Elections

The unusual event, between a Republican presidential candidate and a high-profile Democratic governor who has been a surrogate for the Biden administration, will be moderated by Sean Hannity.Fox News will host a 90-minute debate between Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, starting at 9 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday.The unusual event, between a Republican presidential candidate and a high-profile Democratic governor who has been a surrogate for the Biden administration, will be moderated by Sean Hannity, the conservative prime-time host and a close Trump ally. Here are the ways you can watch:Fox News Channel will show the event starting at 9 p.m. as part of a two-hour broadcast of Mr. Hannity’s prime-time show.Fox News Radio will broadcast the debate simultaneously.The debate will also be streamed on FoxNews.com, but cable authentication will be required to view it online.The matchupMr. DeSantis is facing an intensifying race as he pushes for a strong showing in Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses in January. More than six months after joining the campaign as the most prominent rival to former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. DeSantis has been losing support in recent polls. New upheavals within his campaign will only add to the pressure for a strong performance from Mr. DeSantis in front of a national prime-time audience.He is facing Mr. Newsom, who has been a key ally of President Biden’s and a leading voice of the national Democratic Party. Mr. Newsom has gathered the kind of national support and connections with donors that would place him in a strong position for a future presidential run. For 2024, Mr. Newsom has firmly backed Mr. Biden and has offered reassurances that he will not threaten the president’s re-election campaign.Why are they debating?Presidential candidates typically do not debate people who are not themselves running for president. Mr. Newsom had challenged Mr. DeSantis to a debate more than a year ago, when the Florida governor had not officially begun his campaign but had long been seen to be preparing a run for the presidency. Mr. Newsom’s participation is likely to further fuel speculation that he has his eye on the White House.But the unusual spectacle reflects the current state of the presidential campaign: Mr. DeSantis has been slowly losing momentum and needs a jolt. Mr. Newsom has also been eager to further raise his national profile, and Mr. Biden needs powerful surrogates who can help make the case for a second term.What issues will the two governors discuss?Mr. Hannity’s debate questions will be framed around the two governors’ “vastly different approaches” to running their states, according to Fox News, as well as how they would handle major national issues. These issues would include the economy, the border, immigration, crime and inflation.The two governors have already sparred for more than a year over some of the most contentious issues in politics, particularly immigration, with each seeking to present his state as a role model of his party’s policies and governance. Thursday’s debate is likely to feature similar contrasts. More

The former president’s lawyers in his federal trial on charges of trying to overturn the election are asking to collect a wide range of evidence — including on unrelated issues like Hunter Biden.Lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump said in court papers that they planned to question the findings of several government agencies that the 2020 election was conducted fairly as part of their efforts to defend Mr. Trump against federal charges that he sought to overturn the results of the race.The lawyers also suggested in the papers that they intended to raise a host of distractions as part of their defense, indicating that they want to drag unrelated matters like Hunter Biden’s criminal prosecution and the investigation into former Vice President Mike Pence’s handling of classified documents into the election interference case.The twin filings by Mr. Trump’s lawyers late on Monday were formal requests to the prosecution to provide them with reams of additional material that they believe can help them fight the conspiracy indictment accusing Mr. Trump of seeking to subvert the lawful transfer of presidential power three years ago and stay in office despite his loss to Joseph R. Biden Jr.Criminal defendants routinely make such requests in what are known as motions to compel discovery, but many of those made in Mr. Trump’s two filings were long-shot efforts that are likely to be rejected. Ultimately, Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the election interference case, will have the power to decide which, if any, of the records Mr. Trump will get.But even if his lawyers get far less than what they asked for, the scope of their requests can be read as a kind of outline of how they plan to fight the case, which is set to go to trial in March in Federal District Court in Washington.At the heart of their strategy, the court papers say, is a plan to call into question findings made by the intelligence community, the F.B.I. and other federal agencies that the election was not marred by widespread fraud.The lawyers intend to argue that government reports upholding the integrity of the election were in fact a “partisan effort to provide false assurances to the public.” By questioning the consensus that the election was secure, the lawyers are hoping to show that Mr. Trump was acting in good faith when he spread lies that the vote count had been rigged — a move that could weaken the prosecution’s attempts to prove his criminal intent.To make that argument, Mr. Trump’s legal team has asked Judge Chutkan to force the special counsel, Jack Smith, who is prosecuting the federal cases against the former president, to give it any internal government records that cut against the dominant view that the election had been conducted fairly.Those requests were only some of the 59 separate demands for records made in more than 70 pages of court papers submitted by Mr. Trump’s legal team. Looking for anything that could help them prove the race was not secure, the lawyers made additional requests for information about how federal officials assessed cyberattacks around the time of the election and about attempts by foreign governments to interfere in it.Suggesting yet another defense strategy, the lawyers also asked for any records that could help them undermine Mr. Smith’s contention that Mr. Trump was responsible for the violence that erupted at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. They specifically asked Judge Chutkan to allow them access to any information about security measures implemented at the Capitol before the attack and about the presence of federal agents or informants who were on the ground during the riot.Almost from the moment the election interference indictment was handed up in August, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have tried to paint the case as a direct attempt by Mr. Biden to sabotage the man who is likely to be his chief rival in the 2024 election. They have advanced that argument not only without any evidence, but also in spite of the fact that the charges were filed by Mr. Smith, an independent prosecutor.The lawyers have specifically accused Mr. Biden of seeking to have Mr. Trump indicted in retaliation for the investigation of Hunter Biden, who was indicted in September on federal gun charges in a separate prosecution. And the discovery filings on Monday suggested that Mr. Trump’s lawyers would like nothing better than to muddy the waters of the election interference case by introducing evidence at trial about Hunter Biden.To that end, the lawyers requested any information concerning “coordination” between the Justice Department and the Biden administration or Mr. Biden’s family.In another far-fetched request, the lawyers asked for any records concerning dealings that the Justice Department had with Mr. Pence, who was investigated earlier this year after he returned to federal officials several classified documents he had kept when he left office.In their filing, Mr. Trump’s lawyers suggested without citing any evidence that Mr. Pence, who is likely to be a key government witness at the election interference trial, had “an incentive to curry favor with authorities” because of the potential charges he faced in his classified documents inquiry.Judge Chutkan will not issue a ruling on Mr. Trump’s requests until after prosecutors working for Mr. Smith respond to them next month. And her eventual decree about discovery is only one of several important decisions she will have to make in coming days.She is poised to issue an order about Mr. Trump’s claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election charges because the indictment arose from official actions he took while in the White House. She is also expected to decide whether to allow cameras into her courtroom and televise the trial. More

The support will give Ms. Haley more organizational strength in the field as she battles Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for the No. 2 spot in the Republican presidential race.The political network founded by the Koch brothers is endorsing Nikki Haley in the Republican presidential primary race, giving her organizational muscle and financial heft as she battles Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida for second place in Iowa.The group announced its plans in a memo on Tuesday.The commitment by the network, Americans for Prosperity Action, bolsters Ms. Haley as the campaign enters the final seven weeks before the first nominating contest. Since the first Republican primary debate, Ms. Haley has steadily climbed in polls, even as Mr. DeSantis has slipped. Former President Donald J. Trump remains the dominant front-runner in the race.“In sharp contrast to recent elections that were dominated by the negative baggage of Donald Trump and in which good candidates lost races that should have been won, Nikki Haley, at the top of the ticket, would boost candidates up and down the ballot,” reads the memo from Emily Seidel, a senior adviser to Americans for Prosperity Action, who adds that Ms. Haley would win “the key independent and moderate voters that Trump has no chance to win.”The memo goes on to say that the country “is being ripped apart by extremes on both sides,” adding: “The moment we face requires a tested leader with the governing judgment and policy experience to pull our nation back from the brink. Nikki Haley is that leader.”The group laid out polling describing the shift in the race toward Ms. Haley in a separate memo.Ms. Haley, who has described Mr. Trump’s time as past, has gained support from donors and elite opinion-makers, many of whom describe her as the best alternative to Mr. Trump.But Ms. Haley’s campaign does not have the organizational strength that Mr. DeSantis does, thanks to work the super PAC affiliated with his campaign has been doing for much of the year.The endorsement from the super PAC established by David and Charles Koch could help change that. It will give her access to a direct-mail operation, field workers to knock on doors and people making phone calls to prospective voters in Iowa and beyond. The group has money to spend on television advertisements, as well.The network’s backing also helps fuel Ms. Haley’s momentum heading into the final weeks before voting begins.Americans for Prosperity Action has been among the country’s largest spenders on anti-Trump material this year, buying online ads and sending mailers to voters in several states, including Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina. All told, the group has spent more than $9 million in independent expenditures opposing Mr. Trump.One mailer in Iowa, paid for by the group, shows images of Mr. Trump and President Biden and reads, “You can stop Biden … by letting go of Trump.”But so far, none of that spending has benefited any of Mr. Trump’s rivals, who have been busy battling one another.The Koch network is well financed, raising more than $70 million for political races as of this summer.The group has been committed to opposing Mr. Trump’s return as leader of the Republican Party. In a memo in February, Ms. Seidel, who also serves as the president of Americans for Prosperity, the political network’s parent group, wrote: “We need to turn the page on the past. So the best thing for the country would be to have a president in 2025 who represents a new chapter.”Mr. DeSantis’s campaign, which has had upheaval in recent days, including the resignation of the chief executive of his super PAC, tried to throw cold water on the endorsement before it was even announced.“Every dollar spent on Nikki Haley’s candidacy should be reported as an in-kind to the Trump campaign,” Andrew Romeo, a DeSantis campaign spokesman, wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, 30 minutes before Americans for Prosperity Action officials announced the endorsement on a press call.“No one has a stronger record of beating the establishment than Ron DeSantis, and this time will be no different,” he wrote. More

If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee for president in 2024, it’s now clear he will likely still have criminal indictments hanging over his head on Election Day. It’s possible that his criminal liability for the events leading up to the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol will remain unresolved.If that happens, voters will go to the polls without knowing whether one of the candidates in the current election is criminally responsible for trying to overturn the last one and subvert the will of the voters.Having an election under such circumstances is unthinkable. As Richard Nixon might have put it, voters have a right to know whether their candidate is a crook. It can be avoided, but it’s going to require the judiciary to take some extraordinary steps. And whether it happens will be decided by a relative handful of federal jurists — including a number appointed by Mr. Trump himself.Of the four criminal cases pending against Mr. Trump, the federal election interference prosecution in Washington currently has the best chance of going to trial before the 2024 presidential vote. The trial date is set for March 4. The Federal District Court judge overseeing the case, Tanya Chutkan, has been doing an admirable job of keeping it on track. But legal developments that are out of her hands now threaten to derail that schedule: Expected pretrial appeals could push the trial date past the November election.Mr. Trump has moved to dismiss the case on various grounds, including claims of presidential immunity and violation of the double jeopardy clause. For most pretrial motions, if the motion is denied, the defendant must wait to raise the issue again on appeal following conviction, if there is one.But these two motions fall into a narrow category of claims that usually entitle a defendant to an interlocutory appeal — in this case, an appeal before trial. Because these are claims of a constitutional right not to be tried at all, a post-conviction appeal is not an adequate remedy. By that time, the right has already been lost. A defendant is allowed to appeal such claims before the government may put him on trial.If, as expected, Judge Chutkan denies these motions, Mr. Trump will have a right to appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. (I expect the appeals will focus primarily on the immunity claim; the double jeopardy argument seems frivolous.) If he loses before a three-judge panel there, he can ask the full court to review that decision. If that fails, he can ask the Supreme Court to review the case. While all that goes on, the trial cannot proceed.In a typical case, an appeals process like this could easily take a year or more. In the first prosecution of Senator Bob Menendez of New Jersey, appeals over his claims of constitutional immunity under the speech or debate clause delayed the trial for about 18 months, even with the Supreme Court declining to take the case.In the Trump case, delays like that would push the trial well past November. If Mr. Trump wins the election, he would be able to shut down the two federal prosecutions and could probably have the state prosecutions at least postponed while he is in office.This appears to be the primary defense strategy in Mr. Trump’s criminal cases: delay as much as possible to put off any trials until after next November, when Mr. Trump hopes to be in a position to put an end to his legal problems.Having an election with Mr. Trump on the ballot and his criminal liability for Jan. 6 unresolved could spell disaster for the rule of law. It’s also completely avoidable if the courts — and in particularly, the judges who control the schedule — are willing to do what’s necessary: put the resolution of these motions on a fast track to ensure the case can go to trial as scheduled.Typically, the judicial and political calendars do not intersect. We expect judges to ignore political considerations and campaign schedules when making their decisions. But in times of political crisis, the federal judiciary cannot simply turn a blind eye. It must respond in a way that will enable the political system to address that crisis in a timely manner. This is one of those times.This is not a proposal for the courts to act in a partisan fashion. We don’t know whether Mr. Trump’s claim of immunity will be upheld. If it is rejected, we don’t know what the result of the trial will be. The outcome of the legal process is not the point. The point is that the country deserves to know that outcome before it chooses the next leader of the free world.There is precedent for this kind of judicial rapid response. During Watergate, the appeal of the order for President Nixon to turn over the subpoenaed White House tapes was resolved in only about two months — and that included arguments before and an opinion by the Supreme Court. During the 2000 presidential election, that court heard arguments in Bush v. Gore on Dec. 11 and the very next day issued its opinion shutting down the vote recount in Florida. The usually sedate appellate courts can move with dispatch when they want to.This case requires similar urgency. The initial appeals here could be easily heard and decided within a few weeks. Whether to grant a rehearing before the full Court of Appeals is discretionary, but if it does grant such a hearing, it needs to be equally speedy.After the District of Columbia Circuit rules, the losing party will seek Supreme Court review. If Mr. Trump loses the motions, my own hunch is that the Supreme Court may not take the case. In past disputes the justices have not shown much willingness to go out of their way to help Mr. Trump, and the last thing this embattled court needs right now is to wade into another controversy. But if the court does feel the need to weigh in on these novel constitutional issues, it also needs to move very swiftly.There’s no reason the entire process, including Supreme Court review, could not be completed by January. That would allow the trial date to stay on track if the motions are denied.There’s no concern about Mr. Trump being prejudiced by this relatively breakneck pace. He has vast financial and legal resources. The issues are already fully briefed before Judge Chutkan. The issues are novel — because nothing like Jan. 6 has happened before — but the questions are not extraordinarily complex; we need a rocket docket, but this is not rocket science.Some might argue that voters already have enough information about Mr. Trump’s actions and Jan. 6. But a criminal trial is different. In the aftermath of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump and his allies made repeated claims of voter fraud and a “rigged” election. Those claims uniformly failed when tested in court by the adversary system, where actual evidence is required and witnesses testify under oath. In an age of disinformation and fake news, courts remain the arena where facts still matter.Some voters will not accept the verdict of a criminal trial, no matter what the outcome. But for many it could be a critical data point when casting their ballot.It’s already not possible to have the trial completed before most of the presidential primaries; Super Tuesday, with over a dozen primaries in states and territories across the country, is March 5. Mr. Trump could have the nomination sewn up by the time the trial is over. But the trial could easily be concluded before the Republican convention in July, so the delegates could decide whether they really want to nominate a felon (if that is the outcome) to lead the country.A functioning democracy requires an informed electorate. It’s hard to imagine a more important piece of information for voters to have next November than whether a candidate is criminally culpable for trying to overturn the last presidential election.Our legal system can resolve this case expeditiously while still protecting the defendant’s rights, but the judiciary will have to step up and do its part to protect democracy.Randall. D. Eliason is the former chief of the fraud and public corruption section at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and teaches white-collar criminal law at George Washington University Law School. He blogs at Sidebarsblog.com.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

Fulton county prosecutors do not intend to offer plea deals to Donald Trump and at least two high-level co-defendants charged in connection with their efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia, according to two people familiar with the matter, preferring instead to force them to trial.The individuals seen as ineligible include Trump, his former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, and Trump’s former lawyer Rudy Giuliani.Aside from those three, the Fulton county district attorney Fani Willis has opened plea talks or has left open the possibility of talks with the remaining co-defendants in the hope that they ultimately decide to become cooperating witnesses against the former president, the people said.The previously unreported decision has not been communicated formally and could still change, for instance, if prosecutors shift strategy. But it signals who prosecutors consider their main targets, and how they want to wield the power of Georgia’s racketeering statute to their advantage.A spokesperson for the district attorney’s office declined to comment.Trump and 18 co-defendants in August originally pleaded not guilty to a sprawling indictment that charged them with violating the Rico statute in seeking to reverse his 2020 election defeat in the state, including by advancing fake Trump electors and breaching voting machines.In the weeks that followed, prosecutors reached plea deals in quick succession with the former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell, Jenna Ellis and Kenneth Chesebro – who all gave “proffer” statements that were damaging to Trump to some degree – as well as the local bail bondsman Scott Hall.The plea deals underscore the strategy that Willis has refined over successive Rico prosecutions: extending offers to lower-level defendants in which they plead guilty to key crimes and incriminate higher-level defendants in the conspiracy pyramid.As the figure at the top of the alleged conspiracy, Trump was always unlikely to get a deal. But the inclusion of Meadows and Giuliani on that list, at least for now, provides the clearest roadmap to date of how prosecutors intend to take the case to trial.The preference for the district attorney’s office remains to flip as many of the Trump co-defendants as possible, one of the people said, and prosecutors have asked the Fulton county superior court judge Scott McAfee to set the final deadline for plea deals as far back as June 2024.At least some of the remaining co-defendants are likely to reach plea deals should they fall short in their pre-trial attempts to extricate themselves from Trump, including trying to have their individual cases transferred to federal court, or have their individual charges dismissed outright.The prosecutors on the Trump case appear convinced that they are close to gaining more cooperating witnesses. In recent weeks, one of the people said, prosecutors privately advised the judge to delay setting a trial date because some co-defendants may soon plead out, one of the people said.On Monday, former Trump lawyer and co-defendant John Eastman asked the judge to allow him to go to trial separately from the former president, and earlier than the August 2024 trial date proposed by prosecutors. Eastman also asked for the final plea deal deadline to be moved forward.The court filing from Eastman reflected the apparent trepidation among a growing number of Trump allies charged in Fulton county about standing trial alongside Trump as a major Rico ringleader, a prospect widely seen as detrimental to anyone other than Trump.In a statement, Trump’s lawyer Steve Sadow suggested the former president was uninterested in reaching a deal. “Any comment by the Fulton county district attorney’s office offering ‘deals’ to President Trump is laughable because we wouldn’t accept anything except dismissal,” Sadow said.But the lack of a plea deal would be a blow to Meadows. The Guardian previously reported that the former Trump White House chief of staff has been “in the market” for a deal in Georgia after he managed to evade charges in the federal 2020 election subversion case in Washington after testifying under limited-use immunity.It was unclear why prosecutors are opposed to negotiating with Meadows, though the fact that he only testified in Washington after being ordered by a court suggested he might only be a reluctant witness. Meadows’s local counsel did not respond to a request for comment on Monday night.The lawyers for Giuliani, meanwhile, have long said he never expected a plea deal offer. Giuliani’s associates have also suggested he wanted to remain loyal to Trump, who is scheduled to host a dinner at Mar-a-Lago in December to raise money to pay for his compounding legal debts. More

A majority of those who backed President Biden in 2020 say today’s economy is fair or poor, ordinarily a bad omen for incumbents seeking re-election.Presidents seeking a second term have often found the public’s perception of the economy a pivotal issue. It was a boon to Ronald Reagan; it helped usher Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush out of the White House.Now, as President Biden looks toward a re-election campaign, there are warning signals on that front: With overall consumer sentiment at a low ebb despite solid economic data, even Democrats who supported Mr. Biden in 2020 say they’re not impressed with the economy.In a recent New York Times/Siena College poll of voters in six battleground states, 62 percent of those voters think the economy is only “fair” or “poor” (compared with 97 percent for those who voted for Donald J. Trump).What the Economy Looks Like to Biden Voters in Swing StatesPercent of President Biden’s 2020 supporters who …

Notes: Respondents of other races were omitted because of low sample sizes. The figures may not add up to 100 percent because of rounding.Source: New York Times/Siena College polls of 3,662 registered voters conducted Oct. 22 to Nov. 3 in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and WisconsinBy The New York TimesThe demographics of Mr. Biden’s 2020 supporters may explain part of his challenge now: They were on balance younger, had lower incomes and were more racially diverse than Mr. Trump’s. Those groups tend to be hit hardest by inflation, which has yet to return to 2020 levels, and high interest rates, which have frustrated first-time home buyers and drained the finances of those dependent on credit.But if the election were held today, and the options were Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, it’s not clear whether voter perceptions of the economy would tip the balance.“The last midterm was an abortion election,” said Joshua Doss, an analyst at the public opinion research firm HIT Strategies, referring to the 2022 voting that followed the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn the Roe v. Wade ruling. “Most of the time, elections are about ‘it’s the economy, stupid.’ Republicans lost that because of Roe. So we’re definitely in uncharted territory.”There are things working in Mr. Biden’s favor. First, Mr. Doss said, the economic programs enacted under the Biden administration remain broadly popular, providing a political foundation for Mr. Biden to build on. And second, social issues — which lifted the Democrats in the midterms — remain a prominent concern.Take Oscar Nuñez, 27, a server at a restaurant in Las Vegas. Foot traffic has been much slower than usual for this time of year, eating into his tips. He’d like to start his own business, but with the rising cost of living, he and his wife — who works at home answering questions from independent contractors for her employer — haven’t managed to save much money. It’s also a tough jump to make when the economy feels shaky.Mr. Nuñez expected better from Mr. Biden when he voted blue in 2020, he said, but he wasn’t sure what specifically the president should have done better. And he is pretty sure another Trump term would be a disaster.“I’d prefer another option, but it seems like it will once again be my only option again,” Mr. Nuñez said of Mr. Biden. For him, immigrants’ rights and foreign policy concerns are more important. “That’s why I was picking him over Trump in the first place — because this guy’s going to do something that’s real dangerous at some point.”Mr. Nuñez isn’t alone in feeling dissatisfied with the economy but still bound to Mr. Biden by other priorities. Of those surveyed in the six battleground states who plan to vote for Mr. Biden in 2024, 47 percent say social issues are more important to them, while 42 percent say the economy is more important — but that’s a closer split than in the 2022 midterms, in which social issues decisively outweighed economic concerns among Democratic voters in several swing states. (Among likely Trump voters, 71 percent say they are most focused on the economy, while 15 percent favor social issues.)Kendra McDowell thinks President Biden is doing the best he can given the continuing challenges of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. “People are shopping — you know why? Because they’ve got jobs,” she said.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDour sentiment about the economy also isn’t limited to people who’ve been frustrated in their financial ambitions.Mackenzie Kiser, 20, and Lawson Millwood, 21, students at the University of North Georgia, managed to buy a house this year. Mr. Millwood’s income as an information-technology systems administrator at the university was enough to qualify, and they worried that affordability would only worsen if they waited because of rising interest rates and prices. Still, the experience left a bitter taste.“The housing market is absolutely insane,” said Ms. Kiser, who wasn’t old enough to vote in 2020 but leans progressive. “We paid the same for our one-story, one-bedroom cinder-block 1950s house as my mom paid for her three-story, four-bedroom house less than a decade ago.”Ms. Kiser doesn’t think Mr. Biden has done much to help the economy, and she worries he’s too old to be effective. But Mr. Trump isn’t more appealing on that front.“It’s not that I think that anybody of a different party could do better, but more that someone with their mental faculties who’s not retirement age could do a better job,” Ms. Kiser said. “Our choices are retirement age or retirement age, so it’s rock and a hard place right now.”Generally, voters don’t think Republicans are fixing the economy, either. In a poll conducted this month by the progressive-leaning Navigator Research, 70 percent of voters in battleground House districts, including a majority of Republicans, said they thought Republicans were more focused on issues other than the economy.The health of the economy is still a major variable leading up to the election. A downturn could fray what the president cites as a signal accomplishment of Bidenomics: low unemployment. A study of the 2016 election found that higher localized unemployment made Black voters, an overwhelmingly Democratic constituency, less likely to vote at all.“I think the likelihood that they would choose Trump is not the threat,” Mr. Doss said. “The threat is that they would choose the couch and stay home, and enough of them would stay home for an electoral college win for Trump.”But in the absence of a competitive Democratic primary, the campaigning — and television spots — have yet to commence in earnest. When they do, Mr. Doss has some ideas.So far, Mr. Biden’s messaging has focused on macroeconomic indicators like the unemployment rate and tackling inflation. “The truth is, that’s not the economy to most people,” Mr. Doss said. “The economy to most people is gas prices and food and whether or not they can afford to throw a birthday party for their kid.”Mr. Millwood supports a higher federal minimum wage, and is impatient with the bickering and finger pointing he hears about in Washington.Audra Melton for The New York TimesIt’s difficult for presidents to directly control inflation in the short term. But the White House has addressed a few specific costs that matter for families, by releasing oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to contain surging oil prices in late 2022, for example. The Inflation Reduction Act reduced prescription drug prices under Medicare and capped the cost of insulin for people with diabetes. The administration is also going after what it calls “junk fees,” which inflate the prices of things like concert tickets, airline tickets and even birthday parties.The more the administration talks about its concrete efforts to lower prices, the more Mr. Biden will benefit, Mr. Doss said. At the same time, Mr. Biden can lessen the blowback from persistent inflation by deflecting blame — an out-of-control pandemic was the original cause, he could plausibly argue, and most other wealthy countries are worse off.That’s how it seems to Kendra McDowell, 44, an accountant and single mother of four in Harrisburg, Pa. She feels the sting of inflation every time she goes to the grocery store — she spent $1,000 on groceries this past month and didn’t even fill her deep freezer — and in the health of her clients’ balance sheets. Despite her judgment that the economy is poor, however, she still has enough confidence to start a business in home-based care, a field in greater demand since Covid-19 ripped through nursing homes.“When I talk about the economy, it’s just inflation, and to me inflation is systemic and coming from the Trump administration,” Ms. McDowell said. If the pandemic had been contained quickly, she reasoned, supply chains and labor disruptions wouldn’t have sent prices soaring in the first place.Moreover, she sees the situation healing itself, and thinks Mr. Biden is doing the best he can given the challenges of the wars in Ukraine and now Gaza. “People are shopping — you know why? Because they’ve got jobs,” Ms. McDowell said. “God forbid, today or tomorrow, if I had to go find a job, it’s easier than it was before.”Ms. McDowell is what’s known in public opinion research as a high-information voter. Polls have shown that those less apt to stay up on the news tend to change their views when provided with more background on what the Biden administration has both accomplished and attempted.Ms. McDowell, a mother of four, said that she felt the sting of inflation every time she went to the grocery store, but that she didn’t blame Mr. Biden.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesThe 15-month-old Inflation Reduction Act is still little known, for example. But this past March, the Yale Program on Climate Change Communication found that 68 percent of respondents supported it when filled in on its main components.A frequent theme of conversations with Democratic voters who see the economy as poor is that large corporations have too much power and that the middle class is being squeezed.Mr. Millwood, Ms. Kiser’s partner, said that he was concerned that society had grown more unequal in recent years, and that he didn’t see Mr. Biden doing much about it.“From what I see, it really doesn’t look like the working class is benefiting from many things recently,” said Mr. Millwood, who supports a higher federal minimum wage and is impatient with the bickering and finger pointing he hears about in Washington.After the phone conversation ended, Mr. Millwood texted to say that upon reflection, he would also like to see Mr. Biden push to lower taxes for low-income families and make it more difficult for the wealthiest to dodge them. After being sent news articles about Mr. Biden’s support for the extension of the now-expired Child Tax Credit and the appropriation of $80 billion for the Internal Revenue Service, in part to pursue tax evaders, he seemed surprised.“That is absolutely what I had in mind,” Mr. Millwood texted. “It’s been so noisy in the media lately I haven’t seen much that is covering things like that,” adding, “Biden doesn’t seem so bad after all haha.”Ruth Igielnik More

It feels like years ago, but actually only a few months have passed since many big Republican donors seemed to believe that Ron DeSantis could effectively challenge Donald Trump for the Republican nomination. It has been an edifying spectacle — an object lesson in the reality that great wealth need not be associated with good judgment, about politics or anything else.At this point, both conventional wisdom and prediction markets say that Trump has a virtual lock on the nomination. But Wall Street isn’t completely resigned to Trump’s inevitability; there has been a late surge in big-money support for Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. And there is, to be fair, still a chance that Trump — who is facing many criminal charges and whose public rants have become utterly unhinged — will manage to crash and burn before securing the nomination.So it seems worth looking at what Haley stands for.From a political point of view, one answer might be: nothing. A recent Times profile described her as having “an ability to calibrate her message to the moment.” A less euphemistic way to put this is that she seems willing to say whatever might work to her political advantage. “Flip-flopping” doesn’t really convey the sheer cynicism with which she has shifted her rhetoric and changed her positions on everything from abortion rights to immigration to whether it’s OK to try overturning a national election.And anyone hoping that she would govern as a moderate if she should somehow make it to the White House is surely delusional. Haley has never really shown a willingness to stand up to Republican extremists — and at this point the whole G.O.P. has been taken over by extremists.That said, Haley has shown some consistency on issues of economic and fiscal policy. And what you should know is that her positions on these issues are pretty far to the right. In particular, she seems exceptionally explicit, even among would-be Republican nominees, in calling for an increase in the age at which Americans become eligible for Social Security — a bad idea that seems to be experiencing a revival.So let’s talk about Social Security.The first thing you should know about Social Security is that the actual numbers don’t justify the apocalyptic rhetoric one often hears, not just from the right but from self-proclaimed centrists who want to sound serious. No, the exhaustion of the system’s trust fund, currently projected to occur in roughly a decade, wouldn’t mean that benefits disappear.It would mean that the system would need additional revenue to continue paying scheduled benefits in full. But the extra revenue required would be smaller than you probably think. The most recent long-term projections from the Congressional Budget Office show Social Security outlays rising to 6.2 percent of gross domestic product in 2053 from 5.1 percent this year, not exactly an earth-shattering increase.It’s true that the budget office projects a much bigger rise in spending on Medicare and other major health programs. But much of this projected rise reflects the assumption that medical costs will rise much faster than economic growth, which has been true in the past but need not be true in the future. Indeed, since 2010, Medicare spending has been far less than expected. And there is every reason to believe that smart policies could further curb health care costs, given how much more America spends than other wealthy nations.Still, Social Security does face a funding gap. How should it be closed?Anyone who says, as Haley does, that the retirement age should rise in line with increasing life expectancy is being oblivious, perhaps willfully, to the grim inequality of modern America. Until Covid struck, average life expectancy at 65, the relevant number, was indeed rising. But these gains were concentrated among Americans with relatively high incomes. Less affluent Americans — those who depend most on Social Security — have seen little rise in life expectancy, and in some cases actual declines.So anyone invoking rising life expectancy as a reason to delay Social Security benefits is, in effect, saying that aging janitors must keep working (or be cast into extreme poverty) because bankers are living longer.How, then, should the Social Security gap be closed? The obvious answer — which happens to be favored by a majority of voters — is to raise more revenue. Remember, America collects less revenue as a percentage of G.D.P. than almost any other advanced economy.But Haley, of course, wants to cut income taxes.My guess is that none of this will be relevant, that Trump will be the nominee. But if he stumbles, I would beg political reporters not to focus on Haley’s personal affect, which can seem moderate, but rather on her policies. On social issues and the fate of democracy, she appears to be a pure weather vane, turning with the political winds. On fiscal and economic policy, she’s a hard-right advocate of tax cuts for the rich and benefit cuts for the working class. If calling someone a “populist” has any meaning these days, she’s the exact opposite.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

The president is facing some pressure to focus on oil drilling and gas prices at home, while boosting climate ambition on the world stage.President Biden signed the country’s first major climate law and is overseeing record federal investment in clean energy. In each of the past two years, he attended the annual United Nations climate summit, asserting American leadership in the fight against global warming.But this year, likely to be the hottest in recorded history, Mr. Biden is staying home.According to a White House official who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, Mr. Biden will not travel to the summit in Dubai. Aides say he is consumed by other global crises, namely trying to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in its war with Israel and working to persuade Congress to approve aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.At home, Mr. Biden’s climate and energy policies are crashing against competing political pressures. Concerned about Republican attacks that Mr. Biden is pursuing a “radical green agenda,” centrists in his party want him to talk more about the fact that the United States has produced record amounts of crude oil this year. At the same time, climate activists, particularly the young voters who helped elect Mr. Biden, want the president to shut down drilling altogether.Internationally, developing countries are pushing Mr. Biden to deliver on promises for billions of dollars to help cope with climate change. But Republicans in Congress who control spending scoff at the idea and have been unable to reach agreement among themselves on issues like aid to Israel and Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More