Some of the Right’s Worst Men Are Being Held Accountable

There were many sweet victories on Election Day, but there were also a few losses I am savoring. Perhaps the most satisfying was the drubbing of Representative Max Miller, a Republican from Ohio who lost his seat to a Democrat, Brian Poindexter, by about 10 percentage points in a district President Trump won easily two years ago. Miller’s ex-wife, Emily Moreno, accused him of horrifying domestic abuse, including holding a gun to her head and fracturing their toddler daughter’s collarbone.

Another significant defeat came in Texas’ 23rd Congressional District. That’s where the Republican gun enthusiast YouTuber Brandon Herrera, who described liberal women as “fat and wrong,” lost to child-welfare lawyer Katy Padilla Stout in a district gerrymandered to ensure a red win. And let’s never forget that in the race for governor of Ohio, Amy Acton vanquished Vivek Ramaswamy, who ran perhaps the most disgusting political ad in recent memory.

There have been defeats that went beyond the ballot box. The manosphere — the loose collection of male podcasters, streaming personalities and posters that appeared to help Trump win over young men in 2024 — is also wounded. On Monday, the actor-turned-manosphere-podcaster Russell Brand was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison after a London court found him guilty of rape and sexual assault.

Brand was a moderator at the MAHA Summit in September, though he’s not an American citizen. It was jarring to see someone facing rape charges featured alongside JD Vance, Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Mehmet Oz and Brooke Rollins. There were so many Trump administration officials at the event that “at times it looked like a corporate advertisement with a government imprimatur,” my newsroom colleague Sheryl Gay Stolberg observed in The Times.

Other key manosphere figures are in jail or staring down serious charges. The internet personalities Andrew and Tristan Tate, having exhausted their Trumpworld ties, are facing potential extradition to Britain on charges of rape and sex trafficking.

It’s a welcome change to see all of these men being held accountable after two years of Trump’s he-man woman-hating rule. For Trump and some of his cronies, credible allegations of sexual assault and general bad behavior are no barrier to holding public office. The combination of Brand’s conviction and the resounding losses of these candidates makes it feel like the country is beginning to move past the bald misogyny we have been enduring for too long.

Because we did not just say goodbye to terrible men; we said hello to an impressive slate of new leadership. Annie Andrews, Keisha Lance Bottoms and Gina Hinojosa — women with impressive careers and track records — were able to win in red states. Men ages 18 to 44 moved 32 points away from Republicans in House races compared with 2024 results. A staggering 72 percent of women in the same age range voted for Democrats; we spend so much time talking about wooing the male vote, it’s worth mentioning that overwhelming support from women, which has increased since the last election. It’s good to take a moment to relish these victories.

But just a moment.

Even though MAGA and the manosphere seem neutered right now, it would be foolish to count them out. I doubt that young men would have swung so far left if Trump did not start an unpopular war no one asked for. Trump’s own record of sexual misconduct allegations did not stop them from voting for him two years ago, so I don’t think the midterm results are necessarily indicative that every young man who voted for a Democrat suddenly finds overt sexism to be a deal breaker. (The former Maine Senate candidate Graham Platner had a bunch of defenders even as allegations of assault started to emerge, so it’s not like the left doesn’t have its own issues).

I called Ryan Broderick, the editor of Garbage Day, a newsletter and website that decodes the internet, to ask what he makes of the election and what he thinks it says about America’s young men. He told me that misogyny online was not miraculously swept away by the blue wave: “There is a massive problem, it remains a massive problem, and it is evolving and changing in ways that I think we still really don’t have a good handle on.”

Broderick said bigotry among young men online is particularly hard to quantify right now because Gen Z-ers post far less than millennials. Instead, they’re more likely to lurk, and they are fragmented across many different platforms — not just TikTok and X, but also Rumble, a video service favored by the right wing, and Twitch, a livestreaming platform. It is so much harder to co-opt disaffected young men now than it was a decade ago, when Steve Bannon figured out how to mobilize them.

Just because misogynists online are less visible to the mainstream now does not mean they’re not still around. Gas prices are out of control, Broderick added, explaining, “It’s really hard to mobilize an army of young men when they can’t even drive to go harass people.”

He also pointed out that Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist and sexist who said “Your body, my choice. Forever,” when Trump won in 2024, is still very influential. Fuentes turned on Trump months ago because he hopes that the Republican Party will become even more extreme if MAGA falls apart. “His followers think Trump supporters are embarrassing because they’re not racist enough,” as Broderick put it to me.

I’m making this threat clear now, not because I am a doomer about it but because I have always taken comfort in the fact that a majority of young American men believe in equality. Millions of them are disgusted by Fuentes, Brand and the Tates. But underestimating the allure of the manosphere helped get us eight years of Trump. Despite their moral failings, Ramaswamy, Herrera and Miller each still received over 40 percent of the vote in his race.

Stephen Miller, Trump’s newly promoted chief of staff, will most likely try to rile up what’s left of the base with culture-war issues. Megyn Kelly and Elon Musk are still standing with Brand; Kelly claims Brand is being persecuted for his political beliefs. A group of his supporters gathered at Brand’s sentencing, and one held a banner that read, “Christ was crucified for telling the truth,” per Alex Marshall at The Times. “Russell is the truth.”

The antidote to the poison they’re spewing seems to be making political content that shows young men a different and better way to be. Zohran Mamdani, James Talarico, Rob Sand and Abdul El-Sayed have mastered this approach. They know that the battle for the future will happen online, and we need to be able to keep adapting the message.

End Notes

According to a report in The Guardian, if you want to call somebody a “male chauvinist pig,” your iPhone will not autocomplete the phrase. Aisha Down highlights new research revealing “that Apple has a ‘grey list’ of more than 100,000 words and phrases that it has restricted from being completed by its predictive text.”
Right after the election I watched “Raise Hell: The Life and Times of Molly Ivins,” on Netflix. The documentary about Ivins, a pioneering liberal Texas columnist, came out in 2019, but this was my first time viewing it. Ivins once wrote that it’s the “virulence of Texas sexism that accounts for the strength of Texas women.” I wish that Ivins, who died in 2007, had lived to see Texas turn blue and elect a female governor again.

Feel free to drop me a line about anything here.