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      Trump to Focus on Border as Democrats Eye Boost From Florida Abortion Ruling

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      Former President Donald J. Trump will campaign on immigration and border policy today with events planned in Michigan and Wisconsin, two crucial battleground states in the Midwest.Mr. Trump and other Republicans are trying to keep voters’ attention on the border as President Biden and Democrats, bolstered by a pair of court rulings out of Florida on Monday, grow more optimistic about their ability to center the campaign on abortion.On Monday afternoon, the Florida Supreme Court overturned decades of precedent in ruling that the State Constitution did not protect abortion rights, allowing a six-week ban to take effect. But it simultaneously ruled that a proposed constitutional amendment to guarantee abortion rights until fetal viability could go on the ballot in November.That means Floridians will be voting directly on abortion after living with a near-total ban for several months — which Democrats hope will increase turnout and give them a fighting chance in a state that has become increasingly favorable to Republicans.Wisconsin is one of several states with presidential primaries on Tuesday, and its voters will also decide on two ballot measures after the state’s Republican-led Legislature proposed changing the State Constitution to restrict private funding and staffing of election offices.Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York are also voting. Mr. Trump and President Biden have already clinched their nominations, though, so the outcomes of today’s primaries are not in doubt. Delaware even canceled primaries it would have otherwise held today.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Critics Push Democrats to Submit Blank Ballots in New York

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      President Biden will face another round of organized protest votes over his wartime support for Israel on Tuesday, when New York and three other states hold presidential primaries.The outcome of the contests is not in doubt for Mr. Biden. But activists infuriated over his handling of the war in Gaza are urging participants to vote “uncommitted” or leave ballots blank to maintain pressure on the president.They have put particular emphasis on New York, a large Democratic state that has been a center for demonstrations against the war, including one during a star-studded Biden campaign fund-raiser last week.Unlike other states, New York does not allow participants in its primary to vote “uncommitted” or write in other options. So organizers have urged voters to register their disapproval of Mr. Biden by leaving their ballots blank instead.The “Leave It Blank” campaign has the support of the local Democratic Socialists of America and the Working Families Party, New York’s influential left-leaning party. But two of the president’s most trenchant Democratic critics around the war, Representatives Jamaal Bowman and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, have not promoted it.Antiwar activists argue that the “uncommitted” protests, which began in Michigan in February, have had an effect. After offering Israel unflinching support in the aftermath of Hamas’s deadly attack on Oct. 7, Mr. Biden has grown more openly critical of the American ally’s war strategy in recent weeks. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza has also accelerated after months of Israeli bombardment.Groups are organizing similar votes in three other states holding primaries on Tuesday. In two of them, Connecticut and Rhode Island, primary participants will have the option of voting “uncommitted” if they want to register a protest against the president. In Wisconsin, a crucial swing state, they can choose a similar label, “uninstructed,” to show concern.In another twist, neither Mr. Biden nor his critics are likely to know the size of the protest vote in New York on election night.A spokeswoman for New York’s Board of Elections said the body did not typically report the number of blank ballots cast in presidential primaries in initial, unofficial results because they have no effect on the allocation of party delegates.Organizers of the “Leave It Blank” campaign have threatened to sue the board to pressure it to share the result more quickly. But on Monday, the spokeswoman, Kathleen McGrath, said the board had no reason to change its practice. She said the tally of blank ballots would be public within two weeks. More

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      How I Learned to Love the Rerun Election

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      Have you got the Biden-Trump blues?When our pollsters recently asked voters how they felt about the coming election, they heard words that could also describe rancid garbage, personal regret or a meteor headed for Earth.Stinks. Ashamed. DOOMED.“Lousy,” offered Joe Ruddach, 61, the owner of auto and coffee businesses who lives in Spokane, Wash., when I called him last week. He added words like “anxious” and “stressed” for good measure.“I wish they could get younger people,” he said with a sigh, “or someone that could bring people together.”I’m the new host of this newsletter, and I get it. The rematch between President Biden and former President Donald Trump feels inherently tired, or perhaps inescapably depressing. The primaries ended quickly; the campaign trail is quiet. Both men are broadly unpopular. More Americans see the contest as bad for the country than good, and a full 30 percent of registered voters in the latest New York Times/Siena College poll said they felt scared or apprehensive.Election dread is real and bipartisan, although Republicans seem to view things a bit more brightly than Democrats. Whatever your politics, you might be tempted to tune out this presidential election completely.But today — notwithstanding the fact that it is April 1 — I am here to make the case for the 2024 election, which I think will be as captivating, revealing and far-reaching as any in recent history, one that might turn less on the candidates we know than the voters who will choose them.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Is Financially Ruining the Republican Party

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      Donald Trump is someone you should think carefully about hitching your financial fortunes to. The guy is a gifted carnival barker, no doubt. But when it comes to serious business, he is a bad bet. Many of his ventures, from vodka and steaks to casinos and “university” degrees, have flopped like dying fish. Declaring corporate bankruptcy seems to be one of his favorite hobbies. And even when he wriggles away from failure largely unscathed, the other parties involved aren’t always so fortunate. Where money is involved, anyone still foolish enough to crawl into bed with him should be prepared for the experience to end in tears.Which leads me to gently note: Hey, Republican Party, pay attention! You are being herded toward potential financial ruin. The red flags are smacking you in the face. Wake up and smell the grift!One might assume that a presidential nominee who generates as much devotion as Mr. Trump would be a financial boon to his party. One would be wrong. With Mr. Trump, everything is about Mr. Trump. Other candidates and committees are an afterthought, left to squabble over his scraps. Which might not be problematic if the party’s money machine were whirring along smoothly. But it is not. Whether we’re talking about the battle for Congress or the basic health of the state parties, the G.O.P. is going through a rough financial patch, fueled in no small part by the MAGA king and his minions.The most recent campaign finance reports show that his campaign coffers are notably lighter than President Biden’s. Crunching the numbers, Axios noted recently, “The Biden campaign and the D.N.C. ended February with more than twice as much cash on hand ($97.5 million) as Trump and the R.N.C. ($44.8 million).” While the Republican base may be smitten with Mr. Trump, plenty of big-money donors are skittish about bankrolling his nonsense. The former president has been scrambling to close the gap, leering at potential funders as if they were contestants at the Miss Universe pageant.Now with Mr. Trump the de facto nominee, some top donors will hold their noses and start paying their tributes. But how do you build a strong party when at least part of your money is going to the nominee’s eye-popping legal bills? Being multiply indicted costs big bucks (more than $100 million and counting in his case). The former president has avoided paying those expenses with his own money so far — court costs are for suckers! — instead relying on his fans’ donations to accounts related to his 2020 election-fraud lies. But those accounts are drying up. Fresh income streams must be found. Anyone need a $59.99 Bible?Asked last month if she thought Republican voters would support the Republican National Committee footing Mr. Trump’s legal costs, Lara Trump, soon to be the committee’s co-chair, declared, “Absolutely.” I mean, what else is a good daughter-in-law supposed to say? Still, this possibility has raised enough eyebrows among donors that another Trump lackey, Chris LaCivita, who now oversees the R.N.C.’s operations, has vowed that committee funds will not be used for such.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Revisiting Florida 2000 and the Butterfly Effect

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      The evidence is strong that Al Gore would have won had it not been for an infamous ballot design in Palm Beach County.Theresa LePore, who designed Palm Beach County’s butterfly ballot, with old ballots three years after the 2000 election. David FriedmanWe’re still in a post-primary lull before the campaign starts to heat up — and before Donald J. Trump goes on trial. Here are a few quick notes to end the week.Joe Lieberman and the butterfly ballotJoe Lieberman, the former Democratic senator, died this week at 82. He was Al Gore’s vice-presidential nominee in 2000, when the Gore-Lieberman ticket came less than 600 Florida votes away from winning the White House.We’ll never know what would have happened if the Supreme Court had allowed the recount to continue. But I don’t think it’s always appreciated that we probably do know that Mr. Gore would have won Florida, and therefore the presidency, if it weren’t for the infamous “butterfly ballot” in Palm Beach County.If you don’t remember — it has been a while — the butterfly ballot was very unusual. Candidates were listed on both sides of the ballot, and voters cast a ballot by punching a corresponding hole in the middle. What made it so unusual was that the ordering of the candidates on the ballot didn’t have the same logic as the corresponding punch hole: George W. Bush and Mr. Gore were the first two candidates listed on the left-hand side, but they corresponded to the first and third hole on the punch. The second punch corresponded with the first candidate on the right-hand side of the ballot: the paleoconservative Pat Buchanan, running as a Reform Party candidate.After the election, many voters from Palm Beach claimed they had inadvertently voted for Mr. Buchanan when they meant to vote for Mr. Gore. This is clear in the data. Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than he did on the other side of the county line. Indeed, Mr. Buchanan fared far better in Palm Beach County than any politically or demographically comparable area in the country.You can see this pattern quite clearly in this map, courtesy of Matthew C. Isbell, a Democratic data strategist and consultant:We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden, Obama and Clinton Gather, Tieless, for Campaign Fund-Raiser

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      Did Presidents Biden, Obama and Clinton, appearing together at a fund-raiser in open-neck shirts, look casual or ‘a little disheveled’? Simultaneously historic and perhaps a big nothing, the shot was snapped on Thursday in New York City when President Biden and former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton gathered, before a Democratic fund-raiser, for the taping of “SmartLess,” a podcast hosted by the comedians Jason Bateman, Sean Hayes and Will Arnett.With his beard and rumpled corduroy pants, Mr. Bateman was clearly the odd man out in a group of radiantly healthy alphas dressed in crisp blazers or suits. As one social media quipster put it, Mr. Bateman, the “Arrested Development” star who is soon to appear in a limited series with Jude Law, looked as if he was celebrating his release from the hoosegow. The other dudes were on hand to help cut the cake.It was not Mr. Bateman, though, who generated online buzz with his attire. It was those three presidents appearing without ties. (Messrs. Arnett and Hayes also skipped the neckwear, and as it happened, the three presidents remained without ties straight through the evening’s event.) Were we once again at the precipice, as some commentators seemed to suggest? Was civilization nearing its end? Or were we yet again being reminded of the inexorable march from casual Friday to casual everyday, and to a world in which chief executives dress like field hands and the only people who can be relied on to sport a suit and tie outside a courtroom are bodyguards and limo chauffeurs?Pity the poor tie. Pundits are forever writing its obit. Back in 2022, the doomsayers piled on when, at a G7 summit in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, world leaders including Justin Trudeau, Emmanuel Macron and Boris Johnson “declared the end of the necktie,” according to Women’s Wear Daily, by posing for a group photo in suits and open-neck shirts.World leaders at a G7 summit in Germany in 2022.Susan Walsh/Associated PressWomen’s Wear Daily, citing the pandemic and the corresponding boom in athleisure and active wear, noted that the formal suit — with that sadly diminished phallic accessory, the necktie — “no longer yields the intellect and vim it once did.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Fund-Raiser and Trump Visit to New York Preview Clashes to Come

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      The epicenter of the presidential campaign shifted to New York on Thursday, as the incumbent president and three of his predecessors descended on the area for dueling events that illustrated the kinds of political clashes that could come to define the general election.For Democrats, it was a high-profile, celebrity-studded fund-raiser for President Biden in Manhattan. On Long Island, former President Donald J. Trump attended a wake for a New York City officer who was killed during a traffic stop on Monday. Together, the day’s events struck an unusual contrast in a general election campaign that has so far been largely defined by appearances in courtrooms and at small, invitation-only events.Mr. Biden, along with Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, appeared before 5,000 donors at a Radio City Music Hall event that campaign aides said raised $25 million. The eye-popping number set a record for a single political event, according to the aides, and offered a star-studded show of Democratic unity as the president heads into a difficult re-election campaign.The three Democratic presidents spent much of their time in New York City wrapped in the glitz of their celebrity supporters. Tieless and in matching white shirts, they sat for an interview on a celebrity podcast, were roasted by the comedian Mindy Kaling and interviewed by Stephen Colbert, a late-night host.Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, made his own appearance in the area several hours earlier, at a funeral home on Long Island surrounded by hundreds of police officers and family members of the slain officer. While not officially a campaign stop, aides used the appearance to draw a sharp contrast with Mr. Biden, attacking the Democrats for spending their evening with donors and celebrities. In recent weeks, Mr. Trump has spent far more time battling in court than in battleground states.Former President Donald J. Trump attending a wake for a New York City police officer on Long Island.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Fighting Rages Around Two Gaza Hospitals as Pressure on Israel Rises

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      Israeli forces are battling to retake areas they had already seized, showing the militants’ resilience, as critics call for less destructive tactics in the war.Israeli troops and Hamas fighters waged deadly battles in and around two of the Gaza Strip’s major hospitals on Thursday as the Israeli government came under growing pressure at home and abroad to moderate its approach to a war that has devastated the enclave.Fighting raged for the 11th day at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in an area Israeli forces first seized in November. The clashes illustrated the difficulty the Israelis are having in keeping control of places they had already taken as Palestinian militants melt away and then return.In Israel, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, increasingly unpopular and facing criticism on multiple fronts, met for the first time with the families of kidnapped soldiers being held in Gaza, who accused him before the meeting of ignoring their plight for nearly six months. The soldiers’ relatives had largely remained silent in public while other families of captives spoke out, many of them saying the prime minister should agree to a truce with Hamas if that was what it would take to free their relatives.But there has been no apparent change in Israel’s determination to press on with its offensive in Gaza, despite pressure from, among others, hostage families, the Biden administration and the United Nations, where the Security Council passed a resolution on Monday demanding a cease-fire. After vetoing previous cease-fire resolutions, the United States abstained on Monday, allowing the measure to pass and signaling American displeasure over Israel’s conduct of the war.The International Court of Justice in The Hague on Thursday ordered Israel to take concrete steps to stop obstructing humanitarian aid to Gaza as starvation spreads there, calling on Israel to increase the number of land crossings for supplies and to provide “full cooperation” with the United Nations. The ruling contained the strongest language the court has used so far as it weighs a case filed by South Africa that accuses Israel of genocide, which Israel denies.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More