Elections

Reading the recent excerpt from McKay Coppins’s forthcoming biography of Mitt Romney of Utah, I was struck by the depth of the senator’s contempt and disdain for much of the Republican Party, including many of his colleagues in the Senate.He condemned their vanity, their venality, their cowardice. “Every time he publicly criticized Trump, it seemed,” Coppins writes, describing Romney’s account, “some Republican senator would smarmily sidle up to him in private and express solidarity.” Romney made note of the “rank cynicism” of his Republican colleagues and their almost total refusal to stand up for anything that might harm their future electoral prospects. He saved his harshest words, however, for those Republican senators who would do or say anything for political power and influence.What bothered Romney most about Hawley and his cohort was the oily disingenuousness. “They know better!” he told me. “Josh Hawley is one of the smartest people in the Senate, if not the smartest, and Ted Cruz could give him a run for his money.” They were too smart, Romney believed, to actually think that Trump had won the 2020 election. Hawley and Cruz “were making a calculation,” Romney told me, “that put politics above the interests of liberal democracy and the Constitution.”As for the latest crop of Republicans, Romney had this to say: “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D. Vance.”Reading all this, which is surprisingly harsh and unsparing for someone who is still an active participant in American political life, I wonder how much of it is Romney’s sublimated criticism of himself.On the occasion of Romney’s retirement, which he announced this week, there have been a number of odes, retrospectives and more or less hagiographic assessments of his political career, each colored by his genuinely admirable opposition to Donald Trump. Romney was, after all, the first senator in American history to ever vote to remove a president of his own party from office.But Romney also played a significant role in giving Trump mainstream political credibility when he enthusiastically accepted the reality television star’s endorsement in the 2012 Republican presidential primary. And beyond Trump, Romney — in both of his campaigns for president — eagerly and enthusiastically pandered to the right-wing rage and resentment that eventually found its champion in Trump. This was the Romney who promised to “double Guantánamo” in 2007 and urged “self-deportation” in 2012. It was the Romney who cracked, to a cheering crowd, that “No one’s ever asked to see my birth certificate” and the Romney who did a great deal to appeal to the most viciously right-wing figures in his party.Romney was, not unlike the colleagues he criticizes, willing to say whatever it took to win power, even if it meant smearing nearly half the country as essentially unproductive and opening the door to some of the most corrosive forces in American political life.It is interesting that Romney has such tough words for his colleagues. But speaking as an observer of his career, it seems to me that there are tough words that Romney ought to have for himself. And if he isn’t willing to go that far in public, he should at least do more than leave the scene with a parting jab at the former president.If nothing else changes, then next November, one of two men, Joe Biden or Donald Trump, will be on the way to a second term in the White House. For his role in creating this mess, I think the least Romney could do is to say, to the country, exactly who he thinks should prevail.What I WroteMy Friday column was on Mitt Romney’s comments about his party’s hostility to the Constitution and what that might mean.Americans like to imagine that the story of the United States is the story of ever greater alignment between our Constitution and our democratic values — the “more perfect union” of the Constitution’s preamble. But the unfortunate truth, as we’re beginning to see with the authoritarian turn in the Republican Party, is that our constitutional system doesn’t necessarily need democracy, as we understand it, to actually work.Now ReadingRepresentatives Cori Bush and Rashida Tlaib on “Cop City” in Atlanta and the silencing of dissent for The Nation.Lynn Hunt on the revolutions of 1848 in Europe for The New York Review of Books.Julian Borger on the 50th anniversary of the Chilean coup for The Guardian.Kathryn Joyce on the right-wing’s parallel economy for The New Republic.A two-hour analysis of the work of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, for those of you who are interested in that kind of thing.Photo of the WeekI was in Montreal for a little bit over the summer and I’m just beginning to go through my photos from the trip. Here is a quick snapshot of a street performer and the crowd around him.Now Eating: Pearl Couscous With Creamy Feta and ChickpeasI made this for dinner this week and it was a hit with the whole family. It also helped me use up the abundance of cherry tomatoes we have from our garden, which is a big plus. As always, I went heavy on the herbs. I also served this with a tzatziki sauce and some tinned fish (smoked tuna) that I had in the pantry. The whole meal was filling and nutritious, and felt reasonably virtuous. Recipe comes from New York Times Cooking.Ingredients1 pint grape tomatoes, halved¼ cup sliced scallions2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for drizzling1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar, plus more for serving2 fat garlic cloves, finely grated or minced1½ teaspoons kosher salt, plus more as needed½ teaspoon black pepper, plus more for serving3 oregano, rosemary or sage sprigs2 cups vegetable stock or water⅓ cup chopped cilantro, dill or parsley, plus more for serving½ teaspoon finely grated lemon zest (from ½ lemon)¾ teaspoon ground cumin8 ounces pearl couscous (1½ cups)1 (15-ounce) can chickpeas, drained and rinsed1 cup feta, crumbled (about 4 ounces)⅓ cup freshly grated Parmesan (1½ ounces)DirectionsHeat oven to 450 degrees. In a 9-inch baking dish, cake pan or gratin dish, toss together tomatoes, scallions, 2 tablespoons oil, 1 tablespoon vinegar, garlic, ½ teaspoon salt, pepper and oregano sprigs. Roast until tomatoes are tender, about 15 minutes.While tomatoes roast, heat the stock until it boils, then stir in remaining 1 teaspoon salt, adding more to taste. (You want a well-seasoned broth here to flavor the couscous.) Stir in cilantro, lemon zest and cumin.Remove tomatoes from oven and fold in couscous, chickpeas and hot stock mixture. Cover pan tightly with foil, and return to oven for 20 minutes.Remove foil and fold in about ¾ of the feta (save the rest for garnish) and Parmesan. Bake uncovered until feta starts to melt, another 5 minutes.To serve, pull out and discard herb sprigs if you like, and spoon couscous into bowls. Top with remaining feta, lots more herbs, pepper and a drizzle of olive oil and balsamic vinegar. More

If the president wins re-election, his climate team is likely to try to cut greenhouse gases from steel, cement and other hard-to-clean-up manufacturing.If President Biden wins a second term, his climate policies would take aim at steel and cement plants, factories and oil refineries — heavily polluting industries that have never before had to rein in their heat-trapping greenhouse gases.New controls on industrial facilities, which his advisers have begun to map out and described in recent interviews, could combine with actions taken on power plants and vehicles during his first term to help meet the president’s goal of eliminating fossil fuel pollution by 2050, analysts said. Industrialized nations must hit that target if the world has any hope to avoid the most catastrophic impacts from climate change, according to scientists.“If people look at what this administration has done on climate and say ‘This is enough,’ this country is not going to get to our goals,” said John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan energy research firm whose analyses are regularly consulted by the White House.But talking about more regulations at the start of what promises to be a bruising election cycle is perilous, strategists said. In particular, the prospect of new mandates from Washington regarding steel and cement, the bedrock materials of American construction, could sour the swing-state union workers courted by Mr. Biden.“If you are seen as imposing debilitating regulations on heavy industry that employs large numbers of people, you’re not only going to get a backlash from manufacturing, but labor as well,” said David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist who ran former President Barack Obama’s campaigns. “How to do that without looking like you are stabbing these industries in the back, or in the front for that matter, is a real political challenge.”Still, the urgency of global warming requires action, Mr. Larsen said. “Most other problems in America aren’t going to be 10 times worse in 10 years if we don’t do something right now,” he said. “Climate’s not like that. If this year has shown us anything, with the extreme weather and fires, it’s that it won’t just stay at this level — it’s going to break all the records we’ve just broken.”President Biden during a visit to Lahaina on Maui, which was devastated by wildfires, last month.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesRepublicans are eager to seize on the suggestion of additional regulations at a time when many Americans think the economy is in a downturn.“Apparently skyrocketing gas and energy prices weren’t enough for Biden, he wants to raise the prices on building and infrastructure costs and put hard working Americans further into debt,” said Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. “Biden will not be elected to a second term — American families can’t afford it.”But Collin O’Mara, chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, and others believe that after Americans have sweltered through a summer of the hottest temperatures in recorded history, watched the nation’s deadliest wildfire in over a century decimate a Hawaiian island, inhaled wildfire smoke from Detroit to Atlanta, and experienced hot-tub ocean temperatures off the Florida coast, at least some voters will be ready to embrace more climate action.Solar panel installation at a home in Norman, Okla.Mason Trinca for The New York TimesA second-term Biden climate agenda would come after the president has already delivered transformative policies to reduce greenhouse gases generated by the United States, the country that has pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.Last year, Mr. Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate law, which will provide at least $370 billion over the next decade for incentives to ramp up sales of electric vehicles and expand wind, solar and other renewable energy. Under Mr. Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed regulations, expected to be finalized next year, designed to compel the phaseout of gasoline-powered cars and coal-fired power plants.Together, those policies could help cut the nation’s emissions nearly in half over the next decade, analysts say.And yet, it’s not enough.The United States and nearly 200 other countries agreed in 2015 to try to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, compared with preindustrial levels. Beyond that point, scientists say, the effects of deadly heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures and species extinction would become significantly harder for humanity to handle. But the planet has already warmed by an average of about 1.2 degrees Celsius and the United States and other nations are far from meeting their goals.As emissions in the United States decline from energy and transportation, the country’s two biggest sources of greenhouse gases, industry would become the most polluting sector of the economy. That makes businesses like steel and cement manufacturing — among the most difficult to clean up — the obvious target for the next round of climate regulation.At the White House, Mr. Biden’s climate team has already envisioned a multi-step plan to cut industrial pollution if he wins re-election.The first step would use carrots, steering incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act toward nascent technologies to help factories to reduce their carbon footprint.For example, green hydrogen, a fuel produced by using wind and solar power, is muscular enough to run a steel mill but emits only water vapor as a byproduct. And cement production involves heating limestone and releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide, but several companies have been developing cement that does not emit carbon and may even absorb it.Damage to Horseshoe Beach, Fla., after Hurricane Idalia last month.Paul Ratje for The New York TimesThe second step would be to try to compel global competitors to clean up their operations through a “carbon tariff” — a fee added to imported goods like steel, cement and aluminum based on their carbon emissions.Congress would need to approve such a tax, which has support from Democrats and some Republicans. The European Union imposed a similar carbon border tax earlier this year.To justify a carbon tariff to the World Trade Organization, the United States would likely have to impose the same type of taxes on industrial pollution at home. While efforts to impose a carbon tax have long been seen as dead on arrival in Congress, the administration could instead use its executive authority to impose new top-down regulations on industrial pollution by using the 1970 Clean Air Act, which formed the basis for its proposed regulations on cars and power plants.But those policies are already under fire.Candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination have argued that Mr. Biden’s promotion of electric vehicles and solar energy makes the United States more reliant on its chief economic rival, China, for necessary components and that cutting emissions at home does not matter when other countries continue to pollute.“If you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions,” said former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at the first Republican debate last month.Mr. O’ Mara, an informal adviser to the Biden re-election campaign, said that the United States needs to push other nations to act before Mr. Biden can build support for new domestic climate measures.“If we don’t hold polluters in India and China accountable first, the politics are almost impossible,” Mr. O’Mara said.Perhaps even worse for Mr. Biden, unionized autoworkers are uneasy about his regulations designed to pivot the American market away from gasoline-powered cars and toward electric vehicles. Concerned that electric vehicles require fewer workers and a transition could cost jobs, the United Auto Workers has so far declined to endorse Mr. Biden. The union went on strike Thursday against the nation’s largest carmakers, in part over demands that workers at electric vehicle battery factories be covered by the U.A.W. contract.That discontent could spread to workers in the steel and cement industries if new regulations mean fewer jobs.Sean O’Neill the senior vice president of government affairs at the Portland Cement Association, which represents the majority of the nation’s 20 cement manufacturers, said his industry would welcome federal help to decarbonize and would consider supporting some form of a carbon tariff, under certain circumstances. But it would oppose regulations that could limit the availability of materials to build and repair buildings and bridges, he said.“Any policy that could hamper the domestic production of cement could be problematic to the downstream industries — concrete, construction,” he said.At the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, the messaging strategy steers away from regulations and instead highlights the impacts of extreme weather and climate denial on the part of Republicans.Mr. Biden leaned into those themes at a Sept. 10 news conference, saying, “The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20 — 10 years. That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.”Recent surveys show that Americans are concerned about climate change and think the government and large corporations should do more to fight it, but opinion is mixed when it comes to specific policies.Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida. “Climate is paramount across the South, especially here in Florida where we are on the front lines of the climate crisis,” he said.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn surveys by the Pew Research Center this year, 66 percent of adults said the government should encourage wind and solar energy while just 31 percent want the country to phase out fossil fuels. Respondents were divided on the question of whether the government should encourage the use of electric vehicles, with 43 percent saying it should, 14 percent saying it should not and 43 percent saying it should neither encourage or discourage.While 54 percent of adults polled by Pew said climate change was a major threat to the country’s well-being, respondents ranked it 17th out of 21 national issues in a January survey. “Even for Democrats, who say it’s important, it’s not the top issue,” said Alec Tyson, a researcher who helped conduct the survey.The Biden campaign is betting that the real-time damage from weather disasters made worse by climate change will turn out one demographic the president especially needs — young voters in high numbers.“Climate is one of the biggest issues for us — and as we get older it will continue to be,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, 26, Democrat of Florida, who serves on the Biden campaign’s advisory board and is the only member of Congress from Generation Z.“Climate is paramount across the South, especially here in Florida where we are on the front lines of the climate crisis, with hot-tub temperatures in the surrounding ocean,” said Mr. Frost, speaking by telephone from his Orlando district soon after it was flooded by Hurricane Idalia. “The ocean water, the record heat post-hurricane, the record temperatures in the water — these are things we know and feel.” More

President Biden forcefully sided with the striking United Auto Workers on Friday, dispatching two of his top aides to Detroit and calling for the three biggest American car companies to share their profits with employees whose wages and benefits he said have been unfairly eroded for years.In brief remarks from the White House hours after the union began what they called a targeted strike, Mr. Biden acknowledged that the automakers had made “significant offers” during contract negotiations, but he left no doubt his intention to make good on a 2020 promise to always have the backs of unions.“Over generations, autoworkers sacrificed so much to keep the industry alive and strong, especially the economic crisis and the pandemic,” Mr. Biden said. “Workers deserve a fair share of the benefits they helped create.”Mr. Biden said that Julie Su, the acting secretary of labor, and Gene Sperling, a top White House economic adviser, would go to Michigan immediately to support both sides in the negotiations. But he said the automakers “should go further to ensure record corporate profits mean record contracts for the U.A.W.”For decades, Mr. Biden has been an unapologetic backer of unions who rejects even the approach of some Democrats when it comes to balancing the interests of corporate America and the labor movement.During the past several years, he has helped nurture what polls suggest is a resurgence of support for unions, as younger Americans in new-economy jobs push for the right to organize at the workplace. Mr. Biden declares that “unions built the middle class” in virtually every speech he delivers.“That was most pro-union statement from a White House in decades, if not longer,” Eddie Vale, a veteran Democratic strategist who worked for years at the A.F.L.-C.I.O., said after the president’s remarks.The president’s decision to weigh in on the side of the union without much reservation will most likely to draw fierce criticism from different quarters. Earlier in the day — even before the president’s White House comments — Suzanne P. Clark, the head of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, issued a searing statement blaming the strike on Mr. Biden for “promoting unionization at all costs.”After Mr. Biden’s remarks, Neil Bradley, the group’s top lobbyist in Washington, said the president’s message and the pro-union policies his administration has pursued have “emboldened these demands that just aren’t grounded in reality.”And in a possible preview of a rematch with former President Donald J. Trump, NBC on Friday aired part of an interview in which Mr. Trump sided just as forcefully with the car companies against the unions.“The autoworkers will not have any jobs, Kristen, because all of these cars are going to be made in China,” Mr. Trump said in an interview set to air Sunday on the network’s “Meet the Press” program. “The autoworkers are being sold down the river by their leadership, and their leadership should endorse Trump.”Friday’s walkout by the U.A.W. is in some ways a broader test of Mr. Biden’s economic agenda beyond just his pro-union stand. It also touches on his call for higher wages for the middle class; his climate-driven push to reimagine an electric vehicle future for car companies; and his call for higher taxes for the wealthy. The strike is centered in Michigan, a state that the president practically must win in 2024 to remain in the Oval Office.“You’ve got rebuilding the middle class and building things again here,” Mr. Vale said. “You’ve got green energy, technology and jobs. You’ve got important states for the election. So all of these are sort of together here in a swirl.”At the White House, Mr. Biden’s aides believe the battle between the car companies and its workers will underscore many of the president’s arguments about the need to reduce income inequality, the benefits of empowered employees, and the surge in profits for companies like the automakers that makes them able to afford paying higher wages.That approach is at the heart of the economic argument that Mr. Biden and his campaign team are preparing to make in the year ahead. But it sometimes comes into conflict with the president’s other priorities, including a shift toward electric vehicles.Mr. Biden’s push for automobiles powered by batteries instead of combustion engines is seen by many unions as a threat to the workers who have toiled for decades to build cars that run on gas. The unions want factories that make electric cars — most of which are not unionized — to see higher wages and benefits too.So far, Mr. Biden has sidestepped the question of whether his push for a green auto industry will hasten the demise of the unions. But Friday’s remarks are an indication that he remains as committed as ever to the political organizations that have been at the center of his governing coalition for years.In his remarks on Friday, he hinted at the tension inherent in the technological transition from one mode of propulsion to another.“I believe that transition should be fair, and a win-win for autoworkers and auto companies,” he said. But he added: “I also believe the contract agreement must lead to a vibrant ‘Made in America’ future that promotes good, strong middle class jobs that workers can raise a family on, where the U.A.W. remains at the heart of our economy, and where the Big Three companies continue to lead in innovation, excellence, quality and leadership.”The targeted strike is designed to disrupt one of America’s oldest industries at a time that Mr. Biden is sharpening the contrast between what rivals and allies call “Bidenomics” and a Republican plan that the president warns is a darker version of trickle-down economics that mostly benefits the rich.“Their plan — MAGAnomics — is more extreme than anything America has ever seen before,” Mr. Biden said on Thursday, hours before the union voted to strike.Mr. Biden was joined on Friday by several of the more liberal members of his party, who assailed the automakers and stood by the striking workers.Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, sent out a fund-raising appeal accusing the companies of refusing “to meet the demands of workers negotiating for better pay” despite having “netted nearly a quarter trillion dollars in profit over the last decade.”Senator Sherrod Brown, an Ohio Democrat, visited striking Jeep workers at a Toledo plant that makes the popular Wrangler sport-utility vehicle and declared that “Ohioans stand in solidarity with autoworkers around our state as they demand the Big Three automakers respect the work they do to make these companies successful.”How Mr. Biden navigates the strike and its consequences could have a significant impact on his hopes for re-election. In a CNN poll earlier this month, just 39 percent of people approved of the job he is doing as president and 58 percent said his policies have made economic conditions in the United States worse, not better.The fact that the strike is centered in Michigan is also critical. Mr. Biden won the state over Mr. Trump in 2020 with just over 50 percent of the vote. Without the state’s 16 electoral votes, Mr. Biden would not have defeated his rival.Unlike previous strikes involving rail workers or air traffic controllers, Mr. Biden has no special legal authority to intervene. Still, he is not exactly just an observer either.Just before the strike vote, Mr. Biden called Shawn Fain, the president of the U.A.W., as well as top executives of the car companies. Aides said that the president told the parties to ensure that workers get a fair contract and he urged both sides to stay at the negotiating table.Economists say a lengthy strike, if it goes on for weeks or even months, could be a blow to the American economy, especially in the middle of the country.Still, the president is unwavering on policies toward both unions and the environment. In a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia, Mr. Biden renewed both his vision about what he called a “transition to an electric vehicle future made in America” — which he said would protect jobs — and his rock-solid belief in unions.“You know, there are a lot of politicians in this country who don’t know how to say the word ‘union,’” he said. “They talk about labor, but they don’t say ‘union.’ It’s ‘union.’ I’m one of the — I’m proud to say ‘union.’ I’m proud to be the most pro-union president.” More

In the past seven days, President Biden was targeted for impeachment and his son was indicted. That was just the start.It says something about the way things have been going for President Biden lately that being targeted for impeachment was not the worst news of a tough week.To be sure, it was not a highlight. But over the course of the past seven days, Mr. Biden was besieged on multiple fronts, both personal and political, challenging his capacity, threatening his family and jeopardizing his political position.He was panned by critics for his performance at an overseas news conference. One of his favorite columnists urged him not to run again, sparking more hand wringing in his party. A top ally implicitly questioned his choice of running mate. The auto industry fell into a paralyzing strike that could undermine the economy. His son was indicted on three felony charges. And oh yes, House Republicans opened an impeachment inquiry aimed at charging him with high crimes and misdemeanors.Politics in Washington being what it is today, Mr. Biden and his team exhibited no particular concern over the course of events. After a rocky campaign and two and a half turbulent years in office, they have become accustomed to the gyrations of the modern presidency. Facing a disagreeable short view, they prefer to take the long view, comforting themselves, and arguing to outsiders, that it will work out all right in the end because it has worked out all right before.And Mr. Biden has been blessed by helpful enemies, who now appear poised to provoke an unpopular government shutdown at the same time they pursue an impeachment inquiry that even some Republican lawmakers say is not based on evidence of an impeachable offense. If there is anything that could rally disaffected Democrats and independents, the president’s strategists believe, it is Republican overreach.Conservatives mocked Mr. Biden for his speech in Hanoi, Vietnam.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“President Biden was underestimated two years ago and then he went on to pass historic legislation that has led the U.S. to have the strongest recovery of any developed economy in the world,” Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said on Friday. “We don’t get distracted by Washington parlor games that most Americans are entirely uninterested in.”Avoiding distraction is hardly easy. Mr. Biden was told of the indictment against his son Hunter Biden on Thursday just before leaving the White House to give a speech in Maryland assailing Republican budget plans, forcing him to put the consequences out of his mind long enough to deliver the talk and work the rope lines.He said nothing about the indictment and little about the rest of the setbacks of the week in public, although there was a moment at an evening campaign fund-raising reception when he lamented the changing culture of politics since he was first elected to the Senate in 1972.“Did you ever think you would have to worry about going through protests where you see people standing with their little kids giving you the middle finger and have banners saying, ‘F the Democrat’?” he asked Democratic donors at a private home in McLean, Va. “It’s becoming debased, our public disgust,” he added. “We just have to change it.”The week started in Hanoi, Vietnam, where he gave a news conference on Sunday evening that conservatives quickly mocked because of a few rambling moments and an odd reference to John Wayne. Mr. Biden had barely landed back home and gotten a few hours sleep before Speaker Kevin McCarthy opened an impeachment inquiry accusing the president of corruption without evidence that he had either profited from his son’s business dealings or misused his power to help.The next day, the president picked up The Washington Post to find a column by David Ignatius, who has enjoyed considerable access to the Biden White House, arguing that despite what he considered a laudable record, the 80-year-old president should not run for another term next year. The column caused much buzzing in Washington because Mr. Ignatius has broad respect in the nation’s capital as a reasoned voice often supportive of the president and represents the establishment whose approval Mr. Biden has long craved.Mr. Ignatius’s plea for the president to reconsider his decision to seek a second term resonated among many Democrats deeply anxious about his prospects but reluctant to say so out loud for fear of undermining him. Mr. Ignatius addressed the matter on “Morning Joe,” the MSNBC show that Mr. Biden is known to watch, with much discussion of whether the president was too old for another term, as polls show many voters believe.Just hours later, Senator Mitt Romney, one of the most prominent Republican critics of former President Donald J. Trump, announced that he would retire in favor of “a new generation of leaders” and urged Mr. Biden to do the same. Charlie Cook, a well-regarded nonpartisan election analyst, then weighed in with a column making the case for the president stepping aside.A crowd listening to Mr. Biden speak on Thursday at Prince George’s County Community College in Largo, Md.Anna Rose Layden for The New York TimesHunter Biden’s indictment was followed on Friday by the first union strike against all three major American automakers, a seismic disruption of a key industry with uncertain effects on the economy. White House officials were watching the situation in Detroit with some trepidation, reasoning that a short strike would not make much difference in the long run but an extended walkout could unsettle the economy at a tenuous moment.While many Democrats for months have privately hoped for what Mr. Ignatius publicly voiced, there is no indication that Mr. Biden is or would consider abandoning his re-election campaign. Advisers say privately that the idea never comes up and would be ludicrous. If anything, the importunings of the “chattering class,” as they like to put it, would push Mr. Biden, who believes he is consistently underestimated, in the opposite direction.“The Ignatius thing probably did break his heart, however that’s the kind of thing that forces him and the campaign and his family into their comfort zone of being underdogs,” said Michael LaRosa, a former spokesman for Jill Biden. “The way they view it is: You guys said he couldn’t win last time, he couldn’t win from the center, he couldn’t beat Bernie, he couldn’t bring back bipartisanship, he couldn’t beat Trump, he couldn’t win the midterms. That’s how they see things.”There is no class of elder statesmen who might persuade Mr. Biden of the opposite, no one he would listen to, according to Democratic strategists. Mr. Biden is said to still resent former President Barack Obama for gently pressing him not to run in 2016, and his relationship with former President Bill Clinton and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is complicated by conflicting ambitions.The only ones who might persuade Mr. Biden to change his mind would be his own family, particularly Jill Biden, who talked him out of running for president in 2004. But by all accounts, she and other family members strongly support another campaign, viewing any alternative as a capitulation to the doubters who never believed in the president and the enemies who in her view have weaponized their family against him.For all the concern in the party — and interviews make clear it is deeper than White House officials are willing to acknowledge — there is also a sense of resignation among many Democrats that there are no obvious alternatives to Mr. Biden ready and able to beat Mr. Trump.Jill Biden talked Mr. Biden out of running for president in 2004.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesEven former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has worked closely with Mr. Biden to pass his legislative agenda, seemed to call Vice President Kamala Harris into doubt in an interview this week. Asked on CNN twice if she were the best running mate for Mr. Biden, Ms. Pelosi did not directly say yes. “He thinks so,” she said of the president, “and that’s what matters.”Keeping Mr. Trump out of the Oval Office is such a paramount goal for Democrats that even skeptics of Mr. Biden within the party are increasingly coming to the conclusion that it is too late to think about an alternative and more important now to rally around him.Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, who was seen as a possible candidate if Mr. Biden did not run, recently told fellow Democrats it was “time for all of us to get on the train and buck up,” as he put it in an interview.Donna Brazile, a former Democratic Party chair, insisted that reports of hand wringing are overwrought. “No matter his age or accomplishment, Democrats must begin to focus on every branch of government, preserving our democracy, inspiring young people to run for office and vote — not to mention raise money and run as if we are 10 points behind,” she said. “There’s only one way to win: You have to believe in the candidates on the ballot.”So far, the polling has been unforgiving, undercutting Mr. Biden’s argument that he is the safest choice to defeat Mr. Trump. Multiple surveys have shown him statistically tied with his predecessor, and his approval rating has remained mired around 40 percent despite improving economic conditions.Mr. Biden’s advisers dismiss such findings, noting that Ronald Reagan, Mr. Clinton and Mr. Obama all rebounded from low approval ratings to win re-election handily. Mr. Biden’s campaign has already started airing ads in battleground states, and advisers argue that when the time comes for a choice that matters, voters will return to Mr. Biden rather than switch to an unpopular challenger who has been indicted four times, including for trying to subvert democracy.In the meantime, they said, no one should worry about one week or another. The president survived plenty of tough weeks before pushing through landmark legislation and enacting other major policy goals. After a half-century in politics, they said, he has seen it all and he sets the tone for his White House.“When I read these stories on Biden’s age or polling status, it reminds me of what I used to tell the staff,” said Ms. Brazile. “Keep your head down, make your phone calls and just do the work.” More

The president says he can direct limited military operations without lawmakers’ approval. Most G.O.P. presidential candidates, including Donald J. Trump, did not answer a survey on executive power.If he is elected to a second term, President Biden pledged that he will go to Congress to start any major war but said he believed he was empowered “to direct limited U.S. military operations abroad” without such approval when such strikes served critical American interests.“As president, I have taken great care to ensure that military actions carried out under my command comply with this constitutional framework and that my administration consults with Congress to the greatest extent possible,” he wrote in response to a New York Times survey of presidential candidates about executive power.“I will continue to rigorously apply this framework to any potential actions in the future,” he added.The reply stood in contrast to his answer in 2007, when he was also running for president and, as a senator, adopted a narrower view: “The Constitution is clear: Except in response to an attack or the imminent threat of attack, only Congress may authorize war and the use of force.”In the survey, The New York Times asked major presidential candidates to lay out their understanding of issues that can be critical to the outcome of policy fights but about which they are rarely asked: the scope and limits of a president’s power to act unilaterally or in defiance of statutes, particularly in war, secrecy and law enforcement.Mr. Biden’s answers showed how his view of executive power evolved over years in the White House — eight as Barack Obama’s vice president and now nearly three as president.Only a handful of candidates for the Republican nomination engaged in the survey, including former Vice President Mike Pence, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas and Mayor Francis Suarez of Miami before he suspended his campaign late last month.Vivek Ramaswamy, a businessman and entrepreneur, answered only about half of the 14 questions, and former President Donald J. Trump declined to participate altogether, as did Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, among others.The Times has published in full the answers of participants, including Mr. Biden and two of his Democratic challengers, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson.Notably, Mr. Biden declined to embrace the idea of curtailing emergency powers Congress enacted that presidents can activate if they declare that there are exigent circumstances, said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior Justice Department lawyer in the Bush administration.Mr. Trump invoked emergency powers to spend more on a border wall than lawmakers were willing to appropriate, and the Biden administration invoked the authority for a plan to forgive more than $400 million in student debt. (The Supreme Court struck down the proposal over the summer.) There are bipartisan proposals in Congress to impose new curbs, such as by ensuring that national emergencies terminate after 30 days unless lawmakers affirm a presidential declaration.Asked whether he would sign such a bill, Mr. Biden instead made a vague remark about “working with Congress on devising sensible solutions to the challenges we face as a nation.” He added that he would use every tool at his disposal to respond to emergencies.“If Biden is not open to reform — and his answer was as noncommittal as he could be without saying he was not open to it — then it is likely dead on arrival,” Professor Goldsmith said.On the topic of pardons, every candidate who answered the survey said that a president cannot pardon himself. While in office, Mr. Trump claimed he had a legal right to do so, but that is an ambiguous and untested constitutional question. It could become important if he wins the 2024 election even as he faces criminal charges in two federal cases.Former President Donald J. Trump claimed he had the legal right to pardon himself.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIndeed, while Mr. Trump did not participate in the survey, many of its questions addressed disputed assertions of executive power he made as president, and he and his allies are openly planning to expand his authority over the machinery of government if he wins in 2024. Mr. DeSantis has also pushed an expansive view of executive powers as Florida governor.The refusal by the two men and most other G.O.P. contenders to answer questions on the powers they are seeking from voters reflects a party shift that emerged in the 2016 primary, which Mr. Trump upended by becoming the front-runner ahead of establishment candidates.Other Republican presidential hopefuls in the current primary campaign who declined to answer the questions included Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, and Will Hurd, a former representative of Texas.By contrast, most major Republican primary candidates in 2007 and 2011 were willing to answer the versions of the questions put to them those years, including the party’s eventual nominees, John McCain and Mitt Romney.Four years ago, 17 Democrats vying for their party’s nomination to challenge Mr. Trump also participated in the project. Mr. Biden was among them, making his answers this cycle the third time he has participated. (His willingness to do so as an incumbent seeking re-election also stood in contrast to Mr. Obama, who declined to participate in 2011.)In 2019, Mr. Biden had already shifted to embracing the view, adopted by the executive branch under administrations of both parties, that presidents have broader constitutional authority to carry out limited attacks on other countries without congressional authorization, so long as it falls short of full-scale war.As president, both Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden used force unilaterally, citing their claimed constitutional authority to use military force without congressional permission. In April 2017 and again in April 2018, Mr. Trump directed airstrikes against Syrian government forces, and Mr. Biden in June 2021 and in August 2022 directed airstrikes on Iranian-backed militia groups in Syria.Mr. Pence, who was vice president at the time of Mr. Trump’s strikes, said: “As commander in chief, the president has a constitutional duty to use his executive authority to protect the country from imminent threats. Whether a threat is imminent is a matter of judgment, and it is essential the president be a person of character, experience, and competence whose judgment the American people can trust.”To be sure, just because candidates commit to respecting a limit while on the campaign trail does not mean they will follow through once in office. But their legal policy statements can offer a way to analyze and bring attention to any departure from what they told voters.In 2019, for example, Mr. Biden said that if elected, he would order the Justice Department to review and potentially replace a legal policy memo that says sitting presidents are temporarily immune from indictment. He strongly criticized the department’s interpretation of the Constitution, which limited the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia and Mr. Trump’s attempts to impede that inquiry, Robert S. Mueller III.But Mr. Biden never followed through on that pledge. He is now protected himself by the Justice Department’s theory since a special counsel, Robert Hur, is investigating how several classified documents were in his possession when he left the vice presidency.In his survey answers this time, Mr. Biden sidestepped a question about that issue, instead offering a vague statement about Justice Department independence.“As president, I have fulfilled my campaign promise of restoring a strong and independent Department of Justice led by top-flight legal professionals dedicated to realizing the ideal that this nation was founded on of equal justice under the law,” he wrote. “This means no one is above the law — especially the president of the United States.” More

The Candidates Biden Kennedy Jr. Williamson Hutchinson Pence Ramaswamy Suarez Did not respond to questions. Burgum Did not respond to questions. Christie Did not respond to questions. DeSantis Did not respond to questions. Haley Did not respond to questions. Hurd Did not respond to questions. Scott Did not respond to questions. Trump More

If Donald Trump wins a second term, he and his allies want to revive a plan to allow a president to fire civil service workers who are supposed to be hired on merit. The Biden administration is trying to thwart it.When President Biden took office, he swiftly canceled an executive order his predecessor Donald J. Trump had issued that could have enabled Mr. Trump to fire tens of thousands of federal workers and replace them with loyalists. But Democrats never succeeded in enacting legislation to strengthen protections for the civil service system as a matter of law.Now, with Mr. Trump seemingly poised to win the G.O.P. nomination again, the Biden administration is instead trying to effectively Trump-proof the civil service with a new regulation.On Friday, the White House proposed a new rule that would make it more onerous to reinstate Mr. Trump’s old executive order if Mr. Trump or a like-minded Republican wins the 2024 election.But Trump allies who would most likely have senior roles in any second Trump administration shrugged off the proposed Biden rule, saying they could simply use the same rule-making process to roll back the new regulation and then proceed. Legal experts agreed.The proposed rule addresses the move Mr. Trump tried to make late in his presidency by issuing an executive order known in shorthand as Schedule F. It would have empowered his administration to effectively transform many career federal employees — who are supposed to be hired based on merit and cannot be arbitrarily fired — into political appointees who can be hired and fired at will.Career civil servants include professional staff across the government who stay on when the presidency changes hands. They vary widely, including law enforcement officers and technical experts at agencies that Congress created to make rules aimed at ensuring the air and water are clean and food, drugs and consumer products are safe.Mr. Trump and senior advisers on his team came to believe that career officials who raised objections to their policies on legal or practical grounds — including some of their disputed immigration plans — were deliberately sabotaging their agenda. Portraying federal employees as unaccountable bureaucrats, the Trump team has argued that removing job protections for those who have any influence over policymaking is justified because it is too difficult to fire them.Critics saw the move as a throwback to the corrupt 19th-century patronage system, when all federal jobs were partisan spoils rather than based on merit. Congress ended that system with a series of civil-service laws dating back to the Pendleton Act of 1883. Everett Kelley, national president of the American Federation of Government Employees, described Schedule F as “the most profound undermining of the civil service in our lifetimes.”The legality of Schedule F was never tested because Mr. Biden revoked the order before any federal workers were reclassified. But Mr. Trump has vowed to reinstate it if he returns to office in 2025 — and his motivations, now, are openly vengeful. He has boasted that he will purge a federal bureaucracy that he has disparaged as a “deep state” filled by “villains” like globalists, Marxists and a “sick political class that hates our country.”President Biden’s administration introduced a rule on Friday to strengthen protections for the civil service system.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe proposed new rule was unveiled by the White House’s Office of Personnel Management in a lengthy filing for the Federal Register on Friday. It would allow workers to keep their existing job protections, such as a right to appeal any firing or reassignment, even if their positions were reclassified. It would also tighten the definition of what types of positions can be exempted from civil service job protections, limiting it to non-career political appointees who are expected to turn over when a presidency ends.The regulatory proposal argued that maintaining protections for career civil servants enhances the functioning of American democracy because such federal workers have institutional memory, subject matter expertise and technical knowledge “that incoming political appointees may lack.” They should be free to disagree with their leaders — short of defying lawful orders — without fear of reprisal, the proposed rule states.The public will now have 60 days to comment on the proposed rule, but the Biden administration expects to complete it by early 2024.A spokesman for the Trump campaign did not respond to an email seeking comment on Mr. Biden’s effort.Biden officials and people supportive of their plan are projecting optimism about the significance of the new regulation to bolster protections for the civil service. Among them is Rob Shriver, the deputy director of the Office of Personnel Management, essentially the government’s human resources department.“Our proposed regulation is strong and based in law and has a strong rationale,” Mr. Shriver said. “Anyone who wants to explore a change in policy would have work to do,” he added. “They’d have to go through the same administrative rule-making process and make sure that their policy is grounded in the law.”Mr. Trump’s allies have been aware of the proposed rule since the spring, when the Biden administration cited it on a government website as part of its 2023 regulatory agenda. Trump allies say they don’t expect it to do much more than delay by a number of months their renewal of Schedule F if Mr. Trump wins back the presidency.James Sherk, the former Trump administration official who came up with the idea for Schedule F, defended the order and said that reimposing it would not be difficult despite the new rule.“The Biden administration can, if they want, make removing intransigent or poorly performing senior bureaucrats harder on themselves,” said Mr. Sherk, who now works at the America First Policy Institute, a think tank stocked heavily with former Trump officials. “The next administration can just as easily rescind those restrictions. With regards to reissuing Schedule F, this proposed rule would be a speed bump, but nothing more.”Another fervent supporter of Schedule F is Russell T. Vought, the president of the Center for Renewing America, a think tank with close ties to the former president. In the Trump administration, Mr. Vought had been the director of the Office of Management and Budget. He proposed reassigning nearly 90 percent of his agency’s staff as Schedule F employees, making them vulnerable to being summarily fired if he deemed them obstructive to the president’s agenda.That threat was never acted upon — Mr. Trump issued the Schedule F order in October 2020, shortly before losing re-election — but Biden administration officials say that career civil servants are still living with the hangover from what nearly happened and are anxious about the prospect of Schedule F returning.Russell T. Vought, former director of the Office of Management and Budget, is a fervent supporter of Schedule F.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesJason Miller, a senior official in Mr. Biden’s Office of Management and Budget who has worked on the new rule, said in an interview that Mr. Trump’s Schedule F order “exposed the fragility of the existing system — the system that has been in place for 140 years to ensure we have a dedicated nonpartisan civil service.”Mr. Miller said the impact of Schedule F “is still felt to this day.” He added, “We have carried that with us. It is not just here in O.M.B. It is across federal agencies.”Mr. Vought, however, said Schedule F was about removing poor performers, and characterized the proposed regulation as little impediment to reviving the idea.“This expected move by the Biden administration to forestall accountability within the bureaucracy against poor performers merely reinforces what we already knew — Schedule F rests on a sound legal foundation, is going to succeed spectacularly and the only chance to stop it is to install procedural roadblocks,” he said.Even if Mr. Trump unexpectedly loses the Republican nomination, there’s a good chance that whomever defeats him will also plan to dismantle the administrative state. Schedule F has swiftly become doctrine across a large swath of the G.O.P., and two of Mr. Trump’s leading rivals are indicating they want to go even further than he does.“On bureaucracy, you know, we’re going to have all these deep-state people, you know, we’re going to start slitting throats on Day 1 and be ready to go,” said Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida at an event in New Hampshire in July.On Wednesday, the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy outlined an even more radical plan than Mr. Trump’s for dismantling much of the government. Mr. Ramaswamy said he would shut down multiple federal agencies and fire 75 percent of the federal work force, although both the legal and practical substance undergirding his attention-seeking proposal appeared thin.“I would not view the efforts to protect the integrity of the professional civil service as just antidotes to Trump,” said Representative Jamie Raskin of Maryland, the ranking Democrat on the House Committee on Oversight and Reform, which has jurisdiction over the federal civil service. “I see them as authoritarianism repellents, generally.”Schedule F has swiftly become doctrine across a large swath of the G.O.P. and Vivek Ramaswamy intends to take it further.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesDemocrats had initially tried to change federal law to prevent any return of Schedule F, but opposition by Republicans — where Senate rules allow a minority of 40 lawmakers to block most legislation — thwarted the effort.When the House was still controlled by Democrats in the first two years of Mr. Biden’s presidency, it attached a measure strengthening protections for the merit-based civil service system as an amendment to a “must-pass” annual defense bill in 2022. But Republican opposition kept it off the Senate version and then forced Democrats to drop it when the two versions were reconciled.Democrats used their control of the House in Mr. Biden’s first two years to pass proposed reforms in response to the ways in which Mr. Trump’s presidency flouted norms. Other ideas Democrats proposed included making it harder for a president to offer or bestow pardons in situations that raise suspicion of corruption, to refuse to respond to oversight subpoenas and to take outside payments while in office.The House passed a bill that combined those and other ideas in December 2021. But Republicans almost uniformly opposed such measures, portraying them as partisan attacks on Mr. Trump, and the Senate’s filibuster rule meant they had the power to block them from becoming law. And Mr. Biden did not make enacting post-Trump reforms a bully-pulpit focus.Max Stier, president of the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan group that seeks to make government more effective, has been working with the Biden administration on this and other proposals to bolster the civil service. He said he understands the vulnerability of the new proposed rule to being overturned, but he said it would make reimposing Schedule F even more vulnerable to legal challenges than it was when Mr. Trump first issued the order.Other Democrats, who fear the return of Mr. Trump and Schedule F, view the Biden effort less enthusiastically.“While the Biden administration’s forthcoming regulation is a good first step to protect the federal civil service from politicization, I’ve consistently said this demands a legislative fix,” said Representative Gerald E. Connolly, who along with Senator Tim Kaine — both Democrats of Virginia — has led congressional efforts to prevent a return of Schedule F.“The Biden administration must make this a top legislative priority,” Mr. Connolly added. “That is the only thing that is going to stop Trump’s crusade to remake the civil service in his image.” More

“A very large portion of my party,” Senator Mitt Romney of Utah tells McKay Coppins of The Atlantic, “really doesn’t believe in the Constitution.”Romney doesn’t elaborate further in the article, and Coppins, who spoke to him in depth and at length, beginning in 2021, for a forthcoming biography, does not speculate on what exactly Romney meant with this assessment of his co-partisans.If Romney was using “the Constitution” as a rhetorical stand-in for “American democracy,” then he’s obviously right. Faced with a conflict between partisan loyalty and ideological ambition on one hand and basic principles of self-government and political equality on the other, much of the Republican Party has jettisoned any commitment to America’s democratic values in favor of narrow self-interest.The most glaring instance of this, of course, is Donald Trump’s attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, which was backed by prominent figures in the Republican Party, humored by much of the Republican establishment and affirmed, in the wake of an insurrectionary attack on the Capitol by supporters of the former president, by a large number of House and Senate Republican lawmakers who voted to question the results.Other examples of the Republican Party’s contempt for democratic principles include the efforts of Republican-led state legislatures to write political majorities out of legislative representation with extreme partisan gerrymanders; the efforts of those same legislatures to raise new barriers to voting in order to disadvantage their political opponents; and the embrace of exotic legal claims, like the “independent state legislature theory,” meant to justify outright power grabs.In just the past few months, we’ve seen Tennessee Republicans expel rival lawmakers from the State Legislature for violating decorum by showing their support for an anti-gun protest on the chamber floor, Florida Republicans suspend a duly elected official from office because of a policy disagreement, Ohio Republicans try to limit the ability of Ohio voters to amend the State Constitution by majority vote, Wisconsin Republicans float the possibility that they might try to nullify the election of a State Supreme Court justice who disagrees with their agenda and Alabama Republicans fight for their wholly imaginary right to discriminate against Black voters in the state by denying them the opportunity to elect another representative to Congress.It is very clear that given the power and the opportunity, a large portion of Republican lawmakers would turn the state against their political opponents: to disenfranchise them, to diminish their electoral influence, to limit or even neuter the ability of their representatives to exercise their political authority.So again, to the extent that “the Constitution” stands in for “American democracy,” Romney is right to say that much of his party just doesn’t believe in it. But if Romney means the literal Constitution itself — the actual words on the page — then his assessment of his fellow Republicans isn’t as straightforward as it seems.At times, Republicans seem fixated on the Constitution. When pushed to defend America’s democratic institutions, they respond that the Constitution established “a republic, not a democracy.” When pushed to defend the claim that state legislatures have plenary authority over the structure of federal congressional elections and the selection of presidential electors, Republicans jump to a literal reading of the relevant parts of Article I and Article II to try to disarm critics. When asked to consider gun regulation, Republicans home in on specific words in the Second Amendment — “the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed” — to dismiss calls for reform.Trump tried to subvert American democracy, yes, but his attempt rested on the mechanisms of the Electoral College, which is to say, relied on a fairly literal reading of the Constitution. Both he and his allies took seriously the fact that our Constitution doesn’t require anything like a majority of the people to choose a president. Attacks on representation and personal freedom — the hyper-gerrymandering of legislatures to preserve and perpetuate minority rule and the attempts to limit or restrict the bodily autonomy of women and other Americans — have operated within the lines drawn by the Constitution, unimpeded or even facilitated by its rules for structuring our political system.Republicans, in other words, do seem to believe in the Constitution, but only insofar as it can be wielded as a weapon against American democracy — that is, the larger set of ideas, intuitions, expectations and values that shape and define political life in the United States as much as particular rules and institutions.Because it splits sovereignty between national and subnational units, because it guarantees some political rights and not others, because it was designed in a moment of some reaction against burgeoning democratic forces, the Constitution is a surprisingly malleable document, when it comes to the shaping of American political life. At different points in time, political systems of various levels of participation and popular legitimacy (or lack thereof) have existed, comfortably, under its roof.Part of the long fight to expand the scope of American democracy has been an ideological struggle to align the Constitution with values that the constitutional system doesn’t necessarily need to function. To give one example among many, when a Black American like George T. Downing insisted to President Andrew Johnson that “the fathers of the Revolution intended freedom for every American, that they should be protected in their rights as citizens, and be equal before the law,” he was engaged in this struggle.Americans like to imagine that the story of the United States is the story of ever greater alignment between our Constitution and our democratic values — the “more perfect union” of the Constitution’s preamble. But the unfortunate truth, as we’re beginning to see with the authoritarian turn in the Republican Party, is that our constitutional system doesn’t necessarily need democracy, as we understand it, to actually work.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