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      Our Columnists Aren’t Moderating Tonight’s Debate. Here’s What They’d Ask if They Were.

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      Wednesday night’s Republican presidential debate, held in Tuscaloosa, Ala., will feature just four candidates — Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie — sparring over everything from abortion to Israel to former President Donald Trump. When we asked Times Opinion columnists and contributors what they would ask the candidates if they were moderating the debate, they came back to us with questions designed to test them on guns and crime, foreign wars and health care — exposing where the field stands on, say, military aid for Ukraine or a draconian state abortion ban. But above all, what they wanted to see was the moderators needling the candidates into taking a strong stance on the former president. Here were the responses:Maureen DowdGov. Haley, you have your first ad up about “moral clarity” and “chaos.” But you don’t mention Donald Trump. Why not?Should Donald Trump be prohibited from running for president because of Jan. 6 and all these federal charges?Kenny Holston for The New York TimesFrank BruniIf you’re elected president, would you consider pardoning Donald Trump if he’s convicted by a jury of one or more of the 91 felony counts he faces?Jamelle BouieThe Republican Party has lost the majority of the popular vote in seven out of the last eight presidential elections. Despite this, it has held the presidency for a total of 12 years because of the Electoral College. If you are the nominee in 2024 and you win the majority of the popular vote but lose the Electoral College, would you concede to Joe Biden?Ross DouthatGov. Haley, please name one United States military intervention in the last 30 years that you believe was a mistake, and explain why.Gov. DeSantis, while running for president in 2016, Donald Trump promised to replace Obamacare with some form of universal health care. Do you support repealing Obamacare with a measure that guarantees health insurance to all Americans? If not, why? If so, what would that measure be?Gov. Haley and Gov. DeSantis, if Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, is there anything he could do between now and November 2024 that would make you refuse to support him against Joe Biden? If so, please specify.For all the candidates: The Western world is aging rapidly. The Republican Party currently stands for serious restrictions on immigration. Is there any public policy that your hypothetical administration would pursue that would encourage Americans to have more kids?Erin Schaff/The New York TimesNicholas KristofGuns are the leading cause of death for children in America today. And the states with the highest firearms mortality rates are mostly Republican states. Why is that, and what specific steps can we take to reduce gun deaths in America?President Reagan was known for standing up relentlessly to Moscow. Yet if Republicans continue to block President Biden’s requests for aid to Ukraine, isn’t Russia the big winner? Has the G.O.P. come full circle from confronting Russian aggression to becoming its best hope?Michelle CottleGov. Haley, immigration policy continues to be sacrificed on the altar of political gamesmanship. Border security is important, but it is only one piece of the puzzle. As president, how would you jump-start a push for bipartisan, comprehensive reform?Mr. Ramaswamy, what would it take for you to drop out of this race and spare Americans your troll-y nonsense? A column in The Daily Caller? Your own Fox News show? The promise of a midlevel cabinet post?Gov. DeSantis, why has your candidacy been sagging? What do you plan to do to turn it around?Gov. Christie, the base seems to hate you. How do you respond to people who worry that you staying in the race any longer is helping Donald Trump by preventing non-Trump voters from consolidating behind a challenger whose campaign is getting more traction?Oleg Petrasyuk/EPA, via ShutterstockPamela PaulA question for all: Confidence in the military, while still relatively high compared with confidence in other institutions, is the lowest it’s been in over 25 years, at the same time that the military is struggling to bring in recruits. What would you do to restore trust in the military and recruit more people to volunteer for the armed services?Thomas FriedmanGov. DeSantis, if you were in Congress today, would you vote with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell to continue military and economic aid for Ukraine and sustain Kyiv in its war with Russia for the next year, or with the House isolationists against any further aid? If it is the latter, how would you react if Vladimir Putin publicly thanked you?Gov. Haley, the late Henry Kissinger became famous for his diplomacy, with President Nixon, for peeling China away from the Soviet Union back in the 1970s. If you were president today, would you consider attempting such a move with Xi Jinping’s China, or do you think we should confront Russia and China at the same time? How would that make America more secure?Gov. Haley, as possibly America’s first Indian American president, do you think we should get tougher with President Narendra Modi to limit his curtailments of Indian democracy, or are you OK with what he’s doing?Jose Luis Gonzalez/ReutersEzra KleinGov. DeSantis and Gov. Haley, in 2021, your states — Florida and South Carolina — had higher homicide rates per capita than New York and California. That was also true in 2020, and 2019, and 2018, and 2017, and 2016 and 2015. Why is that?Michelle GoldbergTwenty women are suing Texas after being denied abortions, including in cases of severely dangerous or nonviable pregnancies. Should Texas amend its abortion ban to create a health exemption?Mikala Compton/Austin American-Statesman, via Associated PressCharles BlowGov. DeSantis, you made your crusade against what you called “wokeness” a centerpiece of your governorship and a springboard for your presidential bid. You even wrote a book in which anti-wokeness was a central theme. But over the summer, polling showed that Republican voters were unlikely to be swayed by a narrow focus on rooting out left-wing ideology in schools, media, culture and business — and you didn’t mention the word “woke” in any of the first three debates. Did you overestimate the currency anti-wokeness would have with the Republican primary electorate, and do you regret such a laserlike focus on a single cultural topic?Tressie McMillan CottomOur constitutional right of “free speech” has become a partisan issue. This is having a chilling effect on research, education and public workers. How do you define “free speech”? What role should the president and Congress play in shaping the way that free speech intersects with public institutions?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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Big Donors Rally Around Nikki Haley

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      The former governor of South Carolina is winning support from some Democrats and business-minded conservatives as the G.O.P. candidate who can beat Donald Trump.Nikki Haley is beginning to gain in the polls and has won financial backing from donors such as Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder and Democratic donor, and the Koch brothers.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesA bipartisan boost for HaleyAs the four remaining prominent Republican presidential contenders not named Donald Trump assemble for the latest G.O.P. primary debate tonight, just one will arrive with any sort of positive momentum.Nikki Haley is gaining traction as the leading anti-Trump Republican, particularly among Democrats and business-minded conservatives alike. But growing support from elites may not be enough to help her catch the former president.Reid Hoffman recently donated $250,000 to a super PAC supporting Haley. The LinkedIn co-founder and a major Democratic donor has funded an array of anti-Trump initiatives. His donation, first reported by The Times, is the latest sign that some Democrats see bolstering Haley as the best way to beat Trump.News of Hoffman’s contribution came after Jamie Dimon, JPMorgan Chase’s C.E.O., urged liberals to back Haley. “Get a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump,” he said at the DealBook Summit last week. That’s on top of growing support from business-minded Republicans. The political network founded by Charles and David Koch recently endorsed Haley, and deep-pocketed donors including Stanley Druckenmiller and Andy Sabin have attended fund-raising events for her.A reality check: Despite skipping all of the Republican primary debates and facing a staggering array of criminal and civil trials, Trump still leads Haley and the rest of the G.O.P. field in polls.And support from Democrats and corporate moguls may not endear Haley to the Republican base that will start voting on the G.O.P. candidate next month: A recent fund-raising email from Trump argued that “globalist special interest donors from both parties” are forging “an unholy alliance to beat us.”Other Republican contenders are faring even worse. The campaign of Ron DeSantis, Florida’s governor, is in turmoil. Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, barely qualified for the debate and faces calls to drop out to avoid fracturing the anti-Trump opposition. And Vivek Ramaswamy, the outspoken “anti-woke” entrepreneur, is fading in the polls.Some donors are just throwing up their hands. Marc Rowan, the C.E.O. of Apollo Global Management, said that the 2024 race would come down to President Biden and Trump. “Personally, I’m disappointed,” he told Bloomberg on Tuesday.In other 2024 news: Liz Cheney, the former Wyoming representative who vehemently opposes Trump, is weighing a third-party presidential run. And Biden said “I’m not sure I’d be running” for re-election were Trump not in the race for the White House.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The Supreme Court appears wary of broadly disrupting the U.S. tax code. In oral arguments for Moore v. United States, a majority of justices seemed to favor narrowly upholding a Trump-era one-time tax on foreign income. Legal experts warned that a broad ruling could lead to a redefinition of income, potentially requiring major portions of American tax law to be rewritten.CVS will change how its pharmacies are paid for drugs. The nation’s biggest pharmacy chain said it would move to a system based on how much it pays for medicines, rather than the current model that involves complex formulas. CVS said the new arrangement would give more insight into drug pricing, but skeptics argued that it may not lead to lower costs for consumers.The N.C.A.A.’s president proposes uncapped compensation for college athletes. Charlie Baker suggested that top schools set aside educational trust funds of a minimum of $30,000 annually for at least half of their athletes, and raise compensation for women. The plan — which would take a long time to put in effect — is aimed at helping protect the N.C.A.A. from antitrust inquiries.Patrick McHenry, the chair of the House Financial Services Committee, will retire. The North Carolina Republican, the first interim speaker and a champion of the crypto industry, said he wouldn’t seek re-election. Because of term limits, he wouldn’t be able to hold onto his chairmanship anyway, though his district will most likely remain in Republican hands.Bank bosses head to the Hill The heads of America’s biggest banks, including Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs, are expected to go on the offensive on Wednesday at a Senate Banking Committee hearing, arguing that new regulation would help create further instability in the sector and harm borrowers.Capital rules will be in focus. Industry lobbying groups have pushed back in recent months against the so-called Basel III Endgame that would require banks to keep billions on their books as a backstop for potential losses. (Basel refers to the international banking standards committee.) The Fed and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation are among the regulators seeking higher capital requirements after the regional banking crisis set off by the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.The hearing may be the bankers’ last best chance to push their case that the Basel proposal should be watered down or scrapped. In prepared remarks, Dimon said the proposal “would unjustifiably and unnecessarily increase capital requirements by 20-25 percent for the largest banks.” That would force lenders to pull back, creating “a harmful ripple effect on the economy, markets, businesses of all sizes and American households,” he said.The proposal would have an inflationary side effect, driving up the cost of credit for its clients, Solomon warned in his prepared remarks, which in turn “will likely get passed on to consumers.”The pushback comes as America’s lenders contend with a slew of challenges. High interest rates and a slowing economy have put the crimp on their core lending business. Banking watchdogs, meanwhile, remain concerned about lenders’ exposure to the pandemic-hit commercial real estate sector.Don’t expect progressive senators to be swayed. In a statement, the committee wrote that “while Wall Street banks argue that stronger rules to protect the public will be too expensive, they are actually making trillions of dollars in profits every year and paying C.E.O.s several hundred times more than their median workers.”Europe races to regulate A.I. The first big regulatory regime for artificial intelligence could be signed as early as Wednesday, with European Union lawmakers in the final stages of debating the A.I. Act. The rules wouldn’t take effect for 18 months, but they represent an effort by governments to catch up with the development of a transformative technology that has exploded into the public consciousness since the introduction of ChatGPT a year ago.Europe has long been one of the most aggressive tech regulators. From data privacy to tech sector M&A, the E.U. has often been ahead of others. But the fast pace of A.I. development is testing regulators’ ability to keep up. The A.I. Act was introduced in 2021, but the tech has advanced significantly during that time. Other governments are deliberating their own rules. President Biden issued an executive order in October focused on A.I. and national security; Japan is drafting nonbinding guidelines for the technology and China has imposed restrictions on certain types of A.I. Last month, Britain hosted an A.I. safety summit for tech leaders and policymakers that included the U.S. and China.E.U. lawmakers are trying to impose guardrails without killing innovation. Some say the rules need to address the underlying technology, and are pushing to stop the use of A.I. in biometric surveillance.But some member states want opt-out options. Last month, France, Germany and Italy came out against strict regulation of general-purpose A.I. models for fear of hurting domestic start-ups. Some member states also want exceptions for national security, defense and military purposes.The latest draft of the A.I. Act focuses on “high risk” uses, including law enforcement, school admissions and hiring. Some applications, like chatbots and software that creates manipulated images, will have to make clear to people that they are A.I.-generated. Congress takes on campus battles The presidents of Harvard, M.I.T. and the University of Pennsylvania faced a congressional grilling on Tuesday over a growing wave of hate speech and antisemitism on their campuses that has angered some business leaders and prominent donors since the war in Gaza began in October.College leaders admitted to difficulties in confronting hate and preserving free speech. “I know that I have not always gotten it right,” Claudine Gay, Harvard’s president, told the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. She has come under intense pressure from influential professors, graduates and donors, including the former Treasury secretary Larry Summers and Pershing Square Capital Management’s Bill Ackman, to do more to protect students.After the hearing, Ackman called on all three to “resign in disgrace.” Summers said that Gay’s ideals were “just the right ones,” but that “there’s a lot of work to do.”Preserving students’ safety and civil rights has become a national focus. The Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights recently opened an investigation into complaints of antisemitism at Harvard. That came after a series of federal civil rights investigations into complaints of discrimination against students at some of America’s most prestigious universities, including Harvard, Penn and Columbia. Some schools have formed new task forces to address the growing concerns.The financial stakes are high. Schools that run afoul of civil rights laws could risk losing federal funding. Meanwhile, major university donors are using their clout to call attention to the rise of antisemitism on campus, pushing schools to do more to address the matter. These wealthy alumni are urging others to fight back, too.“We have our own war here in the U.S.,” Marc Rowan, the C.E.O. of Apollo Global Management, said at a recent fund-raiser. Rowan, who has criticized his alma mater, Penn, for its handling of antisemitism, renewed his call to hold the institutions accountable, “financially or otherwise.”THE SPEED READ DealsShares in British American Tobacco tumbled after the company announced a $31.5 billion write-down of its U.S. cigarette brands, six years after buying Reynolds American for $49 billion. (NYT)Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence start-up, xAI, filed to raise up to $1 billion in new capital. (The Verge)How Jeff Ubben’s second act, as an environmentally minded activist investor, fell apart. (FT)PolicyChina’s leader, Xi Jinping, is conducting a purge of the top ranks of the country’s political system, a move that could have implications for the global economy and regional stability. (Politico)A group of nuns that owns a stake in Smith & Wesson sued the gun maker, arguing that its sales and marketing strategy for the AR-15 rifle is putting shareholders’ investments at risk. (WSJ)Best of the restHollywood actors ratified their union’s labor deal with movie and television studios, but some had reservations about its guardrails on the use of artificial intelligence. (NYT)Israeli securities regulators said they found no trading abnormalities ahead of the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attacks, after researchers said they had found a spike in short-selling. (Bloomberg)Is it time to give up vinyl records in the name of climate change? (Guardian)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Haley and DeSantis Face Off: What to Watch for in the GOP Debate

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      Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie will also be onstage, but much of the attention will be on the two Republicans best positioned to become the top challenger to Donald Trump.The debate stage in Tuscaloosa, Ala., will be down to four Republican presidential hopefuls on Wednesday — with the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, still absent — as the imperative to break from the dwindling pack grows more intense less than six weeks before the Iowa caucuses.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, are in a slugfest to claim the mantle of Mr. Trump’s main alternative, and all that would come with that: campaign donations, late endorsements and the possible votes of independents and even Democrats alarmed by Mr. Trump’s authoritarian language and plans to enact a more radical agenda.But the two other candidates onstage, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, will do all they can to grab the spotlight in the hope of revitalizing their flagging campaigns.Here’s what to watch:Who will stand out on a less crowded stage?After the withdrawal from the presidential race of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, there will be only four candidates on the debate stage on Wednesday night. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesThe “will he or won’t he” speculation about whether Mr. Trump would participate in the previous debates in Wisconsin, California and Florida is gone ahead of the gathering in Alabama. The former president’s decision to sit out the events has not hurt his standing in the polls, and the question for many now is whether he would show up to a debate in the general election next fall.But as the field narrows by attrition, the final four will have more time to make an impression on Republican primary voters who have yet to decide.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota on Monday became the latest candidate to drop from the race, although he had failed to make the stage for the last debate. The withdrawal of Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina will be felt more acutely, since he probably would have qualified for Wednesday’s event. His debate performances were largely unremarkable but he made a small splash in Miami last month when he showed up with his girlfriend.The most memorable lines of the last two debates involved Ms. Haley skewering Mr. Ramaswamy. In September, she told her younger rival, “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber,” and last month she called him “just scum.”Those lines raise an important question for Mr. DeSantis as he tries to fend off Ms. Haley’s rise in the polls: Can he take her on more directly and win?Mr. Ramaswamy appears likely to continue his strategy of denigrating and baiting all of his opponents except for Mr. Trump, though the efficacy of his insult-driven blitzkrieg seems to have diminished since he shocked the field in Milwaukee in August. In Iowa City on Saturday, he said he had been “brutally frank in the last debate,” adding, “I don’t intend to stop doing that now.”Mr. Christie faces a loftier question: Is his stated goal of thwarting another Trump presidency better served by dropping out and letting a rival consolidate the anti-Trump vote?Can Haley keep her winning streak alive?The former South Carolina governor has parlayed her debate performances into a real sense of momentum. Yes, she remains far behind Mr. Trump, the man who made her his first United Nations ambassador, in national polling, but her trajectory is on a slow, steady climb, unlike those of her onstage rivals.Wednesday’s debate is the first since the political network founded by the billionaire conservatives Charles and David Koch endorsed Ms. Haley, promising to mobilize an army of grass-roots door knockers behind her. It is also the first since Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase, began encouraging other major donors and Democrats to back her as the last hope of thwarting Mr. Trump’s nomination.She needs to reassure those new backers that they made a solid bet. To do that, she will have to find the zingers she used to dismantle Mr. Ramaswamy, and turn them on the candidate now in her sights, Mr. DeSantis.She still needs to figure out, however, whether she is the candidate for those inside her party and out who fear and loathe Mr. Trump, or whether she wants to appeal to Trump supporters as a fresh face to pick up his mantle. If she is the former, she may only get so far in a G.O.P. that still broadly approves of the former president. Appealing to Trump likers and loathers has been the trick that no Republican has solved.Can DeSantis wrest the mic from Ramaswamy?Mr. DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, though well-funded, have slipped in the polls.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAfter taking glancing shots at Mr. Trump for months, Mr. DeSantis laid into him at length on Tuesday.He castigated Mr. Trump for bragging about the endorsement of a Black Lives Matter activist, for criticizing Mr. DeSantis’s strongly anti-abortion record, and for somehow blaming the Florida governor for the College Football Playoff selection committee’s snub of Florida State University, which was not selected to vie for the championship despite an undefeated season. (The University of Alabama, in Tuscaloosa, was the beneficiary of that snub, so watch for college football talk on Wednesday night.)But Mr. DeSantis’s main criticism was of Mr. Trump’s refusal to debate: “I don’t think he can stand there for two hours against me and come out on top,” he said. “I think they know that, and I think that’s why they’re not doing it.”Clashing with Mr. Trump is vital; after all, you can’t win the nomination without beating the front-runner. But Mr. DeSantis has to blunt Ms. Haley’s rise as well.In Tuscaloosa, Mr. DeSantis needs to take the microphone away from Mr. Ramaswamy, who has faded to fourth place in national polling averages. Ms. Haley, by contrast, is now solidly in second place in New Hampshire, neck and neck with Mr. DeSantis in Iowa and threatening him nationally.Mr. DeSantis’s pressing task is to reassert his status as the Trump alternative, and for him to do that, the debate cannot devolve again into a cage match between Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy.What is Chris Christie’s endgame?Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, barely qualified for Wednesday’s debate.John Tully for The New York TimesFor reasons of ego, unrelenting self-confidence or designs on his future, Mr. Ramaswamy, a political neophyte with nary an elected office to his name, is probably not leaving the primary race anytime soon. The money he is spending from his own bank accounts — $17 million as of Sept. 30 — can keep his campaign afloat as long as he wishes.Mr. Christie is, in many respects, Mr. Ramaswamy’s opposite, a career public servant without a vast fortune to tap, whose campaign’s raison d’être is to diminish Mr. Trump’s stature, not to lionize him as the 21st century’s greatest president. But the former New Jersey governor finds himself at a crossroads in Tuscaloosa.He barely made the debate stage, just qualifying under the Republican National Committee’s tightening requirements — polling at 6 percent or higher in national or early-state polling, and garnering 80,000 unique donors.And his third-place status in New Hampshire, with around 12 percent of the vote, could be seen either as a strength or as a spoiler for the aspirations of the candidate in second place, Ms. Haley, who needs a strong showing in the Granite State to slingshot her into the primary contest in her home state, South Carolina.Mr. Christie continues to denounce Mr. Trump’s fitness for office in ways his Republican rivals won’t, challenging the former president as a would-be dictator threatening to end democracy as we know it. But that line of attack has proved ineffective among Republican primary voters.Megyn Kelly is back. How will she handle the absent Trump?Megyn Kelly, right, preparing for a Republican presidential debate in Detroit during the 2016 campaign. Donald J. Trump attacked her during that cycle’s debates. Richard Perry/The New York TimesThe 2016 presidential campaign might seem like ancient history, but for many Americans, Mr. Trump’s treatment of Megyn Kelly, then a Fox News anchor, during the debates secured his reputation as a misogynist.After Ms. Kelly questioned him forcefully in one debate, he came back with, “You could see there was blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever.” Ms. Kelly was defiant in the face of angry Trump supporters, declaring that she would “not apologize for doing good journalism.”Wednesday’s debate, which will be carried by a cable news newcomer, NewsNation, will have a considerably smaller audience than those Fox showdowns in 2015 and no Mr. Trump — but Ms. Kelly, who now hosts “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Sirius XM, will be back.No doubt, she will be tough on the four participants. The question is, how hard will she press them to take on Mr. Trump?Ms. Kelly will be sharing the moderators’ desk with Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation and Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon, an all-female panel tilted to the right. The debate will be televised on the CW starting at 8 p.m. Eastern time, and streamed on the NewsNation website and the conservative social media site Rumble.Anjali Huynh More

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      The Fourth Republican Debate: How to Watch

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      The debate, featuring four candidates, will be held on Wednesday from 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern time.The fourth debate of the Republican presidential primary is Wednesday, Dec. 6, from 8 to 10 p.m. Eastern time — or 7 to 9 in Tuscaloosa, Ala., where it will be held at the University of Alabama.The debate is sanctioned by the Republican National Committee and will be hosted by NewsNation and three conservative organizations: The Washington Free Beacon, “The Megyn Kelly Show” on Sirius XM and the streaming platform Rumble.Where can I watch it?You have several options.The debate will be broadcast or streamed on all NewsNation platforms, including its TV channel, its app and its website. NewsNation will also have analytical coverage anchored by the former CNN host Chris Cuomo for two hours before and two hours after the event, and will then rebroadcast the debate from midnight to 2 a.m. Eastern.In the Eastern and Central time zones, it will be broadcast live on the CW, in a slot more commonly occupied by magic shows and “Whose Line Is It Anyway?” In the Mountain and Pacific time zones, it will be broadcast on local CW affiliates on a delay: 7 to 9 p.m. Mountain time and 8 to 10 p.m. Pacific time.An audio feed will be available on SiriusXM’s Channel 111, also known as Triumph.It will also be streamed live on Rumble.Which candidates will be onstage?Only four candidates met the Republican National Committee’s more stringent criteria:Chris Christie, a former governor of New Jersey.Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida.Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador.Vivek Ramaswamy, an entrepreneur.They had to have at least 80,000 unique donors — up from 70,000 for the third debate in November — and to reach 6 percent support either in two national polls or in one national poll and polls of two states with early primaries.What about Trump?He is skipping the debate, as he did the first three. (Though he easily meets the polling and donor criteria, he technically hasn’t qualified because he has refused to sign a pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee.)Unlike the first three times, he will not be doing any public counterprogramming. Instead, he will attend a fund-raiser in Florida for a super PAC called MAGA Inc.Who is moderating the debate?The moderators will be Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host turned radio talk-show host; Eliana Johnson, the editor in chief of The Free Beacon; and Elizabeth Vargas, a NewsNation anchor. More

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      Republicans Weigh New Debate Rules That Could Lead to More Onstage Clashes

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      The party is considering whether to open the door to debates not sponsored by the Republican National Committee, which could lead to more onstage clashes but also diminish their fanfare.The next Republican debate on Wednesday could be the last one sponsored by the Republican National Committee in the 2024 primary race, with the party considering debate rule changes that would open the door to more onstage clashes but also diminish the fanfare around them.The debate in Tuscaloosa, Ala., comes as Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is trying to assert herself as the main rival to former President Donald J. Trump, after months in which Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has ceded ground. The R.N.C. is weighing a proposal to end its demand that candidates participate exclusively in the party’s debates, with a final decision expected this week.Few have been happy with how the debates, which are overseen by the R.N.C., have unfolded so far. Mr. Trump has boycotted them, dampening interest and lessening the stakes. His rivals have been forced to fight among themselves. And lower-polling candidates have steadily been pushed out by rising thresholds to qualify.Debates are traditionally the marquee events of a presidential primary contest, with voters eagerly tuning in to watch the candidates disagree on policy and vie for their support. But the Republican front-runner’s stubborn absence this election cycle has robbed them of much of their drama.The debate on Wednesday will feature four candidates, the R.N.C. announced on Monday evening: Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who appeared to have reached the polling requirement over the weekend as party officials met on Monday to approve a final poll that would allow him to qualify.“The fourth debate is another fantastic opportunity for our Republican candidates to share our winning agenda with the American people,” Ronna McDaniel, the party chairwoman, said in a statement.The party had previously signaled plans to hold forums in January in both Iowa and New Hampshire before those states’ nominating contests. Now, those debates may not happen as events sponsored by the party, according to four people involved in the process, though no final decisions have been made. The party could also still sponsor future debates even after stripping away the exclusivity requirement. Other news outlets have continued to engage in talks to hold debates.The debate rule change idea was presented last week to the R.N.C.’s debate committee by David Bossie, who has led that group and was a former top political aide to Mr. Trump. The proposal was first reported by The Washington Post.Multiple candidates have complained about the current limits, believing they have been denied the chance for exposure elsewhere. Still, some 2024 campaigns have been leery of the role that Mr. Bossie is playing for the party given his past close ties to Mr. Trump. The party’s debate committee will formally consider the proposal in a meeting after the debate in Alabama.“As has been the process throughout the entire year, the debate committee will meet to decide the details of future debates,” said Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee, declining to answer specific questions.Ratings for the debates have steadily shrunk. The first clash in Milwaukee, on Fox News, had 12.8 million viewers. The second debate, hosted by Fox Business, had 9.5 million. The third debate, on NBC News and other platforms, dwindled to 7.5 million, according to Nielsen figures.And the fourth debate will be on a lesser-known platform than the first three, NewsNation. The moderators will be Elizabeth Vargas of NewsNation, the former Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly and Eliana Johnson of the Washington Free Beacon.Mr. DeSantis, whose super PAC has been caught in a cycle of turmoil, has been aggressively seeking more opportunities in the national spotlight, including an unusual debate last week on Fox News with the Democratic governor of California, Gavin Newsom. And in a recent appearance on Newsmax, Mr. DeSantis said that network should get a debate. “Maybe as we go forward, maybe there will be more freewheeling debates,” he said.Asked about the R.N.C.’s potential rules change, Andrew Romeo, a spokesman for Mr. DeSantis, said in a text message, “Ron DeSantis wants to debate Donald Trump and/or Nikki Haley in the early states regardless of who sponsors it.”Ms. Haley’s team was more circumspect.A spokeswoman for her campaign, Olivia Perez-Cubas, said in a statement: “Everyone knows Nikki Haley has shined in all the debates. We look forward to debating Donald Trump.”It’s not clear that Mr. Trump will be debating anyone anytime soon, coasting on his polling dominance despite four criminal indictments and 91 felony counts.The former president has boycotted all of the debates to date, arguing that it makes little sense for him to give rivals who are so far behind him any platform to hit him. Even as his campaign hopes for as many debates as possible in a general election against President Biden, he and his team have publicly called for the Republican Party to cancel its remaining debates, targeting the potential Iowa one in particular.Previously, the party has squashed efforts for candidates to debate one another. At one point, Mr. Christie and Mr. Ramaswamy scheduled a debate on Fox News to gin up interest in their candidacies, but the party said it would violate the pledge.“Trump allies in the RNC put an end to it,” Mr. Christie complained on social media. “Nothing new… Party bosses doing everything possible to keep Trump in power.”Mr. Ramaswamy, meanwhile, used the last debate to attack Ms. McDaniel, the party chairwoman, and later circulated a petition to fire her. “Where is the accountability for years of losing: 2018, 2020, 2022 and now 2023?” he wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter.His post did not mention Mr. Trump, who has been the face of the party during all of those elections. Mr. Ramaswamy has lavished praise on the former president even while running against him.The criteria to make the party debates have significantly ratcheted up since August. The minimum threshold is now 6 percent in national or early-state polling, as well as 80,000 donors. The first debate required only 1 percent support.Mr. Trump has been particularly keen on ending the debates before Iowa. The driver of his concerns isn’t clear. But Iowa was a particularly thorny state for him in early 2016, when he lost the caucuses after boycotting a debate in the state hosted by Fox News.Citing Mr. Trump’s substantial polling lead, Steven Cheung, a campaign spokesman, said, “He’s going to be the nominee, so it’s time for everyone to get behind him.” More

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      Some Republicans Have a Message for Chris Christie: Drop Out

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      Several anti-Trump Republican donors and strategists are pushing Mr. Christie to end his presidential campaign and back Nikki Haley.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, has traveled the world in his quest to stop Donald J. Trump’s march to the Republican nomination. In New Hampshire living rooms as well as the charred homes of Israeli families killed by Hamas, he has assailed the former president as being unfit to lead, antidemocratic and an aspiring dictator.But now, six months into Mr. Christie’s presidential primary bid, Republicans who share his goal of defeating Mr. Trump are suggesting an entirely different approach for the long-shot candidate.Quitting.Republican donors, strategists and pundits are publicly pressuring Mr. Christie to follow the lead of Tim Scott and Mike Pence and formally end his campaign. Many would like him to throw his support behind Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has risen in the polls in early-voting states in recent weeks.The focus on Mr. Christie’s bid reflects the anxiety that has consumed anti-Trump Republicans as the race moves into the final weeks before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15. Despite three debates, tens of millions of dollars and many months of campaigning, none of the six candidates still challenging Mr. Trump have made much of a dent in his double-digit lead. And they are rapidly running out of time.“The people who are supporting Chris are not supporting him because they love Chris Christie — they want someone to take on Trump,” said Rick Santorum, the former Pennsylvania senator who dropped out of the presidential race in 2012 after failing to gain enough traction to win the nomination. “He has a really important decision to make as to whether to back out and let his votes go to somebody else, or whether he’s going to actually improve Trump’s chances by staying in.”But the dynamic this year reminds other Republicans of 2016, when Mr. Trump benefited from the large field, allowing him to divide the voters who preferred other candidates. Mr. Christie remained in that race until he finished sixth in the New Hampshire primary. He endorsed Mr. Trump 17 days later.“Time is a flat circle, and everyone insists we relive, beat for beat, the 2016 election,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has spent years working to defeat Mr. Trump. “The main thing that Christie could do to make a difference this time is to drop out.”Mr. Christie views that race differently, saying the candidates running against Mr. Trump — including himself — failed to take the threat of his candidacy seriously enough.“We all thought, ‘well, at some point he’ll drop out or at some point fade away.’ And we all waited. Hope is not a strategy,” he said, in an interview on Fox News on Monday. “If you want to beat someone, you need to go out and tell people why he’s not right for the job and why you are.”Yet in a race in which Mr. Trump has maintained an expansive lead, Mr. Christie’s small foothold on the New Hampshire electorate may not make that great a difference.Patrick Murray, a New Jersey pollster who is the director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute, said his data indicated that only about half of Mr. Christie’s support in New Hampshire would go to Ms. Haley, while the rest would be distributed among the other candidates. The five or six points that Ms. Haley would earn would not be enough for her to come close to Mr. Trump, who leads New Hampshire by nearly 30 points.“It would help her be a closer second-place finisher,” Mr. Murray said. “It’s just not big enough to make the difference.”Surrogates for Ms. Haley have been more hesitant to call on Mr. Christie to drop out. Katon Dawson, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party who now serves as an adviser to the Haley campaign in the state, said that decision would be solely “up to Chris Christie.”“We can’t control what Chris Christie does after New Hampshire or before New Hampshire,” he said. “We can’t control what Ron DeSantis does. All we can do is watch who is raising the money and Nikki Haley is raising money.”Don Bolduc, a retired Army general who unsuccessfully ran for the Senate in 2022 and has warmed up crowds for Ms. Haley at town halls in New Hampshire, was more blunt when posed the question. “I think it’s time for all of them to drop out and just let Nikki have the passing lane and just go right into the presidency,” he said.Mr. Christie’s advisers argue that he is playing an important role by being the only candidate willing to take direct and frequent shots at Mr. Trump. Mike DuHaime, one of Mr. Christie’s top strategists, said a case could be made for any of the candidates other than Mr. Trump to drop out, given that none have been able to break the 20 percent mark in polling.“Whatever case people make to you about Christie, the other two have no path either,” Mr. DuHaime said, referring to Ms. Haley and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. “Should everybody just drop out, or should we try to beat the guy?”Mr. Christie has been more direct in his criticism of former President Donald J. Trump than Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Christie has run a relatively low-budget campaign, powered by a small staff and frequent television appearances. He has largely ignored Iowa to burrow into New Hampshire, a state where independent voters can cast ballots in the primary. Mr. Christie has made an aggressive push for those voters, who are more open to his anti-Trump message. This fall, organizations aligned with his campaign ran ads urging Democrats in the state to become “undeclared” voters and back his bid.But as the deadline to switch party registration has passed, Mr. Christie has shown signs of weakness. In recent weeks, he has barely cracked 10 percent in polling in New Hampshire. It remains unclear whether he will be on the ballot in every state. Last week, officials said he had failed to collect enough signatures to qualify to be on the ballot in Maine. Mr. Christie plans to appeal the ruling.Campaigning in New Hampshire, Mr. Christie said his path to the nomination would involve winning the state and then focusing on Michigan, which holds its primary in late February. He pointed to Mr. McCain’s 2008 campaign in New Hampshire as the model for victory. “All he did was come to New Hampshire, get in a Suburban and went from town to town to town, into town hall meetings, and he went on to win,” he said.As Mr. Christie cracked jokes and took questions from voters, he remained adamant that he was in the race to win the nomination. The other candidates, he said, were “battling like animals to be in second place” — a line that drew chuckles from the crowd gathered in a packed reception room at a small restaurant in Concord.“You know what we call second place in New Jersey? The first loser,” Mr. Christie said, as voters shouted out the answer in unison with him. “If you want to win, you got to beat the guy who’s in front of you.”His appeal won support from some independent New Hampshire voters and even Trump Republicans. “He’s the only one that shows, in my mind, the strength and fortitude needed to run this country,” said Ralph Mecheau, 69, an independent voter who met Mr. Christie at a gathering of a state employees’ union. “If you can’t stand up to Trump, then how are you going to stand up to others?”Gary Morrison, a 27-year-old Trump voter, who is a member of the state employee union, said he came out of the union town hall as a Christie supporter, and liked Mr. Christie’s policies on gun violence that focused on enforcement of laws already on the books and increased support for mental health care instead of adding more gun control laws.“The way I look at it is just making sure that they can’t just take away stuff,” Mr. Morrison said. Mr. Christie said that if he failed to notch a big victory in New Hampshire he would rethink his pledge to keep his campaign going until the Republican convention in July.That’s far too long for some strategists, who said they wanted Mr. Christie to consider a much shorter timetable.“He probably has the toughest path to the nomination, and you just have to face that reality sooner than later,” said Kevin Madden, a Republican strategist who worked on Mitt Romney’s 2012 presidential campaign. “Ideally, it would have been facing that reality yesterday, or a month or two months ago.”Jazmine Ulloa More

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      Winners and Losers From the Third Republican Debate

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      Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the third Republican presidential debate, held in Miami on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rate the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate probably didn’t belong on the stage and should have dropped out before the debate even started; […] More

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      Third Republican Debate: Key Takeaways

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      Nikki Haley staked out a clear, hawkish vision. Ron DeSantis avoided risks. And the night’s glaring absentee, Donald Trump, again emerged untouched.It was the undercard that underwhelmed.The third straight Republican presidential debate that former President Donald J. Trump has skipped — choosing instead to rally with supporters a few miles away — represented a critical and shrinking chance for his rivals to close his chasm of a polling advantage.And with only five candidates on the stage for the first time — Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — they all had far more time to speak.Yet they had precious little to say about Mr. Trump, even when given the chance just over two months before the Iowa caucuses.They sparred in a substantive debate that dissected disagreements over aid to Ukraine, Social Security, confronting China, banning TikTok and how to approach abortion less than 24 hours after Republicans suffered their latest electoral setbacks driven by the fall of Roe v. Wade.But there was something surreal about such detailed discussions unfolding among candidates who seem so far from the Oval Office — even Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who asserted themselves as the leaders of the non-Trump pack.Here are six takeaways from a debate in Miami that may best be remembered for Ms. Haley snapping at Mr. Ramaswamy, “You’re just scum.”Haley came out swinging.Ms. Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that there would be no Hamas without Iran.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesNikki Haley emerged as a power center on the debate stage, giving a forceful performance that took advantage of the night’s focus on foreign policy to present a clear and hawkish vision of America’s role in the world.Leaning into her experience as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she staked out expansive, interventionist positions that cut against Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy vision.She backed Ukraine to the hilt. She said she would support military strikes against Iran. And she said the United States needed to support Israel with “whatever they need and whenever they need it.”Most of the other candidates gave versions of the same responses — but Ms. Haley had the edge of having represented the United States on the world stage.When the candidates were asked what they would urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to do at this moment, Mr. DeSantis said he “would be telling” him to eliminate Hamas. Ms. Haley said she did, in fact, tell Mr. Netanyahu to “finish them.”As Ms. Haley vies with Mr. DeSantis to establish herself as the field’s Trump alternative, some of the party’s biggest donors were closely watching her performance as they weighed whether to spend millions on her behalf in a desperate final effort to beat Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley’s competitors recognized her rising status by taking aim at her.DeSantis is still playing it safe in a game he’s losing.The Florida governor criticized Donald Trump’s absence from the debate stage.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIt seemed, for a moment, as if this would be a different kind of debate for Mr. DeSantis. His opening answer affirmatively outlined how he would be better than Mr. Trump.“He should explain why he didn’t have Mexico pay for the border wall,” Mr. DeSantis began. “He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn’t drain the swamp.” He went on to say that Mr. Trump promised “winning” only to have his party endure years of “losing,” including on Tuesday.“In Florida, I showed how it’s done,” Mr. DeSantis declared, trying to take hometown advantage of a debate held in Miami.But then he mostly left Mr. Trump untouched, satisfied to prosecute his own case and push back on rivals like Ms. Haley. It was the same strategy he used in the first two debates, with little traction gained.Mr. DeSantis is plainly more comfortable than in the first debate. Yet he surprisingly left unsaid a development that his campaign has advertised as a game changer: the endorsement this week of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa.You can’t debate someone who isn’t there.Chris Christie took the sharpest aim at Mr. Trump, but in his absence the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesThe candidates again did little to aggressively contrast themselves with Mr. Trump, who has made himself unavailable for direct sparring by refusing to stand onstage with his rivals or, for the most part, appear with them at multicandidate gatherings on the campaign trail.Without Mr. Trump present, the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.The first question to the candidates was the fundamental one most of them have struggled to answer to Republican voters: why they, and not Mr. Trump, should be the nominee.Mr. Christie, as expected, was the sharpest in his attack, arguing that someone who faces Mr. Trump’s criminal charges “cannot lead this party or this country.”But Mr. DeSantis took only a brief swipe. Ms. Haley praised Mr. Trump’s presidency, then criticized him, saying that he had gone “weak in the knees” on Ukraine and that his time had passed. Mr. Ramaswamy defended Mr. Trump in passing. And Mr. Scott talked about himself.Nikki Haley said that she doesn’t believe Trump is the “right president now.”NBC NewsThat was almost the extent of efforts to chip away at the runaway front-runner. Nearby, Mr. Trump held a rally in Hialeah, Fla., remarking at one point that his rivals were “not watchable.”For months, the candidates have struggled to find a way to force him into the ring with them, with Mr. Christie threatening to follow him on the campaign trail and Mr. DeSantis, in recent days, lobbing crass responses to Mr. Trump’s brutal taunts. In the third debate, none of them figured out how to make it work.This debate got personal.Vivek Ramaswamy fought with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter three debates, this much is clear: Some of the candidates onstage really don’t like one another.The most loathed appears to be Mr. Ramaswamy, who from the start fought not just with the rivals flanking him but also with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign in his opening statement.At times, Mr. Ramaswamy almost seemed to be doing Mr. Trump’s bidding, attacking NBC’s past coverage of the former president’s scandals.He made acidic attacks on Ms. Haley, mocking her foreign policy and calling her “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.” He slipped in a crack about Mr. DeSantis’s footwear, suggesting that the Florida governor, too, was wearing lifts. Mr. DeSantis ignored him. Ms. Haley said hers were five inches and “for ammunition.”When Mr. Ramaswamy later invoked her daughter’s use of TikTok, she demanded, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” and then added in almost disbelief about the exchange, “You’re just scum.”During a confrontation over TikTok, Nikki Haley snapped at Vivek Ramaswamy after he scolded Ms. Haley over her daughter’s use of the app.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAbortion remains a Republican quagmire.The crowd at Wednesday’s debate.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter Tuesday’s defeats, the Republican candidates knew they would face questions about the way forward on abortion. But they mostly seemed uncertain what to say.“We’re better off when we can promote a culture of life,” said Mr. DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in his state. He said little at all about what his party should do or what he would do as president. “At the same time, I understand that some of these states are doing it a little bit different.”Ms. Haley described herself as opposed to abortion, but said that passing national restrictions would be virtually impossible, arguing that it’s crucial to be “honest” with the public. At times, Ms. Haley seemed to be trying to appeal to general-election voters. “I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice,” she said. It was the kind of line that makes Democratic strategists worry about her strength if she were to win the nomination — but also one that the G.O.P. base is unlikely to welcome.It all amounted to a reminder that Republicans, after decades of campaigning against abortion rights, have yet to figure out what to say after finally getting their wish through a Supreme Court that Mr. Trump — who also won’t say where he stands on a national ban — reshaped.Was this Tim Scott’s swan song?Tim Scott said “diplomacy only“ in the Israel-Hamas war was “a weak strategy.“Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Scott qualified for this debate by the narrowest of margins, with only a single poll — the legitimacy of which some of his rivals have privately disputed — ensuring his spot. But the thresholds will be higher for the next debate in December, and Mr. Scott’s allies acknowledge that he needs to something, anything, just to remain a factor.It’s hard to imagine that he did anything on Wednesday night to change his trajectory. He stuck to the same messages he has been hitting throughout the campaign. He described an America in need of spiritual healing and a return to Judeo-Christian values.He received more attention for what he did after the debate than for anything he said during it. Mr. Scott, 58, has never been married, and entire newspaper stories have been dedicated to a mysterious girlfriend who had never been seen with him in public.Until he brought her onstage.Michael Gold More