minority of tub-thumping war supporters is already angry.

This loose community of so-called “Z-patriots” – a reference to the large “Z” letters marking Russian military equipment at the beginning of the war – has been a double-edged sword for the Kremlin.

While they have been helpful in mobilizing grassroots support for the war, they have also lambasted Moscow’s execution and made pointed criticisms of top military brass. Such attacks are, in effect, a way of making veiled attacks on Putin himself.

And we are talking about a sizable minority. Estimates indicate that Z-patriots – the more hawkish and ideologically committed segment of war supporters – represent 13% to 27% of the Russian population.

One of this group’s most prominent ideologues, Zakhar Prilepin, didn’t pull any punches in a recent interview. He described as “humiliating” the fact that “the Russian media community, political scientists and politicians are dancing with joy and telling us how wonderful everything is (now that) Trump has arrived.”

There are reasons to take this group seriously. According to Marlène Laruelle, an expert on nationalism and ideology in Russia, the Z-patriots are emerging as key opinion leaders.

Unlike other ideological camps in Russia, the Z-patriots are very much a product of the war, having emerged from the popular military blogging community and with deep connections to paramilitary and veterans organizations. Indeed, many sympathized with former mercenary Wagner Group chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s anti-elite rants, while Igor Girkin, a former Donbas warlord who claimed to have sparked the initial war in eastern Ukraine in 2014, openly mocked Putin to his almost million-strong Telegram followers.

The Kremlin partially cracked down on some of the Z-patriots in 2023. Prigozhin’s ill-fated mutiny in June was followed by his suspicious death in a plane crash later that summer, while Girkin was jailed and handed a four-year prison sentence for “inciting extremism.”

Yet the Z-patriots remain a force. Girkin, commenting on the U.S.-Russia talks from prison, lamented the “egregious managerial and command failure” over the past three years and sarcastically concluded that Moscow’s political elites, aware of their own weakness, are likely to “‘drag their heels’ in their inimitable style – and with their well-known genius.”

Other pro-war voices expressed skepticism about the information communicated by the Russian delegation and ironically said they expected the Kremlin would pass a law against “discrediting Russia-American relations,” a play on the March 2022 law against “discrediting” Russia’s military.

Sanctions relief a concern

Some of the sharpest criticisms of the Kremlin have been about the economy.

Recent weeks have seen renewed optimism among many in Russia that sanctions relief is on the horizon and that sought-after Western brands may return. Russia – since 2022 the most sanctioned country in the world – had previously appeared to accept that sanctions would remain for decades to come.

The Russian delegation at the recent talks emphasized the prospect of economic cooperation with the United States, no doubt believing Trump to be receptive to such mercantile framings.

A few days later, Putin announced a willingness to develop Russia’s rare earth minerals with foreign partners, including the United States, in what appeared to be an attempt to outbid Zelenskyy.

This, too, provoked a populist backlash among Z-patriots.

“Grampa’s lost it,” one wrote in a thinly veiled swipe at Putin.

Another displayed dismay that “stealing Russia’s natural resources once again became a prospect for mutually beneficial cooperation with American partners.”

“We’ve barely begun to develop small and medium businesses,” Prilepin noted, deriding the “unbearable” excitement around the possibility of Western brands returning.

These sentiments have struck a chord with other parts of society. After all, some Russian businesses have benefited from Western brands’ exit from the Russian market. The government is attempting to fend off these criticisms with a new bill proposed to Russia’s parliament on Feb. 27 calling to ban Western companies that had financially supported Ukraine.

What to do about veterans?

Perhaps most consequential will be what happens to the hundreds of thousands of Russian soldiers currently on the front lines.

While runaway military spending and lavish payouts to soldiers continue to strain the Russian economy, demobilization also poses risks.

A report from the Institute for the Study of War recently concluded that demobilization would be politically risky for the Kremlin, fearful that masses of disgruntled veterans might constitute a potential challenge.

That said, many of the estimated 700,000 Russian troops in Ukraine will eventually return to civilian life and likely become an important constituency in Russian politics moving forward.

The Z-patriots may be a product of war, but they will have an afterlife beyond it. Meanwhile, regardless of any Russian rapprochement with the White House – or perhaps because of it – Russia’s hawks won’t be turning into doves anytime soon.

Adam Lenton, Assistant Professor of Politics & International Affairs, Wake Forest University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

How Americans really feel about deporting immigrants – 3 charts explain the conflicting headlines from recent polls

A protest in San Diego against the Trump administration’s mass deportation plan, Jan. 31, 2025. Carlos Moreno/NurPhoto via Getty Images

Leo Gugerty, Clemson University

President Donald Trump’s signature promise during his campaign was to carry out the “largest deportation” operation in U.S. history, targeting all migrants “who violated the law coming into this country.”

Since anyone living in the U.S. without legal permission has broken civil immigration law, Trump would have to deport all of the 11 million to 12 million immigrants living without legal authorization in the U.S., not just people who have committed serious crimes. Most immigrants living in the country illegally have been here longer than 10 years, so many longer-term residents would be deported.

Trump has claimed that his election victory gives him a “powerful mandate” for such actions. But what do the American people really think about mass deportation?

News outlets like CBS and Scripps News have been reporting since mid-2024 that a majority of Americans support Trump’s plans to deport most or all undocumented immigrants.

These stories rely on some polls during 2024 that showed majority support for mass deportation. Meanwhile, other polls in 2024 found public support for deportation below 40%.

I am a psychologist with expertise in survey research and the influence of political ideology on people’s beliefs about news events. And I believe the key to making sense of these conflicting polls lies in understanding the psychological principles that underlie opinion polling.

Conflicting polls

Extensive psychological research research demonstrates that people make better decisions about complex, high-stakes problems when they think about and compare multiple courses of action, instead of narrowing in on one option.

When it comes to deportation, the main policy alternative offered by presidents as far back as George W. Bush has been allowing immigrants to become legal permanent residents if certain conditions are met, like passing a background check.

Because of this, Pew Research, a prominent pollster, suggests that the best way to determine how people feel about issues like mass deportation is to give them a question that forces them to choose between deportation and something else – in this case, legalization.

For example, one July 2024 poll using a “forced-choice” question asked people whether they’d rather see “a way for undocumented immigrants who meet certain requirements … to stay here legally” or “a national effort to deport and remove all illegal immigrants” from the U.S.

Another type of question used by pollsters focuses people’s attention on only one choice by asking them how much they support a policy like deportation, but without mentioning alternatives. Polls that follow this approach ask people’s opinion of deportation in one question, and their opinion of legalization in another.

This is not ideal because research shows it can lead people to exaggerate their support for the named policy.

What the polls say

In total, I found 14 polls conducted during the past eight years that measured Americans’ opinions on both mass deportation and legalizing status. I dropped two from my analysis because they had questions worded in biased language.

The findings from the remaining 12 polls are representative of the diverse demographics of the U.S.

Graph 1 present the results from the eight polls that used a single forced-choice question. I believe these polls give the best picture of how Americans as a group feel about the two immigration policies.

These polls suggest that over the past eight years, Americans’ overall support for mass deportation has increased from around 22% to around 44%. Meanwhile, support for legalizing immigrants’ status has decreased from about 77% to 55%.

However, all four polls conducted in 2024 find support for legalizing status to be above 54% and support for deportation below 45%.

Graph 2 shows the results of the four polls that used separate questions to assess opinions about deportation and legalization.

This chart clearly demonstrates the problem with asking people to rate their support for deportation and legalization in separate questions. Two polls, both taken in the past year – one by Gallup, the other by Times/Siena – found that a majority of respondents supported deportation and that the same group of respondents supported legalization in equal or even greater numbers.

Consider the October 2024 poll where 57% of respondents supported deportation and 57% supported legalization. These percentages add up to more than 100% because many people in the group said they supported both policies. Since mass deportation and general legalization are polar opposites, people who support both policies should not be considered to strongly support either policy.

For this reason, the separate questions technique does not yield good absolute information about the percentage of people who support either deportation or legalization. However, it does give useful relative information like which policy a group supports more and how opinions change over time.

Keeping this in mind, the results of the 12 polls I analyzed indicate that people favored legalizing immigrants’ status over deportation. Eleven polls, including five taken since 2024, showed this pattern. Overall public support for deportation has actually increased since 2016, while support for legalization has decreased.

However, these changes in opinion over time do not hold true for all Americans.

Americans are polarized about immigration

The poll results I’ve discussed so far are averages calculated based on the responses of everyone who responded to the poll. But group averages don’t tell the whole story on any issue – especially when opinions differ widely within a group, as they do with immigration. So let’s look at the results for Republicans and Democrats separately.

Graph 3 breaks down the results by party for the eight polls that used the best practice: forced choice question.

During Trump’s first term, from 2017 to 2020, just over half of Republicans supported legalization; just under half supported deportation. Only within the past year has Republican opinion shifted, with about 70% now supporting deportation.

In contrast, Democrats’ opinions have remained steady for eight years, with about 90% supporting legalization and 10% favoring deportation.

In other words, the apparent shift toward greater support for deportation shown in Graphs 1 and 2 occurred only among Republicans – not for Americans as a whole.

A mandate to legalize

Despite the recent uptick in Republican support for mass deportation, a clear majority of people in the U.S. would rather give undocumented immigrants a path to legal status than have them deported. This has remained true for eight years.

Polls that seem to contradict this conclusion by showing majority support for mass deportation have used the less reliable separate-questions technique. These results are questionable because these poll respondents voiced equal or stronger support for legalizing immigrants’ status.

If Trump has a “powerful mandate” on immigration, my research shows, it’s for getting legal authorization for immigrants who’ve lived in the U.S. a long time without it – not deporting them.

Leo Gugerty, Professor Emeritus in Psychology, Clemson University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.

Candidate experience matters in elections, but not the way you think

Previously holding political office is an obvious advantage for candidates seeking votes. SDI Productions/E+/Getty Images

Charlie Hunt, Boise State University

Ever since he was chosen as Donald Trump’s running mate back in July, U.S. Sen. JD Vance, a Republican from Ohio, has come under a level of scrutiny typical for a vice presidential candidate, including for some of his eyebrow-raising public statements made in the past or during the campaign.

One line of critique has persisted through the news cycles: that his lack of political experience may make Vance less qualified than others, including his opponent, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, to be vice president.

Do more politically experienced politicians have advantages in elections? And if they enjoyed such advantages in the past, do they still in such a polarized political moment?

The answers are complicated, but political science offers some clues.

Why experience should matter

Previously holding political office, and for a longer period of time, is in some ways an obvious advantage for candidates making the case to potential voters. If you were applying for a job as an attorney, previous legal experience would be favorably looked upon by an employer. The same is true in elections: If you want to run for office, experience as an officeholder could help you perform better at the job you’re asking for.

This approach has been taken by a number of high-profile politicians over the years. For example, in Hillary Clinton’s first campaign for president in 2008, the U.S. senator from New York and future secretary of state made “strength and experience” the centerpiece of her argument to the voters.

Experience also might matter for the same reasons as incumbency – that is, when a candidate is currently holding the office they are seeking in an election. Incumbents typically have much higher name recognition than their challenger opponents, distinct fundraising advantages and, at least in theory, a record of policy achievement on which to base their campaigns. Even for nonincumbents, these advantages are more prevalent for previous officeholders rather than someone who is a newcomer to politics.

Barack Obama and his family on Nov. 4, 2008, the day he won the presidential election, showing that a lack of political experience can be used as a benefit. Emmanuel Dunand/AFP via Getty Images

Inexperienced, or an ‘outsider’?

But Hillary Clinton was, of course, unsuccessful in her first bid for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2008. She was beaten by a relatively inexperienced candidate named Barack Obama; like Vance, Obama had served less than a full term in the Senate before running for higher office.

Obama’s 2008 win shows that a lack of political experience can be leveraged as a benefit.

One of the few things Obama and Donald Trump have in common is that both benefited from an appeal to voters as a political “outsider” in elections in which Americans were frustrated with the political status quo. As outsiders, they appeared uniquely positioned to fix what voters believed was wrong with politics.

Does experience equal ‘quality’?

The “outsider” label isn’t always a ticket to victory.

In 2020, for example, voters were frustrated with the chaos of having a political outsider in the White House and turned to Joe Biden – possibly the most experienced presidential candidate in modern history at that point, with eight years as vice president and several decades in the Senate under his belt. Voters were hungry for political normalcy in the White House and made that choice for Biden.

Does U.S. Sen. JD Vance’s lack of political experience make him less qualified than his opponent, Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota, to be vice president? Scott Olson/Getty Images

Political science has other important lessons about when experience matters and when it doesn’t. In Congress, electoral challengers – those running against incumbents – enjoy more of a boost from prior experience in places such as the state legislature. In fact, the typical indicator for challenger “quality” used in political science research is a simple marker of whether the challenger has prior political experience.

But even this finding is more complicated than it seems: Political scientists such as Jeffrey Lazarus have found that high-quality – that is, politically experienced – challengers do better in part because they are more strategic in waiting for better opportunities to run in winnable races.

Experience matters only sometimes – and maybe less than ever

The usefulness of a lengthy political resume also depends on which stage of the election candidates are in.

Research has found, for example, that a candidate’s experience matters much more in settings such as party primaries, where differences between the candidates on policy issues are typically much narrower. That leaves nonpolicy differences such as experience to play a bigger role.

In the general election, voters supportive of one party are unlikely to factor candidate experience in that heavily, even, or especially, when the candidate they support lacks it.

The political science phenomenon known as negative partisanship means that, more and more, voters are motivated not by positive attributes of their own party’s candidates but rather by the fear of losing to the other side. This has only been exacerbated as the two parties have polarized further.

Voters are therefore more willing than ever to lower the standards they might have for their favored candidates’ resumes if it means beating the other side. Even if a Democrat is clearly more qualified than a Republican in terms of political experience, that advantage is unlikely to sway many Republican voters, and vice versa.

What about 2024?

In 2024, the experience factor is complicated. Trump, of course, has been president before – the ultimate prior experience for someone running for exactly that office.

But he has continued to run as an outsider from the political establishment, casting Kamala Harris – who, as vice president, has little actual institutional power – as an incumbent who is responsible for the current state of the country. Since polls show consistently that a majority of Americans believe the country is not headed in the right direction, we can see why Trump might try to frame the race in this way.

Whether Trump’s strategy ends up working will be more apparent after the election is over. For now, Trump and Harris can rest assured that most of their supporters don’t appear to care how much – or how little – experience they have.

Charlie Hunt, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Boise State University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. 

In a new era of campus upheaval, the 1970 Kent State shootings show the danger of deploying troops to crush legal protests

Ohio National Guard soldiers move in on war protesters at Kent State University on May 4, 1970. AP Photo

Brian VanDeMark, United States Naval Academy

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has expressed his intention, if elected to a second term, to use the U.S. armed forces to suppress domestic protests. The New York Times reports that Trump’s allies are marshaling legal arguments to justify using National Guard or active-duty military troops for crowd control.

Moreover, as the Times notes, Trump has asserted that if he returns to the White House, he will dispatch such forces without waiting for state or local officials to request such assistance.

I am a historian who has written several books about the Vietnam War, one of the most divisive episodes in our nation’s past. My new book, “Kent State: An American Tragedy,” examines a historic clash on May 4, 1970, between anti-war protesters and National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio.

The confrontation escalated into violence: Troops opened fire on the demonstrators, killing four students and wounding nine others, including one who was paralyzed for life.

In my view, the prospect of dispatching troops in the way that Trump proposes chillingly echoes actions that led up to the Kent State shootings. Some active-duty units, as well as National Guard troops, are trained today to respond to riots and violent protests – but their primary mission is still to fight, kill, and win wars.

Archival footage from CBS News of the clash between campus anti-war protesters and Ohio National Guard troops at Kent State University on May 4, 1970.

Federalizing the Guard

The National Guard is a force of state militias under the command of governors. It can be federalized by the president during times of national emergency or for deployment on combat missions overseas. Guardsmen train for one weekend per month and two weeks every summer.

Typically, the Guard has been deployed to deal with natural disasters and support local police responses to urban unrest, such as riots in Detroit in 1967, Washington in 1968, Los Angeles in 1965 and 1992, and Minneapolis and other cities in 2020 after the death of George Floyd.

The 1807 Insurrection Act grants presidents authority to use active-duty troops or National Guard forces to restore order within the United States. However, presidents rarely deploy Guard troops without state governors’ consent.

The main modern exceptions occurred during the Civil Rights Movement, when Southern governors resisted federal orders to desegregate schools in Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama. In each case, the troops were sent to protect Black students from crowds of white protesters.

The standoff at Kent State

The war in Vietnam had grown increasingly unpopular by early 1970, but protests intensified on April 30 when President Richard Nixon authorized expanding the conflict into Cambodia. At Kent State, after a noontime anti-war rally on campus on May 1, alcohol-fueled students harassed passing motorists in town and smashed storefront windows that night. On May 2, anti-war protesters set fire to the building where military officers trained Kent State students enrolled in the armed forces’ Reserve Officer Training Corps program.

In response, Republican Gov. Jim Rhodes dispatched National Guard troops, against the advice of university and many local officials, who understood the mood in the town of Kent and on campus far better than Rhodes did. County prosecutor Ron Kane had vehemently warned Rhodes that deploying the National Guard could spark conflict and lead to fatalities.

Nonetheless, Rhodes – who was trailing in an impending Republican primary for a U.S. Senate seat – struck the pose of a take-charge leader who wasn’t going to be pushed around by a long-haired rabble. “We’re going to put a stop to this!” he shouted, pounding the table at a press conference in Kent on May 3.

Hundreds of National Guard troops were deployed across town and on campus. University officials announced that further rallies were banned. Nonetheless, on May 4, some 2,000 to 3,000 students gathered on the campus Commons for another anti-war rally. They were met by 96 National Guardsmen, led by eight officers.

There was an edge of confrontation in the air as student anger over Nixon’s expansion of the war blended with resentment over the Guard’s presence. Protesters chanted antiwar slogans, shouted epithets at the Guardsmen and made obscene gestures.

Doug Guthrie, a student at Kent State in 1970, looks back 54 years later at the events of May 4.

‘Fire in the air!’

The Guardsmen sent to Kent State had no training in de-escalating tension or minimizing the use of force. Nonetheless, their commanding officer that day, Ohio Army National Guard Assistant Adjutant General Robert Canterbury, decided to use them to break up what the Department of Justice later deemed a legal assembly.

In my view, it was a reckless judgment that inflamed an already volatile situation. Students started showering the greatly outnumbered Guardsmen with rocks and other objects. In violation of Ohio Army National Guard regulations, Canterbury neglected to warn the students that the Guardsmens’ rifles were loaded with live ammunition.

As tension mounted, Canterbury failed to adequately supervise his increasingly fearful troops – a cardinal responsibility of the commanding officer on the scene. This fundamental failure of leadership increased confusion and resulted in a breakdown of fire control discipline – officers’ responsibility to maintain tight control over their troops’ discharge of weapons.

When protesters neared the Guardsmen, platoon sergeant Mathew McManus shouted “Fire in the air!” in a desperate attempt to prevent bloodshed. McManus intended for troops to shoot above the students’ heads to warn them off. But some Guardsmen, wearing gas masks that made it hard to hear amid the noise and confusion, only heard or reacted to the first word of McManus’ order, and fired at the students.

The troops had not been trained to fire warning shots, which was contrary to National Guard regulations. And McManus had no authority to issue an order to fire if officers were nearby, as they were.

Many National Guardsmen who were at Kent State on May 4 later questioned why they had been deployed there. “Loaded rifles and fixed bayonets are pretty harsh solutions for students exercising free speech on an American campus,” one of them told an oral history interviewer. Another plaintively asked me in a 2023 interview, “Why would you put soldiers trained to kill on a university campus to serve a police function?”

A fighting force

National Guard equipment and training have improved significantly in the decades since Kent State. But Guardsmen are still troops who are fundamentally trained to fight, not to control crowds. In 2020, then-National Guard Bureau Chief General Joseph Lengyel told reporters that “the civil unrest mission is one of the most difficult and dangerous missions … in our domestic portfolio.”

In my view, the tragedy of Kent State shows how critical it is for authorities to be thoughtful in responding to protests, and extremely cautious in deploying military troops to deal with them. Force is inherently unpredictable, often uncontrollable, and can lead to fatal mistakes and lasting human suffering. And while protests sometimes break rules, they may not be disruptive or harmful enough to merit responding with force.

Aggressive displays of force often heighten tensions and worsen situations. Conversely, research shows that if protesters perceive authorities are behaving with restraint and treating them with respect, they are more likely to remain nonviolent. The shooting at Kent State demonstrates why force should be an absolute last resort in dealing with protests – and one fraught with grave risks.

Brian VanDeMark, Professor of History, United States Naval Academy

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license.