Anger in Japan grows after US Marine is arrested over the killing of a woman on Okinawa

• October 5, 2026

By MARI YAMAGUCHI

TOKYO (AP) — The arrest of a U.S. Marine on suspicion of robbing and killing a local woman on Okinawa has drawn condemnation from Japan’s leaders and renewed protests against the heavy American military presence on the southern island.

The alleged killing could complicate Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s push to strengthen Japanese military defense on the island and to work more closely with the U.S. military to deter China in the region.

Okinawa prefectural police said they arrested Devin Jacob Ballard, 20, who is stationed at Futenma Air Station, on suspicion of strangling Anna Yagi, 39, at a hotel in the island’s capital city of Naha early Saturday and stealing her wallet and backpack. He has denied the allegations, according to Japanese media.

Security camera footage showed a man wearing a black top, trousers and white sneakers entering the hotel with the woman and later leaving alone.

Ballard was arrested when a patrolling officer saw him walking later Saturday in an entertainment district in Okinawa City, about 25 kilometers (15 miles) northeast of Naha. His shaved head and the tattoos on his arms matched those of the man in security footage, Kyodo news agency reported.

“I’m outraged and flabbergasted to hear that a suspect came to the (entertainment area) after committing a murder,” Kenji Higa, who lives in Okinawa City, told the Okinawa Times.

There is longstanding anger over the behavior of some Americans

People in Okinawa have long been wary of the U.S. presence on the island but many have come to see its strategic value due to what is widely viewed as a growing threat from China.

Okinawa was under U.S. occupation from World War II until 1972. Today it hosts 70% of America’s military facilities and most of the 50,000 U.S. troops based in Japan today.

There has been anger over increasing crime linked to the U.S. military on the island. The number of U.S. military-related criminal cases rose to 101 last year from about 40 in 2020, according to prefectural police.

After the 1995 rape of a 12-year-old girl by three U.S. service members, huge crowds protested the heavy U.S. troop presence on Okinawa. There was also anger over the rape of a teenage girl by a U.S. service member in 2024 and the delayed disclosure of the crime.

About 160 people gathered at a protest Sunday in Naha, condemning the crime and renewing demands that U.S. military bases be removed from the island.

One sign read: “We’ve had enough of this!”

Japanese officials condemn the crime

“The case deals a major shock and adds fear to the Okinawans who have already been forced to live next to U.S. bases,” newly elected Okinawa Gov. Genta Koja told reporters Sunday night in Naha. “It is absolutely unforgivable and we are outraged.”

Koja said the case underscored the ineffectiveness of past disciplinary measures taken by the U.S. military following similar crimes.

“I’m enraged by the loss of a precious life of an Okinawan resident,” Koja told Lt. Gen. Benjamin Watson, commander of III Marine Expeditionary Force, and U.S. Consul General in Naha, Andrew Ou on Monday when he summoned them to the prefectural government. He demanded that U.S. officials take effective preventive measures.

Watson replied: “I recognize the serious incident caused significant concern and anxiety among the residents of Okinawa, our neighbors” and that “we are committed to being good neighbors … and earning the trust of the Okinawan people.”

In Tokyo, Takaichi condemned the crime and demanded full cooperation and tougher disciplinary and preventive measures by the United States.

Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi also summoned U.S. Forces Japan Commander Lt. Gen. Stephen Jost to his ministry, while Foreign Minister Toshimitsu Motegi expressed his outrage to the U.S. ambassador to Japan, George Glass.

The suspect will face Japanese justice

Glass, on X, expressed his condolences Sunday to the victim’s family and said the United States is cooperating with Japanese authorities.

On Monday, he said he is telling U.S. military commanders of the need “to hold our American service members to the very highest levels of discipline and integrity” and that he and Watson discussed the “next steps in strengthening that bond of trust with our Japanese partners and base-hosting communities.”

Under a bilateral status of forces agreement, the case is being handled by the Japanese authorities because the suspect was not on duty and was arrested off base.

Japanese prosecutors started examining the suspect’s case on Monday to determine whether to press formal charges in coming weeks.

If convicted, he could face life in prison or the death penalty.

​ Orange County Register 

Reader survey: How do you listen to the radio?

• October 5, 2026

A short while ago, I invited anyone interested to visit socalradiowaves.com to take a short survey about radio listening habits. Not shows you like or stations you prefer, but how you listen to the radio.

By radio, I mean regular broadcast radio stations heard over the air or otherwise. I purposely left out satellite and other non-broadcast stations because I wanted to get an idea of how many listen via a traditional radio versus more modern technologies.

This is not a scientific survey. It is not set up as one, and any high school statistics student can tell you there are multiple biases at work here. It is voluntary in nature; the pool of those being surveyed comes from a singular source (readers of this newspaper and this column), and I didn’t set it up to make sure participants couldn’t respond more than once.

In other words, it would earn a fail if constructed for a high school course, though it would probably still be light-years ahead of most studies quoted online. Regardless, for what it is, it gives some interesting insights into some of the listening habits of, at press time, 88 respondents.

The first question was “how do you listen to the radio,” and asked for every way you listen. Unremarkably, the top answer was 30% who said they listen on a car radio using the built-in tuner. Add that to the 10% who listen on a portable radio, and 9% using a home stereo, and you see that roughly half the respondents listen via a traditional radio.

But wait … that means roughly half listen at least occasionally using other means. Streaming through a phone at home or while walking accounted for 16%, 10% stream through a computer, 9.5% stream on their phone in a car, 9% use an app built into the car and 6% stream using a smart speaker. That’s very technologically advanced!

When asked how you usually listen to the radio, with the same choices as above, the winner by a long shot was using a car radio with its own tuner at 48%. Adding together all “regular radios,” the total came to 70%. Yet that leaves a full 30% listening via streaming — a very high number. Most streaming was done using a phone at home or while walking (14%) or on a smart speaker (6%). Surprisingly, apps built into the car infotainment system accounted for only 1% as a “usual” choice.

What smartphone apps do you use? Just over 25% said “none.” But just under 25% said they use the iHeartRadio app, putting it just slightly above individual station apps at 24%. Audacy came in at 10%, while TuneIn Radio was about nine.

What smartphone apps do you usually use? iHeart was the top among those who use apps at a bit over 26%. Followed by individual station apps (25%), TuneIn Radio (6%), and pulling up the rear was Audacy at just over 2%.

For those who use automotive infotainment apps, the leader again was iHeart at 28%, with TuneIn Radio at 7%. But this one was a bit skewed due to extra choices being made that were not part of the original survey, including Sirius, None, Don’t Have One, and a couple of NAs.

And finally, my favorite question — when streaming using apps or smartphone speakers, do you usually listen to local stations or to those from another city — over 50% listen locally. That bodes well for our local stations and our local advertisers who support those stations. Twenty-three percent say they listen to stations from another area, and the rest said they don’t listen via apps or smart speakers at all.

I find that in my case, it depends. If I want to listen to a local AM station, I often use an app in the car for better fidelity. For local FMs, I just use the tuner. But I often find myself using apps to tune into KFMW Rock 108 from Iowa, AM stereo WION from Michigan, The Gamut WSHE from Virginia, or 93/KHJ from American Samoa. Those are some of my favorites, not counting stations that only stream and thus were ineligible to be counted in this survey.

The takeaway for me is that traditional broadcast radio is still the dominant way that people listen to the radio. Or at least people who read this column and took the survey. I imagine that will be the case for quite some time, though for some stations, especially on AM, I could see people wanting apps just for the increased fidelity.

I won’t report on the results again, but the survey is still open if you have not taken it yet. Once you submit your answers, you can see the overall results and compare with your own.

And if you have a suggestion for a future totally unscientific survey, let me know.

Richard Wagoner is a San Pedro freelance columnist covering radio in Southern California. Email rwagoner@socalradiowaves.com.

​ Orange County Register 

Dennis Hastert, longtime Republican House speaker who went to prison, dies at age 84

• October 5, 2026

By MICHAEL TARM and HERBERT G. McCANN

CHICAGO (AP) — Dennis Hastert, the nation’s longest-serving Republican House speaker, who helped turn much of President George W. Bush’s agenda into law before his own political legacy was forever fouled by allegations that he molested high school athletes when he was a wrestling coach, died over the weekend, a coroner said Monday. He was 84.

Hastert, who was speaker from 1999 until 2007, died of natural causes at his home, according to Kendall County Coroner Jacquie Purcell.

When he was sentenced in 2016 to more than a year behind bars, the former history teacher became one of the highest-ranking American politicians ever ordered to prison.

In the late 1990s, Hastert was a little-known Illinois lawmaker with a reputation for congeniality that had helped him ascend the ranks of congressional leaders. When Newt Gingrich lost support because of ethics violations and the GOP’s poor showing in an election, Republicans elected Hastert to succeed him. In his first weeks on the job, he presided over the House while the Senate conducted Bill Clinton’s impeachment trial.

After the GOP reclaimed the White House, Hastert took much of what Bush proposed and steered it to passage, including massive tax cuts and a measure that amounted to a huge expansion of prescription drug benefits — the biggest change in Medicare in decades.

His legacy was suddenly thrown into doubt in 2015, when he was accused of evading banking regulations as part of a plan to pay hush money to conceal unspecified “prior misconduct.” Nearly a year later, prosecutors filed papers that described what media reports had suggested for months: Hastert’s misconduct involved the sexual abuse of teenage boys on his wrestling team in the small town of Yorkville, west of Chicago.

During a 16-year coaching career, he led his team to a state championship and was named national coach of the year in 1976. But behind the accolades, prosecutors said, Hastert sexually abused at least four team members from 1965 to 1981.

The person Hastert was paying, identified in court papers only as Individual A, said the abuse occurred in a motel room when he was 14 on the way home from wrestling camp. Hastert allegedly touched other wrestlers in a locker room after saying he would give them massages. Two wrestlers said Hastert performed sex acts on them.

Prosecutors also described a recliner where Hastert often sat in the locker room with a direct view of the stalls where the boys showered.

Hastert agreed to plead guilty to evading banking laws. In all, he paid more than $1.7 million out of $3.5 million that he had promised to Individual A, sometimes in lump sums of $100,000 cash.

At the sentencing hearing where he received 15 months behind bars, the visibly angry judge called Hastert a “serial child molester.” A former wrestler struggled with his emotions as he told the court about his “dark secret” from adolescence.

In his own statement, Hastert said he was “deeply ashamed” and admitted that he “mistreated” some of his athletes. But he never referred directly to sexual abuse.

The public knew nothing about Hastert’s past when Republicans lost seats in the 1998 midterm elections. Hastert confronted Gingrich about dissatisfaction in the GOP ranks, saying it was unlikely Gingrich could hold his post, Hastert wrote in “Speaker: Lessons from 40 Years in Coaching and Politics.”

“Well, I’ll make them support me,” he quoted Gingrich saying of the GOP rebels. Told that was unlikely, Gingrich asked Hastert what to do.

“Do what you have to do,” he replied. The next day, Gingrich stepped down as speaker and left the House.

Hastert’s path to the speaker’s office was cleared when Louisiana Rep. Bob Livingston, who was considered a lock to replace Gingrich as speaker, resigned after acknowledging several extramarital affairs.

In January 1999, Hastert broke with tradition by delivering his acceptance speech from the House floor and by allowing Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, a Missouri Democrat, to briefly preside over the day’s proceedings.

“Solutions to problems cannot be found in a pool of bitterness,” Hastert said in his speech. “They can be found in an environment in which we trust one another’s word, where we generate heat and passion, but where we recognize that each member is equally important to our overall mission of improving the life of the American people.”

Hastert was aware of the personal pitfalls of holding the powerful position.

“You know, in this business, especially in a job like this, you can get your head someplace where it shouldn’t be,” Hastert said in a 1999 interview with The Associated Press. “But you come back home, and you’re home. You’re back where you’ve always been, and your feet are back on the ground.”

He was generally viewed as a friendly, even-tempered lawmaker. His wrestling experience followed him to Washington, with GOP colleagues often calling him “coach.”

Hastert said he lacked the appetite for higher office.

As the recount of the 2000 presidential election dragged on, Hastert’s aides briefed him on the possibility that he might become acting president in the event of an Electoral College deadlock.

“I really didn’t want to be president, temporary or otherwise,” he wrote in his book. But he decided that he would not pass the office to the constitutional officer next in line if an Electoral College deadlock extended beyond Inauguration Day. In the end, the Supreme Court’s 5-4 ruling ended the recount, and Bush moved into the White House.

Hastert’s journey to Congress from his boyhood farm appeared to be the result of fate and luck.

In 1980, he finished third in an Illinois House primary. But the incumbent became fatally ill, and GOP leaders chose Hastert to take his place on the November ballot, where he won in a traditional GOP stronghold.

Hastert became a congressional candidate in 1986, when local Republican leaders put him on the primary ballot, replacing freshman Rep. John Grotberg, who was battling cancer. Hastert went on to beat the Democrat with 52 percent of the vote, his smallest margin of victory in a congressional race.

In Washington, Hastert served quietly in House leadership, working closely with Gingrich and then-House Majority Whip Tom DeLay after Republicans took control in 1995. Several years later, DeLay was the force driving Clinton’s impeachment and was simply too toxic to seek the speaker’s chair.

Hastert’s tenure was marked by a shift of power from committee chairmen to GOP leaders, fealty to the Bush administration and an explosion of congressional pet projects known as earmarks. Democrats fumed that he weakened the ethics process that ensnared DeLay, who left Congress under a cloud of criminal charges in 2006.

Hastert became wealthy largely through a complex web of transactions that coincided with one of his own highway earmarks increasing the value of land he had purchased in his district.

He was forced to step down as speaker in 2007, when Democrats gained control of the House, and he resigned his seat later that year. In 2008, he joined the Washington lobbying firm of Dickstein Shapiro as a senior adviser, specializing in government law and strategy.

Born in Aurora, Illinois, Hastert earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Wheaton College in 1964 and a master’s in education from Northern Illinois University in 1967.

In 2007, Wheaton named its newly created public policy center the J. Dennis Hastert Center for Economics, Government and Public Policy. After Hastert’s indictment, the school removed his name in 2015. Other organizations abandoned associations with Hastert, and his portrait was removed from a hallway outside the House chamber.

Hastert lived his entire life in Chicago’s suburbs, primarily in the Yorkville area. While growing up, he helped his father with the family feed business.

Survivors include his wife, Jean, and two adult sons.

Tarm and McCann are former Associated Press reporters.

​ Orange County Register 

Gains in California home prices continue to evaporate

• October 5, 2026

Let’s politely say that a lot has changed in the housing market since the Federal Reserve ended its cheap-money policies years ago.

Consider the dramatic evaporation of home appreciation, with every state seeing smaller gains since 2022 than in the previous four years. My trusty spreadsheet tells the tale, reviewing Federal Housing Finance Agency price index data for the 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Higher mortgage rates made homes harder to afford and shrank buyer budgets. Plus, as pandemic worries faded, the mad dash for bigger homes and homeownership cooled.

Job growth lost steam, which meant fewer people were out shopping for homes. And with a flood of newly built apartments, renting started to look like the smarter money move.

The big chill

Look at price gains over the last four years through mid-2026, and you’ll see appreciation has been relatively tame.

California shows an average annual price gain of 1.9%. That was the seventh-smallest among the states and trailed the nation’s 3.1% rate of gains.

It’s no California quirk. Ponder the state’s chief rivals: Texas gains were the fourth-slowest at 1.5% per year, while Florida ranked sixth-slowest at 1.6%.

The slowest four-year pace of increases were found in the District of Columbia at 0.2%, Colorado at 0.8%, and Oregon at 1.5%.

Even the fastest gains seem mild: New Jersey was up 5.6% annually since 2022, Connecticut 5.4% and New York 5.2%.

The boom years

Now, stack those small gains against the previous four years, when pandemic-era economic chaos and rock-bottom mortgage rates sent prices soaring.

California home prices surged at a 9.5% annual pace in the four years ending in the second quarter of 2022. That jump was the 11th smallest gain. U.S. prices were rising at an annual rate of 11.3%.

The top gains were seen in Idaho, which averaged 16.5% annual increases. Florida was at 15.1% and Arizona at 14.6%. Texas was No. 19 at 11.5%

How hot was it? Even the U.S. laggards saw noteworthy gains: the District of Columbia averaged 4.6% per year, Louisiana 6.4% and North Dakota 6.7%.

How slow?

Compare the gains of these two periods, and you find that California’s home appreciation pace has slowed by 80%.

No, prices didn’t fall 80% – the rate of gains did, sliding to 1.9% from 9.5%. Please note this drop is only the 13th-largest cooldown among the states.

Nationally, recent price gains were 73% less than the previous four years.

The biggest drops in appreciation rates were in the District of Columbia, off 95%, Colorado, off 92%, Florida, off 89% and Texas, off 87%.

The smallest drops? West Virginia, off 32%, Illinois, off 39% and North Dakota, off 47%.

Leader to laggard

California home gains have mellowed to a back-of-the-pack position among the states.

That’s bad for bragging rights. It’s better for affordability. And it’s a huge status change.

Think about the period between 1975, when the FHFA data starts, and 2018. That’s when the affordability problems were brewing as California home values appreciated at an annual rate of 7.54%.

That gain was No. 1 among the states and well above the nation’s 5.9% annual pace. Yes, California was once America’s home appreciation king in an era when the state economy grew at top-of-the-charts speed.

Next for annualized gains over these 43 years were the District of Columbia, up 7.5% a year, and Washington state, up 7.4%.

Texas was No. 35 at 5.3% a year, as Florida ranked No. 29 at 5.5%.

And the slowpokes? West Virginia and Mississippi both averaged 4.2% gains annually.

Jonathan Lansner is the business columnist for the Southern California News Group. He can be reached at jlansner@scng.com

• Try Jonathan Lansner’s Substack collection of economic trends. CLICK HERE!

August’s most popular Southern California real estate stories …

No. 1: Where is OC’s hottest homebuying neighborhood?

No. 2: 338-unit affordable housing complex breaks ground in Tustin

No. 3: Peek inside this Newport Coast estate that sold for $39M

No. 4: Enderle Center sold, Campo on 17th moves ahead in Tustin

No. 5: Rents rise in just 22% of SoCal. See which cities got hikes

No. 6: Home prices dip in 38% of OC. How did your ZIP do?

No. 7: LA-OC’s worst-paying jobs: Can those wages pay the rent?

No. 8: LA-OC homes still ‘unaffordable’ even with a 0% mortgage

No. 9: Corona del Mar retail center trades hands, a first in 80 years

No. 10: California housing is frozen, but not underwater

​ Orange County Register 

Supreme Court rejects appeal over Michigan school ban on ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ sweatshirts

• October 5, 2026

By LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court is rebuffing an appeal from a Michigan woman fighting a school district’s ban on shirts with the phrase “Let’s Go Brandon,” a jab at then-President Joe Biden with a coded reference to profanity.

The mother of two boys says their First Amendment rights were violated when they were told to take off the sweatshirts she bought them for Christmas in 2022.

A lower court disagreed, finding that the veiled vulgarity of the phrase, which functions as a stand-in for “F-— Joe Biden,” allows schools to ban it.

The woman’s attorneys argued that the decision wrongly gives school officials wide latitude to squelch political speech based on their personal ideas of what is vulgar. The phrase itself doesn’t contain any swear words or sexual implications, they said.

The school district urged the justices to reject the case, arguing that messages with lewd implications have no place in school, even if they touch on political topics. There has been evidence that some students wore clothing that read “Make America Great Again” or had messages supporting President Donald Trump, a Republican who lost the 2020 election to Biden, a Democrat.

The phrase originated in 2021, when people in the crowd at a NASCAR race chanted the obscenity directed at Biden and a TV sports reporter said they were calling out “Let’s Go, Brandon,” apparently believing they were chanting for driver Brandon Brown, who had just won a race.

Follow the AP’s coverage of the U.S. Supreme Court at https://apnews.com/hub/us-supreme-court.

​ Orange County Register 

Nobel medicine prize goes to 3 scientists for research into brain activity

• October 5, 2026

By KOSTYA MANENKOV, LAURAN NEERGAARD and ADITHI RAMAKRISHNAN

STOCKHOLM (AP) — The Nobel Prize in medicine was awarded Monday to three scientists who created a tool using light to help unravel how the brain works.

Karl Deisseroth, 54, Peter Hegemann, 71, and Georg Nagel, 73, have carried out research into light-gated ion channels and optogenetics.

The Nobel Assembly lauded their work and said the method is now being used in laboratories around the world to reveal the brain’s mysteries.

The assembly said Deisseroth is based at Stanford University in California, while Hegemann is at Humboldt University in Berlin and Nagel at the University of Würzburg, also in Germany.

Optogenetics opened what the Nobel assembly called a new era in neuroscience, the discovery of a light-controlled switch to turn on and off nerve cells and circuits in the brain to better learn how it works — to start unraveling the pathways that lead to behavior and disease.

It started when Hegemann explored how a single-celled type of green algae can swim toward light. He and Nagel discovered a particular protein that, when illuminated by blue light, opens a channel to create an electrical impulse. Putting that protein into other cells makes them light-sensitive.

Deisseroth then worked with the gene that controls that protein to create a light-controlled switch for nerve cells in the brains of living mice.

“It’s a very precise set of tools for doing experiments about how the brain works that are pretty hard to do any other way,” said the University of Pittsburgh’s Jeremy Berg. He was at the National Institutes of Health in the early 2000s when it awarded Deisseroff major funding for “this vision of optogenetics that was pretty much spot-on the way it played out.”

One winner had just gone to bed

Deisseroth, a self-described night owl, said he was up late in his Northern California home working on papers and emailing his students. He had just gone to lie down when he got the call from the Nobel assembly.

“No real sleep was achieved,” he told The Associated Press in a phone call an hour after the announcement.

He said the next task on his to-do list was to pack school lunches for his children, who were still sound asleep.

“That’s my one obligation I have in the next few hours, to make sure I make their sandwiches,” he said.

Thomas Perlmann, the secretary of the medicine committee, said he was able to reach all three winners Monday. The AP’s efforts to reach Hegemann and Nagel were not immediately successful.

Medicine prize kicks off Nobels week

The prize was announced at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm, kicking off Nobels week. The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million).

Last year, the prize went to three scientists researching the immune system.

Monday’s medicine prize is followed by the physics prize on Tuesday, chemistry on Wednesday and literature on Thursday.

After Friday’s peace prize is awarded, the Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences will be announced on Oct. 12.

The prize money this year is 12 million Swedish kronor (about $1.2 million), whether for an individual, small group of laureates or organization.

Neergaard reported from Washington and Ramakrishnan reported from New York. Stefanie Dazio in Berlin contributed to this report.

AP Nobel Prizes: https://apnews.com/hub/nobel-prizes

​ Orange County Register 

Former Prince Andrew files a legal action to quash warrants that led to searches of his residence

• October 5, 2026

By DANICA KIRKA

LONDON (AP) — The former Prince Andrew has filed a legal action challenging the warrants that authorized searches at two of his homes earlier this year as British police investigated allegations related to his links to the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.

A judicial spokesperson confirmed that Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor had filed a claim with the High Court in London and a hearing is scheduled for Thursday.

The Daily Telegraph previously reported that Mountbatten-Windsor had asked the court to determine whether Thames Valley Police acted lawfully in searching the former prince’s homes near Windsor Castle and on King Charles III’s Sandringham estate.

The searches were conducted in February when Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office following allegations that the former prince shared sensitive information with Epstein during his time as the U.K.’s trade envoy.

Police questioned Mountbatten-Windsor for 11 hours before he was released under investigation, meaning he was neither charged nor exonerated.

It was the first time in nearly four centuries that a senior British royal was placed under arrest, underscoring how deference to the monarchy has eroded in recent years.

Thames Valley Police said Monday that its investigation was continuing, even as it confirmed that the department was involved in legal proceedings about the search warrants. A department spokesman declined further comment while those proceedings are underway.

The allegations against Mountbatten-Windsor came to light when the U.S. Justice Department released millions of pages of documents from its investigation into sex trafficking by Epstein and his connections to a network of wealthy, powerful men around the world.

Mountbatten-Windsor’s relationship with Epstein has been a source of embarrassment to the royal family for more than a decade and forced him to give up royal duties in 2019.

But as further revelations began to leak out of the U.S. investigation last year, the king moved to insulate the monarchy from the fallout by stripping his younger brother of his princely title.

After Mountbatten-Windsor was arrested, Charles departed from the “never complain, never explain” approach of his late mother, Queen Elizabeth, and took the unusual step of issuing a statement on the investigation.

“Let me state clearly: the law must take its course,’’ he said at the time. “As this process continues, it would not be right for me to comment further on this matter.’’

​ Orange County Register 

Trump’s immigration crackdown divides rural voters as midterms approach, poll finds

• October 5, 2026

By LINLEY SANDERS, SARAH JANE TRIBBLE, ALI SWENSON and FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — More than a year into President Donald Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown, a poll finds that voters in rural parts of the country are divided on whether those immigration policies have benefited or harmed their communities.

In The Associated Press-KFF survey of more than 2,000 rural voters in August, about a third said the Trump administration’s immigration enforcement had been positive for their community and about a third said it had been negative. The remaining 3 in 10, roughly, said it had no impact.

Trump promised tough enforcement on the campaign trail in 2024, and the survey highlights how a cornerstone of his base, rural supporters of his Make America Great Again movement, are especially likely to say they see a benefit where they live from the Republican president’s stringent immigration policies.

Yet many rural voters also say immigrants are a key part of their local economies, and some believe Trump’s immigration actions have gone too far.

Laura Leigh Taylor, a 37-year-old farmer who voted for Trump in 2024, said she disapproves of the wide-ranging scope of Trump’s immigration crackdown, which resulted in a friend’s hardworking father being deported.

“I understand getting rid of the rapists and the murderers,” she said. “But all the people that fell in between that really weren’t doing nothing but taking care of their family.”

Taylor now regrets her vote for Trump. As a resident of Smithville, Georgia, a town of about 600, Taylor thinks she will vote for Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff in November because, she said, the Democrats have been the ones talking about families being uprooted by Trump’s immigration enforcement.

“Just because of that simple fact, I’m going to go with him,” Taylor said.

Most rural voters want politicians to talk about immigration

Roughly three-quarters of rural voters say it’s “extremely” or “very” important for midterm candidates to talk about immigration, though that’s lower than the share who want them to address the cost of living, fraud in government programs or healthcare costs.

Rural voters don’t overwhelmingly think Trump’s immigration policies have helped their communities, but they are also less likely than the general public to say that Trump has overstepped in his efforts, which have involved mass deportations and rapid deportations of immigrants to countries where they have no ties.

Only about 4 in 10 rural voters say Trump has “gone too far” in restricting legal immigration or deporting immigrants living in the U.S. without authorization, below the 55% of U.S. adults overall who said the same in a September AP-NORC poll.

John Thomas, a 55-year-old from Liberty, Kentucky, supports Trump’s efforts to deport people without legal status. Thomas, who has just been approved for disability benefits after injuring his back in 2008, believes they put too much of a burden on the healthcare system. Regulating immigration, he said, is a means of providing better healthcare to Americans.

“They’ve been taking from everybody,” Thomas said of immigrants. “People that really need this stuff can’t get it because of them.”

David Grabowski, a professor of healthcare policy at Harvard Medical School, said that research suggests immigrants use less healthcare than native-born Americans. “It is hard to argue that they are placing an undue burden on the system,” he said, because many immigrants work in healthcare and pay taxes.

Most rural voters see the economic importance of immigrants

Immigrants often play key roles in sustaining local industries, including by filling jobs in manufacturing, healthcare and agriculture. The survey suggests the vast majority of rural voters see immigrants in the country legally as an important part of their local economies.

Shannon Monnat, director of the Center for Policy Research at Syracuse University and president of the Rural Sociological Society, said immigration has been a demographic lifeline for much of rural America. Rural areas have been losing young adults for years, she said.

“For a lot of small towns, immigrants are the reason the school and hospital stayed open and the county didn’t shrink,” Monnat said.

About 7 in 10 rural voters see immigrants who are in the country legally as “very” or “somewhat” important to their local economies, and a similar share say the same about temporary or seasonal agriculture workers. Hundreds of thousands of immigrants take seasonal jobs on U.S. farms each year, with most of them coming from Mexico, on H-2A visas.

Rural voters with a connection to agriculture and farming are more likely than those without one to say that temporary or seasonal workers are “very important” to their local economies, the poll found.

Jeff Miller, a 56-year-old Republican hydro blaster and vacuum technician, has mostly been pleased with Trump’s agenda, and he believes things are “heading in the right direction.” The one thing Miller has struggled with is Trump’s aggressive immigration policy, which he blames for the deportation of a “really good worker” and friend, who was removed from the U.S. when his work permit expired.

Miller, from Racine, Ohio, said he would support exceptions for hard workers, or just a less aggressive approach.

“There’s kind of an up-and-down thing because I lost a really good friend over that,” Miller said.

Rural voters are much less likely to say immigrants who are in the country illegally are beneficial, but 45% say they are at least “somewhat” important to local economies.

Albert Martinez, a 70-year-old Democrat from San Diego, Texas, voted for Trump in 2016, but he now believes the Trump administration has “gone amok.” The Army veteran said he is a proponent of getting criminals out of the country, but that is not what he is seeing happening with current immigration enforcement.

“They started doing everybody across the board,” Martinez said. “Innocent kids and women, people who work in restaurants, people who work in hotels, people who are building homes, people who are doing masonry work, and innocent, good, taxpaying people. Taxpayers. It’s insane.”

Rural MAGA voters support Trump’s immigration policies

Some of Trump’s most loyal supporters — rural Republicans who consider themselves MAGA supporters — are about twice as likely as rural, non-MAGA Republicans to see a benefit to Trump’s immigration policies where they live.

Roughly 4 in 10 rural voters identify as MAGA Republicans, while about 1 in 10 are Republicans but not MAGA supporters.

About two-thirds of rural MAGA Republicans say Trump’s immigration policies have had a positive impact where they live. Roughly half say the Trump administration has “not gone far enough” on deporting immigrants in the country illegally, while about half say his actions have been “about right.”

Katherine Reed, a 27-year-old Republican who supports the MAGA movement, has been pleased to see the Trump administration’s deportation policies play out. The resident of Mount Pleasant, Texas, believes her community has always been safe but that the administration’s policies have had a positive impact by reducing violent crime nationwide, saying, “It’s made life for people a lot safer.”

She believes if someone comes to America, they should “respect the law of the land” and “do it legally.”

“I want really amazing people to become Americans,” Reed said. “That’s the whole point of America.”

The poll of 2,241 U.S. adults registered to vote in rural areas of the country was conducted Aug. 12-24, 2026, using a sample drawn from the probability-based SSRS Opinion Panel. The margin of sampling error for the full sample is plus or minus 3 percentage points. In collaboration with AP, KFF researchers worked to design the survey sample and questionnaire, analyze and report findings.

This report is a collaboration between The Associated Press and KFF Health News. KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling and journalism.

​ Orange County Register