Factory closures and little improvement in working people’s lives in Saginaw a ‘death by a thousand cuts’ that still hurts

Evan Allardyce worked as an electrician at one of the General Motors factories that once dotted Michigan’s Saginaw county and now stand as decaying markers to thousands of jobs lost to corporate agendas. He struggled to find work after the plant closures and was forced to travel across the country for contract jobs.

So Allardyce, now a leader of a Saginaw branch of the US’s largest electricians union, understands blue-collar anger over the free trade agreements that allowed car makers and other industries to move hundreds of thousands of well-paying jobs into Mexico and Canada since the 1990s. He sees how the resulting economic decline and rising poverty in the industrial heartlands helped elect Donald Trump in 2016.

Some Republicans question what they see as the local Saginaw party’s obsessive focus on conspiracy theories

Debra Ell opened her Trump Shoppe in a dingy Saginaw strip mall back when establishment Republicans and TV pundits were still scoffing at the man who was about to remake US politics.

Ell latched on to Donald Trump as a winner not long after he declared his run for the presidency in 2015. But she understood that the key to his success in her corner of swing state Michigan was to keep a distance from the local Republican party, which Ell regarded with almost as much hostility as she did the Democrats.

Eating out in Denmark can be costly, but a growing number of child-friendly community supper clubs in the capital offer affordable feasting with the locals

Copenhagen is a gastronome’s paradise. Stroll around the Danish capital’s elegant boulevards and before long you’re bound to stumble upon a hallowed, Michelin-starred temple of New Nordic cuisine. However, there’s a cheaper and more convivial side to the city’s culinary scene: its communal supper tables.

Leading the way is the community centre Absalon, a former church in the smart Vesterbro neighbourhood. On a Sunday evening in September, the air buzzes with conversation and the clatter of cutlery as about 200 people tuck into bowls of steaming tomato lentil soup and piles of fried potatoes in a creamy fennel and chive sauce. This is the nightly fællesspisning dinner (the Danish word loosely translates as communal dining), featuring long tables, shared by strangers. The menu changes daily to spotlight locally sourced ingredients made into affordable dishes that are served tableside by the guests themselves.