Aurelia Butler

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    ‘Morally Offensive and Fiscally Reckless’: 3 Writers on Trump’s Big Gamble

    Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Nate Silver, the author of “On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything” and the newsletter Silver Bulletin, and Lis Smith, a Democratic communications strategist and author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story,” to discuss the aftermath of the passage of President Trump’s One Big, Beautiful Bill.Frank Bruni: Let’s start with that megabill, the bigness of which made the consequences of its enactment hard to digest quickly. Now that we’ve had time to, er, chew it over, I’m wondering if you think Democrats are right to say — to hope — that it gives them a whole new traction in next year’s midterms.I mean, the most significant Medicaid cuts kick in after that point. Could Trump and other Republicans avoid paying a price for them in 2026? Or did they get much too cute in constructing the legislation and building in that delay and create the possibility of disaster for themselves in both 2026 and 2028, when the bill’s effect on Medicaid, as well as on other parts of the safety net, will have taken hold?Lis Smith: If history is any guide, Republicans will pay a price for these cuts in the midterms. In 2010, Democrats got destroyed for passing Obamacare, even though it would be years until it was fully implemented. In 2018, Republicans were punished just for trying to gut it. Voters don’t like politicians messing with their health care. They have been pretty consistent in sending that message.I’d argue that Democrats have an even more potent message in 2026 — it’s not just that Republicans are messing with health care, it’s that they are cutting it to fund tax cuts for the richest Americans.Nate Silver: What I wonder about is Democrats’ ability to sustain focus on any given issue. At the risk of overextrapolating from my home turf in New York, Zohran Mamdani just won a massive upset in the Democratic mayoral primary by focusing on affordability. And a message on the Big, Beautiful Bill could play into that. But the Democratic base is often more engaged by culture war issues, or by messages that are about Trump specifically — and Trump isn’t on the ballot in 2026 — rather than Republicans broadly. The polls suggest that the Big, Beautiful Bill is extremely unpopular, but a lot of those negative views are 1) among people who are extremely politically engaged and already a core Democratic constituency, or 2) snap opinions among the disengaged that are subject to change. Democrats will need to ensure that voters are still thinking about the bill next November, and tying it to actual or potential changes that affect them directly and adversely.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Faith Leaders Can Now Endorse. Will That Swing the NYC Mayor’s Race?

    The I.R.S. has cleared faith leaders to endorse political candidates to their congregations. New York clergy are wrestling with the choice to use their newfound influence.Four days after his remarkable showing in New York’s Democratic mayoral primary, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani appeared at the Harlem headquarters of a group headed by the Rev. Al Sharpton. He acknowledged the leaders and biblical scriptures that fueled his campaign.“Weeping may endure for the night, but joy comes in the morning,” Mr. Mamdani said, a reference to Psalm 30:5, a scripture that is especially popular in Black churches. “And it has been night for far too long in this city.”Mr. Mamdani did not come to the gathering on June 28, for the National Action Network, explicitly seeking an endorsement from the faith leaders in the crowd. But under a new rule change from the I.R.S., he and his opponents in the mayoral race may be able to secure one without tax repercussions.Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee seeking to become the first Muslim mayor of New York City, regularly campaigned at mosques.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesThe I.R.S. said in a court filing last week that houses of worship could endorse political candidates to their congregations without losing their tax-exempt status. The move was initially seen as the agency’s formal termination of a longstanding but spottily enforced rule against campaigning from the pulpit.But in New York, the ruling could also open up a new front in the city’s heated mayoral race, offering candidates the chance to formally consolidate support from not only faith leaders but their congregations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    N.Y.C. Panel Withdraws Proposal to Switch to Open Primaries

    The panel, created by Mayor Eric Adams, said it would introduce other ballot initiatives, but not a proposal that would allow all voters to participate in primaries regardless of party.The primary elections that New York City uses to pick its mayors will remain unchanged, after a special panel that had been formulating a switch to an open primary system said on Wednesday that it would not put the proposal on the ballot this fall.Under the proposal, all registered voters, regardless of their party affiliation, could participate in primary elections. The 13-member panel, called a Charter Revision Commission, said it had decided not to put the proposal before voters because there was no consensus among civic leaders as to what the new primary model should look like.Richard R. Buery Jr., the chairman of the commission, which was created by Mayor Eric Adams, said in a statement that he was “personally disappointed” in the decision and hoped the issue might be revisited in the future.“I hope civic leaders will build on the progress that we have made this year, develop greater consensus and advance a proposal to voters prior to the next citywide election,” Mr. Buery said.In a 135-page report released earlier this month, which outlined the open-primary plan and other proposals, the commission acknowledged that some members of the panel felt that this year was not the right time to introduce such a major change.One reason to delay a move to an open primary system, the report said, was that New York had only recently enacted a big change to its elections — ranked-choice voting — that some voters still struggled to understand.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Vance Tries to Sell the Benefits of Trump’s Megabill but Ignores the Costs

    In a visit to Pennsylvania, Vice President JD Vance stressed tax cuts and savings accounts for newborns, with no mention of trims to Medicaid and nutritional assistance programs many Trump voters rely on.Vice President JD Vance traveled to a crucial swing state on Wednesday to sell the Trump administration’s signature domestic policy legislation as a victory for working American families, despite concerns even among some Republicans over its cuts to the safety net in service of benefiting the rich.In what amounted to an attempted brand relaunch of legislation that Democrats have framed as an attack on the middle class, Mr. Vance traveled to a machine shop in eastern Pennsylvania to spotlight provisions in the package that would cut taxes, preserve overtime pay and create $1,000 savings accounts for newborns. Left unmentioned by Mr. Vance were the cuts to Medicaid and the nutritional assistance programs that many of Mr. Trump’s own supporters rely on.“I think this will be transformational for the American people,” Mr. Vance said in front of signs that read “No tax on tips” and “America is back.” The vice president appealed to those in attendance to help the administration sell the package ahead of next year’s midterm elections, arguing that it would benefit Americans like those working in the manufacturing facility serving as his backdrop.“We’re going to invest in American workers and American families every single day,” Mr. Vance added. “That’s my solemn promise to every single person in this room.”Selling the bill is likely to be an uphill climb, particularly after Republicans provided Democrats a series of sound bites expressing concern over how Medicaid cuts would hurt their constituents. While polls show the bill is broadly unpopular, it is difficult to say how much it will influence voters in future elections. Still, six out of 10 Americans find the package unpopular, according to a recent CNN poll. Roughly 58 percent of Americans said Mr. Trump had gone too far in cutting federal programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    JD Vance’s Big, Beautiful Task

    The vice president is selling Trump’s domestic policy bill amid signs Democratic attacks are breaking through.Vice presidents always have hard jobs.They have little practical authority. They are the face of decisions they are not empowered to make. They get assignments that are hard to ace (like Vice President Kamala Harris’s deployment to address the “root causes” of migration).This morning, I headed to a machine shop in West Pittston, Pa., where Vice President JD Vance was stepping up to shoulder what is becoming a delicate task: selling President Trump’s “One Big Beautiful Bill.”Stumping for your boss’s signature legislation might not ordinarily be an arduous assignment. But at least at this early point, the law, for which Vance cast a tiebreaking vote, is simply not very popular. Some Republicans have warned that it will cost their party seats; one is already trying to roll back the bill’s cuts to Medicaid.Making matters worse for Vance, hints of distrust were in the air, given the furor over the administration’s decision not to release more information about the investigation into the convicted sex offender and disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein.The machine shop began filling up with devoted Trump and Vance fans, who arrived in Trump 2028 hats or T-shirts showing the moment the president survived an assassination attempt last summer. But even here, there were questions about the new law, and signs that Democrats’ efforts to highlight it as regressive and call it a giveaway for the wealthy were breaking through.“The Democrats are saying that, I forget the number, but, like, millions of people are going to lose their health care and that kind of thing. And I just want to know if that’s true,” said Jane Mizerak, 68, a Republican from the nearby town of West Wyoming, who said she had voted for Trump each time he had run for president.Republicans Rebound in Support for ImmigrationPercent saying immigration is a good thing for this country today

    Source: Gallup surveys of U.S. adults from 2001 to 2025. By The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Adams Eclipses Mamdani in Recent Fund-Raising, as Cuomo Lags Behind

    Mayor Eric Adams reported raising $1.5 million over the last month, but his inability to qualify for matching funds may hamper his re-election bid.When Eric Adams appeared at a campaign fund-raiser in Florida earlier this month with people who are aligned with a Young Republicans group and President Trump, the event seemed incongruous for a sitting Democratic mayor of New York City.But this is no ordinary mayor’s race.As Mr. Adams makes a long-shot re-election bid as an independent candidate in November, he has begun to expand his fund-raising network to try to compete with the Democratic nominee, Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani.The latest fund-raising period in the race suggests that the mayor still holds sway with some donors — even if they are outside the typical New York donor world.Of the $1.5 million that Mr. Adams raised during the most recent filing period, from June 10 to July 11, nearly half came from outside New York City. Eight donations arrived from Florida on the day of the fund-raiser, totaling $2,325.Mr. Mamdani also posted a strong fund-raising haul during that period. He raised $852,000, including $256,000 that is eligible for public matching funds, effectively boosting his total to $1.1 million, according to his campaign. And in a sign of his growing national stature, roughly 45 percent of his contributions came from outside New York State. He now has just over $2.6 million on hand.Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, in contrast, raised just $64,000 during the recent fund-raising period, in part because he was not actively fund-raising while he mulled whether to continue his campaign as an independent in November. He has almost $1.2 million on hand, and, after releasing a video on Monday confirming his intention to run, is expected to now start focusing on raising money.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Mamdani, Be a Convener, Not a Commentator

    Dear New York City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani:I have been watching you tortuously try to explain to pro-Israel New Yorkers that your readiness to defend the phrase “globalize the intifada” was not antisemitic or meant to favor the elimination of the Jewish state.You have said that it’s not a phrase you use but have not condemned its use by others, insisting that it means different things to different people. Going even further on Tuesday, in a meeting with New York business leaders, you reportedly said you would “discourage” use of the phrase.It seems to me that you have gotten yourself tied up in knots on this issue, pulled between your supporters and your critics. May I offer two pieces of advice that have guided me over four decades of navigating this conflict:First, if you are discussing a mantra — like “globalize the intifada” — that takes 15 minutes to explain why it doesn’t mean what it obviously means, I’d suggest that you distance yourself further from that mantra.May I offer an alternative? “Two states for two people.” It works really well with drums — “Two states, for two people.”While that solution may be a long shot, it has the virtue of being the only viable, just solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict — one that many Americans still support, and one, if this Gaza war ever ends, I believe many Israelis and Palestinians and Arabs and Muslims and Jews in New York City will as well. There is no other viable alternative. There is no one-state solution; there is no three-state solution. The only alternative to “two states for two people” is, in my opinion, no states for two people — just a grinding forever war between two people living intertwined with each other.Second, the world does not need the mayor of New York City to be another commentator on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The world is awash with commentators on this issue. We don’t need any more. We need leaders ready to be conveners of those looking for the only just solution.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Why We Mistake the Wholesomeness of Gen Z for Conservatism

    “N.Y.C. art schools see record-high application numbers as Gen Z-ers clamber to enroll,” Gothamist’s Hannah Frishberg reported earlier this month. Art school has a reputation for being totally impractical and mildly dissolute. But what members of Gen Z like about art school, Frishberg explains, is that it has “a comforting, human sense of purpose.”The art school trend sounds counterintuitive at first. During times of economic uncertainty, the cliché is that young people usually go to law school or do something else that seems pragmatic, steady and lucrative. Yet art school can offer young people a set of tangible, hands-on skills and a road to employment that is set apart from an increasingly artificial-intelligence-driven corporate world.I have been interviewing 20-somethings about dating, politics, faith and their aspirations for a couple of years now. Dozens of conversations with members of Gen Z have convinced me that the most prominent aspect of their generational character is that they’re small-c conservative.This is frequently misunderstood as politically conservative (more on that in a second). But what I mean is that they’re constitutionally moderate and driven by old-fashioned values. It might be hard for us to recognize just how wholesome Gen Z is, or what that represents for America’s future. But we should try.It’s not just their “Shop Class as Soulcraft” disposition — their bias for the local and the handmade and against tech overlords — that makes this generation seem like a throwback. Or their renewed and unironic interest in things like embroidery, crocheting and knitting. There has been a lot of grown-up chatter in the past few years about the fact that Gen Z teenagers are having less sex, drinking less and doing fewer drugs than millennials and members of Gen X did. Teen pregnancy is at record lows.There’s probably not a single reason behind these shifts. Of course, Gen Z consists of millions of people, and generalizations are not going to apply to every member. But I can see, in the ways this generation is different from previous ones, a clear desire for moderation in all things.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More