Elections

Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey suspended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, but he undermined his effort to stop Donald J. Trump when he sweepingly dismissed his Republican rivals during a hot-mic moment.Minutes before his announcement in Windham, N.H., Mr. Christie could be heard on the event’s livestream, saying, “She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it,” in a reference to Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor. “She’s not up to this.” He added of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, “DeSantis called me, petrified.”Mr. Trump immediately seized on the remarks, writing on Truth Social that Mr. Christie’s comments about Ms. Haley, who appears to be the most significant obstacle to a Trump victory in New Hampshire, were a “very truthful statement.”In his speech, Mr. Christie did not endorse any of his rivals, nor did he address their prospects against Mr. Trump, dashing the hopes of Republican moderates that his exit would unify remaining members of the party who oppose Mr. Trump.In fact, Mr. Christie denounced his opponents’ long-running public deference to the former president, and offered no positive remarks about their candidacies.“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win,” he said. “And I feel no differently today because this is a fight for the soul of our party and the soul of our country.”His departure, which came after mounting pressure from within his party, effectively ends a phase of the Republican presidential contest, removing from the field its most aggressive Trump critic. He was the only prominent contender who declared that Mr. Trump was unfit for office — an argument that all but doomed his candidacy from the start.Nonetheless, Mr. Christie used the final moments of his campaign to unleash one last extended criticism of Mr. Trump, eviscerating his policies, lamenting the direction in which he has taken the country and asserting that he did not have the nation’s best interests at heart.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was caught on a hot mic saying that a Republican presidential rival was “not up to this,” presumably referring to former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.“Imagine just for a moment if 9/11 had happened with Donald Trump behind the desk,” Mr. Christie said. “The first thing he would have done was run to the bunker to protect himself. He would have put himself first, before this country.”His speech doubled as a dark warning for a party — and a country — that the former governor portrayed as veering dangerously off course, criticizing “the hate and the division and the selfishness of what our party has become under Donald Trump.”Mr. Christie also acknowledged regret for his actions after Mr. Trump defeated him in the 2016 primary race. Soon afterward, Mr. Christie shocked the political establishment by endorsing Mr. Trump, becoming the first significant former candidate to back him as his march to the nomination picked up pace.“For all the people who have been in this race, who have put their own personal ambition ahead of what’s right, they will ultimately have to answer the same questions that I had to answer after my decision in 2016,” he said. “Those questions don’t ever leave. In fact, they’re really stubborn. They stay.”Despite Mr. Christie’s withering criticisms of his rivals, his decision could turn the primary election in New Hampshire on Jan. 23 into a two-person race between Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley. Her positions on foreign policy, national security and the rule of law broadly overlap with Mr. Christie’s, and she will hope to consolidate never-Trump Republicans and independents behind her.After Mr. Christie’s speech, Ms. Haley praised him as “a friend for many years,” commending him in a statement “on a hard-fought campaign” but making no reference to the hot-mic comments. “I will fight to earn every vote,” she said.On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis had called Mr. Christie to express his appreciation for his role in the contest, according to two people with knowledge of the call. During their conversation, Mr. Christie mocked Ms. Haley and said she was not up to the task, the people said.Mr. DeSantis wrote on social media on Wednesday, “I agree with Christie that Nikki Haley is ‘going to get smoked.’”Recent polls have shown Ms. Haley narrowing the gap against Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, and her backing combined with Mr. Christie’s support has sometimes equaled or bettered the former president’s. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday found Mr. Trump with 39 percent support, Ms. Haley with 32 percent and Mr. Christie with 12 percent.Mr. Christie, a former United States attorney, built his candidacy around a prosecutorial argument about his domineering rival’s unsuitability for office. He steadfastly refused to water down his denunciations of Mr. Trump, a onetime ally turned bitter antagonist, even as most of his rivals labored to find a middle ground of praise and subtle contrasts.Mr. Christie and wife Mary Pat Christie hugged supporters after his announcement on Wednesday.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThat bold stance, and Republican voters’ lack of tolerance for it, left Mr. Christie trailing far behind in polls and fund-raising, managing to grab a foothold only in independent-minded New Hampshire. Yet the former governor regularly found himself in the shadow of Ms. Haley in the Granite State during the closing months of the campaign, with Gov. Chris Sununu endorsing Ms. Haley in December and later calling on Mr. Christie to withdraw from the race.For weeks, Mr. Christie rebuffed any suggestion that he should drop out, stressing the argument that his role as Mr. Trump’s chief critic in a dwindling Republican field was vital.As recently as Tuesday, he spoke at length about his reasons for forging ahead.“Let’s say I dropped out of the race right now, and I supported Nikki Haley,” he said. “And then three months from now, four months from now, we get ready to go to the convention. She comes out and is his vice president. What would it look like? What will all the people who supported her at my behest look like when she’s up on a stage in Milwaukee with her hands up like this with Donald Trump?”Mr. Christie’s familiarity with the former president gave him endless ammunition for attacks. He mocked Mr. Trump’s taste for well-done hamburgers and his love of cable news. He called attention to Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments, even as other Republican candidates sought to support the former president through his legal woes.But despite this barrage, Mr. Christie’s condemnation of Mr. Trump never took hold. He made a cringeworthy attempt to nickname his rival “Donald Duck” over Mr. Trump’s ducking of the primary debates. He was drowned out with resounding boos during the first debate when he tried to criticize Mr. Trump.In an attempt to show both expertise in foreign policy and a fearlessness to lead, Mr. Christie embarked on trips to conflict zones in Ukraine and Israel. He vividly recounted atrocities he had learned about in each place to buttress his aggressive support of those countries, though neither overseas venture broke through with voters.As he campaigned, Mr. Christie became more moderate than he had been in the past, either admitting to mistakes like endorsing Mr. Trump or evolving on issues such as same-sex marriage. “I was wrong,” Mr. Christie said of his opposition to such marriages at an event in New Hampshire last month. He peppered his stump speeches with references to former President George W. Bush, hardly a popular figure with today’s Republican base.Betting his entire campaign on New Hampshire, Mr. Christie argued in an interview with The New York Times in September that “once Donald Trump loses in one place, that entire rotted building will crumble.” He held dozens of town halls and other events across the small state, building modest traction and rising in polls, though he never came within striking distance of Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie’s allied super PAC dumped all of its advertising budget — $5.1 million as of Wednesday, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm — into the state.Some of Mr. Christie’s supporters expressed disappointment after his event on Wednesday. Toni Pappas, a Hillsborough County commissioner from Manchester, N.H., was one of them, but said, “I think he did something very noble and patriotic.”Tom Barton, a self-described libertarian from Washington, N.H., who planned to vote for Mr. Christie, said he could not see himself supporting another Republican. “They don’t have the courage to tell the truth about Trump,” he said.Still, most Republican voters had remained firmly opposed to Mr. Christie, who trudged on without changing his approach. If anything, his resolve to attack the former president increased.“The future of this country is going to be determined here,” Mr. Christie told a crowd at a New Hampshire brewery in September, clutching an I.P.A. It was a warning he would issue at nearly every campaign stop. “If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.”Shane Goldmacher More

The first time I covered a Taiwan “election,” 38 years ago, the island was a dictatorship under martial law, with members of the opposition more likely to be tortured than to gain power.Government officials explained that modern democracy wasn’t fully compatible with Chinese culture, and one of my minders made a vague inquiry about paying me — apparently to see if a Times correspondent could be bribed.Taiwan lifted martial law the next year, 1987, and helped lead a democratic revolution in Asia, encompassing South Korea, Mongolia, Indonesia and others. Taiwan now ranks as more democratic than the United States, Japan or Canada, according to the most recent ratings by the Economist Intelligence Unit, and the island is now caught up in boisterous campaigning for presidential and legislative elections on Saturday.(The campaigning has mostly gone smoothly but not entirely so: As a gimmick, one Taiwanese party handed out 460,000 laundry detergent pods to win support. Some voters unfortunately mistook the pods for food.)The stakes here are enormous, for President Biden has repeatedly said that the United States would defend Taiwan from a military assault by China, and the policies of the new government may shape the risk of such a confrontation. The importance of the outcome to China is reflected in Beijing’s efforts to manipulate it — and perhaps we Americans can learn something here about resisting election interference.“What China has been trying to do is use Taiwan as a test ground,” Taiwan’s foreign minister, Joseph Wu, told me. “If they are able to make a difference in this election, I’m sure they are going to try and apply this to other democracies.”China resisted Asia’s democratic tide — yet it seems to want a vote in Taiwan’s election.Flags representing different political parties.An Rong Xu for The New York Times“Whenever Taiwan holds an election, China interferes — but this time it’s the most severe,” Vice President William Lai, who is leading in the presidential polls, told foreign reporters.The Chinese government has made no secret of its unhappiness with Lai’s candidacy, because he and his Democratic Progressive Party view Taiwan as effectively independent rather than as part of China. Beijing sees Lai as a secessionist, calling him a “destroyer of peace” and warning that he could be “the instigator of a potential dangerous war.”Paradoxically, China’s Communist Party appears to favor a victory by its historical enemy, the Kuomintang. That’s because the Kuomintang welcomes closer economic ties with China and opposes Taiwan’s becoming an independent country.In an effort to increase the chances of the Kuomintang presidential candidate, Hou Yu-ih, China appeared to pressure a billionaire businessman, Terry Gou, who operates factories in China making Apple products, to drop out of the race. Gou claimed to have backing from Mazu, a sea goddess, but the Communist Party must have prevailed over the goddess: Gou did indeed drop out.Meanwhile, networks on Facebook and TikTok are spreading Chinese propaganda in Taiwan as part of an election manipulation strategy, according to a research organization here. The networks mostly disparage Lai and other Democratic Progressives while raising suspicions about the United States.China has lately sent a series of intimidating large balloons — perhaps weather or surveillance balloons — over Taiwan. Some see the purpose as rattling the Taiwanese in the run-up to the election and warning them of the risks of electing Democratic Progressives.Then there are other accusations that are more difficult to assess. A Democratic Progressive candidate accused China of circulating a deepfake video of him engaged in a sex act. The cabinet called for an investigation.The best antidote to Chinese manipulation may be calling attention to it. In the past, Chinese election meddling in Taiwan has backfired, and Lai seems happier talking about Chinese manipulations than about the frustration voters feel about out-of-control Taiwan housing prices and government corruption.Presidential candidate William Lai, at a rally.An Rong Xu for The New York TimesOne reason for the global attention on Taiwan’s election is the backdrop of concern about the risk of conflict in the Taiwan Strait. Some in the Taiwan opposition warn that the danger will be greater if the next president is someone who flirts with Taiwan independence, like Lai. Partly because of accusations that he might poke China unnecessarily, Lai has gone out of his way to say that he will continue the policies of President Tsai Ing-wen — whom Beijing also can’t stand but who has been cautious about provoking China.The White House has called on “outside actors” — read: “China”— to avoid interfering in Taiwan’s elections, and I hope that Beijing will get the message that manipulations can backfire. Unfortunately, I suspect that the reality is nuanced: Blatant election bullying is counterproductive, but more subtle manipulations on TikTok or Facebook may succeed if they elude scrutiny. We in the press didn’t pay enough attention to foreign manipulation in the 2016 U.S. election; we must do better.One last thought: As I cover these Taiwan elections and think back to the first one I covered in Taiwan, I keep reflecting: When will change ever come to China?It wasn’t obvious in the 1980s which countries in Asia would democratize and which wouldn’t — and then rising education levels and a growing middle class led to a flowering in countries near China even as the Middle Kingdom itself became more repressive, especially in recent years under Xi Jinping.Beijing feels bleak today — but considering the transformation on an island once under prolonged martial law and a similarly autocratic regime, it may be that the place where it’s easiest to be optimistic about China is actually here in the thriving young democracy of Taiwan during election week.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

Let’s start here: A second Donald Trump presidency is a disaster scenario.And if, in 2024, Joe Biden is the only thing standing between Trump and the White House, then Biden’s success may well be the last hope for the country as we know it. In that case — the most likely one at this point — America needs Biden to succeed. That’s why it’s so distressing when he comes up short in his appeals to the voters he’ll need to win re-election.This week, Biden delivered a speech at Emanuel A.M.E. Church in Charleston, S.C. — Mother Emanuel — a historic Black church that was the site of a massacre, carried out by a white supremacist, in 2015.It was one of Biden’s attempts to reach out to Black voters, a constituency from which he desperately needs enthusiastic support but that is going soft on him and, polls have shown, a part of which may even be drifting to Trump.The president’s speech was a chance to offer a vision for his second term, but there was hardly any vision in it. It focused on what his administration has done and not what it will do. It landed like someone coming to collect a payment for services rendered rather than to celebrate victories with a partner before mapping out future plans.This stands in contrast to Trump, who is offering a vision for America, albeit the darkest, bleakest vision imaginable. Part of that contrast may be the nature of the relationship of challengers — change agents — to incumbents, continuity proponents.But Biden needs to find a better balance.In a speech two weeks after he was sworn in, Biden said: “Racial equity will not just be an issue for one department in our administration. It has to be the business of the whole of government in all our federal policies and institutions.”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

Dealing a blow to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, a federal court of appeals on Wednesday ruled that he had violated First Amendment protections when he suspended a progressive state prosecutor for political gain.The ruling, by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit, undercut Mr. DeSantis on an episode he has made a key credential in his presidential campaign. Mr. DeSantis forced Andrew Warren, a Democratic state attorney representing the Tampa area, out of office in August 2022 after he had spoken out against Republican policies on abortion and transgender rights.On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has used the suspension of Mr. Warren, who had been elected to his post twice, to illustrate his strong-arm approach to progressive public officials who push what he calls a “woke” agenda.The court on Wednesday vacated a decision from a federal judge in Tallahassee in January 2023 not to reinstate Mr. Warren, who has fought the suspension in court, arguing that it violated his First Amendment right to free speech. Now, that judge must reconsider his ruling.Testimony and records released as part of a late 2022 trial in the case revealed the extent to which the removal of Mr. Warren was motivated by a desire to bolster Mr. DeSantis’s political standing. The district court judge, Robert L. Hinkle, ruled that Mr. DeSantis did not violate Mr. Warren’s First Amendment rights when he suspended him for his own political benefit.But in its 59-page decision, a three-judge appeals court panel unanimously ruled that Mr. DeSantis did violate Mr. Warren’s First Amendment rights. The panel said Mr. DeSantis needed to prove that Mr. Warren’s performance and policies were the reason he was suspended, and not his personal views on matters such as abortion.In a statement calling the decision “an egregious encroachment on state sovereignty,” Jeremy Redfern, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said the governor’s office was looking over the decision to determine next steps, which could include appealing to the larger 11th Circuit court or the U.S. Supreme Court.Mr. Warren, who has said he will not run for office again this year, said he looked forward to seeking his reinstatement in court.“This is what we’ve been fighting for from the beginning — the protection of democracy,” he said in a statement.Nicholas Nehamas More

As speculation about his future in the presidential race swirled, Chris Christie was caught on a hot mic on his campaign’s livestream in a conversation before his scheduled event in Windham, N.H., discussing his Republican rivals in the race.“She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it,” Mr. Christie said in the conversation, presumably referring to Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. “She’s not up to this.”He noted that “she spent $68 million, just on TV, spent $68 million so far,” which is roughly the total that Ms. Haley and her allies have spent on television advertising in the race.Mr. Christie continued: “Fifty-nine million by DeSantis, and we spent 12. I mean, who’s punching above their weight, and who’s getting a return on their investment?”Mr. Christie then said that “DeSantis called me, petrified.”A person replied by speculating that Mr. DeSantis was “probably getting out after Iowa.”The audio on the livestream cut out after a few minutes, and in midsentence. The video stream was taken down moments later. More

The closely-watched contest has been a hot mess for more than a decade. The most-watched early presidential contest in America has been a hot mess for more than a decade. My first Iowa caucus night was in 2012. The Republican Party of Iowa declared Mitt Romney the winner by a mere eight votes over Rick Santorum, giving Romney a boost of momentum that eventually carried him to the nomination.By the next morning, Santorum’s underdog campaign was hearing from county chairmen about miscounts. The state party ultimately retracted its call — Santorum had actually won by 34 votes — but not for more than two weeks.“I pulled off a miracle, but they said Romney was the winner,” Santorum said when I called him this week. “It wasn’t, ‘Santorum came from nowhere.’ It was ‘Romney won, the race is over.’ What do you think the result would have been if they said I had won?”The 2012 debacle was the first of three consecutive botched Iowa caucus nights. On Monday, the state’s Republican caucuses will once again be run by party volunteers at 1,657 caucus sites.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

Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis will meet on Wednesday night in Des Moines for the last Republican presidential debate before the Iowa caucuses on Monday.CNN will host the debate starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time.Where can I watch?CNN is broadcasting the debate on cable and will stream it free on CNN.com. Subscribers to the streaming service Max can watch via CNN Max.Which candidates will be there?Only three candidates — Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley and Donald J. Trump — met CNN’s qualification requirements. To make it onto the debate stage, candidates had to have at least 10 percent support in a minimum of three distinct polls of national Republican primary voters or Iowa Republican caucusgoers.Mr. Trump, the front-runner, has not attended any of the four previous Republican primary debates. He won’t attend this one either, leaving Mr. DeSantis, Florida’s governor, and Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, to face off one on one. Instead, Mr. Trump will join the Fox News anchors Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum for a live town hall at the same time as the debate.In a departure from the four previous debates, the Republican National Committee is not a sponsor of the one on Wednesday. In December, the party decided it would stop participating in future debates, giving the hosting TV networks freedom to set their own qualification rules.Who are the moderators?Dana Bash and Jack Tapper, co-hosts of CNN’s Sunday show “State of the Union,” will moderate the debate.Is this the last primary debate?No. ABC News and WMUR, a Hearst television station in New Hampshire, will host a debate in that state on Jan. 18. And CNN plans to host another debate, also in New Hampshire, on Jan. 21. More

The coming election will be held at a time of insoluble cultural and racial conflict; a two-tier economy, one growing, the other stagnant; a time of inequality and economic immobility; a divided electorate based on educational attainment — taken together, a toxic combination pushing the country into two belligerent camps.I wrote to a range of scholars, asking whether the nation has reached a point of no return.The responses varied widely, but the level of shared pessimism was striking.Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former director of policy planning at the State Department, responded, “So is the U.S. at a critical juncture? And is this juncture qualitatively different from previous difficult moments in our history?”His answer to his own question: “I lean toward yes, as one of the comparative advantages of this democracy has been its ability to reform itself and correct mistakes, and our ability to do so now is much less certain.”What worries Haass most isthe decline in a common American identity. Americans lead increasingly separate and different lives. From “out of many one” no longer applies. This is truly dangerous as this is a country founded on an idea (rather than class or demographic homogeneity), and that idea is no longer agreed on, much less widely held. I am no longer confident there is the necessary desire and ability to make this country succeed. As a result, I cannot rule out continued paralysis and dysfunction at best and widespread political violence or even dissolution at worst.In an email, Pippa Norris, a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School, described the complex interplay of cultural and economic upheavals and the growing inability of politics to give voice to disparate interests as key factors driving contemporary dysfunction.Some developments, Norris wrote,are widely documented and not in dispute, notably the decades-long erosion of blue collar (primarily masculine) work and pay in agriculture, extractive and manufacturing industries, especially in unionized and skilled sectors which employed high school graduates, and the massive expansion of opportunities in professional and managerial careers in finance, technology and the service sector, in the private as well as in the nonprofit and public sectors, rewarding highly educated and more geographically mobile women and men living in urban and suburban areas.These developments have, in turn,been accompanied with generational shifts in cultural values moving societies, and in a lagged process, in the mainstream policy agenda, gradually in a more liberal direction on a wide range of moral issues, as polls show, such as attitudes toward marriage and the family, sexuality and gender, race and ethnicity, environmentalism, migration, and cosmopolitanism, as well as long-term processes of secularization and the erosion of religiosity.What kinds of political systems, Norris asked, are most vulnerable to democratic backsliding when voters become polarized? Answer: two-party systems like the one operating in the United States.In this country, Norris argued,Backsliding is strengthened as the political system struggles to provide outlets for alternative contenders reflecting the new issue agenda on the liberal-left and conservative-right. The longer this continues, the more the process raises the stakes in plurality elections and reinforces “us-them” intolerance among winners and especially losers, who increasingly come to reject the legitimacy of the rules of the game where they feel that the deck is consistently stacked against them.All of which lays the groundwork for the acceptance of false claims.Norris continued:The most plausible misinformation is based on something which is actually true, hence the “great replacement theory” among evangelicals is not simply “made up” myths; given patterns of secularization, there is indeed a decline in the religious population in America. Similarly for Republicans, deeply held beliefs that, for example, they are silenced since their values are no longer reflected in “mainstream” media or the culture of the Ivy Leagues are, indeed, at least in part, based on well-grounded truths. Hence the MAGA grass roots takeover of the old country club G.O.P. and authoritarian challenges to liberal democratic norms.These destructive forces gain strength in the United States, in Norris’s view,Where there is a two-party system despite an increasingly diverse plural society and culture, where multidimensional ideological polarization has grown within parties and the electorate, and where there are no realistic opportunities for multiparty competition which would serve as a “pressure valve” outlet for cultural diversity, as is common throughout Europe.Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, sees other factors driving intensified conflict. In an email, he wrote:If the Democrats manage to win another term and can control the Congress as well as the White House after 2024, they may make an even larger turn in the direction of F.D.R.-style government support for general welfare. But if the G.O.P. wins in 2024, or even wins enough to paralyze government and sow further doubts about the legitimacy of our government and institutions, then we drift steadily toward Argentina-style populism, and neither American democracy nor American prosperity will ever be the same again.Why is the country in this fragile condition? Goldstone argued that one set of data points sums most of it up:From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, output and wages moved together. But slowly from the mid-1970s, and then rapidly from the 1980s, they diverged. By 2023, we’ve had 40 years in which the output of the economy has grown enormously, with output per worker hour growing by 126 percent, while compensation per worker has grown only 27 percent.In short, Goldstone continued, “a majority of Americans today are more pressured to get life’s necessities, more unsure of their future, and find it far more difficult to find avenues to get ahead. No wonder they are fed up with politics ‘as usual,’ think the system is rigged against them, and just want someone to make things more secure.”Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in an email that pessimism has become endemic in some quarters: “I find that many of my friends, relatives and colleagues are equally concerned about the future of the country. The worst part of this is that we feel quite helpless — unable to find ways to improve matters.”That the leaders of one of our two major political parties “would support a corrupt, self-interested, and deranged former president,” Sawhill continued, “is certainly part of the problem but even more concerning is the fact that a majority of the public currently says they would vote for him in 2024.”The biggest challenge, she wrote, “is what I have called ‘the great misalignment’ between the institutions we have and those we need to deal with most of these problems.”The framers of the Constitution, she wrote:understood human frailties and passions. But they thought they had designed a set of institutions that could weather the storms. They also assumed a nation in which civic virtue had been instilled in people by families, schools or faith-based congregations. Over the coming year, those assumptions will be sorely tested.The difficulties of institutions in prevailing under such concerted duress is becoming increasingly apparent.Greg Conti, a political scientist at Princeton, in an essay published in December in Compact magazine, “The Rise of the Sectarian University,” describes the erosion of national support for the mediating role of key institutions:The real peril to elite higher education, then, isn’t that these places will be financially ruined, nor that they will be effectively interfered with in their internal operations by hostile conservatives. It is, instead, that their position in American society will come to resemble that of The New York Times or of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Which is to say that they will remain rich and powerful, and they will continue to have many bright and competent people working within their ambit. And yet their authority will grow more brittle and their appeal more sectarian.If universities continue to operate as they have been doing, a similar fate will be their destination. From being de facto national institutions, a valued part of our shared patrimony, pursuing one of the essential purposes of a great modern society, they are coming to be seen as the instruments of a sect. Public regard for higher education was falling across the ideological spectrum even before the events of this autumn. Without a course correction, the silent majority of Americans will be as likely to put any stock in the research of an Ivy League professor as they are to get the next booster, even as Ivy League credentials receive great deference within an increasingly inward-looking portion of our privileged classes.Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress,” is the most optimistic — or, perhaps, the least pessimistic — of those I contacted for this column. He replied by email to my query:One can always think one is in an unprecedented crisis by listing the worst things happening in the country at the time. But this is a non-random sample, and selecting the worst developments in a given year will always make it seem as if a catastrophe is imminent. It’s good to remember the apparently existential crises of decades that you and I lived through, including:the 1960s, with the assassination of three of the country’s most beloved figures, including the president; urban riots in which dozens of people were killed and neighborhoods burned in a single night; an unpopular war that killed 10 times as many Americans as died in Iraq and Afghanistan; fears of annihilation in an all-out nuclear war; a generation that rejected the reigning social and sexual mores, many of whom called for a violent Communist or anarchist revolution; a segregationist third-party candidate who won five states.the 1970s, with five terrorist bombings a day in many years; the resignations of both the vice president and the president; double-digit inflation and unemployment; two energy crises that were thought might end industrial civilization; “America Held Hostage” in Iran; a sitting president almost unseated by his own party; etc.the 1980s, with violent crime and homelessness reaching all-time highs; new fears of nuclear escalation; a crack cocaine crisis.the 2000s, with fears of weekly 9/11-scale attacks, or worse, attacks with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; plans for the surveillance of the entire American population; widespread ridicule and hatred of a president who led the country into two disastrous wars.Pinker has repeatedly made his case in recent days on the X platform, posting “177 Ways the World Got Better in 2023” on Jan. 2, “From David Byrne’s Reasons to Be Cheerful” on the same day and “No, 2023 Wasn’t All Bad, and Here Are 23 Reasons Why Not” on Jan. 4.Pinker, however, is an outlier.Larry Kramer, who just retired as president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is set to serve as president of the London School of Economics, wrote in an email that several major contemporary trends are negative, including:(1) Fragmentation of media, coupled with loss of standards, disappearance of local media, and degradation of journalistic norms; (2) weakening of parties through well-meaning but misguided regulation (e.g., campaign finance) that shifted control from professionals to private, wealthy ideologues; (3) policy regimes that wildly exacerbated wealth inequality and left overwhelming numbers of Americans feeling worse off, reducing life expectancy, and disabling government from addressing people’s needs; (4) a shift in the left and the right to identity politics that reduces people to their race, gender, and political ideology — sharpening the sense of differences by minimizing what we share with each other and so turning a shared political community with disagreements into warring camps of enemies.A number of those I contacted cited inequality and downward mobility as key factors undermining faith in democratic governance.Allen Matusow, a historian at Rice and the author of “The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s,” wrote by email that he belongs “to the school that believes that our democracy has not been in such peril since the Civil War, and the easy explanation is Trump. But the real question is why such a despicable demagogue commands the support of so many.”Matusow specifically cited “income inequality and “the cultural resentments of those left behind.”Trump’s contribution “to the left-behind,” Matusow wrote,is license to focus its resentments on minorities and to make the expressions of prejudice acceptable. Since WW II we have had two other notable populist demagogues. Both exploited a moment to attack elites, though neither was a threat to win the presidency. Joe McCarthy was careful not to stir up prejudices against racial and ethnic minorities, and for all his faults, George Wallace was not a serial liar. Trump is in a class all by himself.Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, shares Matusow’s concerns over the detrimental impact of inequality. Cain emailed me to say:The recent growing dissatisfaction with democracy is a reminder that people judge the fairness of their political system by how they are doing in it. Downward mobility and the loss of political and social status leads to alienation from democratic norms and distrust in government. We believe that democracy is a better form of government because it will produce better policies by being accountable to the people. But when it does not perform well, democratic legitimacy erodes across the political spectrum.These factors, Cain continued, work in tandem withsocial and political instability due to globalization, automation, and social media. Much has changed in recent decades such as the country’s more diverse racial and ethnic composition, job opportunities more strongly defined along education lines, and expanded gender roles. MAGA anger and anxiety about replacement stems from the simultaneous loss of social status, economic opportunity, and political power due to these significant economic, social and demographic trends.Dissension between Democrats and Republicans, Cain argued, feeds a vicious circle:The progressive left wants changes to happen more quickly, which only feeds right-wing fears and fervor. The cycle of political tension continues to build. Trump stirs the pot, but the tensions have been building for decades.In the short term, Cain is not optimistic:We can’t have effective government until we have sufficient consensus, and we can’t have consensus unless the people in government aim for effective policy rather than notoriety and a media career. Barring one party running the table and winning trifecta control, we will wallow in a polarized, divided government for another term or two. That is the design of the Madisonian system: stay in neutral until we know where we want to go.Perhaps the most trenchant comment I received was from Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, who replied to my inquiry at the height of the controversy over the former Harvard president Claudine Gay:I have thought for some time that America was suffering multiple elite-driven institutional breakdowns across the board, opening the door to a national and global maelstrom. But now I find myself so overwhelmingly distressed by it all, including the collapse of core values at my own university, that I cannot write coherently about it.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