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      This Election Year Is Unlike Any Other

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      At the outset of this election year, with Donald Trump leading the race to be the Republican presidential nominee, Americans should pause to consider what a second Trump term would mean for our country and the world and to weigh the serious responsibility this election places on their shoulders.By now, most American voters should have no illusions about who Mr. Trump is. During his many years as a real estate developer and a television personality, then as president and as a dominant figure in the Republican Party, Mr. Trump demonstrated a character and temperament that render him utterly unfit for high office.As president, he wielded power carelessly and often cruelly and put his ego and his personal needs above the interests of his country. Now, as he campaigns again, his worst impulses remain as strong as ever — encouraging violence and lawlessness, exploiting fear and hate for political gain, undermining the rule of law and the Constitution, applauding dictators — and are escalating as he tries to regain power. He plots retribution, intent on eluding the institutional, legal and bureaucratic restraints that put limits on him in his first term.Our purpose at the start of the new year, therefore, is to sound a warning.Mr. Trump does not offer voters anything resembling a normal option of Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, big government or small. He confronts America with a far more fateful choice: between the continuance of the United States as a nation dedicated to “the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity” and a man who has proudly shown open disdain for the law and the protections and ideals of the Constitution.If in 2016 various factions of the electorate were prepared to look beyond Mr. Trump’s bombast in the hope that he might deliver whatever it was they wanted without too much damage to the nation, today there is no mystery about what he will do should he win, about the sorts of people he will surround himself with and the personal and political goals he will pursue. There is no mystery, either, about the consequences for the world if America re-elects a leader who openly displays his contempt for its allies.Mr. Trump’s four years in the White House did lasting damage to the presidency and to the nation. He deepened existing divisions among Americans, leaving the country dangerously polarized; he so demeaned public discourse that many Americans have become inured to lies, insults and personal attacks at the highest levels of leadership. His contempt for the rule of law raised concerns about the long-term stability of American democracy, and his absence of a moral compass threatened to corrode the ideals of national service.The Republic weathered Mr. Trump’s presidency for a variety of reasons: his lack of prepared agenda, the disruptions of the Covid-19 pandemic and the efforts of appointees who tried to temper his most dangerous or unreasonable demands. Most important, it survived because of the people and institutions in his administration and in the Republican Party who proved strong enough to stand up to his efforts to undermine the peaceful transfer of power.It is instructive in the aftermath of that administration to listen to the judgments of some of these officials on the president they served. John Kelly, a chief of staff to Mr. Trump, called him the “most flawed person I’ve ever met,” someone who could not understand why Americans admired those who sacrificed their lives in combat. Bill Barr, who served as attorney general, and Mark Esper, a former defense secretary, both said Mr. Trump repeatedly put his own interests over those of the country. Even the most loyal and conservative of them all, Vice President Mike Pence, who made the stand that helped provoke Mr. Trump and his followers to insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, saw through the man: “On that day, President Trump also demanded that I choose between him and the Constitution,” he said.There will not be people like these in the White House should Mr. Trump be re-elected. The former president has no interest in being restrained, and he has surrounded himself with people who want to institutionalize the MAGA doctrine. According to reporting by the Times reporters Maggie Haberman, Charlie Savage and Jonathan Swan, Mr. Trump and his ideological allies have been planning for a second Trump term for many months already. Under the name Project 2025, one coalition of right-wing organizations has produced a thick handbook and recruited thousands of potential appointees in preparation for an all-out assault on the structures of American government and the democratic institutions that acted as checks on Mr. Trump’s power.The project ties in with plans from Mr. Trump and his supporters to reclassify tens of thousands of federal workers so they can be fired if they do not buy fully into the Trump agenda. He also plans to strip the Justice Department of its independence in order to use it to wreak vengeance on those who, in his view, failed to concoct a victory for him in the 2020 election or otherwise didn’t support his unconstitutional demands. There is more, including threats by Mr. Trump to find ways to use federal troops against those who might protest his policies and practices. These ambitions demonstrate that the years out of office and the mounting legal challenges he faces have only sharpened his worst instincts.Mr. Trump was impeached twice as president and since leaving office has been charged in four criminal cases — two related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, one over hush money paid to a porn star and another for hoarding classified documents after he left office and impeding the government’s efforts to retrieve them. No other sitting or former president has ever been indicted on criminal charges. Not only has Mr. Trump shown no remorse for these actions, he has given no sign that he understands these indictments to be anything but a political crusade meant to undermine him. He continues to claim that the Jan. 6 insurrection has been misrepresented. “There was love and unity,” he said in an interview last August. And he has suggested that, if re-elected, he could use his presidential powers to pardon himself.Mr. Trump’s forays into foreign affairs remain dangerously misguided and incoherent. During his presidency, he displayed consistent admiration for autocratic leaders — including Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong-un — and contempt for our democratic allies. While in the White House, he repeatedly threatened to leave NATO, an alliance critical to the stability of Europe that he sees only as a drain on American resources; now his campaign website says, without elaborating, that he plans to “finish” the process of “fundamentally re-evaluating NATO’s purpose and NATO’s mission.”He has announced his intention to abandon Ukraine, leaving it and its neighbors vulnerable to further Russian aggression. Encouraged by an American president, leaders who rule with an iron fist in Hungary, Israel, India and elsewhere would face far less moral or democratic pressure.Mr. Trump has made clear his conviction that only “losers” accept legal, institutional or even constitutional constraints. He has promised vengeance against his political opponents, whom he has called “vermin” and threatened with execution. This is particularly disturbing at a time of heightened concern about political violence, with threats increasing against elected officials of both parties.He has repeatedly demonstrated a deep disdain for the First Amendment and the basic principles of democracy, chief among them the right to freely express peaceful dissent from those in power without fear of retaliation, and he has made no secret of his readiness to expand the powers of the presidency, including the deployment of the military and the Justice Department, to have his way.Democracy in the United States is stronger with a formidable conservative political movement to keep diversity of thought alive on important questions, such as the nation’s approaches to immigration, education, national security and fiscal responsibility. There should be room for real disagreement on any of these topics and many more — and there is a long tradition of it across the American experiment. But that is not what the former president is seeking.Re-electing Mr. Trump would present serious dangers to our Republic and to the world. This is a time not to sit out but instead to re-engage. We appeal to Americans to set aside their political differences, grievances and party affiliations and to contemplate — as families, as parishes, as councils and clubs and as individuals — the real magnitude of the choice they will make in November.Source photograph by Kozlik_Mozlik, via Getty Images.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      A Midwestern Republican Stands Up for Trans Rights

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      As 2023 slouches to an ignominious end, some news came Friday that gave me an unexpected jolt of hope. I have spent much of the year watching with horror and trying to document an unrelenting legal assault on queer and trans people. Around 20 states have passed laws restricting access to gender-affirming care for trans and nonbinary people, and several have barred transgender and nonbinary people from using bathrooms that align with their gender identity.So it was shocking — in a good way, for once — to hear these words from Ohio’s Republican governor, Mike DeWine, as he vetoed a bill that would have banned puberty blockers and hormones and gender-affirming surgeries for trans and nonbinary minors in Ohio and blocked transgender girls and women from participating in sports as their chosen gender:“Were House Bill 68 to become law, Ohio would be saying that the state, that the government, knows better what is medically best for a child than the two people who love that child the most — the parents,” DeWine said in prepared remarks. “Parents are making decisions about the most precious thing in their life, their child, and none of us, none of us, should underestimate the gravity and the difficulty of those decisions.”DeWine, by situating his opposition to the bill on the chosen battlefield of far-right activists — parents’ rights — was tapping into an idiom that is at once deeply familiar to me and yet has almost entirely disappeared from our national political discourse: that of a mainstream, Midwestern Republican. It is a voice I know well because it is one I heard all my life from my Midwestern Republican grandparents.I did not agree with all of their beliefs, especially as I got older. But I understood where they were coming from. My grandfather, a belly gunner in the Pacific Theater in World War II, believed a strong military was essential to American security. My grandmother was a nurse, and she believed that science, medicine and innovation made America stronger. They made sure their children and grandchildren went to college — education was a crucial element of their philosophy of self-reliance. And above all, they believed the government should be small and stay out of people’s lives as much as humanly possible. This last belief, in individual freedom and individual responsibility, was the bedrock of their politics.And so I am not surprised that defeats keep coming for anti-transgender activists. At the ballot box, hard-right candidates in swing states have tried to persuade voters with lurid messaging about children being subjected to grisly surgeries and pumped full of unnecessary medications. But in race after race, the tactic has failed.Legally, the verdict has been more mixed, which is unsurprising given how politically polarized the judiciary has become. This week a federal judge in Idaho issued a preliminary ruling that a ban on transgender care for minors could not be enforced because it violated the children’s 14th Amendment rights and that “parents should have the right to make the most fundamental decisions about how to care for their children.” The state is expected to appeal the decision.In June, a federal court blocked an Arkansas ban on gender-affirming care for minors. “The evidence showed that the prohibited medical care improves the mental health and well-being of patients,” the ruling said, “and that, by prohibiting it, the state undermined the interests it claims to be advancing” of protecting children and safeguarding medical ethics. In 2021, Asa Hutchinson, then the governor, had vetoed the ban for reasons similar to DeWine, but the Arkansas Legislature overrode his veto. (The Ohio Legislature also has a supermajority of Republicans and may decide to override DeWine’s veto.)In other states, like Texas and Missouri, courts have permitted bans to go into effect, forcing families to make very difficult decisions about whether to travel to receive care or move to a different state altogether. The issue seems destined to reach the Supreme Court soon. The A.C.L.U. has asked the Supreme Court to hear its challenge to the care ban in Tennessee on behalf of a 15-year-old transgender girl. Given how swiftly and decisively the court moved to gut abortion rights, it seems quite possible that the conservative supermajority could choose to severely restrict access to transgender health care for children or even adults.But maybe not. After all, the overturning of Roe has deeply unsettled the country, unleashing a backlash that has delivered unexpected victories to Democrats and abortion-rights advocates. Ohio voters just chose by a wide margin to enshrine the right to end a pregnancy in the state Constitution.This is why I think DeWine’s veto speaks to a much bigger truth: Americans simply do not want the government making decisions about families’ private medical care. Polling on abortion finds a wide array of views on the morality of ending a pregnancy at various points up to viability, but one thing is crystal clear: Large majorities of Americans believe that the decision to have an abortion is none of the government’s business.Rapidly changing norms around gender have many people’s heads spinning, and I understand how unsettling that can be. Gender is one of the most basic building blocks of identity, and even though gender variations of many kinds have been with us for millenniums, the way these changes are being lived out feel, to some people, like a huge disruption to their way of life. Even among people who think of themselves as liberal or progressive, there has been a sense that gender-affirming care has become too easily accessible, and that impressionable children are making life-changing decisions based on social media trends.It has become a throwaway line in some media coverage of transgender care in the United States that even liberal European countries are restricting care for transgender children. But this is a misleading notion. No democracy in Europe has banned, let alone criminalized, care, as many states have done in the United States. What has happened is that under increasing pressure from the right, politicians in some countries have begun to limit access to certain kinds of treatments for children through their socialized health systems, in which the government pays for care and has always placed limits on what types are available. In those systems, budgetary considerations have always determined how many people will be able to get access to treatments.But private care remains legal and mostly accessible to those who can afford it.Republicans are passing draconian laws in the states where they have total control, laws that could potentially lead to parents being charged with child abuse for supporting their transgender children or threaten doctors who treat transgender children with felony convictions. These statutes have no analog in free Europe, but they have strong echoes of laws in Russia, which is increasingly criminalizing every aspect of queer life. These extreme policies have no place in any democratic society.Which brings me back to my Midwestern Republican grandparents, Goldwater and Reagan partisans to their core. My grandfather died long before Donald Trump ran for president, and 2016 was the first presidential election in which my grandmother did not vote for the Republican candidate. But she did not vote for Hillary Clinton, choosing another candidate she declined to name to me. Like a lot of Republicans, she really didn’t like Clinton, and one of the big reasons was her lifelong opposition to government health care. She didn’t want government bureaucrats coming between her and her doctors, she told me.I think many, many Americans agree with that sentiment. Transgender people are no different. They don’t want government bureaucrats in their private business.“I’ve been saying for years that trans people are a priority for enemies and an afterthought to our friends,” Gillian Branstetter, a strategist who works on transgender issues at the A.C.L.U., told me. “I’ve made it my job to try and help people understand that transgender rights are human rights, not just because transgender people are human people, but because the rights we’re fighting for are grounded in really core democratic principles, like individualism and self-determination.”Those are core American values, but 2024 is an election year, and even though transphobia has proved to be a loser at the ballot box, many Republicans are sure to beat that drum anyway. Mike DeWine has me hoping that some Republicans will remember what was once a core principle of their party, and embrace the simple plain-spoken truth of my heartland forebears: Keep the government out of my life, and let me be free to live as I choose.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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      Young Iowa Republicans Raise Their Voices. Will Their Party Listen?

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      G.O.P. presidential candidates have not aggressively courted Gen Z, even as young voters increasingly show an openness to new candidates and a concern for new ideas.As Vivek Ramaswamy walked out of an event this month at Dordt University, a small Christian college in northwestern Iowa, the school’s football players greeted him with bro hugs and a challenge: Could he join one of them in doing 30 push-ups?Mr. Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old entrepreneur and Republican presidential candidate, did not miss a beat.“You guys are probably about half my age or so,” he said when he was done, having strained only slightly, “and I’m probably about half the age of everyone else who’s making a real dent in American politics today.”Kellen Browning/The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Primaries, Polls and Party Shares: It’s Time for the Mailbag.

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      Readers have questions, including on switching over to another side’s primary, and a quick comment on Swift.A sign that voting is near.Geoff Stellfox/The Gazette, via Associated PressI hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season. We haven’t received many questions about the Republican primary recently, even though the Iowa Caucus is less than three weeks away. But we have gotten a few, and many on other topics, so let’s dive into the mailbox one last time in 2023.Switching parties for a primary?What if some of us former Republicans, now independents or Democrats thanks to Trump, registered as Republicans in order to vote for Nikki Haley in the primary? As a New Jersey voter, it wouldn’t really matter here, because the primaries are usually decided before they get to us. I would much rather see her on the ballot than Trump. Would a push like that do anything? — Nancy DriesMs. Haley trails by 50 points in the national polls, so realistically it’s going to take a lot more than moderate Democrats switching for the race to become competitive.But that doesn’t mean that Democrats and independents won’t play a role. Unlike New Jersey, many states have open primaries where Democrats will be able to vote in the Republican primary without changing their registration at all. It wouldn’t surprise me if Ms. Haley fares especially well in states like those, including South Carolina. She’ll also probably fare well in states where independent voters can participate, like New Hampshire.What about a one-on-one race?When I look at a recent poll of Iowa voters, I see that Trump is at 44 percent with DeSantis and Haley tied at 17 percent. Trump is clearly leading, but there are a lot of voters who are aligning themselves with DeSantis, Haley, Ramaswamy and Christie. And a small number of voters who are undecided.If the Republican field were to narrow down to one candidate who runs against Trump, where do the supporters of those other candidates go? — Steven BrownWhen we surveyed Iowa back in July, we found Donald J. Trump leading Ron DeSantis by 16 points, 55 percent to 39 percent, in a hypothetical one-on-one matchup. Mr. DeSantis won just 51 percent of the voters who didn’t back him or Mr. Trump, and I’d guess the tally is worse for him today, given the trend in the polls since then. I’d also guess it’s worse for Ms. Haley, who would need to win over relatively conservative DeSantis voters.Wrong tack for “wrong track”I’m frustrated with “right track-wrong track” polling — well, maybe more specifically, media coverage of it. It always seems to be presented as poor numbers reflecting badly on the president. But if I’m asked that question, I will say “wrong track” but because of the G.O.P. threat to democracy. Any way to fix that? — Jack CowanTo be honest, Jack, I’ve never been a big fan of the question and we don’t always ask it. That said, I do think it has its place: It’s useful to have a longstanding rough proxy for the national mood, even if it doesn’t yield any insight into the “why.” For that, we have other questions.What are they conserving?The term “conservatives” used to have a specific political meaning. But today what are they conserving? I believe the media needs to adopt more accurate terms to call them, such as right wing populists, or right wing ideologues, or right wing radicals. What they are practicing is no longer true conservatism. Am I wrong? Thank you. — Don NationsI don’t think I agree that “conservative” has always had a consistent, specific and clear political meaning. “Liberal” and “progressive” haven’t had consistent, specific and clear political meanings either.And at least to my mind, today’s conservatives are still true to the most basic definition: a political ideology aimed at conserving a traditional way of life — customs, culture, ideas, institutions, hierarchies, values, beliefs and more.Clearly, some conservatives today see tension between preserving certain traditional institutions — like a democratic republic, which risks empowering those opposed to conservatives — and other conservative aims. But this is not exactly unprecedented in the conservative tradition: Beyond “radical” or “populist” that you offered, terms like reactionary or counterrevolutionary have also been used to describe conservatives who aren’t so conservative in defense of some long-established values.But are they enthusiastic about Trump?Do the polls reflect an increasing popularity for Trump among the young, Black or Hispanic voter sets?I hear a great deal about disaffection toward Biden. But does that mean they are happy or enthusiastic about Trump? — Bryan WatsonIt does not mean they’re happy or enthusiastic about Mr. Trump. In fact, most of the voters who backed President Biden in 2020, but have backed Mr. Trump in recent New York Times/Siena College polling, do not have a favorable view of Mr. Trump at all. They’re also far less likely to say they’ll actually vote, or to have a record of doing so in the past.Who else is out there?Are there any polls that show a Democrat who could beat Trump? Gavin Newsom? — Michele SayreWell, “could” is a pretty loose term! President Biden could beat Mr. Trump, you know. There’s even a perfectly reasonable case he’s still the favorite, despite trailing in polling today.But the polls don’t show any other Democrats beating Mr. Trump, at least outside of their home states. In fairness to them, they’re not especially well known — and, relatively speaking, neither is Mr. Newsom.Hello? Cellphones?If this poll is using the tired old method of calling landline phone numbers, forget it.Especially for young, Black and Hispanic voters, if the pollsters are not using cellphone contacts, they aren’t reaching those voters. None of them has a landline anymore!And, in fact, in my age group (over 65), half or more of the ones I know no longer have a landline. — Robin C. KennedyThe Times/Siena poll is not using the tired old method of calling landline phone numbers. At this point, more than 90 percent of our respondents are reached on their cellphones, and more than 99 percent of our young respondents are reached by cellphone.Taylor Swift effect?I know very little about this person except she’s exceedingly popular with young people and encourages them to vote, apparently Democratic. Could this affect the elections in ’24? If so, is there such a precedent? — Jerry FrankelMy first instinct was to say, “No, of course not,” but …I did not expect her Eras Tour to be the tour of the century, so I’m not sure I’m the best judge of the power of her appeal — which has clearly proven to be extraordinary. I’m not sure her 40-16 favorability rating in a recent NBC/WSJ poll quite does justice her appeal, either.So I asked someone in my household who is far more knowledgeable on the matter whether Ms. Swift could be important in the election and she said: “I think she could. I think she has a ton of power.”Now, even if she does make a difference, it would only be at the margin (right?). But if she did make a marginal difference, it wouldn’t be entirely without precedent. If you have a long memory, you might remember that Oprah Winfrey’s endorsement really might have decided the 2008 Democratic primary in Barack Obama’s favor, though I don’t think a T-Swift endorsement of Mr. Biden would be nearly as symbolic or surprising, given her previous support for Democratic candidates.What are the shares by party?What’s the latest data on the breakdown of Republicans, independents and Democrats? Thanks. — Liz GeorgesIn our last poll, Democrats, Republicans and independents each represented 30 percent of the electorate. I can’t remember getting a clean, 30-30-30 break before (7 percent weren’t sure and 3 percent identified with another party). I thought there was something kind of elegant about it. More

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      Lauren Boebert, Far-Right Firebrand, Is Switching House Districts in Colorado

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      Facing a strong primary challenger and the fallout from the “Beetlejuice” scandal, Ms. Boebert is turning to a more conservative district in hopes of victory.Representative Lauren Boebert, a far-right House Republican, announced on Wednesday that she would run in a more conservative district in Colorado — seeking to increase her chances after a strong primary challenger emerged in her district.The move — from the Third Congressional District to the Fourth — will thrust Ms. Boebert into a crowded primary to replace Representative Ken Buck, a conservative who is not seeking re-election. She has fervently promoted false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald J. Trump. Mr. Buck attributed his decision not to run in part to the widespread belief in his party of these false claims — as well as to the refusal of many of his Republican colleagues to condemn the Jan. 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.In a video posted on social media, Ms. Boebert said that the move was a “fresh start,” alluding to a “pretty difficult year for me and my family,” pointing to her divorce. “It’s the right move for me personally, and it’s the right decision for those who support our conservative movement,” Ms. Boebert said.In September, then in the midst of finalizing the divorce, she was caught on a security camera vaping and groping her date shortly before being ejected from a performance of the musical “Beetlejuice” for causing a disturbance.A primary challenger has since emerged with significant backers among prominent former Republican officials in the state. Jeff Hurd, a 44-year-old lawyer from Grand Junction, has been endorsed by former Gov. Bill Owens and former Senator Hank Brown. The editorial board of the Colorado Springs Gazette also endorsed Mr. Hurd over Ms. Boebert this month.Mr. Hurd, in a statement after Ms. Boebert’s announcement, played up the support he has received from Republicans across the state, vowing that he “will fight every day to ensure this seat stays in Republican hands.”Colorado’s Fourth Congressional District is significantly more conservative than the Third, and securing the Republican nomination would place Ms. Boebert in a strong position to win in a seat where Mr. Buck earned 60 percent of the vote in 2022. Ms. Boebert barely won re-election that year, pulling ahead of her Democratic opponent, Adam Frisch, with roughly 500 votes.Mr. Frisch, who is running again in the Third District, said that Ms. Boebert’s withdrawal from that race changed little for his campaign.“From Day 1 of this race, I have been squarely focused on defending rural Colorado’s way of life,” he said in a statement, adding that “my focus will remain the same.”An earlier analysis by the Cook Political Report had rated the race for Ms. Boebert’s current seat in 2024 as a tossup. By contrast, the race in the general election in the Fourth Congressional District is not considered competitive.The other Republicans running in the primary to replace Mr. Buck include two former state senators, Ted Harvey and Jerry Sonnenberg; Richard Holtorf, a state representative; Trent Leisy, a Navy veteran and business owner; and Deborah Flora, a radio host.Mr. Leisy asserted on social media soon after Ms. Boebert’s announcement that she was giving Democrats an advantage in the race for her current district by making the switch.“Lauren should be a fighter and keep her district red,” Mr. Leisy said, adding that he was “running in a district that I actually live in.”Charles Homans More

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      Trump Pushes Forward in 2024 Run Amid Indictments and Colorado Ruling

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      This week’s debate over his very eligibility for office served as a stark reminder that anyone else facing such a wide array of legal problems would have left the political stage long ago.In another era, a politician would have walked away.For decades, American elected officials facing criminal charges or grave violations of the public trust would yield their positions of power, if only reluctantly, citing a duty to save the country from embarrassment and ease the strain on its institutions.Then came Donald J. Trump. The former president isn’t just forging ahead despite four indictments and 91 felony charges, but actively orchestrating a head-on collision between the nation’s political and legal systems.The ramifications continued to accrue this week, when the fundamental question of the former president’s eligibility for office was all but forced upon a Supreme Court already mired in unprecedented questions surrounding Mr. Trump’s plot to overturn the 2020 election.But the heated legal debate over whether Mr. Trump engaged in an insurrection obscured the extraordinary reality that he is running for president at all — returning with fresh vengeance and a familiar playbook built around the notions that he can never lose, will never be convicted and will never really go away.That blueprint remains intact largely because his approach continues to yield political returns.Far from agonizing over the collateral damage from his never-surrender ethos, Mr. Trump seems incentivized by strife, tightly braiding his legal defense with his presidential campaign. He has tried to run out the clock on his criminal trials, a strategy that earned a new victory on Friday when the Supreme Court declined to decide a key point of contention in his federal 2020 election case immediately.While this year began with most Republicans telling pollsters that they preferred a different presidential nominee, the calendar will flip to 2024 with roughly two-thirds of the party aligned behind Mr. Trump. His legal problems, which in decades past would have bolstered rivals for a major party’s presidential nomination, have only caused Republican voters to unify around him more.“This has been the mystery of the Trump era — every time we think this is the final straw, it turns into a steel beam that merely solidifies his political infrastructure,” said Eliot Spitzer, a former Democratic governor of New York. Mr. Spitzer resigned as governor in 2008 amid a prostitution scandal, saying at the time that he owed as much to his family and the public.Lately, Mr. Trump has faced increased criticism that he is adopting fascist language and authoritarian tactics. Defending himself, he insisted repeatedly this week that he had never read “Mein Kampf,” Adolf Hitler’s Nazi manifesto.Of course, if there were a guidebook on how to run traditional American political campaigns, he would not have read that, either.At the start of his 2016 bid, he disparaged decorated military veterans, and voters looked past it. When a hot-mic recording surfaced of Mr. Trump casually claiming that celebrity status made it easier to sexually assault women, he resisted calls from fellow Republicans to step aside, dismissed the remarks as “locker room talk” and, 32 days later, won the presidency.The cycle repeated itself for years, leading to a kind of truism inside Trump world that the swirl of chaos and coup de théâtre surrounding the former president was almost always surprising, but hardly ever shocking.The absurdity of it all, in other words, always seemed to make perfect sense.Mr. Trump and his allies have sought to turn his impeachments into a political strength. Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesEven the riot by Mr. Trump’s supporters at the Capitol nearly three years ago adhered to that adage. Whether the attack was the ultimate coda to his presidency or the beginning of a darker phase in U.S. politics, the violence, in hindsight, was as horrifying as it was foreseeable.Mr. Trump, after all, had spent four years wielding the powerful White House bully pulpit to insist that any critical news coverage was a lie, that no elected official he opposed should be believed and that the courts could not be trusted.The story in Washington again unfolded in ways that were surprising — but hardly shocking. Days after Mr. Trump left office, polls showed that he maintained high levels of support inside his party. House Republicans who had voted to impeach him found themselves the targets of censure and primary challenges. Republican leaders visited him at Mar-a-Lago — a steady stream of supplicants bowing before their exiled king.It soon became clear that the Republican Party’s best opportunity to cast Mr. Trump aside had passed when 43 of its senators voted to acquit him in his impeachment trial after the Capitol riot.In an interview last month, Mr. Trump all but bragged about continuing his latest presidential campaign despite his criminal charges.“Other people, if they ever got indicted, they’re out of politics,” he told Univision. “They go to the microphone. They say, ‘I’m going to spend the rest of my life, you know, clearing my name. I’m going to spend the rest of my life with my family.’”“I’ve seen it hundreds of times,” Mr. Trump said, concluding that such decisions were always mistakes. “I can tell, you know, it’s backfired on them.”Mr. Trump’s legal problems, which in decades past would have bolstered rivals for a major party’s presidential nomination, have only caused Republican voters to unify around him more.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s commitment to the fight is rooted in a “preoccupation with not being seen as a loser,” said Mark Sanford, the former Republican governor of South Carolina, who considered stepping down as governor in 2009 when an extramarital affair erupted in scandalous national headlines.He ultimately remained in office, recalling in an interview this week that he had wanted to take responsibility for his actions and had hoped his regret and humility would serve as an example to his four sons and lead to a reconciliation with his constituents.Mr. Sanford said he doubted Mr. Trump had ever considered not running again.“For him to think about what’s best for the republic would mean having a frontal lobotomy,” Mr. Sanford said. “From the number of people he’s sued over the years to the number of subcontractors he’s ripped off to all of his bankruptcies, he has just bullied his way through life. He plays to an audience of one, and it’s not God — it’s Donald Trump.”Former Senator Trent Lott, a Mississippi Republican, said he would advise Mr. Trump to end his presidential campaign if one of the former president’s federal cases resulted in a felony conviction.Mr. Lott, a former Senate majority leader, was forced out of his leadership position in 2002 after praising Strom Thurmond, a longtime senator and ardent segregationist who died the next year.“At some point, someone has to say to him that he has to do what’s in the best interest of the country and shut down his campaign,” Mr. Lott said of Mr. Trump. “But I don’t see any indication so far that he plans on going anywhere but back to the White House.” More

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      New Trump Cases Shadowed by Rocky Relationship With Supreme Court

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      Though he appointed three justices, his administration had the worst track record before the justices since at least the 1930s.“I’m not happy with the Supreme Court,” President Donald J. Trump said on Jan. 6, 2021. “They love to rule against me.”His assessment of the court, in a speech delivered outside the White House urging his supporters to march on the Capitol, had a substantial element of truth in it.Other parts of the speech were laced with fury and lies, and the Colorado Supreme Court cited some of those passages on Tuesday as evidence that Mr. Trump has engaged in insurrection and was ineligible to hold office again.But Mr. Trump’s reflections on the U.S. Supreme Court in the speech, freighted with grievance and accusations of disloyalty, captured not only his perspective but also an inescapable reality. A fundamentally conservative court, with a six-justice majority of Republican appointees that includes three named by Mr. Trump himself, has not been particularly receptive to his arguments.Indeed, the Trump administration had the worst Supreme Court record of any since at least the Roosevelt administration, according to data developed by Lee Epstein and Rebecca L. Brown, law professors at the University of Southern California, for an article in Presidential Studies Quarterly.“Whether Trump’s poor performance speaks to the court’s view of him and his administration or to the justices’ increasing willingness to check executive authority, we can’t say,” the two professors wrote in an email. “Either way, though, the data suggest a bumpy road for Trump in cases implicating presidential power.”Now another series of Trump cases are at the court or on its threshold: one on whether he enjoys absolute immunity from prosecution, another on the viability of a central charge in the federal election-interference case and the third, from Colorado, on whether he was barred from another term under the 14th Amendment.The cases pose distinct legal questions, but earlier decisions suggest they could divide the court’s conservative wing along a surprising fault line: Mr. Trump’s appointees have been less likely to vote for him in some politically charged cases than Justice Clarence Thomas, who was appointed by the first President Bush, and Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., who was appointed by the second one.In his speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump spoke ruefully about his three appointees: Justices Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, suggesting that they had betrayed him to establish their independence.“I picked three people,” he said. “I fought like hell for them.”In a speech at the Ellipse on Jan. 6, 2021, Mr. Trump spoke ruefully about his three appointees and suggested that they had betrayed him to establish their independence.Pete Marovich for The New York TimesMr. Trump said his nominees had abandoned him, blaming his losses on the justices’ eagerness to participate in Washington social life and to assert their independence from the charge that “they’re my puppets.”He added: “And now the only way they can get out of that because they hate that it’s not good in the social circuit. And the only way they get out is to rule against Trump. So let’s rule against Trump. And they do that.”Mr. Trump has criticized Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. on similar grounds. When the chief justice cast the decisive vote to save the Affordable Care Act in 2012, Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter that “I guess @JusticeRoberts wanted to be a part of Georgetown society more than anyone knew,” citing a fake handle. During his presidential campaign, Mr. Trump called the chief justice “an absolute disaster.”When he spoke on Jan. 6, Mr. Trump was probably thinking of the stinging loss the Supreme Court had just handed him weeks before, rejecting a lawsuit by Texas that had asked the court to throw out the election results in four battleground states.Before the ruling, Mr. Trump said he expected to prevail in the Supreme Court, after rushing Justice Barrett onto the court in October 2020 in part in the hope that she would vote in Mr. Trump’s favor in election disputes.“I think this will end up in the Supreme Court,” Mr. Trump said of the election a few days after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death that September. “And I think it’s very important that we have nine justices.”After the ruling, Mr. Trump weighed in on Twitter. “The Supreme Court really let us down,” he said. “No Wisdom, No Courage!”The ruling in the Texas case was not quite unanimous. Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas, issued a brief statement on a technical point.Those same two justices were the only dissenters in a pair of cases in 2020 on access to Mr. Trump’s tax and business records, which had been sought by a New York prosecutor and a House committee.The general trend continued after Mr. Trump left office. In 2022, the court refused to block the release of White House records concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting Mr. Trump’s claim of executive privilege. The court’s order let stand an appeals court ruling that Mr. Trump’s desire to maintain the confidentiality of internal White House communications was outweighed by the need for a full accounting of the attack and the disruption of the certification of the 2020 electoral count.Only Justice Thomas noted a dissent. His participation in the case, despite his wife Virginia Thomas’s own efforts to overturn the election, drew harsh criticism.Mr. Trump’s rocky record at the court offers only hints about how the justices will approach the cases already before them and on the horizon. His claim of absolute immunity appears vulnerable, based on other decisions from the court on the scope of presidential power.The case examining one of the federal statutes relied on by the special counsel in the federal election-interference case, which makes it a crime to corruptly obstruct an official proceeding, does not directly involve Mr. Trump, though the court’s ruling could undermine two of the charges against him.Mr. Trump’s rocky record at the court offers only hints about how the justices will approach the cases already before them and on the horizon.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesThe justices have been skeptical of broad interpretations of federal criminal laws, and the arguments in the case will doubtless involve close parsing of the statute’s text.The case that is hardest to assess is the one from Colorado, involving as it does a host of novel questions about the meaning of an almost entirely untested clause of the 14th Amendment, one that could bar Mr. Trump from the presidency. The case is not yet at the Supreme Court, but it is almost certain to arrive in the coming days.Guy-Uriel E. Charles, a law professor at Harvard, said the justices would have to act.“The Supreme Court is a contested entity, but it is the only institution that can weigh in and try to address this problem, which needs a national resolution,” he said. “There has been some loss of faith in the court, but even people who are deeply antagonistic to it believe it needs to step in.” More

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      Nikki Haley Wants to Run on Her Record, Not Her Gender

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      The Republican presidential candidate would be the first woman to enter the White House, but she has so far tried to avoid the identity politics that could repel some voters.Inside the warehouse for an upscale department store chain in eastern Iowa, Michele Barton, wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with “Women for Nikki” in bright pink letters, mused excitedly about the prospect of sending the first woman to the White House.But Ms. Barton, 52, a mother of four and a lifelong Republican, was quick to insist that she was not supporting Nikki Haley because she is a woman.“I think she is the right candidate,” she said on Wednesday as she waited for Ms. Haley to appear at a town-hall event in Davenport. “It just so happens that she is a woman.”It’s a familiar refrain from some of Ms. Haley’s most enthusiastic female supporters, who, like the candidate herself, downplay the importance of her gender in the 2024 presidential race, even as they celebrate the potentially historic nature of her bid.Ms. Haley is performing this balancing act at a striking moment in U.S. politics. Her climb in the polls and the struggles of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mean that the Republican candidate with the best hope of pushing the party beyond former President Donald J. Trump — who has a long history of misogynist remarks and sexual misconduct allegations — might well be a woman.Throughout her campaign, Ms. Haley has sought to tread a fine line in talking about her gender. She emphasizes elements of her life and career that inherently set her apart in an otherwise all-male field, but avoids leaning into identity politics in ways that might repel the largely white and graying base of conservative voters she needs to court in order to win the nomination.“I don’t want to just be a woman,” she told Charlamagne Tha God on “The Daily Show” last month. “I don’t want to just be Indian. I don’t want to just be a mom. I don’t want to just be a Republican. I don’t want to just be all of those things. I’m more than that. And I think every person is more than that.”Her stump speech includes nods to her experiences as a mother and a military spouse. Her pithy rejoinders to her rivals invoke her five-inch heels. Her list of close-out songs at town-hall events includes Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House.”A Haley campaign event in Iowa last month. When Ms. Haley mentions that she was the first woman and first person of color to serve as governor of South Carolina, it’s largely to argue that the United States is not “rotten” or “racist.”Jordan Gale for The New York TimesBut Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, seldom, if ever, mentions directly that she is vying to shatter the highest glass ceiling in American politics. (In her campaign announcement video, she said she did not believe in the idea of such ceilings.)On the campaign trail in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, she rarely brings up her gender, which her allies believe could be a potent asset to win over college-educated voters and suburban women in a general election, if she were to beat Mr. Trump in the primary.Chris Cournoyer, an Iowa state senator and Ms. Haley’s state chairwoman there, said these demographics could also help Ms. Haley become more competitive in the state, where she has trailed Mr. Trump in polls by a wide margin and until recently also lagged behind Mr. DeSantis.“I’ve heard from a lot of women who are independents, a lot of women who are Democrats, that they are going to switch parties to caucus for her on Jan. 15,” Ms. Cournoyer said.Although she often mentions her barrier-breaking victory to become the first woman and first person of color to serve as governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley does so mainly to argue that the United States is not “rotten” or “racist.”Her event on Wednesday at the Von Maur warehouse in Davenport may have been billed as a Women for Nikki event, but aside from three coalition T-shirts on display near the entrance, the venue carried few signs of the all-female, grass-roots groups that have helped spread her message.Both Republican strategists and gender studies scholars say that Ms. Haley’s relatively muted approach to gender on the trail makes sense: The path to higher office for women is often paved with double standards and gender biases, regardless of a candidate’s party or ideology. But it can be particularly difficult for Republican women. Conservative voters tend to harbor traditional views about femininity while expecting candidates to seem “tough.”A recent study from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University found that Republicans were less likely than Democrats to see distinct barriers to women’s political representation, support targeted efforts to increase diversity in politics and pressure party leaders to embrace strategies to expand the ranks of women in power.Kelly Dittmar, who as the center’s research director worked on the report and has analyzed Ms. Haley’s political bids, said she saw parallels between Ms. Haley’s campaigns for governor and president. In both, Ms. Haley’s ads have talked about being “new” and “different,” offering cues to voters about her race and gender but, Ms. Dittmar said, allowing them to interpret the words as they wished.“It is both strategic and in line with her own conservative identity,” Ms. Dittmar said, adding that as a candidate for governor Ms. Haley rejected calls from her constituents to promise that she would appoint an even number of men and women to her administration.No woman has ever won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, or even a state Republican presidential primary, and Ms. Haley is only the fifth prominent Republican woman to run for her party’s nomination. Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, last made the attempt in 2016, and she made gender central to her campaign.With her own calibrated approach, Ms. Haley has sought to lean into her foreign policy and executive experience, challenge misconceptions about women and electability and position herself as one of her party’s most effective messengers on abortion, despite having signed some of the nation’s toughest anti-abortion restrictions as governor of South Carolina. She recently said that as governor she would have signed a six-week ban on the procedure.The path to higher office for women is often paved with double standards and gender biases, regardless of party or ideology. Conservative voters, in particular, tend to harbor traditional views about femininity.Sophie Park/Getty ImagesThe approach has won her some of her most devoted supporters and often unpaid volunteers — women willing to drive for hours to set up chairs, collect contact information and hype up her bid. Campaign officials say that Women for Nikki chapters have now emerged in all 50 states. At recent town halls in Iowa, at least two women asked her to reiterate her stance on abortion, though they had already heard it, so that others in the room could hear it, too.“I don’t think the fellas know how to talk about it properly,” she said both times.And yet, the issue of gender has remained inescapable. In the fourth Republican presidential debate, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy lobbed gendered attacks, accusing her of benefiting from “identity politics,” as former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey went the other direction, defending her in what some of her supporters saw as playing the white knight. Then, there is Mr. Trump, who calls her a “Birdbrain” and remains popular among Republican women.A poll from The New York Times and Siena College released this month found that 63 percent of female Republican primary voters supported Mr. Trump. Ms. Haley had 12 percent support from that group. Other surveys show her garnering more support from men than women. But in hypothetical matchups, Ms. Haley has beaten President Biden by the widest margin of any Republican challenger, roughly splitting female votes with him.“Nikki has potent electability against Biden, but she needs to find potent electability against Trump,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has been working to defeat Mr. Trump. “Right now, voters just don’t believe she can do it, and so she has to change that perception.”Perhaps Ms. Haley best captured her approach in response to a question from a prospective voter while campaigning this week in Agency, Iowa. Listening to Ms. Haley on the warehouse floor of a corn seed company, Sarah Keith, 28, a chemical engineer, wanted to know how the candidate would draw more women into the party, particularly those dissatisfied with the liberal agenda.“They talk about women’s issues,” Ms. Haley said, referring to the Democrats and defining those concerns as the same ones that worry most voters, including the economy and national security. “I think women are tired. I think everybody is tired of the noise, and what they want is just to see results.” More