After more than four decades working in the paper industry, Gaetano “Guy” Spinelli poured his life savings into developing an eco-friendly yet durable paper straw and opened his company, Boss Straw, in Woodstock in 2021.
Then in February, President Donald Trump signed an
executive order promoting plastic straws while declaring that paper straws “don’t work.”
“I’ve had them many times. On occasion they break. They explode,” Trump said. “If something’s hot, they don’t last very long, like a matter of minutes, sometimes a matter of seconds. It’s a ridiculous situation.”
The president’s rant incensed Spinelli, who had voted for Trump in November. Business immediately dropped following the executive order.
“He’s put me from a profitable picture to a nonprofitable company,” Spinelli said. “And my product is a strong product. I’ve got a paper straw that lasts two weeks in any drink, hot or cold,” without compromising taste.
Despite the recent hit to his company, the 75-year-old business owner said that if he could go back, he would still cast a ballot for Trump in the 2024 presidential election.
“Outside of what he did to me, I think he’s doing a pretty good job,” Spinelli said.
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Nemer, who was born in Lebanon and had been a loyal Democrat, instead voted for Trump, who penned a letter in late October to the Lebanese American community pledging a commitment to peace in Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. A few days before the election, Trump met with Arab American leaders in
Dearborn, Michigan, the nation’s biggest Arab-majority city, where Nemer resides.
But she grew alarmed in February, when Trump proposed the
evacuation of millions of Palestinians from Gaza, with plans to turn it into a “Riviera of the Middle East.” In March, Trump shared an AI-generated video depicting “Trump Gaza,” featuring him and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sunbathing together.
The Trump administration has also targeted
college campus protesters who demonstrate against Israel and the war, threatening some with deportation. But on Friday, the government
reversed course on student visa terminations amid a barrage of legal challenges to the policy.
“Our freedom of expression, freedom of demonstration and just overall liberties are at stake,” she said.
Yet even in hindsight, Nemer doesn’t think she could have voted differently.
“We weren’t getting that empathy from the Democratic Party, unfortunately,” she said. “But Republicans are almost making the same mistake now.”
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The United States appropriated or otherwise made available around $180 billion in
aid for Ukraine since the full-scale invasion. But
shipments of weapons were stalled by internal debates within the Biden administration over the possibility of Russian escalation — delays that Alik Kasman of Buffalo Grove believes proved debilitating for the military of the nation of his birth.
“President Biden … understands, or seemed to understand, the nature of the war. He committed to helping Ukraine,” said Kasman, an activist for military aid for Ukraine, who was born in Kyiv. “However, we have seen that his material support, actual weapons transfer to Ukraine, were not nearly sufficient.”
Moscow was counting on a quick victory and not ready for prolonged resistance; if Ukraine had immediately received everything Congress allocated, Kasman contends that “the war could have been finished.”
During the 2024 presidential race, Kasman didn’t see any
good options for Ukraine on the ballot. He voted for Trump, hoping for a change in the status quo.
“Kamala Harris did not indicate that she would do anything different than President Biden would have … a cautious supply of weapons that would prolong the war but would not lead to any decisive outcome.,” he added.
In February, Trump called Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy a “
dictator” while falsely claiming he started the war. During a
contentious White House meeting later that month,
Trump berated Zelenskyy and declared himself “in the middle” and not either the side of Ukraine or Russia in the war.
Kasman said he is not happy with Trump. But he doesn’t believe the alternative would have been better.
“As an advocate for Ukraine, it is much easier to deal with Trump because I can go to (Washington, D.C.) and I can contradict his point of view,” he said. “Whereas with Biden, that was a much more difficult task. I had to go and explain why I believe Biden is saying one thing and doing something else.”
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A few days after the election, J. Marcos Peterson wrote a
Chicago Tribune letter to the editor explaining why he — a self-described gay, first-generation Mexican American with family members in the U.S. without legal permission — voted for Trump.
The letter took Democrats to task for failing to build coalitions, botching the economy and mishandling the southern border. The opinion piece also expressed ire at the Biden administration’s fast-tracked work permits and other assistance for recently-arrived migrants.
“Seeing my undocumented family members, who have been in the U.S. for more than 20 years, work, pay taxes and buy their own homes with zero benefits, then watching millions of new migrants skip the line with government funded help, only enflamed me and other Latinos like me,” he said in the letter.
As the first hundred days of Trump’s second term come to a close, Peterson said he’s been generally pleased.
“Everything he promised to do, he’s doing,” Peterson said during a phone interview.
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