{ "archive_path": "archive/1792616416.147412", "base_url": "www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it", "basename": "they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it", "bookmarked_date": "2026-10-21 21:00", "canonical": { "archive_org_path": "https://web.archive.org/web/www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it", "dom_path": "output.html", "favicon_path": "favicon.ico", "git_path": "git/", "google_favicon_path": "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.wired.com", "headers_path": "headers.json", "htmltotext_path": "htmltotext.txt", "index_path": "index.html", "media_path": "media/", "mercury_path": "mercury/content.html", "pdf_path": "output.pdf", "readability_path": "readability/content.html", "screenshot_path": "screenshot.png", "singlefile_path": "singlefile.html", "warc_path": "warc/", "wget_path": "www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it.html" }, "domain": "www.wired.com", "extension": "", "hash": "77EHPY1HE1NE7ES620FF", "history": { "archive_org": [], "dom": [], "favicon": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--output", "favicon.ico", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.google.com/s2/favicons?domain=www.wired.com" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:43.226855+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "favicon.ico", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792616416.147412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:42.777503+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "git": [], "headers": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--head", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:44.276339+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "headers.json", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792616416.147412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:43.236946+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "htmltotext": [], "media": [], "mercury": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/@postlight/parser/cli.js", "https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it" ], "cmd_version": "1.0.0", "end_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:57.653413+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "mercury", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792616416.147412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:51.999767+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "pdf": [], "readability": [ { "cmd": [ "/app/node_modules/readability-extractor/readability-extractor", "/tmp/tmpjxpfur94", "https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it" ], "cmd_version": "0.0.11", "end_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:51.984491+00:00", "index_texts": [ "In the autumn of 2024, Annie was ready for something new. She was living in the southern United States when her husband received an unexpected job offer that would move them to a town just outside London. They were in their twenties with no kids. \u201cWe wanted to take a risk,\u201d she says.While researching their new destination on Reddit, TikTok, and Instagram, Annie found Americans eager to explain how enchanting life in the British suburbs could be\u2014all the benefits of a small town, just a short train ride away from one of the biggest cities in the world. The more she read, the sunnier her expectations about the UK\u2019s health care system, social culture, and European transportation systems became.They moved before the end of the year. But the reality of life in the UK was dramatically different to what she\u2019d imagined. \u201cThere are huge misconceptions about access to quality health care, standard of living \u2026 the quality of life is significantly lower than in the US,\u201d she says, citing the challenges she experienced with the National Health Service\u2019s maternity care\u2014having moved while pregnant with her first child\u2014as well as the lack of disposable income in Britain, thanks to lower salaries. \u201cThings in the UK that are considered luxury items are very common\u201d in America, like a dishwasher and dryer, she adds.Annie says she experienced a high amount of anti-American sentiment straight away. \u201cI found it particularly surprising how people feel so comfortable mocking my accent and culture, even in a workplace environment,\u201d she says. \u201cThe UK is very much a place of \u2018it is what it is,\u2019 but as Americans we are taught to always improve and strive for better things.\u201d Annie and her husband now have an exit plan for summer next year, the earliest their employers would allow them to relocate back home.They\u2019re not alone. Thousands of Americans have, like Annie, relocated to Europe in the last few years. Some left seeking adventure; others, the promise of a \u201cslower\u201d lifestyle outside the American grind. But, for many, these reasons were just bonuses to another kind of escape: political refuge in the wake of Trump\u2019s second term.Annie is not her real name\u2014in fact, she chose not to share any of the specifics of her work background, her husband\u2019s industry, or the precise places they had lived when we spoke about her desperation to get back to America. Like several other Americans WIRED spoke to about their decision to leave and subsequent regret, Annie wanted to remain anonymous because she is concerned about the professional risks of publicly criticizing life abroad. Others cited recent online backlash when other Americans said they missed home, or, in one case, a realization that the political climate of Trump\u2019s America was not something they could escape by heading to Europe.For left-leaning Americans concerned about Trump\u2019s reelection, relocation to Europe was presented as a lifeboat: Some claim you can live gentler, freer, and, most of all, morally lighter. Celebrities, including Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi, and Rosie O\u2019Donnell, all fled the US for political reasons. Courtney Love announced she was applying for UK citizenship in early 2025, describing the political climate at home as \u201cfrightening.\u201d Digital nomad visas introduced after the pandemic in countries like Spain, Greece, and Portugal have made the jump logistically easier.The number of US migrants doubled in the first quarter of 2025 compared to the previous year. In Spain, the number of American residents reached a \u201crecord high\u201d in 2026, according to the country\u2019s National Statistics Institute. The Financial Times reported in April that there was a 63 percent increase in American applications to Ireland\u2019s Foreign Births Register, the citizenship path for those with an Irish parent or grandparent, between 2024 and 2025. The UK Home office reported a surge in residency applications from the US between January and March 2025, the highest since records began in 2004.Private data also reflects the political climate is a major factor. The expatriation company, Expats, released a report earlier this year in which 71 percent of 58,000 respondents \u201ccited the political climate in the United States as a reason for wanting to relocate.\u201d But while Trump 2.0 has more than fulfilled the worst nightmares of many Americans who left, online posts reflect a growing number of them are quietly\u2014and at times apologetically\u2014plotting a move back home, if they haven\u2019t already returned.Sarah Wood Gonz\u00e1lez, a journalist and consultant, recently returned to New York after three years in Spain and Edinburgh. She says she had few expectations of her life in Scotland and wasn\u2019t glossy-eyed about Europe but was \u201csurprised and delighted\u201d by how \u201ceducated and intellectually curious\u201d everyone was. However, when it came to work, she found the slowness to be a drawback.\u201cSomething I had taken for granted is the American outgoingness and default to action, where the question is \u2018how can we collaborate?\u2019\u201d she explains. \u201cGenerally speaking, I also found that the American work style, for better or for worse, moves much faster and can get to a yes or no in less time.\u201dThis was a similar reality for Josh, another American immigrant who asked to remain completely anonymous, citing concerns about backlash. He moved to Berlin in 2023, in part anticipating what might happen at the 2024 election, and also because he felt his life had hit standstill post-Covid. He had even lived in Germany before, spoke German, and had friends in Berlin. But his expectations, particularly when it came to his career, didn\u2019t align with reality.\u201cFinding work was so hard, and the endless bureaucracy had grown worse since I\u2019d left,\u201d he tells WIRED. \u201cI missed the friendlier people, freedom of speech, and ease of daily life\u201d in the US. He adds, \u201cIf you aren\u2019t born and raised there, and don\u2019t look German, you\u2019ll never be fully accepted.\u201d\u201cI thought that \u2018British politeness\u2019 existed as it does in movies,\u201d Annie says, \u201cbut unfortunately, the reality is that present-day British culture is very individualistic, as well as without the sense of charity and helpfulness that many parts of American culture value.\u201d She says she had negative experiences with the NHS maternal care, compared to the smooth experience of her private health insurance in the US, and didn\u2019t expect it to cost her anything: \u201cI pay huge amounts of taxes and an immigration surcharge to access the NHS services\u2014so no, the health care is not free here.\u201d She also expected train travel to be low cost, based on what she\u2019d read about Europe (despite the extortionate train prices and terrible service quality being one of the biggest political conversations in the UK).A noticeable number of American influencers and anonymous social media users are calling it quits, often sheepishly confessing that life wasn\u2019t what they expected\u2014and that they missed their old lives back in the US. On subreddits dedicated to these kinds of discussions, like r/expats, r/GoingToSpain, r/AmericanExpatsUK, r/AmerExit, you can now find a number of stories about difficulties building a new community, trouble finding work, icier cultural norms compared to the open friendliness of America, and sometimes a higher-than-expected European cost of living. Many posts now feature people asking for a new kind of advice: Is it okay for me to miss,\u00a0or even to want to move, back home?These posts are usually met with a huge amount of backlash. Commenters are quick to imply that the poster must be right-wing and privileged, in for a nasty shock if they did return home. Ironically, many times, they parrot the right-wing notion that they probably aren\u2019t trying hard enough to assimilate into their new country. When one person recently said they badly missed their community of friends in a \u201cblue city in a blue state\u201d and were considering moving back, the majority of top comments agreed the user was \u201cinsane.\u201dKate Glavan, an influencer whose posts are often focused on leftist politics, moved to London in late 2024 from New York. She almost immediately found getting work incredibly difficult, with many of the brands she\u2019d previously worked with not having a good enough reason to do sponsored content with a creator now speaking to a British audience. Earlier this year, she announced she\u2019d be returning to New York.On Reddit, the response ranged from \u201cfeels a bit icky to me how she\u2019s been living in the UK all this time instead of having to deal with all the BS in the US like the rest of us\u201d to \u201cSaying I hate it here about the UK while talking about wanting to move to America is definitely a choice in this political climate.\u201dWhen Annie posted earlier this summer on Reddit her excitement about going back to the US in 2027, the comments were largely critical, and ones offering functional relocation advice were heavily downvoted. A moderator intervened, saying many people in the forum \u201cbelieve the USA is evil\u201d and conversely \u201cthe UK is paradise,\u201d continuing that there was often little room for nuance or empathy for differing experiences. In another from earlier this year, where a user said they were struggling to adjust to life in Spain with a toddler, commenters warned that she may cause psychological damage to her child if she relocated back to the US.Jen Barnett, the cofounder of Expatsi Go, tells WIRED: \u201cOur clients are not naive and don\u2019t expect a political utopia anywhere. They\u2019re just well-intentioned Americans who are trying to live meaningful lives while the fabric of society is kind of being ripped apart around them.\u201dShe adds that with the right tools and realistic expectations, it\u2019s \u201cmore likely they\u2019ll stay and thrive.\u201dThe irony is that Europe is not a left-wing paradise. Italy\u2019s prime minister, Giorgia Meloni\u2014who has been a Trump ally\u2014is anti-abortion, anti same-sex marriage, and anti-migrant. Hard-right groups are on the rise in Britain, while Greece, Germany, and Portugal all have right-wing governments pursuing conservative, anti-immigration agendas.\u201cWhat is happening in the US is also happening everywhere now, to the point I\u2019m even a little hesitant in what I say to you, or anywhere online,\u201d says Nick, an art director from New York who relocated to Poland in part because of right-wing populism in the US. He moved with his Polish wife to Krakow, where they have a young child, but despite these personal ties has found it difficult to adjust to the culture and bureaucracy. Now Nick feels trapped in Europe where he says the politics aren\u2019t much better\u2014conceding that Poland both politically and culturally has strong right-wing popularity.As of a few months ago, Josh is back living in the US, where he says he feels happier, and finally \u201caccepted and at home.\u201d In retrospect, he wonders if he got caught up in the frenzy of discourse when he chose to leave in the first place.\u201cOnce I was in Germany and had some distance from the situation in the US,\u201d he says, \u201cI felt perhaps I had overreacted.\u201d" ], "output": "readability", "pwd": "/data/archive/1792616416.147412", "schema": "ArchiveResult", "start_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:48.983443+00:00", "status": "succeeded" } ], "screenshot": [], "singlefile": [], "title": [ { "cmd": [ "curl", "--silent", "--location", "--compressed", "--max-time", "120", "--user-agent", "Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_15_7) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/118.0.0.0 Safari/537.36 ArchiveBox/0.7.4 (+https://github.com/ArchiveBox/ArchiveBox/) curl/curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "https://www.wired.com/story/they-fled-trumps-america-now-they-regret-it" ], "cmd_version": "curl 8.14.1 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)", "end_ts": "2026-10-22T04:25:48.973374+00:00", "index_texts": null, "output": "They Fled Trump\u2019s America. 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