Amnesties, Commutations and Pardons

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      Sánchez’s Deal With Catalonia Separatists Creates Turmoil in Spain

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      Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s agreement with Catalan separatists will likely keep him in power, but it has provoked an upheaval.Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain sealed a deal to extend amnesty to Catalan separatists on Thursday in exchange for their political support, likely allowing him to stay in power but causing turmoil throughout Spain, doubts in Europe and questions about the country’s stability.Mr. Sánchez, 51, who is currently acting as a caretaker prime minister after inconclusive snap elections he called in July, backed the amnesties related to an illegal referendum that shook Spain in 2017 to receive the critical support of the Junts party, which supports independence from Spain for the northern region of Catalonia.With their support, Mr. Sánchez will likely avoid new elections, win parliamentary backing for another stint as prime minister and solidify his place in the European Union as its standard-bearer for progressive politics.But the proposed amnesties, something Mr. Sánchez had previously said he would never do, triggered an uproar..Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez of Spain speaking with the media last month.Virginia Mayo/Associated PressEarlier in the day, Mr. Sánchez’s allies, eager to avoid the appearance that the deal had been struck out of pure political calculation, sought to frame the proposal as instrumental in putting a tense and violent period of Spanish history behind the country.It was “a historic opportunity to resolve a conflict that could — and should — only be resolved politically,” Santos Cerdán, a top negotiator with the Socialist Party, who had performed shuttle diplomacy between Madrid and separatist exiles in Brussels, said after the deal was announced. “Our aim is to open the way for a legislature that will allow us to progress and to build an open and modern society and a better country.”The deal potentially marks a remarkable reversal of political fortune for Mr. Sánchez, who has made a career out of bold, long-shot bets, but who seemed on the brink of a political abyss after his party received a drubbing in local and regional elections in May.But the Junts party is not a reliable partner, and has already made clear it will continue to seek to extract concessions in exchange for its support in close votes in Parliament.The deal, and the violence, come after thousands of protesters angrily surrounded the Socialist Party headquarters in Madrid in past days and called on Mr. Sánchez not to make a deal with the separatists, whom many conservatives consider an existential threat to Spanish nationhood.Protesters holding independence flags in September during a demonstration to celebrate the Catalan National Day in Barcelona.Emilio Morenatti/Associated PressThe mainstream conservative Popular Party, which had been expected to win elections over the summer but fell short of enough votes to form a government, has called for major demonstrations throughout Spain’s major cities on Sunday.It is about “privileging a minority to the detriment of a majority, and ending the equality between Spaniards that is enshrined in the Constitution,” said Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the Popular Party leader, who said that Mr. Sánchez had clearly aligned himself with enemies of the state. “The humiliation to which Sánchez is subjecting our country is complete.”In Brussels, the European commissioner for justice, Didier Reynders, sent a letter to Spain’s justice and presidency ministers about the “serious concerns” raised by the amnesty proposal.In regional and local elections in May, Mr. Sánchez’s party took such a shellacking that he pulled the plug on his government, opting to try his chances with an early national election instead. He was expected to lose.But while Mr. Sánchez did not come out on top in the July election, he and his progressive allies won enough support to stun the favored conservative and hard-right parties, depriving them of the necessary parliamentary support to form a government.Mr. Sánchez, who has served as the prime minister since 2018, a position he won in a daring confidence vote, instead had a narrow path to building a government, but it ran right through the issue of Catalan independence, among the most prickly and fraught in Spanish politics.In 2017, leaders of the Catalan separatist movement provoked Spain’s greatest constitutional crisis in decades when they staged an independence referendum that Madrid called illegal.Carles Puigdemont, Catalonia’s exiled former leader, at a news conference in Brussels. Mr. Puigdemont has been in exile in Belgium.John Thys/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesAfter enormous demonstrations in Barcelona and a tense national climate, the heads of the movement balked. Their leader, who was president of Catalonia at the time, Carles Puigdemont, fled the country and has remained in self-imposed exile in Belgium since. His allies have faced convictions.But on Thursday, Mr. Sánchez won the support of seven lawmakers from the Junts party that Mr. Puigdemont essentially leads, in exchange for the Socialist Party proposing a new law granting amnesty to him and everyone else in the failed independence referendum. The new law could affect many separatists who have been convicted or are currently facing trial for pro-independence activities.The specifics of the agreement have not yet been made public, and it is expected to be proposed in the Spanish Parliament next week. The deal was not a given, and required more than two months of negotiations between Sánchez’s Socialist party, his own, more progressive allies, and the Catalan and Basque independence movements that, despite a lackluster showing in July’s election, retained enough leverage to force a deal.Mr. Puigedemont said on Thursday at a news conference in Brussels that he would still support the cause of independence, and he celebrated the deal, saying that it took the issue out of the judiciary and brought it back in the public sphere where it belonged.“It is a way to return to politics,” he said, “what is politics.”Rachel Chaundler More

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      Donald Trump’s Campaign of Violence and Lawlessness

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      Though it was lost in the four-year cyclone that was the presidency of Donald Trump, one of his most immoral acts was to pardon soldiers who were accused of committing war crimes by killing unarmed civilians or prisoners. Military leaders, including his own defense secretary and the secretary of the Army objected, saying it would undermine good order and discipline. Lawlessness can easily beget lawlessness.But the American system is ill prepared to deter leaders bent on undermining the rule of law. Checks and balances spread powers across the government, but that isn’t enough to temper or stop bad-faith actors looking to subvert the law. According to a new article in The Atlantic, Gen. Mark Milley, upon becoming the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, “found himself in a disconcerting situation: trying, and failing, to teach President Trump the difference between appropriate battlefield aggressiveness on the one hand, and war crimes on the other.”Donald Trump, as General Milley discovered and many Americans already knew, is a man unencumbered by any moral compass. He goes the way he wants to go, legalities and niceties be damned. Last week in a post on his social network, Mr. Trump argued that General Milley’s actions would have once been punishable by death.Most Americans probably didn’t notice his screed. Of those who did and were not alarmed, far too many nodded along in agreement. As Josh Barro said in a Times Opinion round table this week about the former president’s recent comments, “Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in” to the views that many voters have of him.It is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Trump is running for the presidency on a platform of lawlessness, promising to wield the power of the state against his enemies — real or imagined. Today, millions and millions of Americans support him for that reason or despite it.In poll released this week, 51 percent of American adults said they’d vote for Mr. Trump over President Biden, including the vast majority of Republicans. And Wednesday night’s farcical G.O.P. debate may only increase Mr. Trump’s large lead in the primary.That advantage over the Republican field is growing even as prosecutors are finally trying to hold Mr. Trump legally responsible for his misdeeds — from the plot to overturn the 2020 election to fraud allegations concerning his real estate empire.The backlash has been predictable: In the past few months, Mr. Trump has argued that federal laws about classified documents don’t apply to him; floated the idea of pardons for his supporters jailed for attacking the Capitol; said that judges with whom he disagrees are unfit to preside over cases against him; and has been accused of threatening to prejudice the jury pool in one case. A judge decided to shield the identity of jurors in another after Trump supporters posted the names, photos and addresses of grand jurors involved in issuing an indictment in that case. He is also pushing for a government shutdown to halt Justice Department investigations, to force a show of loyalty and try to bend our political system to his will — even when he is out of office.All this has accompanied a sharp uptick in the often incoherent statements from the 77-year-old former president, on social media and at his rallies. And while many Americans long ago tuned him out, his most extreme supporters, like Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, have not. In his newsletter, Mr. Gosar recently wrote that General Milley should be hanged.As the legal cases against Mr. Trump have picked up, “so too have threats against law enforcement authorities, judges, elected officials and others,” The Times reported this week. “The threats, in turn, are prompting protective measures, a legal effort to curb his angry and sometimes incendiary public statements and renewed concern about the potential for an election campaign in which Mr. Trump has promised ‘retribution’ to produce violence.”Mr. Trump’s targets extend to other Republicans. In a biography out next month, Senator Mitt Romney disclosed that he was spending $5,000 per day on security for himself and his family against threats from Trump supporters.This combustible combination of heated political rhetoric, unhinged conspiracy theories, anti-government sentiment and a militant gun culture have created fertile ground for political violence. The country is not powerless to stop the spread of lawlessness but it requires addressing those precursors to violence.Many of those elements swirled around a visit by Mr. Trump this week to a gun store in South Carolina that this summer, sold an AR-15-style rifle to a man who later carried out a racist mass shooting at a dollar store. During his visit, Mr. Trump hefted a custom Glock handgun with his face etched onto the handle. Though he said he wanted to buy one of the weapons — they’re big sellers! — it is unclear if he could legally do so since he is under indictment.Mr. Trump’s whims and erratic online missives should not be dismissed as “Trump being Trump.” Take his call this month for House Republicans to shut down the government. Mr. Trump egged them on, urging them to settle for nothing less than their full slate of demands, including forcing the Justice Department to end its investigations of him. He called it “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots.”While a government shutdown won’t end the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, a Trump presidency could easily do so. After all, there are few moral or legal hurdles left to clear after pardoning war criminals.There are many nations where citizens live in fear of governments that wield unchecked and arbitrary authority against their enemies, real or imagined. That is the America that Mr. Trump is promising his supporters. When Mr. Trump told supporters “I am your retribution,” all Americans should take him at his word.Defeating Mr. Trump at the ballot box is going to require a lot more political courage than it takes to put flashes of honesty in the pages of a memoir. The former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson is the latest in a long line of memoirists, declaring in an interview on Tuesday for her new book that Mr. Trump is “most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”True enough. Which is why Americans can’t wait until January 2025, and another shelf of memoirs, to hear the truth that so many Republicans have long known.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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      How Biden’s View on Presidential War Powers Has Shifted

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

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      Compassionate Release for Those Aging Behind Bars

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      More from our inbox:Living Well, and Pursuing One’s Passion, With Parkinson’sThe ‘Absurd Contradictions’ of the Migrant SystemA Civilized Argument A Debate QuestionCecilia CarlstedtTo the Editor: Re “Inside a Dementia Unit in a Federal Prison” (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 13):Katie Engelhart vividly describes the absurdity and cruelty of incarcerating frail elders with debilitating dementia. It would be a mistake, though, to conclude simply that expanding compassionate release is the answer. Certainly, that’s warranted, but policymakers should be proactive, not just reactive.As a former parole commissioner, I know that dementia is just the tip of the iceberg of the problem of mass aging behind bars.Countless people (not just men) effectively face a slow death penalty behind bars because of extreme sentences or repeated denials of parole release despite these individuals’ complete transformations. Far from being helpless, many are violence interrupters, mentors, scholars and artists, including people previously convicted of causing serious harm. They have changed.Enacting elder parole bills, which do not guarantee release based on age but rather allow older adults to be individually considered for release by a parole board, can help resolve the crisis of aging behind bars, save substantial money, and return people to the community to repair the harm they long ago caused — before they are on death’s doorstep.Carol ShapiroNew YorkTo the Editor:Dementia units in prisons should primarily serve as a conduit to helping achieve compassionate release. As physicians volunteering with the Medical Justice Alliance, we review the medical care of numerous patients with dementia who are undiagnosed and untreated in the prison system. Patients wake up unsure why they are in prison, hoping that President Nixon might pardon them.We must consider the high cost of normalizing the imprisonment of elderly patients with dementia. Financially, developing “dementia-friendly” prison units incurs significant costs; that money could instead be used to improve community resources such as nursing facilities. Ethically, we must grapple with punishing people who do not pose a threat to others and are unable to understand why they are being punished.Compassionate release laws at the state and federal levels should make dementia an explicit criterion for early release. Facilities should also screen older patients for dementia on a regular basis and develop protocols for requesting compassionate release and expediting placement in memory care facilities. The U.S. prison population is aging and change is urgently needed.Caitlin FarrellNicole MusheroWilliam WeberTo the Editor:As a person who has served three federal prison terms for antiwar protests for a total of almost three years, I found myself shaking my head that the Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains Federal Medical Center Devens to hold men with dementia.The essay noted that most of the men in the dementia unit have no memories of their crimes or why they are incarcerated, yet few are deemed eligible for compassionate release. The United States incarcerates nearly two million people in our thousands of jails and prisons. The U.S. prison system is primitive, lacks redemption and only metes out punishment. The term rehabilitation is simply not part of this cruel system.In my time in more than a half dozen federal prisons, I never met a man I would not have to my home as a dinner guest. Our jails and prisons are filled mostly with people convicted of nonviolent crimes. Many — perhaps the majority — of incarcerated people are poor, mentally ill or substance abusers. Most need medical treatment, not incarceration.I agree with F.M.C. Devens’s clinical director, Dr. Patricia Ruze, who thinks it would be “totally appropriate” to release the whole unit on compassionate grounds and relocate the men to community nursing homes.I’d go one step further: Let’s release all nonviolent people from prison with appropriate community support to help them prosper and avoid recidivism, as well as offer programs of human uplift to the remaining prisoners using the money we save by closing the prisons we will no longer need.Patrick O’NeillGarner, N.C.Living Well, and Pursuing One’s Passion, With Parkinson’sThe pianist Nicolas Hodges has continued to perform and record — with alterations and tough decisions — after receiving a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.Roderick Aichinger for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Pianist Adapts His Life to Parkinson’s” (Arts & Leisure, Aug. 13):Thank you for demonstrating how the pianist Nicolas Hodges is adapting to life with Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Hodges is testament to the fact that it is possible to continue to live well with Parkinson’s, and the article highlights two key ways to manage symptoms: consistently taking medications (dopamine) and reducing commitments or stress. Exercise and physical activity are also critical to managing symptoms.Recent research published by the Parkinson’s Foundation shows that the number of people in the U.S. diagnosed with Parkinson’s annually has increased by 50 percent, from approximately 60,000 to 90,000. This means that every six minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with the disease and may encounter similar challenges to those faced by Mr. Hodges.Further funding to support research and drug development are needed in order to find a cure, and the Parkinson’s Foundation and other organizations work tirelessly to advance this.In the meantime, we applaud Mr. Hodges for speaking about his experience with the disease and continuing to pursue his passion. Play on, Mr. Hodges.John L. LehrNew YorkThe writer is president and C.E.O. of the Parkinson’s Foundation.The ‘Absurd Contradictions’ of the Migrant SystemTo the Editor: We have millions of square feet of office space no longer being used and tens of thousands of homeless people and displaced immigrants needing shelter. Many employers cannot fill open jobs while the talents and proven determination of immigrants sit untapped in detention.We can strengthen our economy and confirm our commitment to human dignity and decency by correcting these absurd contradictions.It would be far more cost-effective to use the migrant detention system funds to create a system where people can be quickly helped and trained to be productive contributors to society instead of expensive drains on us all.Even if common decency is not a motivation, pure selfish economic need dictates that we end the waste and do the right thing.Michael E. MakoverGreat Neck, N.Y.A Civilized Argument Christopher Smith for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Imagining the Face-Off in Trump’s Jan. 6 Case,” by David French (column, Aug. 12):I started feeling odd as I read Mr. French’s column. It was so quiet! Two measured, rational voices speaking through the ink, each backing up their arguments with researchable references and free of bitter, ad hominem jabs. A few bits of pique and tooth grinding to humanize both the defense and the prosecution, but all for the sake of clarifying a complex position.How civilized! How rare! It’s a shame that the essay was the voice of one man working his careful way through a thicket of legal complexity and not a real-life exchange of ideas in search of a mutually arrived at truth.Leslie BellDavenport, IowaA Debate QuestionTo the Editor: At the Republican debate I would like to see the moderator ask each of the participants if as president they would pardon Donald Trump if he is convicted of federal crimes.Walter RonaghanHarrison, N.Y. More

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      Elecciones generales de España: las alianzas al centro del debate

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      Los grandes temas del país han estado en buena medida ausentes del debate político. Las posibles coaliciones y los aliados de los principales partidos han sido el foco de la campaña.La guerra en Ucrania avanza. Las temperaturas abrasadoras impulsan una reflexión sobre el cambio climático. La inseguridad económica abunda. Pero las elecciones españolas podrían resolverse en torno al asunto de las malas compañías.Mientras los españoles se preparan para votar en las elecciones generales del domingo, los expertos opinan que a los votantes se les pide decidir quién —el gobierno de centroizquierda o la oposición de centroderecha— tiene los amigos más desagradables y los menos aceptables y peligrosamente extremistas.Las encuestas sugieren que el presidente del gobierno, Pedro Sánchez, el líder socialista, será reemplazado por los conservadores, que han aprovechado su dependencia a algunos aliados que han intentado separarse de España. Entre ellos, el movimiento independentista catalán del norte de España y los descendientes políticos del grupo vasco separatista ETA, que enfureció a los votantes antes de las elecciones autonómicas y municipales de mayo cuando presentaron a 44 terroristas convictos como candidatos, entre ellos siete que fueron hallados culpables de asesinato.Los socialistas de Sánchez, por su parte, han expresado inquietud por los aliados extremistas de sus oponentes conservadores, el partido Vox. Vox podría ser el primer partido de extrema derecha en llegar al gobierno desde la dictadura de Franco si es que, como se espera, el principal partido conservador gana y necesita formar una coalición.Pedro Sánchez en un mitin en Madrid.Juan Medina/ReutersEsta atención minuciosa a las alianzas políticas ha ensombrecido un debate sobre temas clave en España, como la vivienda, la economía y el empleo, así como el historial actual del presidente del gobierno, que incluye haber obtenido de la Unión Europea un tope al precio del gas destinado a la producción de electricidad.Estas elecciones, explicó Pablo Simón, politólogo de la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, se centran en los socios. “Los socios de la derecha y los socios de la izquierda”.Ni el conservador Partido Popular (PP) ni el Partido Socialista Obrero Español (PSOE) de Sánchez han aumentado o descendido de manera radical en sus respectivos apoyos desde las últimas elecciones, en 2019, y ninguno de los dos partidos se espera que obtenga una mayoría absoluta en el Congreso de 350 escaños de España.Más bien, el PP y sus posibles socios nacionalistas de Vox han usado a los aliados del presidente para crear una imagen de lo que llaman el “sanchismo”, que definen como el impulso egoísta, arrogante y sin escrúpulos del presidente para romper cualquier promesa y establecer cualquier tipo de alianza para quedarse en el poder.El principal reclamo es por su alianza con los catalanes independentistas. Durante las últimas elecciones generales de España, Sánchez prometió detener a los principales separatistas catalanes. Pero poco después, cuando la supervivencia de su gobierno dependía de ese apoyo, empezó a negociar para indultarlos.“Se sentó en la mesa con nosotros por la presión política y la necesidad de gobernar el país”, dijo Gabriel Rufián, integrante del Congreso por Esquerra Republicana, un partido a favor de la independencia de Cataluña.Los conservadores también recuerdan a menudo que Sánchez alguna vez dijo que no podría conciliar el sueño si el partido de extrema izquierda Podemos entrara a su gobierno. Pero, como Sánchez necesitaba al partido, lo integró.Desde entonces, Podemos ha colapsado y, a decir de los expertos, sus errores y extralimitaciones han sumado votantes moderados e indecisos a las filas conservadoras. Sánchez espera que un nuevo grupo de izquierda, Sumar, logre compensar esas pérdidas y lo lleve hasta un umbral en donde, otra vez, pueda recurrir a sus aliados separatistas para que lo apoyen en el Congreso.Un mitin de Sumar en Barcelona. Sánchez espera que el nuevo grupo que reúne a distintos partidos de izquierda pueda mejorar sus posibilidades.Maria Contreras Coll para The New York TimesEn una entrevista con la Radio Nacional de España el domingo, Sánchez dijo que, de ser necesario, buscaría apoyo de ambos partidos independentistas una vez más.“Por supuesto”, dijo Sánchez, “para sacar adelante una reforma laboral busco votos hasta debajo de las piedras. Lo que nunca voy a hacer es lo que han hecho el PP y Vox, que es recortar derechos y libertades, negando la violencia machista. Para avanzar, yo pacto con quien haga falta”.Los seguidores de Sánchez afirman que las negociaciones y los indultos han reducido en gran medida las tensiones con el separatismo catalán, pero los votantes conservadores dicen que la cuasiseparación igual deja un mal sabor de boca.Lo que es más, aseguran que les disgusta la dependencia de Sánchez a los votos de EH Bildu, descendientes del ala política de ETA, que dejó un saldo de más de 850 personas muertas cuando, también, buscaba formar un país independiente de España.El grupo terrorista vasco se desintegró hace más de una década y la justicia española ha determinado que Bildu es un grupo político legítimo y democrático. Pero para muchos españoles sigue en la sombra del legado sangriento del pasado y su presencia resulta inquietante para la unidad futura del país.Incluso los aliados clave de Sánchez admitieron que la derecha se benefició al dictar los términos de las elecciones como un referéndum sobre Bildu.La campaña entera se basa en esto, comentó Ernest Urtasun, miembro del Parlamento Europeo y portavoz de la plataforma de izquierda Sumar. “Moviliza a gran parte del electorado de la derecha y desmoviliza al electorado de la izquierda”.Pero, indicó, la contienda aún era fluida en los últimos días y aseguró que los sondeos internos mostraban que iban avanzando. Entre más lograra la izquierda apegarse a los temas sociales y económicos, y no a sus aliados, dijo, tendrían mejores posibilidades.Si Sánchez llegara a requerir sus votos en el Congreso para gobernar, los líderes de los movimientos independentistas han dejado en claro que no darán su apoyo a cambio de nada.Habrá un “precio” adicional, que incluirá negociaciones para eventualmente llevar a cabo un referéndum por la independencia de Cataluña, dijo Rufián. Alegó que la derecha, y en especial Vox, siempre han tenido algún tema de discordia para distraer a los votantes de los problemas reales y que en esta ocasión ese tema eran los catalanes y los vascos.“A nosotros no nos podrán responsabilizar” por los puntos de la agenda de la derecha, dijo Rufián.Rufián dijo que Sánchez le había advertido que España no estaba preparada aún para perdonar a los secesionistas, y que su coalición sufriría daños políticos si se otorgaban los indultos. Pero, presionado, el presidente dio marcha atrás.“Es bueno para la democracia que no vaya gente a la cárcel por votar”, dijo de los indultos concedidos por Sánchez. Si eso se castiga políticamente, añadió, “yo acepto”.Pero los indultos y las alianzas han facilitado a los candidatos conservadores persuadir a los votantes españoles a juzgar a Sánchez por las alianzas que forja.Alberto Núñez Feijóo, líder del PP, ha calificado a Sánchez como la “gran esperanza electoral” para quienes andaban con pasamontañas, en una clara referencia a los terroristas de ETA. Los líderes de izquierda han observado que Feijóo parece haber tenido sus propias amistades cuestionables, al llamar otra vez la atención hacia fotografías en las que se le ve en un yate con un traficante convicto de cocaína.Alberto Núñez Feijóo, líder del PP, en Madrid. Es posible que Feijóo busque gobernar solo, pero quizás no sea capaz de lograrlo.Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesFeijóo evitó el último debate televisado de campaña, diciendo que quería que también los separatistas estuvieran en el escenario. Los socialistas creen que simplemente es una estrategia de dispensación de favores políticos para evitar cuestionamientos por su cercanía con el narcotraficante y para distanciarse de su aliado nominal, Santiago Abascal, líder de Vox.Al final, Feijóo dijo que tenía problemas de espalda.Feijóo ha dejado en claro que preferiría gobernar solo, sin Abascal. Pero Abascal quiere participar y ha indicado que si Vox entrara al gobierno se opondría con fuerza a cualquier movimiento separatista.En un evento de campaña este mes, Abascal acusó a Sánchez de mentir y de pactar con “los enemigos de la democracia” y añadió, “para Pedro Sánchez proteger la democracia es que le voten violadores, golpistas, ladrones”.Ese tipo de discurso es parte del manual de Vox.Según Aurora Rodil Martínez, concejala por Vox de Elche, en donde Vox gobierna junto con el PP —un escenario que podría ser el que se viva a nivel nacional—, Sánchez tiene un ansia patológica de poder. Consideró que su personalidad está “enfocada en sí mismo” y opinó que por ello no tiene empacho en aliarse con la extrema izquierda, “los herederos de ETA”.Rodil Martínez dijo que los aliados de Sánchez en el movimiento independentista catalán desean separarse de España. Añadió que Sánchez se ha “arrodillado” antes sus aliados de Podemos y requerido del apoyo de Bildu, a quienes calificó de “terroristas” y culpables de “crímenes sangrientos”.Todo lo anterior, dijeron los expertos, constituía una distracción de los verdaderos desafíos del país.“Estamos discutiendo sobre los socios”, dijo Simón, el politólogo y añadió que eso era algo terrible porque no se discutían las políticas.Un afiche con el retrato de Santiago Abascal, líder de VoxMaria Contreras Coll para The New York TimesJason Horowitz es el jefe del buró en Roma; cubre Italia, Grecia y otros sitios del sur de Europa. Cubrió la campaña presidencial de 2016 en Estados Unidos, el gobierno de Obama y al Congreso estadounidense con un énfasis en especiales y perfiles políticos. @jasondhorowitz More

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      Spain’s Election Puts Focus on Leading Parties’ Allies

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      Before voting Sunday, a focus on the leading parties’ allies has dominated the campaign — and obscured debate about more fundamental issues.The war in Ukraine is raging. Scorching temperatures are prompting a reckoning with climate change. Economic insecurity abounds. But the Spanish election may pivot on the question of bad company.As Spaniards prepare to vote in national elections on Sunday, experts say that voters are being asked to decide who — the center-left government or the favored center-right opposition — has the more unsavory, less acceptable and dangerously extremist friends.Polls suggest that Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist leader, will be ousted by conservatives who have made hay of his reliance on allies who have tried to secede from Spain. They include northern Spain’s Catalonian independence movement and political descendants of the Basque secessionist group ETA, who infuriated voters before local elections in May when they fielded 44 convicted terrorists as candidates, including seven found guilty of murder.Mr. Sánchez’s Socialists have, for their part, raised alarm about their conservative opponents’ extremist allies in the Vox party. Vox could become the first far-right party to enter government since the Franco dictatorship if, as expected, the leading conservative party wins and needs its support.Mr. Sánchez at a rally in Madrid. “This election is about the partners,” one expert said.Juan Medina/ReutersThe hyper-focus on political bedfellows has obscured a debate about critical issues in Spain such as housing, the economy and employment, as well as the prime minister’s actual record, which includes winning from the European Union a price cap on gas for electricity.“This election is about the partners,” said Pablo Simón, a political scientist at Madrid’s Carlos III University. “The partners of the right and the partners of the left.” Neither the conservative Popular Party nor Mr. Sánchez’s Socialists have gone up or down radically in support since the last elections, in 2019, and neither are expected to win an absolute majority of Spain’s 350-seat Congress.Instead, the Populist Party and its potential nationalist partners in Vox have used the prime minister’s allies to create a picture of what they call “Sánchismo.” They define it as the prime minister’s self-interested, arrogant and unprincipled impulse to break any promise and make any alliance to stay in power.The main beef is his alliance with pro-independence Catalans. During Spain’s last national election, Mr. Sánchez promised to arrest the leading Catalonian secessionists. But soon after, with his government’s survival depending on their support, he began negotiating their pardons instead.“He succumbed to political pressure and the need to govern the country,” said Gabriel Rufián, a member of Parliament with Esquerra Republicana, a pro-Catalan independence party.Conservatives also frequently recall that Mr. Sánchez once claimed he would not be able to sleep through the night if the far-left Podemos party entered his government. But Mr. Sánchez needed the party, so it did.Since then, Podemos has collapsed and, experts say, its mistakes and overreaches have turned moderate and swing voters to the conservatives. Mr. Sánchez is hoping that a new left-wing umbrella group, Sumar, can make up for the losses, and get him to a threshold where he can again turn to his secessionist allies for support in Parliament.A rally for Sumar in Barcelona. Mr. Sánchez is hoping the new left-wing umbrella group can lift his chances.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York TimesIn an interview on National Spanish Radio on Sunday, Mr. Sánchez said he would, if necessary, seek support from both independence parties again.“Of course,” Mr. Sánchez said. “To carry out a labor reform, I would look for votes, even under the stones. What I will never do is what the PP and Vox have done, which is to cut rights and freedoms, denying sexist violence. I will make deals with whomever I have to, in order to move forward.”Supporters of Mr. Sánchez point out that the negotiations and pardons have greatly reduced tensions with Catalan’s separatist movement, but conservative voters say that the near-secession still leaves a bad taste in their mouth.Even more so, they say they are disgusted by Mr. Sánchez’s dependence on the votes of EH Bildu, the descendants of the political wing of ETA, which killed more than 850 people as it, too, sought to carve out an independent country from Spain.That Basque terrorist group disbanded more than a decade ago, and Spain’s judiciary has deemed Bildu a legitimate and democratic political group. But for many Spaniards it remains tainted by the bloody legacy of the past and concern for the country’s cohesion in the future.Even Mr. Sánchez’s key allies recognized that the right benefited by dictating the terms of the election as a referendum on Bildu.“Their whole campaign is constructed on this,” said Ernest Urtasun, a member of European Parliament and the spokesman for the left-wing Sumar party. “It mobilizes a lot of the electorate on the right and it demobilizes the electorate of the left.”But he said the race was still fluid in its last days and claimed that internal polling showed them inching up. The more the left could stick to social and economic issues, and not its allies, he said, the better its chances.If Mr. Sánchez does require their votes in Parliament to govern, the leaders of the independence movements have made it clear their support will not come for free.There will be an additional “price,” including continued negotiations toward an eventual referendum for Catalonian independence, Mr. Rufián said. He argued that the right wing, and especially Vox, always had a wedge issue to distract voters from real problems and this time it was the Catalans and the Basques.“We can’t be held responsible” for the talking points of the right, Mr. Rufián said.Mr. Rufián said Mr. Sánchez had warned him that Spain was not yet ready to pardon the secessionists and that his coalition would suffer politically if they were granted, but under pressure the prime minister reversed course anyway.“I think it’s good for democracy that political prisoners are not in jail,” he said of the pardons Mr. Sánchez granted. “If there is a penalty for that, I accept that.”But the pardons and the alliances have made it easier for conservative candidates to convince Spain’s voters to judge Mr. Sánchez by the company he keeps.Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party, has called Mr. Sánchez the “great electoral hope” for “those who used to go around wearing ski masks,” a clear reference to the ETA terrorists. Left-wing leaders have noted that Mr. Feijóo appears to have had dubious personal friends of his own, drawing renewed attention to pictures taken of him hanging out on a yacht with a convicted cocaine trafficker.Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the Popular Party, in Madrid. Mr. Feijóo may want to govern alone, but may not be able to.Pierre-Philippe Marcou/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Feijóo has ducked out of the campaign’s final televised debate, saying he wanted the separatists to be onstage, too. The Socialists believe he was simply pursuing a Rose Garden strategy to avoid questions about his association with the drug kingpin and to distance himself from his nominal ally, the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal.Mr. Feijóo ended up saying he had a bad back.Mr. Feijóo has made it clear that he would prefer to govern alone, without Mr. Abascal. But Mr. Abascal wants in, and has indicated that if Vox entered the government it would crack down hard on any secessionist movements.At a campaign event this month, Mr. Abascal accused Mr. Sánchez of being a liar who made “deals with the enemies of democracy” and added, “As far as Pedro Sánchez is concerned, protecting democracy is about getting the votes of rapists, coup-mongers.”That sort of language is part of the Vox playbook.“Sánchez has a really pathological anxiety for power,” said Aurora Rodil Martínez, the Vox deputy mayor of Elche, who, in a potential preview of things to come, serves with a mayor from the Popular Party. “I think his personality is focused on himself and therefore he has no shame handing himself over to the extreme left, to the heirs of ETA.”She said his allies in the Catalonian independence movement “want to separate themselves from Spain and deny our nation.” Mr. Sánchez, she added, “has got down on his knees” for his far-left allies in Podemos and needed the support of Bildu, “terrorists guilty of bloody crimes.”All of that, experts say, amounted to a distraction from the country’s real challenges.“We are discussing about the partners,” said Mr. Simón, the political scientist, adding, “it’s a terrible thing because we are not discussing about policies.”A poster of the Vox leader, Santiago Abascal.Maria Contreras Coll for The New York Times More

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      What We Learned About Trump’s Policies in Contentious Town Hall

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      Former President Donald J. Trump staked out positions on several major issues, including separating migrant children from their parents and pardoning Jan. 6 rioters.Among the barrage of falsehoods and bluster, former President Donald J. Trump laid markers down on several major and divisive issues at the CNN town-hall meeting on Wednesday night.Mr. Trump spoke of several actions he might take if re-elected, at times with a specificity he often dodges in speeches and friendlier interviews. He also revealed much about his thinking on positions that are likely to roil his party, including the war in Ukraine and access to abortion.Here’s a look at some of what Mr. Trump said about policy:Reconsidering migrant family separationsWhen asked if he would return to a policy of separating migrant children from their parents when they arrive at the border, Mr. Trump did not rule it out.“Well, when you have that policy, people don’t come,” he said. “If a family hears that they’re going to be separated, they love their family, they don’t come.”Mr. Trump acknowledged that the policy “sounds harsh” but claimed that the situation warranted it.Some 5,500 foreign-born children, and hundreds of U.S. citizens, are known to have been separated from their parents under the Trump administration’s so-called zero tolerance policy, which jailed and criminally charged migrant parents for crossing the border without authorization.Mr. Trump abandoned the policy after an international outcry in 2018.President Biden formed a commission to reunite parents with their children, some of whom have spent years in foster care. He also vowed not to separate families at the border and quickly ended the detention of families, though the administration is considering new efforts such as curfews and the use of more GPS monitors for adults as they see more surges of families arriving at the border.Pardons for the Jan. 6 riotersWhen asked if he had any regrets about his actions leading up to the riot at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump insisted that he did nothing wrong and sympathized with his supporters who took part.A retired lawyer in the audience asked Mr. Trump if he would issue pardons to those rioters who were convicted of federal offenses.“I am inclined to pardon many of them,” Mr. Trump said. “I can’t say for every single one because a couple of them, probably, they got out of control.”More than 900 people have been criminally charged as part of the assault on the Capitol, including four members of the far-right group the Proud Boys, who were convicted this month of sedition.Mr. Trump did not rule out pardons for them, saying he would have to review their individual circumstances.“I don’t know,” he said. “I’d have to look at their case, but I will say in Washington, D.C., you cannot get a fair trial, you cannot. Just like in New York City, you can’t get a fair trial either.”Dodging on a national abortion banMr. Trump repeatedly sidestepped questions about whether he would sign a federal abortion ban if Republicans managed to steer one through the divided Congress. He also would not say how many weeks into a pregnancy he might consider banning an abortion.“I’m looking at a solution that’s going to work,” he said. “Very complex issue for the country. You have people on both sides of an issue, but we are now in a very strong position. Pro-life people are in a strong position to make a deal that’s going to be good and going to be satisfactory for them.”Mr. Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court during his presidency, paving the way for the court to eliminate the federal right to an abortion. But he has since resisted being drawn into the debate, and has privately worried about political backlash.Characterizing his views on abortion restrictions as similar to President Ronald Reagan’s, Mr. Trump said that he believed in exceptions for rape, for incest and to save the life of a mother.Not taking Ukraine’s sideMr. Trump skirted the issue when asked multiple times if he wanted Ukraine to win the war after being invaded last year by Russia.“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” he said. “I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people.”The former president claimed he would bring the war to an end in 24 hours, if he returned to office, but did not specifically say what he would do to broker a peace.He would not call President Vladimir Putin of Russia a war criminal, as Mr. Biden has, saying that doing so would make it more difficult to end the hostilities between the two nations.Mr. Trump did say Mr. Putin had “made a bad mistake” by invading Ukraine.Threatening default on U.S. debtMr. Trump suggested on Wednesday night that Republicans in Congress should hold fast against raising the federal debt ceiling without budget cuts, even if it means the country defaults on its debt.“I say to the Republicans out there — congressmen, senators — if they don’t give you massive cuts, you’re going to have to do a default,” he said.A growing list of economists and analysts have warned about the potential consequences if Congress does not raise the borrowing limit before the government can no longer pay its bills, including huge job losses, a recession and a nosedive on Wall Street.Mr. Trump predicted that Democrats would “absolutely cave” when confronted with the choice between accepting spending cuts and defaulting. Still, when asked to clarify if he would endorse a default, he said he would.“We might as well do it now because you’ll do it later,” he said.When Ms. Collins pointed out that Mr. Trump had once said when he was president that using the debt ceiling as a negotiating wedge could not happen, he said that circumstances had changed.“Because now I’m not president,” he said.The Big Lie 2.0?On a night when he doubled and tripled down on his false claims that the 2020 election was rigged, Mr. Trump refused to say unconditionally that he would accept the results of next year’s election should he become the Republican presidential nominee.“If I think it’s an honest election, I would be honored to,” he said.Mr. Trump spent much of the interview re-litigating his defeat and closed with a caveat about the next election.“If it’s an honest election, correct, I will,” he said of accepting the results.Alyce McFadden More

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      Ron DeSantis Burnishes Tough-on-Crime Image to Run in ’24 and Take On Trump

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      The Florida governor, preparing for an all-but-declared campaign, is said to see an opening to take on the former president from the right.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has spent months shoring up a tough-on-crime image as he weighs a run for the White House, calling for stronger penalties against drug traffickers and using $5,000 bonuses to bolster law-enforcement recruitment to his state.Now, Mr. DeSantis and his allies plan to use that image to draw a contrast with the Republican front-runner in the 2024 race, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. DeSantis and his backers see the signature criminal-justice law enacted by Mr. Trump in 2018 as an area of weakness with his base, and Mr. DeSantis has indicated that he would highlight it when the two men tussle for the Republican nomination, according to three people with knowledge of Mr. DeSantis’s thinking. That law, known as the First Step Act, reduced the sentences for thousands of prisoners.Mr. DeSantis has yet to officially announce his candidacy, but he has been quietly staffing a presidential campaign, and his allies have been building up a super PAC. Since at least his re-election in November, Mr. DeSantis has privately suggested that Mr. Trump’s record on crime is one of several policy issues on which Mr. Trump is vulnerable to attacks from the right.One potentially complicating factor for Mr. DeSantis: He voted for the initial House version of the First Step Act in May 2018, while still a congressman. He resigned his seat in September 2018 after winning the Republican primary for governor, and was not in the House to vote for the more expansive version of the sentencing reform bill that ultimately passed into law in December 2018.Other Trump vulnerabilities, in the view of Mr. DeSantis and some of his allies, include Mr. Trump’s deference to Dr. Anthony S. Fauci as the nation’s top infectious disease expert during his initial response to the coronavirus pandemic.In July 2020, President Donald J. Trump met with Mr. DeSantis to discuss storm preparedness in Florida and the pandemic.Al Drago for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis has already pushed that point publicly, contrasting his record on the pandemic with that of Mr. Trump. He recently told the interviewer Piers Morgan that he would have fired Dr. Fauci. In the early days of the pandemic, however, Mr. DeSantis did not call for Mr. Trump to fire Dr. Fauci.Mr. DeSantis has said nothing publicly to telegraph that he intends to directly hit Mr. Trump as soft on crime. Yet for months, he has been privately gearing up for such a contrast, whether it comes from him or his allies.Public safety was an issue in Mr. DeSantis’s 2022 campaign, as it was for a number of Republicans. A person familiar with Mr. DeSantis’s thinking, who was granted anonymity because the person was not allowed to discuss private deliberations, said the governor viewed public safety as encompassing other policy matters, such as immigration.In January, Mr. DeSantis announced a series of legislative measures for the coming session in Florida, which, among other actions, would toughen penalties against drug traffickers.“Other states endanger their citizens by making it easier to put criminals back on the street. Here, in Florida, we will continue to support and enact policies to protect our communities and keep Floridians safe,” Mr. DeSantis said in a statement at the time. “Florida will remain the law-and-order state.”He has also instituted a program to pay $5,000 bonuses to recruit new Florida law enforcement officers and has played up his success in inducing hundreds to relocate to Florida from other states, such as New York and California. And he made a mini-tour last month visiting law enforcement offices in major cities in Democratic-leaning states.Mr. Trump is aware of his vulnerability on the crime issue because of his record as president, according to people close to him. Shortly after leaving office he began trying to inoculate himself against attacks by promising an uncompromising law-and-order agenda, with especially harsh treatment of drug dealers.In a speech last year at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas Republican who was a staunch supporter of most of Mr. Trump’s agenda but a critic of the First Step Act, called Mr. Trump’s moves on criminal justice reform the “worst mistake” of his term..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Since becoming a candidate for the third time in November, Mr. Trump has released a handful of direct-to-camera videos discussing policy. In one, he proposed strengthening police departments with additional hiring and criticized what he called “radical Marxist prosecutors who are abolishing cash bail, refusing to charge crimes and surrendering our cities to violent criminals.” He also called for deploying the National Guard into areas with high crime rates.But he did not address sentencing, the core of his surprisingly lenient approach in office — and one that was at odds with his law-and-order campaign talk.Asked to comment, Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, described Mr. Trump as “the law-and-order president that cracked down on crime and put away violent offenders, resulting in the lowest crime rate in decades.” Mr. Cheung accused Mr. DeSantis of giving “a safe haven for violent felons” that has resulted “in rampant crime in Florida” and said that Mr. Trump had received support from law enforcement officials around the country. And Mr. Cheung pointed to an array of crime statistics in Florida that the Trump campaign planned to highlight as unfavorable for Mr. DeSantis.Lindsey Curnutte, a spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis, declined to comment.As president, following the advice of his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, in December 2018, Mr. Trump signed the First Step Act, which resulted in more than 3,000 inmates being released early from federal prison.Mr. Trump promoting the First Step Act in November 2018. The law led to the early release of thousands of prisoners.Al Drago for The New York TimesA Republican official who is not affiliated with Mr. DeSantis and who has closely tracked criminal recidivism among people released from prison because of the First Step Act, said that the volume of those releases would provide fodder for attack ads against Mr. Trump.On Wednesday, Pedro L. Gonzalez, a conservative with a large online following who often attacks Mr. Trump from the right and defends Mr. DeSantis, tweeted that the man charged with assaulting a U.S. Senate staff member over the weekend was “released from prison thanks to Trump’s First Step Act” and linked to a Fox News story about the case.Many of those released under the First Step Act had been imprisoned for selling drugs — a crime that Mr. Trump now says publicly that he wants to punish with the death penalty because of the destruction wrought by illegal drugs.Mr. Trump, early on as president, mused admiringly in private about how dictators like Xi Jinping of China and former President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines executed drug dealers. At other times, he asked top officials whether it was feasible to shoot in the legs migrants who were illegally crossing the border.But for most of his term, Mr. Trump suppressed this instinct publicly. He came to believe that a more compassionate criminal justice policy would help him with African American voters, according to people familiar with his thinking.Because of this — and a competition in 2020 over spending with the billionaire candidate Michael R. Bloomberg — the Trump campaign paid millions of dollars to run a Super Bowl commercial highlighting his commutation of the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a Black woman convicted of leading a multimillion-dollar drug trafficking ring. Mr. Trump and his team hailed the First Step Act as a historic bipartisan achievement.“Did it for African Americans. Nobody else could have gotten it done,” Mr. Trump wrote in response to a reporter’s question in 2022, adding, “Got zero credit.” The word “zero” was underlined for emphasis.But in June 2020, as Americans massed on the streets to protest the police killing of George Floyd, Mr. Trump told his aides privately, according to Axios, that it was a mistake to have listened to Mr. Kushner.Mr. Trump had been paying close attention to the influential Fox News host Tucker Carlson, who flayed the president as abandoning his tough-on-crime platform.“In 2016, Donald Trump ran as a law-and-order candidate because he meant it,” Mr. Carlson said in a June 2020 monologue that was anxiously shared around Mr. Trump’s orbit. “But the president’s famously sharp instincts, the ones that won him the presidency almost four years ago, have been since subverted at every level by Jared Kushner.”Mr. Trump made a sharp turn away from Mr. Kushner’s criminal justice policies during that summer of Black Lives Matter protests, and he never looked back. He urged his military leaders to send troops into cities like Seattle to take out anybody involved in riots. Mark T. Esper, who served at the time as defense secretary and resisted those requests, wrote in his memoir that Mr. Trump asked, “Can’t you just shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?”In his final six months in office, Mr. Trump was erratic in his criminal justice policies. He went on a historic federal execution spree. But he also went on a pardon spree — handing out many dubious pardons, including one to a drug smuggler with a history of violence, through a process heavily influenced by Mr. Kushner.And by the time Mr. Trump was plainly looking for a future in politics again in 2021, he began talking publicly about executing drug dealers. More