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      Biden’s 2024 Re-Election Campaign Begins. You Might Miss It at First.

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      The president has no immediate plans to barnstorm key states with large rallies. He will instead try to burnish his record, and hope Republican infighting continues.President Biden has formally moved from a campaign-in-waiting to a campaign of waiting.Despite his heavily anticipated re-election announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden has no immediate plans to barnstorm the key battlegrounds. Decorative bunting is nowhere to be found, and large rallies will come later.Instead, Mr. Biden’s next steps look much like his recent ones: leveraging the White House to burnish his record with ribbon-cuttings, and willingly ceding the stage to a Republican presidential primary that is already descending into a dogfight between Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, even before he has entered the race.The first 24 hours, a heavily scripted period in any campaign, serve as a Biden road map for the months to come: a video announcement and an array of text messages to spur online donations; the behind-the-scenes hiring of his campaign team; an official White House event that doubled as a campaign opportunity; and a rally focused on abortion rights, headlined by the vice president, at a historically Black university.“This is not a time to be complacent,” Mr. Biden says in the video, which spends more time warning of threats posed by Republicans — to abortion rights, entitlement programs and democracy — than articulating a policy vision for a second term.Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, said the two public appearances on Tuesday by the president and vice president — at a labor union conference talking about his economic agenda for the middle class and at the abortion-rights rally — captured “two pillars of the campaign” to come.At the same time, she predicted little public campaigning anytime soon for the 80-year-old president.“It’s about getting staff, it’s about raising money, it’s about stopping the ridiculous questions of if he’s running,” Ms. Lake said. “That is the antidote to whether he has the energy to run, to questions about his age.”Biden advisers say his entry was driven more by the internal demands of constructing a presidential campaign rather than the external need to communicate with voters, which he can do from the White House, though his team has begun producing potential advertisements. The Democratic National Committee has bought advertising time beginning Wednesday on MSNBC and on local stations in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to AdImpact, a media tracking service.On Tuesday, Mr. Biden announced a campaign manager and her principal deputy, along with seven national co-chairs. It is no accident that instead of immediately traveling to a battleground state, Mr. Biden will huddle with some of his biggest donors on Friday in the capital.At moments, the campaign rollout had the feel of a nostalgia tour, like an old band trying to recapture the magic of the past. The announcement was timed to the exact day of Mr. Biden’s kickoff four years earlier. His first speech, then and now, was to a labor union. And then as now, Jill Biden, the first lady, snapped a photo in front of the same building at the Northern Virginia Community College where she teaches English.The 2024 presidential race is expected to revolve around about half a dozen highly competitive states.The epicenter will be the two Sun Belt states, Georgia and Arizona, that Mr. Biden in 2020 put into the Democratic column for the first time since the 1990s, as well as the three industrial states touching the Great Lakes that are perennial battlegrounds: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Nevada and North Carolina, which has been just out of Democrats’ grasp in recent years, are expected to have heavy spending, as well.Mr. Biden held a video call on Tuesday with roughly a dozen Democratic governors to discuss messaging in battleground states and carrying out the administration’s agenda, according to a person with direct knowledge of the call. The call included, among others, the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.In Mr. Biden’s labor conference speech, he delivered a lengthy recitation of the policy achievements of his first two years in office, and was briefly interrupted with the “four more years” chant familiar to every presidential re-election campaign. He spoke of signing trillions in stimulus and infrastructure spending and, as in his announcement video, warned of “MAGA” Republicans who he said threatened to destroy the fabric of the country.“The speaker, the former president, the MAGA extremists, they’re cut from a different cloth,” Mr. Biden said. “The threat that MAGA Republicans pose is to take us to a place we’ve never been.”Mr. Biden speaking in Wilmington, Del., in October 2020, when coronavirus restrictions and precautions greatly reduced in-person campaigning. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFor a re-election bid, Mr. Biden’s campaign introduction presented a curiously dark vision of the country.In his video, he said his fight in 2020 to restore the “soul of the nation” was still incomplete, and at risk. At his speech, the biggest applause lines were his vows to defend the country from various perils, not any remarks presenting an uplifting vision for the future.“It’s been one crisis after another,” said Cristóbal Alex, who worked on Mr. Biden’s 2020 run and in his White House. “The country remains on the cliff. And the election of Donald Trump or a similar MAGA type would push the country over the brink.”Some elements of the campaign were not completed until last weekend, and the re-election staff is still being built out. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, said she had received a call from Mr. Biden on Sunday asking her to be a campaign co-chair.“I don’t quite know exactly what’s ahead,” she said. “I’ve never done this before.”Mr. Biden’s team is sensitive to questions about his age and the rigor of his schedule, especially after he won in 2020 while campaigning most of the year from his Delaware home because of the pandemic. The White House has compiled a chart tracking his travel so far in 2023, and it shows that his number of trips outpaced former President Barack Obama’s in the same time period in 2011.With the widespread end of coronavirus precautions, Democrats are predicting a return to normalcy on the campaign trail. The 2020 race “will have turned out to be, I think, an atypical election,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.But Mr. Biden’s campaign is hardly seeking to have him dominate the headlines. As he has traveled the country recently to promote his legislative accomplishments, the nation’s attention has often focused elsewhere, especially on the never-ending legal and political drama encircling his predecessor.In January, when Mr. Biden stood beside Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the G.O.P. leader, for a ribbon-cutting on a major bridge project over the Ohio River, Republicans in Washington were engaged in a weeklong spectacle over the next House speaker.“Frankly, the best way to run for re-election as president is to be president,” said Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a longtime Biden ally who was announced as a national campaign co-chairman.Mr. Biden’s video and Tuesday speech seemed to goad more Republican infighting, featuring a short clip of Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis shaking hands.“Let the other side continue to self-destruct,” said Alan Kessler, a Democratic bundler who has raised money for Mr. Biden.As Mr. Biden has traveled the country in recent months to promote his legislative accomplishments, the nation’s political attention has often focused elsewhere.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThen there is the issue of abortion rights, on which Mr. Biden has his own long and complicated political history that he sought to avoid discussing in 2020. Since last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the issue has become a top Democratic motivator, powering some unexpected midterm victories and a sweeping triumph this month in a contest for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.“We all know abortion is going to be — if not the top issue — one of the top issues for 2024,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which sponsored the abortion rights rally at Howard University on Tuesday night where Ms. Harris was set to be the headline speaker.Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, said the president, like other Democrats, was aware of how the Supreme Court’s abortion decision had galvanized voters in his party’s favor.“He’s going to talk about protecting reproductive freedom, reproductive rights,” Mr. Klain said Tuesday.Mr. Biden did not say the word “abortion” in his kickoff video, though just four seconds in, there is an image of a woman standing outside the Supreme Court holding a sign that reads, “Abortion is health care.”The only images preceding that shot were of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The first word uttered by Mr. Biden captures both scenes, and is one that Democrats hope will frame the 2024 campaign: “Freedom.”“The question we are facing,” he says in the video, “is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.”Katie Glueck More

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      With Biden’s 2024 Bid, Kamala Harris Will Be Under More Scrutiny

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      The vice president will be central to President Biden’s re-election efforts, particularly on the issue of abortion access. Both critics and supporters say the increased spotlight is a good thing.WASHINGTON — Kamala Harris, the vice president, was featured heavily throughout a video that President Biden used to announce his 2024 campaign on Tuesday, a strong signal that she will be a central part of his re-election efforts.Somehow, both her harshest critics and her staunchest allies see this as a good thing.To her supporters, Ms. Harris, 58, represents broad swaths of the American electorate that Mr. Biden does not: She is a woman, she is biracial and she is decades younger than the 80-year-old president, who would be 86 at the end of a second term. She is seen as the administration’s most visible advocate on issues including voting rights, access to abortion and combating climate change.But her detractors — who include both Republicans and Democrats — say she is unprepared for the scrutiny that is sure to come her way as she positions herself as the potential heir apparent to a Biden presidency. And some do not think the issues in her portfolio will appeal to the independent and moderate voters who tend to decide presidential elections.“What swing voter wakes up and says, ‘Boy, Kamala Harris is going to move me?’” said Mike Murphy, a political strategist who was a longtime adviser to John McCain, the Republican senator and presidential candidate. Mr. Biden and Ms. Harris are still betting that the case they are making to America — that their administration represents the protection of civil liberties and the return of stable governing — will have broad appeal. Hours after Mr. Biden announced his re-election bid on Tuesday, Ms. Harris participated in events that were designed to present her as an emissary of the president but also showcase the ways in which their roles will differ on the campaign trail.On Tuesday afternoon, she appeared alongside President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea, who is in Washington this week for a state visit, at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration Goddard Space Flight Center. There, the two promoted joint projects between the South Korean and U.S. governments and said they would work together to monitor the threat of climate change.Later in the evening, the vice president previewed a fiery and polished campaign style as she attended an event promoting abortion rights, an issue that is likely to define the 2024 race and one that Republicans are struggling to build a unified platform around.She spent her first night on the trail visiting Howard University, a historically Black college and her alma mater, to participate in a rally co-hosted by Planned Parenthood and NARAL Pro-Choice America. Howard students chanted “Four More Years” and gave Ms. Harris a standing ovation as she took the stage.“We are living, I do believe, in a moment in time where so many of our hard-won freedoms are under attack,” Ms. Harris said. “And this is a moment for us to stand and fight.”She criticized the Supreme Court for taking a constitutional right “from the women of America” and assailed “extremist” Republicans around the country for passing restrictive abortion laws, including those that outlaw the procedure in cases of rape and incest — “clearly, most of them don’t even know how a woman’s body works,” she remarked at one point.“Immoral, outrageous, that people who dare to walk around expecting you to respect them, and elect them, would do these kinds of things to other human beings and strip them of their right and entitlement to dignity and autonomy,” Ms. Harris said.An increased number of appearances by Ms. Harris will mean that conservative media outlets like Fox News will have more opportunities to scrutinize everything from the substance of her remarks to her body language, a practice that the vice president’s allies say is rooted in sexism and racism.Some conservative critics have tried to make the case that a vote for Mr. Biden is really a vote for President Harris. On Tuesday, a campaign ad released by the Republican National Committee juxtaposed an image of the president and vice president against artificially generated doomsday scenes.“Republicans will definitely try to make the race as much about her as possible because they see her as more vulnerable, more unpopular,” Tim Miller, a political strategist and communications director for Jeb Bush’s 2016 presidential campaign, said in an interview. But like Mr. Biden, Ms. Harris has low approval ratings: A recent poll found that 36 percent of Americans think she is doing a good job.“I think she’ll play a more significant role than another V.P. would in another situation,” Mr. Miller added.Vice President Kamala Harris hugging Justin J. Pearson at Fisk Memorial Chapel in Nashville, Tenn., earlier this month, after he was ousted as a state representative in a move that some saw as racially motivated. He was later reinstated. Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMs. Harris came into the Biden administration with an undefined portfolio and stepped into one of the trickiest roles in American politics. She has spent the past two years trying to establish her legacy amid frequent staff turnover and thorny assignments, including addressing the root cause of migration from Central America to the United States. During the first months of his presidency, Mr. Biden referred to her as a “work in progress,” according to Chris Whipple, who wrote a book on the Biden presidency.Several current and former aides said she began to find her footing when she requested to be the administration’s leader on voting rights — only to remain the public face of the issue as legislative efforts to expand ballot access died in Congress.In recent months, she has established herself as an advocate of police reform and as the standard-bearer for the administration on abortion rights since Roe v. Wade, which established a constitutional right to abortion, was overturned by the Supreme Court last summer.In recent weeks, Ms. Harris has also traveled to help further Mr. Biden’s calls for stricter gun control measures amid a series of mass shootings. In early April, she made a last-minute trip to Nashville to meet with State Representatives Justin J. Pearson and Justin Jones, two Democratic lawmakers who were expelled for protesting for gun control on the Tennessee House floor and later reinstated. She also met with the two lawmakers, who are Black, alongside the president in Washington this week.“There’s an agenda at play,” Ms. Harris said at Howard. “They even went so far that they had to turn off the microphones on two young elected leaders in Nashville because they couldn’t even stand it. They couldn’t even handle it, these people who want to call themselves leaders.”Ms. Harris’s supporters say they see enormous potential for the vice president to bolster her reputation and further define her legacy as the campaign season approaches. Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis of California, who visited Ms. Harris last week in Washington, said the vice president had grown into her role. She added that Ms. Harris would be able to showcase more of her skills on the campaign trail this time than in 2020, during the height of the pandemic.“Particularly with the younger climate activist leaders in the room, and particularly with people of color, she is an inspirational champion,” Ms. Kounalakis said. “Connecting with real people on the campaign trail is very natural for her, and where she truly thrives.” More

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      Republicans Did Something Most People Don’t Like, So They’re Changing the Rules

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      When Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador, announced her campaign for the Republican presidential nomination in February, she remarked that the Republican Party had “lost the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections.” That, she said, “has to change.”Her fellow Republicans appear to disagree. Across the country, Republican officeholders and activists have abandoned any pretense of trying to win a majority of voters. Last week, for example, Cleta Mitchell — a top Republican lawyer, strategist and fund-raiser — told donors to the Republican National Committee that conservatives had to limit voting on college campuses and tighten rules for voter registration and mail-in ballots. Only then, she said, could Republicans level the playing field for the 2024 presidential election. “The left has manipulated the electoral systems to favor one side — theirs,” she said in her presentation. “Our constitutional Republic’s survival is at stake.”The Republican Party’s hostility to popular government is most apparent on issues where the majority stands sharply opposed to conservative orthodoxy. Rather than try to persuade voters or compromise on legislation, much of the Republican Party has made a conscious decision to insulate itself as much as possible from voters and popular discontent.None of this is new, of course. The first major wave of Republican voter restrictions landed in 2011 after the previous year’s Tea Party-driven election. The Supreme Court unraveled a key section of the Voting Rights Act two years later in Shelby County v. Holder. And it’s been more than 10 years since Republicans in Wisconsin gerrymandered themselves into an almost impenetrable legislative majority.There’s still room for innovation, however, and in the past year Republicans have opened new fronts in the war for minority rule. One element in these campaigns, an aggressive battle to limit the reach of the referendum process, stands out in particular. Wherever possible, Republicans hope to raise the threshold for winning a ballot initiative from a majority to a supermajority or — where such a threshold already exists — add other hurdles to passage. It’s an abrupt change from earlier decades, when Republicans used referendums to build support and enthusiasm among their voters on both social and economic issues.The initiative and referendum processes were envisioned at the start of the 20th century to circumvent an unrepresentative and recalcitrant legislature. And in the year since the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, voters have used both to do exactly that. As my newsroom colleagues Kate Zernike and Michael Wines noted on Sunday, “Voters pushed back decisively after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last year, approving ballot measures that established or upheld abortion rights in all six states where they appeared.”In the face of public opposition to their unpopular views on abortion, Republicans had three choices: make the case to voters that tough abortion restrictions were worthwhile; compromise and bend to public opinion; or change the rules so that their opponents could not protect abortion rights against the will of a legislature that wants to ban the procedure.You know where this is going.Ahead of an effort to enshrine abortion rights into the state Constitution with a ballot measure that would go to voters in a November general election, Ohio Republicans are advancing a ballot measure that would raise the threshold for passing such a measure to 60 percent. If they get their way, the measure could go to voters in an August special election (previously, Ohio Republicans had opposed August special elections). This new rule requiring a supermajority would take only a simple majority to pass.In the wake of successful ballot initiatives to adopt the Medicaid expansion and legalize recreational marijuana, which passed in 2020 and 2022, Missouri Republicans also want to create a new supermajority requirement for ballot measures. One proposal would require 60 percent of the vote; the other two would require a two-thirds vote. Another related proposal would require any ballot initiative to receive a majority of the vote in half of Missouri’s 34 State Senate districts, most of which are sparsely populated. It would create, in essence, an electoral college for ballot initiatives.Republicans in Florida want to raise their state’s threshold for amending the Constitution through ballot initiative from 60 percent of the vote to nearly 67 percent. And after voters in Arkansas rejected a ballot measure to put new restrictions on future ballot measures, Republicans under Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders simply passed the changes into law, using the legislature to do what they could not accomplish with the ballot measure.There is a point to make here about supermajority thresholds for lawmaking, whether it’s in or outside the legislature. The common defense of the supermajority threshold is that it is a tool to build or encourage consensus. But as Alexander Hamilton observed of the Articles of Confederation — which demanded consensus, even unanimity, for the Confederation Congress to take action — “To give a minority a negative upon the majority (which is always the case where more than a majority is requisite to a decision) is, in its tendency, to subject the sense of the greater number to the lesser.” In other words, a supermajority requirement is more akin to a minority veto than it is a technique for the promotion of consensus.There are times and circumstances where demanding a supermajority makes sense. But the Republican opponents of majority rule for ballot initiatives aren’t thinking about the best way to structure direct lawmaking by the public. They are thinking about the best way to keep voters from stopping their efforts to ban abortion (or legalize marijuana or give health insurance to working people), as if all power belongs to them and not, say, the people.As a unit of governance, the state legislature is both unusually powerful, with broad discretion over large areas of public policy, and unusually open to partisan and ideological capture through luck, timing and open manipulation of the rules. Part of the political story of the past decade (and farther back still) is how the Republican Party and the conservative movement have used these facts to their advantage.With gerrymandering, Republicans in several otherwise competitive states have built a nearly impenetrable wall around their legislative majorities. Through restrictions on the vote, they can keep as many of their opponents from the ballot box as is feasible. With fanciful doctrines like the so-called independent state legislature theory, they could have a pretext for amassing even more power to shape elections — even if the Supreme Court rejects the theory in its strongest form. And if all of this isn’t enough to tilt the playing field, Republicans can, as we see, change the rules of referendums and initiatives to limit direct policymaking by the voters.One of the many self-justifying myths about the counter-majoritarian features of the American political system is that they exist to curtail or prevent the “tyranny of the majority.” Americans today might want to remember something the framers never forgot: Much worse than the tyranny of the many is the tyranny of the few.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      North Dakota governor signs law banning nearly all abortions

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      North Dakota on Monday adopted one of the strictest anti-abortion laws in the US as the Republican governor Doug Burgum signed legislation banning the procedure throughout pregnancy, with slim exceptions up to six weeks’ gestation.In those early weeks, abortion would be allowed only in cases of rape, incest or medical emergency, such as ectopic pregnancy.“This bill clarifies and refines existing state law … and reaffirms North Dakota as a pro-life state,” Burgum said in a statement.Last year’s US supreme court ruling overturning the 1973 Roe v Wade decision that legalized abortion nationwide has triggered multiple state laws banning or restricting the procedure. Many were met with legal challenges. Currently, bans on abortion at all stages of pregnancy are in place in at least 13 states and on hold in others because of court injunctions. On the other side, Democratic governors in at least 20 states this year launched a network intended to strengthen abortion access in the wake of the supreme court decision that eliminated women’s constitutional right to end a pregnancy and shifted regulatory powers over the procedure to state governments.The North Dakota law is designed to take effect immediately, but last month the state supreme court ruled a previous ban is to remain blocked while a lawsuit over its constitutionality proceeds. Last week, lawmakers said they intended to pass the latest bill as a message to the state’s high court signaling that the people of North Dakota want to restrict abortion.Supporters have said the measure signed Monday protects all human life, while opponents contend it will have dire consequences.North Dakota no longer has any abortion clinics. Last summer, the state’s only facility, the Red River Women’s Clinic, shut its doors in Fargo and moved operations a short distance across the border to Moorhead, Minnesota, where abortion remains legal. The clinic’s owner is still pursuing a lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of North Dakota’s previous abortion ban.It’s expected that this new ban will also be the subject of legal challenges.Republican Senator Janne Myrdal, of Edinburg, sponsored the latest state legislation.“North Dakota has always been pro-life and believed in valuing the moms and children both,” Myrdal said in an interview. “We’re pretty happy and grateful that the governor stands with that value.”Liz Conmy, a Democratic representative, voted against the bill and said she had hoped Burgum would not sign it.“I don’t think women in North Dakota are going to accept this and there will be action in the future to get our rights back,” Conmy said. “Our legislature is overwhelmingly pro-pregnancy, but I think women in the state would like to make their own decisions.” More

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      Biden Has Something He’d Like to Tell You

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      Gail Collins: Well, Bret it looks like Joe Biden will be announcing his re-election bid this week.Bret Stephens: Proving my prediction from last week dead wrong.Gail: I know you disagree with him on many issues, particularly relating to the economy.But given the likely Republican presidential candidates, any chance you’ll actually be able to avoid voting for him?Bret: Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Probably not.It says something about the state of the Republican Party that the two current front-runners — let’s call them Don Caligula and Ron Torquemada — are nonstarters for a voter like me. And I’m a guy who believes in low taxes, a strong military, broken-windows policing, entitlement reform, a border wall and school choice. That’s the Nikki Haley side of the party — now reduced to single digits of the G.O.P. base.Gail: Sorry about Haley’s failure to take flight. I know you were rooting for her.Bret: Well, I’m still holding out hopes — increasingly faint though they are.On the other hand, I really, really wish Biden weren’t running, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. He’s just not a convincing candidate. And for all the talk of Donald Trump being unelectable in the general election, we’ve heard those predictions before. All it might take is a recession — which is probably coming — for swing voters to care a lot less about abortion rights in Florida or the Jan. 6 attempted coup than they will about jobs and the economy.Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?Gail: Nervous? Just because we’re talking about a presidential election in which one of the two major parties nominates either a loony ex-president drowning in legal problems or a deeply unappealing, extremely right-wing enemy of Disney World?Bret: It’s a game of Russian roulette, played with three bullets in the six-shooter.Gail: As for the Democrats, I’ve already told you I think 80 is too old to be planning another presidential campaign. And Biden has been around so long, it’s hard to make anything he talks about doing sound exciting.But what you’re worried about — a popular reaction against a bad economy — would be a problem for anybody in the party.Bret: True, but Amy Klobuchar or Gretchen Whitmer or some other plausible nominee can’t be accused of owning the economy the way Biden can.Gail: Biden certainly has negatives. But Trump has a lot more — all way more dire. And even if Ron DeSantis weren’t a terrible campaigner, I can’t see him winning over the electorate with his past plans to torpedo Medicare.Bret: You’re probably right about DeSantis, who seems too obsessed trying to slay Mickey and Minnie to appeal to regular voters outside Florida. As for Trump, this is a strange thing to say, but: The guy has demon energy. You know the movie “Cocaine Bear”? Trump is “Diet Coke Cujo,” if you get my Stephen King reference.Gail: Yeah, he’s never boring. Sigh. But we’ll see how energetic he looks when he’s defending himself for falsifying business records, and all the other investigations that await him.Alas, we’ll be conversing about this for a very long time, Bret. On the more immediate horizon, there’s the Fox-Dominion settlement. Tell me your thoughts.Bret: I am sorry we didn’t get to watch Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the gang of cynical, lying, repulsive and wretched propagandists squirm under oath in courtroom testimony. Would have paid money just to see that.But, realistically speaking, it’s probably the best possible result. $787.5 million is rich vindication for Dominion. It’s the closest Fox will ever come to admitting guilt. And it spares us the possibility of an appeals process that might have ended with the Supreme Court revisiting the strict libel standards of Times v. Sullivan and potentially limiting the freedom of the press.Gail: Yeah, for all my daydreams about Fox celebrities having to get up in court and apologize to the nation, in the real world this is probably the best you can get while protecting all the rights of a free press.Bret: The good news, Gail, is that Dominion still has suits pending against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Newsmax and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow Guy, along with a few others. And there’s also the pending Smartmatic suit against Fox, too.Having fun, making bank and doing good at the expense of creeps has got to be the greatest joy adults can have in a boardroom.But we mentioned the Supreme Court. Any thoughts on the mifepristone ruling, staying the lower court’s ban on the abortion pill? I’m relieved, of course, that the court will allow the pill to remain on the market.Gail: Well, this is the nice thing about a democracy. You have the powers that be suddenly realizing the public is totally not on their side. So they fudge a little, dodge a little and quietly backtrack.Bret: It’ll be some irony if Republicans come to rue last year’s Dobbs decision for making them unelectable in all but the reddest parts of the country — and Democrats come to celebrate it for helping them cement a long-term majority that eventually changes the composition of the court so that abortion rights are restored.Gail: But we’re still a long way from living in a country where every woman has the right to control her own body when it comes to reproduction issues.Bret: As the dissents from Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in the mifepristone ruling make clear ….Gail: I’ve always wanted to see state lawmakers from both sides get together on a package of reforms that would couple abortion rights with easily available, easily affordable health and counseling services for poor pregnant women.Along, of course, with high quality child care for low-income working mothers. Ahem.Bret: Gail, would it shock you to know that I don’t disagree with anything you just said? Of course, child care won’t solve the root of so many of our problems, which is the near-destruction of stable two-parent families in too many poor households. But that’s a disaster whose cure lies beyond a government’s ability to solve.Gail: Wow — government support for high-quality early education? I think I’m hearing a major change of heart. If so, gonna buy a very nice bottle of wine for dinner tonight and drink a toast to you.Bret: I tend to soften in your presence.Gail: Awww. Well, go on — back to the issues of the day.Bret: Speaking of disasters, your thoughts on Biden’s E.P.A. rule controlling emissions from power plants?Gail: A worthy effort to protect future generations from environmental disaster, and of course the Republicans hate it.Bret: There should be a better way of saving the planet than by using administrative means to impose high costs on industry that will inevitably be passed along to consumers in the form of higher energy prices — which also hit poorer people harder — while setting wildly unrealistic target dates for an energy transition.Notice that I’m saying this and I still will probably have no choice but to vote for Biden. Unbelievable.Gail: Our colleague Jim Tankersley wrote a great analysis about the ongoing crisis over raising the debt limit, which has got to get done this spring. And how more than half of the Republicans’ 320-page version of a debt limit bill is actually about removing clean energy restrictions.Bret: I’d need to see the fine print before making a judgment, but a lot of what passes for “clean energy,” like biofuels, is really a dirty-energy, big government, big business boondoggle. As for the debt limit, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Biden showed any willingness to meet Republicans halfway on spending cuts and work requirements for able-bodied adults taking federal subsidies.Gail: Bret, the debt limit is — something responsible people take care of without creating a political crisis with demands they’ll never achieve.But hey, that’s a mean way to end our talk. You’re always great about telling me about something new you’ve just read. Go ahead.Bret: Gail, I have to recommend Katie Hafner’s smart and humane obituary on Richard Riordan, the last Republican mayor of Los Angeles and a man who brought calm good sense to a city reeling from riots and racial strife. Riordan was a warts-and-all kind of guy, who cracked some dumb jokes that would have probably been politically fatal in our cancel-culture age. But he also brought common sense and a strong work ethic to his job and embodied a Republican pragmatism that we could sorely use today. He was the last of nine children born to an Irish Catholic family — California is better because his parents were persistent.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: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Republican Graham loses cool over abortion after supreme court pill ruling

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      Republican frustration with the supreme court decision which on Friday blocked restrictions on a widely used abortion pill spilled into public on Sunday, as the South Carolina senator Lindsey Graham lost his cool in a television interview when challenged on his flip-flopping position.Graham, who last September proposed a national 15-week abortion ban only a month after insisting it was an issue for states to decide, became angry on CNN’s State of the Union, deflecting questions with false claims Democrats wanted a law allowing abortions until birth on demand.The flustered senator accused his interviewer, Dana Bash, of covering for opponents he said wanted to see “barbaric” late-term abortions “out of line with the rest of the civilised world” and commonplace, he said, only in China and North Korea.“No, no, no, you [in the] media keep covering for these guys,” Graham shouted. “They introduced legislation that allowed abortion on demand with taxpayer funds to the moment of birth, that’s the law they want to pass and nobody in your business will talk about it.”Bash replied she was covering for nobody and had frequently challenged Democrats on the issue.The official position of the Democratic party is to codify federal protections for abortion, guaranteed by the Roe v Wade decision of 1973 until overturned by the supreme court last year, that permitted the procedure until “fetal viability”, generally accepted to be at about 24 weeks’ gestation.The spectacle of Graham’s anger underscored how Republicans are struggling to find a cohesive response to Friday’s ruling over the abortion pill mifepristone and on abortion in general.Many analysts and party members believe the issue cost votes in last year’s midterms, following the supreme court Dobbs v Jackson ruling that overturned Roe v Wade.Moves by several Republican-led states to tighten abortion restrictions, including the signing by the Florida governor, Ron DeSantis, of the nation’s most extreme ban, at six weeks, have prompted voter backlash. Polling shows three in five Americans approve of abortion access in most or all cases.On ABC’s This Week, the South Carolina Republican congresswoman Nancy Mace said the court was right to block restrictions last month placed on mifepristone by a Texas judge appointed by Donald Trump.“This was a hand-picked case with a hand-picked judge to get this outcome,” she said. “And when you look at the ruling in Texas, in part at least, it used a law that the supreme court in 1983 said was unconstitutional.“So the basis for his ruling, I argue, was debunked and it should not have been.”Mace, who has spoken of being raped as a teenager, said the approach of her party to the wider issue was too rigid, and colleagues needed to show more sympathy and compassion for victims of rape who found it difficult or impossible to obtain an abortion.“I want us to find some middle ground,” she said. “As a Republican and conservative, a constitutional conservative who’s pro-life, I saw what happened after Roe v Wade [fell] … I saw the sentiment change dramatically.“As Republicans, we need to read the room because the vast majority of folks are not in the extremes. We just saw a fetal heartbeat bill signed in the dead of night in Florida. In my home state a very small group of state legislators filed a bill that would execute women who have abortions and gave more rights to rapists than women who have been raped.“That is the wrong message heading into 2024. We’re going to lose huge if we continue down this path of extremities. It hurt us in the midterms. We actually lost seats. We’ve buried our heads in the sand. We want to go to the extreme corners of this issue, but that’s not where the vast majority of Americans are right now.”Amy Klobuchar, a Democratic senator for Minnesota and a leading voice for abortion rights, also hailed the mifepristone decision.“Senator Graham knows where the American people are on this,” she told CNN. “They are with Democratic leaders, and the people of this country believe that the women of this country should be able to make their own decisions about their healthcare and not politicians.”Klobuchar also attacked the legal arguments advanced by those seeking to ban mifepristone, which in part relied on the 150-year-old Comstock Act prohibiting the mailing of contraceptives, “lewd” writings and any “instrument, substance, drug, medicine, or thing” that could be used in an abortion.The law has not been enforced since the 1930s, according to NPR.“It was literally passed in 1873,” Klobuchar said. “That is 10 years before the Yellowstone prequel, at a time when we were treated for pneumonia through bloodletting, back in the age of the Pony Express.“The American people do not want to go backwards. And what I heard today is that Republican leaders in Washington aren’t backing down on their opposition to reproductive freedom. They are doubling down.” More

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      in US Politics

      Democratic states stockpile abortion pills as legal fight for access looms

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      Despite a reprieve by the US supreme court, a growing number of Democratic states are stockpiling abortion pills as the legal fight for access to the abortion drug mifepristone is set to continue.On Friday, the supreme court decided to temporarily block a lower court ruling that would have significantly restricted the availability of mifepristone, an FDA-approved abortion medication.Nevertheless, as the case continues to wind through America’s court system and remains challenged by anti-abortion groups, more Democratic states are now stockpiling abortion pills amid an unpredictable legal battle.Earlier this month, Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Trump-appointed federal judge in Texas issued a preliminary injunction that suspended the FDA’s approval of mifepristone, calling it a drug that is used to “kill the unborn human”.Swiftly after Kacsmaryk’s ruling, Democratic states have been stockpiling abortion pills including mifepristone as well as misoprostol, the second drug in the abortion regimen which can also be used on its own, although less effectively.At the Massachusetts governor Maura Healey’s request, the University of Massachusetts Amherst has purchased approximately 15,000 doses of mifepristone. The stockpile is expected to offer “sufficient coverage” in the state for over a year.“Mifepristone has been used safely for more than 20 years and is the gold standard. Here in Massachusetts, we are not going to let one extremist judge in Texas turn back the clock on this proven medication and restrict access to care in our state,” Healey said last week.Meanwhile, the Democratic governors of New York and California both announced plans to stockpile misoprostol in attempts to safeguard their states’ abortion access.New York’s governor Kathy Hochul announced last week that New York will be purchasing misoprostol in order to stockpile 150,000 doses, a five-year supply.Hochul also pledged that if mifepristone is removed from the market, New York will commit up to an additional $20m to providers to support other abortion methods.In a similar move, governor Gavin Newsom of California announced last week that the state has secured an emergency stockpile of up to 2m misoprostol pills“We will not cave to extremists who are trying to outlaw these critical abortion services. Medication abortion remains legal in California,” Newsom said, adding that California has shared the negotiated terms of its misoprostol purchase agreement to assist other states in securing the pill at low cost.Since then, additional Democratic states have followed suit.The governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, recently announced a partnership with the University of Maryland’s medical system to purchase a “substantial amount of mifepristone”.“This purchase is another example of our administration’s commitment to ensure Maryland remains a safe haven for abortion access and quality reproductive health care,” said Moore, who also released $3.5m in previously withheld funding for the state’s abortion care clinical training program.On Thursday, Oregon made a similar announcement, with its governor Tina Kotek revealing the state has secured a three-year supply of mifepristone, regardless of the supreme court’s ruling on the pill.“Here in Oregon, I will make sure that patients are able to access the medication they need and providers are able to provide that medication without unnecessary, politically motivated interference and intimidation,” Kotek said.With Democratic states rushing to stock up on abortion pills, the tumultuous legal fight for abortion access is far from over. In the last nine months, 13 states have banned abortion. With anti-abortion groups fighting for increased pill restrictions nationwide, even states that have legalized the procedure may become affected.Following the supreme court’s decision to temporarily block mifepristone restrictions, the next stage of the litigious battle over the drug will take place in the fifth circuit, with oral arguments scheduled for 17 May. The case will then likely return back to the supreme court.In a statement to the New York Times, Erik Baptist, a senior counsel for the Alliance Defending Freedom, a conservative legal organization representing a coalition of anti-abortion groups and doctors, pledged to continue fighting against abortion care.“The FDA must answer for the damage it has caused to the health of countless women and girls and the rule of law by failing to study how dangerous the chemical abortion drug regimen is and unlawfully removing every meaningful safeguard, even allowing for mail-order abortions,” he said about the 23-year-old FDA-approved drug.Meanwhile, the Joe Biden administration and civil rights organizations promised to continue fighting for reproductive rights.“I’ll continue to fight attacks on women’s health. The American people must also continue to use their vote as their voice and elect a Congress that will restore the protections of Roe v Wade,” Biden tweeted shortly after the supreme court issued its decision.The American Civil Liberties Union echoed similar sentiments, with Jennifer Dalven, ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project director saying: “Make no mistake, we aren’t out of the woods by any means … And as this baseless lawsuit shows, extremists will use every trick in the book to try to ban abortion nationwide.”Dalven added: “But if our opponents think we will allow them to continue to pursue their extreme goals without fierce backlash, they are sorely mistaken.” More

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      in Elections

      Abortion Surges to the Center of the 2024 Campaign

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      Nearly a year after the Supreme Court turned abortion into a dominant issue of the 2022 midterms, the battle over abortion rights has catapulted to the center of the emerging 2024 election season, igniting Democrats, dividing Republicans and turbocharging sensitive debates over health care.From North Carolina to Nevada, Democrats running at every level of government are vowing to make support for abortion rights a pillar of their campaigns, and to paint their opponents as extremists on the issue.And as races intensify, Republicans are caught between the demands of their socially conservative base and a broader American public that generally supports abortion rights, exposing one of the party’s biggest political liabilities as it tries to win back the White House, recapture the Senate and expand its narrow House majority.This month, a Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race after running on her support for abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAll of those dynamics have crystallized over the last month. First, a liberal Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race by a commanding margin after running assertively on her support for abortion rights. A few days later, a conservative judge in Texas took the extraordinary step of moving to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court on Friday said the pill would remain widely available for now, halting two separate rulings, including the Texas ruling, while an appeal moves forward.Democrats cast the Supreme Court’s order as a close call, and warned that many Republicans still want as many abortion restrictions as possible, including a national ban. At the same time, Republican presidential hopefuls — whose teams generally did not respond to requests for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday night — are straining to find their footing on the issue.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not know they are pregnant, staking out a position that conservatives applauded, but one that could hurt him in a general election with moderate voters. Others, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have struggled to articulate firm positions. And former President Donald J. Trump, whose choices for the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade, recently angered anti-abortion leaders by emphasizing state power over the issue rather than a national ban.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, who signed a measure that banned abortions after 24 weeks, with some exceptions. Mr. Sununu, who calls himself “pro-choice,” was the rare possible Republican presidential candidate to offer a comment on the court’s ruling on Friday: “Good call by the Supreme Court.”Representative Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who leads the House Democratic campaign arm, said Republicans had moved in an increasingly “extreme” direction on abortion. She pointed, for instance, to an Idaho law criminalizing those who help a minor get an out-of-state abortion without parental permission, and to threats more broadly to abortion medication.“It’s dangerous, and people are angry,” she said. “We’re going to see that in 2024 in elections across the country.”Anti-abortion demonstrators gathered in front of the Supreme Court as part of the 50th March for Life in Washington in January. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAs President Biden moves toward announcing a re-election bid as soon as Tuesday, one of his advisers predicted that the issue of abortion rights would be more significant in 2024 than it was last year, as Americans experience the far-reaching results of overturning Roe.Democrats are carefully monitoring — and eagerly broadcasting — the positions on abortion taken by Republicans in the nascent stages of primary season. And they are pressing their own succinct message.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Democratic Senate campaign arm. “Not politicians, not judges.”Republicans are far more divided on what their pitch should be — and party officials acknowledge this poses a steep challenge.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat. “Not politicians, not judges.”Julia Nikhinson for The New York TimesConflict always emerges between the demands of primary voters and the preferences of general-election swing voters. But the overturning of Roe has drastically complicated this calculus for Republican candidates. They now face detailed questions about whether to support national bans; how soon into a pregnancy abortion bans should apply; what exceptions, if any, to permit; and how they view medication used in instances of abortions and miscarriages.“We wrap ourselves around the axle trying to nuance our position as a candidate or a party through the primary, knowing that we’re going to have to reexplain ourselves in the general,” Mr. Sununu said. “It comes off as disingenuous, convoluted, and at the end of the day, it really chases away voters.”The fault lines in the party were illuminated again this past week. After a spokesman for Mr. Trump indicated to The Washington Post that the former president believed abortion should be decided at the state level, the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a stern rebuke.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signing a 15-week abortion ban into law in April 2022. This month, he signed a more restrictive six-week ban.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images, via Sipa USA“We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the organization, said in a statement.In a separate statement, Mr. Trump’s campaign said he “believes it is in the states where the greatest advances can now take place to protect the unborn,” while declaring him the “most pro-life president in American history.”There will be no shortage of opportunities for Republican candidates to highlight their anti-abortion credentials and to navigate the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision, starting as soon as Saturday, at a gathering of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is also expected to give a speech on abortion.Bob Vander Plaats, a socially conservative leader in Iowa whose organization is expected to host a gathering with presidential candidates this summer, said, “There’s a lot of ways to determine a person’s bona fides when it comes to the sanctity of human life, but I guarantee you the Texas ruling will be discussed.”The issue of abortion, he said, “will be a cornerstone issue in the Iowa caucuses. It will be a cornerstone issue in the Republican primary.”On Thursday, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, tried to help her candidates navigate the subject, suggesting that opposing abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy was a strong position politically, somewhat mirroring polling she has been showing to members of her party.“In 2022, a lot of Republican candidates took their D.C. consultants’ bad advice to ignore the subject,” she said in a speech. Noting the onslaught of Democratic ads on the subject, she said, “most Republicans had no response.”She urged Republicans to cast Democrats as “extreme” on the issue, a message echoed by some working on House and Senate races who say Democrats should be pressed on what limitations they support.Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster who worked for the successful re-election campaign of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa last year, pointed to Ms. Reynolds, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia as examples of leaders who embraced tight abortion restrictions but were not defined by that issue alone. All three swept to comfortable victories in states that often lean right, but are not the nation’s most conservative states.“This last election saw some candidates who were unclear or changed their position, lacked conviction and were unprepared to talk about this issue,” she said. “If you have those things — if you have conviction, if you have empathy, if you are prepared and you know how to define yourself and your opposition,” she added, “we can successfully navigate this issue.”But some candidates have shown little interest in managing a rhetorical balancing act.The issue is likely to come to a head in North Carolina, home to what may be the most consequential governor’s race of 2024, with Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, term-limited.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican. Sophie Park for The New York TimesMark Robinson, the state’s often incendiary lieutenant governor and a Republican, is expected to announce a run for governor as soon as Saturday. Mr. Robinson, who has said that he and his now-wife aborted a pregnancy decades ago, has since made clear that he wants greater restrictions on abortion rights in North Carolina, where Republicans now have supermajorities in the state legislature. The procedure is currently legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in the state.Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general who is running for governor, said in an interview that there was “no question” that he saw abortion rights as being directly on the ballot. That message was effective for Democrats in governor’s races in several critical states last year.“The only reason North Carolina doesn’t have a ban on abortion now is because we have a Democratic governor,” Mr. Stein said.A spokesman for Mr. Robinson declined to comment for this article.For Democrats elsewhere, it can be more challenging to argue that their races will decide the fate of abortion rights in their state, especially in places where abortion protections are codified. And it is far too soon to know what mix of issues will ultimately determine 2024 campaigns.Still, Democrats noted that if the Supreme Court had let the Texas ruling stand, that would have had major nationwide implications — and many stress the possibility of national abortion bans, depending on the makeup of the White House and Congress.“Even though we may have current protections for this in Nevada, if a nationwide abortion ban is imposed, Nevadans will suffer, and women will die,” Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, a Democrat who recently announced her re-election bid, said in an interview.In a statement, Ms. Rosen called the Supreme Court order “a temporary relief.” But in the interview, she said the Texas ruling underscored how one conservative judge could threaten the power of a major government agency.“It’s pretty frightening,” she said. More