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      General Mark Milley’s Term Had It All

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      At midnight on Sept. 30, Gen. Mark A. Milley’s turbulent term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff will end.He is the last senior official whose tenure spanned both the Trump and the Biden administrations, a time that included just about every kind of crisis.Insurrection. Pandemic. The chaotic ending of the war in Afghanistan. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Shoot-downs of unidentified flying objects.There was that time his boss wanted to deploy American troops on the streets against American citizens. The day U.S. intelligence picked up talk among Russian generals about using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. And a Republican senator’s blockade of military promotions that delayed his successor’s confirmation.As the senior military adviser to two presidents, General Milley demonstrated loyalty, until he deemed it no longer in the country’s interest, and was often praised for his leadership. But he also made very public mistakes, including an especially egregious one for which he would later apologize.In the end, his chairmanship was shaped by a straightforward loquaciousness, a commander in chief who specialized in chaos and a chain of fast-moving events around the world.“No one was asked to do as difficult a series of things as he had to do,” said Peter Feaver, a Duke University professor who has studied the armed forces.Here is a look at Gen. Mark Alexander Milley’s four years as the 20th chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, based on interviews with the general, his colleagues and associates, as well as reporting and books about the Donald J. Trump administration.The First CrisisSept. 30, 2019On an Army base field just outside Washington, General Milley takes the oath of office.It is a rainy Monday, and President Trump is there. He has told his aides that General Milley, a barrel-chested Green Beret with bushy eyebrows and a command-a-room personality, looks like a proper general to him.“I have absolute confidence that he will fulfill his duty with the same brilliance and fortitude he has shown throughout his long and very distinguished career,” Mr. Trump says.The honeymoon does not last three days.General Milley, left, was sworn in during a ceremony with Vice President Mike Pence, President Donald J. Trump and other military leaders.Anna Moneymaker/The New York TimesOct. 4, 2019General Milley’s Turkish counterpart, Gen. Yasar Guler, tells him that Turkey will send thousands of troops over the border into Syria to target American-backed Kurdish forces. The Kurds are the Pentagon’s most reliable partners in the fight against the Islamic State. But Turkey says they are terrorists.General Milley has to take the matter to Mr. Trump, who is mad that U.S. troops are in Syria.Two days later, Mr. Trump announces a de facto endorsement of the Turkish move: He will pull the American troops out of Syria, essentially leaving the Kurds to fend for themselves.“Morally reprehensible and strategically dumb,” opines Senator Angus King, independent of Maine.Oct. 16, 2019An emergency meeting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi; Senator Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader; and members of Mr. Trump’s national security team degenerates into a shouting match over Mr. Trump’s decision to pull the U.S. troops out of Syria.“Nervous Nancy’s unhinged meltdown!” Mr. Trump says after the meeting, tweeting a photo of Ms. Pelosi standing across a table from him, pointing her finger in the air.At the Pentagon, the talk is all about the man seated next to Mr. Trump in the photo: a grim-looking General Milley, with his hands clasped in front of him. He has been on the job for 16 days.Oct. 26, 2019Mr. Trump’s abrupt withdrawal order forces General Milley and Pentagon officials to speed up a plan to take out the ISIS leader, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, whom they have been monitoring at a compound in Qaeda territory in Syria.They want to carry out the risky nighttime raid while they still have troops, spies and reconnaissance aircraft in the country.The raid is successful, thanks in part to the same Kurdish forces Mr. Trump effectively abandoned.“He died like a dog,” Mr. Trump says of the ISIS leader.Nov. 13, 2019General Milley has figured out a way to turn Mr. Trump around on Syria. He has told the president that American commandos and their Kurdish allies need to stay to guard the oil there.Some 800 troops will remain in northern Syria.“We’re keeping the oil,” Mr. Trump tells reporters. “We left troops behind, only for the oil.”Jan. 3, 2020General Milley and other senior officials have given the president a range of options to deal with attacks by Iranian-backed Shiite militias. Mr. Trump chooses the most extreme: assassinating Gen. Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander.Mr. Trump has been fuming over television reports showing Iranian-backed attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.That night, General Suleimani is killed in an American drone strike at Baghdad International Airport.The fallout is immediate. Iranian groups put a price on General Milley’s head. And five days later, just after concluding a barrage of retaliatory airstrikes, Iran mistakenly shoots down a Ukrainian passenger jet, killing 176 people on board.General Qassim Suleimani, Iran’s most powerful military commander, was killed in an American drone strike.Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA, via ShutterstockWomen mourning General Suleimani during a funeral procession in Baghdad.Ahmed Jalil/EPA, via ShutterstockPandemic and ProtestsMarch 24, 2020At a virtual town hall event, General Milley predicts that the coronavirus will not last long. “You’re looking at probably late May, June, something in that range,” he said. “Could be as late as July.”That same day, the Navy announces that three sailors on the aircraft carrier Theodore Roosevelt have tested positive for the virus.May 25, 2020Memorial Day. More than 350 sailors from the Theodore Roosevelt are in quarantine on Guam. The virus has taken the aircraft carrier out of service for weeks, causing an imbroglio that leads to the resignation of the acting secretary of the Navy.Back in Washington, General Milley is heading to Arlington National Cemetery, where he will meet with Gold Star families who had lost loved ones in America’s wars.For General Milley, Memorial Day is a workday. He helps place flags on the graves. “I have soldiers that are buried here that died under my command,” he tells a CBS News crew.That night he sees a report on TV about a Black man in Minneapolis who died at the hands of the police.June 1, 2020“Can’t you just shoot them? Shoot them in the legs or something?” Mr. Trump asks General Milley and Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper in the Oval Office.Mr. Trump says that demonstrations in the streets over the killing of George Floyd were making him look “weak.” He wants 10,000 active-duty troops in Washington, D.C., alone to take on the protesters.General Milley and Mr. Esper explain that pitting American soldiers against American protesters could hurt civil-military relations and incite more violence. They talk Mr. Trump out of it.General Milley leans into Mr. Esper, presses his thumb to his forefinger and whispers that he is “this close” to resigning. So was Mr. Esper, the defense secretary recalled in his book, “A Sacred Oath.”It is not even noon yet.Around 6 p.m., General Milley and Mr. Esper are again summoned to the White House. Neither knows why at the time, but they will soon be taking a walk with the president.Mr. Trump has decided to stage a photo op in front of St. John’s Episcopal Church across Lafayette Square near the White House. He holds a Bible, which his daughter Ivanka has pulled out of her bag. General Milley is wearing his camouflage uniform.As Mr. Trump poses, General Milley disappears from view. But the damage is done. General Milley is the most senior officer of a military that at its core is supposed to be above politics.“An egregious display of bad judgment, at best,” says Paul D. Eaton, a retired major general and a veteran of the Iraq war.General Milley spends the rest of the night walking through the streets of Washington, talking to National Guard troops and protesters alike. At 12:24 in the morning, he heads home. Not long after, he is writing a resignation letter.“It is my belief that you are doing great and irreparable harm to my country,” one draft says, according to “The Divider: Trump in the White House,” by Susan Glasser and Peter Baker. He does not send the letter.Protests that sometimes turned violent erupted in Minneapolis and across the country after the police killing of George Floyd.Stephen Maturen/Getty ImagesGeneral Milley joined Mr. Trump and other senior officials in a walk from the White House, through protesters and law enforcement, to a church nearby.Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 11, 2020General Milley apologizes for the walk in the park. “I should not have been there,” he says in a commencement address at the National Defense University.Mr. Trump is furious. “Why’d you do that?” he asks General Milley later that day.This is the Rubicon that many people in the Trump administration eventually cross: the moment when they change from ally to enemy in the eyes of the president. Mr. Trump never cared much for Mr. Esper, whom he calls “Mr. Yesper.” General Milley, by contrast, the president once favored. No more.Aug. 20, 2020General Milley is in Colorado Springs for a Northern Command ceremony and makes a beeline for Mr. Esper to tell him about an alarming phone call the night before: Robert C. O’Brien, Mr. Trump’s fourth national security adviser, says there is interest in killing another senior Iranian military officer.Why now? General Milley tells Mr. Esper the proposed strike has not gone through the normal bureaucratic discussion that precedes operations of this magnitude. To put Mr. O’Brien off, General Milley goes into what he calls his “hamana hamana,” nonsense talk.For the next five months, General Milley tells people that he will do everything he can to keep the Trump team from launching strikes — potential acts of war — without proper vetting.Oct. 14, 2020General Milley and Mr. Esper huddle over what to do about some military nominations they want to make.They want two women — Gen. Jacqueline D. Van Ovost of the Air Force and Lt. Gen. Laura J. Richardson of the Army — to be promoted, on merit, to elite, four-star commands. But the men are worried that Mr. Trump will not go for it, because promoting women is too “woke” for him.They agree on a strategy. They will hold back the nominations until after the November elections. Maybe Joe Biden will win, the men figure.Oct. 30, 2020General Milley reassures his Chinese counterpart, Gen. Li Zuocheng, in a phone call that Mr. Trump has no plans to attack China, no matter what intelligence is picking up about the president wanting to create a crisis to help him in the polls.Before the InsurrectionNov. 9, 2020Mr. Trump has lost the election but is not conceding. And he has decided that the transition period is a perfect time to revamp the Pentagon leadership. He takes to his usual medium to announce that he has “terminated” Mr. Esper. Christopher C. Miller, a former Army Green Beret, will take over the Defense Department.General Milley threatens to resign, according to Mr. Esper’s book. Mr. Esper tells him: “You’re the only one left now to hold the line. You have to stay.”Nov. 10, 2020The purge is on. Mr. Trump fires two Defense Department under secretaries and sends in political loyalists: Kash Patel, a former aide to Representative Devin Nunes of California, and Ezra Cohen, an ally of Michael T. Flynn, a former national security adviser. Anthony Tata, a retired general who once referred to President Barack Obama as a “terrorist leader,” is now in the top Pentagon policy job.General Milley vows that there will be no coup under his watch. “They may try,” but they will not succeed, Milley tells his deputies, according to “I Alone Can Fix It,” by Carol Leonnig and Philip Rucker. “You can’t do this without the military. You can’t do this without the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. We’re the guys with the guns.”Nov. 11, 2020During a meeting, Mr. Patel hands General Milley a sheet of paper that says Mr. Trump is ordering all remaining U.S. troops home from Somalia by Dec. 31 and from Afghanistan by Jan. 15.General Milley heads to the White House. He and other national security aides talk Mr. Trump out of the Afghanistan pullout by reminding him that he has already ordered an Afghanistan withdrawal in the next months. The Somalia withdrawal date is moved to Jan. 15.Nov. 25, 2020Mr. Trump removes Henry Kissinger and Madeleine K. Albright from the Defense Policy Board, replacing them with loyalists. He also pardons Mr. Flynn, the former general and national security adviser who pleaded guilty to lying to the F.B.I.A week later, Mr. Flynn endorses an ad calling for martial law and for a national “re-vote” — to be conducted by the military.“I just want to get to the 20th,” General Milley tells aides, referring to Inauguration Day, Jan. 20.Jan. 6, 2021Mr. Trump summons his supporters to the Capitol. Rioters storm the building to overturn the election.National Guard troops clashed with protesters into the evening on Jan. 6, 2021.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesNational Guard troops were stationed in the Capitol for weeks after the attack.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesJan. 8, 2021The Chinese are on high alert, so General Milley makes another call. “Things may look unsteady,” he says. “But that’s the nature of democracy, General Li.”Next, General Milley advises the Navy to postpone planned exercises near China.Ms. Pelosi is on the phone asking what’s to stop Mr. Trump from launching a nuclear weapon.General Milley tells her there are procedures in place.After that call, he summons senior officers to go over those procedures, according to “Peril” by Bob Woodward and Robert Costa. “If you get calls,” he tells the officers, “there’s a procedure.”He adds, “And I’m part of that procedure.”He turns to each officer in the room.“Got it?”“Yes, sir.”“Got it?”“Yes, sir.”A New BossJan. 20, 2021Joseph R. Biden Jr. takes the oath of office.April 6, 2021General Milley is in the Oval Office for the news he knows is coming but does not want to hear. Mr. Biden, like his predecessor, wants all American troops out of Afghanistan. This time, the deadline is Sept. 11, 2021, exactly 20 years after the terrorist attacks that launched two decades of war.General Milley had hoped that Mr. Biden would agree to keep a modest troop presence in the country to prevent it from falling back into the hands of the Taliban and from becoming a launching pad for terrorist attacks. But Mr. Biden is adamant.General Milley and the new defense secretary, Lloyd J. Austin III, tell senior commanders to start packing up. The last thing the men want now is for an American soldier to die in Afghanistan after the president has ordered a withdrawal.A race to the exits begins.General Milley and other leaders meeting with President Biden at the White House in October 2022.Doug Mills/The New York TimesJune 23, 2021General Milley pushes back against criticism that the Pentagon is becoming too “woke.”After a Republican congressman presses Mr. Austin, the first Black man to lead the Pentagon, on whether the Defense Department teaches “critical race theory,” General Milley hits back. “I’ve read Mao Zedong. I’ve read Karl Marx. I’ve read Lenin,” he says. “That doesn’t make me a communist.”In a two-minute clip that plays over and over on social media platforms, General Milley defends the military’s right to study what it wants, including topics that some might find uncomfortable.“I want to understand white rage, and I’m white, and I want to understand it,” he says. “What is it that caused thousands of people to assault this building, and try to overturn the Constitution of the United States of America?”Last Days in AfghanistanJuly 2, 2021American troops leave Bagram Air Base, their last hold in Afghanistan. Within hours, the base is ransacked by looters.Aug. 15, 2021The Taliban seize Kabul, the capital. Attention turns to evacuating Americans and their Afghan allies from the country.At the Pentagon, General Milley receives hundreds of phone calls from aid organizations, media companies and lawmakers, all pleading for help evacuating their people. In meetings, he barks at the bureaucratic red tape.Taliban fighters took control of Kabul on Aug. 15, 2021.Jim Huylebroek for The New York TimesAmerican Air Force troops evacuated scores of people from Kabul.Senior Airman Taylor Crul/U.S. Air Force, via ShutterstockAug. 26, 2021At 5:48 p.m. local time, a suicide attack at Kabul airport kills at least 183 people, including 13 U.S. service members sent to help with evacuations.Sept. 1, 2021General Milley is fielding questions at a news conference about a drone strike in Kabul that killed 10 civilians, including children. Senior officials know that civilians were killed, but they are sticking to the talking points that the strike also targeted terrorists plotting another attack.“Yes, there were others killed,” General Milley says. “Who they are, we don’t know. The procedures were correctly followed and it was a righteous strike.”Sixteen days later, the Pentagon acknowledges that the strike was a mistake.“This is a horrible tragedy of war,” General Milley says in a statement.Sept. 28, 2021The general has been talking.A bunch of books are out that describe his actions in the waning days of the Trump presidency: the call to China, the meeting with the nuclear code officers.Some senators at a hearing are angry that General Milley tried to protect the Pentagon from Mr. Trump. Others are angry that he told so many people afterward.In a break from usual military hearings on Capitol Hill, it is the Republicans who are angriest at the military general. General Milley is now a lightning rod for Trump allies across the country, regularly pilloried in right-wing media outlets.War in EuropeJan. 28, 2022General Milley warns that Russia has assembled more than 100,000 troops at Ukraine’s borders, with more coming every day, and enough military hardware to invade the entire country.Given the type of forces that are arrayed, he says at a Pentagon news conference, “if that was unleashed on Ukraine, it would be significant, very significant, and it would result in a significant amount of casualties.”Feb. 24, 2022Russia invades Ukraine.Ukrainian soldiers in Kharkiv, Ukraine, in February 2022.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesRefugees arrived in Hungary after Russia invaded Ukraine.Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesOct. 24, 2022For the first time in months, General Milley is on the phone with his Russian counterpart, Gen. Valery V. Gerasimov, who had been giving him the silent treatment.U.S. intelligence has picked up discussions among senior Russian generals about using a tactical nuclear weapon in Ukraine. President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia has been making not-veiled threats about escalation, and General Milley wants to make sure Moscow isn’t about to cross a serious red line.After the call, General Milley’s people say that he and General Gerasimov will keep the lines of communication open.Nov. 9, 2022General Milley tells the Economic Club of New York that neither Russia nor Ukraine, in his opinion, can win the war. Diplomats, he believes, need to start looking for ways to begin negotiations.“When there’s an opportunity to negotiate, when peace can be achieved, seize it,” he says.The remarks cause a furor: Ukrainians worry that the Biden administration is preparing to abandon them, and White House officials scramble to reassure them that U.S. support remains solid.Feb. 11, 2023The text from a reporter comes to General Milley’s phone at 9:27 on a Saturday morning.For the third time in less than a week, NORAD is tracking an unidentified flying object over North America. This one is over the Yukon in Canada. U.S. fighter jets shot down the two others: a Chinese spy balloon, and who knows what.“It’s an alien, isn’t it,?” the text says.The general replies, “Not aliens!”Aug. 21, 2023The Royal Edinburgh Military Tattoo, a yearly show where troops clad in full ancient fighting kit including kilts, sporran, drums and bagpipes, put on a show at a centuries-old castle that has turned into a 90-minute farewell salute to America’s senior general.General Milley, in full military dress and white gloves, is in the guest-of-honor seat, in a crowd of thousands. As each group concludes its performance, a single green light in the darkened arena shines on the general, and he stands up, at attention. Each succession of troops stops to salute him. The green light goes off, and he sits back down.Sept. 22, 2023Mr. Trump has his own farewell salute for General Milley.In a Truth Social post, Mr. Trump says the general’s retirement “will be a time for all Americans to celebrate!” He calls General Milley a “woke train wreck” and complains about the general’s calls with his Chinese counterpart. “This is an act so egregious that, in times gone by, the punishment would have been DEATH!”Mr. Trump concludes, “To be continued!” More

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      in Elections

      ‘Trump Is Scaring the Hell Out of Me’: Three Writers Preview the Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Josh Barro, who writes the newsletter Very Serious, and Sarah Isgur, a senior editor at The Dispatch, to discuss their expectations for the second Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dig into and try to sort out a barrage of politics around President Biden’s sagging approval numbers, an impeachment inquiry, a potential government shutdown and shocking political rhetoric from former President Trump.Frank Bruni: For starters, Josh and Sarah, Donald Trump is scaring the hell out of me. It’s not just his mooning over a Glock. It’s his musing that in what he clearly sees as better days, Gen. Mark Milley could have been executed for treason. Is this a whole new altitude of unhinged — and a louder, shriller warning of what a second term of Trump would be like (including the suspension of the Constitution)?Josh Barro: I don’t think people find Trump’s provocations very interesting these days. I personally struggle to find them interesting, even though they are important. I’m not sure this constitutes an escalation relative to the end of Trump’s service — the last thing he did as president was try to steal the election. So I’m not sure this reads as new — Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in.Bruni: Sarah, what do you make of how little has been made of it? Is Trump indemnified against his own indecency, or can we dream that he may finally estrange a consequential percentage of voters?Sarah Isgur: Here’s what’s wild. In one poll, the G.O.P. is now more or less tied with Democrats for “which party cares about people like me,” closing in on Democrats’ 13-point advantage in 2016 … and in another poll, the G.O.P. is leading Democrats by over 20 points on “dealing with the economy.” So how is Joe Biden even still in this race? And the answer, as you allude to, is Trump.Barro: Trump’s behavior has already estranged a consequential percentage of voters. If Republicans found a candidate who was both normal and law-abiding and a popularist, they’d win big, instead of trying to patch together a narrow Electoral College victory, like Trump managed in 2016 and nearly did again in 2020.Bruni: Sarah, you’re suggesting that Trump is a huge general election gift to Biden. To pivot to tonight’s debate, is there any chance Biden doesn’t get that gift — that he winds up facing Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis or someone else?Isgur: Possible? Sure. Every year for Christmas, I thought it was possible there was a puppy in one of the boxes under the tree. There never was. I still think Ron DeSantis is probably the only viable alternative to Trump. But he’s looking far less viable than he was in June. And the more voters and donors flirt with Tim Scott or Nikki Haley, it becomes a race for No. 2 (see this debate) — and the better it is for Trump. That helps Trump in two ways: First, it burns time on the clock and he’s the front-runner. Second, the strongest argument for these other candidates was that Trump couldn’t beat Biden. But that’s becoming a harder and harder case to make — more because of Biden than Trump. And as that slides off the table, Republican primary voters don’t see much need to shop for an alternative.Barro: These other G.O.P. candidates wouldn’t have Trump’s legal baggage and off-putting lawlessness, but most of them have been running to Trump’s right on abortion and entitlements. And if Trump isn’t the nominee, he’ll quite possibly be acting to undermine whoever is the G.O.P. nominee. So it’s possible that Republicans are actually more likely to win the election if they nominate him than if they don’t.Isgur: You talk to these campaigns, and they will readily admit that if Trump wins Iowa, this thing is over. And right now he’s consistently up more than 30 points in Iowa. Most of the movement in the polls is between the other candidates. That ain’t gonna work.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the primary is approaching being over. DeSantis has sunk in the polls and he’s not making a clear argument about why Trump shouldn’t be nominated.Bruni: Do any of tonight’s debaters increase their criticism of him? Sharpen their attacks? Go beyond Haley’s “Gee, you spent a lot of money” and Mike Pence’s “You were not nice to me on Jan. 6”? And if you could script those attacks, what would they be? Give the candidates a push and some advice.Barro: DeSantis has been making some comments lately about how Trump kept getting beat in negotiations by Democrats when he was in office. He’s also been criticizing Trump for throwing pro-lifers under the bus. The unsaid thing here that could tie together these issues and Trump’s legal issues is that he is selfish — that this project is about benefiting him, not about benefiting Republican voters. It’s about doing what’s good for him.That said, this is a very tough pitch for a party full of people who love Trump and who think he constantly faces unfair attacks. But it’s true, and you can say it without ever actually attacking Trump from the left.Isgur: Here’s the problem for most of them: It’s not their last rodeo. Sure, they’d like to win this time around. And for some there’s a thought of the vice presidency or a cabinet pick. But more than that, they want to be viable in 2028 or beyond. Trump has already been an electoral loser for the G.O.P. in 2018, 2020 and 2022, and it hasn’t mattered. They aren’t going to bet their futures on Trump’s power over G.O.P. primary voters diminishing if he loses in 2024, and if he wins, he’ll be limited to one term, so all the more reason to tread lightly with Trump’s core voters. Chris Christie is a great example of the alternative strategy because it is probably his last race — and so he’s going straight at Trump. But it hasn’t fundamentally altered the dynamics of the race.Barro: I think DeSantis’s star certainly looks dimmer than it did when he got into the race.Isgur: DeSantis is worse off. But this was always going to happen. Better to happen in 2024 than 2028. But Josh is right. Political operatives will often pitch their candidate on there being “no real downside” to running because you grow your national donor lists and expand your name recognition with voters outside your state. But a lot of these guys are learning what Scott Walker, Jeb Bush and Tim Pawlenty have learned: There is a downside to running when expectations are high — you don’t meet them.Bruni: Give me a rough estimate — how much time have Haley and her advisers spent forging and honing put-downs of Vivek Ramaswamy? And would you like to suggest any for their arsenal? Josh, I’m betting you do, as you have written acidly about your college days with Ramaswamy.Barro: So I said in a column (“Section Guy Runs for President”) that I didn’t know Ramaswamy in college, but I have subsequently learned that, when I was a senior, I participated in a debate about Social Security privatization that he moderated. That I was able to forget him, I think, is a reflection of how common the overbearing type was at Harvard.Bruni: Ramaswamy as a carbon copy of countless others? Now you’ve really put me off my avocado toast, Josh. Is he in this race deep into the primaries, or is he the Herman Cain of this cycle (he asked wishfully)?Barro: I think the Ramaswamy bubble has already popped.Bruni: Popped? You make him sound like a pimple.Isgur: Your words, Frank.Barro: He makes himself sound like a pimple. He’s down to 5.1 percent in the RealClearPolitics polling average, below where he was just before the August debate. One poll showed his unfavorables going up more than his favorables after the debate — he is very annoying, and that was obvious to a lot of people, whether or not they share my politics.Isgur: Agree. He’s not Trump. Trump can weather the “take me seriously, not literally” nonsense. Ramaswamy doesn’t have it.Bruni: Let’s talk about some broader dynamics. We’re on the precipice of a federal shutdown. If it comes, will that hurt Republicans and boost Biden, or will it seem to voters like so much usual insider garbage that it’s essentially white noise, to mix my metaphors wildly?Barro: I’m not convinced that government shutdowns have durable political effects.Isgur: It seems to keep happening every couple years, and the sky doesn’t fall. It is important, though, when it comes to what the G.O.P. is and what it will be moving forward. Kevin McCarthy battling for his job may not be anything new. But Chip Roy is the fiscal heart and soul of this wing of the party, and even he is saying they are going to pay a political penalty.Barro: I find it interesting that Kevin McCarthy seems extremely motivated to avoid one, or at least contain its duration. He thinks the politics are important.Isgur: I’d argue the reason it’s important is because it shows you what happens when voters elect people based on small donor popularity and social media memes. Nobody is rewarded for accomplishments, which require compromise — legislative or otherwise. These guys do better politically when they are in the minority. They actually win by losing — at least when their colleagues lose, that is. That’s not a sustainable model for a political party: Elect us and we’ll complain about the other guys the best!Bruni: What about the impeachment inquiry? The first hearing is on Thursday. Is it and should it be an enormous concern for Biden?Isgur: I’m confused why everyone else is shrugging this thing off. I keep hearing that this doesn’t give the G.O.P. any additional subpoena powers. Yes, it does. We just did this when House Democrats tried to subpoena Trump’s financial records. The Supreme Court was very clear that the House has broad legislative subpoena power when what they are seeking is related to potential legislation, but that it is subject to a balancing test between the two branches. But even the dissenters in that case said that Congress could have sought those records pursuant to their impeachment subpoena power. So, yes, the tool — a congressional subpoena — is the same. But the impeachment inquiry broadens their reach here. So they’ve opened the inquiry, they can get his financial records. Now it matters what they find.Barro: I agree with Sarah that the risk to Biden here depends on the underlying facts.Isgur: And I’m not sure why Democrats are so confident there won’t be anything there. The president has gotten so many of the facts wrong around Hunter Biden’s business dealings, I have no idea what his financial records will show. I am no closer to knowing whether Joe Biden was involved or not. But I’m not betting against it, either.Barro: I think the Hunter saga is extremely sad, and as I’ve written, it looks to me like the president is one of Hunter’s victims rather than a co-conspirator. I also think while there are aspects of this that are not relatable (it’s not relatable to have your son trading on your famous name to do a lot of shady business), there are other aspects that are very relatable — it is relatable to have a no-good family member with substance abuse and psychological issues who causes you a lot of trouble.Obviously, if they find some big financial scheme to transfer money to Joe Biden, the politics of this will be very different. But I don’t think they’re going to find it.Bruni: But let’s look beyond Hunter, beyond any shutdown, beyond impeachment. Sarah, Josh, if you were broadly to advise Joe Biden about how to win what is surely going to be a very, very, very close race, what would be your top three recommendations?Barro: The president’s No. 1 political liability is inflation, and food and fuel prices are the most salient aspect of inflation. He should be doing everything he can to bring price levels down. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have a ton of direct control over this — if presidents did, they wouldn’t get tripped up by this issue. But he should be approving more domestic energy production and transmission, and he should be bragging more about doing so.U.S. oil production is nearing record levels, but Biden is reluctant to talk about that because it makes climate activists mad. If he gets attacked from the left for making gasoline too cheap and plentiful, great.Isgur: Make it a referendum on Trump. It’s what Hillary Clinton failed to do in 2016. When it’s about Trump, voters get squeamish. When it’s about Biden, they think of all of his flaws instead.Bruni: Squeamish doesn’t begin to capture how Trump makes this voter feel. Additional recommendations?Barro: Biden generally needs to be willing to pick more fights with the left. Trump has shown how this kind of politics works — by picking a fight with pro-life activists, he’s moderating his own image and increasing his odds of winning the general election. There’s a new poll out this week that says that voters see the Democratic Party as more extreme than the Republican Party by a margin of nine points. Biden needs to address that gap by finding his own opportunities to break with the extremes of his party — energy and fossil fuels provide one big opportunity, as I discussed earlier, but he can also break with his party in other areas where its agenda has unpopular elements, like crime and immigration.Isgur: The Republican National Committee handed Biden’s team a gift when they pulled out of the bipartisan debate commission. Biden doesn’t have to debate now. And he shouldn’t. The Trump team should want a zillion debates with Biden. I have no idea why they gave him this out.Bruni: I hear you, Sarah, on how Biden might bear up for two hours under bright lights, but let’s be realistic: Debates don’t exactly flatter Trump, who comes across as one part feral, two parts deranged. But let’s address the Kamala Harris factor. Josh, you’ve recommended replacing Harris, though it won’t happen. Maybe that’s your third? But you have to tell me whom you’d replace her with.Barro: Harris isn’t just a 2024 problem but also a 2028 problem. She is materially less popular than Biden is, and because of Biden’s age, he even more than most presidents needs a vice president who Americans feel comfortable seeing take the presidency, and the polls show that’s not her. I’ve written about why he should put Gretchen Whitmer on the ticket instead. What Biden needs to hold 270 electoral votes is to keep the Upper Midwest swing states where his poll numbers are actually holding up pretty well — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. The popular governor of Michigan can do a lot more for him there than Harris can.Isgur: It is a big problem that voters don’t think Biden will make it through another term, so that the V.P. question isn’t will she make a good vice president but will she make a good president. Democrats are quick to point out that V.P. attacks haven’t worked in the past. True! But nobody was really thinking about Dan Quayle sitting behind the Resolute Desk, either. But I don’t think they can replace Harris. The cost would be too high with the base. I also don’t think Harris can get better. So my advice here is to hide her. Don’t remind voters that they don’t like her. Quit setting her up for failure and word salads.Bruni: I want to end with a lightning round and maybe find some fugitive levity — God knows we need it. In honor of Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, I wonder: How many gold bars does each of you have in your basement or closet? Mine are in my pantry, behind the cashews, and I haven’t counted them lately.Barro: I understand Bob Menendez keeps tons of cash in his house because his family had to flee a Communist revolution. This is completely understandable. The only reason I don’t keep all that gold on hand is that I do not have a similar familial history.Isgur: Mine are made of chocolate, and they are delicious. (Dark chocolate. Milk chocolate is for wusses, and white chocolate is a lie.)Bruni: Are we measuring Kevin McCarthy’s remaining time as House speaker in hours, weeks or months, and what’s your best guess for when he subsequently appears in — and how he fares on — “Dancing With the Stars”?Isgur: Why do people keep going on that show?! The money can’t possibly be that good. I’ll take the over on McCarthy, though. The Matt Gaetz caucus doesn’t have a viable replacement or McCarthy wouldn’t have won in the first place … or 15th place.Barro: I also take the over on McCarthy — most of his caucus likes him, and unlike the John Boehner era, he hasn’t had to resort to moving spending bills that lack majority support in the conference. Gaetz and his ilk are a huge headache, but he won’t be going anywhere.Bruni: Does the confirmed November debate between Ron DeSantis and Gavin Newsom — moderated by Sean Hannity! — represent reason to live or reason to emigrate?Barro: Ugh. I find Newsom so grating and slimy. All you really need to know about him is he had an affair with his campaign manager’s wife. He’s also been putting his interests ahead of the party’s, with this cockamamie proposal for a constitutional amendment to restrict gun rights. It will never happen, will raise the salience of gun issues in a way that hurts Democratic candidates in a general election and will help Newsom build a grass roots email fund-raising list.Isgur: Oh, I actually think this is pretty important. Newsom and DeSantis more than anyone else in their parties actually represent the policy zeitgeist of their teams right now. This is the debate we should be having in 2024. As governors, they’ve been mirror images of each other. The problem for a Burkean like me is that both of them want to use and expand state power to “win” for their team. There’s no party making the argument for limited government or fiscal restraint anymore. And there’s no concern about what happens when you empower government and the other side wins an election and uses that power the way they want to.Bruni: You’ve no choice: You must dine, one-on-one, with either Matt Gaetz or Marjorie Taylor Greene. Whom do you choose, and how do you dull the pain?Barro: Marjorie Taylor Greene, but we’d spend the whole time talking about Lauren Boebert.Isgur: Damn. That was a good answer. Can I pick George Santos? At least he’s got great stories.Bruni: Last question — we’ve been plenty gloomy. Name something or a few things that have happened over recent weeks that should give us hope about the country’s future.Barro: The Ibram Kendi bubble popped! So, that was good.More seriously, while inflation remains a major problem (and a totally valid voter complaint), the economy has continued to show resiliency on output and job growth. People still want to spend and invest, despite 7 percent mortgage rates. It points to underlying health in the economy and a reason to feel good about American business and living standards in the medium and long term.Isgur: I had a baby this month — and in fact, September is one of the most popular birth month in the United States — so for all of us who are newly unburdened, we’re enjoying that second (third?) glass of wine, deli meat, sushi, unpasteurized cheese and guilt-free Coke Zero. And the only trade-off is that a little potato screams at me for about two hours each night!But you look at these new studies showing that the overall birthrate in the United States is staying low as teen pregnancies drop and birth control becomes more available but that highly educated woman are having more kids than they did 40 years ago … clearly some people are feeling quite hopeful. Or randy. Or both!Bruni: Sarah, that’s wonderful about your little potato — and your sushi!Barro: Congratulations!Bruni: Pop not only goes the weasel but also the Ramaswamy and the Kendi — and the Barro, ever popping off! Thank you both. Happy Republican debate! If that’s not the oxymoron of the century.Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book “The Beauty of Dusk” and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.Josh Barro writes the newsletter Very Serious and is the host of the podcast “Serious Trouble.”Sarah Isgur is a senior editor at The Dispatch and the host of the podcast “Advisory Opinions.”Source photograph by ZargonDesign, via Getty Images.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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      ‘This Is Going to Be the Most Important Election Since 1860’

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      I recently sent out a list of questions about the 2024 elections to political operatives, pollsters and political scientists.How salient will abortion be?How damaging would a government shutdown be to Donald Trump and the Republican Party?Will the MAGA electorate turn out in high percentages?Will a Biden impeachment by the House, if it happens, help or hurt the G.O.P.?Will the cultural left wing of the Democratic Party undermine the party’s prospects?Will the key battleground states be Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan and Wisconsin?How significant will Black and Hispanic shifts to the Republican Party be and where will these shifts have the potential to determine the outcome?Will Kamala Harris’s presence on the ticket cost Biden votes?Why hasn’t Biden gained politically from his legislative successes and from improvements in the economy? Will that change before the 2024 election?Why should Democrats be worrying?From 2016 to 2023, according to Morning Consult, the share of voters saying that the Democratic Party “cares about me” fell from 43 to 41 percent while rising for the Republican Party from 30 to 39 percent; the share saying the Democrats “care about the middle class” fell from 47 to 46 percent, while rising from 33 to 42 percent for the Republican Party.What’s more, the percentage of voters saying the Democratic Party is “too liberal” rose from 40 to 47 from 2020 to 2023, while the percentage saying the Republican Party was “too conservative” remained constant at 38 percent.Why should Republicans be worrying?Robert M. Stein, a political scientist at Rice, responded to my question about MAGA turnout by email: “Turnout among MAGA supporters may be less important than how many MAGA voters there are in the 2024 election and in which states they are.”One of the most distinctive demographic characteristics of self-identified MAGA voters, Stein pointed out, “is their age: over half (56 percent) were over the age of 65 as of 2020. By 2024, the proportion of MAGA voters over 70 will be greater than 50 percent and will put these voters in the likely category of voters leaving the electorate, dying, ill and unable to vote.”Because of these trends, Stein continued, “it may be the case that the absolute number and share of the electorate that are MAGA voters is diluted in 2024 by their own exit from the electorate and the entry of new and younger and non-MAGA voters.”Along similar lines, Martin Wattenberg, a political scientist at the University of California-Irvine, argued by email that generational change will be a key factor in the election.Between 2020 and 2024, “about 13 million adult citizens will have died” and “these lost voters favored Trump in 2020 by a substantial margin. My rough estimate is that removing these voters from the electorate will increase Biden’s national popular vote margin by about 1.2 million votes.”The aging of the electorate works to the advantage of Biden and his fellow Democrats. So too does what is happening with younger voters at the other end of the age distribution. Here, Democrats have an ace in the hole: the strong liberal and Democratic convictions of voters between the ages of 18 and 42, whose share of the electorate is steadily growing.Joe Trippi, a Democratic consultant, was exuberant on the subject:Don’t forget Gen Z. They are on fire. Unlike you and me who dove under our school desks in nuclear attack drills but never experienced a nuclear attack, this generation spent their entire school lives doing mass shooting drills and witnessing a mass shooting at a school in the news regularly.Young voters, Trippi continued, “are not going to vote G.O.P. and they are going to vote. Dobbs, climate, homophobia, gun violence are all driving this generation away from the G.O.P. — in much the same way that Dems lost the younger generation during the Reagan years.”Wattenberg was more cautious. He estimated that 15 million young people will become eligible to vote between 2020 and 2024.“How many of them will vote and how they will vote is a key uncertainty that could determine the election,” he wrote. “Given recent patterns, there is little doubt that those that vote will favor the Democratic nominee. But by how much?”There are some developments going into the next election that defy attempts to determine whether Democrats or Republicans will come out ahead.Take the case of all the criminal charges that have been filed against Trump.In more normal — that is, pre-Trump — days, the fact that the probable Republican nominee faced 91 felony counts would have shifted the scales in favor of the Democrats. But these are not normal times.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, pointed out that the 2024 election has no precedent.“How will the Trump prosecutions unfold amidst the primaries and the presidential campaign?” Lee asked in an email. “How will developments in these cases be received by Republicans and the public at large? We have little relevant precedent for even considering how these cases are likely to affect the race.”Gary Jacobson, a political scientist at the University of California-San Diego, agreed, noting in an email: “How will Trump’s trials evolve and how will people react to them? What happens if he is convicted and sentenced? What happens if he is acquitted?”Lee and Jacobson were joined in this line of thinking by Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster, who emailed his view thatThe greatest uncertainty on the G.O.P. side is the potential impact of the Trump trials. An acquittal, especially in the first case to go to trial, would almost certainly strengthen him. But what about a conviction, especially if it involves jail time? That may be the greatest uncertainty in American politics in my lifetime.Some of those I contacted observed that the prospect of one or more third-party bids posed a significant threat to Biden’s chances.Paul Begala, a Democratic political operative and CNN contributor, wrote by email:Please allow me to start with what to me is the most critical variable in the 2024 presidential election: Will Dr. Cornel West’s Green Party candidacy swing the election to Donald Trump? If I were working for the Biden-Harris ticket, that’s what would keep me up at night.In Begala’s opinion, “Dr. West has more charisma, better communications skills, and greater potential appeal than Dr. Jill Stein did in 2016. If, in fact, he is able to garner even two to five percent, that could doom Biden and the country.”And that, Begala continued, does not “even take into account a potential centrist candidacy under the No Labels banner. Biden won moderates by a 30-point margin (64-34), and 38 percent of all voters described themselves as moderate in 2020. If No Labels were to field a viable, centrist candidate, that, too, would doom Biden.”Norman Ornstein, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, agreed, arguing that third-party candidates are a “huge issue”:The role of No Labels and, secondarily, of Cornel West: They could be genuine spoilers here. And that is their goal. Harlan Crow and other right-wing billionaires did not give big bucks to No Labels to create more moderate politics and outcomes.Among those I contacted for this column, there was near unanimous agreement that abortion will continue to be a major issue — as it was in 2022, when abortion rights voters turned out in large numbers, lifting Democrats in key races.“It is the single most significant factor helping Democrats,” Ornstein declared, adding, “The fact that red states move more and more to extremes — including banning abortions for rape and incest, watching women bleed with untreated miscarriages, seeing doctors flee, criminalizing going to another state — will fire up suburban and young voters.”Justin Gest, a professor of policy and government at George Mason University, pointed out in an email thatDemocrats nationwide are taking a page out of the playbook of former President George W. Bush’s longtime adviser, Karl Rove. In those years, Republicans used state ballot measures and referendums on divisive culture war issues that split their way to mobilize conservative voters. In those days, the subject matter was often gay rights.Citing a June Ipsos poll that found “public opinion around the Dobbs decision and abortion remains mostly unchanged compared to six months ago,” Gest argued “that abortion remains salient more than a year after the revocation of abortion rights by the U.S. Supreme Court, but Democrats in many states will also use ballot measures to ensure it is top of mind.” Gest also noted that “supermajorities of the country favor preserving access to abortion to some extent.”Stein, however, wrote by email that while a majority of voters have remained in favor of abortion rights, they appear to be placing less importance on the issue than was the case immediately after the Dobbs decision.Stein pointed to a March Morning Consult survey that found “10 percent of voters in the most competitive congressional districts rank issues such as abortion as their top voting concern, down from 15 percent in November.”But, Stein added, Republican state legislators are not helping their own political fortunes by muting discussion of abortion; instead, they have been unrelenting in their efforts to elevate the prominence of abortion. “The recent sentencing of a mother in Nebraska who provided her daughter abortion pills,” he wrote, “puts a very real face on the consequences of Dobbs and restrictions on abortion rights,”There was some disagreement among those I contacted over the political consequences of a government shutdown, something that could well happen within days unless Speaker Kevin McCarthy can find a path to enactment of budget legislation.Frances Lee said that shewould probably discount the effects of a government shutdown. Their effects seem largely to be confined to the shutdown period itself. Once resolved, they quickly fade from memory. Trump presided over the longest government shutdown in history in 2018-19, and that fact played no role in the 2020 elections.Michael Podhorzer, former political director of the AFL-CIO, however, contended that it is “hard to imagine it won’t blow back on them — every previous shutdown has, and this one’s justifications seem nonexistent.”William Galston, a senior fellow at Bookings, agreed, writing by email:Evidence from past shutdowns suggests that it would be damaging, and this time Trump has chosen to get involved directly, which I think is a mistake. Republicans’ dysfunction in recent weeks has occurred in broad daylight, which increases the odds that they’ll get the lion’s share of the blame.Begala, in character, was the most outspoken:The G.O.P. is talking about shutting down the government, impeaching the president, removing the Speaker, and crippling the military by blocking vital promotions. Their brand is chaos. Like Clinton before him, Biden is well positioned to use a government shutdown to jujitsu the G.O.P. and win re-election.There was also some disagreement among those I queried over whether Kamala Harris would cost Biden votes.Begala dismissed the possibility:Nope. Democrats tried to make Spiro Agnew an issue; it failed. They tried to make Dan Quayle an issue; failed again. Harris has found her voice on abortion rights, which are a central issue.Ornstein was succinct: “Vice-presidential candidates do not cost votes.”Gest, however, argued against this idea:I think she will. Fairly or unfairly, she is viewed as more threatening to Republicans than Biden himself, which is why the DeSantis campaign has tried to bait her into conflict with his provocations. And because of President Biden’s advancing age, her profile holds more gravity than most running mates.There is one issue that has been increasingly troubling for Democrats: Will the modest but significant shifts among Black and Hispanic voters toward the Republican Party continue and will they increase?Gest wrote that “if Republicans suddenly make significant inroads with Latinos in the Southwest, they could change the dynamics” in states like Arizona and Nevada.But in order to do so, Gest cautioned, shifts to the Republican Party among minorities “would need to outnumber the pandemic-era arrival of left-leaning transplants from coastal urban cities. To the extent that these transplants have settled in their new homes, they can solidify Democratic support.”In a December 2022 Politico article, “How Demographic Shifts Fueled by Covid Delivered Midterm Wins for Democrats,” Gest made the case thatData from the U.S. Postal Service and Census Bureau shows how the pandemic drove urban professionals who were able to work remotely — disproportionately Democrats — out of coastal, progressive cities to seek more space or recreational amenities in the nation’s suburbs and Sun Belt. This moved liberals out of electoral districts where Democrats reliably won by large margins into many purple regions that had the potential to swing.Gest cited large population growth coinciding with much stronger than expected Democratic gains in places like Arizona’s Maricopa County — which, between 2018 and 2022, “gained nearly 100,000 people, and Democrats’ margins rose by 17 points since that year: and Pima County, including Tucson, gained 16,000 people and its margins in the gubernatorial race swung 16 points for Democrats.”One source of uncertainty is the media, which can, and often does, play a key role in setting the campaign agenda. The contest between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump is a prime example.In the aftermath of the 2016 election, the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard conducted a study, “Partisanship, Propaganda, & Disinformation: Online Media & the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election.” It that found that reporting on Hillary Clinton was dominated “by coverage of alleged improprieties associated with the Clinton Foundation and emails.”According to the study, the press, television and online media devoted more space and time to Clinton’s emails than it did to the combined coverage of Trump’s taxes, his comments about women, his failed “university,” his foundation and his campaign’s dealings with Russia.Going into 2024, it is unlikely the media could inflict much more damage on Trump, given that the extensive coverage of the 91 felony counts against him does not seem to affect his favorable or unfavorable rating.Biden, in contrast, has much more to gain or lose from media coverage. Will it focus on his age or his legislative and policy achievements? On inflation and consumer costs or economic growth and high employment rates? On questions about Biden’s ability to complete a second term or the threats to democracy posed by the ascendant right wing of the Republican Party?Herbert Kitschelt, a political scientist at Duke, argued that matters of immense concern are at stake: “This is going to be the most important election since 1860, because it is going to be about the future of this country as a democracy.”It will be an election, he continued,about whether this country will preserve the rule of law in an independent justice system; whether women will be respected as autonomous decision makers or subjected again, step-by-step, by a religion-encoded male supremacy; whether this country will continue to hold free and fair elections or generalize to the entire realm a new version of what prevailed in the South before the civil rights legislation.The 2024 election, in Kitschelt’s view, “is the last stand of the nationalist ‘Christian’ white right, as their support is eroding in absolute and relative terms, and of all those who believe that white supremacy across all U.S. institutions needs to be protected, even at the cost of giving up on democracy.”But, on an even larger scale, he argued, “The 2024 election will also be about whether this country will preserve a universalist sense of citizenship or devolve into a polity of splintered identity pressure groups, rent-seeking for shares of the pie.”Unfortunately, Kitschelt concluded, “if the Democrats let the Republicans succeed in priming the identity issues that divide the potential Democratic coalition, the white Christian nationalists will have a greater chance to win.”And that, of course, is a central goal of Trump’s — and of his campaign.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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      Trump, Weighing In on Auto Strike, Has a Mixed Legacy on Unions

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      The former president will be making a campaign stop in Michigan on Wednesday amid the United Automobile Workers’ strike. He has both appeased unions and sought to circumvent them.As a businessman, Donald J. Trump at first tried to circumvent labor unions, then spent decades largely appeasing them to avoid costly strikes.During his first presidential campaign, he boiled down labor issues to a grievance about other countries taking advantage of the United States.As president, he made appointments and adopted policies often more antagonistic to organized labor than those of many other Republicans.When Mr. Trump arrives in the Detroit area on Wednesday to interject himself into the United Auto Workers strike, he will bring with him a record of interactions with organized labor that, whether out of pragmatism or opportunism, has few straight lines.What may resonate the loudest with the current and former factory workers whom Mr. Trump hopes to reach is his decades-long history of reducing a host of economic and labor issues to the complaint that America’s leaders have allowed other countries to “rip off” the United States. He used that line of reasoning in announcing the Michigan trip, arguing that “dumb” government programs to promote electric vehicles would push all automobile production to China. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” he wrote on his Truth Social platform.He deployed the same logic in criticizing Shawn Fain, the United Auto Workers’ president, though what he thought Mr. Fain should do differently was not clear. “I think he’s not doing a good job in representing his union, because he’s not going to have a union in three years from now,” Mr. Trump said in a recent interview broadcast on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Those jobs are all going to be gone because all of those electric cars are going to be made in China.”In many ways, that argument is a replay of one of the greatest hits from Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign, when he aligned himself with workers at a Carrier furnace plant in Indianapolis who faced layoffs after the company announced plans to move the operation to Mexico. At rally after rally, he said it would be easy for him to stop such departures, a message that appealed to former factory workers and those who felt at risk. In Detroit, that approach would allow him to strike a note of support to both workers and companies without choosing sides in the most consequential labor dispute in years.Members of the United Auto Workers union at a rally in Detroit last week.Cydni Elledge for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s visit will serve other political purposes as well. He has scheduled a prime-time speech at an auto parts manufacturer as a distraction from the Republican primary debate he chose not to attend, much as his interview with Tucker Carlson was scheduled to be released during the last primary debate. And in the contest to win over blue-collar voters, the appearance pits him directly against President Biden, who on Tuesday took the unusual step of appearing with Mr. Fain and speaking out in support of the union’s contract demands.Mr. Trump’s early interactions with labor unions were based on less complex concerns. As a young real-estate developer in 1980, Mr. Trump hired a nonunion crew of 200 undocumented Polish workers to demolish the Bonwit Teller department store on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, clearing the way for what would become Trump Tower, his signature building and the first new construction he pursued on his own. The men were paid as little as $4 an hour, less than half the union wage, and worked 12-hour shifts without safety gear. Though he saved money in the short term, the long-term costs were significant. The treatment of those workers led to 15 years of litigation. Mr. Trump paid $1.375 million to settle the case, including a $500,000 payment to a union benefits fund. The terms of the settlement remained sealed until Mr. Trump became president and a judge released them over his objections.For the rest of his building career, Mr. Trump generally hired large construction companies, allowing him to complete major projects with a minimum number of full-time employees. Those companies typically handled the hiring and management of union workers. It was an era when organized crime lorded over many of the building trade unions in New York.“We had very little, if anything, to do with the unions,” said Barbara Res, who oversaw the construction of Trump Tower for Mr. Trump and worked with him for years. “That’s one of the benefits of having a construction manager. They take care of that crap.”When Mr. Trump ran casinos in Atlantic City, the owners negotiated as an association with the local hotel and casino workers union. John R. O’Donnell, who managed the Trump Plaza casino for several years starting in the late 1980s, said Mr. Trump was so terrified by the threat of lost business during a strike that he would mine his fellow association members and their lawyers for details on the owners’ strategy and then surreptitiously pass that information along to local union leaders. He said Mr. Trump’s typical efforts to reduce costs “did not apply when it came to the union,” because he was adamant that a strike “cannot happen.”“He worked against the association to help the unions, to the detriment of the rest of the city,” Mr. O’Donnell said. “He was going to sign a contract regardless.”In New York City, Mr. Trump developed a professional relationship with Peter Ward, the longtime president of the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, which had members working in Trump-owned or -operated hotels. In 2011, Mr. Ward led his union to support Mr. Trump’s brief effort to take over operation of the Tavern on the Green restaurant in Central Park, which had been closed by a bankruptcy.“We have a long and good history with him,” Mr. Ward told The New York Post at the time of the Tavern on the Green agreement.During the transition after Mr. Trump won the 2016 election, Mr. Ward was among those on the president-elect’s official schedule for a face-to-face meeting at Trump Tower.Not all employees at Mr. Trump’s hotels and golf courses are unionized. Workers at the hotel that Mr. Trump co-owns in Las Vegas with the casino mogul Phillip Ruffin began a unionization drive in 2014. The owners pushed back against the effort, but ultimately signed a contract with the union the month after the 2016 election. In 2018, workers at the Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, N.J., told a reporter for The New York Times that many employees there were undocumented immigrants; one worker said a manager had directed her to someone to help her obtain fraudulent records.After decades taking a counterintuitive approach to organized labor as a business owner, Mr. Trump made a sharp turn to the right once elected. Two of his choices for top Labor Department posts had been reliable antagonists of organized labor throughout their careers: Andrew Puzder, who as chief executive of a fast-food company repeatedly argued that labor regulations stifled economic growth; and Patrick Pizzella, a conservative lobbyist and government official who had spent years promoting the interests of businesses against those of unions.Mr. Puzder withdrew his nomination because of a lack of congressional support. Mr. Pizzella served as deputy secretary and acting secretary under Mr. Trump. As a lobbyist in the 1990s, he had been hired by the Northern Mariana Islands, a commonwealth of the United States where some workers earned less than $1 an hour, to ensure that Congress did not impose federal minimum wage and immigration laws there.As president, Mr. Trump signed executive orders that undid longstanding protections for two million unionized federal workers, including making it easier to fire and discipline government employees. His appointees demoted the senior civil servants who resolved most labor cases. Mr. Trump has said that if re-elected he will fire thousands of federal workers whom he considers part of a “deep state” filled with “villains.”His line of complaint about other countries taking advantage of the United States dates back to his earliest comments on national affairs. In September 1987, during the presidency of Ronald Reagan, Mr. Trump bought full-page advertisements in three major newspapers, including The Times, arguing that Japan, Saudi Arabia and other countries were “laughing at America’s politicians” because the United States paid their defense costs. “I was tired, and I think a lot of people are tired, of watching other countries ripping off the United States,” he said on CNN that night. “This is a great country. They laugh at us behind our backs. They laugh at us because of our own stupidity, and the leaders.”Nearly 30 years later, during the 2016 presidential campaign, Mr. Trump repeated almost those exact words after a video of Carrier managers announcing layoffs to employees in the Indiana plant gained wide attention. He said such moves would stop under his presidency because he would impose a 35 percent tariff on goods shipped from foreign factories that had replaced plants in the United States. “We’re going to make our products here,” he said. “Companies are taking advantage of us. And countries are abusing us. And the way you stop it is so easy.”The message resonated with voters at his rallies, as well as with Carrier employees. “I loved it,” Jennifer Shanklin-Hawkins, a worker at the company, told The Times. “I was so happy Trump noticed us.”Mr. Trump never instituted the sort of targeted tax threat he said would be so easy. He and Mike Pence, the vice president and former governor of Indiana, did help persuade Carrier to keep about 850 of those 1,400 jobs in Indiana, in exchange for $7 million in incentives from the state. The rest of the workers were laid off, and hundreds more workers at a nearby Carrier factory were also let go. Some said they ended up feeling like props for the Trump campaign.“There was still a layoff,” Ms. Shanklin-Hawkins told a reporter with The Indianapolis Star in 2020. “He lied completely.”Noam Scheiber More

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      Why Biden and Trump Are Courting Striking Autoworkers

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      The president and his leading Republican rival are heading to Michigan to address members of the U.A.W., whose political clout is growing.The political stakes grow as the U.A.W. strike drags on.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBiden and Trump bid for blue collar votes In an extraordinary show of support, President Biden plans to join striking autoworkers on the picket line in Michigan on Tuesday. It comes a day before Donald Trump is expected to speak to union members in Detroit instead of participating in the second Republican primary debate.The competing visits come as the two home in on battleground states ahead of next year’s election. But their appearances also reveal a political battle to become the voice of blue collar workers at a time when both candidates are struggling to win over mainstream voters and even some within their own parties.Bidenomics is a conundrum for the president. Biden says he is “the most pro-union president in American history” and has overseen one of the biggest industrial policy shifts in decades through the Inflation Reduction Act, offering billions of dollars in subsidies to create new manufacturing jobs in a push to greenify the economy.But the president is getting little credit from voters. Approval ratings for his economic management are at career lows. And the I.R.A. is somewhat troublesome for him: It includes incentives for automakers to make more electric vehicles, which labor leaders say will depend on non-union jobs and require fewer workers.The United Automobile Workers union has held back from endorsing Biden. The group was an early supporter of his economic road map but broke with other big unions. “The EV transition is at serious risk of becoming a race to the bottom,” Shawn Fain, the U.A.W. president, wrote to members in May.Trump sees an opportunity to hammer Biden and the U.A.W. Trump, whose track record as a businessman and president often backed business over labor, will speak directly to workers, aiming to project himself as a protector of jobs. He has called the federal push for electric vehicles a “catastrophe for Michigan” that would cost American jobs, benefit China and raise prices for consumers.Fain has said Trump would be a “disaster” if re-elected. But the former president’s rhetoric and policies like rewriting trade agreements have appealed to some union members.Union votes could prove decisive in 2024. Trump won Michigan in 2016, but Biden took the state by more than 150,000 votes in 2020. In crucial swing states, even wooing a relatively small portion could be crucial. “In a strike situation, they’re all going out because they’re supporting their own economic interests,” said Alexander Colvin, the dean of Cornell University’s School of Industrial and Labor Relations. “That doesn’t mean they all think the same thing politically.”HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The F.C.C. is reportedly set to reinstate net neutrality rules. The regulator will revive Obama-era limits on broadband providers’ ability to unfairly interfere with internet traffic, after Democrats finally gained a majority among its commissioners, according to Bloomberg. Companies including AT&T and Comcast are likely to push back, arguing that such rules would be a big burden.All eyes are on striking actors as screenwriters prepare for a vote on their labor deal. Leaders of the Writers Guild of America are to vote on their tentative pact with studios on Tuesday, with members set to weigh in soon. But there are few signs that an agreement with the SAG-AFTRA actors’ union is close, meaning that Hollywood will remain largely shut for now. Meanwhile, SAG-AFTRA members voted to authorize a strike against video game companies.Fossil fuel use needs to fall more quickly to contain global warming, the International Energy Agency says. Adoption of cleaner energy technologies like electric vehicles and solar is growing, but the use of fossil fuels must shrink faster to avoid a climate catastrophe, the agency said in its latest report. Some industry watchers said that the I.E.A. is still too optimistic about the decline in demand for oil and coal.Senator Bob Menendez says he won’t resign. The New Jersey Democrat, accused of taking bribes, said he’d fight the corruption charges leveled by federal prosecutors. He didn’t address questions about bars of gold found on his property, but asserted that the $550,000 in cash found stuffed around his home was merely part of an emergency fund.Growth concerns hit the bond market Alarm bells are ringing for markets on both sides of the Atlantic. Investors have again sold off their sovereign bond holdings, especially Treasury notes and German bunds, pushing yields to highs last seen in 2007 just before the housing crisis and in 2011 during the European debt crisis.Growth concerns appear to be the culprit. Global trade fell in July at its fastest pace since the summer of 2020, when the coronavirus pandemic snarled global markets. According to the newest World Trade Monitor report, the decline is the latest signal that global demand for goods is deteriorating, as inflation and high interest rates remain at multi-decade highs.Jamie Dimon added fuel to the pessimistic outlook. The C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase warned of a kind of worst-case scenario in which the Fed is forced to keep raising its benchmark lending rate to combat inflation, further blunting growth. “I am not sure if the world is prepared for 7 percent,” he said in an interview with The Times of India, referring to the federal funds rate.Fed policymakers themselves don’t see such a scenario playing out. They released a forecast last week suggesting that one more interest rate increase was in the cards this year, and possibly two cuts next year, which would keep interest rates at around 5 percent by the end of 2024. But since the Fed meeting, the futures market has been pricing in higher policy rates for longer, and that’s adding volatility to the bond market.A potential U.S. government shutdown is also unnerving investors. The prospect that lawmakers will fail to reach a deal by Saturday’s deadline to fund the government is weighing on stocks, with U.S. futures in the red this morning. On Monday, Moody’s, the ratings agency, said a shutdown could lead it to downgrade the country’s credit rating — a warning that the White House seized upon in hopes of compelling the warring Republican factions to break their impasse on spending cuts.The good news: The uncertainty has put a lid on the oil rally, with Brent crude falling below $91 a barrel this morning, a two-week low.1.5 trillion — Gallons of water used in fracking by oil and gas companies in the U.S. since 2011. That’s equivalent to the amount of tap water used by the state of Texas each year, according to a Times investigation. The boom in fracking to meet growing energy demand poses a threat to the country’s aquifers, researchers say.ChatGPT, can you take on Alexa? Hours after Amazon announced a big bet on an artificial intelligence start-up — and days after it revealed plans to make its Alexa digital assistant smarter — one of the most prominent names in the A.I. race unveiled its plan to surpass those advancements.OpenAI said its ChatGPT chatbot can now listen to users’ spoken requests and respond vocally, among other new capabilities. It’s a reminder of how fast the race to advance A.I. is moving — and how high the stakes are.Voice is a more natural way of interacting with ChatGPT, according to OpenAI executives, who also said that their chatbot will feature voices that sound more natural than those of existing digital assistants. (The Times says that the voices sound better, but still come across as a little robotic.)OpenAI is adding other features to ChatGPT, including image recognition. One example that OpenAI demonstrated: Share an image of a bicycle with the chatbot and it will instruct the user how to lower the seat.Amazon seems aware of the risks of being outpaced by rivals. Unlike Alexa or Siri, which require users to ask specific commands, the latest version of ChatGPT is capable of more conversational interactions, including follow-up questions and clarifications. Wider adoption of that chatbot could risk Amazon losing its longtime dominance in the market for personal assistants.The Alexa announcement last week, in which Amazon said that it was incorporating the large language model technology into its assistant, is meant to address that eventuality — though ChatGPT’s new capability will be available sooner.With new capabilities come worries about new dangers. OpenAI executives said that they won’t let ChatGPT identify faces, though the software will be able to talk at length about other pictures it’s asked to analyze. There’s also the risk that greater use of ChatGPT will lead to potential mishaps involving the well-known A.I. weakness of inventing facts, known as hallucinating.And Amazon, perhaps leery of the well-publicized hitches that Microsoft and Google suffered in rolling out advanced A.I. features to the wider public, is making the new Alexa features available initially only to some users in the U.S.In other A.I. news: Meet the human workers training A.I. systems. Spotify says it won’t ban A.I.-produced music, but it will work with OpenAI to clone podcasters’ voices to produce versions of their shows in other languages. And New York Magazine asks whether Sam Altman, OpenAI’s C.E.O., is the Robert Oppenheimer of the digital age.THE SPEED READ DealsAmerican Airlines appealed a federal court ruling that blocked its planned alliance with JetBlue. (Reuters)Vista Equity Partners now oversees more than $100 billion in assets, reflecting investor interest in the big tech deals that are the firm’s stock in trade. (Axios)What’s at stake as Disney and Comcast prepare to negotiate over the value of the streaming service Hulu, which they jointly own. (FT)PolicyTesla is reportedly a focus of European regulators’ inquiry into state subsidies for electric vehicles made in China. (Bloomberg)The Commerce Department has hired veterans of Wall Street firms including Goldman Sachs and KKR to help run its semiconductor funding program. (Bloomberg)Best of the restSan Francisco residents say that their city is being unfairly pilloried as a decaying, crime-ridden metropolis. (NYT)Microsoft is looking to power its A.I. and cloud data centers with small nuclear reactors. (CNBC)How companies are pulling off four-day workweeks. (WSJ)“The End of Privacy is a Taylor Swift Fan TikTok Account Armed with Facial Recognition Tech” (404 Media)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Why Democrats Keep Winning Elections Despite Biden’s Negative Polling

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      Despite a flood of negative polls for Democrats, the party has delivered a string of strong results in special elections, which can be a useful gauge of the national political environment.For nearly two years, poll after poll has found Americans in a sour mood about President Biden, uneasy about the economy and eager for younger leaders of the country.And yet when voters have actually cast ballots, Democrats have delivered strong results in special elections — the sort of contests that attract little attention but can serve as a useful gauge for voter enthusiasm.In special elections this year for state legislative offices, Democrats have exceeded Mr. Biden’s performance in the 2020 presidential election in 21 of 27 races, topping his showing by an average of seven percentage points, according to a study conducted by the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee, the party’s campaign arm for state legislative races.Those results, combined with an 11-point triumph for a liberal State Supreme Court candidate in Wisconsin this spring and a 14-point defeat of an Ohio ballot referendum this summer in a contest widely viewed as a proxy battle over abortion rights, run counter to months of public opinion polling that has found Mr. Biden to be deeply unpopular heading into his re-election bid next year.Taken together, these results suggest that the favorable political environment for Democrats since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade has endured through much of 2023. Democratic officials have said since the summer of 2022, when the ruling came down, that abortion is both a powerful motivator for the party’s voters and the topic most likely to persuade moderate Republicans to vote for Democratic candidates.“Dobbs absolutely changed the way that people thought about and processed things that they had perceived as a given,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the D.L.C.C. “We continue to see voters recognizing what’s at stake in these elections.”Democrats are now using abortion rights to power races far down the ballot — an extension of how candidates in special elections at the congressional level have long used prominent national issues to fuel their campaigns.In January 2010, Scott Brown won a shocking upset in a Senate special election in deep-blue Massachusetts by running against President Barack Obama’s health care push. In March 2018, Conor Lamb won a special election to fill a House seat in a deep-red Pennsylvania district by campaigning as a centrist voice against Mr. Trump.Both the Brown and Lamb special elections served as indicators of the wave elections their parties won in subsequent midterm elections.Some of the special elections won by Democrats this year have involved relatively few voters: Under 2,800 ballots were cast in a New Hampshire State House contest last week.“The best evidence that a special election produces is whose side is more engaged on a grass-roots turnout level,” Mr. Lamb said in an interview on Monday. “That gives you some signal about who is bringing their turnout back next year.”Mr. Biden’s low approval ratings have illustrated a wide gap between how Democratic leaders view him and what voters think. But past presidents — including Barack Obama — have recovered from similarly sour numbers to win re-election, a point Mr. Biden’s aides repeat to seemingly anyone who will listen.Political operatives remain vexed about how much stock to put into the results of special elections. Such races tend to draw a fraction of the turnout in regular contests, and the voters skew older and more educated — a demographic that in the Trump era is more likely to favor Democrats.The party that wins special elections tends to trumpet their importance and predictive power, while the losing side writes them off as insignificant measures of voters’ mood.Last week, after Democrats won special elections to maintain control of the Pennsylvania House and flip a Republican-held seat in the New Hampshire House, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, Mr. Biden’s campaign manager, emailed donors to say the results showed Mr. Biden’s political strength.“These aren’t just one-off election wins,” she wrote. “They prove that our message is resonating with voters — and that we can’t write off any corner of the country.”Officials with the Republican state legislative campaign arm did not respond to messages on Monday.The next chance for Democrats to prove their strength in down-ballot elections will come in Virginia. A slate of Democratic state legislative candidates are warning on the campaign trail that a Republican-controlled legislature and Gov. Glenn Youngkin would roll back abortion rights. Republicans are pitching the same menu of tax cuts and parental influence over schools that swept Mr. Youngkin into office two years ago.The elections are likely to serve as a solid arbiter of the parties’ strength heading into 2024. Under the state’s new legislative district lines, Mr. Biden would have won a majority of House of Delegates seats in 2020. But Mr. Youngkin carried a majority of the districts when he was elected in 2021.“These are competitive maps,” Ms. Williams said. “When we get to the other side of this November election and you look at all of these things combined, you’re going to see a very strong story for Democrats.” More

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      If Politicians Are Either Stainless or Shameless, Guess Which One Senator Menendez Is

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, you know how much I hate stereotypes, but — New Jersey! What is it about the state that seems to produce ethically challenged pols? I’m thinking about Harrison Williams and Bob Torricelli and Jim McGreevey and innumerable mayors and assemblymen and now Senator Robert Menendez, indicted — once again — for various corrupt practices, including taking bribes in the form of gold bars.Is it the mercury in the Hackensack River? The effects of Taylor Pork Roll? Lingering trauma over the Snooki pouf?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, the case has of course yet to be tried, but right now, whenever I see a picture of Bob Menendez, I imagine a little golden rectangle sticking out of his pocket.His career is over. However, let’s be fair. We can’t get all high and mighty about New Jersey when we live in a state where George Pataki, whose three terms ended in 2007, was the last elected governor to finish his political career without having to resign in disgrace.Bret: Maybe the eastbound sign on the George Washington Bridge should read, “Welcome to the Empire State, not quite as crooked as the state you’re leaving. But. …”Gail: I can think of some more states that could use similar signs, but I’ll be charitable today and refrain from making lists. Do you have a remedy? One thing that worries me is how uncool politics has become. You don’t see promising college students talking about their dream of going back home and running for City Council. Or even someday becoming president.I blame Donald Trump for that, of course. But I have to admit Joe Biden doesn’t exactly make politics look like an exciting career.Bret: My pet theory about modern American politics is that only two types of people go into it: the stainless and the shameless. Either you have lived a life of such unimpeachable virtue that you can survive endless investigations into your personal history, or you’re the type of person who lacks the shame gene, so you don’t care what kind of dirt the media digs up about you. In other words, you’re either Mitt Romney or Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer or Anthony Weiner.Gail: Wow, first time I’ve thought about Anthony Weiner in quite a while. But go on.Bret: Point being, most normal people fall somewhere in the middle, and they don’t want to spend their lives under a media microscope. That’s why so many otherwise well-qualified and otherwise public-spirited people steer clear of political careers. Which brings us without stopping to the complete breakdown in the Republican House caucus.Gail: So glad you brought that up. I was of course going to ask — how much of this is Kevin McCarthy’s fault, how much the fault of Republican conservatives in general?Bret: Can’t it be both? McCarthy got his speakership by putting himself at the mercy of the lunatic fringe on his right, and now that fringe is behaving like … lunatics. In theory, what the Republican caucus is arguing about is government spending and whether a government shutdown can send a message about excess spending. In reality, this is about power — about people like Matt Gaetz showing that, with a handful of votes, he can bring the entire Congress to heel. It’s the tyranny of a small minority leveraging its will over a bare majority to hold everyone else hostage.Including, I should add, the Defense Department. If you had told me 10 years ago that the G.O.P. would purposefully sow chaos at the Pentagon to score points about government spending or abortion, I would have thought you were tripping. But here we are.Gail: Non-fan of the House Republicans that I am, I did not expect anything good when they won the majority last year. But I did expect them to be semi-competent in their attempts to do bad.Bret: Hehe.Gail: Instead, we have government by Matt Gaetz, or Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama senator who’s been holding up military promotions as a protest against … abortion rights?All this is good for the Democrats, who would have had to block any House budget that decimated critical services like health care. As things stand now, if we go into October without a national budget in place, all the ensuing crises will be blamed on the Republicans.Not saying I want that to happen, but if it does, glad the shame will go in the right direction.Bret: House Republicans have become a circular firing squad and I really have to wonder whether McCarthy will last another month as speaker, let alone to the end of this Congress. Although, whenever I think the Republicans are harming themselves, I turn to the Democrats. Granting almost 500,000 Venezuelans temporary protected status is the right thing to do, but the administration’s failure to get control of the border means it’s only a matter of time before grants at this scale happen as a matter of course. I just don’t understand how this is good policy or wise politics. Please explain it to me.Gail: Don’t think anybody feels the current border policies are anything close to perfect, but it’s a question of what else to do. Eager to hear any suggestions that don’t involve a stupid, embarrassing wall.Bret: Which I continue to favor — along with wide and welcoming gates — but OK. There’s also something called a “smart fence” that has excellent sensors to detect border crossings, but is less ugly, less expensive and more environmentally sensitive than a wall. But it would have to be manned continuously by armed patrols. We can also immediately return people arriving here illegally rather than let them stay in the United States while awaiting a court hearing, unless they are from countries where they are at mortal risk from their own governments. President Obama did that pretty robustly, and I don’t remember any of my liberal friends claiming it was an assault on human rights. And we need to enormously expand consular facilities throughout Latin America so people’s immigration claims can be processed abroad, not once they’ve crossed the border.Gail: Voting with you on greatly expanded consular services.Bret: It would be a start. And I’m saying all this as someone who believes deeply in the overall benefits of immigration. But a de facto open border doesn’t advance the cause of a liberal immigration policy. It undermines it. And it could take down a lot of the Democratic Party in the process.Gail: Arguing about the fence is sort of comforting, in a way. Takes me back to the old days when we could fight about politics without having to wring our hands over the likes of Kevin McCarthy.Bret: So true. Politics used to be debating ideas. Now it’s about diagnosing psychosis.Gail: Don’t know how depressed to feel about the deeply unenthusiastic, borderline terrifying polling numbers that Biden has been getting. On the one hand, it’s understandable that people are cranky about not having a younger, fresher, more exciting alternative to Trump. On the other hand — jeepers, the man has achieved a heck of a lot. And when you look at the inevitable alternative. …Bret: Liberals might see a lot of liberal policy achievements, but what conservatives and swing voters see is higher food and gas prices, higher mortgage rates, urban decay, an immigration crisis that only seems to get worse and a visibly feebler president. I really doubt we’d be having these anxieties over a potential second term for Trump if Biden simply stepped aside.Gail: But to get back to the House Republicans — an impeachment inquiry, starring Hunter Biden, yet again? This one, as you know well, is allegedly supposed to investigate whether the president did anything in 2015 to protect his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. Are you indifferent, bored or embarrassed?Bret: Angered. It’s outrageous to open an impeachment inquiry when there is absolutely no available evidence that the president committed impeachable offenses. By that preposterous standard, the police should open investigations into every parent in America whose children are louts.Gail: Speaking of louts — or at least uncouth dressers — how do you feel about Chuck Schumer’s decision to drop the Senate dress code? Clearly a bow to John Fetterman, who has been known to show up in a hoodie and shorts.Bret: Schumer is one of the nicest men I know in political life, a real mensch whether you agree with him or not. But this is a case of him being too nice. The Senate is held in low enough repute already; we don’t need it looking like an Arby’s. I hope he rethinks this. What’s your view?Gail: Agree about Schumer and kinda think you’re also right on the dress code. He lost me at the shorts.Hey, one last question — any predictions for the Republican debate this week?Bret: I expect Ramaswamy to irritate, DeSantis to infuriate, Christie to needle, Pence to remind me of a beetle, Scott to smile and Haley to win by a mile. But I doubt it will move the dial.Otherwise, I’d rather spend the time watching people ice fish.Gail: Come on, there’s always something weird or ridiculous to reward you for watching. And some suspense — will Ron DeSantis say something truly stupid that will make him drop out? Will Tim Scott have any good I-wanna-be-veep moments? And it’s always fun to listen to Chris Christie slam into Trump.Bret: True. And let’s see what conspiracy theory Ramaswamy will endorse next, like: Did Joe Biden get his Corvette at a discount from George Soros?Gail: We can talk it over next week. Along with God-knows-what new political crisis. Looking forward already.Bret: Same here. And before we go, I hope our readers didn’t miss Ian Johnson’s extraordinary essay about the Chinese journalists and historians fighting to preserve the knowledge of China’s tragedies and atrocities in the face of the regime’s attempts to suppress it. It made me think of how badly our own sense of history, including events like Jan. 6, has eroded, and reminded me of my favorite Milan Kundera lines: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”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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      The Democratic Party Has an Old Problem and Won’t Admit It

      by

      President Biden’s advanced age (80) gets rehashed endlessly, because the human condition makes it inescapable. A deft politician can wait out almost any other liability: Scandals and gaffes fade over time; the economy bounces back; governing errors can be corrected. But Mr. Biden will never be (or appear) younger than he is today. The problem of his age will never fade.In our fixation on Mr. Biden’s age, we often gloss over the role the Democratic Party has played in promoting and lionizing its older leaders, then muddling through when illness or death undermines their ability to govern. The party’s leaders seem to believe implicitly in the inalienable right of their aging icons to remain in positions of high power unquestioned, long after it becomes reasonable to ask whether they’re risking intolerable harm.The party has come to operate more like a machine, in which lengthy, loyal service must be rewarded with deference. It is why Mr. Biden has not drawn a credible primary challenger, when polling and reporting alike suggest that Democrats are deeply anxious about his ability to mount a vigorous campaign and serve another full term.And it is that deference, from those who seek to protect Democratic leaders from all but the mildest criticism, that ensures that we keep reliving the same bad dream, where each subsequent election comes with higher stakes than the last. It leaves grass-roots supporters to see all their hard work — and democracy itself — jeopardized by the same officials who tell them they must volunteer and organize and donate and vote as if their lives depend on it. And for millions of younger voters, it becomes increasingly hard to believe that any of it matters: If defeating Republicans is a matter of existential urgency for the country, why is the Democratic Party so blasé about elevating leaders who are oblivious to the views of the young people who stand to inherit it?I peg the beginning of this recurring nightmare to the year 2009, when Senator Ted Kennedy’s death nearly derailed President Obama’s signature health care reform and ultimately deprived Democrats of their Senate supermajority, which they might have used to pass more sweeping legislation than they did. Eleven years later, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg also died in office. Her death was a hinge point where history turned and swept much of her substantive legacy into the dustbin; worse, it left living Americans to toil indefinitely under the legacy that replaced hers.There were gentle behind-the-scenes efforts and a robust public persuasion campaign meant to convince Justice Ginsburg to retire when Democrats still controlled the Senate and President Obama could have appointed her replacement, but there were plenty of liberals urging her to stick it out. Christine Pelosi, the daughter of Nancy Pelosi, who was then the House minority leader, cheered Justice Ginsburg for ignoring the calls for her to step down. “You Go Ginsburg! Resist that sexist Ageism,” she wrote.Despite all of this terrible history, we face a similar challenge today: an aging party, and a Democratic establishment not just unwilling to take decisive action to stave off disaster but also reluctant to even acknowledge the problem.When Senator Dianne Feinstein of California (90) developed complications from shingles earlier this year and was unable to fulfill her duties, leaving Senate Democrats unable to swiftly advance judicial nominations, the elder Ms. Pelosi framed the calls for Ms. Feinstein to step aside as a form of injustice. “I’ve never seen them go after a man who was sick in the Senate in that way,” Ms. Pelosi told reporters.She herself has ignored years of (gentle, always gentle) hints that it was time to step aside in favor of younger leaders with less political baggage. She did finally relinquish her leadership role in 2022, after losing the House majority for the second time in 12 years, but earlier this month, she said she would run for her House seat again.The end of Ms. Pelosi’s speakership has reduced the overall risk level somewhat. If she or Ms. Feinstein were to die in office, it wouldn’t be terribly destabilizing, the way it was when Mr. Kennedy and Justice Ginsburg died, and the way it would if Mr. Biden did. But it does feed the deeper and perhaps more insidious problem: a widespread sense of alienation among the young voters Democrats desperately need to turn out in elections.This should not go on. Liberals are apparently doomed to white-knuckle it through 2024, but there are affirmative steps Democrats could take to better allow younger leaders to displace older ones.Paradoxically, the G.O.P. may provide a model the Democrats can use. Although the Republican base is older, it does a better job insulating itself from gerontocracy than Democrats do. Republicans are obviously far from perfect champions of their own self-interest. Their penchant for personality cults has wedded them to Donald Trump, who also happens to be old, but they are vulnerable to charlatans of all ages. That’s in part because they take steps to reduce the risk that they lose power by the attrition of elderly leaders. Justice Anthony Kennedy timed his retirement so a Republican president could replace him; the House G.O.P. has cycled through several leaders over the past decade and a half, none of them terribly old. When Kentucky’s Democratic governor Andy Beshear defeated the Republican incumbent Matt Bevin, Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, encouraged his allies in the Kentucky Legislature to circumscribe Mr. Beshear’s appointment power — to ensure partisan continuity in Washington, should a Senate seat become vacant. So although Mr. McConnell seems committed to serving out his term, he has a succession plan.Democrats could adopt a similarly hard-nosed attitude about retiring their leaders in dignified but timely ways. Republicans term-limit the chairs of their congressional committees, which guarantees senior lawmakers cycle out of their positions and make way for younger ones.Even just acknowledging this issue — and encouraging good-faith dissent — would boost Mr. Biden’s credibility with younger voters. While a political conversation that sidesteps this uncomfortable topic, along with any number of others, might soothe anxious partisans, it will leave them unprepared for hard realities.Democratic Party actors may be able to convince themselves that there’s something high-minded about muzzling this discourse entirely — that vigorous intraparty criticism is self-defeating, and that complaining about Mr. Biden’s age when nothing can be done about it is a form of indulgent venting that only inflames public misgivings about the president. But they’d be wrong. We can see without squinting that his advanced age has created meaningful drag on his polling, and that it is a gigantic problem for the Democratic Party if younger voters, who are overwhelmingly progressive, come to view it as a lifestyle organization for liberals who have grown out of step with the times. Airing out widely held frustrations with the party’s gerontocracy might persuade younger voters that their leaders get it, and that their time in power will come to an end sooner than later.Brian Beutler (@brianbeutler) writes Off Message, a newsletter about politics, culture and media.Source images by Liudmila Chernetska, Adrienne Bresnahan and xu wu/Getty ImagesThe 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