Elections

The Iowans who will brave frigid temperatures Monday for the first test of support for Republican presidential hopefuls will be caucusing — a process that’s distinct from other ballot-box affairs.Unlike in other elections, Iowa’s Democratic and Republican parties, not the state’s government, organize and run the caucuses. And members of the two parties will conduct business a little differently.What happens during a caucus?Once participating Republican voters arrive at the caucus precinct, they must check in with precinct workers, who will verify that they are eligible to participate. (Only registered Republicans may participate in G.O.P. caucuses, but party rules allow unregistered voters, Democrats and independents to register or switch their party affiliation at the caucus site.)Then, the caucusgoers will elect a chair and secretary to preside over the event. Supporters of each candidate will speak to the caucus, pitching their peers on why they should support their preferred candidates.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

At a historic Black church, Fani T. Willis pushed back against an accusation that Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she brought on, was unqualified for the job. Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., pushed back on Sunday against the criticism and questions about her judgment that have followed a court filing accusing her of being romantically involved with an outside lawyer she hired to lead the racketeering case against former President Donald J. Trump. Ms. Willis emerged from almost a week of silence to address the congregation at one of the oldest Black churches in Atlanta, which had invited her to be the keynote speaker for a service dedicated to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. She did not address the allegation that she was in a relationship with Nathan Wade, the special prosecutor she hired in 2021, who has earned more than $650,000 in the job to date. Instead, what Ms. Willis detailed were the frustrations and struggles that she said she has faced not only as a prosecutor, but also as a Black woman taking on the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. 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

President Biden has a re-election campaign with two distinct centers of gravity — the White House and his Delaware headquarters — and advisers who are juggling two jobs at once.With less than 10 months to go until the 2024 election, the nerve center of President Biden’s bid for a second term is stationed not at his campaign’s headquarters in Delaware but within feet of the Oval Office.The president and his chief strategist, Mike Donilon, have repeatedly discussed when to move him over to the campaign — perhaps after the 2022 midterm elections, then after the 2023 off-year elections and again at the end of 2023. Each time, no move happened after the president told aides he wanted to keep Mr. Donilon within walking distance.Anita Dunn, the longtime Democratic operative who stepped in to help revive Mr. Biden’s fledging operation four years ago, is devising the re-election message again, even as she oversees communications at the White House. Jen O’Malley Dillon, Mr. Biden’s deputy White House chief of staff and former campaign manager, is also splitting her day job with her role as one of the most powerful voices in the campaign.So far, almost none of the people in the president’s inner circle have left for campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., prompting some donors and strategists to worry that too much of Mr. Biden’s team remains cloistered inside the White House. Less than a year before Election Day, the president has a campaign with two distinct centers of gravity, advisers juggling two jobs at once, and months of internal debate about when to consolidate everyone in one place.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 last time Donald J. Trump participated in competitive Iowa caucuses, he lost narrowly, accused Senator Ted Cruz of Texas of stealing the contest, claimed fraud, demanded that Iowa Republicans nullify the results, and called for a rerun.While Iowa has a history of troubles with its caucus results, there’s been no evidence of fraud. The 2016 Republican contest was, in fact, the only one since 2008 that had gone off without a hitch.And yet if Monday night ends with Mr. Trump underperforming expectations, both his history and his rhetoric during this year’s campaign suggest he won’t hesitate to cry foul and refuse to accept the result.Mr. Trump has already accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of “trying to rig” the caucuses. Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist whom Mr. Trump last year considered hiring for a campaign post, suggested on social media that “the deep state” was engaging in “weather manipulation” to instigate Iowa’s Friday snowstorm and subzero temperatures to depress Trump turnout on Monday. And Donald Trump Jr. suggested in a Telegram video that “we can’t take anything for granted, or assume that everything is going to be on the up and up. We’ve seen this rodeo before.”Those claims are not likely to be met with much support from Iowa Republicans and the party volunteers who will operate the 1,657 caucus sites across the state.“If Trump says it’s fraud, he’s full of crap,” said A.J. Spiker, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa who is backing Mr. DeSantis.Still, Iowa Republicans aim to protect themselves from campaigns claiming foul play at the caucuses.At each site, caucusgoers mark their presidential preferences on paper slips. Those slips are then counted in full view of whoever wants to watch. Typically a representative from each campaign watches the counting, and recording is allowed.“It’s the most transparent straw vote you could possibly do,” Mr. Spiker said.The Trump campaign’s headquarters in Urbandale, Iowa, on Saturday.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s pre-emptive Iowa fraud claims last month followed a flub by Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis. She called on supporters to “descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus.”“You do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus,” she said.That earned Ms. DeSantis a rebuke from the state Republican Party.Only Iowans can participate in the caucuses. Republican volunteers are supposed to check for photo identification at the caucus sites. Still, Mr. Trump’s campaign suggested then that the DeSantis campaign had professed a “plot to rig the caucus through fraud.”Another candidate who has trafficked in conspiracies and has been sowing doubt about Iowa’s caucuses is Vivek Ramaswamy, who failed to qualify for recent debates.“The mainstream media is trying to rig the Iowa G.O.P. caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in a campaign video this week. “Don’t fall for their trick. They don’t want you to hear from me about the truth.”Voting rights groups and disinformation experts say the pre-emptive cries about fraud and rigged elections have become something of a new normal.“This follows the general playbook, the election denier playbook of just pre-emptively laying the groundwork for claims of fraud in the event of a loss,” said Emma Steiner, the Information Accountability Project Manager at Common Cause, a left-leaning voting rights organization. “It’s sort of future-proofing.”Indeed, Mr. Trump has long trumpeted baseless claims of fraud or rigging before an election. In 2016, weeks before Election Day, Mr. Trump started questioning the veracity of mail ballots in Colorado, citing little evidence. After he won the 2016 election, Mr. Trump claimed that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote (it did not), and he launched a commission to investigate voter fraud in the country (it folded without any significant findings).The Trump team has called elections rigged even when he is not participating in them. When the 2020 Democratic caucuses melted down because of a faulty app and a disorganized state party, Mr. Trump’s campaign questioned whether the results were “being rigged against Bernie Sanders.” His sons went further.“Mark my words, they are rigging this thing,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter the night of the 2020 caucuses. “What a mess.” More

new video loaded: More

All humans have oddities in the ways they speak. But those of presidential candidates are exposed more than most. All day, the candidates talk. And talk. And talk. Sometimes in scripted stump speeches, sometimes in off-the-cuff remarks to voters and the news media.And few talk more than Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who, in trying to make up his deficit in the polls, will on a typical day host five events for voters, sit for three interviews on television and hold a gaggle with reporters.Over the weeks and months on the campaign trail, one of Mr. DeSantis’s most curious verbal quirks has become clear: the way he sometimes uses the word “do.”During a CNN debate last week, Mr. DeSantis pledged to help seniors afford prescription drugs.“I want seniors to be able to do,” he said.Not “do” something. Just do. There is no word missing. That’s the full quote. In Mr. DeSantis’s parlance, the verb does not always require a direct object.Similarly, at a barbecue restaurant in Ames, Iowa, the next day, he said that as president he would defund the United Nations. “You’re going to see a lot of changes into how we do,” he vowed.Discussing the freezing weather with a crowd of Iowans, the Florida-born Mr. DeSantis remarked that once the temperature fell below zero, “with the windchill on just your exposed skin, it really, really starts to do.”And when a voter in Decorah asked if he would move the Department of Agriculture’s headquarters to Iowa, the governor said yes — in his typical fashion.“Iowa has first dibs on the Department of Agriculture,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis replied. “You guys want it, we’re going to do!”For Mr. DeSantis, who pitches himself as a take-charge, get-it-done leader, “do” is not just a verb. It can be an idea, a promise, a way to solve the problems that bedevil America. All of us can — and should — do.Of course, Mr. DeSantis also uses the word in the more traditional sense. But ask him if he thinks his rigorous campaigning schedule will help him win the Iowa caucuses on Monday?“I’ve done it right, I think Iowans appreciate that,” he said. “And we’re going to do.” More

Former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a moderate Republican who decided not to enter the party’s presidential primary last year but has not ruled out a third-party run, backed Nikki Haley on Sunday as the anti-Trump minority of the G.O.P. coalesces around her.“I think it’s time for the party to get behind Nikki Haley,” Mr. Hogan said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”He explained his support entirely in terms of polling.“Ron DeSantis has put all the marbles on Iowa and spent all his time and money and seems to be going in the wrong direction,” said Mr. Hogan, who has been a prominent critic of Mr. Trump. “I think Nikki Haley’s got all the momentum. And what this race is really all about is to try to nominate the strongest possible nominee for November. I’m convinced that the momentum is with Nikki Haley.”When the host, Jake Tapper, asked if that was an endorsement, Mr. Hogan said, “I think we want to have the strongest possible nominee in November. Polls show that that is Nikki Haley.”As Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have slipped, a number of prominent Republicans who want someone other than former President Donald J. Trump on the ballot in November have urged like-minded voters to unite behind Ms. Haley. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire endorsed her last month and big donors are flocking to her as well.Supporters of Ms. Haley hope that she can drive Mr. DeSantis out of the race if she beats him for second place in Iowa. A new poll released Saturday evening indicates that she is narrowly ahead of him.Mr. DeSantis has poured millions of dollars into Iowa and won the endorsements of its governor and the influential evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats. A third-place finish would be a significant blow and leave him struggling for momentum heading into New Hampshire.A second-place finish for Ms. Haley — even if it is miles behind Mr. Trump — could lift her going into New Hampshire, where the former president’s lead is smaller. And after New Hampshire, the race’s focus shifts to her home state, South Carolina.Mr. Hogan recently stepped down from a leadership position with the group No Labels, which is seeking ballot access for a third-party candidate, prompting speculation that he was preparing for a run. In the CNN interview, he did not entirely rule out doing that if Republicans were to nominate Mr. Trump; he said No Labels would “wait and see if we’re stuck with these two bad choices,” referring to Mr. Trump and President Biden.“I wouldn’t want to be associated with anything that would be a spoiler for either Donald Trump or Joe Biden,” he said, but added, “We will just have to wait and see.” More

A former doctor with a humble background, Mr. Lai is seen as more attuned to the mood of Taiwan’s people than to the perilous nuances of dealing with Beijing.In 2014, when Lai Ching-te was a rising political star in Taiwan, he visited China and was quizzed in public about the most incendiary issue for leaders in Beijing: his party’s stance on the island’s independence.His polite but firm response, people who know him say, was characteristic of the man who was on Saturday elected president and is now set to lead Taiwan for the next four years.Mr. Lai was addressing professors at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, an audience whose members, like many mainland Chinese, almost certainly believed that the island of Taiwan belongs to China.Mr. Lai said that while his Democratic Progressive Party had historically argued for Taiwan’s independence — a position that China opposes — the party also believed that any change in the island’s status had to be decided by all its people. His party was merely reflecting, not dictating, opinion, he said. The party’s position “had been arrived at through a consensus in Taiwanese society,” Mr. Lai said.To both his supporters and his opponents, the episode revealed Mr. Lai’s blunt, sometimes indignant sense of conviction, a key quality of this doctor-turned-politician who will take office in May, succeeding President Tsai Ing-wen.“He makes clear-cut distinctions between good and evil,” said Pan Hsin-chuan, a Democratic Progressive Party official in Tainan, the southern city where Mr. Lai was mayor at the time of his 2014 visit to Fudan University. “He insists that right is right, and wrong is wrong.”The son of a coal miner, Mr. Lai, 64, has a reputation for being a skilled, hard-working politician who sees his humble background as attuning him to the needs of ordinary people in Taiwan. When it comes to navigating the hazardous nuances of dealing with Beijing, however, he may be less adept.Supporters of Mr. Lai at a campaign event in Taipei on Saturday.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesMr. Lai may have to watch his tendency for occasional off-the-cuff remarks, which Beijing could exploit and turn into crises.“I don’t think that Lai is actually going to pursue de jure independence,” said David Sacks, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies Taiwan. “But what I do worry about is that Lai doesn’t have that much experience in foreign policy and cross-strait relations — which is incredibly complex — and he is prone to a slip of the tongue, that Beijing pounces on.”In interviews with those who know Mr. Lai, “stubborn” or “firm” are words often used to describe him. But as Taiwan’s president, Mr. Lai may have to show some flexibility as he deals with a legislature that is dominated by opposition parties that have vowed to scrutinize his policies.As the leader taking the Democratic Progressive Party into power for a third term, Mr. Lai would have to be very attentive to the public mood in Taiwan, Wang Ting-yu, an influential lawmaker from the Democratic Progressive Party, said an interview before the election.“How to keep the trust of the people, how to keep politics clean and above board: that’s what a mature political party has to face up to,” Mr. Wang said. “You must always keep in mind that the public won’t allow much room for mistakes.”During the election campaign, one of Mr. Lai’s most successful ads showed him and President Tsai on a country drive together, chatting amicably about their time working together. The message made clear when Ms. Tsai handed over the car keys to Mr. Lai, who has been her vice president since 2020, was that there would be reassuring continuity if he won.Whatever continuity may unite the two in policy, Ms. Tsai and Mr. Lai are quite different leaders with very different backgrounds. President Tsai, who has led Taiwan for eight years, remains liked and respected by many. But she also governed with a kind of technocratic reserve, rarely giving news conferences.Ms. Tsai rose as an official negotiating trade deals and crafting policy toward China. Mr. Lai’s background as a city mayor, by contrast, has made him more sensitive to problems like rising housing costs and a shortage of job opportunities, his supporters say.“Lai Ching-te has come all the way from the grass roots — as a congress delegate, legislator, mayor, premier — climbing up step by step,” said Tseng Chun-jen, a longtime activist for the D.P.P. in Tainan. “He’s suffered through cold and poverty, so he understands very well the hardships that we people went through at the grass roots in those times.”Ms. Tsai and Mr. Lai have not always been allies. Ms. Tsai brought the D.P.P. back to power in 2016 after it had earlier suffered a devastating loss at the polls. Mr. Lai was her premier — until he quit after poor election results and boldly challenged her in a primary before the 2020 election.Mr. Lai, left, with President Tsai Ing-wen, center, at a rally in Taipei this month.Mike Kai Chen for The New York Times“Tsai Ing-wen joined the D.P.P. as an outsider, when the D.P.P. needed an outsider,” said Jou Yi-cheng, a former senior official with the party who got to know Mr. Lai when he was starting out in politics. “But Lai Ching-te is different. He’s grown up within the D.P.P.”Mr. Lai spent his early years in Wanli, a northern Taiwanese township. His father died from carbon monoxide poisoning while down a mine when Mr. Lai was a baby, leaving Mr. Lai’s mother to raise six children herself.In his campaigning, Mr. Lai has cited the hardships of his past as part of his political makeup.He said in a video that his family used to live at a miner’s lodge in the township, which would leak when it rained, prompting them to cover the roof with lead sheets — which were not always reliable. “When a typhoon came, the things covering the roof would be blown away,” he said. Mr. Lai kept at his studies and went to medical school. After doing military service, he worked as a doctor in Tainan. It was a time when Taiwan was throwing off decades of authoritarian rule under the Nationalist Party, whose leaders had fled to the island from China after defeat by Mao Zedong and his Communist forces.Mr. Lai joined what was at the time a scrappy new opposition party, the Democratic Progressive Party, and he later recalled that his mother was disappointed when he decided to set aside medicine to go into politics full time.“He got his mother’s reluctant support,” wrote Yuhkow Chou, a Taiwanese journalist, in her recent biography of Mr. Lai. When he first decided to run for a seat in the National Assembly in 1996, Ms. Chou wrote, Mr. Lai’s mother told her son, “If you fail to get elected, go back to being a doctor.”However, Mr. Lai turned out to be a gifted politician. He rose quickly, helped by his appetite for hard work as well as his youthful good looks and eloquence as a speaker, especially in Taiwanese, the first language of many of the island’s people, especially in southern areas like Tainan, said Mr. Jou, the former party official.Voters lining up in Taipei on Saturday.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesMr. Lai became a member of Taiwan’s legislature and then, in 2010, the mayor of Tainan. Later he served as premier and vice president to Ms. Tsai. Along the way, he revealed a combative streak that gave his critics ammunition, but also won him fans in his party.D.P.P. supporters cite a clip of him in 2005, lashing out at opposing Nationalist Party members in the legislature for blocking a budget proposal to buy U.S. submarines, jets and missiles. “The country has been destroyed by you!” he said, cursing at one point. “You guys have blocked everything.”As premier in 2017, Mr. Lai made the comment most often cited by his critics. Facing questions from Taiwanese lawmakers, Mr. Lai described himself as a “pragmatic worker for Taiwanese independence.”At the time, China’s government office for Taiwan affairs condemned the comment; ever since, Beijing and Mr. Lai’s Taiwanese critics have held it up as proof of his reckless pursuit of independence. But Mr. Lai’s words were in line with his party’s broader effort to rein in tensions over the issue of Taiwan’s status by arguing that the island had already achieved practical independence, because it was a self-ruled democracy.Still, Mr. Lai will be under great pressure to avoid such remarks as president. China has grown stronger militarily and, under Xi Jinping, increasingly willing to use that force to pressure Taiwan. In his election night victory speech, Mr. Lai emphasized his hope of opening dialogue with Beijing.“He kept it vague and, to my ear, he didn’t say any of the phrases that Beijing finds intolerable,” said Kharis Templeman, a research fellow at the Hoover Institution who studies Taiwan and monitored the election. “He gave himself a fighting chance to avoid, or at least delay, the harshest reaction from Beijing.” More