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      Tim Scott Tackles Race and Racism in Chicago, Trying to Gain Traction

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      Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina gave his speech as his struggling presidential campaign said it would move most of its staff to Iowa.Senator Tim Scott, struggling to gain traction less than three months before the first Republican primary ballots are cast, came to the South Side of Chicago on Monday to rebuke the welfare state and the liberal politicians he dismissed as “drug dealers of despair.”The speech was at New Beginnings Church in the poor neighborhood of Woodlawn. It may have been delivered to Black Chicagoans, but the South Carolina senator’s broadsides — criticizing “the radical left,” the first Black female vice president, Kamala Harris, and “liberal elites” who want a “valueless, faithless, fatherless America where the government becomes God” — were aimed at an audience far away. That audience was Republican voters in the early primary and caucus states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina, and the donors who have peeled away from his campaign.His political persona as the “happy warrior” gave way to a chin-out antagonism toward the Black leaders who run the nation’s third-largest city, and the Democratic Party that “would rather lower the bar for people of color than raise the bar on their own leadership.”Speaking to a largely receptive audience in a church run by a charismatic Republican pastor, Mr. Scott added: “They say they want low-income Americans and people of color to rise, but their actions take us in the opposite direction. The actions say they want us to sit down, shut up and don’t forget to vote as long as we’re voting blue.”The speech came just minutes before a Scott campaign staff call announcing that the senator’s once-flush campaign would move most of its resources and staff to Iowa, in a last-ditch effort to win the first caucus of the season and rescue the campaign.“Tim Scott is all in on Iowa,” his campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, said in a statement.Mr. Scott, the first Black Republican senator from the South in more than a century, launched his presidential bid in May, with a roster of prominent Republicans behind him, a $22 million war chest and a message of optimism that separated him from the crowded primary field. To many white Republicans, his message on race, delivered as a son of South Carolina, where slavery was deeply embedded and where the Civil War began, resonated, while many Black Democrats found it naïve and insulting.“If you stop at our original sin, you have not started the story of America, because the story of America is not defined by our original sin,” he said early this year as he considered a presidential run. “The story of America is defined by our redemption.”But from the beginning, even supporters wondered aloud whether optimism and uplift were what Republican voters wanted, after so many years of Donald J. Trump and the rising culture of vengeance in the G.O.P.This past weekend, Don Schmidt, 78, a retired banker from Hudson, Iowa, put it bluntly to Mr. Scott as the senator campaigned in Cedar Falls before the University of Northern Iowa beat the University of North Dakota in football. Mr. Schmidt told Mr. Scott he was thinking of supporting him or Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor.“But,” he cautioned, “I don’t know whether you can beat Trump.”Race has lately been a particularly problematic subject for Mr. Scott. He has at once maintained there is no such thing as systemic racism in the United States, but has also spoken of having a grandfather forced from school in the third grade to pick cotton in the Jim Crow South, and of his own brushes with law enforcement simply because he was driving a new car.His audience on Monday on the South Side were the grandchildren of the Black workers who left the segregated South during the Great Migration to lean their shoulders into the industrialization of the Upper Midwest. And he seemed to invite the pushback he got after the speech as part of the political theater.Rodrick Wimberly, a 54-year-old congregant at the New Beginnings Church, was incredulous that Mr. Scott really did not believe that the failings of some Black people were brought on by systemic impediments. He brought up redlining that kept Black Chicagoans out of safer neighborhoods with better schools and lending discrimination that suppressed Black entrepreneurship and homeownership.“What we see in education, in housing, the wealth gap widening, there is statistical data to show or suggest at the very least there are some issues that are systemic,” Mr. Wimberly told the senator. “It’s not just individual.”But Mr. Scott held his ground, just as he has since June, when the senator tried to stir up interest in his campaign with a clash on the television show “The View” over an assertion that he didn’t “get” American racism.When Mr. Wimberly suggested that the failing educational system was an example of the systemic racism holding Black Chicagoans back, Mr. Scott responded: “But who’s running that system? Black people are running that system.”Such sparring has largely failed to lift his campaign, however. On Saturday, his hometown newspaper, The Post and Courier of Charleston, advised Mr. Scott and other Republican candidates to drop out and endorse Ms. Haley as the candidate best positioned to challenge Mr. Trump in the primaries, which begin in fewer than three months.Last week, Mr. Scott’s super PAC, Trust in the Mission PAC, or TIM PAC, told donors it would cancel “all of our fall media inventory.”“We aren’t going to waste our money when the electorate isn’t focused or ready for a Trump alternative,” Rob Collins, a Republican strategist who is a co-chairman of the super PAC, wrote in the blunt memo. As Bill Brune, 73, a Republican and Army veteran from La Motte, Iowa, put it this weekend: “There’s a lot of good people, but they get no attention. The good guys finish last.”Republican politicians, including Mr. Trump, who has a glittering high-rise hotel on the Chicago River, have for years used the city as a stand-in for urban decay and violence, though that portrait is at best incomplete. Vivek Ramaswamy, another Republican presidential candidate, came to a different South Side neighborhood three miles from New Beginnings in May to discuss tensions among Black residents over the city’s efforts to accommodate an influx of migrants, many of whom were bused there from the border by Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas — but also to show his willingness to speak with audiences usually ignored by Republican candidates.Monday’s appearance was, in effect, Mr. Scott’s take on adopting — and amplifying — Mr. Ramaswamy’s flair for the dramatic. Shabazz Muhammad, 51, was released from prison in 2020, after serving 31 years. Since then, he said, he has struggled to find work and housing because of his record and what he called “the social booby traps” in his way. Beyond the candidate’s critique of the welfare state, Mr. Muhammad wanted to know specifically what Mr. Scott wanted to do to help people like him.Mr. Scott, though sympathetic, was unwavering in his description of social welfare policies as “colossal, crippling, continual failures.”“Are we tough enough to get better and not bitter?” he asked his audience.Neil Vigdor More

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      Border Crisis Comes to Blue Cities After Migrants Are Bused North

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      The strain of migrants in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities has taxed resources, divided Democrats and put pressure on President Biden to act.When Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began sending migrants and asylum seekers from the southwestern frontier to New York, Washington and Chicago, he vowed to bring the border to the Democratic cities he said were naïvely dismissing its costs.A year later, the migrant waves he helped set in motion have put northern “sanctuary” cities increasingly on edge, their budgets stretched, their communities strained. And a border crisis that has animated Republican politics for years is now dividing the Democratic Party. Humanitarian impulses are crashing into desperate resource constraints and once-loyal Democratic allies have reluctantly joined Republicans to train their fire on President Biden.Eric Adams, the mayor of the nation’s largest city, declared this week that without a federal bailout and clampdown at the border, swelling migration “will destroy New York City.” The nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, has promised to sue Mr. Abbott. And the liberal mayor of the third-largest city, Chicago, began pleading last month for the White House to step in.“Let me state this clearly: The city of Chicago cannot go on welcoming new arrivals safely and capably without significant support and immigration policy changes,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, a liberal Democrat, has declared a state of emergency, activated the National Guard and started petitioning the White House for help.The migrants on state-funded buses from Texas are a fraction of the total number arriving in northern cities. Texas brags that its “Operation Lone Star” has sent more than 13,100 migrants to New York City since August 2022, but the overall strain there stems from the total, more than 110,000. Some of those migrants have family in New York, while others are attracted to the city’s history of welcoming immigrants.Still, the rising clamor is creating a rare convergence between the two parties, which for years have fought in seemingly parallel political universes. Democrats focused on issues like abortion, the preservation of democracy and expansion of health care, while Republicans warned of a migrant “invasion” and railed against “woke” liberal ideology, socialism and expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Endless Republican news conferences at the border and threats to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, were dismissed as political bluster.Now, suddenly, some Democrats are sounding remarkably like Republicans.“Upstate New Yorkers shouldn’t be forced to bear responsibility for decades of failed immigration policy, dysfunction and stupidity out of Washington, Albany and places like New York City,” said Josh Riley, the Democratic candidate seeking to unseat Representative Marc Molinaro, a Hudson Valley Republican. Mr. Riley added that it was time for Mr. Biden to “to step up and help out.”For Republicans, the response to Mr. Abbott’s gambit has gone beyond what they could have hoped for — a spreading of the pain, as millions of migrants stream across the southern border, fleeing violence and poverty, drawn to what they see as a more welcoming administration in Washington and plentiful work.Representative Ronny Jackson, a conservative Republican from Texas, praised the bus caravans as “bold” and “thinking outside the box.” Even more moderate Republican voices have praised the move. “The reality is, Abbott was shining a light on existing issues that nobody was talking about,” said Will Hurd, a moderate Republican and former House member from a Texas border district now running for president as a fierce critic of Donald J. Trump. “Blue governors and mayors are having to deal with what Republican governors have had to deal with for three years now.”Democrats seem paralyzed by a surge of urban migration that has defied easy answers — and increasingly threatens their political aspirations, from crucial tossup congressional races in the suburbs of New York City to the race for the White House.Democrats in the cities continue to castigate their Republican opponents for using migrants as political weapons, with little regard for their health or safety. Last month, a 3-year-old child traveling to Chicago on a Texas-funded bus became ill, was put on an ambulance and later died at a hospital. The party’s candidates are quick to point out that Republicans deserve a large share of blame for blocking previous attempts to enact a bipartisan immigration overhaul in Washington.But many Democrats realize complaints only go so far as they enter an election year, when immigration, border security and appeals to nativism from Mr. Trump and his imitators will roil the electorate far from the Mexican border.“The potency of the issue has not abated, and Democrats who think that it has are fooling themselves,” said Howard Wolfson, a top Democratic strategist who steers hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending as Michael R. Bloomberg’s adviser.“This is not just going to be a local New York City or Chicago or Boston issue,” he added. “This is going to be top of mind for voters all over the country next year, and my strong advice to the White House is they need to get off the sidelines and take action to address this.”In Chicago, migrants have jammed police stations and O’Hare Airport.Sebastian Hidalgo for The New York TimesThe numbers are becoming impossible to ignore. New York City is sheltering 59,000 migrants each night and projects that caring for them could eat up $12 billion in the next few years, threatening the viability of other city services.Chicago has taken in 13,500 migrants, and spent at least $250 million. Migrants have jammed police stations and O’Hare Airport, and prompted fierce recriminations from Black residents on the South Side who see disparities between investment in their communities and the money spent on migrant care.In Washington, the city has taken in 10,500 migrants since the first bus arrived outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris.And in Massachusetts, the arrival of thousands of migrant families has driven the state’s shelter population up by 80 percent in the last year.“When is enough enough?” asked Representative Henry Cuellar, a conservative Democrat who represents a border district around Laredo, Texas. “You’ve got to be able to control your borders and be able to handle the number of people that come in. You just can’t open up the faucet and let everybody in.”Mr. Cuellar said that even before Mr. Biden’s inauguration, he warned Biden transition officials that a crisis was looming with the receding Covid-19 emergency and the end to draconian border rules imposed by the Trump administration. He recalled meeting Mayor Adams at a reception this year and listening to his complaints.“I didn’t tell him who I was,” Mr. Cuellar said. “I was just smiling and thinking to myself, ‘You guys only get a drop of what we get here at the border.’”Asylum seekers, many from Venezuela, at a Catholic Charities respite center in Laredo, Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesAs the appeals grow louder, the White House has slowly ramped up its response.The Federal Emergency Management Agency in June allocated huge “shelter and service” grants to cities and states unused to such attention — $105 million to New York City, $10.6 million for Chicago, $19 million to Illinois, more than $5 million to Washington. Those numbers, however, hardly meet the need: Chicago and Illinois alone have allocated about $200 million on migrant care in the city this year.After Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York traveled to Washington last month, Biden administration officials said they would ask Congress to allocate more money to reimburse cities and states and pledged to help asylum seekers fill out paperwork to obtain work permits more quickly. They also blamed Congress for refusing to take up a comprehensive immigration plan Mr. Biden first proposed in 2021.Tom Perez, director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has begun convening weekly phone calls with Mr. Adams and Ms. Hochul, and he spoke with Governor Healey on Thursday.White House officials said they were rushing work permits to migrants who cross the border using a new app issued by Customs and Border Protection and said the administration had spent $1 billion to ease the crisis. An additional $600 million request is awaiting congressional action.But the officials said ultimately Congress must act to broaden immigration legislation.Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman, dismissed Mr. Abbott’s “cruel political stunts” and chided “Republicans in Congress who not only refuse to pass comprehensive immigration reform but are also not providing” the Department of Homeland Security with the resources it needs.He said the Biden administration was “using the tools it has available to secure the border and build a safe, orderly and humane immigration system while leading the largest expansion of lawful pathways for immigration in decades.”But the White House has quietly said no to more aggressive unilateral actions, such as using executive powers to accelerate work permitting. And Mr. Biden himself appears to want nothing to do with the issue publicly, forgoing the kind of high-profile leadership local officials have been clamoring for.“When some of these governors and blue cities like New York started calling out, I thought the Biden administration would get its head out of the sand, but not a lot has changed,” said Mr. Jackson, the Republican congressman from Texas. “I just think they don’t know what to do at this point. They’ve created a crisis they can’t manage.”Some Democrats fear that their standard-bearer for 2024 may be misreading the potency of a volatile issue heading into an election year.Tom Suozzi, a Democratic former congressman from Long Island mulling a comeback attempt next year, urged Mr. Biden to take a page from one of his predecessors, Bill Clinton. Mr. Suozzi said the president should propose to Republicans a moderate package of reforms that balances border security with “the very real human suffering that exists.”“If the Republicans come to the table with the president and the Democrats, America has a path forward,” Mr. Suozzi said. “If the Republicans reject the president’s moderate solution, it exposes them as simply playing politics on this issue.”Washington, D.C., has taken in 10,500 migrants since the first bus arrived outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris.Valerie Plesch for The New York TimesBut Democrats are divided on how the administration should respond. Leaders in some of the affected cities want an expansion of humanitarian parole programs and temporary protected status for whole classes of migrants, such as Venezuelans. Those steps would help rush work permits to overcrowded shelters, police stations and airports now housing people who are either forced to sit idle or enter the underground economy.“This does require a national response, but it has to be a humanitarian response, not an iron hand across the border,” said Nubia Willman, who led Chicago’s Office of New Americans as the first buses began arriving.And public displays of division have liberal Democrats worried that more moderate Democratic leaders like Mr. Adams may just play into Republican hands. Former Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have both quoted Mr. Adams in recent days in their own appeals to harden the southwestern border.Representative Delia Ramirez, a Chicago Democrat, said she understood the “frustration” of some Democrats. But, she said, “I just really hope that my colleagues would show why Democrats need to stick together. The blame game doesn’t get us anywhere.”She called Mr. Adams’s comments “anti-immigrant” and “despicable.”For now, even the fastest way to relieve cities’ burdens — requests for federal funds to help reimburse cities and states — has been caught up in politics. Republicans are threatening to stop any funding that would share the cost of the crisis.“The city and state made a choice,” said Mr. Molinaro, the Republican congressman from New York. “There is no willingness by the president and governor to intervene in a real way. I don’t see subsidizing the city to be a sanctuary city.” More

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      What Chicago’s New Mayor Says About the City’s Biggest Challenges

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      It wasn’t long ago that Brandon Johnson, 47, was a county commissioner and teachers’ union organizer, unknown to many Chicagoans. On Monday he will be sworn in as the city’s 57th mayor.Mr. Johnson’s rapid ascent from political obscurity to the helm of America’s third-largest city was fueled by an unapologetically progressive platform, a gift for retail campaigning, and enthusiastic support and money from organized labor. He knocked out the incumbent mayor, Lori Lightfoot, in the first round of balloting in February, then beat Paul Vallas, a far more conservative and well-funded Democrat, in the runoff last month.Now comes the hard part.Mr. Johnson inherits a proud city that has not fully emerged from its pandemic funk. Chicago’s downtown is emptier, its public schools have fewer students, and crime rates remain far higher than before the pandemic.In an interview last week at his transition office along the Chicago River, Mr. Johnson said he was cleareyed about the scope of the challenges awaiting him but confident about the city’s trajectory.Here are some of the biggest issues facing Chicago, and what he had to say about them:The city needs a new police superintendent.“It’s important that the city of Chicago has confidence in the superintendent. That’s someone who understands constitutional policing, but someone who also understands that public safety is an overall goal that cannot be confined to policing.”The superintendent selected by Ms. Lightfoot, David Brown, resigned after she lost re-election, leaving the embattled Chicago Police Department under interim leadership. Mr. Johnson, who before running for mayor expressed support for removing some law enforcement funding, will soon have to select a permanent superintendent.Mr. Johnson said he would seek someone who understands Chicago and could earn the trust of rank-and-file officers, but also someone who shared his view of policing as just one part of a broader safety strategy. He said the new superintendent must be willing to work with newly elected councils of residents created to provide feedback and to make suggestions on law enforcement in each of the city’s police districts.Migrants at a police district in Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood this month.Sebastian Hidalgo for The New York TimesChicago has struggled to house an influx of migrants.“We are a sanctuary city. There’s an incredible history of the city of Chicago being a welcoming space for families across the country and across the world.”Mr. Johnson inherits an escalating crisis: the increasingly large stream of Venezuelans and other migrants arriving by bus and plane from border states and seeking shelter in Chicago. In the last several weeks, the number of migrants entering Chicago has multiplied, filling city shelters and overwhelming police stations, where migrants have been dropped off. With the lifting last week of Title 42, a federal policy that allowed the United States to expel many people who crossed the southern border before they could apply for asylum, even more migrants are expected to flow into Chicago.The influx is both a problem and an opportunity for Chicago, a city that grew in population from 2010 to 2020, but then saw those gains erased during the pandemic, when thousands of residents moved out. Mr. Johnson said that he intended to help welcome the migrants, but said that he also wanted to make sure that Black families who have been in the city for decades are not cut out from city resources.Public education presents a formidable test.“There’s no greater institution to transform in this moment. Our public school system has to be transformed.”A former social studies teacher, Mr. Johnson most recently worked as an organizer for the Chicago Teachers Union, a progressive and politically powerful organization that engaged in repeated work stoppages during his tenure and was a chief antagonist of the most recent two mayors.Mr. Johnson has spoken repeatedly of investing in neighborhood schools as a way to address the city’s broader challenges. He said he envisioned “an education system that exposes our children to as many industries as possible in a real, tangible way,” with a far greater focus on connecting high school graduates with career opportunities, including in trades that do not require a college degree.Mr. Johnson answering a question from a high school student at a mayoral forum in February.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesDowntown still lacks its prepandemic swagger.“I believe it’s a unique opportunity for this generation to set a course that could be studied a century from now.”Downtown is not going to look the same as it did before the pandemic, Mr. Johnson said. But precisely what it will become is less clear.Mr. Johnson said he sees a chance to build on existing industries, especially in the life sciences, a sector that has seen recent growth. During his mayoral transition, Mr. Johnson has met with business and civic leaders downtown, a group that largely supported his opponent, Mr. Vallas.And Mr. Johnson will be the face of the city during one of its newest and most divisive events: a NASCAR street race downtown this summer. Mr. Johnson said that he intends to carry out the new car racing event with “care and sensitivity,” but also hopes to build on the slate of more established festivals and activities the city offers, especially those that appeal to younger people.Public safety remains a huge concern.“Do you know what safe communities do all over the country? You know what they do? They invest in people.”Mr. Johnson spoke on the campaign trail of making deep investments in communities that have seen the most violent crime, especially on the South Side and the West Side, where he lives. People will feel safer, he said, when they have strong neighborhood schools, low unemployment and access to mental health services.Those goals feel long term, but Mr. Johnson also says he hopes to make immediate changes like doubling the number of young people who have work after school and in the summer. More

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      Democratic Convention Gives Chicago, Staggered by Pandemic, a Chance to Shine

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      Republicans have cast Chicago as a metropolis of crime and dysfunction, but with the 2024 Democratic convention, Chicagoans are eager to prove them wrong.CHICAGO — Word had just leaked Tuesday that the Democratic Party had chosen the nation’s third-largest city for its 2024 national convention when Republicans began trotting out warnings about crime infestations and the necessity of bulletproof vests.But no political trash talk seemed to dampen the excitement of a metropolis less in need of a pick-me-up than a little validation for the comeback it is sure is coming.“It’s definitely a shot in the arm to the city,” said Sam Toia, a longtime Chicago booster and the president of the Illinois Restaurant Association, adding, “We are a world-class city,” an oft-used phrase here that projects Chicagoans’ time-honored self-doubt.It would be dishonest to say Chicago, which last hosted the Democratic convention in 1996, has recovered all of its swagger since the coronavirus laid it low. Then-President Donald J. Trump was already denouncing Chicago as some sort of national embarrassment even before the virus reached American shores. Its violent crime, though receding from its post-pandemic high by some measures, is still “a cancer that’s eating the soul of this city,” said Arne Duncan, a former secretary of education whose new venture addresses violence in Chicago’s worst neighborhoods.Hotel and retail traffic is back to 85 percent of 2019 levels while public transit is at 73 percent, according to the Chicago Loop Alliance. But Chicago’s downtown late last year was only at half the activity it hosted before the pandemic, 48th among the 62 North American cities the University of Toronto measured.Brandon Johnson campaigning with supporters in February in Chicago, before his eventual victory.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesThe surprise mayoral triumph last week of a young, untested liberal, Brandon Johnson, has brought with it a nervous excitement — the hope of a fresh face but the worry that comes with inexperience. Still, with the sun out, temperatures in the 70s and the summer festival season on its way, Chicagoans were already feeling optimistic. “It gives us an opportunity to feature the best of the best, in a space where there is a lot of energy and a lot of hope,” said Representative Delia Ramirez, a progressive in her first term in Congress from Chicago’s near northwest side. “This is a truly new day, with a brand-new mayor-elect, the youngest, most progressive, most diverse City Council ever, our first Latina in Congress — it’s a magical place and it’s ready.”Chicago beat out its biggest competitor, Atlanta, with three basic appeals. It’s in a state with a Democratic governor, J.B. Pritzker, who also happens to be a billionaire with deep and wide-open pockets. It has powerful unions who pressed the pro-labor occupant of the White House to choose a city with unionized hotels, unionized convention and entertainment sites and unionized restaurants. And it’s in a state whose progressive policies contrasted sharply with Georgia’s abortion ban, open-carry gun law and “right-to-work” labor requirements.Chicago’s proximity to the “Blue Wall” states that President Biden will need for his re-election — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — may have been a factor, but Georgia is no less important a swing state in 2024. The people who made the pitch were far more intent on emphasizing that no conventioneers would have to cross picket lines to crawl into their nonunion hotel beds or deal with openly armed protesters.“Illinois really does represent the values of the Democratic Party, from A to Z, especially the labor piece,” said Bob Reiter, president of the Chicago Federation of Labor.Mr. Johnson’s victory was something of a bonus, along with the landslide election last week of a liberal judge to Wisconsin’s state Supreme Court, just to the north.“Chicago had the clear advantage of a Democratic governor, a governor who was intimately involved in the bid and also a political race where a progressive Democrat just won a really tough race,” said Shirley Franklin, a former Atlanta mayor who was part of the public campaign to bring the convention to the South.Had Mr. Johnson’s much more conservative rival, Paul Vallas, prevailed, Democratic Party officials would have had to figure out how — or whether — to embrace a mayor whom many of them had spent months painting as a secret Republican who used fear tactics and crime to garner support from Chicago-area Republicans.Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois was instrumental in bringing the Democrats’ convention to Chicago.Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesThe city’s liberal leaders hope convention organizers will elevate Mr. Johnson, as they try to energize young voters who have been supercharged by issues like abortion and guns but have not quite warmed to their octogenarian president.“Democrats need to show that we have people on the mic, front and center, that excite people, that unite people and give them hope that we can come together,” Ms. Ramirez said.Party officials are unsure what role the new mayor might play at the convention. Mr. Johnson may not have all the internal party baggage that Mr. Vallas had, but he did openly discuss “defunding” the police during the civil rights protests that followed the murder of George Floyd. More than a year before the actual convention, Republicans are already latching onto Chicago’s reputation for criminal violence and political dysfunction.“What’s the bigger concern, sirens drowning out nominating speeches or what items attendees must leave at home to make room for their bulletproof vest in their suitcase?” quipped Will Reinert, a spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee.The right-wing website Breitbart blared, “Democrats Choose Chicago, America’s Murder Capital.”Jeffrey Blehar, a Chicago-based contributor for the conservative National Review, predicted, “Democratic conventioneers are in for an entirely new experience in either highly militarized downtown security or exciting street-crime adventure.”If, by the summer of 2024, crime rates are improving and Chicago’s police force is amply funded, Mr. Johnson may well be center stage. If trends go otherwise, he may not be.What is clear, city boosters say, is that Chicago will be ready, with Michelin-starred restaurants within walking distance of the arena, gracious hotels scrubbed of their pandemic dust and city residents eager to prove their detractors wrong.“Are there things we need to snap into place post-pandemic? Sure,” Mr. Reiter said. “This event helps us clinch that.” Maya King More

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      5 Reasons Democrats Picked Chicago for Their 2024 Convention

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      Party leaders said the choice reflected their momentum in the Midwest. But the political map was only one factor behind the decision.President Biden’s decision to host the Democratic National Convention in Chicago represents the triumph of practicality over sentimentality.He picked a major Midwestern city with ample labor-friendly hotels, good transportation and a billionaire governor happy to underwrite the event. That combination overpowered the pull Biden felt from runner-up Atlanta, the capital of a state Mr. Biden won for Democrats in 2020 for the first time in a generation.Chicago — unlike the last four Democratic convention cities — is not in a presidential battleground. But it is the cultural and economic capital of the American Midwest. The United Center, the convention arena, sits about an hour away from two critical presidential battleground states, Wisconsin and Michigan, with sometimes-competitive Minnesota nearby.Democrats used the choice to highlight their commitment to protecting the “blue wall” of Midwestern states that have been critical to their White House victories. But the electoral map wasn’t the only factor. Here are the top reasons Chicago was selected.Last week, Chicago elected Brandon Johnson, a progressive Democrat, as the new mayor.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesLaborMr. Biden said during his first year in office that he would be “the most pro-union president leading the most pro-union administration in American history.”So it would have been politically tricky at best for him to send a national political convention to Atlanta, a city with comparatively few unionized hotels in a so-called right-to-work state.An Atlanta convention could have prompted organized labor to limit its financial contributions, or even orchestrate outright boycotts. When President Barack Obama took the Democratic convention to Charlotte in 2012, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers skipped the event.“Some of our labor members have felt that they’ve been left behind,” said Lonnie Stephenson, who retired as president of the I.B.E.W. last year. “I think this shows the commitment of the Democratic Party to support that part of the country.”Money and J.B. PritzkerConventions are expensive and the money to pay for them can be hard to come by. The nominee does not want to divert dollars for campaigning in battleground states to an elaborate party. And the Democratic base is increasingly hostile to many of the large corporations that have historically underwritten conventions.Enter J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois, a billionaire who also happens to have been a former top party fund-raiser.“We have a very generous local bunch of corporate leaders and corporations in the Fortune 500,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said.Evan Jenkins for The New York TimesMr. Pritzker was central to Chicago’s bid. He personally lobbied Mr. Biden. And before the announcement Tuesday, he privately pledged fund-raising for the convention, which is a relief to party officials..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“We have a very generous local bunch of corporate leaders and corporations in the Fortune 500,” Mr. Pritzker said in an interview on Tuesday. “I’m, of course, personally committed to engage in the fund-raising that’s necessary.”Implicit in that promise is that Mr. Pritzker, who spent more than $300 million on his two campaigns for governor, will serve as a financial backstop if outside money does not materialize.Political geographyDemocrats were quick to talk about other factors. They held up the selection of Chicago as a symbol of the party’s investment in the Midwest, and the central role the region will play in Mr. Biden’s path to victory in 2024.“The Midwest reflects America,” said Jaime Harrison, the party chairman.Republicans had the same idea. They announced last August that their convention would be in Milwaukee in July 2024, meaning that the two conventions will be within driving distance. (The Democrats will meet in August.)But the reality is that the political implications for the host city and state are often overblown.Democrats hosted in North Carolina (2012) and Pennsylvania (2016), and still lost those states. Republicans hosted in Minnesota (2008) and Florida (2012), and lost both times. And in 2016, Republicans hosted Donald J. Trump’s nominating convention in Cleveland but the event divided the party’s Ohio leadership. The Republican governor, John Kasich, and its senator, Rob Portman, largely stayed away, then Republicans went on to win the state anyway.Still, the decision stung in Georgia, where Democrats had made a strong political case for hosting.Mayor Andre Dickens of Atlanta called Georgia “the battleground that will decide the 2024 election.”And Erick Allen, a former state representative who is the party chairman in suburban Cobb County, said Democrats were making a mistake.“I think they got it wrong,” he said. “There’s an opportunity to use the convention in Atlanta as a regional win for the Democratic Party. And I think that’s now going to be harder.”Logistics, logistics, logisticsConventions are international events that require tens of thousands of hotel rooms and a transportation and law enforcement network that can involve dozens of local, state and federal agencies.Chicago here had an advantage in the number of hotel rooms, 44,000, within a reasonable distance of the convention site, along with a public transit network that has three train lines that have stops within a few blocks of the arena.“The bottom line is Chicago can hold a convention of this size in a very centrally located, easy to get around way,” said Senator Tammy Duckworth, an Illinois Democrat.More compelling to the Democratic National Committee was the fact that Chicago’s United Center sits on a plot of 45 acres of privately owned land, making it easier to secure and control activities outside. The arena also has twice as many suites as Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, which would have hosted the convention there. Those suites will serve as magnets for the party’s high-dollar donors.Crime and local politicsIt’s pretty clear how Republicans will portray Mr. Biden’s convention city.A spokesman for the campaign arm of House Republicans, Will Reinert, mocked the selection: “What’s the bigger concern: sirens drowning out nominating speeches or what items attendees must leave at home to make room for their bulletproof vest in their suitcase?”(Republicans notably did not mention crime rates when they selected Milwaukee, which had a higher homicide rate than Chicago in 2022.) Democrats answered that pandemic-era spikes in crime were easing, in Chicago and across the country. As a political issue, the tough-on-crime messaging may also be losing its power. The city this month elected a new mayor, Brandon Johnson, who defeated a more conservative rival backed by the local police unions who focused his campaign on the issue of addressing the city’s crime.“The truth is that things have gotten better and better,” Mr. Pritzker said. “It’s a recovery across the nation in major cities that includes a recovery on the issue of crime. Things are better than they were.”Maya King More

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      How Brandon Johnson Made Up Ground and Won Chicago’s Mayoral Race

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      Mr. Johnson, a progressive county commissioner, won over liberal voters across the city after finishing second in a first round of balloting.CHICAGO — In the final days of the mayoral campaign in Chicago, Brandon Johnson drew more than 4,000 people to a jubilant rally featuring Senator Bernie Sanders, who endorsed him. He crisscrossed the South and West Sides, visiting six churches in a single Sunday. In a last push on Election Day, an army of volunteers for Mr. Johnson knocked on 46,000 doors across the city, whipping up enthusiasm and encouraging last-minute voters to get to the polls.The coalition that Mr. Johnson needed — young people, Black voters on the South and West Sides, a sizable number of Latino voters, white progressives on the North Side and along the lakefront — was coming together.On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson, a Democratic county commissioner who was unknown to many Chicagoans a few months ago, came from behind to defeat Paul Vallas, a more conservative Democrat and a former school executive who entered the runoff campaign with a significantly larger base of support. Mr. Vallas, 69, was the favorite of many moderate and conservative voters, running on a law-and-order platform in which he promised to expand the police force and crack down on crime.On Tuesday, Mr. Johnson, a county commissioner who was unknown to many Chicagoans a few months ago, came from behind to defeat Paul Vallas.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesBut even though large numbers of Chicagoans had said in polls that they considered public safety to be the most important issue in the election, it was Mr. Johnson, 47, who captured the slim majority of votes in Tuesday’s election. He tapped into the vast network of progressive groups in liberal Chicago — from the powerful teachers’ union to smaller, ward-based political organizations — who focused on field work to rally voters. Mr. Johnson pitched voters on a public safety plan that went beyond policing but distanced himself from past support for defunding of law enforcement.Chicago voters chose Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and union organizer with more liberal polices than his opponent Paul Vallas.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesMr. Johnson took advantage of widespread doubts among Democratic voters over Mr. Vallas’s party identification, ever since the emergence of a television interview from 2009 in which Mr. Vallas called himself “more of a Republican than a Democrat.”And Mr. Johnson capitalized on key endorsements to bolster his credibility among voters who did not know him well, especially those from Senator Sanders and Representative Jesús G. García, a progressive congressman with a base of support in mostly Hispanic neighborhoods on the West Side.“You walk into a runoff with a certain base, but then you’ve got to expand your base beyond that,” Andre Vasquez, a City Council member who organized for Mr. Johnson, said on Wednesday. “The Latino community did better for Brandon than expected. The North Side performed well. It feels like a coalition of everything.”Still, Mr. Johnson will take charge of a deeply divided Chicago. Mr. Vallas, who was once in charge of the city’s public school system, won nearly 49 percent of the vote to Mr. Johnson’s 51 percent, with thousands of mail-in ballots yet to be counted. In the first round of voting in February, Mr. Vallas received the most votes. Large numbers of Chicagoans said in polls that they considered public safety to be the most important issue in the election.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesAhead of the runoff, Mr. Johnson worked to increase turnout among young voters and broaden his support among Hispanic residents.“That’s one thing that really caught my attention about Brandon: He’s out here with my people, my Hispanic community, advocating for himself,” said Lily Cruz, 22, a college student from the Southwest Side who voted for Mr. Johnson. “I feel like he has put more effort than I’ve seen any other politician that wants to run for office,” she added.Mr. Johnson performed well in some largely white neighborhoods near Lake Michigan and in predominantly Hispanic areas northwest of downtown, just as he had in a first round of voting in February. But unlike then, Mr. Johnson, who is Black, dominated on Tuesday in wards with Black majorities, winning 80 percent of the vote in some of those areas on the South and West Sides.Chicago Mayor Runoff Election Results More

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      After His Arraignment, Trump Lashes Out

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      More from our inbox:‘A Great Day for Liberals’ in Wisconsin and ChicagoA Renewed Interest in Freudian PsychoanalysisLos cargos contra Trump representan la culminación de una investigación de casi cinco años de duración.Dave Sanders para The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump Charged With 34 Felonies” (front page, April 5):After Judge Juan M. Merchan warned at Donald Trump’s arraignment that all parties must refrain from making statements about the case with the potential to incite violence and civil unrest, what does the former president who can’t keep his mouth shut do during his speech a few hours later?He says hateful things about Judge Merchan and his family, and vilifies District Attorney Alvin Bragg, District Attorney Fani Willis in Georgia and the special counsel Jack Smith.And one of the former president’s sons put a photograph of Judge Merchan’s daughter on social media — a clear invitation to violence.It’s time for the former president to be gagged. And when he speaks out with hateful words again, a contempt order and jail time may put a sock in his mouth. About time.Gail ShorrWilmette, Ill.To the Editor:Crowd size has always been important to Donald Trump. It is the metric he uses, along with TV ratings, to measure his impact, to gauge his popularity, to feed his ego.The crowd that showed up Tuesday at his arraignment was hardly composed overwhelmingly of Trump supporters. It looked as if the media and anti-Trump people more than countered his base.No matter how Mr. Trump spins it, no matter how many times at his future rallies he proclaims an overwhelming showing of support in New York City, the camera doesn’t lie.It was good to see him cut down to size Tuesday. For the first time in his adult life he could not control the narrative. He called for a massive protest, he predicted “death and destruction” if he was charged, and he got neither.Len DiSesaDresher, Pa.To the Editor:The April 5 front-page headline “Even as Biden Has Oval Office, Predecessor Has the Spotlight” is a statement that is true only because your newspaper and other media outlets allow Donald Trump to occupy center stage.This behavior of the media has been mentioned many times before, and many believe that the tens of millions of dollars’ worth of free publicity provided to Mr. Trump during the 2016 campaign contributed to his winning the election.It is now 2023 and we are facing an election that could well decide the future of America. I am therefore requesting that The Times stop paying so much attention to Mr. Trump (we’ve heard everything he has to say many times before) effective immediately.David SommersKensington, Md.To the Editor:I felt a real jolt seeing the photo of former President Donald Trump seated at the table in a Manhattan courtroom. It was the jolt of the norms of American justice falling back into alignment.Christopher HermanWashington‘A Great Day for Liberals’ in Wisconsin and ChicagoJanet Protasiewicz, the liberal candidate in Wisconsin’s Supreme Court election, during her election night party in Milwaukee on Tuesday. She ran on her open support of abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers” (news article, April 5):While New York and the nation were fixated on the circus that was Donald Trump’s arraignment, a special election was held in Wisconsin that decided whether conservatives or liberals would control that state’s Supreme Court. Janet Protasiewicz, a Milwaukee County judge, won the race and gave liberals control of the highest court in Wisconsin.Wisconsin is an important swing state, and this new balance of power in the court will have dramatic effects on abortion rights, potential election interference and how election districts are drawn. Conservatives, who have had control of the Supreme Court, will no longer be able to gerrymander voting districts to favor Republicans, nor will they be able to successfully challenge the results of a free and fair election.While this is only one state, we may see similar results in other swing states like Michigan, Pennsylvania and, yes, even Texas. Donald Trump is to Democrats the gift that just keeps on giving.Henry A. LowensteinNew YorkTo the Editor:Three news stories from your newspaper indicate that Tuesday was a great day for liberals and progressives: “Trump Charged With 34 Felonies,” “Liberal Wins Wisconsin Court Race, in Victory for Abortion Rights Backers” and “Rejecting a ‘Republican in Disguise,’ Chicago Voters Elect Johnson as Next Mayor.”While conservative Republicans are obsessed with culture wars and MAGA, progressives are making political headway. Let’s hope that we continue on this march to liberalism till our nation is free from prejudices, curbs on reproductive and gender freedoms, relentless gun-related violence, etc.Michael HadjiargyrouCenterport, N.Y.A Renewed Interest in Freudian Psychoanalysis Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Renstrom for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Back to the Couch With Freud” (Sunday Styles, March 26):It is true that people “see what they want in Freud.” Thus, a younger generation might think Freud “gay friendly” because a 1935 letter declared, “Homosexuality is nothing to be ashamed of, no vice, no degradation.”However, the article omits that Freud went on to describe homosexuality in that same letter as an “arrest of sexual development.”Freud’s theory that gay people suffered from psychological stunted growth rationalized many decades of discrimination in which openly gay men and women were refused psychoanalytic training because they were “developmentally arrested.” Only in 1991 did the American Psychoanalytic Association change its policies refusing admission to gay candidates.I am glad that Freud is having a renaissance. However, any reading or interpretation of his work should not ignore the historical context in which he lived and the ways, for better or worse, in which some of his theories have been used to discriminate.Jack DrescherNew YorkThe writer, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Columbia University, is the author of “Psychoanalytic Therapy and the Gay Man.”To the Editor:I was pleased to see New York Times coverage of the “Freudaissance,” which I have been a joyful participant in for more than a decade now, both personally and professionally.One of the understandings I have come to, having spent countless hours on both sides of the proverbial couch, in both psychoanalytic and cognitive behavioral contexts, is that these two approaches do not really diverge from each other as much as many tend to assume that they do.I see the C.B.T. founder Aaron Beck’s three levels of cognition (automatic thoughts, core beliefs and cognitive schemas) mapping neatly onto Freud’s topographical model of the mind (the conscious, preconscious and unconscious, respectively).And I see the dialectic behavioral therapy founder Marsha Linehan’s construct of the “wise mind” as an integration of the rational and emotional minds matching Freud’s structural model of the ego as a synthesis of superego and id.Different terms resonate differently in different generations and with different individuals, but rather than disproving or undermining Freud’s theories, I see today’s evidence-based approaches as indications that the father of modern psychology was apparently onto something more than a century ago.Rachel N. WynerWest Hempstead, N.Y.The writer is a clinical psychologist. More

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      Rejecting a ‘Republican in Disguise,’ Chicago Voters Elect Johnson as Next Mayor

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      In a largely liberal city, Chicago voters chose Brandon Johnson, a county commissioner and union organizer, over Paul Vallas, who took a hard line on crime.CHICAGO — Rufus Burns, a 73-year-old resident of Chicago’s West Side, voted for Brandon Johnson for Chicago mayor on Tuesday. But it was really more of a vote against Paul Vallas.“A Republican in disguise,” he said of Mr. Vallas.Ever since the resurfacing of a television interview from 2009 — during which Mr. Vallas called himself “more of a Republican than a Democrat” — many Chicagoans in this overwhelmingly Democratic city have doubted whether Mr. Vallas, a former schools executive, was really the Democrat that he more recently claimed to be.Mr. Johnson, a county commissioner with more liberal policies on education, housing and policing, won the mayoral election in a close race, according to a projection by The Associated Press. At the polls on Tuesday, some voters said that as they considered the choice between Mr. Johnson, 47, and Mr. Vallas, 69, they were largely swayed by a sense that Mr. Johnson was the true progressive in the race.“It was pretty obvious for me,” said Annie Wang, 22, a business analyst who lives in the South Loop. “Johnson is the much more progressive candidate. Vallas was closer to the Republican Party. That made all the difference.”Carmen Moore, a schoolteacher who lives in the Austin neighborhood on the West Side, said that she cast a ballot for Mr. Johnson because she felt he would be a better agent for addressing systemic issues on the South and West Sides of the city. Then, she added, there was that clip from Mr. Vallas’s television interview, which began playing as a campaign ad in early February.“That kind of got me from the beginning,” she said. “That was one thing that stuck out for me.”In Hyde Park on Chicago’s South Side, Richard Strier, a retired professor of English literature at the University of Chicago, said he was worried that Mr. Vallas was a closet Republican.“Vallas makes me nervous,” he said. “I’m basically voting against Vallas for someone who is more progressive.”Mr. Vallas pitched himself to a voters as a tough-on-crime technocrat who would hire thousands more police officers and make the city safer than it has been since the pandemic, when shootings and homicides spiked. But he also spent much of the campaign trying to convince voters that he was a devoted Democrat.On the campaign trail, he cited support from Black leaders, including Jesse White, the former Illinois secretary of state, and surrounded himself with Democratic City Council members who lined up behind him at events and vouched for his credibility and experience.Voting at Beard Elementary School on Tuesday.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesPaul Vallas, lower right, speaks with reporters at Manny’s Deli on election day.Mustafa Hussain for The New York TimesOne major obstacle for Mr. Vallas among liberal voters was his early endorsement by the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, a union representing rank-and-file officers whose leader, John Catanzara, has alienated many Chicagoans with strident hard right positions. (Mr. Catanzara, for example, defended the rioters who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, then apologized.)Kristen Lopez, 30, a graduate student on the South Side, said on Tuesday that when she learned that Mr. Vallas was endorsed by the police union, she knew who would get her vote for mayor: Mr. Johnson.“That made my choice for me,” she said.Crime was one of Ms. Lopez’s general concerns, she said, but she also cared about issues like gentrification and affordable housing — and rejected Mr. Vallas’s notion of adding more police officers to the force.“Obviously, giving the police more power hasn’t worked so far,” she said. But for some voters, it was Mr. Vallas’s more conservative policies, especially on crime and policing, that drew them to him.Brad Walker, 44, who lives on the city’s North Side, described himself as an independent who is liberal on social issues, but a strong proponent of gun rights and financial responsibility.He voted for Mr. Vallas because progressives “have been very weak” on rising crime in Chicago, he said.“The one thing Chicago was known for was its cleanliness and safety,” he said. “If you’re going to be in the city and pay high taxes, you want to feel safe.”As he cast a vote in downtown Chicago, Daniel Lancaster, 37, an engineer who lives in Roscoe Village, a neighborhood on the North Side, said that he saw the two candidates as far apart politically. Mr. Johnson was “the Bernie Democrat,” he said, noting his endorsement by the progressive Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont.“For me, it was more of a vote for an ideal,” he said.Voting for Mr. Johnson was riskier, Mr. Lancaster conceded. His proposals for solving crime were more long term than Mr. Vallas’s, with calls to invest more deeply in education and affordable housing.“There’s a lot of political theory behind it, but it’s going to take more time,” he said.Brandon Johnson holds his I VOTED card outside the Lorraine Hansberry Apartments polling site.Jim Vondruska for The New York TimesIn the Far North Side neighborhood of Rogers Park, on the shore of Lake Michigan, Cal Graham, 62, said he took Mr. Vallas’s years-ago description of himself as a Republican seriously.“He said he was,” Mr. Graham said.But Mr. Graham said that he remains unsure if Mr. Johnson is better equipped to handle the crime problem in Chicago.“I don’t know until one of them gets in office,” he said. “That’s the only way you can tell. They all have ideas but nobody has the solution.”For Kevin Yahampath, 23, a business analyst, choosing between Mr. Johnson and Mr. Vallas required a last-minute gut check. Before he headed into a polling station in the Loop late Tuesday afternoon, he logged onto an online quiz on the Chicago Sun-Times website, designed to help voters see which candidate aligned with their politics.The quiz told Mr. Yahampath that he was a Johnson voter.“I kind of expected it,” he said. “I knew Vallas was to the right.”Robert Chiarito More