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      America Has a Ginni Thomas Problem

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      Clarence and Virginia (Ginni) Thomas don’t discuss their dueling efforts to destroy our democracy when they come home from a day of wreaking havoc.That’s what Ms. Thomas, a conservative activist and an adherent to the lie that Donald Trump won the last election, wants us to believe. That’s essentially what she told the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol when it interviewed her last week.I don’t believe that any more than I believe Trump can declassify documents with his mind.Why does this matter? Because Ms. Thomas pressed the White House and various state legislators to overturn the 2020 election, and her husband has refused to recuse himself from election-related cases. In fact, Justice Thomas was the Supreme Court’s lone dissent when it rejected Trump’s efforts to withhold documents from the Jan. 6 committee.In March, The National Law Journal spoke with several experts who agreed that Justice Thomas should have recused himself from the case. One called his refusal to do so “arguably unprecedented.”Ms. Thomas didn’t just encourage people to overturn the election; she was at the Stop the Steal rally from which the insurrection sprang on Jan. 6, although she told The Washington Free Beacon that she returned home before Trump took the stage.In other words, Ms. Thomas is a one-woman constitutional crisis.According to The New York Times, during her testimony before the committee, Ms. Thomas repeated her assertion that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. That is a lie. She knows it, and we know it.Because she is repeating this lie, I can’t believe anything she says without proof. Therefore, her claim that she never discussed her election subversion activities with her husband rings hollow.Did she also not share with him her seemingly deranged Facebook posts framing the teenage survivors of the Parkland shooting as “dangerous to the survival of our nation” or espousing the conspiracy theory that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton wiretapped Trump?Is the Thomas household just silent, filled only with the hum of grievance and betrayal? Or do these spend their time talking in trivialities, reminiscing about their polar opposite upbringings — him born in the predominately Black, Gullah community of Pin Point, Ga., her born in predominantly white Omaha, Neb., which at the time was facing its own racial tensions?Maybe they share maleficent chuckles recalling how he rebuffed questions at his confirmation hearing in 1991 over the allegations that he sexually harassed Anita Hill, calling it, absurdly, a “high-tech lynching,” or how Ms. Thomas in 2010 left a voice mail message for Hill, demanding that she apologize to her husband.According to The Times, the message was: “Good morning, Anita Hill. It’s Ginni Thomas. I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”What?! Ma’am, if you don’t stop playing on that lady’s phone!The ask was brazen. It was disrespectful. It was delusional. But that’s Ginni Thomas.Sure, maybe the woman with the audacity to call her husband’s accuser and ask that person to apologize to the man she says abused her is too bashful at home to raise her most recent antics with her husband. But it seems unlikely; for years, journalists have documented how close and forthright Justice and Ms. Thomas are with each other. As early as 1991, the year he was confirmed, one of his longtime friends, Evan Kemp, told The Washington Post that she was the one person he really listened to.In the same article, one of Ms. Thomas’s aunts is quoted as saying Justice Thomas “was so nice, we forgot he was Black.” She added, “And he treated her so well, all of his other qualities made up for his being Black.”Can you imagine? How must it feel to marry into a family where people think of your Blackness as a weight on the wrong side of the scales and you have to achieve at the highest level to balance it out? Of course, Justice Thomas may not object to that characterization. But he and his wife may still spend their quiet time unpacking it.Ms. Thomas is not a minor player and outside agitator. She is connected and influential. According to The Times, she led a group of hard-right activists in a White House meeting with Trump where “members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving in the military.”According to the paper, one of the people the group asked to have at the meeting was an assistant Ms. Thomas hired after the conservative group Turning Point USA fired the person for texting a colleague, “I hate Black people.”Since Ms. Thomas is married to a Black man, I can’t make any of that make sense. Maybe, like her aunt, she forgot Justice Thomas was Black.But the major issue remains: The wife of a Supreme Court justice has been actively engaged in trying to overturn an election, and the justice won’t recuse himself from any cases related to that issue. They are Mr. and Mrs. Mutiny.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 and Twitter (@NYTopinion), and Instagram. More

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      Seven Years of Trump Has the Right Wing Taking the Long View

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      Could there soon be an American counterpart to Viktor Orban, the Hungarian prime minister, a right-wing populist who in 2018 declared, “We must demonstrate that there is an alternative to liberal democracy: It is called Christian democracy. And we must show that the liberal elite can be replaced with a Christian democratic elite”?Liberal democracy, Orban continued,is liberal, while Christian democracy is, by definition, not liberal: it is, if you like, illiberal. And we can specifically say this in connection with a few important issues — say, three great issues. Liberal democracy is in favor of multiculturalism, while Christian democracy gives priority to Christian culture; this is an illiberal concept. Liberal democracy is pro-immigration, while Christian democracy is anti-immigration; this is again a genuinely illiberal concept. And liberal democracy sides with adaptable family models, while Christian democracy rests on the foundations of the Christian family model; once more, this is an illiberal concept.Or could there soon be an American counterpart to Giorgia Meloni, another right-wing populist and admirer of Orban, now on course to become the next prime minister of Italy?Meloni’s platform?Yes to natural families, no to the L.G.B.T. lobby. Yes to sexual identity, no to gender ideology. Yes to the culture of life, no to the abyss of death. No to the violence of Islam, yes to safer borders. No to mass immigration, yes to work for our people.Donald Trump’s entrenched refusal to accept the outcome of the 2020 election and his deepening embrace of conspiracy theory, particularly its QAnon strain; the widespread belief among Republican voters that the election was stolen; and, as The Times reported on Sept. 18, the fact that “six Trump-backed Republican nominees for governor and the Senate in midterm battlegrounds would not commit to accepting this year’s election results, with another six Republicans ignoring or declining to answer a question about embracing the November outcome” — all suggest, to say the least, that all is not well with democracy in America.There are many other signals pointing to the vulnerability of the liberal state.A 2020 study, “Global Satisfaction With Democracy” by the Bennett Institute for Public Policy at the University of Cambridge, found that dissatisfaction with democracy has grown rapidly in developed nations since the recession of 2008, and that one of the sharpest increases in discontent has been in the United States:Now, for the first time on record, polls show a majority of Americans dissatisfied with their system of government — a system of which they were once famously proud. Such levels of democratic dissatisfaction would not be unusual elsewhere. But for the United States, it marks an “end of exceptionalism” — a profound shift in America’s view of itself, and therefore, of its place in the world.It is a reflection of just how remarkable this shift in sentiment has been that a presidential candidate — Donald J. Trump — could arrive at the White House after a presidential campaign that denounced American political institutions as corrupt, and promised to step back from promoting democracy abroad in favor of putting “America First,” treating all countries transactionally based on a spirit of realism, regardless of their adherence to or deviation from democratic norms.Along similar lines, Joshua Tait — a contributor to the volume “Key Thinkers of the Radical Right: Behind the New Threat to Liberal Democracy” — argued in a Q. and A. posted at George Washington University’s Illiberalism Studies Program that “we face potentially massive disruptions over the coming decades as we feel the impacts of climate change, aging populations, and automation.”Tait went on:The right, both in the United States and elsewhere, has the sort of rhetorical and intellectual tools to craft a compelling argument to certain segments of the population in the face of insecurity and transformation. The combination of disruption, transformation and pain creates the conditions where right-wing, often illiberal discourses of heroism, golden age and the threatening Other creates real meaning for some, even as it draws boundaries around communities.In an email response to my follow-up inquiry, Tait wrote:The 2016 election, Trumpism in the United States, Orban, Law & Justice in Poland, and to a lesser extent Brexit in the United Kingdom have validated the intellectual right in the America that long held some or all illiberal positions. Moreover, Trump in particular obliterated right-wing respectability politics and revealed the conservative and Republican establishments had no capacity to discipline views that had previously been beyond the pale — the result of changes in the way the right-wing media ecosystem worked, and the nature of party primaries.The end of the Cold War, Tait contended, prompted the right to shift from an international focus to domestic issues:Without an external ideological foe in global communism, the right faced up to its domestic and in many ways real enemy, progressive liberalism. The right imported its existential and apocalyptic view domestically. The Culture Wars, antipathy toward multiculturalism and so on are part of this, and the great demographic sort (the coming minority status of white Americans) has intensified it dramatically.Many leaders of the social and cultural right in this country are treating Trump’s presidency and his continuing hold on a majority of Republican voters as an opportunity to further mobilize conservatives.The National Conservatism project, created in 2019 by the Edmund Burke Foundation, has taken up this challenge, joining together an array of scholars and writers associated with such institutions, magazines and think tanks as the Claremont Institute, Hillsdale College, the Hoover Institution, the Federalist, First Things, the Manhattan Institute, the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and National Review.On June 22, 75 supporters of the National Conservatism project issued a 10-part statement of principles. The signatories include Rod Dreher, senior editor of The American Conservative; Jim DeMint, a former senator from South Carolina and a former president of the Heritage Foundation; Mark Meadows, a former chief of staff to President Trump; Christopher Rufo of the Manhattan Institute and the venture capitalist Peter Thiel.The principles include a strong commitment to the infusion of religion into the operation of government: “No nation can long endure without humility and gratitude before God and fear of his judgment that are found in authentic religious tradition.” Thus the “Bible should be read as the first among the sources of a shared Western civilization in schools and universities, and as the rightful inheritance of believers and nonbelievers alike.”Perhaps most strikingly, the principles declare that:Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision, which should be honored by the state and other institutions both public and private. At the same time, Jews and other religious minorities are to be protected in the observance of their own traditions, in the free governance of their communal institutions, and in all matters pertaining to the rearing and education of their children. Adult individuals should be protected from religious or ideological coercion in their private lives and in their homes.The principles argue for a restoration of traditional family values combined with a rejection of the sexual revolution and of feminist calls for self-actualization in defiance of family obligation:We believe the traditional family is the source of society’s virtues and deserves greater support from public policy. The traditional family, built around a lifelong bond between a man and a woman, and on a lifelong bond between parents and children, is the foundation of all other achievements of our civilization.Their authors warn thatThe disintegration of the family, including a marked decline in marriage and childbirth, gravely threatens the well-being and sustainability of democratic nations. Among the causes are an unconstrained individualism that regards children as a burden, while encouraging ever more radical forms of sexual license and experimentation as an alternative to the responsibilities of family and congregational life. Economic and cultural conditions that foster stable family and congregational life and child-raising are priorities of the highest order.I asked Yoram Hazony, the chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, to expand on this phrase in the statement in the principles: “Where a Christian majority exists, public life should be rooted in Christianity and its moral vision.”Hazony replied by email that the statement is intendedto permit a public life rooted in Christianity and its moral vision in those parts of the United States in which a majority of voters support such a public culture. This is in keeping with our endorsement of the federalist principle in Clause 3. There are many states in the United States where no such majority exists, and the Statement of Principles does not envision using the national government to impose such a public life on those states. The point is to return “church and state” issues to the states to be resolved through the democratic process.In her March 2022 paper, “Illiberalism: a conceptual introduction,” Marlene Laruelle, a professor of international affairs and the director of the Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George Washington University, provides a four-part definition of the term:Illiberalism is a new ideological universe that, even if doctrinally fluid and context-based, is to some degree coherent; it represents a backlash against today’s liberalism in all its varied scripts — political, economic, cultural, geopolitical, civilizational — often in the name of democratic principles; it proposes solutions that are majoritarian, nation-centric or sovereigntist, favoring traditional hierarchies and cultural homogeneity; and it calls for a shift from politics to culture and is post-post-modern in its claims of rootedness in an age of globalization.Laruelle argues that there are significant differences between illiberalism and conservatism as it has been traditionally understood:The key element that dissociates illiberalism from conservatism is its relationship to political liberalism. Classical conservatives — such as the Christian Democrats in Europe or the Republican Party in the U.S. before Donald Trump — are/were fervent supporters of political rights and constitutionalism, while illiberalism challenges them. For classical conservatives, the political order is a reflection of the natural and family order, and therefore commands some submission to it. For illiberals, today’s political order is the enemy of the natural order and should be fought against.In a 2021 Wall Street Journal op-ed, “Why America Needs National Conservatism,” Christopher DeMuth, president from 1986 through 2008 of the mainstream Republican American Enterprise Institute and now chairman of the National Conservative Conference, reinforces Laruelle’s point: “When the American left was liberal and reformist, conservatives played our customary role as moderators of change. We too breathed the air of liberalism, and there are always things that could stand a little reforming.” But, DeMuth continued, “today’s woke progressivism isn’t reformist. It seeks not to build on the past but to promote instability, to turn the world upside-down.”The doctrines of progressivism have resulted, DeMuth argues, inmayhem and misery at an open national border. Riot and murder in lawless city neighborhoods. Political indoctrination of schoolchildren. Government by executive ukase. Shortages throughout the world’s richest economy. Suppression of religion and private association. Regulation of everyday language — complete with contrived redefinitions of familiar words and ritual recantations for offenders.How deep is the reservoir of support that national conservatism can tap into? The striking pattern in polling data shows that over the years from 2017 to the present, Trump, despite all his liabilities, has retained a consistent favorability rating, ranging from 41 to 46 percent of the electorate, a base that appears virtually immovable.Arlie Hochschild, a professor of sociology at Berkeley and the author of “Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right,” has been interviewing voters in Eastern Kentucky’s Appalachia since 2018, exploring the reasons behind this unwavering loyalty.I asked her about the prospects of illiberalism in this country and she replied by email: “We should keep a close eye on the sense of grievance stored up almost as a springboard within the word ‘stolen.’ ” The background to this, Hochschild argued,is that blue-collar, rural/small town — especially white and male — have since the l970s been the “losers” of globalization, and the two parties now represent two economies. To this demographic, economic loss is compounded with a loss of fallback sources of honor — gender, sexuality, race — for white heterosexual males these, too, seem under attack. This is the “deep story” of “Stop the Steal,” and they see reality through that story.The story does not end there. Hochschild continued:The right believes that it is the left, not the right, that is moving toward fascism. Inside the right wing mind today freedom is threatened “by the left.” Political correctness a form of “thought control.” The left controls the media. The F.B.I. is scanning Facebook to hunt down patriots in Washington. So, ironically, they see themselves as brave upholders of freedom, democracy, civil liberties. They aren’t saying we want strong totalitarian control so we get to impose our values on others. They see themselves as the victims of this control and Trump as their liberator from that control.Still, national conservatism faces significant hurdles. For example, Hochschild pointed out, this country recently saw a dramatic change in the Kansas electorate: “In the days after the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision leaked, Kansans turned out in record numbers in the primary and delivered a victory for abortion rights, a win fueled by Democrats out registering Republicans by 9 points since the Dobbs decision was announced, with a staggering 70 percent of all new registrants being women.”How dangerous, then, is America’s current right populist movement?Tait, the historian of conservatism, is cautious in addressing this question, noting that national conservatism seems to “represent something new in that it seems to explicitly depart from liberalism instead of reproducing it in a compromised, conservative way.” He described the Edmund Burke Foundation’s Statement of Principles asan effort at a mature, sanitized post-Trumpism. But a great many of the guardrails of constitutional liberalism and fusionist conservatism have been undermined and we may see a politics less constrained by liberal constitutional norms and rules. Likewise, the actors prominent in this space are less constrained by right-wing respectability politics, including Ron DeSantis and Josh Hawley.Damon Linker, a senior fellow at the Niskanen Center, sees a strong parallel between trends in the United States and the illiberal developments in Europe. Referring to the recent election in Italy, Linker posted “What just happened in Italy?” on his Sept. 26 substack, Eyes on the Right, arguing thatWe’re left with a picture of a country in which the center-left is supported mainly by the educated, secular, and professional classes, while the right appeals to a cross-section of the rest of the country — the working class as well as the middle and upper-middle classes, along with the religiously pious and the large numbers of Italians who treat religion as a symbol or identity-marker without actually believing in or practicing it.If that sounds familiar, Linker continued,that’s because similar things have been happening in many places over the past decade. The precise political results of these shifts have varied from country to country as they’ve interacted with different electoral systems, but the underlying trends in public opinion can be seen to a greater or lesser extent in France, Great Britain, the United States, and other countries. In each case, the center-left has gone into decline with the center-right and anti-liberal populist right rising to take its place. Until the center-left figures out a way to win back the working- and middle-class, as well as the nominally religious, it will continue to lose precious political ground to the populist and nationalist right.William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings, points out in an essay, “What Is National Conservatism? The movement could be the future of the American right,” that “Two of illiberalism’s most important intellectuals, political theorists Yoram Hazony and Patrick Deneen, have mounted a frontal attack on the entire individualist, rights-based liberal political tradition that they trace back to John Locke.” In Eastern Europe, this critique resonates, Galston continued, but “it does create a problem for the United States where, historians inspired by Louis Hartz have argued, political liberalism is our tradition.”National conservatives, Galston argued,do not distinguish between the liberal political tradition and the excesses of today’s liberal culture. They see the focus on individual rights — and on the conceptions of equality and liberty that flow from them — as corroding traditional beliefs and practices. They are convinced that they must sacrifice the liberal baby to get rid of the progressive bathwater, and they are all too eager to do so. Embracing unfettered majoritarianism in the pursuit of virtue is no virtue. It is hard to overstate the danger to pluralism and liberty that lies at the end of this road.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Youngkin Stumps With Kemp in Georgia, Urging Conservatives to Vote

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      ALPHARETTA, Ga. — Gov. Glenn Youngkin of Virginia appeared at a campaign event on Tuesday afternoon for his counterpart in Georgia, Brian Kemp, helping to bolster Governor Kemp’s re-election pitch to voters.The event, in Alpharetta’s idyllic town center, brought out more than 200 conservative voters from around Georgia, several with hats, T-shirts and signs bearing Mr. Kemp’s campaign logo. In his speech, Mr. Youngkin pressed for conservative voters to turn out en masse on Election Day and pointed out the competitive politics of the two Republican governors’ states.Mr. Youngkin also focused on the issues that helped him get elected. Education and the economy, he said, represent “the failed policy of the progressive liberals.”“We all know that it has failed,” Mr. Youngkin said. “This is not a Republican view. This is an American view.”Mr. Kemp, too, underlined the parties’ differences in policy, championing his decision to defy public health guidance during the earliest waves of the Covid-19 pandemic to keep businesses open in Georgia. In addition, he laid out a policy plan for a second term that would include using surplus funds from the state budget to cut property and income taxes.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.A Focus on Crime: In the final phase of the midterm campaign, Republicans are stepping up their attacks about crime rates, but Democrats are pushing back.Pennsylvania Governor’s Race: Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed G.O.P. nominee, is being heavily outspent and trails badly in polling. National Republicans are showing little desire to help him.Megastate G.O.P. Rivalry: Against the backdrop of their re-election bids, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are locked in an increasingly high-stakes contest of one-upmanship.Rushing to Raise Money: Senate Republican nominees are taking precious time from the campaign trail to gather cash from lobbyists in Washington — and close their fund-raising gap with Democratic rivals.Georgia has played host to a parade of Republicans who have kept former President Donald J. Trump at arm’s length. Mr. Kemp in 2020 resisted Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn his loss in the election in Georgia, and this year he easily fended off a Trump-backed challenger in the primary, former Senator David Perdue.In early September, Mr. Kemp campaigned with former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina. And before Mr. Kemp’s primary, former Vice President Mike Pence headlined a Kemp campaign event..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Youngkin, a former private equity executive who defeated Terry McAuliffe, a former governor, in the November 2021 election for Virginia governor, has traveled across the country in recent weeks on behalf of Republican candidates for state office. In late August he campaigned with Tudor Dixon, the Republican running to unseat Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. In early September, Mr. Youngkin appeared alongside Joe Lombardo, the Republican candidate for governor in Nevada.Mr. Youngkin’s tours have only fueled speculation that he is angling for a spot in a future Republican presidential primary. However, in a news conference after the rally on Tuesday, Mr. Youngkin downplayed such talk.“I don’t really think about it,” he said. “I’m focused on 2022, being the best governor I can possibly be in the Commonwealth of Virginia.”Mr. Kemp leads his Democratic opponent, Stacey Abrams, by more than five percentage points in a majority of polls of the race. Even so, Mr. Kemp has implored his supporters to consider the network of Democratic organizers and party leaders who had worked to turn out the vote and powered the party’s gains in the 2020 presidential election and 2021 U.S. Senate runoffs.When asked by The New York Times during a news conference if he still had concerns about Republicans’ ability to match Democrats’ grass-roots turnout efforts, Mr. Kemp replied, “Damn right.”“I would tell all those people out there: Don’t believe any of these polls,” he said, turning his attention to his Democratic rivals. “You cannot underestimate their ground game.”He then underlined the millions of dollars that Democrats and their allies have poured on to the airwaves in recent weeks. “We’re never going to outspend them,” he said. “But I do believe we’re going to outwork them.” More

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      Why Zombie Reaganomics Still Rules the G.O.P.

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      What’s my plan for the next two years? I will be happy, healthy and successful. What will I do to achieve these things? What are you, a Marxist?I’ve now summarized the essence of the Commitment to America announced by House Republicans last week. This “plan” was obviously meant to evoke Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Contract With America, which was followed by a Republican takeover of Congress.But the Contract With America, love it or hate it — put me in the latter category — offered a fairly specific policy agenda, with a list of planned legislation. What Republicans have just released, by contrast, is mainly a list of good things they claim will happen, with barely a hint of how they propose to make them happen.If you squint hard at the economics section of the Commitment to America, however, you can see the faint outlines of a familiar set of ideas — zombie Reaganomics. Which raises a question: Why are deregulation, benefit cuts and tax breaks for the rich still the ruling ideology of a party that now claims to stand for the working class?Before I get there, a couple of notes on what the economics portion of the commitment actually says.First, it’s striking how many of the economic complaints are about things that are barely, if at all, affected by government policy, like the price of gas (which has come down a lot since its peak) and supply-chain disruptions (which have been diminishing).Second, immediately after declaring that “we have a plan to fix the economy,” House Republicans say that they will “curb wasteful government spending.” As anyone who follows budget debates knows, that’s the ultimate weasel phrase. What spending are we talking about, specifically?Bear in mind that the federal government is basically an insurance company with an army: The great bulk of spending is on health care, retirement and the military. You can’t meaningfully cut expenditure without attacking at least one of these. So which parts of that spending are wasteful?Well, Senator Rick Scott, the chair of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, has called for sunsetting all federal programs — including Social Security and Medicare — every five years, which would open the door to gutting America’s social safety net. Other Republicans have tried to distance themselves from that idea, although without removing Scott from his position. But again, what is this wasteful spending they propose to cut?But back to the commitment. Its economic program, such as it is, calls for “pro-growth tax and deregulatory policies.” No specifics, but this is clearly a call for zombie Reaganomics.Why “zombie”? Because we now have four decades’ worth of experience showing that deregulation and tax cuts for the rich do not, in fact, produce higher wages and faster economic growth. So the idea that tax cuts are the secret of prosperity should be dead, yet somehow it’s still shambling along, eating Republican brains.Of course, I’m just saying that because I’m a Marxist. (I’m not, but that’s what modern Republicans call anyone who supports progressive taxation and social insurance.) But for what it’s worth, financial markets share my skepticism. Look at what’s happening in Britain, where Prime Minister Liz Truss’s recent announcement of a Reaganite economic plan sent interest rates soaring and the pound plunging.Which brings me back to my original question: Why is the G.O.P. still committed to a failed economic ideology?For a long time, the G.O.P. seemed to fit the portrait famously drawn by Thomas Frank in his book “What’s the Matter With Kansas?” That is, it was a party mostly dedicated to making the rich richer that managed to win elections on social issues — which in practice meant catering to bigotry while campaigning, then pivoting to tax and benefit cuts immediately afterward.With the rise of MAGA, however, catering to bigotry is no longer a marketing device; it’s the party’s main agenda. In that case, however, why continue plutocrat-friendly policies? Why not add some actual populism to the mix? Why did Representative Kevin McCarthy, who will likely become speaker if Republicans take the House, declare that his first bill would be one to repeal additional funding for the Internal Revenue Service, allowing wealthy tax cheats to breathe easy?Part of the answer may be that anti-abortion, anti-L.G.B.T.Q., anti-immigrant warriors don’t know or care much about economic policy, so they’ve left it in the hands of the usual suspects — congressional staff members, conservative think tankers and other apparatchiks who’ve spent their whole careers promoting the tax-cut mystique.But there may also be a strategy here. Billionaires may no longer run the G.O.P. the way they used to, but the party still wants their money. So plutocrat-friendly policies may be a way of keeping wealthy donors and corporations on board, even if many of them are uncomfortable with the right-wing social agenda.This strategy depends, however, on working-class voters not realizing what Republicans are up to. Hence the vacuous nature of the Commitment to America; any acknowledgment of what the G.O.P. might actually do could be a big political problem.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Does It Matter That Investigators Are Closing In on Trump?

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      Gail Collins: Bret, which do you think is more of a threat to Trump’s political future, the classified document drama at Mar-a-Lago or the legal challenge to his businesses in New York?Bret Stephens: Gail, I suspect the most serious threats to Trump’s future, political or otherwise, are Big Macs and KFC buckets. Otherwise, I fear the various efforts to put the 45th president out of business or in prison make it considerably more likely that he’ll wind up in the White House as the 47th president. How about you?Gail: Sigh. You’re probably right but I’m still sorta hoping New York’s attorney general can hit him in the pocketbook. He’s super vulnerable when it comes to his shady finances — I’m even surprised he can find lawyers who have confidence they’ll keep being paid.Bret: No doubt the Trump Organization was run with the kind of fierce moral and financial rectitude you’d expect if Elizabeth Holmes had been put in charge of Enron. But the essential currency of Trumpism is drama, and what the New York and U.S. attorneys general have done is inject a whole lot more of it into Trump’s accounts.Gail: I don’t think the news that Letitia James accused him of fudging his financial statements will upset the base — they’ve always known this is a guy who responded to the World Trade Center terror attack by bragging that his tower was now the highest building in Lower Manhattan.Bret: A graceless building, by the way, far surpassed by the Chrysler Building, for those who care about architectural rivalries.Gail: Maybe I need to stop obsessing about this and take a look at the rest of the public world. Anything got your attention in particular?Bret: Am I allowed a rant?Gail: Bret, rants are … what we do.Bret: The investigation of Matt Gaetz, Republican of Florida, which looks like it’s about to fall apart, is an F.B.I. disgrace for the ages. It should force heads to roll. And Congress needs to appoint a Church-style committee or commission to reform the bureau. After the Ted Stevens fiasco, James Comey’s disastrous interventions with Hillary Clinton’s emails, and the bureau misrepresenting facts to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court as part of its investigation of Trump and Russia, something dramatic has to change to save the F.B.I. from continuing to lose public trust.Gail: Are you upset by the investigation or the fact that the investigation is failing?Bret: I’m upset by a longstanding pattern of incompetence tinged by what feels like political bias. I don’t like Gaetz’s politics or persona any more than you do. But what we seem to have here is a high-profile politician being convicted in the court of public opinion of some of the most heinous behavior imaginable — trafficking a minor for sex — until the Justice Department realizes two years late that its case has fallen apart. We have a presumption of innocence in this country because we tend to err the most when we assume the worst about the people we like the least.Gail: Nothing nobler than ranting about a basic moral principle on behalf of a deeply unattractive victim.Bret: He’s the yang to Lauren Boebert’s yin. But no American deserves to be smeared this way.Gail: While we’re on the general subject of crime let’s talk bail reform. Specifically, New York’s new system, under which a judge basically lets out arrestees not accused of violent felonies. New info suggests this may be increasing crime. But I’m sticking with my support for the concept. Suspects who haven’t yet been tried shouldn’t get different treatment based on their ability to come up with bail.Your turn …Bret: New York’s bail reform laws are egregious because we’re now the only state that forbids judges from considering the potential danger of a given suspect. It leads to crazy outcomes, like the guy who tried to stab Representative Lee Zeldin at a campaign stop in July and was released hours later.Another problem is that too many cities effectively decriminalized misdemeanors like shoplifting and have given up prosecuting a lot of felonies, which tends to encourage an anything-goes mentality among the criminally minded. We really need a new approach to crime, of the kind that Joe Biden and Bill Clinton pushed back in the early 1990s, when the Democrats finally determined to be a law-and-order party again.Gail: Biden’s generally held to a middle course that doesn’t drive anybody totally crazy. That’s why he got elected, after all. How would you say he’s doing these days?Bret: I’m giving him full marks on supporting Ukraine. And I know Democrats have this whole “Dark Brandon” thing given Biden’s legislative victories, along with the chance that Democrats might hold the Senate thanks to bad Republican candidates. But I still don’t see things going well. Food prices keep going up-up-up and we’re heading for a bad-bad-bad recession.You?Gail: Going for Not At All Bad. Otherwise known as N.A.A.B.Bret: I’m approaching the point of T.O.T.W.I. T.: The Only Thing Worse Is Trump.Gail: You’re way off.Biden may not have mobilized Congress the way we hoped, but he’s gotten quite a bit done — from funding the ever-popular infrastructure programs to reducing health care costs for the working and middle classes to finally, finally giving the Internal Revenue Service some funds to do its work more efficiently.But he lost you after infrastructure, right?Bret: He’s governed so much further to the left than I would have liked. Change of subject: What governor’s races are you following?Gail: It’s always a lot harder to focus on other states’ governors than the senators but I gotta admit this year I’m hooked on …Well, let’s start with one we’re going to disagree about. I’m guessing there’s no way you could be rooting for Beto O’Rourke in Texas, right?Bret: Ah, no, except as a performance artist. When are Texas Democrats going to nominate a centrist who stands a modest chance of winning a statewide race?What about the New York race? I don’t suppose you could have warm feelings for Lee Zeldin, could you?Gail: Well, to get Zeldin as their gubernatorial nominee, New York Republicans passed up a bid by Rudy’s son Andrew Giuliani, so I’d definitely put Zeldin in the Could Be Worse category.Bret: Hochul’s main achievement to date has been to get taxpayers to put up $850 million for a new Bills stadium in Buffalo. That makes her perfect for Albany, which I don’t mean as a compliment.Gail: Yeah, her Buffalo obsession is pretty irritating. But about Texas — Abbott is one of those Make Everything Worse Republicans, who most recently made the headlines by shipping busloads of migrants to northern cities. A move that did nothing to solve anything, but did help expose what a jerk he is.Really, nothing Beto has ever done is that awful.Bret: That’s because Beto has never done anything.One Democrat I am excited about is Maryland’s Wes Moore, whom I know slightly and impresses me greatly. His book, “The Other Wes Moore,” will soon be required reading the way Barack Obama’s “Dreams From My Father” used to be. And, just to be clear, that’s me saying that Moore could one day be president.Who else?Gail: Your bipartisanship is making me feel guilty. But about the governors — one other guy who fills me with rancor is my ongoing obsession, Ron DeSantis of Florida, who’s terrible in all the ways Abbott is terrible but much worse since he’s already a serious presidential candidate.Bret: And an effective governor who knows how to drive liberals crazy and whose state is attracting thousands of exiles from New York, California and other poorly governed, highly taxed blue states.Gail: Sorry but having empty space to develop and few social services to support doesn’t make you effective, just well positioned.But go on ….Bret: Speaking of DeSantis, how do you think he’d fare in a theoretical matchup against California’s Gavin Newsom?Gail: Oh boy, that’s pretty theoretical. DeSantis worries me because his policies are terrible — cruel and terrible. But he’s an obsessive campaigner with a smart pitch.Have to admit I don’t have much of a feel for Newsom — in general it’s hard to be a national candidate if you’re running as a Democrat from a state that’s very liberal. Liberal for good and historic reasons, but hard to sell to folks in Kansas or North Carolina.Here’s another Republican governor I’ve been mulling — what about Brian Kemp in Georgia?Bret: I’m generally not a fan of Southern Republicans. But Kemp did stand his ground against three election deniers: David Perdue in 2022, Donald Trump in 2020 and Stacey Abrams in 2018.Gail: Kemp is one of those Republicans — like Mike Pence and Liz Cheney — who I admire for their principled stands while realizing I would never vote for them. His abortion position, for instance, is appalling. So he goes in my Honorable But Wrong list.We’re cruising toward the final stage of the Senate campaigns, too, Bret. Let me leave you with the thought that Arizona is looking great for my side and Ohio maybe conceivably possible.Bret: And who’da thunk I’d be rooting for Democrats in both races?Gail: Wow. To be continued.Bret: In the meantime, Gail, I recommend reading Richard Sandomir’s beautiful obituary for two Jewish sisters who survived the Holocaust and passed away a few weeks ago in Alabama, 11 days apart. It’s a nice reminder of how much we all have to live for — and to wish all of our readers, Jewish or otherwise, a good and sweet new year.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Glenn Youngkin Is Playing a Dangerous Game

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      It’s obvious. Glenn Youngkin, the Republican governor of Virginia, wants to be president.Within months of taking office, Youngkin had already established two political organizations, Spirit of Virginia and America’s Spirit, meant to raise his profile in national Republican politics with donations and assistance to candidates both in his home state and across the country. In July, he met privately with major conservative donors in New York City, underlining the sense that his ambitions run larger than his term in Richmond.Youngkin, a former private equity executive, is on a tour of the country, speaking and raising money for Republican candidates in key presidential swing states. And as he crisscrosses the United States in support of the Republican Party, Youngkin is neither avoiding Donald Trump nor scorning his acolytes; he’s embracing them.In Nevada last week, Youngkin stumped for Joe Lombardo, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor who acknowledges that President Biden won the election but says he is worried about the “sanctity of the voting system.” In Michigan, Youngkin stumped for Tudor Dixon, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor who has repeatedly challenged the integrity of the 2020 presidential election. And later this month, in Arizona, Youngkin will stump for Kari Lake, the Trump-backed Republican nominee for governor who accused Democrats of fraud in the state and says that unlike Gov. Doug Ducey, she “would not have certified” the 2020 election results.Whether Youngkin agrees with any of this himself is an open question. In the 2021 Virginia Republican primary, he flirted with election denialism but never fully committed. What matters, for our purposes, is that Youngkin believes he needs to cater to and actually support election questioners and deniers to have a shot at leading the Republican Party.You can sense, in conversations about the present and future of the Republican Party, a hope that there is some way to force the party off its current, anti-democratic path. You could see it in the outrage over Democratic Party “meddling” in Republican primaries. As the conservative columnist Henry Olsen wrote for The Washington Post in July, “True friends of democracy would seek to build new alliances that cross old partisan boundaries.”What Youngkin — a more polished and ostensibly moderate Republican politician — aptly demonstrates is that this is false. The issue is that Republican voters want MAGA candidates, and ambitious Republicans see no path to power that doesn’t treat election deniers and their supporters as partners in arms.There is an analogy to make here to the midcentury Democratic Party, which was torn between a liberal, Northern, pro-civil rights faction and a reactionary, Southern, segregationist faction. The analogy is useful, not because the outcome of the struggle is instructive in this case, but because the reason the liberal faction prevailed helps illustrate why anti-MAGA Republicans are fighting a losing battle.In 1948, the mayor of Minneapolis — 37-year-old Hubert Humphrey — called on the hundreds of delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia to add a strong civil rights plank to the party’s national platform. “To those who say we are rushing this issue of civil rights,” Humphrey said, “I say to them we are 172 years late.”“The time has arrived for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states’ rights and walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights,” Humphrey added.As the historian Michael Kazin notes in “What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party,” both “the speech and the ebullient, and quite spontaneous, floor demonstration that followed helped convince a majority of delegates — and President Truman, reluctantly — to include the civil rights pledge in the platform.”But there were dissenters. A small number of Southern delegates left the convention in protest. Calling themselves the States’ Rights Democratic Party, they organized a challenge to Truman with Gov. Strom Thurmond of South Carolina at the top of their ticket.These “Dixiecrats” were anti-civil rights and, for good measure, anti-labor. “We stand for the segregation of the races and the racial integrity of each race, the constitutional right to choose one’s associates; to accept private employment without governmental interference, and to earn one’s living in any lawful way,” reads the States’ Rights Democratic platform, unanimously adopted at their convention in Oklahoma City the next month. We favor, they continued, “home-rule, local self-government and a minimum of interference with individual rights.”Of course, this meant the maintenance of Jim Crow, the subversion of the constitutional guarantees embedded in the 14th and 15th Amendments, and the continued domination of Black Americans by a tyrannical planter-industrial elite.From its inception in the late 1820s as the movement to elect Andrew Jackson president, the Democratic Party relied on the Solid South to win national elections. Now it had a choice. Democrats could reject their new civil rights plank, accommodate the Dixiecrats and fight with a unified front against a hungry and energetic Republican Party, shut out of power since Herbert Hoover’s defeat in 1932. Or they could scorn the so-called States’ Rights Democrats and run as a liberal party committed to equal rights and opportunity for all Americans.They chose the latter and changed American politics forever. And while much of this choice was born of sincere belief, we also should not ignore the powerful force of demographic change.From 1915 to 1965, more than six million Black Americans left their homes in the agrarian South to settle in the cities of the industrial North, from New York and Chicago to Philadelphia and Detroit and beyond.Their arrival marked the beginning of a tectonic shift in American political life. “The difference in laws between the North and the South created a political coming-of-age for Black migrants,” the political scientist Keneshia N. Grant writes in “The Great Migration and the Democratic Party: Black Voters and the Realignment of American Politics in the 20th Century.” “Seeing political participation as a badge of honor and hallmark of success in northern life, migrants registered to vote in large numbers. Northern parties and candidates worked to gain Black support through their election campaigns, and the parties expected Black voters to turn out to vote for their nominees on Election Day.”For a Democratic Party whose national fortunes rested on control of urban machines, Black voters could mean the difference between four years in power and four years in the wilderness. With the rise of Franklin Roosevelt, who won an appreciable share of the Black vote in the 1932 presidential election, Northern Democratic politicians began to pay real attention to the interests of Black Americans in cities across the region.By 1948, most Black Americans who could vote were reliable partners in the New Deal coalition, which gave liberals in the Democratic Party some of the political space they needed to buck Jim Crow. Yes, the Dixiecrats would withdraw their support. But for every white vote Harry Truman might lose in Alabama and Mississippi, there was a Black vote he might gain in Ohio and California, the two states that ultimately gave him his victory over the fearsome former prosecutor (and New York governor) Thomas Dewey.Not only did the Dixiecrat rebellion fail; it also demonstrated without a shadow of a doubt that Democrats could win national elections without the Solid South. The segregationists were weaker than they looked, and over the next 20 years the Democratic Party would cast them aside. (And even then, with the Dixiecrat exodus, Truman still won most of the states of the former Confederacy.)There is no equivalent to northern Black voters in the Trumpified Republican Party. Put differently, there is no large and pivotal group of Republicans who can exert cross-pressure on MAGA voters. Instead, the further the Republican Party goes down the rabbit hole of “stop the steal” and other conspiracy theories, the more it loses voters who could serve to apply that pressure.In a normal, more majoritarian political system, this dynamic would eventually fix the issue of the MAGA Republican Party. Parties want to win, and they will almost always shift gears when it’s clear they can’t with their existing platform, positions and leadership.The problem is that the American political system, in its current configuration, gives much of its power to the party with the most supporters in all the right places. Republicans may have lost the popular vote in seven of the last eight presidential elections, but key features in the system — equal state representation in the Senate, malapportionment in the House of Representatives and winner-take-all distribution of votes in the Electoral College (Nebraska and Maine notwithstanding) — gives them a powerful advantage on the playing field of national politics.To put it in simple terms, Joe Biden won the national popular vote by seven million ballots in the 2020 presidential election, but if not for roughly 120,000 votes across four states — Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Donald Trump would still be president.Which is all to say that someone like Glenn Youngkin is only doing what makes sense. To make MAGA politics weak among Republican politicians, you have to make MAGA voters irrelevant in national elections. But that will take a different political system — or a vastly different political landscape — than the one we have now.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      DeSantis’s Migrant Flights Aim to Jolt Midterms, and Lay Groundwork for 2024

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      The Florida governor’s move sending migrants to Martha’s Vineyard from Texas brought liberals’ condemnation, and more such flights may follow.For months, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas and Gov. Doug Ducey of Arizona have been busing migrants across the country, using immigrants as political props as they try to score points in the midterm elections and bolster their conservative bona fides.But last week, Ron DeSantis, Florida’s Republican governor, supercharged the tactic, flying two chartered planeloads of undocumented migrants out of Texas — about 700 miles from the Florida state line — to Martha’s Vineyard, the moneyed Massachusetts vacation spot frequented by liberal celebrities and former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.The migrants had not set foot in Florida and said they were misled about their destination. The island was unprepared to handle the influx. But Mr. DeSantis got exactly the reaction he wanted.Liberal condemnation. Conservative applause. And national attention.Days after the migrants got off their planes, Mr. DeSantis flew across the country himself — to events for Republican candidates for governor in Wisconsin and Kansas where he promoted his stunt. He received standing ovations.“They were homeless,” he said about the migrants, at an event on Sunday in Green Bay, Wis. “They were hungry. And they hit the jackpot to be able to be in the wealthiest sanctuary city in the world.”The ambitious governor is betting that the tactic will not hurt his re-election race in Florida, long the nation’s largest political battleground, and will reinject the issue of border security into the midterm contest. As voters remain focused on economic uncertainty and abortion rights, it remains unclear whether immigration will gain a major foothold in the final weeks before the election in November.Yet the move signals that Mr. DeSantis could be eyeing a future beyond Florida and aiming to secure his place in the conversation of potential presidential candidates. Polls show that former President Donald J. Trump is the party’s overwhelming pick in 2024, with Mr. DeSantis as the clear second choice.“This is a sign of someone who is acting with political impunity because he believes he has political impunity in Florida,” said Fernand R. Amandi, a Democratic pollster in Miami. “I don’t think he makes this move if he didn’t already anticipate it was not a roadblock to him winning re-election.”Long considered to harbor presidential ambitions, Mr. DeSantis ripped this move directly from the playbook of Mr. Trump, whose rhetoric and political style he has adopted.The idea of transporting migrants to Democratic strongholds was considered by the Trump administration. Stephen Miller, the former president’s policy adviser, and others in the Trump White House pushed the move as a way to strike back against sanctuary cities that refused to fully cooperate with federal immigration authorities. The plan was rejected by Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials over liability and budgetary concerns.Migrants being transported from Martha’s Vineyard on the ferry headed to the mainland on Friday.Matt Cosby for The New York TimesMr. DeSantis secured $12 million in the state budget to transport unauthorized immigrants planning to come to Florida, an amount that suggested more flights are to come. He said the migrants had to sign a release form and had been given an informational packet that included a map of Martha’s Vineyard.But Mr. DeSantis has also been clear that the effort was part of a political strategy intended to lift his party in the midterms. Republican strategists say he and the other governors are simply pointing out the hypocrisy of Democratic Party leaders, who they see as far removed from the surge of migrants and their impact on local communities..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.A spokeswoman for Mr. DeSantis declined to comment for this article.The public investigations of Mr. Trump and the fight over the fate of legal abortion heightened Democratic hopes for the midterms over the summer, leaving Republicans scrambling to return the race to issues that break more in their favor — high inflation, economic uncertainty, public safety, immigration.Polling shows that a majority of voters — 51 percent — say they agree more with the Republican Party than the Democrats on illegal immigration, according to a new poll by The New York Times and Siena College. On the issue of legal immigration, they are evenly split.“This border is now an issue in these elections,” Mr. DeSantis said on Sunday, at the event in Wisconsin. “And I think it’s something that our candidates need to take.”Democrats moved quickly to cast Mr. DeSantis as heartless and “un-American.”“Instead of working with us on solutions, Republicans are playing politics with human beings, using them as props,” President Biden said on Thursday at the Hispanic Caucus Institute Gala in Washington. “What they’re doing is simply wrong. It’s un-American, it’s reckless and we have a process in place to manage migrants at the border.”The Democrat who is Mr. DeSantis’s opponent in the Florida governor’s race, former Representative Charlie Crist, released a digital ad calling the migrant flights “a cruel political stunt to appeal to his base.”“My faith teaches me that we’re all children of God,” Mr. Crist said in the ad. “That is lost on Ron DeSantis. For him, it’s always putting politics over peoples’ lives.”Democrats see an opportunity in part because the migrants he sent to Martha’s Vineyard were overwhelmingly from Venezuela. Florida is home to the largest population of Venezuelan immigrants in the country. And Venezuelan voters are an important demographic in the perennial swing state that helped cement Mr. Trump’s victory in the state in the 2020 election.But Mr. DeSantis’s move suggests that he believes his re-election effort is operating from such a position of strength that he can afford to potentially repel some moderates in his state, a longtime destination for immigrants.Some strategists say the governor may not be focused on swing voters in his home state at all.“My guess is that it seems pretty favorable, at least in terms of the one audience he has right now, which is Republican voters,” said Ed Goeas, a longtime Republican strategist. More

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      Trump Rally Plays Music Resembling QAnon Song, and Crowds React

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      In Ohio, a dark address by the former president featured music that was all but identical to a theme song for the conspiracy theory movement.David Maxwell/EPA, via ShutterstockFormer President Donald J. Trump appeared to more fully embrace QAnon on Saturday, playing a song at a political rally in Ohio that prompted attendees to respond with a salute in reference to the cultlike conspiracy theory’s theme song.While speaking in Youngstown in support of J.D. Vance, whom he has endorsed as Ohio’s Republican nominee for the Senate, Mr. Trump delivered a dark address about the decline of America over music that was all but identical to a song called “Wwg1wga” — an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”As Mr. Trump spoke, scores of people in the crowd raised fingers in the air in an apparent reference to the “1” in what they thought was the song’s title. It was the first time in the memory of some Trump aides that such a display had occurred at one of his rallies.Aides to Mr. Trump said the song played at the rally was called “Mirrors,” and it was selected for use in a video that Mr. Trump played at the conservative meeting CPAC and posted on his social media site, Truth Social. But it sounds strikingly like the QAnon theme song.Taylor Budowich, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said, “The fake news, in a pathetic attempt to create controversy and divide America, is brewing up another conspiracy about a royalty-free song from a popular audio library platform.”The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Echoing Trump: Six G.O.P. nominees for governor and the Senate in critical midterm states, all backed by former President Donald J. Trump, would not commit to accepting this year’s election results.Times/Siena Poll: Our second survey of the 2022 election cycle found Democrats remain unexpectedly competitive in the battle for Congress, while G.O.P. dreams of a major realignment among Latino voters have failed to materialize.Ohio Senate Race: The contest between Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, and his Republican opponent, J.D. Vance, appears tighter than many once expected.Pennsylvania Senate Race: In one of his most extensive interviews since having a stroke, Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee, said he was fully capable of handling a campaign that could decide control of the Senate.As president, Mr. Trump often had a winking relationship with QAnon, amplifying social media posts related to the conspiracy theory movement, which holds that when he was in the White House he was locked in a war against satanic, child-trafficking liberals and Democrats. A chief tenet of the movement, which has gradually spread from the fringes of the far right closer to the center of the Republican Party, is that Mr. Trump will ultimately be returned to power.But what was once a flirtation with a movement that the F.B.I. has warned could increasingly turn violent now appears to be a full embrace.Last week, for example, Mr. Trump posted an image of himself on Truth Social, wearing a Q pin on his lapel and under a slogan reading “The Storm is Coming.” Adherents to QAnon believe that the “storm” is the moment when Mr. Trump will retake power after vanquishing his enemies, having them arrested and potentially executed on live TV.Mr. Trump’s speech in Ohio had an apocalyptic tone and seemed intended to delegitimize officials in the F.B.I. and Justice Department who are involved in investigations into both his handling of sensitive government documents removed from the White House and the role that he and allies played in trying to overturn the 2020 election.The Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol drew Trump supporters and QAnon conspiracy theorists.Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated Press“We are a nation that has weaponized its law enforcement against the opposing political party like never ever before,” Mr. Trump told the crowd. “We’ve got a Federal Bureau of Investigation that won’t allow bad, election-changing facts to be presented to the public.”Addressing the conflict in Ukraine, Mr. Trump also warned that the United States “may end up in World War III.” Assailing reporters, as he often does, he said that there was “no fair press any longer” and repeated his frequent refrain that the news media is “truly the enemy of the people.”Those complaints were followed by series of other false claims.Mr. Trump said that “free speech is no longer allowed” in the United States, a country, he went on to claim, “where crime is rampant like never before, where the economy has been collapsing.” More