Elections

Gail Collins: Bret, this may sound a bit strange, but I’ve decided to be grateful for all the political debates going on around us. While the real world can get kinda depressing, the debate world is always ready to just chatter away.I want to hear your predictions on the Republican set-to coming this week. But first, did you watch the governors go at it? Gavin Newsom versus Ron DeSantis? What did you think?Bret Stephens: The idea for the governors’ debate was first mooted when it looked like DeSantis could be the Republican presidential nominee. Now he seems slightly less relevant than the moderator, Sean Hannity, as well as slightly more obnoxious. Which is … saying something.But I still think DeSantis got the better of Newsom on the substance of their arguments. What did you think?Gail: Thought DeSantis won in the sense that he sounded somewhat less dim than many of us expected.Bret: I never thought of DeSantis as a dummy. Just a jerk.Gail: Although having Sean Hannity continually tossing him softball questions helped.Bret: True.Gail: Newsom was quicker, and his answers were smarter. As to which state works better, Californians do have to spend a lot to live there, when it comes to housing, food, gas, etc., but Florida ranks 14th on those basics and that’s a whole lot closer to the top than DeSantis seemed to be claiming.Florida’s taxes are lower but way more regressive — heavy on sales and property taxes that burden the middle and working classes with very little of the social services California dedicates to the poor.Bret: Since Newsom became governor in 2019, roughly 2.3 million Californians have left the state, but fewer than 1.4 million have arrived, a net loss of close to a million people. This is a phrase that gets tossed around a lot, but in this case it’s literally true: People are voting with their feet. And they are going to red states like Florida and Texas, in part because California ranks last in the country in terms of affordability, violent crime rates are way above the national average and the state has the largest homeless population in the country.I’m no fan of DeSantis when it comes to his views about abortion or his petty battles with Disney. But as blue states go, the Golden State ain’t exactly a role model for Democratic governance.Gail: One thing I was thinking while watching the two of them have at it was that the whole scene was a good promotion for your version of conservatism. Whenever the conversation turned to social issues like abortion, DeSantis was toast. When the questions were about public spending, Newsom had to work a whole lot harder.Bret: It would have been better to have a Democrat from a purple state, like Kentucky’s Andy Beshear or North Carolina’s Roy Cooper, provide the Democratic counter to DeSantis’s extremism.Gail: Well, I’ll bet a whole bunch of other governors are out there waving their arms to volunteer if Fox News wants to go down this road again.Bret: I hope someone smart and sane like Chris Wallace can moderate the next one. And speaking of smart and sane, we lost Sandra Day O’Connor last week. Ruth Bader Ginsburg was often treated like a feminist saint, but as a pioneer for women and a legal powerhouse, O’Connor deserves more of the accolades.Gail: Super happy to applaud Sandra Day O’Connor, but Bret, I think she’d prefer if you celebrate her without dissing another female pioneer.Bret: Sorry, that came out wrong. Point taken.Gail: One of my favorite O’Connor stories was when William French Smith, Ronald Reagan’s attorney general at the time, called to interview her for the Supreme Court post. She cheerfully reminded him that she’d applied to his law firm when she graduated from Stanford Law, and the only job she was offered was secretary.O’Connor then served Smith and her other visitors a salmon mousse she prepared and answered all their questions brilliantly without mentioning that she was recovering from a hysterectomy at the time they dropped by.Bret: I’ll raise a toast to both O’Connor and Ginsburg for helping ensure that my daughters’ generation won’t have to put up with much of the sexism my mother’s generation had to suffer.Gail: Amen!Bret: And, more specifically to O’Connor, to salute her for helping save abortion rights for a generation with her vote in the Planned Parenthood v. Casey decision, as well as for her impassioned and correct dissent in Kelo v. New London, in which she denounced the use of eminent domain to suit the needs of private developers over poorer private homeowners. She was a conservative who could speak up for the vulnerable. Also, a good reminder that it was a conservative president, Reagan, who nominated her to the court. History will remember them both well.Another historic figure we lost last week was Henry Kissinger. I’m guessing you weren’t a big fan?Gail: Well, Bret, I was a student during the Vietnam War era, and I can’t say I was ever a fan. I realize Kissinger’s approach to the war was much more complicated than we gave him credit for at the time. But still not feeling any compulsion to mourn.Bret: I knew Kissinger personally and once had a spectacularly, almost hilariously, unfriendly interview with him on the subject of China, in which he refused to answer most of my questions. I also disagreed with him about many things, though my criticisms were from the right, not the left. Arms control deals with the Kremlin, for instance, were always a mistake, since the Soviets could never be trusted to keep their word.Yet I couldn’t help but admire him. His books, especially “Diplomacy,” are guideposts for my thinking about foreign policy. He came to this country as a refugee, served it as a soldier, rose to the pinnacle of influence and had a concept about husbanding American power through what he called our “disastrous oscillations between overcommitment and isolation.” I think it’s better to learn from him than just to castigate him.Gail: Almost always a smart approach.Bret: Let’s talk about someone less controversial. How about Elon Musk telling the companies that won’t advertise on Twitter — sorry, X — to, er, go do something or other with themselves?Gail: Never claimed to be an expert on any twittery issues, but I do have a strong impression that Musk is one of those guys who had one great moment, capitalism-and-market-wise. But it turned out that was absolutely all he had, and once he took his billions down other paths, it was a disaster.Sorta scary he’s one of the richest guys on the planet. Your thoughts?Bret: I once called Musk “the Donald Trump of Silicon Valley,” because I thought he was basically a BS artist making a living off misdirected government subsidies for electric vehicles. That was unfair, especially considering the achievements of Tesla and SpaceX. He’s more like the Howard Hughes of Boca Chica — a technological and entrepreneurial visionary whose increasingly self-destructive behavior suggests he should probably lay off the drugs or whatever else he’s on.And then there’s his efforts to meddle in foreign policy and his endorsement of antisemitic conspiracy theories — which may make him more comparable to Henry Ford. Maybe I’ve been too soft on opinionated billionaires.Gail: Yeah, maybe what we need to do more of this holiday season is forget about Musk and Take a Lonely Billionaire Out to Lunch.Bret: Unless you’d prefer to take lonely George Santos out to lunch.Gail: Think anybody would give us a reservation? Can’t remember when a politician collected so many enemies for stuff that stupid. He’s going to spend the rest of his life known as the Campaign Contributions for Botox guy.Bret: Or as the Politician Who Lied More Than Is Strictly Necessary.Gail: Onward and upward. Bret, I promised we’d come back to this, so here goes: There’s another Republican debate coming up on Wednesday night. Might only be three people in it — your fave Nikki Haley, our friend DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy the, um, entrepreneur.I’m hoping Chris Christie might somehow manage to qualify. If we have to watch a quarreling batch of Republicans who will not get the presidential nomination, I’d at least like it to be diverting.Any predictions?Bret: Gary Lineker once described soccer as a game in which “22 men chase a ball for 90 minutes and at the end, the Germans win.” That feels a bit like this Republican debate: Three or four adults chase the political football across the stage and at the end, Trump wins.I hope I’m wrong. But with Trump’s primary lead looking increasingly insurmountable, isn’t it time for you Democrats to, uh, panic?Gail: Joe Biden is the inevitable nominee, if he wants to run for another four years. No way you can dump a guy who’s done a really good overall job as president, who has a fine character and no scandals more pressing than the thing with his son, which many American voters find totally boring.Of course, we want someone younger than 81, but there’s no non-insulting way to rip the nomination away from him. And he’ll almost certainly be running against Trump, who we note every single week is almost as old and in way worse shape. And while Biden is certainly given to garbling his messages, he seldom comes up with total misstatements and lies.Plus we’re going to have a campaign in which one of the candidates is facing more felony indictments than most of America’s Most Wanted. Call me sad, but not panicked.Bret: Gail? I’m panicked.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

Electoral results since the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision should tell a lot of people in the Republican Party something they absolutely do not want to hear: Even rank-and-file G.O.P. voters are not as pro-life as we might have thought when Roe v. Wade was the law of the land.That trend was confirmed last month in Ohio — the latest sign that the Republican Party needs to figure out a new way of addressing abortion.Many conservatives may call themselves pro-life, but in practice, that may be a more aspirational statement than an accurate reflection of hard policy views. Perhaps by figuring out what it now means to be pro-life — and recognizing that pro-life policy is easiest to sell only when it amounts to a ban on abortions later in pregnancy — Republicans can come up with a new approach to the politics of the issue.Before Roe was overturned, the term “pro-life” covered a lot of ground — which was useful over decades in galvanizing a broad coalition willing to use abortion as a political cudgel. As Republicans are finding out today, “pro-life” means many things to many people.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

In the spring of 1989, the Chinese Communist Party used tanks and troops to crush a pro-democracy protest in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square. Most of the West, across traditional partisan lines, was aghast at the crackdown that killed at least hundreds of student activists. But one prominent American was impressed.“When the students poured into Tiananmen Square, the Chinese government almost blew it,” Donald J. Trump said in an interview with Playboy magazine the year after the massacre. “Then they were vicious, they were horrible, but they put it down with strength. That shows you the power of strength. Our country is right now perceived as weak.”It was a throwaway line in a wide-ranging interview, delivered to a journalist profiling a 43-year-old celebrity businessman who was not then a player in national politics or world affairs. But in light of what Mr. Trump has gone on to become, his exaltation of the ruthless crushing of democratic protesters is steeped in foreshadowing.Mr. Trump’s violent and authoritarian rhetoric on the 2024 campaign trail has attracted growing alarm and comparisons to historical fascist dictators and contemporary populist strongmen. In recent weeks, he has dehumanized his adversaries as “vermin” who must be “rooted out,” declared that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” encouraged the shooting of shoplifters and suggested that the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley, deserved to be executed for treason.As he runs for president again facing four criminal prosecutions, Mr. Trump may seem more angry, desperate and dangerous to American-style democracy than in his first term. But the throughline that emerges is far more long-running: He has glorified political violence and spoken admiringly of autocrats for decades.Fani Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., brought one of the sets of indictments that Mr. Trump faces.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesAs a presidential candidate in July 2016, he praised the former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein as having been “so good” at killing terrorists. Months after being inaugurated, he told the strongman leader of the Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, that his brutal campaign of thousands of extrajudicial killings in the name of fighting drugs was “an unbelievable job.” And throughout his four years in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump blew through boundaries and violated democratic norms.What would be different in a second Trump administration is not so much his character as his surroundings. Forces that somewhat contained his autocratic tendencies in his first term — staff members who saw their job as sometimes restraining him, a few congressional Republicans episodically willing to criticize or oppose him, a partisan balance on the Supreme Court that occasionally ruled against him — would all be weaker.As a result, Mr. Trump’s and his advisers’ more extreme policy plans and ideas for a second term would have a greater prospect of becoming reality.A Radical AgendaTo be sure, some of what Mr. Trump and his allies are planning is in line with what any standard-issue Republican president would most likely do. For example, Mr. Trump would very likely roll back many of President Biden’s policies to curb carbon emissions and hasten the transition to electric cars. Such a reversal of various rules and policies would significantly weaken environmental protections, but much of the changes reflect routine and longstanding conservative skepticism of environmental regulations.Other parts of Mr. Trump’s agenda, however, are aberrational. No U.S. president before him had toyed with withdrawing from NATO, the United States’ military alliance with Western democracies. He has said he would fundamentally re-evaluate “NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission” in a second term.He has said he would order the military to attack drug cartels in Mexico, which would violate international law unless its government consented. It most likely would not.He would also use the military on domestic soil. While it is generally illegal to use troops for domestic law enforcement, the Insurrection Act allows exceptions. After some demonstrations against police violence in 2020 became riots, Mr. Trump had an order drafted to use troops to crack down on protesters in Washington, D.C., but didn’t sign it. He suggested at a rally in Iowa this year that he intends to unilaterally send troops into Democratic-run cities to enforce public order in general.“You look at any Democrat-run state, and it’s just not the same — it doesn’t work,” Mr. Trump told the crowd, calling cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco crime dens. “We cannot let it happen any longer. And one of the other things I’ll do — because you’re supposed to not be involved in that, you just have to be asked by the governor or the mayor to come in — the next time, I’m not waiting.”Mr. Trump’s plans to purge undocumented immigrants include sweeping raids, huge detention camps, deportations on the scale of millions per year, stopping asylum, trying to end birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil to undocumented parents and invoking the Insurrection Act near the southern border to also use troops as immigration agents.Mr. Trump has sweeping plans to deal with undocumented immigrants.Verónica G. Cárdenas for The New York TimesMr. Trump would seek to expand presidential power in myriad ways — concentrating greater authority over the executive branch in the White House, ending the independence of agencies Congress set up to operate outside of presidential control and reducing civil service protections to make it easier to fire and replace tens of thousands of government workers.More than anything else, Mr. Trump’s vow to use the Justice Department to wreak vengeance against his adversaries is a naked challenge to democratic values. Building on how he tried to get prosecutors to go after his enemies while in office, it would end the post-Watergate norm of investigative independence from White House political control.In all these efforts, Mr. Trump would be backed in a second term by a well-funded outside infrastructure. In 2016, conservative think tanks were bastions of George W. Bush-style Republicanism. But new ones run by Trump administration veterans have sprung up, and the venerable Heritage Foundation has refashioned itself to stay in step with Trumpism.A coalition has been drawing up America First-style policy plans, nicknamed Project 2025. (Mr. Trump’s campaign has expressed appreciation but said only plans announced by him or his campaign count.) While some proposals under development in such places would advance longstanding Republican megadonor goals, such as curbing regulations on businesses, others are more tuned to Mr. Trump’s personal interests.The Center for Renewing America, for example, has published a paper titled “The U.S. Justice Department Is Not Independent.” The paper was written by Jeffrey Clark, whom Mr. Trump nearly made acting attorney general to aid his attempt to subvert the election and is facing criminal charges in Georgia in connection with that effort.Asked for comment, a spokesman for Mr. Trump did not address specifics but instead criticized The New York Times while calling Mr. Trump “strong on crime.”Weakened GuardrailsEven running in 2016, Mr. Trump flouted democratic norms.He falsely portrayed his loss in the Iowa caucuses as fraud and suggested he would treat the results of the general election as legitimate only if he won. He threatened to imprison Hillary Clinton, smeared Mexican immigrants as rapists and promised to bar Muslims from entering the United States. He offered to pay the legal bills of any supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies and stoked hatred against reporters covering his events.In office, Mr. Trump refused to divest from his businesses, and people courting his favor booked expensive blocks of rooms in his hotels. Despite an anti-nepotism law, he gave White House jobs to his daughter and son-in-law. He used emergency power to spend more on a border wall than Congress authorized. His lawyers floated a pardon at his campaign chairman, whom Mr. Trump praised for not “flipping” as prosecutors tried unsuccessfully to get him to cooperate as a witness in the Russia inquiry; Mr. Trump later did pardon him.Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump and son-in-law, Jared Kushner, received White House posts despite an anti-nepotism law.Al Drago for The New York TimesBut some of the most potentially serious of his violations of norms fell short of fruition.Mr. Trump pressured the Justice Department to prosecute his adversaries. The Justice Department opened several criminal investigations, from the scrutiny of former Secretary of State John Kerry and of the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey Jr. to the attempt by a special counsel, John Durham, to find a basis to charge Obama-era national security officials or Mrs. Clinton with crimes connected to the origins of the Russia investigation. But to Mr. Trump’s fury, prosecutors decided against bringing such charges.And neither effort for which he was impeached succeeded. Mr. Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into opening a criminal investigation into Mr. Biden by withholding military aid, but it did not cooperate. Mr. Trump sought to subvert his 2020 election loss and stoked the Capitol riot, but Vice President Mike Pence and congressional majorities rejected his attempt to stay in power.There is reason to believe various obstacles and bulwarks that limited Mr. Trump in his first term would be absent in a second one.Some of what Mr. Trump tried to do was thwarted by incompetence and dysfunction among his initial team. But over four years, those who stayed with him learned to wield power more effectively. After courts blocked his first, haphazardly crafted travel ban, for example, his team developed a version that the Supreme Court allowed to take effect.Four years of his appointments created an entrenched Republican supermajority on the Supreme Court that most likely would now side with him on some cases that he lost, such as the 5-to-4 decision in June 2020 that blocked him from ending a program that shields from deportation certain undocumented people who had been brought as children and grew up as Americans.Republicans in Congress were often partners and enablers — working with him to confirm judges and cut corporate taxes, while performing scant oversight. But a few key congressional Republicans occasionally denounced his rhetoric or checked his more disruptive proposals.In 2017, then-Senator Bob Corker rebuked Mr. Trump for making reckless threats toward North Korea on Twitter, and then-Senator John McCain provided the decisive vote against Mr. Trump’s push to rescind, with no replacement plan, a law that makes health insurance coverage widely available.It is likely that Republicans in Congress would be even more pliable in any second Trump term. The party has become more inured to and even enthusiastic about Mr. Trump’s willingness to cross lines. And Mr. Trump has worn down, outlasted, intimidated into submission or driven out leading Republican lawmakers who have independent standing and demonstrated occasional willingness to oppose him.Mr. McCain, who was the 2008 G.O.P. presidential nominee, died in 2018. Former Representative Liz Cheney, who voted to impeach Mr. Trump for inciting the Jan. 6, 2021, riot and helped lead the committee that investigated those events, lost her seat to a pro-Trump primary challenger. Senator Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican presidential nominee and the only G.O.P. senator who voted to convict Mr. Trump at his first impeachment trial, is retiring.Representative Liz Cheney, center right, helped lead the investigation of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and later lost a primary challenge to a pro-Trump candidate.Doug Mills/The New York TimesFear of violence by Trump supporters also enforces control. In recent books, both Mr. Romney and Ms. Cheney said that Republican colleagues, whom they did not name, told them they wanted to vote against Mr. Trump in the Jan. 6-related impeachment proceedings but did not do so out of fear for their and their families’ safety.Personnel Is PolicyPerhaps the most important check on Mr. Trump’s presidency was internal administration resistance to some of his more extreme demands. A parade of his own former high-level appointees has since warned that he is unfit to be president, including a former White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly; former defense secretaries Jim Mattis and Mark T. Esper; the former national security adviser John R. Bolton; former Attorney General William P. Barr; and others.Mr. Trump in turn has denounced them all as weak, stupid and disloyal. He has privately told those close to him that his biggest mistakes concerned the people he appointed, in particular his choices for attorney general. The advisers who have stuck with him are determined that if he wins a new term, there will be no officials who intentionally stymie his agenda.In addition to developing policy papers, the coalition of think tanks run by people aligned with Mr. Trump has been compiling a database of thousands of vetted potential recruits to hand to a transition team if he wins the election. Similar efforts are underway by former senior Trump administration officials to prepare to stock the government with lawyers likely to find ways to bless radical White House ideas rather than raising legal objections.Such staffing efforts would build on a shift in his final year as president. In 2020, Mr. Trump replaced advisers who had sought to check him and installed a young aide, John McEntee, to root out further officials deemed insufficiently loyal.Depending on Senate elections, confirming particularly contentious nominees to important positions might be challenging. But another norm violation Mr. Trump gradually developed was making aggressive use of his power to temporarily fill vacancies with “acting” heads for positions that are supposed to undergo Senate confirmation.In 2020, for example, Mr. Trump made Richard Grenell — a combative Trump ally and former ambassador to Germany — acting director of national intelligence. Two prior Trump-era intelligence leaders had angered Mr. Trump by defending an assessment that Russia had covertly tried to help his 2016 campaign and by informing Democratic leaders it was doing so again in 2020. Mr. Grenell instead won Mr. Trump’s praise by using the role to declassify sensitive materials that Republicans used to portray the Russia investigation as suspicious.Richard Grenell was one of the acting heads named by Mr. Trump for positions that are supposed to undergo Senate confirmation. He became acting director of national intelligence.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesAfter Mr. Trump left office, there were many proposals to codify into law democratic norms he violated. Ideas included tightening limits on presidents’ use of emergency powers, requiring disclosure of their taxes, giving teeth to a constitutional ban on outside payments and making it harder to abuse their pardon power and authority over prosecutors.In December 2021, when Democrats still controlled the House, it passed many such proposals as the Protecting Our Democracy Act. Every Republican but one — then-Representative Adam Kinzinger, who was retiring after having voted to impeach Mr. Trump after the Jan. 6 riot — voted against the bill, which died in the Senate.The debate on the House floor largely played out on a premise that reduced its urgency: Mr. Trump was gone. Democrats argued for viewing the reforms as being about future presidents, while Republicans dismissed it as an unnecessary swipe at Mr. Trump.“Donald Trump is — unfortunately — no longer president,” said Representative Rick Crawford, Republican of Arkansas. “Time to stop living in the past.” More

An important bloc for the governing party, the island’s youth are focusing on bread-and-butter issues and have helped propel the rise of an insurgent party.In the months leading up to a pivotal presidential election for Taiwan, candidates have focused on who can best handle the island democracy’s volatile relationship with China, with its worries about the risks of war. But at a recent forum in Taipei, younger voters instead peppered two of the candidates with questions about everyday issues like rent, telecom scams and the voting age.It was a telling distillation of the race, the outcome of which will have far-reaching implications for Taiwan. The island is a potential flashpoint between the United States and China, which claims Taiwan as its territory and has signaled that it could escalate military threats if the Democratic Progressive Party wins.But many Taiwanese voters, especially those in their 20s and 30s, say they are weary of geopolitics and yearn for a campaign more focused on their needs at home. In interviews, they spoke of rising housing costs, slow income growth and narrowing career prospects. A considerable number expressed disillusionment with Taiwan’s two dominant parties, the governing Democratic Progressive Party and the opposition Nationalist Party.That sentiment has helped propel the rise of a third: the Taiwan People’s Party, an upstart that has gained traction in the polls partly by tapping into frustration over bread-and-butter issues, especially among younger people. The two main parties have also issued policy packages promising to address these anxieties.In interviews, younger voters voiced concerns about rising housing costs, slow income growth and narrowing career prospects. An Rong Xu for The New York TimesWhom young people ultimately vote for — and how many vote at all — could be a crucial factor in deciding the presidential election on Jan. 13. About 70 percent of Taiwanese in their 20s and 30s voted in the 2020 presidential election, a lower share than among middle-aged and older voters, according to official data. People ages 20 to 34 count for a fifth of Taiwan’s population, government estimates show.“We’re tired of the divisions and wars of words between political parties,” said Shen Chih-hsiang, a biotechnology student from Kaohsiung, a city in the south that is traditionally a stronghold of the Democratic Progressive Party. He remained undecided on whom to support.“Instead of worrying about the politics of major powers that are hard to change,” said Mr. Shen, 25, “I am more concerned about whether I can get a job and afford a house after graduation.”The frustrations voiced by Taiwan’s voters have highlighted some of the issues that the next administration will be under pressure to address. Taiwan is renowned for its cutting-edge semiconductor industry. But many younger workers at smaller companies earn relatively low incomes, and inflation can eat into any small pay increases. Housing prices have risen in many cities.Vice President Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, has led in the polls for months. But his lead has narrowed over Hou Yu-ih, the candidate for the Nationalist Party, or Kuomintang. Ko Wen-je, the candidate for the Taiwan People’s Party, has slipped in recent polls but could still play a decisive role by drawing youth votes that might have once gone to Mr. Lai’s party.Ko Wen-je, the candidate for the Taiwan People’s Party, at a news conference in Taipei last month. He has slipped in recent polls but could still play a decisive role by drawing youth votes.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesTo increase the chances of an opposition victory, Mr. Hou and Mr. Ko had briefly discussed forming an alliance. But the talks fell apart in a spectacular fashion late last month.“So much of this youth support for Ko Wen-je is really driven not by actual admiration for the man and his policies, but by frustration,” said Lev Nachman, a political science professor at National Chengchi University in Taipei. He cited focus group discussions he had with Taiwanese students.“This idea that the D.P.P. and K.M.T. are both equally bad seems to have taken hold among a lot of younger voters,” Professor Nachman said, referring to the two main parties.In a recent poll by My Formosa, an online magazine, 29 percent of respondents ages 20 to 29 said they supported Mr. Ko and his running mate, a fall from the previous survey, while 36 percent backed Mr. Lai. Other polls suggested a similar pattern, thought experts stressed those results could change in the final weeks of the race.The rumble of discontent did not mean that Taiwanese were dismissive about the risks of conflict with China, said Chang Yu-meng, the president of the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy. The group had organized the presidential forum last month, where Mr. Lai and Mr. Ko answered questions from young voters.“I think young people are still highly concerned about international topics,” Mr. Chang said in an interview after the forum, citing relations with China as an example. “But apart from that, they are really concerned about a diversity of issues.”Chang Yu-meng, the president of the Taiwan Youth Association for Democracy, said young voters were concerned about a broad range of issues in addition to relations with China.Lam Yik Fei for The New York TimesWinning the election would be a watershed for the Democratic Progressive Party. Once a scrappy outsider, it was founded in 1986 as a wave of mass protests and democratic activism pushed the Nationalist Party to abandon authoritarian rule. Since Taiwan began direct presidential elections in 1996, no party has won more than two successive terms.The Democratic Progressive Party has tended to win most of the youth vote, but after two terms in power under President Tsai Ing-wen, it is no longer a fresh face. And many younger Taiwanese tend to see the opposition Nationalists as a party too caught in the past and too attached to China.“To young people in Taiwan now, the D.P.P. is the establishment,” said Shelley Rigger, a professor at Davidson College in North Carolina, who has long studied Taiwanese politics and conducted interviews with younger voters. “Whatever the D.P.P. was going to do for young people, they should have done by now. There’s a lot of youth dissatisfaction with the economy.”Mr. Ko, a surgeon and a former mayor of Taipei, has leaped into the space created by this discontent. He supported the Democratic Progressive Party earlier in his political ascent but formed the Taiwan People’s Party in 2019 as an alternative to the establishment. At rallies across the island, he has promised to solve housing and economic problems with a no-nonsense approach that he says he honed in hospital emergency wards. Mr. Ko and his supporters argue that he can also thaw relations with China.Jennifer Yo-yi Lee is one of the legislative candidates for the Taiwan People’s Party who is hoping to tap into voter frustration. “Young people are tired of the vicious battle between parties,” Ms. Lee said.Lam Yik Fei for The New York Times“Taiwan has been stagnant for too long, and it needs some changes,” said Hsieh Yu-ching, 20, who recently attended a youth rally held by Mr. Ko.Mr. Lai recently announced a series of youth policies, promising to improve the job opportunities and mitigate high housing costs. He also announced as his running mate Bi-khim Hsiao, who has been Taiwan’s representative in Washington for more than three years. Ms. Hsiao could lift enthusiasm for the Democratic Progressives, several experts said.“I also want to acknowledge the many domestic and social challenges that our young people are facing,” Ms. Hsiao said at a news conference last month. She promised to do more to address anxiety over jobs, housing and the environment.Vice President Lai Ching-te, the Democratic Progressive Party’s candidate, center left, announced as his running mate Bi-khim Hsiao, who has been Taiwan’s representative in Washington.Carlos Garcia Rawlins/ReutersThe parties all face the hurdle of coaxing voters to turn up at the ballot box. Taiwan’s minimum voting age, 20, is higher than in many other democracies, and people must vote where they are officially registered as residents. For some voters, especially younger ones, that means a long trip back to their hometowns.Millie Lin, who works at a technology company in Taipei and hails from Tainan, at the other end of the island, said she had not decided whether to go home to vote on Jan. 13.“When I see the struggles between political parties,” she said, “I sometimes feel that my vote can’t change anything.” More

She has gained with educated and relatively moderate Republicans and independents, but that is also a big liability in today’s G.O.P.Nikki Haley is No. 2 in polling in New Hampshire.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesIf you dozed off while following the Republican primary, I wouldn’t blame you. But it might be worth perking up for a moment.Over the last few months, Nikki Haley has gained enough in the polls that she might be on the verge of surpassing Ron DeSantis as Donald J. Trump’s principal rival in the race.With Ms. Haley still a full 50 percentage points behind Mr. Trump in national polls, her ascent doesn’t exactly endanger his path to the nomination. If anything, she is a classic factional candidate — someone who’s built a resilient base of support by catering to the wishes of a minority of the party. So if you were reading this only on the off chance that Mr. Trump might be in jeopardy, you can doze off again.But even if it’s still hard to imagine a Haley win, her rise may nonetheless make this race more interesting, especially in the early states, which will begin to vote in six weeks. Ms. Haley is now neck-and-neck with Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, a state he is counting on to reverse a yearlong downward spiral in the polls. She’s well ahead of Mr. DeSantis in New Hampshire and South Carolina, two states where a moderate South Carolinian like her ought to fare relatively well.Ms. Haley finds herself in an intriguing position. Even without any additional gains over the next 40 days, a result in line with today’s Iowa polling could be enough for her to claim a moral victory heading into New Hampshire and potentially even clear the field of her major rivals. Mr. DeSantis would be hard pressed to continue in the race if he finished 27 points behind Mr. Trump, as the polls show today. And Chris Christie would face pressure to withdraw from the race or risk enabling Mr. Trump, just as he did at this same time and place in 2016. If the stars align, it’s not inconceivable that Ms. Haley could become highly competitive in New Hampshire, where today she and Mr. Christie already combine for around 30 percent of the vote.When primary season began, it seemed unlikely that Ms. Haley would have a chance to surpass Ron DeSantis.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe idea that Ms. Haley might win New Hampshire might seem far-fetched but, historically, much crazier things have happened. Late surges in Iowa and New Hampshire are so common that they’re closer to being the norm than the exception. Of course, there’s still a chance that such a surge could belong to Mr. DeSantis, who has earned important Iowa endorsements from the prominent evangelical leader Bob Vander Plaats and Gov. Kim Reynolds. It’s also possible that nothing really changes in the next 40 days. But there’s no reason to be terribly surprised if Ms. Haley simply keeps gaining. She’ll have the resources to compete, especially having recently earned the support of the political network founded by the Koch brothers.For a precedent, John McCain is probably the best analogy. By the numbers, George W. Bush is a strong comparison to Mr. Trump. Both held 60 percent or more of the Republican vote nationwide and started with a seemingly comfortable lead of around 45-15 in New Hampshire. At first, Mr. McCain did not seem to be Mr. Bush’s strongest challenger. But in the end, he won New Hampshire, 49-30, cleared the field, and ultimately won seven states.Winning seven states would be very impressive for Ms. Haley, just as it was for Mr. McCain. It would also represent a fairly marked shift from today’s currently uncompetitive Republican race. (Mr. Trump would probably win all 50 states if we had a national primary today.) But to state the obvious: Winning seven states would leave her much further from winning the nomination than it probably sounds. And while caveats about Mr. Trump’s legal challenges are worth flagging here, it’s probably something pretty close to the best case for Ms. Haley.That’s because she has gained traction only by catering to the needs of a party wing, especially one that’s dissatisfied with the party’s front-runner — in other words, an archetypal factional candidate.These kind of candidates are a common feature of contested primaries, as even the most formidable front-runners struggle to appeal to every element of a diverse party. George W. Bush, for instance, was one of the strongest primary candidates on record, but as a Southern evangelical conservative he was always an imperfect fit for Northern moderates, leaving a natural opening in 2000 for a candidate who appealed to that faction: Mr. McCain.If you look back, you can probably think of a factional candidate in almost every presidential primary cycle. Bernie Sanders, John Kasich, Rick Santorum, Mike Huckabee, Howard Dean, Pat Buchanan and Jesse Jackson are only the beginning of a very long list of candidates who gained a foothold by offering an often-but-not-always disgruntled faction exactly what it wanted.If you haven’t noticed, all these factional candidates lost their races. That’s not a coincidence. It’s very challenging to make a powerful appeal to a faction and somehow still become the favorite of the rest of the party. It’s not impossible to pull off, but it takes a special set of circumstances — like an unpopular front-runner, or a faction that’s so large and popular as to blur the distinction between a mere “faction” and the “mainstream,” like the conservative movement in the 1970s.But if factional candidates usually lose, under the right circumstances they can have a big advantage in gaining a toehold in the race. By definition, these candidates have a powerful appeal to a narrow but often still quite sizable base of support. Broadly appealing candidates, on the other hand, can struggle to become anyone’s favorite — especially if there’s already a strong, broadly appealing front-runner like a Mr. Trump or Mr. Bush.Just consider how often factional favorites outlast more conventional, mainstream candidates who, in many respects, seem to be stronger candidates. Was Jesse Jackson stronger than John Glenn in 1984? Was Rick Santorum vastly stronger than Tim Pawlenty in 2012? Probably not. In a hypothetical one-on-one matchup, Mr. Glenn and Mr. Pawlenty would have probably defeated the likes of Mr. Jackson and Mr. Santorum. But these losing mainstream candidates couldn’t find a distinct base in a race against a broadly appealing front-runner, whereas the factional candidates built resilient and insulated bases of support.The same can be said of Ms. Haley today. Is she a stronger candidate than Mr. DeSantis? It doesn’t seem so. A HarrisX/The Messenger poll shows Mr. DeSantis with a two-to-one lead over Ms. Haley if Mr. Trump dropped out of the race. But Ms. Haley appeals squarely to the relatively moderate, highly educated independents and Republicans who do not support Mr. Trump, giving her the inside path to a resilient base. It’s a base that, almost by definition, even Mr. Trump can’t touch.Mr. DeSantis, on the other hand, has done surprisingly little to appeal to the voters who dislike Mr. Trump. He’s running as an orthodox conservative — another Ted Cruz, except this time against a version of Mr. Trump with far stronger conservative credentials than the one who lost Iowa eight years ago. If Ms. Haley weren’t in the race, perhaps Mr. DeSantis would grudgingly win many of her supporters, but his transformation into a Cruz-like Republican is part of what created the space for a Ms. Haley in the first place.As with factional candidates before her, the same attributes that help Ms. Haley appeal to Mr. Trump’s detractors make her a poor fit for the rest of the party. Most Republicans agree with Mr. Trump on immigration, foreign policy, trade and other policies that distinguish Mr. Trump from his skeptics. This is a conservative, populist party. A moderate, establishment-backed candidate might have the path of least resistance to earning 25 percent of the vote in a race against a populist, conservative like Mr. Trump. But the path to 50 percent is far harder. More

The comments from Florida’s governor on Sunday followed a similar statement by former President Donald J. Trump; Democrats have denounced their stances.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said on Sunday that, if elected president, he would pursue legislation that would “supersede” the Affordable Care Act, echoing former President Donald J. Trump’s comments, which Democrats seized upon last week.“What I think they’re going to need to do is have a plan that will supersede Obamacare, that will lower prices for people so that they can afford health care, while also making sure that people with pre-existing conditions are protected,” Mr. DeSantis said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He went on to say that repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act was a broken promise from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign.“We’re going to look at the big institutions that are causing prices to be high — big pharma, big insurance and big government — but it’s going to need to be where you have a reform package that’s going to be put in place,” he said. “Obamacare promised lower premiums. It didn’t deliver that,” he added. “We know we need to go in a different direction, but it’s going to be done by having a plan that’s going to be able to supersede it.”Mr. Trump called for the same thing last week, writing on his social media platform that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act. After President Biden’s campaign denounced the statement, Mr. Trump wrote: “I don’t want to terminate Obamacare, I want to REPLACE IT with MUCH BETTER HEALTHCARE. Obamacare Sucks!!!”Mr. DeSantis named two specific policies he would address: making health care costs publicly available so that consumers can compare prices, and lowering insurance premiums for people who choose lower-cost providers. He called coverage for pre-existing conditions, a key component of the Affordable Care Act, “an easy thing that we’ll agree on.”Beyond that and a list of principles — “more transparency, more consumer choice, more affordable options, less red tape” — he did not go deep on his plan. Of the more than 40 million Americans covered by A.C.A. plans, he said, “We’ll have a plan that will offer them coverage, so the coverage will be different and better, but they’re still going to be able to be covered.”He said he would release a full proposal “probably in the spring,” which would be after a majority of states have held their primaries or caucuses.While opposition to the Affordable Care Act was initially a vote driver for Republicans, the law has become much more popular over the years, and Republicans’ failed effort to repeal the law in 2017 helped Democrats in the 2018 elections.A KFF poll in May found that 59 percent of Americans supported the A.C.A. Mr. DeSantis’s and Mr. Trump’s calls to replace it could play well in the Republican primary — only 26 percent of Republicans support the health law, according to the poll — but could become a liability in the general election because 89 percent of Democrats and 62 percent of independents support the health law.The Democratic National Committee condemned Mr. DeSantis’s comments.“DeSantis is hellbent on taking his failed ‘Florida Blueprint’ nationwide, even though it has contributed to some of the highest health care costs in America and left hundreds of thousands of hardworking Floridians without insurance,” Sarafina Chitika, a D.N.C. spokeswoman, said. “If Ron DeSantis, Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans have their way, they’d send premiums skyrocketing to line the pockets of greedy health care executives and their wealthy buddies.”Florida is one of 10 states that have not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act and had one of the nation’s highest percentages of uninsured people last year, according to the Census Bureau. More

Results of voting for the governments of four Indian states showed gains for Mr. Modi’s ruling party, putting him in a strong position ahead of general elections in the spring.The ruling party of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has tightened its grip over India’s populous northern belt, results of state elections showed Sunday, expanding its dominance of a key region ahead of general elections in which Mr. Modi is seeking a third term.The results of voting for the governments of four states, with a cumulative population of more than 240 million people, was another blow to the dwindling fortunes of the main opposition party, the Indian National Congress. The party, which ruled for a majority of India’s history as a republic, has struggled to claw its way back after Mr. Modi rose to national power in 2014.The Congress party was hoping to use the state elections to build momentum for national elections next spring, but instead lost all three states in which it was pitted against Mr. Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, or B.J.P.The B.J.P. managed to re-elect its government in Madhya Pradesh, with a bigger margin, and topple Congress in Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan. The only victory for Congress came against a smaller regional party in Telangana, in India’s south, where Mr. Modi’s Hindu nationalist politics has faced resistance. The results of elections in a smaller fifth state, Mizoram, are expected on Monday, but the race there is between two smaller regional parties.“When the Congress goes up against the formidable organizational and electoral machinery of the B.J.P., burnished by Prime Minister Modi’s charisma, it collapses,” Arati Jerath, a New Delhi-based political analyst, said about the opposition’s performance in the north. “This is the B.J.P.’s big advantage in 2024.”While Indian elections trends could easily fluctuate in coming months, Ms. Jerath said the B.J.P.’s further consolidation of its support base, where its Hindu nationalist politics have taken strong root, puts it in a comfortable position ahead of the elections in the spring.Mr. Modi already has a big plan for further galvanizing his base of support: the inauguration in January of a massive Hindu temple in Ayodhya, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh, that is being constructed on the site of a destroyed mosque. Demands for the construction of the temple helped turn Hindu nationalism into a major political movement in the 1990s and make the B.J.P. a national power.Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressing the media in New Delhi, in September. The B.J.P.’s victories in the state elections put it in a comfortable position ahead of the elections in the spring.Adnan Abidi/ReutersThe state elections this month, while usually not a direct indication of how people vote in the general elections, were important in their timing. For the Congress party, it was seen as chance to show that it was getting its house in order, and regaining a winning touch.In the months before the elections, the Congress had scored a victory against the B.J.P. by winning the southern state of Karnataka, the cash-rich hub of the Indian tech industry. It also formed a national alliance, called INDIA, that included smaller and regional parties — an indication of its acceptance of an evident truth: that Congress cannot win a fight alone against Mr. Modi’s formidable B.J.P. and its considerable resources.Going into the state elections this month, however, the Congress decided to fight alone in states where it saw a good chance of victory against the B.J.P.The refusal of Congress to join together in these elections with the same parties it hopes to ally with in the national fight against Mr. Modi will diminish its standing in the eyes of those partners, analysts said.“It is going to be very difficult for them to put up a credible challenge against the B.J.P. in 2024,” said Rahul Verma, a fellow at the Center for Policy Research in New Delhi. “Now I am not sure how the INDIA alliance is going to pan out.”In the three states where the B.J.P. and Congress went head to head, there was little to differentiate the parties, with both mainly focusing on handouts — from subsidized gas cylinders, to deposits for farmers and married women, to payments for books and school bags for students. Both parties faced voter fatigue, allegations of corruption and infighting in their state ranks.But to cover for its weakness, the B.J.P. had what the Congress has struggled to find, analysts said: ideological clarity and charismatic national leadership.The B.J.P stands clearly for Hindu nationalism and its divisive vision for turning India into a Hindu-first state. Mr. Modi, projecting himself as an ambitious champion of development as well as Hindu interests, also has a strong pull with voters across the country. His government has used the resources of the top-heavy and unequal Indian economy for well-targeted welfare schemes, handed out often in his name. In states where local B.J.P. leaders were struggling in the elections, it was Mr. Modi’s face on the posters; the handouts for voters were presented as “Modi’s guarantee.”In comparison, the Congress has struggled to present a leadership that can put up a fight against Mr. Modi, or a clear vision for its secular ideology. Mr. Modi’s effort to harness grassroots Hindu networks over the past decade and his firm grip over the national media have significantly shifted India’s secular mainstream, particularly in the country’s north.A rally for India’s Congress party in Hyderabad, India, on Tuesday. The Congress party was hoping to use the state elections to build momentum for next spring’s big national race, but instead lost all the three states where it was pitted against the Bharatiya Janata Party.Mahesh Kumar A./Associated PressRahul Gandhi, the Congress leader who would likely be its candidate for prime minister if the party wins in the spring, is often caricatured by Mr. Modi and his aides as entitled and a lightweight.While Mr. Gandhi has presented the Congress as standing for harmony and secularism against the divisive Hindu-first politics of Mr. Modi, that difference has not been projected clearly by officials at the state level.In the elections this month, Madhya Pradesh, with a population of more than 80 million, and which the B.J.P. had ruled for most of the past two decades, was seen as a major test of whether the Congress could use the B.J.P.’s weaknesses to score a victory.The B.J.P. government of the state had been accused by critics of widespread corruption, political infighting and causing communal tensions and riots with its Hindu-first policies.The Congress also accused the B.J.P. of using underhanded methods when in 2020 it toppled the Congress government that had come to power two years earlier with the help of smaller parties. The B.J.P. managed to take power that year by getting a number of Congress deputies to change sides.Despite the criticism, the B.J.P. still held on to Madhya Pradesh — and won about 50 more seats, according to the results on Sunday.“As a political party, as an organization, the B.J.P are much more agile and adaptive,” said Mr. Verma, the analyst. “They are ready to take bold moves, to experiment for winning at any cost.” More

There is a land mine embedded in the United States Code, one that Donald Trump, if re-elected president, could use to destroy our republic. But it’s not too late for Congress to defuse the mine now and protect America.I’m talking about the Insurrection Act, a federal law that permits the president to deploy military troops in American communities to effectively act as a domestic police force under his direct command. In theory, there is a need for a well-drafted law that permits the use of federal troops in extreme circumstances to maintain order and protect the rule of law. The Insurrection Act, which dates back to 1792 but has since been amended, is not, however, well drafted. And its flaws would give Trump enormous latitude to wield the staggering power of the state against his domestic political enemies.These flaws are especially relevant because Trump and his allies are keenly aware of the act’s provisions and have long expressed interest in its use. Trump has publicly regretted not using more military force to suppress riots in the wake of George Floyd’s killing in 2020, there were suggestions that he utilize the act as part of his plot to steal the 2020 election, and now there are reports that Trump might invoke the act on the first day of his next term, to suppress demonstrations, to control the border or both.Moreover, these reports have to be read in the context of Trump’s latest public pronouncements. He has declared many of his domestic political opponents to be “vermin.” His campaign has promised that his critics’ “sad, miserable existence” will be “crushed.” And he has specifically told his followers, “I am your vengeance.”Some version of the Insurrection Act is probably necessary. After all, from the Whiskey Rebellion to the Civil War to Trump’s own insurrection on Jan. 6, we have seen direct, violent challenges to federal authority. But any such authorization should be carefully circumscribed and subject to oversight. The authority granted by the act, however, is remarkably broad, and oversight is virtually nonexistent.The Insurrection Act contains a number of provisions, and not all are equally bad. For example, the first provision, 10 U.S.C. Section 251, provides that the president may deploy troops “upon the request of [a state’s] legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened” in the event of an insurrection. There is no unilateral presidential authority under this provision; the president’s power is activated only by a state request.But the act gets worse, much worse. The next section takes the gloves off, giving the president the ability to call out the National Guard or the regular army “whenever the president considers that unlawful obstructions, combinations, or assemblages, or rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any state by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” Note the key language: “whenever the president considers.” That means deployment is up to him and to him alone.The section after that does much same thing, again granting the president the power to “take such measures he considers necessary” to suppress “any insurrection, domestic violence, unlawful combination or conspiracy.” This broad grant of power makes the Insurrection Act far more immediately dangerous than many other threatened Trump actions, such as prosecuting political opponents and transforming the federal work force. Judicial review can blunt many of Trump’s worst initiatives, but there’s no such obvious check on the use of his power under the act.You might wonder why the Insurrection Act hasn’t presented much of a problem before now. It’s been used rarely, and when it has been used, it’s been used for legitimate purposes. For example, it was used repeatedly to suppress racist violence in the South during the Reconstruction era and the civil rights movement. Most recently, George H.W. Bush invoked it in 1992 — at the request of the governor of California — to assist in quelling the extreme violence of the Rodney King riots in Los Angeles.That historical restraint has been dependent on a factor that is utterly absent from Trump: a basic commitment to the Constitution and democracy. Previous presidents, for all their many flaws, still largely upheld and respected the rule of law. Even in their most corrupt moments, there were lines they wouldn’t cross. Trump not only has no such lines but also has made his vengeful intentions abundantly clear.There is still time, however, to take this terrible tool out of Trump’s potential hands. The Insurrection Act has not always been so broad. In its earliest versions, the president’s power was much more carefully constrained. But Congress expanded the president’s power after the Civil War, in part to deal with racist insurgencies in the defeated Confederacy.It’s time to rein in the excesses of the act. In 2022, Elizabeth Goitein and Joseph Nunn from the Brennan Center for Justice submitted a comprehensive reform proposal to the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. The proposal would narrow and carefully define the circumstances in which the president can deploy troops, provide for a congressional review and approval process and enable judicial review of claims that the legal criteria for deployment were not met. It’s a proposal worth adopting.I’m not naïve. I recognize that it will be difficult if not impossible for any reform bill to pass Congress. Mike Johnson, the speaker of the Republican-led House of Representatives, was a central player in Trump’s effort to overturn the 2020 election. Many of Trump’s congressional allies share his thirst for vengeance. But it’s past time to highlight this problem in the federal code. It’s past time to strip unilateral authority from the president.It’s not hard to imagine what could happen if we don’t. An angry, vindictive president could send regular army troops straight into American cities at the first hint of protest. This would place both the American polity and the American military under immense strain. While the former consequence may be more obvious, the latter is also important. Many soldiers would be deeply unhappy to be deployed against their countrymen and would be rightly concerned that a reckless deployment would be accompanied by reckless orders. Dominating the streets of New York is not the mission they signed up for.When you read misguided laws like the Insurrection Act, you realize that the long survival of the American republic is partly a result of good fortune. Congress, acting over decades, has gradually granted presidents far too much power, foolishly trusting them to act with at least a minimal level of integrity and decency.Trump has demonstrated that trust is no longer a luxury we can afford. It’s time to take from presidents a power they never should have possessed. No man or woman should be able to unilaterally deploy the armed forces to control America’s streets.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. 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