Elections

The star of the first few minutes of the Republican debate on Wednesday was not a candidate, not a moderator and not a notable moment from the crowd.It was a song.To frame their first few questions, the Fox News moderators played a few lyrics from “Rich Men North of Richmond,” a folksy ballad about a narrator who is “working all day” while rich elites in Washington — an hour north of Richmond — keep him stuck in place.“It is by a singer from Farmville, Va., named Oliver Anthony — his lyrics speak of alienation, of deep frustration with the state of government and of this country,” Martha MacCallum, one of the moderators, said before asking, “So, Governor DeSantis, why is this song striking such a nerve in this country right now?”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida seized on the relatively benign question with what amounted to an opening statement contrasting his economic record with President Biden’s.“We also cannot succeed when the Congress spends trillions and trillions of dollars,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Those rich men north of Richmond have put us in this situation.”The song made an unusual and sudden leap straight to No. 1 on the Billboard singles chart this week, fueled in part by influential conservative pundits and media figures.It quickly struck a chord with Republicans. Its relatively unpolished music video, with Mr. Anthony singing into a lone microphone with a resonator acoustic guitar, racked up 36 million views.While it is not overtly political, the song’s lyrics appeal to conservatives in language and theme, and it is quickly becoming an anthem for Republicans as it takes aim at policies related to climate change and the social safety net.“I wish politicians would look out for miners,” Mr. Anthony sings, “and not just minors on an island somewhere. Lord, we got folks in the street, ain’t got nothin’ to eat, and the obese milkin’ welfare.”Mr. Anthony has tried to stay out of the political fray surrounding his song.“I sit pretty dead center down the aisle on politics and always have,” he said in an introductory video posted to YouTube this month. More

The Florida governor was livid after his allies’ debate strategy memo was revealed online. He enters tonight’s debate looking to reclaim lost ground.Follow live updates on the first Republican presidential primary debate.Ron DeSantis was livid.The super PAC supporting him had posted a trove of sensitive material, including strategic advice and research on his rivals, only days before the first debate of the 2024 campaign. The advice was, at times, so basic that it could come off as condescending: reminding the Florida governor to talk about his family, for instance, and prescribing how many times he should attack President Biden and the news media.Mr. DeSantis erupted over the revelation, according to people told of his reaction, even though the posting of the documents online was meant to avoid running afoul of campaign finance rules. The advice memo, pilloried as “amateurish” within his extended orbit, was quickly taken down, along with the other documents, but the damage had been done. If he followed the advice laid out — including which rivals to hit — he would look like a puppet.Campaigning over the weekend, Mr. DeSantis distanced himself from the memo. “I didn’t do it,” he said. “I didn’t read it. It’s not going to influence what I do.”The episode was a self-inflicted wound by the broader DeSantis team that capped two months of difficulties for the Florida governor that have included dropping poll numbers, a new campaign manager and staff cutbacks. Now, Mr. DeSantis heads into Wednesday night’s event in Milwaukee looking to reclaim lost ground and avoid losing more, knowing that he is almost certain to be a major target for his rivals without Donald J. Trump on the stage.It’s been clear for weeks that the debate would be a critical juncture; to prepare, Mr. DeSantis brought on a top Republican debate coach, Brett O’Donnell. But in some ways, a number of Republicans said, Mr. DeSantis is less in need of a breakout moment than of a stabilizing performance. Allies believe his top priority is to reassure skittish donors and supporters that he has the mettle to square off against Mr. Trump.“This is a big moment for him, but he’s going to rise to it,” predicted Representative Thomas Massie of Kentucky, one of a few House Republicans backing Mr. DeSantis.Mr. DeSantis has displayed some resiliency. Polls show that after months of attacks from Mr. Trump and weeks of unflattering headlines about campaign upheaval, many Republican voters still like Mr. DeSantis. He had the highest favorability rating of any Republican in this week’s Des Moines Register/NBC News poll in Iowa, even as he trailed Mr. Trump by 42 percent to 19 percent.But his standing in the multicandidate race has slipped, with other candidates such as Vivek Ramaswamy and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey appearing to make inroads in the race for second place.“When he got in the race, he had the first license to be the alternative to Trump,” Brad Todd, a longtime Republican strategist, said of Mr. DeSantis. “But it was a license that had an expiration date, and I think that’s probably due.”“It’s really his title to keep,” Mr. Todd added, but “it’s not a foregone conclusion he keeps it.”Whether Mr. DeSantis can convert those favorable views into votes remains to be seen.Advisers say Mr. DeSantis is focused on winning the nomination on the ground in Iowa and the other early states, outworking Mr. Trump and leveraging his well-funded super PAC to out-organize his rivals. But if the national perception of his candidacy does not improve, that task becomes significantly harder.Publication of the debate-prep documents further sowed mistrust between Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and the super PAC, which he seeded with $82.5 million left over from his 2022 re-election. The anger is so palpable that one person who has advised the DeSantis campaign said the super PAC memo “almost seemed intentionally unhelpful.”One line in the memo seemed to sting most: the suggestion that Mr. DeSantis defend Mr. Trump and bludgeon Mr. Chris Christie by accusing him of angling to become an MSNBC host with his frequent broadsides against the former president.That is because Mr. DeSantis, who had been traveling to events in Iowa and New Hampshire organized by his super PAC and interacting with members of the group’s staff, had already been testing out a version of just such a line with various people in private, according to a person with knowledge of the matter.The dynamics of a Trump-less debate stage on Wednesday are hard to predict. But the DeSantis campaign expects the governor to be the “center of attacks,” according to a guidance that his new campaign manager, James Uthmeier, issued in a memo to donors and allies over the weekend.“We all know why our competitors have to go down this road: because this is a two-man race for the Republican nomination between Governor DeSantis and Donald Trump,” Mr. Uthmeier wrote.But the description of the G.O.P. contest as a “two-man race” seems outdated, as Mr. DeSantis’s rivals have drawn far closer to him in many polls than he is to Mr. Trump. The super PAC memo advised the governor to take a “sledgehammer” to one rival, Mr. Ramaswamy, who has been climbing in some surveys.Mr. Massie, who dismissed the memo as “not the smartest move,” said that Mr. Ramaswamy was more of a “curiosity” than a serious candidate.“There is no way in hell people are going to elect someone as president — or to either party’s nomination — who they only found out about six months ago,” Mr. Massie said.A spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy, Tricia McLaughlin, responded by mocking Mr. DeSantis for urging Republican voters not to be “listless vessels” who blindly support Mr. Trump.“Counter to what some candidates onstage say, we believe the American people are more than just listless vessels,” she said.One Republican aligned with a rival to Mr. DeSantis described Mr. Ramaswamy, who has repeatedly come to Mr. Trump’s defense, as a wild card in the debate.Much will depend on the questions the moderators ask of the candidates, and whether they try to steer the conversation to a referendum on Mr. Trump in absentia, forcing the candidates to talk about him.Mr. Massie said that Mr. Trump’s absence would allow Mr. DeSantis to take unanswered “clean shots” at the former president’s record, and to assert his right to rebuttals when attacked by rivals, soaking up airtime.“He’s got to be careful, I think, not to criticize the man, Trump,” Mr. Massie said. “Policy is Ron’s path to victory.”Indeed, while Republican politics is rife with prognosticators saying that the way to beat Mr. Trump is to attack him, Mr. Christie has been doing just that for weeks, gaining in New Hampshire but not in national polls. Neither strategy to beat Mr. Trump — holding him close or a frontal assault — has proved surefire in the months before Labor Day, when the campaign season begins in earnest.The race is “wide open” for the eight candidates onstage, said Henry Barbour, a longtime Republican National Committee member. But, he added, “it has to be a one-on-one race.”If there’s more than one candidate not named Trump still in the race after the South Carolina primary, the fourth G.O.P. nominating contest, which is set for Feb. 24, 2024, Mr. Barbour said, “it’s almost a given that Donald Trump will have an insurmountable lead by the middle of March” in the all-important delegate chase.With Mr. Trump missing, Mr. Todd, the G.O.P. strategist, said the debate had the potential to feel like an undercard ahead of a later marquee matchup.“The debate in some ways will perform like a semifinal,” Mr. Todd said, with the goal being to advance to the next round. “Everyone knows Trump is in the finals. This is about who will be in the finals with him.” More

The role of debate moderator carries prestige, but it also brings exacting demands and inherent risks: personal attacks by candidates, grievances about perceived biases and, for the two moderators of Wednesday’s Republican primary debate, a tempestuous cable news network’s reputation.Enter Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, the Fox News Channel mainstays who drew that assignment and will pose questions to the eight G.O.P. presidential candidates squaring off for the first time, absent former President Donald J. Trump.The party’s front-runner, Mr. Trump will bypass the debate in favor of an online interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from Fox News in April.But that doesn’t mean the debate’s moderators will be under any less of a microscope.Here’s a closer look at who they are:Bret BaierHe is the chief political anchor for Fox News and the host of “Special Report With Bret Baier” at 6 p.m. on weeknights. Mr. Baier, 53, joined the network in 1998, two years after the network debuted, according to his biography.Mr. Baier, like Ms. MacCallum, is no stranger to the debate spotlight.In 2016, he moderated three G.O.P. primary debates for Fox, alongside Megyn Kelly and Chris Wallace, who have since left the network. He was present when Ms. Kelly grilled Mr. Trump about his treatment of women during a 2015 debate, an exchange that drew Mr. Trump’s ire and led him to boycott the network’s next debate nearly six months later.During the 2012 presidential race, Mr. Baier moderated five Republican primary debates.At a network dominated by conservative commentators like Sean Hannity and the departed Mr. Carlson and Bill O’Reilly, Mr. Baier has generally avoided controversy — but not entirely.After Fox News called Arizona for Joseph R. Biden Jr. on election night in 2020, becoming the first major news network to do so and enraging Mr. Trump and his supporters, Mr. Baier suggested in an email to network executives the next morning that the outlet should reverse its projection.“It’s hurting us,” he wrote in the email, which was obtained by The New York Times.Mr. Baier was also part of a witness list in the defamation lawsuit that Dominion Voting Systems brought against Fox News over the network’s role in spreading disinformation about the company’s voting equipment. Fox settled the case for $787.5 million before it went to trial.Martha MacCallumShe is the anchor and executive editor of “The Story With Martha MacCallum” at 3 p.m. on weekdays. Ms. MacCallum, 59, joined the network in 2004, according to her biography.During the 2016 election, Ms. MacCallum moderated a Fox News forum for the bottom seven Republican presidential contenders who had not qualified for the party’s first debate in August 2015. She reprised that role in January 2016, just days before the Iowa caucuses.She and Mr. Baier also moderated a series of town halls with individual Democratic candidates during the 2020 election, including one that featured Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.Before joining Fox, she worked for NBC and CNBC.When Fox projected Mr. Biden’s victory over Mr. Trump in Arizona, effectively indicating that Mr. Biden had clinched the presidency, Ms. MacCallum was similarly drawn into the maelstrom at the network.During a Zoom meeting with network executives and Mr. Baier, she suggested it was not enough to call states based on numerical calculations — the standard by which networks have made such determinations for generations — but that viewers’ reactions should be considered.“In a Trump environment,” Ms. MacCallum said, according to a review of the phone call by The Times, “the game is just very, very different.” More

The first debate of the 2024 Republican presidential primary, hosted by Fox News, is set to kick off in Milwaukee on Wednesday at 9 p.m. Eastern time. It’s expected to last two hours.In contrast to many debates, the candidates will not make opening statements, though they will have 45 seconds each for closing statements. They will have one minute to answer each question and 30 seconds for follow-ups.The debate will be moderated by the Fox News hosts Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, and will include eight candidates: Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, former Vice President Mike Pence, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina. Former President Donald J. Trump has chosen not to participate.To qualify, candidates had to meet polling and donor criteria set by the Republican National Committee and also sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee, no matter who it is. More

Former President Donald J. Trump will not be on the debate stage in Milwaukee on Wednesday night. Instead, he will be at his private golf club in Bedminster, N.J., and aides have not said if he will be watching.But voters will still have a chance to hear from him, in an interview with Tucker Carlson, the former Fox News host who posts episodes of a show on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter.The interview was recorded at some point in the last two weeks at Mr. Trump’s club, a person briefed on the matter said. The interview is expected to be posted around the time the debate — the first of the Republican primary season — begins.Both Mr. Carlson and Mr. Trump have been feuding with Fox News, which is hosting the debate.Mr. Carlson was pushed from his popular 8 p.m. show by officials at the network, and is still being paid the remainder of his contract.Mr. Trump, who has a wide lead in early polling, has complained bitterly about the network’s coverage for many months, and has suggested he may not participate in any debates. But that’s especially true for Wednesday and the second debate, which will be hosted by Fox Business.Mr. Trump is also likely to draw attention away from day-after coverage of the debate on Thursday, albeit for reasons less welcome to him: He is expected to travel to Georgia to be booked on the racketeering charges he faces there stemming from his efforts to remain in power after his 2020 election loss. More

Three men accused of helping to surveil Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s vacation home could face more than 20 years in prison if convicted.Nearly three years ago, amid the tumult of Covid-19 and a presidential campaign, federal and state prosecutors outlined a sprawling right-wing terror plot to kidnap and possibly kill Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer, at her vacation home.Since then, in courtrooms across Michigan, that investigation has led to guilty pleas, convictions at trial and two acquittals, as well as introspection about what the plot says about the country’s political discourse.This week, as another presidential election approaches, what is likely the final chapter in that case is unfolding in the same rural county as the governor’s vacation home. Three men — Michael Null and William Null, who are twin brothers, and Eric Molitor — are on trial on a charge of providing material support for a terrorist act. Prosecutors said the plot had been fueled by anti-government sentiment, militia activity and anger over pandemic lockdowns.“For the average person, it’s almost impossible to fathom how brazen and how bold and how dangerous these individuals were,” William Rollstin, a prosecutor, told jurors in state court on Wednesday. “These defendants decided to use force and violence to solve their problems.”Prosecutors have accused the Null brothers and Mr. Molitor of traveling to Antrim County, about 250 miles northwest of Detroit, to scout out the governor’s vacation home and help prepare for an attack. If convicted, they could each face more than 20 years in prison. Unlike the men convicted in federal court, they are not charged with planning to participate in the kidnapping itself.Opening arguments on Wednesday echoed many of the themes aired in two prior federal trials in Grand Rapids, as well as another in state court in Jackson, Mich.Defense lawyers tried to downplay their clients’ actions. They suggested the men were minor players who did not know much about the plans to harm Ms. Whitmer, were egged on by F.B.I. informants and were caught up in overheated pandemic-era politics.“We have police protests — I mean, cities are burning,” Kristyna Nunzio, a lawyer for William Null, said in court, describing national events in 2020. “People are scared during this time period. And it’s fair to keep that in your mind when you review all of the evidence.”But prosecutors said the defendants were aiding the leaders of the plot, Barry Croft and Adam Fox. Federal jurors found that Mr. Croft and Mr. Fox had planned to kidnap Ms. Whitmer and blow up a bridge leading to her home in order to disrupt the police response. Mr. Croft is serving a nearly 20-year prison sentence, and Mr. Fox is serving a 16-year sentence.This trial is playing out in politically conservative Antrim County, where Donald J. Trump received more than 60 percent of the vote in 2020 even as Joseph R. Biden Jr. clinched Michigan. When Ms. Whitmer won re-election in convincing fashion last year, her opponent carried Antrim County by a 14-point margin.In opening arguments, Mr. Rollstin emphasized that the underlying terror plot sought not just to harm Ms. Whitmer but also to attack members of her security detail and other law enforcement officers who might respond to the scene.“It’s much more than just the governor, ladies and gentlemen,” Mr. Rollstin said. William Barnett, a lawyer for Mr. Molitor, noted for the jury that Ms. Whitmer had blamed Mr. Trump’s rhetoric for the plot.“It’s all politics, folks,” Mr. Barnett said. “There’s something going on here. I don’t know what’s going on. But it looks like weaponization of the government.” More

Through stump speeches and statements on the campaign trail, the Republican presidential contenders have hinted at what they might say on the debate stage. Here’s a look at their possible lines.The top contenders in the Republican presidential primary — minus the most important one — will face off Wednesday night in the first debate of the 2024 race. The debate will provide the candidates, many who are relatively unknown to voters, an opportunity to refine their message and to test their attacks on rivals, hoping to deliver a zinger to stand out in a crowded field.Those statements may include exaggerations or outright misinformation about a host of subjects, like inflation, immigration, foreign policy and cultural issues. The candidates’ stump speeches and previous statements offer a glimpse of what the debate audience might hear.Here is a sampler of the kind of exaggerations, misleading statements and half-truths that could come up.Chris Christie“We should discuss why he promised to build a wall across the entire border and completed 52 miles of new wall in four years. At that pace, he’d need 110 more years as president to finish the wall.”This is partially true.Mr. Christie has made targeting former President Donald J. Trump — the front-runner for the Republican nomination, who is not attending this debate — central to his campaign and specifically criticized him for supposedly not fulfilling his campaign promises while in office.It is true that Mr. Trump said throughout the 2016 cycle that he would build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it. Mexico has not paid for any wall construction.However, Mr. Trump said he would build a 1,000-mile wall, not along the entire border as Mr. Christie has claimed. And while Mr. Christie’s 52-mile figure refers to one category of wall construction, the Trump administration built around 453 total miles of border wall starting in 2017, though most of the new barriers reinforced or replaced existing structures.Ron DeSantis“In Florida, our crime rate is at a 50-year low. You look at the top 25 cities for crime in America, Florida does not rank amongst the top 25.”This is partially true.Mr. DeSantis has played up his record as Florida’s governor and what he sees as legislative successes there throughout his presidential campaign.While Florida’s crime rate fell to a 50-year low in 2021, crime reporting was incomplete and provisional after a switch in how law enforcement agencies reported data. The crime rate that year included data from just 59 percent of agencies in Florida, leaving crime data for more than 40 percent of the state’s population unaccounted for, according to The Tampa Bay Times.Nikki Haley“Why was it last year that a third of our teenage girls seriously contemplated suicide? This is serious. We need to look at that. So let’s snap out of it. Boys go into boys bathrooms, girls go to girls bathrooms and if there’s something in between, go into a private bathroom.”This lacks evidence.Ms. Haley, the only woman in the Republican primary, has, like many candidates, leaned into issues involving gender identity and sexuality on the trail. Criticizing transgender athletes who compete in women’s sports has become one of her most reliable applause lines.There is no scientifically proven link between suicidal ideation and trans people competing in sports. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported this year that teenage girls are facing elevated suicide rates. Medical experts have said that while there are many potential causes, no evidence points to increased awareness of L.G.B.T.Q. issues as a causal or contributing factor.Mike Pence“The fact is, today abortion law in the United States is more aligned with China and North Korea than with Western nations in Europe.”This is misleading.Mr. Pence, the staunchest abortion opponent in the race, has frequently expressed support for a national abortion ban and called on other candidates to back a 15-week ban.The majority of European countries have legalized abortion up to 10 to 15 weeks of pregnancy and allow for abortions past the gestational limit if the parent’s life is in danger. Many laws in those countries are more permissive than they appear on paper and allow for exemptions upon request.China, in contrast, allows for elective abortions without specific gestational limits, but in recent years has said that it aims to reduce the number of “medically unnecessary” abortions. And it is unclear what North Korea’s laws are, given that the World Health Organization reported no documentation after 2015 on the procedure’s legality.Vivek Ramaswamy“There’s very little evidence of people being arrested for being armed (Jan. 6). Most of the people who were armed, I assume the federal officers who were out there were armed.”This is false.Mr. Ramaswamy has remained one of Mr. Trump’s most ardent defenders through his four indictments and said throughout his campaign that “systematic and pervasive censorship,” not Mr. Trump, was to blame for the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The Justice Department reported that 112 individuals were charged with using a “deadly or dangerous weapon or causing serious bodily injury to an officer” and 104 were charged with entering a restricted area with a dangerous or deadly weapon as of Aug. 4. There is no way to know how many of the thousands there were armed, but Secret Service officials confiscated several hundred weapons that included knives or blades, pepper spray canisters, brass knuckles and tasers.And Mr. Ramaswamy himself condemned Mr. Trump on X, formerly known as Twitter, after the attack: “What Trump did last week was wrong. Downright abhorrent. Plain and simple.”Tim Scott“There have been more illegal encounters under Biden than the previous two administrations combined.”This is false.Mr. Scott, who has campaigned as a “happy warrior” with an optimistic message, has largely directed his criticism toward the Biden administration, particularly its handling of illegal border crossings.Reporting of immigration data changed in March 2020 from tracking “apprehensions” to “encounters,” a broader range of expulsions enabled by the Title 42 border policy that allowed for quicker removals during the Covid-19 pandemic, making comparisons across administrations inconsistent.But available data from U.S. Border Patrol showed that illegal immigration levels nationwide were still lower under Mr. Biden than under the Trump and Obama administrations combined. And PolitiFact reported that the Scott campaign used inconsistent metrics to back its claim. More

More from our inbox:Trump’s Trial Dates and the Odds of ConvictionDoes Barbie Really Need Ken?September Dawn Bottoms for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “How Do We Fix the Scandal That Is American Health Care?,” by Nicholas Kristof, with photographs by September Dawn Bottoms (column, Aug. 20):Nicholas Kristof scratches the surface of the failures of the health care system in this country. I have been in practice for 28 years as a cardiologist and internist and have seen firsthand the miraculous breakthroughs in cardiac care as well as the appalling level of care typical in treatment of chronic diseases, especially among minority populations.Most care in this country is delivered by large for-profit and nonprofit entities (which function largely as for-profit entities but avoid taxes). These systems are incentivized to invest in high-end tertiary care, typically cardiac, orthopedic, neurosurgical and oncologic care, as they have the highest reimbursement.Chronic care for conditions such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure are not sexy areas of medicine and for the most part offer low compensation from Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payers.Our health care system needs to incentivize primary care and force nonprofit entities to allocate larger portions of their budgets to primary care or lose their nonprofit status.Daniel ZangerBrooklynTo the Editor:Nicholas Kristof has written a cogent and damning column. One piece of the health care crisis we must also address is physician education and remuneration.New physicians have delayed earning potential in order to attend medical school and have endured at least three years of paltry pay and extremely demanding schedules as medical interns and residents. By the time they are able to practice medicine after at least seven years of post-college training, they are unlikely to set up practice in rural areas with the lowest pay, fewest colleagues for support, professional isolation and limited call coverage. They are also less likely to practice in pediatrics or family medicine than in a medical specialty.Indeed, no one can blame them for wanting to work in a place conducive to comfortably repaying student loans as well as paying for malpractice insurance.Bright, hardworking young people can find myriad other fields of work and skip the stress that is modern U.S. medicine.If we are serious about improving health outcomes and reducing infant mortality, depression and skyrocketing rates of diabetes and other illnesses, then we need to completely revamp physician education.Nurses, doctors and hospital staff are heroes. Let’s treat them as such. Pay for their education, and incentivize work in underserved and high-risk locales.Susan BaloghBostonTo the Editor:Only last month the Department of Health and Human Services found that some of the country’s largest for-profit insurance companies, which together manage Medicaid programs that cover the majority of the 87 million individuals on Medicaid, denied more than one of every four requests for doctor-ordered treatments or medications for patients enrolled in their Medicaid plans. Medicaid serves many who live with the disadvantages that often lead to higher rates of diabetes and other chronic illnesses for which timely and consistent care is essential to better outcomes. Providing the services that doctors prescribe for these patients would go a long way to fixing the scandal described by Mr. Kristof.Ted HermanProvidence, R.I.The writer is a former health insurance executive.Trump’s Trial Dates and the Odds of ConvictionDoug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “This Indictment Does Something Ingenious,” by Norman Eisen and Amy Lee Copeland (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 16): The Georgia indictment might be ingenious, but the fact remains that Donald Trump won Georgia in 2016 and missed by a whisker winning again in 2020. So there is an overwhelming likelihood that some of his base of supporters will be on his jury and will not vote for his conviction no matter the strength of the evidence.Harold J. SmithWhite Plains, N.Y.To the Editor:There are many legitimate factors to take into account in determining when any criminal trial might begin, but one factor not to take into account is the defendant’s job. At the moment, Donald Trump is looking for a job (president) and in essence interviewing to get the job (campaigning).So let’s hope that the one factor that none of the judges consider in setting Mr. Trump’s trial date is his “interviewing schedule.”The judges might consider that at least some of Mr. Trump’s potential “employers” might want to know before hiring him whether or not he is a felon and set to spend many years in prison.Eugene D. CohenPhoenixDoes Barbie Really Need Ken?Iris Schneider/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor: Re “Why Barbie and Ken Need Each Other,” by Ross Douthat (column, nytimes.com, Aug. 9):As a young woman, I agree with Mr. Douthat that “Barbie” contains some real, not-talked-about ambivalence concerning what female empowerment truly means.However, the core failing of “Barbie” is not, as he suggests, its failure to unite Barbie and Ken romantically, but a failure to imagine a world in which people of all genders can successfully lead together. Mr. Douthat’s insinuation that romance and reproduction must be the basis of any kind of productive union between men and women is archaic and troubling.This being said, the assertion of the “Barbie” movie that Ken is “superfluous” is also concerning. It is not, of course, that women have a need for men, but that humanity requires all of its members’ collaboration to achieve its highest potential. And yet, at the end of the movie, when Ken is relegated to a status equal to that of women in the real world (read: oppressed), any hope for a world in which people — or dolls — of all genders can live fulfilled, empowered lives remains elusive.Mary ElliotLenox, Mass.To the Editor:Certainly, there is evidence that married people tend to be happier than the unmarried. But that largely applies to people who are happily married. Unhappily married people are not only less happy than the happily married, but also less happy than those who are divorced, and less healthy than those who are single, divorced or widowed.There are some important factors that suggest Barbie and Ken’s union might not be a happy one. Barbie never expressed any interest in a relationship with Ken or with anyone else. As Barbie was being ushered into a black S.U.V. and taken to the Mattel headquarters, Ken high-tailed it back to Barbieland solo. While there, as Gloria (played by America Ferrera) so clearly summarized, he took Barbie’s house, he brainwashed her friends, and he tried to control the government.No one needs 40 years of General Social Survey data to know that they would be miserable. Stop trying to convince women that the key to their happiness is committing to emotionally damaged men against their self-interest and better judgment.Theresa HastertAnn Arbor, Mich. More