Elections

El anuncio sugiere que Estados Unidos respalda la campaña contra la corrupción dirigida por el nuevo presidente de Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo.El Departamento de Estado estadounidense informó el miércoles que Alejandro Giammattei, quien fue presidente de Guatemala hasta el tumultuoso traspaso de poder efectuado esta semana, tenía prohibida la entrada en Estados Unidos debido a información que, según las autoridades, indicaba que había aceptado sobornos.El anuncio sugiere que Estados Unidos respalda la campaña contra la corrupción dirigida por el nuevo presidente de Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo. Hace poco, Guatemala se vio envuelta en protestas por los intentos de impedir que Arévalo tomara posesión de su cargo, y Giammattei se negó a participar en la juramentación de su sucesor celebrada el lunes.“Nadie, especialmente un funcionario público, está por encima de la ley”, declaró Brian Nichols, alto funcionario del Departamento de Estado para el Hemisferio Occidental.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?  More

The former South Carolina governor has been careful about how and when she criticizes the former president. New Hampshire will test her approach.Nikki Haley might have come in third in the Iowa caucuses, but as she campaigns in New Hampshire for its first-in-the-nation primary next week, her attention is squarely focused on only one rival: Donald J. Trump.Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, has begun fine-tuning her argument against her former boss, trying out new jabs and unleashing a new attack ad right out of the gate. She has also stepped up her efforts to frame herself as Mr. Trump’s top rival, announcing that she would no longer participate in primary debates that don’t include him.In recent remarks and in a new television ad, Ms. Haley paints Mr. Trump and President Biden as two sides of the same coin: politicians past their prime who are unable to put forth a vision for the country’s future because they are “consumed by the past, by investigations, by grievances.”At a campaign rally on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H., she fended off Mr. Trump’s attacks on her immigration record, warned voters not to believe his ads against her and reminded them that it was Mr. Trump who had wanted to raise the age for Social Security eligibility and had once proposed increasing the gas tax.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?  More

Straining to recover after a bruising defeat in Iowa, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his allies moved on Wednesday to shake up his operation yet again, with his super PAC carrying out layoffs and the campaign signaling that it would largely bypass New Hampshire’s primary election next week in favor of competing in South Carolina.The change in strategy appeared to set up the one-on-one contest in New Hampshire that Nikki Haley has been hoping for against former President Donald J. Trump, who leads in polls but is more vulnerable in the moderate state than in socially conservative Iowa. At the same time, the shift could put new pressure on Ms. Haley in South Carolina, where she once served as governor.The maneuvering may not ultimately make much of a dent in a race in which Mr. Trump has dominated polling, won the Iowa caucuses on Monday by a staggering 30 percentage points and spent Wednesday in court for one of his many legal cases, where a judge threatened to kick him out for being unruly. But it changed the calculations for his remaining Republican rivals.As Mr. DeSantis’s team licked its wounds on Wednesday, his super PAC, Never Back Down, trimmed operations in several places, including Nevada. Other staff members were also laid off, including almost the entire online “war room” team, a person with knowledge of the matter said. Those who were cut had their email accounts immediately suspended. It was unclear how many people in all lost their jobs.Mr. DeSantis also began moving a majority of his campaign staff — a separate group — to South Carolina to prepare for its Feb. 24 primary, according to a senior campaign official, who insisted on anonymity. And rather than campaign exclusively in New Hampshire this week, the final stretch before the primary election on Jan. 23, Mr. DeSantis will stump in South Carolina over the weekend, hoping that his conservative message will better align with primary voters.His campaign on Wednesday framed the decision as a chance to deal a knockout blow to Ms. Haley.“When Nikki Haley fails to win her home state, she’ll be finished and this will be a two-person race,” Andrew Romeo, a campaign spokesman, said in a statement. “We’re wasting no time in taking the fight directly to Haley on her home turf.”But the move showed that Mr. DeSantis was all but giving up on competing in New Hampshire, where his poll numbers have been abysmal, trailing in the single digits far behind Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley.Mr. DeSantis’s schedule has been hectic. After campaigning in New Hampshire on Wednesday, he and his team have said he now plans to spend Thursday off the trail, hold more New Hampshire events on Friday and then travel to South Carolina for most of the weekend before returning to New Hampshire on Sunday.In Derry, he still tried to play up his New Hampshire bona fides.“We’re excited to be here,” he said after a well-practiced five-minute anecdote about his family’s relationship to the Boston Red Sox, who are revered in New Hampshire. He went on to suggest that Ms. Haley’s refusal to debate him in the state had played a part in his decision to back away.“You know, we had planned to be here tomorrow night,” he said. “They’ve always done a debate in New Hampshire a week before the primary. So I said I’m in. Of course, Trump hasn’t debated, so he’s not in, and Haley wouldn’t debate either.”Speaking to reporters afterward, Mr. DeSantis tried to downplay his decision to travel to South Carolina.Mr. DeSantis did not directly address his decision to retreat from New Hampshire during a speech on Wednesday in Hampton, N.H., or a later appearance in Derry. John Tully for The New York TimesIt remained uncertain whether he might squeeze in a last-minute New Hampshire stop early next week before the state’s primary on Tuesday, and Mr. Romeo declined to say whether Mr. DeSantis would be there on the day of the election. Neither the governor nor his super PAC has placed an advertisement in New Hampshire since Nov. 18, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.Ms. Haley’s path in New Hampshire is now clearer. Even after she finished third in Iowa — close behind Mr. DeSantis — Ms. Haley declared that she had accomplished her goal of creating a one-on-one matchup with the former president.“When you look at how we’re doing in New Hampshire, in South Carolina and beyond, I can safely say tonight Iowa made this Republican primary a two-person race,” she said after votes were tallied on Monday.Olivia Perez-Cubas, a spokeswoman for Ms. Haley, responded to Mr. DeSantis’s move with a quip: “South Carolina is a great state. We hope they enjoy their vacation time here.”Since December, Ms. Haley and her allies have pointed to the possibility of a one-on-one race in New Hampshire as an opportunity for an outright victory there.Internal polling conducted last month in the state by Americans for Prosperity Action, a super PAC founded by the billionaire Koch family that is backing Ms. Haley’s campaign, found that in a full field of Republican candidates, she trailed Mr. Trump by 45 percent to 32 percent.But in a head-to-head matchup between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump, without Mr. DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy or Chris Christie — both of whom have since left the race — the polling found Ms. Haley in a statistical tie with Mr. Trump, 48 percent to 45 percent.Still, Mr. DeSantis’s decision to spend less time in New Hampshire is not guaranteed to be good news for her. Supporters of Mr. DeSantis tend to be more conservative than Ms. Haley’s moderate-leaning coalition, so those who jump ship from the Florida governor might vote for Mr. Trump instead.CBS News earlier reported Mr. DeSantis’s shift toward South Carolina.Mr. DeSantis was denied his best chance at exposure in New Hampshire when Ms. Haley turned down two debates scheduled for Thursday and Sunday. Even the weather seemed to be against him there. A snowstorm and icy roads forced him to cancel two town halls in rural parts of the state on Tuesday night and Wednesday morning, while Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump were able to go through with their events.Mr. Trump was set to return to New Hampshire on Wednesday evening. He spent the morning in a Manhattan courthouse for his defamation trial, where the writer E. Jean Carroll testified that Mr. Trump had “shattered my reputation” by accusing her of lying about her claim that he raped her in a department store dressing room decades ago. Mr. Trump’s disclaiming comments, loud enough for jurors to hear, prompted the judge in the case to threaten to throw him out of the room.Even before it was clear that Mr. DeSantis was retreating from New Hampshire, his allies were trying to lower expectations.Jason Osborne, the majority leader of New Hampshire’s House of Representatives, who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis, said in an interview on Tuesday that the Florida governor had “nothing to lose” in New Hampshire.“The expectations are already set so low,” Mr. Osborne said. “Anything he does will be over expectations. There’s only upside here.”Never Back Down’s field operation in South Carolina is not nearly as extensive as the one it spent heavily to create in Iowa, where Mr. DeSantis staked many of his hopes and allowed the super PAC to take over many of the responsibilities of a traditional campaign.Nikki Haley at an event in Bretton Woods, N.H., on Tuesday. Ms. Haley’s path in New Hampshire is now clearer.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe group has burned through cash, spending at least $30 million on its push to reach voters in person through door-knocking and canvassing in early-primary states, according to a person with knowledge of its efforts — a figure that does not include additional tens of millions in television advertising.Given that ambitious investment, Mr. DeSantis’s defeat on Monday to Mr. Trump in Iowa was all the more devastating, and raised urgent new questions about how long his operation could financially sustain a bid and attract new donors.One of those who was laid off at Never Back Down, George Andrews, who had been assigned as a caucus precinct operations director in Iowa but also listed himself on LinkedIn as a state director in California, posted on the career website that he had been let go.“As of 6 am this morning, I learned I am now a free agent due to budget cuts beyond my control,” Mr. Andrews wrote in a post on LinkedIn.“I completely understand why this had to happen, harbor no ill will, and wish my former team great success as they attempt to bring back sanity to our party,” he wrote. “What they are trying to accomplish for America is much greater than my termination as an individual employee.”An official with the group appeared to confirm the layoffs, saying that those affected were being paid through the end of January. The official, who did not speak on the record, added that the group was “evaluating and paring down” other consultants, vendors and some staff members who had been focused on various aspects of the group’s work.Scott Wagner, the chief executive of Never Back Down, issued a statement saying that the group continued to host events for Mr. DeSantis, but he did not address the question of layoffs.“Never Back Down continues to host a slew of events on the ground for Gov. DeSantis,” Mr. Wagner said. “We’ve mobilized several members of our robust Iowa team over to the other early primary states to help in these efforts.”Paul Mondello, 81, of Londonderry, who was at an event for Mr. DeSantis in Derry on Wednesday, said it was “kind of offensive to some degree” that the governor was not focusing on New Hampshire, but it would not shake his resolve to vote for him.“For him to leave, it is a little bit of a punch,” Mr. Mondello said. “I don’t think you should give up.”Nick Corasaniti More

The decision against Alejandro Giammattei, who is accused of accepting bribes, signaled U.S. support for a new anticorruption drive in Guatemala.The State Department said on Wednesday that Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala’s president until a tumultuous transfer of power this week, was barred from entering the United States because of what officials said was information indicating that he had accepted bribes.The announcement signaled that the United States was moving quickly to support the anticorruption drive led by Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo. Guatemala was recently engulfed in protests over attempts to prevent Mr. Arévalo from taking office, and Mr. Giammattei refused to appear at his successor’s inauguration on Monday.“No one, especially a public official, is above the law,” said Brian Nichols, the top State Department official for the Western Hemisphere.The Treasury Department also announced sanctions on Wednesday against Alberto Pimentel Mata, a former energy minister in Mr. Giammattei’s government, in connection to Mr. Pimentel Mata’s taking bribes and his involvement in numerous corruption schemes related to government contracts and licenses, officials said.Last weekend, U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied entry in Miami to one of Mr. Giammattei’s sons, and expelled him on Monday, according to Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah and a supporter of Mr. Giammattei.Taken together, the moves reflect how the United States government is trying to stem corruption and impunity in Guatemala, Central America’s most populous country.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?  More

The campaign website for Representative Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat mounting a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, has a policy platform that signals liberal bona fides tempered by a Midwestern businessman’s practicality. It includes headers like “Climate Action,” “Women’s Health and Economic Security” and “Immigration Reform.”Sometime on Tuesday, one header was changed. Gone was “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” In its place: “Equity and Restorative Justice.”The text beneath the header — including acknowledgments of racial disparities and vague promises to ensure equal opportunity — was untouched. But the tweak was nonetheless significant. Even more so was its timing: On Saturday, Mr. Phillips had received the endorsement of William A. Ackman, the billionaire investor who in recent months has become an outspoken critic of so-called D.E.I. programs in higher education.Mr. Ackman did not merely endorse Mr. Phillips; in a lengthy post on X on Saturday, where Mr. Ackman has a considerable following, he said that he had already given the maximum $3,300 donation allowed to Mr. Phillips’s campaign, and he announced that on Tuesday, after the federal holiday for Martin Luther King’s Birthday, he planned to wire $1 million to We Deserve Better, a super PAC formed late last year that is supporting Mr. Phillips’s candidacy.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?  More

A confluence of political forces and changing media behavior are testing their efficacy in the Trump era.In a presidential election year, no glowing rectangle in Iowa or New Hampshire is safe from an endless deluge of political ads.Campaign ads are inescapable on the nightly news, “Wheel of Fortune” and YouTube. Even the high-dollar, high-visibility ad blocks of professional and college football games have become increasingly saturated.It’s a deeply entrenched multimillion-dollar industry, and one of the largest expenses of every presidential campaign. But a confluence of political forces and changing media behavior may be testing the efficacy of political advertising in the Trump era.Nikki Haley and her allied super PAC spent roughly $28 million on broadcast ads in Iowa, according to AdImpact, an ad-tracking firm. Gov. Ron DeSantis and his allies spent $25 million. Trump and his super PAC spent only $15 million — and won by more than 30 points.As my colleagues Michael Bender and Katie Glueck reported, that result showed a new depth to the Republican Party’s devotion to Trump. But it also suggests that a smaller universe of persuadable voters and a wholesale shift in viewing habits may have significantly undercut the impact of political advertising.According to Cross Screen Media, an ad analytics firm, only 63 percent of Iowa Republicans are reachable with traditional or “linear” TV ads, as viewers switch to streaming and social media. In 2016, that percentage was still in the 90s. At most, Republican campaigns this year reached 42 percent of likely caucus voters.“I don’t think that people have caught up with where the media consumption is,” said Michael Beach, chief executive of Cross Screen Media.The pivot to streaming is potentially deadly for political ad buyers. Beach estimates that almost 40 percent of the time viewers spend on television is on streaming, but streaming offers far fewer opportunities to show ads to viewers than traditional programming.Granite State mediaNew Hampshire’s presidential race is much closer than Iowa’s was, with polls showing Haley trailing Trump by single digits. And Trump faces a similar advertising deficit, with Haley and her allies spending more than twice as much as Trump’s campaign and its allied super PAC.But the tone of advertising in New Hampshire has taken a sharply negative turn on the former president. Ten times as many negative ads attacking Trump have run in New Hampshire over the past 30 days as ran in Iowa, according to data from AdImpact. The biggest such spender is the SFA Fund, the super PAC supporting Haley, which is portraying Trump as a liar prone to temper tantrums.Trump and his allies have responded, spending $1.4 million on a single ad attacking Haley over immigration, and $2.7 million on one targeting her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015 (she also called for a corresponding income tax cut).30-second issuesThe New Hampshire ads reveal the key issues that each campaign is hoping will boost their support in the final days. The Trump campaign and MAGA Inc., the super PAC supporting his campaign, have spent more in New Hampshire on ads regarding immigration than any other issue, according to AdImpact.Haley’s campaign has almost exclusively run ads portraying her as representing a “new generation” and castigating Trump and President Biden as too old for the presidency. The SFA Fund has made taxes core to its ad campaign, with nearly half its ad spending over the past month promoting Haley’s pledge to cut taxes for the middle class or defending her record on taxes.(DeSantis, who is far behind Trump and Haley in New Hampshire, had not broadcast any ads in the state in over a month when DeSantis and his super PAC announced Wednesday that they would be leaving the state to focus on South Carolina.)But there may be slightly more of an opportunity for Haley to close the gap. According to Cross Screen Media, 80 percent of New Hampshire Republican voters are reachable by traditional television advertising.Speaker Mike Johnson will most likely need to rely on Democrats to avoid a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe House G.O.P.’s incredible shrinking majorityThanks to a combination of coincidence, scandal, health issues and political turmoil, the Republican majority in the House of Representatives keeps getting smaller.This week, with lawmakers absent for medical reasons and the recent not-so-voluntary departures of the ousted former speaker Kevin McCarthy and the expelled George Santos, the best G.O.P. attendance that Speaker Mike Johnson can muster as he tries to avoid a government shutdown is the bare-minimum 218 votes. That is before factoring in the impact of rough winter weather across the nation.Another Republican, Representative Bill Johnson of Ohio, is resigning as of Sunday to take a job as a university president, lowering the number to 217 if Representative Harold Rogers of Kentucky, the 86-year-old dean of the House, is unable to quickly return from recuperating from a car accident. Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the No. 2 Republican, is out until at least next month while undergoing cancer treatment.As a result, the G.O.P. could soon be able to afford just a single defection on any matter if Democrats remain united and have no absences of their own.Republicans are in a real numerical bind. At a time when House Republicans regularly face internal rebellion from hard-line conservatives, Johnson has absolutely no cushion if he chooses to rely strictly on the votes of his own party, which is part of the reason he cut a deal with Democrats on spending to avoid a shutdown later this week, further angering the hard right.Democrats say the recurring scenario of leaning on them for must-pass bills is proof that even though Republicans are the majority party on the tally sheet, they don’t have a working majority because of their diminished forces and constant internal squabbling.“When anything hits the fan, they don’t have 218,” said Representative Steny H. Hoyer of Maryland, the former longtime Democratic majority leader, referring to the number that represents a basic majority in the 435-member House. “They are not the majority party in this House.”Johnson, the novice speaker, said it was a problem he could handle.“I’m undaunted by this,” he said recently on CBS. “We deal with the numbers that we have.” — Carl HulseRead the full story here.More politics news and analysisBacking down: The super PAC supporting Ron DeSantis began laying off staff.Disorder in the court: A judge threatened to throw Donald Trump out of his defamation trial.No-shows: CNN canceled its Republican debate in New Hampshire for lack of participation.History lesson: Haley and DeSantis were asked about race in America, and it got awkward.You would cry too: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. wants to create his own party to get on the ballot.Read past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

The judge sent the matter back to Maine’s secretary of state, ordering her to modify, withdraw or confirm her ruling after the Supreme Court rules on a similar case out of Colorado.A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to issue her decision quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.Read the Maine Judge’s Ruling on Trump’s Ballot EligibilityThe judge ordered the state’s top election official to wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on the eligibility issue in a Colorado case, and then to confirm, modify or reverse her Dec. 28 decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot.Read DocumentWe 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?  More

Well, people, Iowa has spoken. Peeped, anyhow.Every time the nation gets to select its next president, all eyes turn to Iowa, which traditionally has the first word on what the public wants.This is a state with approximately 1 percent of the national population. How could we not pay attention?Next week, we’ll be obsessed with the voting in New Hampshire, which has less than half as many people as Iowa.So goes the current caucus-and-primary system — on the Republican side, at least. The Democrats changed theirs after 2020, when the Iowa count crashed and burned. It took days to get the final results, which gave Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders the lead, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, who came in at a pathetic 15.8 percent.Pop quiz: The Iowa Democrats struggled to produce a vote count because of:A. A deep reluctance to let other states start getting all the attentionB. A bad appC. Threats to public safety from a 12-foot-tall snow bearDon’t go for the self-absorption option. Be nice. The answer, of course, is a bad app. Truly, in this day and age, virtually anything terrible that occurs is either because of a bad app or Donald Trump.You’ve got to admire the dedicated citizens who keep the Iowa caucuses going. But it’s hard not to get tired of hearing candidates deliver effusive tributes to the state’s special interests, like the glories of ethanol subsidies. (“I stood up for ethanol like nobody has ever stood up for it,” Trump claimed on caucus night. Really suspect that before he began running for president, he thought ethanol was a hair product.)This year, the Democrats are casting their ballots by mail, and Iowa leaders will let us know the results in early March. The party, under orders from President Biden, has rearranged its schedule so the primaries will officially start in South Carolina next month, then move on to Nevada. The idea is to get a population of voters that’s a tad more diverse than Iowa, which is about as ethnically homogeneous as Finland.Sneering at the idea that Iowa is always first is traditionally coupled with an acknowledgment that voters there have a history of high participation even in terrible winter weather.Turns out, however, that not so many showed up this year — 110,000 Republicans voted, which was less than 15 percent of those registered. And hey, probably about a tenth of the population that visited the Butter Cow at last year’s Iowa State Fair.Certainly can’t blame them for choosing to stay home during weather that would have discouraged Nanook of the North. But do you think it was possibly the ballot as well? Everybody knew Trump was going to win. Maybe some people found it too depressing to participate.Our former president managed to get more than half of the votes cast in Iowa. But he failed to win all 99 counties, thanks to a one-vote margin (yes, one) in the county where the University of Iowa is situated. Nikki Haley won there, giving her at least a little bounce for the next stop, in New Hampshire, which has a relatively high percentage of college graduates.Ron DeSantis is moving on, too. He actually came in a tad ahead of Haley statewide, but I’m not sure he should boast about that. Having visited every single one of those 99 counties (as he constantly reminded us), DeSantis apparently won most of the hearts in … none of them.About New Hampshire. If anybody is going to beat Trump anywhere, it’ll be Haley in New Hampshire, where Republicans tend to be moderate and happy to show their independence by doing something different. She’s already taken on the front-runner by announcing that she won’t go to any debates there unless Trump agrees to participate, too.Pause for a brief giggle.On the Democratic side, New Hampshire party leaders are very, very unhappy that Biden has ditched them for South Carolina. And how should we feel about that? On one hand, New Hampshirites have always been super devoted to their role — Chris Christie probably spent the happiest days of his campaign there, attacking Trump before always-available audiences. It’s such a deep-seated tradition, political junkies have to be a little sad to see the state being snubbed.On the other hand, New Hampshire is whiter than Iowa. It’s one of the least diverse states in the Union.It’s very easy to write in a candidate’s name in New Hampshire, and top Democrats say they’re going to do just that for Biden, even though, in the words of the former state party chair Kathy Sullivan, they’re “still pissed.”Gird your loins, citizens. Our political lives are going to be primarily primaries for the next couple of months. (Super Tuesday is March 5.) Candidates will find ways to pick fights, even if they’re silly.Sometimes it’s hard to keep all this in focus. We’ve got lives to live. Joe Biden has to run the country. Donald Trump has to go to nine million trials.But hey, it’s democracy. It’s important. And it’s going to be a very long year.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More