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      Is Trump the Democrats’ Secret Weapon?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I was moved by Ketanji Brown Jackson’s remarks last week after her Senate confirmation: “In my family, it took just one generation to go from segregation to the Supreme Court.” What a ringing affirmation of what’s possible in the United States. And how depressing that only three Republican senators could bring themselves to vote for her, if only on the principle that every president deserves to get qualified nominees confirmed. Whatever happened to acknowledging the possibility that we can respect and admire people with whom we also disagree?Gail Collins: Bret, every time we converse, I get to experience that.Bret: Ditto.Gail: But you know what our politics have become. There are a lot of people to blame for the death of bipartisanship in judicial selection, but I’ll never forget Mitch McConnell refusing to bring multiple Barack Obama nominees up for a vote.Bret: I’ll resist the urge to dwell on Harry Reid’s filibustering of George W. Bush’s nominees. The larger question is how we go forward. I don’t think we can endure as a republic if no president of either party can even appoint judges or staff the executive branch unless he has a Senate majority, too. Your thoughts?Gail: I tend to resist the we-can’t-survive-this predictions — we’ve survived a heck of a lot, after all.Bret: Fair point. We defeated Germany twice. What’s one Ted Cruz, more or less?Gail: But this kind of perpetual partisanship certainly isn’t good for the country. I guess the world will be looking toward Alaska to see how the regular public is reacting — of the three Senate Republicans who voted to confirm Judge Jackson, Lisa Murkowski is the only one up for re-election this year.Bret: Murkowski also faces a primary challenge from a Donald Trump-endorsed Republican opponent, meaning that she showed real political courage in voting for Jackson. More than can be said for a bunch of G.O.P. senators who are retiring at the end of the year and could have usefully demonstrated some principle and independence.Gail: Murkowski aside, I suspect the Republican candidates this fall are going to be running on a generally Trumpist line, which will make things worse. Do you disagree?Bret: Not clear yet. Our news-side colleagues Shane Goldmacher and Jonathan Martin reported last month that some of the primary candidates Trump originally preferred — like the Senate candidate Mo Brooks in Alabama and the gubernatorial candidate David Perdue in Georgia — aren’t doing well in the polls. Trump is also getting crosswise with Republican incumbents in the governor’s office like Doug Ducey in Arizona and Pete Ricketts in Nebraska by opposing their favored candidates, or at least favoring ones they don’t like. If anything, Trump may turn out to be the Democrats’ secret weapon this fall by dividing the party or backing candidates who can’t win in the general election. That’s how Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock were able to win their Georgia Senate races the last time around.Gail: I noticed Trump went ahead and withdrew his support for Brooks, claiming he was outraged that Brooks said it was time to stop obsessing about the 2020 election and move on.Bret: Trump is like John Cleese’s Basil Fawlty character from “Fawlty Towers,” except in reverse: You must mention the war. Or at least the “stolen election.”Gail: Still, I bet Trump could have managed to overlook it if Brooks wasn’t also running way behind in the polls.Bret: We’ll see. Right now, the generic polling leans Republican, but it could change if the Supreme Court votes to overturn Roe v. Wade. It could change even further if Ukraine manages to defeat Russia with American help. What else do the Democrats need?Gail: The Democrats need to run on ways to make the country better. One is reducing health care costs, which would include cracking down on waste and government funding for expensive drugs like insulin. Another is reducing the deficit with a tax on the very rich.Bret: The administration seems to be taking your advice on both points, though I’m not sure it will help them all that much by November. I’d like to see them get ahead of a couple of looming surges that will play into G.O.P. hands: the expected migrant surge at the border; the big cost-of-living surge; and the next Covid surge. The last one is actually tied to the first: The administration can help moderate Democrats by extending something called Title 42 to expedite migrant expulsions as a health-emergency measure. As for inflation, how about a sales-tax holiday for necessities and other basic goods for the next 12 months?Gail: Here’s a proposed deal: a sales tax holiday for basics combined with a tax increase for the rich.Bret: I always oppose tax hikes, but that isn’t the worst bargain. How about the immigration issue? The administration doesn’t seem to know its own mind, according to a fascinating piece last weekend in The Times.Gail: Well, another way to think about it is that the administration knows there’s no good answer. Any immigration policy is going to be unpopular with one side or the other — except Biden’s very, very much appreciated halt to building that stupid Trump wall.Bret: A wall I have reluctantly come around to concluding should be built, even as we do more to increase legal immigration.Gail: Oh wow, Bret, you’ve gone over to the wall! Better than going over the wall, I guess, but still …Bret: Bet some of our readers are thinking, “Both things are possible.”A wall won’t stop people from coming here legally and then overstaying their visas. But it will save some of the most vulnerable migrants from taking terrible risks to cross the border while denying right-wing nativists one of their most potent political issues.Gail: And serve as a great symbol to the rest of the world that the days we celebrated our country as a nation of immigrants are long gone. Sigh.Bret: We are and should remain a nation of immigrants. Just lawfully arrived.Gail: It’s certainly important not to encourage illegal immigration. But it’s equally important — actually more important — to raise the number of immigrants we’re bringing into the country. Given the very low birthrate in America, we’ve got to attract all the willing workers we can.Bret: Totally agree on this. Countries that stagnate demographically will eventually stagnate economically. Our Hispanic population is incredibly talented, energetic and diverse, we’ve got plenty of room to grow, and we’re blessed to have Mexico — the country where I grew up — as a neighbor. Anyone who doubts me on this score should consider what it’s like for Ukraine to have Russia as a neighbor.The case I’d make to the administration is to set out three principles for immigration: that it should be lawful, that it should be safe and that it should be compassionate. They need to take care of the first point to guarantee the other two.Gail: No problem there, but there’s a long leap from a commitment to lawful, compassionate immigration and — oh, Lord, that wall. Sorry, still flummoxed. Let’s move on.Bret: The other big domestic story last week was the failure of the Justice Department to win its case against four men accused of conspiring to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. What do you make of it?Gail: Basically you’ve got a bunch of dopey right-wing guys venting about Governor Whitmer’s Covid restrictions and talking about kidnapping her. And some genuine question as to whether they’d have done anything more than posture over lunch at Buffalo Wild Wings if an F.B.I. informant hadn’t become one of their leaders.Bret: It’s a thin line between, um, entrapment and hate, to adapt an old lyric.Gail: This kind of case always poses the question of how far our investigators can go in exposing anti-government nut jobs. Imagine what it’s like to spend months — sometimes years! — pretending to be best pals with paranoid idiots.Bret: My wife and kids know the feeling.Gail: Sooner or later you may be tempted to push things along — and then maybe create a crime that would never have happened otherwise.I’m not an expert in this case, but I do appreciate how very careful the country needs to be in overseeing law enforcement.Any final thoughts on your end?Bret: Given how high-profile this case was, it’s a real black eye for the government and particularly the F.B.I. Bamboozling foolish people into potentially criminal behavior and then prosecuting them for it in a highly politicized way is the sort of thing that fuels precisely the kind of conspiracy thinking that these people were prey to in the first place.Gail: Meanwhile, I’ve been sort of obsessing about what would happen if Russian psycho-hackers managed to figure out a way to take our power grid offline. Imagining what that’d be like gives me the kind of chills I got as a kid in Catholic school when the nuns would spend hours warning us that the end of the world could arrive any day. Then we were supposed to go home and practice hiding in the basement with our parents.Bret: The good news is the Russians haven’t even been able to manage taking out the power grid in Ukraine, so they might have a harder time against us. Perhaps the end of the world isn’t nigh, after all?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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      At CPAC, Trump Misleads About Biden, a Russian Pipeline and Gas Prices

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      The former president made inaccurate claims about his border wall, the Biden administration and a Russian pipeline, among other topics.Former President Donald J. Trump repeated familiar boasts and grievances in a keynote speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference on Saturday.Mr. Trump repeatedly invoked the lie that the 2020 election was “rigged” and mounted exaggerated attacks on President Biden. Even as he condemned Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as an “atrocity” and praised the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelensky, as a “brave man,” he repeated his misleading claim that the Obama administration had merely provided Ukraine with “blankets.”Here’s a fact-check.What Mr. Trump Said“The wall will be quickly completed. We’ll build the wall and complete the wall in three weeks. It took two and half years on the wall, two and half years just to win all the litigation, over 11 lawsuits that they threw at us. And we have it just about finished, and I said they can’t be serious. They don’t want to close up the little loops.”False. During his campaign in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to construct a 1,000-mile-long border wall that would be paid for by Mexico. By the time he left office, his administration had constructed 453 miles of border wall, most of which replaced or reinforced existing barriers. In places where no barriers previously existed, the administration built a total of 47 miles of new primary wall.Mr. Trump’s vow that he would have been able to complete the wall within three weeks also does not track with the initial construction pace. Construction of replacement barriers in Calexico, Calif., began in February 2018, the first border wall project under Mr. Trump. Construction of the first new section of wall in the Rio Grande Valley began in November 2019. That amounts to 12.9 miles of replacement wall and 3.3 miles of new wall per month.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.What Mr. Trump Said“Just one year ago, we had the most secure border in U.S. history, record low gas prices.”False. When Mr. Trump left office in January 2021, the national average price of a gallon of gasoline for that month was $2.42. That is not a record low. Gas prices fell to $2.21 in January 2015 under former President Barack Obama, $1.13 under former President George W. Bush and $0.96 under former President Bill Clinton.What Mr. Trump Said“I’m the one who ended his pipeline. He said you’re killing me with the pipeline. Nobody else ended his pipeline. Biden came in. He approved it.”This is misleading. Mr. Trump was referring to the status of a natural gas pipeline between Russia and Germany under his administration and that of President Biden. In fact, American presidents — and most European countries other than Germany and France — have consistently opposed the project, but they have limited say in whether the pipeline is built.Mr. Trump signed a law imposing sanctions on the Nord Stream 2 pipeline in December 2019, prompting a suspension in construction. But by then, most of the pipeline had already been built, with 2,100 kilometers laid and 300 kilometers remaining. Construction resumed a year later in 2020.The current White House press secretary, Jen Psaki, described Nord Stream 2 as a “bad deal” that divides Europe and leaves Ukraine and Central Europe vulnerable to Russian manipulation. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that the Biden administration’s opposition was “unwavering.”But the State Department nonetheless lifted sanctions on the company building the pipeline in May 2021. According to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service, this might be because “the administration’s ability to prevent the pipeline from becoming operational is limited” while sanctions “could jeopardize U.S.-German and U.S.-European cooperation in other areas, including countering Russian aggression.”Mr. Biden issued new sanctions on the pipeline this week after Germany announced that it would suspend the certification of the pipeline in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.What Mr. Trump Said“The reason we’ve got soaring gas prices is because Biden has shut down American energy, canceled our oil and gas leases just two days ago. Two days ago, they canceled many oil and gas leases because of the environment.”This is misleading. The Biden administration indefinitely halted new federal oil and gas leases and permits in response to a court ruling. It did not revoke existing leases. A federal judge had blocked the way the administration was calculating the cost of climate change, leading the administration to pause regulatory decisions that relied on the metric. More

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      John Brennan: Joe Biden Should Watch “The Present”

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      On a recent evening I watched “The Present,” a short film by Farah Nablusi, a Palestinian filmmaker, which was nominated for an Academy Award for live-action short film (the winner in the category was “Two Distant Strangers). Ms. Nablusi’s 25-minute film is a powerful, heartbreaking account of the travails of Yusuf, a Palestinian man, and Yasmine, his young daughter, as they traverse an Israeli military checkpoint in the West Bank twice in a single day.“The Present” establishes its context quickly, opening with images of Palestinian men making their way through a narrow passageway at one of the numerous checkpoints that dot the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Palestinians going to work, visiting family or shopping on the opposite side of a security barrier have to bear this humiliating procedure every day.Yusuf sets out with Yasmine to buy an anniversary gift for his wife. He is held in a chain-link holding pen. The ostensible reason is that the Israeli guards want to search him and his possessions more thoroughly. Yasmine sits nearby, watching and waiting in silence.The scene brought back memories of my first visit to the West Bank in 1975, when I crossed the Jordan River and arrived at an Israeli security post. As a student at the American University in Cairo, I was excited about visiting Jerusalem and spending Christmas Eve in Bethlehem. I joined a relatively short line, which moved at a steady and efficient pace.A few feet away, I could see men, women and children in a much longer line fully enclosed by steel mesh fencing labeled “Palestinians and Arabs.” I saw several subjected to discourtesy and aggressive searches by Israeli soldiers.While I was distressed by what I saw, I knew that Israel had legitimate security concerns in the aftermath of the 1967 and 1973 wars, worries that had been heightened by attacks on Israeli and Jewish targets by Palestinian terrorist organizations.Half a century has passed, and the political and security landscape of the Middle East has profoundly changed.Israel has signed peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan. The Abraham Accords, brokered by the United States last year, have paved the way for four more Arab states — the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco — to establish diplomatic relations with Israel. Hopefully, more Arab leaders will follow suit as there is no reason and little geostrategic sense in continuing to deny the reality and permanence of the state of Israel. (Unfortunately, the accords did nothing for the Palestinians except to obtain a suspension of Israeli plans to illegally annex the West Bank.)There also has been significant progress in reducing violence carried out by Palestinians inside and outside the occupied territories. The exception is Hamas, which continues to launch rocket attacks into Israel from the Gaza Strip.In the West Bank, Palestinian security and intelligence services have worked closely with their Israeli, Arab and Western counterparts to disrupt extremist networks and prevent attacks. These Palestinian agencies have demonstrated an impressive degree of professionalism over the past two decades.Despite sharply reduced tensions between Israel and the Arab world, the Palestinian people themselves have seen no appreciable progress in their quest to live in their own sovereign state. Political fissures and the ineffective political leadership of the Palestinian Authority have contributed to stymying ambitions for Palestinian nationhood.But that could change. Legislative elections in May and presidential elections in July in the West Bank and Gaza offer Palestinians an opportunity to elect representatives capable of conducting a more effectual political dialogue within the Palestinian homeland and beyond. Palestinian candidates who do not bear the sclerotic reputations of political incumbents, if elected, would help soften the deep-rooted cynicism that many Israeli officials display toward Palestinian negotiators.The major hurdle will be to reverse the trend of diminished interest that the Israeli government has shown in pursuing a two-state solution. Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has spearheaded relentless expansion of settlements in the West Bank. That expansion has brought along more concrete walls, security barriers and control points, further reducing the spaces where Palestinians can live, graze their flocks, tend their olive groves and vegetable gardens without being challenged by their occupiers.Unfortunately, during the Trump years, the United States ignored Palestinian interests and aspirations. Mr. Trump moved the American Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, rejecting the position of all previous U.S. administrations that it would endanger final status negotiations on that contested city. He senselessly severed funding to the Palestinian Authority and ended our contributions to the United Nations for Palestinian refugee assistance.In a welcome change, the Biden administration has authorized the release of $235 million for humanitarian, economic and development programs supporting Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and elsewhere in the region.The concluding scene of “The Present” shows Yusuf, tired and hobbled with back pain, increasingly angry and on the verge of violence as he attempts to return home with the anniversary gift. His chilling, emotional outburst made me think of the frustration felt by every Palestinian who has to live with the stifling security measures and political oppression attendant to Israel’s military occupation.It was his little daughter, Yasmine, though, who gave me most pause and concern. She watched her father’s patience, dignity and humanity steadily erode.I can only imagine the imprint such experiences have on the young girls and boys who live in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. They grow up traumatized by injustice, discrimination and violence. They live with the feeling that their existence is controlled by people who don’t care about their welfare, their safety or their future.The Biden administration is dealing with a dizzying array of domestic and international problems but the Palestinian quest for statehood deserves the early engagement of his national security team. The United States needs to tell Israeli leaders to cease provocative settlement construction and the sort of oppressive security practices depicted in “The Present.”A clear signal from President Biden that he expects and is ready to facilitate serious Israeli-Palestinian discussions on a two-state solution would be of great political significance.John Brennan is a former director of the Central Intelligence Agency.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 Seeks Respite in Texas, Where G.O.P. Allies Face Pressure

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      AdvertisementContinue reading the main storySupported byContinue reading the main storyTrump Seeks Respite in Texas, Where G.O.P. Allies Face PressureIn visiting the border, Mr. Trump hoped to change the focus from a mob attack on the U.S. Capitol. But Texas is also reeling from the turmoil in Washington.President Trump touring a portion of the border wall near Alamo, Texas, on Tuesday.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York TimesJames Dobbins and Jan. 12, 2021, 6:28 p.m. ETALAMO, Texas — President Trump’s choice of Texas for his first public appearance since the Capitol mob attack was not accidental: The state not only showcases the border wall, which Mr. Trump is celebrating in his presidency’s chaotic last days, but the Republican Party’s success in limiting the game-changing Democratic gains that flipped states such as Arizona and Georgia.Democrats do not hold a single statewide office in Texas, though the party has made big inroads in large cities around the state. Mr. Trump handily carried the state while eroding the Democratic Party’s dominance in counties along the border with Mexico, winning over many Hispanic voters who had not come out to support Republicans in the past.“Anyone who thinks Trump has lost support in Texas should stop listening to mainstream media,” said Julie McCarty, chief executive of the True Texas Project, a statewide conservative group. “If anything, recent events have only solidified support for him.”In visiting the border, Mr. Trump perhaps hoped to change the focus of public attention from the U.S. Capitol rampage by his loyalists last week to the wall he built along portions of the Mexican border, one of his signature projects.But in choosing to take a farewell lap in one of the most Trump-friendly states in the country, the president may have underestimated the degree to which Texas has been roiled by the political turbulence that followed the Nov. 3 election and the president’s attempts to upset the country with baseless claims of electoral fraud.As his plane touched down in the Rio Grande Valley on Tuesday, the local McAllen Monitor printed a full-page ad from critics of the president, using the Spanish term that roughly translates as “get out of here”: “You are not welcome here,” it said. “Fuera!”In Alamo, a South Texas town of about 20,000 that was the focus of Mr. Trump’s visit, several people expressed confusion as to why the president had chosen to visit at such an unsettling time. Authorities in the town, which has no affiliation to the Alamo Mission site in San Antonio or the 1836 battle in the war to create a slaveholder Texas republic, said they had “no details” about the presidential visit because the Trump administration had not informed them ahead of the trip.At the Aztek Barber Shop in Alamo, Alejandro Silva, 27, said he held nothing against Mr. Trump and did not have an opinion about the border wall.“But he shouldn’t be visiting now,” said Mr. Silva, a mechanic. “He should leave office and leave everyone alone.”The Republican Party and its politicians in Texas have been called on by donors and constituents to answer for the chaos in Washington in which hundreds of the president’s supporters rioted in the Capitol, leaving five people dead.AT&T, the telecommunications and entertainment colossus based in Dallas, said it was suspending contributions to members of Congress who voted last week to object to certified Electoral College votes for President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. Lawmakers targeted by the move included 17 Texas Republicans.The Houston Chronicle, the hometown newspaper of Senator Ted Cruz, called on Mr. Cruz to resign over his amplification of Mr. Trump’s baseless claims of election fraud. Revealing fissures among Republicans in the state, criticism of Mr. Cruz is also coming from some elected conservatives, including State Representative Lyle Larson of San Antonio.Upset with Mr. Cruz’s public pronouncements in recent days, Mr. Larson said on Twitter that the junior senator from Texas “needs to be quiet and stop embarrassing himself, his family and our state. A few others from Texas should join him.”Mr. Trump used the visit Tuesday to promote his aim of curbing immigration from Latin America. Mr. Trump advanced the border wall over the objections of tribal nations, local landowners and environmental groups, waiving dozens of laws, including measures protecting endangered species and Native American burial sites.The Rio Grande Valley is the busiest transit point for unauthorized immigration into the United States. The Trump administration made the region a focus of its enforcement efforts, including construction of new sections of wall, though it encountered resistance from many private landowners along the border.“One of the big elements of the wall that makes it so successful is we can have far fewer people working now, they can be working on other things, other things related to crime and drug prevention,” said Mr. Trump, sounding somewhat subdued, during a brief speech on Tuesday afternoon in front of a section of the wall.Despite the criticism over Mr. Trump’s visit from Democrats and immigrant-rights groups, dozens of the president’s supporters turned out in the Rio Grande Valley to voice support for the president as his motorcade made its way through the area.Elsewhere in Texas, signs of backing for Mr. Trump were also on display outside the State Capitol in Austin, where several dozen protesters, some clad in tactical gear and armed with multiple handguns, hunting knives and other weaponry, gathered to express support for the president on the first day of the Texas legislative session.Samuel Hall, the leader of the right-wing protest, said Mr. Trump’s border visit highlighted what Mr. Hall described as the president’s accomplishments on border security.“He had some problems building the wall,” Mr. Hall admitted, “but that’s because there was opposition in Congress.” He said he believes that Mr. Trump won the election, and spoke of the upcoming inauguration of Mr. Biden as a possibility, not a certainty.“If President Biden is inaugurated, I will pray for him and for our country,” Mr. Hall said. “We’re going to be in a lot of trouble.”Samuel Hall, founder of Patriots for America, speaking to a rally at the Texas State Capitol on Tuesday as officers of the Texas State Police stood by.Credit…Ilana Panich-Linsman for The New York TimesMatt Long, who identified himself as head of the Fredericksburg, Texas, Tea Party, shouted through a bullhorn in an apparent attempt to influence Republican legislators inside. “The magic R is going to lose if you don’t grow a spine!” he shouted. “You have nothing to fear except the next election!”Garry Mauro, a Democrat and former Texas state land commissioner, said Texas has continued to provide a reservoir of support for the increasingly isolated president, partly because of a massive hiring spree in recent years by immigration agencies along the border that have served as the tip of the spear for Mr. Trump’s anti-immigration drive.“He’s looking for whatever small victory he can claim,” Mr. Mauro said of the president’s visit. “There’s no statewide elected officials in Texas that are going to take him on for coming here, and there aren’t many states where you can say that.”In South Texas, Zak Borja, 21, a student and food service worker, arrived at 6 a.m. to secure his spot along the president’s motorcade route for himself and other supporters of Mr. Biden. Only six showed up to join Mr. Borja; they were soon overwhelmed by dozens of Trump supporters shouting conspiracy theories and chanting, “We are the media.”“He is coming to Texas to put on a show that he has done something, when in reality he has only incited violence and divided our community,” Mr. Borja said. “He’s only here to stroke his ego, a charade, to make it look like he’s done something.”James Dobbins More