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      The Biden-Trump Rematch Is Already Here

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      One of the most significant developments in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election has emerged largely under the radar. From 2016 to 2022, the number of white people without college degrees — the core of Donald Trump’s support — has fallen by 2.1 million.Over the same period, the number of white people who have graduated from college — an increasingly Democratic constituency — has grown by 13.3 million.These trends do not bode well for the prospects of Republican candidates, especially Trump. President Biden won whites with college degrees in 2020, 51-48, but Trump won by a landslide, 67-32, among whites without degrees, according to network exit polls.Even so, there is new data that reflects Trump’s ongoing and disruptive quest for power.In a paper published last year, “Donald Trump and the Lie,” Kevin Arceneaux and Rory Truex, political scientists at Sciences Po-Paris and Princeton, analyzed 40 days of polling conducted intermittently over the crucial period from Oct. 27, 2020, through Jan. 29, 2021.The authors found that Trump’s false claim that the 2020 election was stolen from him has had continuing ramifications:The lie is pervasive and sticky: the number of Republicans and independents saying that they believe the election was fraudulent is substantial, and this proportion did not change appreciably over time or shift after important political developments. Belief in the lie may have buoyed some of Trump supporters’ self-esteem.In reaction to the lie, Arceneaux and Truex write, “there was a significant rise in support for violent political activism among Democrats, which only waned after efforts to overturn the election clearly failed.”Endorsement of the lie pays off for Republicans, Arceneaux and Truex argue: “Republican voters reward politicians who perpetuate the lie, giving Republican candidates an incentive to continue to do so in the next electoral cycle.”These trends are among the most striking developments setting the stage for the 2024 elections.Among the additional conditions working to the advantage of Democrats are the increase in Democratic Party loyalty and ideological consistency; the political mobilization of liberal constituencies by adverse Supreme Court rulings; an initial edge in the fight for an Electoral College majority; and the increase in nonreligious voters along with a decline in churchgoing believers.These and other factors have prompted two Democratic strategists, Celinda Lake and Mike Lux, to declare, “All the elements are in place for a big Democratic victory in 2024.” In “Democrats Could Win a Trifecta in 2024,” a May 9 memo released to the public, the two even voiced optimism over the biggest hurdle facing Democrats, retaining control of the Senate in 2024, when as many as eight Democratic-held seats are competitive while the Republican seats are in solidly red states:While these challenges are real, they can be overcome, and the problems are overstated. Remember that this same tough Senate map produced a net of five Democratic pickups in the 2000 election, which Gore narrowly lost to Bush; six Democratic pickups in 2006, allowing Democrats to retake the Senate; and two more in 2012. If we have a good election year overall, we have a very good chance at Democrats holding the Senate.Republican advantages include high rates of crime (although modestly declining in 2023 so far), homelessness and dysfunction in cities run by Democrats; a parents’ rights movement opposed to teaching of so-called critical race theory and gender-fluid concepts; and declining public support for gay rights and especially trans rights.There are, needless to say, a host of uncertainties.One key factor will be the salience on Election Day of issues closely linked to race in many voters’ minds, including school integration, affordable housing, the end of affirmative action, crime, urban disorder and government spending on social programs. As a general rule, the higher these issues rank in voters’ priorities, the better Republicans do. In that respect, the success of conservatives in barring the use of race in college admissions has taken a Republican issue off the table.Frances Lee, a political scientist at Princeton, noted in an email that in the “sour environment” of today’s politics, “many voters may be tempted toward a protest vote, and it is likely that there will be some options available for such voters.” It is not clear, Lee added, “what No Labels will do, but the potential there introduces considerable additional uncertainty.”Asked what factors he would cite as crucial to determining the outcome of the 2024 election, Ray La Raja, a political scientist at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, pointed out by email:The economy is the source of the most uncertainty — it is doing well, although inflation is not fully tamed. Will things continue to improve and will Biden start to get credit? This is especially important for white working-class voters in swing states like Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Pennsylvania.Alan Abramowitz, a political scientist at Emory, documents growing Democratic unity in two 2023 papers, “Both White and Nonwhite Democrats Are Moving Left” and “The Transformation of the American Electorate.”As a result of these trends toward intraparty consensus, there has been a steady drop in the percentage of Democratic defections to the opposition, as the party’s voters have become less vulnerable to wedge-issue tactics, especially wedge issues closely tied to race.From 2012 to 2020, Abramowitz wrote in the Transformation paper, “there was a dramatic increase in liberalism among Democratic voters.” As a result of these shifts, he continued, “Democratic voters are now as consistent in their liberalism as Republican voters are in their conservatism.”Most important, Abramowitz wrote, therise in ideological congruence among Democratic voters — and especially among white Democratic voters — has had important consequences for voting behavior. For many years, white Democrats have lagged behind nonwhite Democrats in loyalty to Democratic presidential candidates. In 2020, however, this gap almost disappeared with white Democratic identifiers almost as loyal as nonwhite Democratic identifiers.Three Supreme Court decisions handed down in the last week of June — rejecting the Biden administration’s program to forgive student loan debt, affirming the right of a web designer to refuse to construct wedding websites for same-sex couples and ruling unconstitutional the use of race by colleges in student admissions — are, in turn, quite likely to increase Democratic turnout more than Republican turnout on Election Day.Politically, one of the most effective tools for mobilizing voters is to emphasize lost rights and resources.This was the case after last June’s Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which eliminated the right to abortion and in the 2022 midterm elections mobilized millions of pro-choice voters. By that logic, the three decisions I mentioned should raise turnout among students, gays and African Americans, all Democratic constituencies.My Times colleague Jonathan Weisman argued in a July 1 article, “Supreme Court Decisions on Education Could Offer Democrats an Opening,” that the rulings giveDemocrats a way to shift from a race-based discussion of preference to one tied more to class. The court’s decision could fuel broader outreach to the working-class voters who have drifted away from the party because of what they see as its elitism.In addition, Weisman wrote, “Republicans’ remarkable successes before the new court may have actually deprived them of combative issues to galvanize voters going into 2024.”The education trends favoring Democrats are reinforced by Americans’ changing religious beliefs. From 2006 to 2022, the Public Religion Research Institute found, the white evangelical Protestant share of the population fell from 23 percent to 13.9 percent. Over the same period, the nonreligious share of the population rose from 16 to 26.8 percent.Ryan Burge, a political scientist at Eastern Illinois University, found that the nonreligious can be broken down into three groups: atheists, who are the most Democratic, voting 85-11 for Biden over Trump; followed by agnostics, 78-18 for Biden; and those Burge calls “nothing in particular,” 63-35 for Biden.The last of the pro-Democratic developments is an initial advantage in Electoral College votes, according to an analysis at this early stage in the contest.Kyle D. Kondik, managing editor of Larry Sabato’s Crystal Ball at the University of Virginia Center for Politics, published “Electoral College Ratings: Expect Another Highly Competitive Election” last week.“We are starting 260 electoral votes worth of states as at least leaning Democratic,” Kondik writes, “and 235 as at least leaning Republican,” with “just 43 tossup electoral votes at the outset.”In other words, if this prediction holds true until November 2024, the Democratic candidate would need to win 20 more Electoral College votes while the Republican nominee would need to win 35.The competitive states, Kondik continues, “are Arizona (11 votes), Georgia (16) and Wisconsin (10) — the three closest states in 2020 — along with Nevada (6), which has voted Democratic in each of the last four presidential elections but by closer margins each time.”In the case of Arizona, Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, argued in an email that domestic migration from California to Arizona is substantial enough to help shift the state from red to purple.“In some recent work we have done comparing California, Arizona and Texas,” Cain added, “we find that the movement of Californians is greater in absolute numbers to Texas, but proportionately more impactful to Arizona.”People who move, Cain continued,make Arizona a bit more polarized and close to the Arizona purple profile. They contribute to polarized purpleness. Enough move over a four-year period to have a measurable impact in a close race. Unlike immigrants, domestic migrants can become voters instantly.How about the other side of the aisle?Daniel Kreiss, a professor of journalism and mass communication at the University of North Carolina, writing by email, cited the Republican advantage gained from diminished content regulation on social media platforms: “This platform rollback stems broadly from Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, which gave other platforms a green light to drop electoral and public health protections.”The beneficiaries of this deregulation, Kreiss continued, are “Trump and Republicans more broadly who use disinformation as a strategic political tool.”These content regulation policies are a sharp policy shift on the part of the owners and managers of social media websites, Bridget Barrett, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information, and Kreiss write in a June 29 paper, “Platforms Are Abandoning U.S. Democracy.”They argue that in the aftermath of the 2020 electionplatforms took serious steps to protect elections and the peaceful transfer of power, including creating policies against electoral disinformation and enforcing violations — including by Trump and other candidates and elected officials. And deplatforming the former president after an illegitimate attempt to seize power was a necessary step to quell the violence.More recently, Barrett and Kreiss note, “social media platforms have walked away from their commitments to protect democracy. So much so that the current state of platform content moderation is more like 2016 than 2020.”Frances Lee pointed out that Cornel West’s entry into the presidential election as a candidate of the Green Party will siphon some liberal voters away from Biden: “West has announced a presidential bid and has now moved from the People’s Party to the Green Party, which will have ballot access in most states,” she wrote.Insofar as West gains support, it will in all likelihood be at Democrats’ expense. West is a prominent figure in progressive circles and his agenda is explicitly an appeal to the left.In a June 28 appearance on C-SPAN, West declared:We need jobs with a living wage. We need decent housing, quality education, the basic social needs. You can imagine disproportionately Black and brown are wrestling with poverty. The abolition of poverty and homelessness. I want jobs with a living wage across the board. I want a U.S. foreign policy that is not tied to big money and corporate interests.While West will draw support from very liberal Democrats, there is another factor that may well weaken Democratic support among some moderate voters: the seeming insolubility of homeless encampments, shoplifting, carjacking and crime generally in major cities. This has the potential to tilt the playing field in favor of Republican law-and-order candidates, as it did in the 2023 Wisconsin Senate race and in suburban New York House contests.In 2022, crime ranked high among voter concerns, but Republicans who campaigned on themes attacking Democrats as weak on crime met with mixed results.A recent trend raising Republican prospects is the Gallup Poll finding that the percentage of people “who say gay or lesbian relations are morally acceptable” fell by 7 percentage points, from a record high of 71 percent in 2022 to 64 percent this year.There was a six-point drop among Democrats on this question, from 85 to 79 percent approval, and a precipitous 15-point falloff among Republicans, 56 to 41 percent. Independents, in contrast, went from 71 percent approval to 72 percent. The overall decline reversed 20 years of steadily rising approval, which has grown from 39 percent in 2002 to 71 percent in 2022. Gallup also found that the public is holding increasingly conservative views on key issues related to gender transition.Asked “Do you think transgender athletes should be able to play on sports teams that match their current gender identity or should only be allowed to play on sports teams that match their birth gender?” the public favored birth gender by 28 points, 62-34, in May 2021. In May 2023, the margin grew to 41 points, 69-28.Similarly, Gallup asked “Regardless of whether or not you think it should be legal, please tell me whether you personally believe that in general it is morally acceptable or morally wrong to change one’s gender.” In May 2021, 51 percent said morally wrong, 46 percent said acceptable. In May 2023, 55 percent said morally wrong, 43 percent said acceptable.President Biden is a strong supporter of transgender rights. On March 31, the White House released “Statement From President Joe Biden on Transgender Day of Visibility,” in which Biden vowed:My administration will never quit fighting to end discrimination, to stand against unjust state laws, and to guarantee everyone the fundamental right and freedom to be who they are. We’ll never stop working to create a world where everyone can live without fear; where parents, teachers and whole communities come together to support kids, no matter how they identify; and every child is surrounded by compassion and love.Republican candidates are moving in the opposite direction. At the Faith and Freedom conference last month in Washington, Mike Pence promised to “end the gender ideology that is running rampant in our schools, and we will ban chemical and surgical gender transition treatment for kids under the age of 18.”Ron DeSantis told the gathering:The left is lighting the fire of a cultural revolution all across this land. The fire smolders in our schools. It smolders in corporate board rooms. It smolders in the homes of government. We’re told that we must accept that men can get pregnant. We are told to celebrate a swimmer who swam for three years on the men’s team, then switches to the women’s team and somehow is named the women’s champion.The 2020 election raised a new concern for Democrats: Trump’s success in increasing his support from 2016 among Latino voters.Kyle Kondik’s analysis shows that Nevada (17 percent of the vote was Hispanic in 2020) and Arizona (19 percent was Hispanic) are two of the four tossup states in 2024. This suggests that the Latino vote will be crucial.While acknowledging the gains Trump and fellow Republicans have made among Latino voters, a June 2023 analysis of the 2022 election, “Latino Voters & The Case of the Missing Red Wave,” by Equis, a network of three allied, nonpartisan research groups, found that with the exception of Florida, “at the end of the day, there turned out to be basic stability in support levels among Latinos in highly contested races.” In short, the report’s authors continued, “the G.O.P. held gains they had made since 2016/2018 but weren’t able to build on them.”In Florida, the report documented a six-year collapse in Democratic voting among Hispanics: In 2016, Hillary Clinton won 66 percent of the Latino vote; in 2020, Biden won 51 percent and in 2022 Democratic congressional candidates won 44 percent.The Equis study also pointed to some significant Democratic liabilities among Latino voters: Substantial percentages of a key bloc of pro-Democratic Hispanics — those who say they believe Democrats “are better for Hispanics” — harbor significant doubts about the party. For example, 44 percent agreed that “Democrats don’t keep their promises” and 44 percent agreed that “Democrats take Latinos for granted.”In addition, the percentage of Latino voters describing immigration as the top issue — a stance favoring Democrats — has nose-dived, according to the Equis analysis, from 39 percent in 2016 to 16 percent in 2020 and 12 percent in 2022.Where, then, does all this contradictory information leave us as to the probable outcome of the 2024 election? The reasonable answer is: in the dark.The RealClearPolitics average of the eight most recent Trump vs. Biden polls has Trump up by a statistically insignificant 0.6 percent. From August 2021 to the present, RealClear has tracked a total of 101 polls pitting these two against each other. Trump led in 56, Biden 38, and the remainder were ties.While this polling suggests Trump has an even chance, surveys do not fully capture the weight of Trump’s indictments and falsehoods on his own candidacy and, as evidenced in competitive races in 2022, on Republicans who are closely tied to the former president.Among the key voters who, in all likelihood, will pick the next president — relatively well-educated suburbanites — Trump has become toxic. He is, at least in that sense, Biden’s best hope for winning a second term.Even before the votes are counted on Nov. 5, 2024, the most important question may well turn out to be: If Trump is the Republican candidate for a third straight time and loses the election for a second, will he once again attempt to claim victory was stolen from him? And if he does, what will his followers — and for that matter, everyone else — do?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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      It’s Not America’s Unhappiest Birthday

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, happy almost Independence Day. In the spirit of the holiday: Is America toast?Gail Collins: Well, gee, Bret, happy almost Independence Day back. Hope you’re not planning to celebrate by, um, shooting things off.Bret: Only my mouth. As usual.Gail: Seriously, please elaborate. If you’re thinking of the Supreme Court, I’m happy to join in any hand-wringing. But somehow I suspect you’ve got a different vision of doom.Bret: It won’t surprise you that I’ve been pretty happy with the court’s rulings this term, which I’m sure we’ll get to in a moment. But what I mean is the brokenness of almost every institution I can think of, a thought I’m borrowing from Alana Newhouse, the editor of Tablet magazine. Congress: broken. Public education: broken. The I.R.S.: broken. The Roman Catholic Church: broken. The immigration system: broken. Cities: broken. Civil discourse: broken. Families: broken. Race relations: broken.And the most broken thing of all: public trust. Trust in government, in news media, in police, in the scientific establishment. There’s a ton of scholarly research showing that when societies become low-trust, like in Lebanon or Brazil, they tend to fare poorly.Gail: I know that many very smart people are in the throes of despair, but I just can’t get there. People have been complaining about the schools since the beginning of time — and that’s a good thing; you certainly don’t want to be complacent about education.Bret: Did you know that The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1944 for reporting on how shockingly ignorant American college freshmen were about U.S. history? And them wuz the good ol’ days.Gail: The I.R.S. is broken only to the extent that Republicans in Congress are refusing to supply funding to make the tax system work.Bret: And because the agency runs with the sort of peerless efficiency we generally expect from federal bureaucracies.Gail: And let’s see — as a longtime fallen-away Catholic, I don’t think the church is going to fix itself until we have both women priests and married priests. But it’s not as if it’s more broken now than it was throughout my life.Bret: I defer to you on this one. Just trying to think of the last time I read a story about a Catholic priest that didn’t involve child molestation or an effort by the church hierarchy to cover it up.Gail: The cities: They aren’t broken — most of them just need a whole lot more federal aid for housing and public safety. And gee, federal gun laws that crack down on villains from buying weapons down South and illegally shipping them to gun-control states like New York.I could go on, but I don’t want to monopolize our civil discourse. Are you really so superpessimistic?Bret: It’s easy to get carried away with gloom, and America has a history of bouncing back from bouts of depression and disorder. But I find it really hard to feel any optimism when Donald Trump seems to be cruising to the Republican renomination and Joe Biden is generating excitement among Democrats the way a colonoscopy generates excitement among people turning 50: something your doctor says you must do but only because the potential alternative is lethal.Gail: Oh, gosh, Bret, now whenever I look at Joe Biden, I’m going to think “colonoscopy president.”You know I’m very sorry he decided to run again and put a damper on all the promising younger Democrats who might have been great options to replace him. But still, he’s been a good president. Our problem isn’t really on the Democratic side. The Trump-remodeled Republican Party is one thing I’d put on a list of national disasters.Bret: Don’t forget it’s also an international disaster.Gail: Know you’re as down on Donald as I am. Should we talk Supreme Court? The big decisions — affirmative action, gay rights, student loans. Am I right guessing you agreed with all three?Bret: Well, don’t forget the court striking down the independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, in which three conservative judges joined with three liberals to uphold the right of state judiciaries to have a say in how state legislatures draw congressional districts and conduct elections. Or the Counterman v. Colorado case, in which four conservative justices joined Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a 7-to-2 decision protecting free-speech rights. This may be a conservative court, but it’s not a MAGA court.Gail: Can see the Trump campaign calls …Bret: Regarding the cases you mentioned, I think even the Biden administration knew deep down that its effort to forgive billions in student loans without action from Congress was legally doubtful. And I don’t have to agree with a web designer’s religious beliefs about same-sex marriage to accept that she has a free-speech right not to participate in something she finds morally objectionable.Gail: How would you feel about a wedding dress designer who refused to take business from a mixed-race couple because her own moral beliefs are against Black people being able to marry white people?Bret: Well, obviously I’d find it abhorrent. But this current case is different, because it turned on whether a business owner could be obliged to design a website for a same-sex couple. That’s clearly a matter of speech, not the identity of the customer.Gail: This case comes out of Colorado, which has a very specific state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Once again our Supremes have made it clear that they’re only going to rule for stuff they like — to hell with details like legality.Bret: I don’t think either of us questions the right of the Supreme Court to overturn any state laws that violate fundamental constitutional rights, even if we don’t like the views of the people claiming those rights. As for the affirmative action case, I think it was one of the best decisions in the court’s history. I know you, um, dissent ….Gail: We had a big argument about that one last week. Having a diverse student body or workplace isn’t just a good goal; it’s critical to building and maintaining a truly free and equal society.Bret: Sure, provided diversity isn’t achieved by giving advantages to some racial groups at the expense of others. In the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases, Asian Americans were put at a significant disadvantage in the admissions process simply on account of their race.Gail: I’m still hopeful business leaders and school administrators will be able to work to the same end by concentrating on other factors — like, say, looking for applicants who have been able to overcome an impoverished upbringing.Bret: We agree on this. And as our colleague David French pointed out in a terrific column last week, Harvard could have long ago redesigned its admissions process to favor students on account of socioeconomic status rather than race and achieved roughly the same kind of diversity without putting race at the center of its admissions calculus.Gail: We’ll see. Still hate the idea that striving to have a student body or work force that’s racially diverse is some kind of mortal sin.Can we talk presidential politics for a minute? Feel kinda guilty for bringing it up, given that the nominating conventions are still more than a year away, but it does continue to fascinate me.Bret: By all means …Gail: I noticed that the proudly middle-middle-class governor Ron DeSantis got $1.25 million for his political memoir. Also that he just signed a bill allowing Florida roads to be built with a radioactive material.Bret: Phosphogypsum, a byproduct of making fertilizer, which is now kept in mountainous stacks across Florida. Used for construction in Europe, Australia and Japan, to no apparent ill effect. As for the memoir, Andrew Cuomo, a former New York governor, got $5.1 million for his book, shortly before he completely disgraced himself. I’d say the Florida governor’s advance is pretty modest, in the scheme of things.Gail: I retreat. For the moment. Anyhow, the DeSantis stories are just silly details in a race when the Republican front-runner keeps getting charged with major crimes. Now, this is supposed to be your flock, Bret. How do you keep focused?Bret: Gail, I read about the Republican Party the way I would about a former friend with whom I was once close but who tragically turned to a life of debauchery and crime in his demented old age.Gail: Is that why you’re feeling so down on everything, from the cities to religion?Bret: Might be. Hard to feel optimistic, politically, when you don’t really have a team to root for. But maybe you’re right and I’m too depressed about America. Still would much prefer to live here than in Britain, with its sky-high inflation. Or France, with its riots. Or Mexico, with its corruption and creeping authoritarianism. Or Canada, with its Justin Trudeau.So I’m back where we started. Happy Fourth of July!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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      Bolsonaro ha sido inhabilitado en Brasil. Trump busca la presidencia en EE. UU.

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      Aunque el comportamiento de ambos expresidentes fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas que enfrentan han sido drásticamente diferentes.El presidente de extrema derecha, que no era el favorito en las encuestas, alertó sobre un fraude electoral a pesar de no tener ninguna prueba. Tras perder, afirmó que las elecciones estaban amañadas. Miles de sus seguidores —envueltos en banderas nacionales y engañados por teorías de la conspiración— procedieron a asaltar el Congreso, buscando anular los resultados.Ese escenario describe las elecciones presidenciales más recientes en las democracias más grandes del hemisferio occidental: Estados Unidos y Brasil.Pero si bien el comportamiento de los dos expresidentes —Donald Trump y Jair Bolsonaro— fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas han sido drásticamente diferentes.Si bien Trump enfrenta cargos federales y estatales que lo acusan de pagarle a una actriz de cine porno por su silencio y de manejar de manera indebida documentos clasificados, sigue siendo la figura más influyente de la derecha estadounidense. Más de dos años después de dejar la Casa Blanca, Trump parece estar destinado a convertirse en el candidato republicano a la presidencia, con una amplia ventaja en las encuestas.En Brasil, Bolsonaro ha enfrentado represalias más rápidas y feroces. También enfrenta numerosas investigaciones criminales. Las autoridades allanaron su casa y confiscaron su teléfono celular. Y el viernes, menos de seis meses después de que dejara el poder, el Tribunal Superior Electoral de Brasil votó para inhabilitar a Bolsonaro de optar a un cargo político durante lo que queda de la década.Las secuelas de un asalto en el complejo de oficinas del gobierno brasileño por parte de los partidarios de Bolsonaro en enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesEl tribunal dictaminó que el expresidente abusó de su poder cuando hizo afirmaciones sin fundamento sobre la integridad de los sistemas de votación de Brasil en la televisión estatal. Su próxima oportunidad a la presidencia sería en las elecciones de 2030, en las que tendría 75 años.Trump, incluso si es hallado culpable en un caso antes de las elecciones del año que viene, no sería descalificado automáticamente de postularse a la presidencia.El contraste entre las consecuencias que enfrentan ambos hombres refleja las diferencias de las estructuras políticas y gubernamentales de los dos países. El sistema estadounidense ha dejado el destino de Trump en manos de los votantes y del proceso lento y metódico del sistema judicial. En Brasil, los tribunales han sido proactivos, rápidos y agresivos para eliminar cualquier cosa que consideren una amenaza para la joven democracia de la nación.Las elecciones estadounidenses están a cargo de los estados, con un mosaico de reglas en todo el país sobre quién es elegible para postularse y cómo. En muchos casos, uno de los pocos obstáculos para aparecer en una boleta es recolectar suficientes firmas de votantes elegibles.En Brasil, las elecciones están regidas por el Tribunal Superior Electoral, el cual, como parte de sus funciones, sopesa regularmente si los candidatos tienen derecho a postularse para un cargo.“El alcalde, el gobernador o el presidente tienden a abusar de su poder para ser reelectos. Por eso creamos la ley de inelegibilidad”, dijo Ricardo Lewandowski, juez jubilado del Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil y expresidente del Tribunal Superior Electoral.La ley brasileña establece que los políticos que abusen de sus cargos sean temporalmente inelegibles para cargos. Como resultado, el Tribunal Superior Electoral ha bloqueado rutinariamente la postulación de políticos, incluidos, junto con Bolsonaro, tres expresidentes.“Lo que nuestro sistema trata de hacer es proteger al votante”, dijo Lewandowski. “Quienes cometieron delitos contra el pueblo deben permanecer fuera del juego durante cierto periodo de tiempo hasta que se rehabiliten”.Según algunos analistas, esta estrategia ha puesto demasiado poder en manos de los siete jueces del Tribunal Superior Electoral, en lugar de que sean los votantes quienes decidan.“Es una diferencia estructural entre los dos países”, dijo Thomas Traumann, analista político y exsecretario Especial de Comunicación Social de una presidenta brasileña de izquierda. Los políticos en Brasil conocen las reglas, dijo, y el sistema ha ayudado a mantener alejados del poder a algunos políticos corruptos. “Por otro lado, estás impidiendo que la gente decida”, dijo.El sistema electoral centralizado de Brasil también impidió que Bolsonaro librara una batalla tan prolongada por los resultados de las elecciones como lo hizo Trump.En Estados Unidos, un conteo lento de votos retrasó una semana la proclamación del ganador y luego el proceso del Colegio Electoral tomó varios meses más. Cada estado también realizó sus propias elecciones y auditorías. Eso le dio a Trump, y a los políticos y grupos que lo apoyaban, tiempo y varios frentes para implementar ataques contra el proceso.En Brasil, un país con 220 millones de habitantes, el sistema electrónico de votación contó las boletas en dos horas. La autoridad electoral central y no los medios de comunicación, procedieron a anunciar al ganador esa noche, en una ceremonia que involucró a líderes del Congreso, los tribunales y el gobierno.El sistema de votación electrónica de Brasil contó las papeletas en dos horas.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesBolsonaro permaneció en silencio durante dos días pero, con pocas opciones, al final se hizo a un lado.Sin embargo, ese enfoque también conlleva riesgos.“Se podría alegar que ser tan centralizado también te hace propenso a más abusos que en el sistema estadounidense, que está más descentralizado y permite básicamente una supervisión local”, dijo Omar Encarnación, profesor del Bard College que ha estudiado los sistemas democráticos en ambos países.Sin embargo, añadió, en Estados Unidos, varios estados han aprobado recientemente leyes de votación restrictivas. “Resulta claro que son dos modelos muy diferentes y, dependiendo del punto de vista, se podría argumentar cuál es mejor o peor para la democracia”.En el periodo previo a las elecciones, el sistema de Brasil también le permitió combatir de manera mucho más agresiva contra cualquier desinformación o conspiración antidemocrática. El Supremo Tribunal Federal ordenó redadas y arrestos, bloqueó a miembros del Congreso de las redes sociales y tomó medidas para prohibir a las empresas de tecnología que no cumplieran con las órdenes judiciales.El resultado fue una campaña radical e implacable destinada a combatir la desinformación electoral. Sin embargo las medidas también generaron reclamos generalizados de extralimitación. Algunas redadas se enfocaron en personas solo porque estaban en un grupo de WhatsApp que había mencionado un golpe de Estado. Algunas personas fueron encarceladas temporalmente sin juicio por criticar al tribunal. Un congresista fue sentenciado a prisión por amenazar a los jueces en una transmisión en vivo.Estas acciones estrictas de los tribunales han ampliado su enorme influencia en la política brasileña en los últimos años, incluido su papel central en la llamada investigación Lava Jato que envió a prisión al presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.“La audacia, la temeridad con la que los tribunales han actuado, no solo contra Bolsonaro, sino incluso contra Lula, sugiere que los tribunales se están comportando de una manera un tanto —odio usar la palabra irresponsable— pero tal vez incluso represiva”, dijo Encarnación.Sin embargo, a pesar de los esfuerzos del tribunal, miles de partidarios de Bolsonaro procedieron a atacar y saquear los recintos del poder de la nación en enero, una semana después de la toma de posesión de Lula.Si bien la situación fue inquietantemente similar al asalto al Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero de 2021, los roles de los dos expresidentes fueron diferentes.Cientos de simpatizantes de Bolsonaro fueron detenidos temporalmente después de los disturbios de enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesAmbos avivaron los reclamos y convencieron a sus seguidores de que se cometió un supuesto fraude, pero Trump les ordenó de manera explícita que marcharan hacia el Capitolio durante un discurso en las inmediaciones del lugar.Cuando los simpatizantes de Bolsonaro formaron su propia turba, Bolsonaro se encontraba a miles de kilómetros en Florida, donde permaneció por tres meses.En ambos países, cientos de invasores fueron arrestados y condenados, e investigaciones de los congresos están investigando lo sucedido. Por lo demás, las consecuencias han sido distintas.Al igual que Trump, Bolsonaro también ha defendido a sus seguidores.El viernes, Bolsonaro dijo que la revuelta no había sido un intento de golpe de Estado sino “viejitas y viejitos con banderas brasileñas en sus espaldas y biblias bajo sus brazos”.Pero las repercusiones políticas han sido diferentes.En Estados Unidos, gran parte del Partido Republicano ha aceptado las afirmaciones infundadas de fraude electoral, los estados han aprobado leyes que dificultan el voto y los votantes han elegido candidatos para el Congreso y las legislaturas estatales que niegan los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales.En Brasil, la clase política se ha alejado en gran medida del discurso de fraude electoral, así como del propio Bolsonaro. Los líderes conservadores están impulsando en la actualidad a un gobernador más moderado como el nuevo abanderado de la derecha brasileña.Encarnación afirmó que, a pesar de sus problemas, el sistema democrático de Brasil puede proporcionar un modelo sobre cómo combatir las nuevas amenazas antidemocráticas.“Básicamente, las democracias están luchando contra la desinformación y Dios sabe qué otras cosas con instituciones muy anticuadas”, dijo. “Necesitamos actualizar el hardware. No creo que haya sido diseñado para personas como las que enfrentan estos países”.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, que abarca Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Anteriormente reportó de tecnología desde San Francisco y, antes de integrarse al Times en 2018, trabajó siete años en The Wall Street Journal. @jacknicas • Facebook More

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      Why Trump and Bolsonaro Cases Were Handled Differently

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      In both the United States and Brazil, former presidents made baseless claims of fraud, and their supporters stormed government buildings.Down in the polls, the far-right president warned of voter fraud, despite no evidence. After losing, he claimed the vote was rigged. Thousands of his supporters — draped in the national flag and misled by conspiracy theories — then stormed Congress in a bid to overturn the results.That scenario describes the latest elections in the Western Hemisphere’s largest democracies: the United States and Brazil.But while the behavior of the two former presidents — Donald J. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro — was remarkably similar, the political aftermath has been drastically different.While Mr. Trump faces federal and state charges that accuse him of paying off a porn star and mishandling classified documents, he remains the most influential figure on the American right. More than two years after leaving the White House, he again appears poised to become the Republican nominee for president, with a wide lead in the polls.In Brazil, Mr. Bolsonaro has faced much swifter and fiercer blowback. He, too, faces numerous criminal investigations. The authorities have raided his house and confiscated his cellphone. And on Friday, less than six months after he left power, Brazil’s electoral court voted to block Mr. Bolsonaro from political office for the rest of the decade.The aftermath of a riot at the Brazilian government office complex by supporters of Mr. Bolsonaro in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesThe court ruled he had abused his power when he made baseless claims about the integrity of Brazil’s voting systems on state television. His next shot at the presidency would be in the 2030 election, when he is 75.Mr. Trump, even if he is convicted in a case before next year’s election, could still potentially run.The contrasting fallout for the two men reflect key differences in the two countries’ political and governing structures. The U.S. system has left Mr. Trump’s fate up to voters and the slow, methodical process of the justice system. In Brazil, the courts have been proactive, fast and aggressive in snuffing out anything they see as a threat to the nation’s young democracy.U.S. elections are run by the states, with a patchwork of rules across the country on who is eligible to run and how. In many cases, one of the few hurdles to appearing on a ballot is collecting enough signatures from eligible voters.In Brazil, elections are governed by a federal electoral court, which, as part of its duties, regularly weighs in on whether candidates have the right to seek office.“The mayor, governor or president tend to abuse their power to be re-elected. So we created the law of ineligibility,” said Ricardo Lewandowski, a retired Brazilian Supreme Court justice and former head of the electoral court.Brazilian law states that politicians who abuse their positions are temporarily ineligible for office. As a result, the electoral court has routinely blocked politicians from running, including, with Mr. Bolsonaro, three former presidents.“What our system has tried to do is protect the voter,” Mr. Lewandowski said. “Those who committed crimes against the public have to stay out of the game for a certain amount of time until they rehabilitate.”The approach has also put what some analysts say is too much power in the hands of the electoral court’s seven judges, instead of voters.“It’s a structural difference between the two countries,” said Thomas Traumann, a political analyst and former press secretary for a leftist Brazilian president. Politicians in Brazil know the rules, he said, and the system has helped keep some corrupt politicians from power. “On the other hand, you are preventing the people from deciding,” he said.Brazil’s centralized electoral system also thwarted Mr. Bolsonaro from waging as protracted a fight over the election’s results as Mr. Trump did.In the United States, a slow vote count delayed the declaration of a winner for a week, and the Electoral College process then took several more months. Each state also ran its own election and audits. That gave Mr. Trump and politicians and groups supporting him time and various fronts to mount attacks against the process.In Brazil, a nation of 220 million people, the electronic voting system counted the ballots in two hours. The central electoral authority, not the news media, then declared the winner that night, in a ceremony involving leaders of Congress, the courts and the government.Brazil’s electronic voting system counted the ballots in two hours. Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesMr. Bolsonaro remained silent for two days but, with few options, eventually stepped aside.But that approach also carries risks.“You can argue that being that centralized is also prone to more abuse than the American system, which is more decentralized and allows for basically local supervision,” said Omar Encarnación, a Bard College professor who has studied the democratic systems in both countries.Yet in the United States, several states have recently passed restrictive voting laws, he added. “So clearly, these are two very different models, and one can argue in either direction, which one is best or worst for democracy.”In the run-up to the election, Brazil’s system also allowed it to fight far more aggressively against any anti-democratic misinformation or plotting. The nation’s Supreme Court ordered raids and arrests, blocked members of Congress from social networks and moved to ban tech companies in Brazil that did not comply with court orders.The result was a sweeping and unrelenting campaign aimed at fighting election misinformation. But the moves also drew widespread claims of overreach. Some raids targeted people just because they were in a WhatsApp group that had mentioned a coup. Some people were temporarily jailed without a trial for criticizing the court. A congressman was sentenced to prison for threatening judges on a livestream.Such stringent actions by the courts extends their outsized influence in Brazilian politics in recent years, including their central role in the so-called Car Wash investigation that sent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to prison.“The boldness, the fearlessness in which the courts have acted, not just against Bolsonaro, but even toward Lula, would suggest that the courts are behaving in a somewhat — I hate to use the word reckless — but perhaps even in a repressive mode,” Mr. Encarnación said.Yet regardless of the court’s efforts, thousands of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters still raided and ransacked the nation’s halls of power a week after Mr. Lula’s inauguration in January.While the scenes were eerily similar to the storming of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the roles of the two ex-presidents were different.Hundreds of Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters were temporarily detained after the riot in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesBoth had fanned the flames, convincing their followers there had been fraud, but Mr. Trump explicitly directed his supporters to march to the Capitol during a speech nearby.When Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters formed their own mob, Mr. Bolsonaro was thousands of miles away in Florida, where he remained for three months.In both countries, hundreds of trespassers were arrested and charged, and congressional investigations are digging into what happened. Otherwise the aftermath has been different.Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Bolsonaro has also defended his supporters.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that the riot was not an attempted coup, but instead “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”But the political reverberations have differed.In the U.S., much of the Republican Party has embraced the baseless claims of election-fraud, states have passed laws that make it harder to vote, and voters have elected election-denying candidates to Congress and state legislatures.In Brazil, the political establishment has largely moved away from talk of election fraud — and from Mr. Bolsonaro himself. Conservative leaders are now pushing a more moderate governor as the new standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.Mr. Encarnación said that, despite its problems, Brazil’s democratic system can provide a model on how to fight new anti-democratic threats.“Democracies basically are fighting misinformation and God knows what else with very antiquated institutions,” he said. “We do need to upgrade the hardware. I don’t think it was designed for people of the likes these countries are facing.” More

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      Brazil’s Bolsonaro Blocked From Office for Election-Fraud Claims

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      Brazil’s electoral court banned former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking office until 2030 for spreading false claims about the nation’s voting system.Brazilian election officials on Friday blocked former President Jair Bolsonaro from seeking public office until 2030, removing a top contender from the next presidential contest and dealing a significant blow to the country’s far-right movement.Brazil’s electoral court ruled that Mr. Bolsonaro had violated Brazil’s election laws when, less than three months ahead of last year’s vote, he called diplomats to the presidential palace and made baseless claims that the nation’s voting systems were likely to be rigged against him.Five of the court’s seven judges voted that Mr. Bolsonaro had abused his power as president when he convened the meeting with diplomats and broadcast it on state television.“This response will confirm our faith in the democracy,” said Alexandre de Moraes, a Supreme Court justice who leads the electoral court, as he cast his vote against Mr. Bolsonaro.The decision is a sharp and swift rebuke of Mr. Bolsonaro and his effort to undermine Brazil’s elections. Just six months ago, Mr. Bolsonaro was president of one of the world’s largest democracies. Now his career as a politician is in jeopardy.Under the ruling, Mr. Bolsonaro, 68, will next be able to run for president in 2030, when he is 75. The next presidential election is scheduled for 2026.Mr. Bolsonaro said Friday that he was not surprised by the 5-to-2 decision because the court had always been against him. “Come on. We know that since I took office they said I was going to carry out a coup,” he told reporters (though he, too, had hinted at that possibility). “This is not democracy.”His lawyers had argued that his speech to diplomats was an “act of government” aimed at raising legitimate concerns about election security.Mr. Bolsonaro appeared to accept his fate, saying Friday that he would focus on campaigning for other right-wing candidates.Yet he is still expected to appeal the ruling to Brazil’s Supreme Court, though that body acted aggressively to rein in his power during his presidency. He has harshly attacked the high court for years, calling some justices “terrorists” and accusing them of trying to sway the vote against him.Judge Alexandre de Moraes, center, a member of Brazil’s Supreme Court, used the court to curb Mr. Bolsonaro’s power during his administration.Dado Galdieri for The New York TimesEven if an appeal is successful, Mr. Bolsonaro would face another 15 cases in the electoral court, including accusations that he improperly used public funds to influence the vote and that his campaign ran a coordinated misinformation campaign. Any of those cases could also block him from seeking the presidency.He is also linked to several criminal investigations, involving whether he provoked his supporters to storm Brazil’s halls of power on Jan. 8 and whether he was involved in a scheme to falsify his vaccine records. (Mr. Bolsonaro has declined the Covid-19 vaccine.) A conviction in any criminal case would also render him ineligible for office, in addition to carrying possible prison time.Mr. Bolsonaro was a shock to Brazil’s politics when he was elected president in 2018. A former Army captain and fringe far-right congressman, he rode a populist wave to the presidency on an anti-corruption campaign.His lone term was marked by controversy from the start, including a sharp rise in deforestation in the Amazon rainforest, a hands-off approach to the pandemic that left nearly 700,000 dead in Brazil and harsh attacks against the press, the judiciary and the left.Mr. Bolsonaro in 2017, when he was a member of congress.Lalo de Almeida for The New York TimesBut it was his repeated broadsides against Brazil’s voting systems that alarmed many Brazilians, as well as the international community, stoking worries that he might try to hold on to power if he lost last October’s election.Mr. Bolsonaro did lose by a slim margin and at first refused to concede. Under pressure from allies and rivals, he eventually agreed to a transition to President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.Yet, after listening to Mr. Bolsonaro’s false claims for years, many Bolsonaro supporters remained convinced that Mr. Lula, a leftist, had stolen the election. On Jan. 8, a week after Mr. Lula took office, thousands of people stormed Brazil’s Congress, Supreme Court and presidential offices, hoping to induce the military to take over the government and restore Mr. Bolsonaro as president.Mr. Bolsonaro said on Friday that the riot was not an attempted coup, but instead “little old women and little old men, with Brazilian flags on their back and Bibles under their arms.”Since then, more evidence has emerged that at least some members of Mr. Bolsonaro’s inner circle were entertaining ideas of a coup. Brazil’s federal police found separate drafts of plans for Mr. Bolsonaro to hold on to power at the home of Mr. Bolsonaro’s justice minister and on the phone of his former assistant.Mr. Bolsonaro’s attacks on the voting system and the Jan. 8 riot in Brazil bore a striking resemblance to former president Donald J. Trump’s denials that he lost the 2020 election and the Jan. 6, 2021, storming of the U.S. Capitol.The aftermath of the riot at the Brazilian government complex in Brasília in January.Victor Moriyama for The New York TimesYet the result for the two former presidents has so far been different. While Mr. Bolsonaro has already been excluded from the next presidential race, Mr. Trump remains the leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination. Mr. Trump could also still run for president even if he is convicted of any of the various criminal charges he faces.The ruling against Mr. Bolsonaro upends politics in Latin America’s largest nation. For years, he has pulled Brazil’s conservative movement further to the right with harsh rhetoric against rivals, skepticism of science, a love of guns and an embrace of the culture wars.He received 49.1 percent of the vote in the 2022 election, just 2.1 million votes behind Mr. Lula, in the nation’s closest presidential contest since it returned to democracy in 1985, following a military dictatorship.Yet conservative leaders in Brazil, with an eye toward Mr. Bolsonaro’s legal challenges, have started to move on, touting Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the right-wing governor of Brazil’s largest state, São Paulo, as the new standard-bearer of the right and a 2026 challenger to Mr. Lula.“He is a much more palatable candidate because he doesn’t have Bolsonaro’s liabilities and because he is making a move to the center,” said Marta Arretche, a political science professor at the University of São Paulo.The Brazilian press and pollsters have speculated that Mr. Bolsonaro’s wife, Michelle, or two of his sons would run for president. Mr. Bolsonaro said recently that he told Ms. Bolsonaro she doesn’t have the necessary experience, “but she is an excellent campaigner.”Tarcísio Gomes de Freitas, the right-wing governor of São Paulo state, is emerging as a new standard-bearer of the Brazilian right.Adriano Machado/ReutersFriday’s decision is also further proof that Mr. Moraes, the head of the electoral court, has become one of Brazil’s most powerful men.During Mr. Bolsonaro’s administration, Mr. Moraes acted as the most effective check on the president’s power, leading investigations into Mr. Bolsonaro and his allies, jailing some of his supporters for what he viewed as threats against Brazil’s institutions and ordering tech companies to remove the accounts of many other right-wing voices.Those tactics raised concerns that he was abusing his power, and Mr. Bolsonaro and his supporters have called Mr. Moraes an authoritarian. On the left, he has been praised as the savior of Brazil’s democracy.Mr. Bolsonaro’s case before the electoral court stemmed from a 47-minute meeting on July 18 in which he called dozens of foreign diplomats to the presidential residence to present what he promised was evidence of fraud in past Brazilian elections.He made unfounded claims that Brazil’s voting machines changed ballots for him to other candidates in a previous election and that a 2018 hack of the electoral court’s computer network showed the vote could be rigged. But security experts have said the hackers could never gain access to the voting machines or change votes.The speech was broadcast on the Brazilian government’s television network and its social media channels. Some tech companies later took the video down because it spread election misinformation.As for Mr. Bolsonaro’s future plans? He told the Brazilian newspaper Folha de São Paulo that during the three months he spent in Florida this year after his election loss, he was offered a job as a “poster boy” for American businesses wanting to reach Brazilians.“I went to a hamburger joint and it filled with people,” he said. “But I don’t want to abandon my country.”Ana Ionova More

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      Republican Presidential Candidates Celebrate Student Loan Ruling

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      Much of the Republican field of presidential candidates was unanimous in praising the Supreme Court’s decision on Friday to reject President Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan.Former President Donald J. Trump praised the ruling during an address to attendees at the Moms For Liberty conference in Philadelphia.“Today the Supreme Court also ruled that President Biden cannot wipe out hundred of billions, perhaps trillions of dollars in student loan debt, which would have been very unfair to the millions and millions of people who paid their debt through hard work and diligence, very unfair,” he said. He called Mr. Biden a “corrupt president” and lamented that the plan was “a way to buy votes.”Senator Tim Scott, Nikki Haley and former Vice President Mike Pence were among the first of the 2024 contenders to signal their alignment with the six conservative justices in supporting the decision.“The U.S. Supreme Court was right to end the illegal and immoral effort by the Biden Administration to transfer student debt to taxpayers,” Mr. Scott wrote on Twitter. “If you take out a loan, you pay it back.”He called on colleges and universities to “act to lower tuition and improve the quality of their programs” and vowed that as president, he would take action to make education more affordable and to expand access to vocational training.Mr. Pence sought credit for having “played a role in appointing three of the Justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision” — though he did not mention former President Donald J. Trump even as he highlighted one of the Trump administration’s signature achievements.“Joe Biden’s massive trillion-dollar student loan bailout subsidizes the education of elites on the backs of hardworking Americans,” Mr. Pence wrote on Twitter, “and it was an egregious violation of the Constitution for him to attempt to do so unilaterally with the stroke of the executive pen.”Ms. Haley was similarly critical, painting the president’s plan as unfair.“A president cannot just wave his hand and eliminate loans for students he favors, while leaving out all those who worked hard to pay back their loans or made other career choices,” Ms. Haley wrote on Twitter.In a speech Friday morning in Philadelphia, she heaped praise on the court: “Can I just say God bless the Supreme Court? They are righting a lot of wrongs.”Vivek Ramaswamy and Asa Hutchinson soon joined in as well, and while Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has not released an official statement, his campaign used the moment to highlight his higher education policies in Florida.In a video published by his campaign’s account on Twitter, Mr. DeSantis is seen on the campaign trail in South Carolina, promoting Florida’s rules on state school tuition rates and saying that colleges and universities “should be responsible for defaulted student loan debt.”“If you produce somebody that can’t pay it back,” he continues, “that’s on you.”Mr. Ramaswamy posted a two-and-a-half minute video to Twitter extolling the decision, citing its legal underpinnings as a “powerful precedent” that could target “most of the regulations of the administrative state.”Mr. Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas, also commended the decision, stating that the “ruling reaffirms the importance of upholding our legal framework and preserving the checks and balances that ensure the proper functioning of our government.” He also called for finding a legislative solution to the student loan debt crisis.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota added his voice to the chorus of praise for the decision later Friday afternoon: “Erasing the debt of high-paid, college-educated workers at the expense of blue-collar Americans is wrong, and would have exacerbated inflation significantly,” he said in a statement, adding that “the Constitution clearly states that spending originates in Congress.”Another Republican candidate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has not publicly commented on the decision.Anjali Huynh More

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      Biden Now Faces Student Borrowers Asking: What Now?

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      President Biden accused Supreme Court justices of having “misinterpreted the Constitution” and vowed on Friday to seek new ways to relieve the crushing weight of student debt after the court’s conservative majority rejected his $400 billion plan to forgive federal loans.Speaking from the White House after the court issued its 6-to-3 decision, Mr. Biden lashed out at Republicans who challenged his plan, saying they were willing to forgive loans for business owners during the pandemic, but not for Americans struggling with college debt.“The hypocrisy is stunning,” he said.The president suggested that the court had been influenced by “Republican elected officials and special interests” who opposed his plan, which would have forgiven up to $20,000 in debt for as many as 40 million people.“They said no, no,” Mr. Biden said of the justices, “literally snatching from the hands of millions of Americans thousands of dollars in debt relief that was about to change their lives.”The court’s finding that Mr. Biden’s loan plan exceeded his authority under the HEROES Act unraveled one of the president’s signature policy efforts and ratcheted up the pressure on him to find a new way to make good on a promise to a key constituency as the 2024 presidential campaign gets underway.Mr. Biden said he had directed his secretary of education to use a different law, the Higher Education Act of 1965, to provide some debt relief. But it was unclear whether that law could be used to provide widespread debt relief. And education officials said it would take months, at least, before regulations could be put in place to begin providing debt relief.Officials expressed confidence that the Higher Education Act provides authority for the secretary to broadly “settle and compromise” student loan debts.Chief Justice John Roberts, the author of Friday’s ruling, appeared to undercut that argument in his opinion, suggesting that the ability to relieve debt under the Higher Education Act was limited to the disabled, people who are bankrupt or who have been defrauded.But Mr. Biden said his administration will try anyway.“In my view, it’s the best path that remains,” Mr. Biden insisted.Mr. Biden said he had directed the Education Department not to report borrowers who miss student loan payments to credit rating agencies for 12 months. Payments are set to begin in the fall after being paused since the beginning of the pandemic.The department also has proposed changes to benefit borrowers on an income-based repayment plan. A draft of the changes released in January said they could reduce payments on undergraduate loans to 5 percent of discretionary income, limit the accumulation of unpaid interest and allow more low-income workers to qualify for zero-dollar payments.Mr. Biden spoke about student loan forgiveness in October in Dover, Del.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe ruling in the student loan lawsuit was the culmination of Republican efforts assailing a centerpiece of Mr. Biden’s broader agenda, as the president and his allies try to make the case to Americans for a second term in the White House.In nearly two and a half years, the president has faced significant opposition in Congress and the courts to promises he made as a candidate. He dropped efforts for free community college and preschool. He abandoned taxpayer funding for child care. The courts have blocked some of his most ambitious climate policies and delayed his efforts to control the border.Student debt relief was among the most costly relief programs Mr. Biden proposed in the wake of the pandemic. But unlike his successes in seeking congressional approval for infrastructure spending and chip manufacturing subsidies, the president used his own authority to forgive $400 billion in student loan debt. On Friday, the court said he went too far.More broadly, the court’s decision was the latest blow to presidential power, with the justices putting new limits on how much leeway the executive branch has when interpreting congressional statutes.That could have far-reaching implications. With Congress in political paralysis, recent presidents — including Barack Obama and Donald J. Trump — have increasingly turned to executive actions and orders to advance their policy goals.Courts have responded by delaying or overturning some of those actions. Mr. Obama’s efforts to provide protection from deportation for the parents of some immigrants never went into effect. Many of Mr. Trump’s executive actions were deemed excessive by judges.In the student loan case, the court said that Mr. Biden had stretched the law beyond reason.Unlike his successes in seeking congressional approval for infrastructure spending and chip manufacturing subsidies, the president used his own authority in seeking to forgive student debt. T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWhen Mr. Biden announced last summer that his government would forgive up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt, student advocacy groups and many progressives cheered the move.“People can start finally to climb out from under that mountain of debt,” Mr. Biden said.His plan, which came after months of agonizing about whom it would benefit and whether it was too costly, would have been a centerpiece of his argument to voters that his economic agenda is designed to help low- and middle-income Americans blaze a path to greater prosperity.Instead, a majority of the justices agreed with critics who said the president’s debt relief plan went beyond the president’s authority under congressional legislation that allows changes to student loans during a public emergency.Within moments of the court ruling on Friday, it was clear that Mr. Biden would be under immense pressure from the left wing of the Democratic Party to respond swiftly and aggressively.Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the Democratic Senate leader who had pushed hard for student debt relief, demanded that Mr. Biden not give up.“I call upon the administration to do everything in its power to deliver for millions of working- and middle-class Americans struggling with student loan debt,” Mr. Schumer said.Senator Bernie Sanders, the Vermont independent, went even further.“The president has the clear authority under the Higher Education Act of 1965 to cancel student debt,” Mr. Sanders wrote in a statement. “He must use this authority immediately.”For much of the last year, administration officials had refused to say whether they were working on a “Plan B” in the event the Supreme Court rejected the president’s plan.Even after several justices expressed deep skepticism during oral arguments earlier this year, Mr. Biden and his aides continued to insist that they had confidence in the legality of the debt relief plan and would not say whether they were working on an alternative.Millions of people with federal student loans are about to get another financial shock this fall, when the yearslong pause on repayment of existing loans ends.The federal government, under former President Donald J. Trump, imposed the pause on repayments at the beginning of the pandemic, as businesses closed and millions of people lost their jobs. Mr. Biden renewed the pause several times since taking office, but has said it will not be renewed again now that the pandemic has largely ended.Payments are set to resume in October, putting pressure on the debt holders that Mr. Biden’s forgiveness plan was designed to help.One question for Mr. Biden is whether those who are disappointed will blame him or the Supreme Court when they go to the ballot box next year.Mary-Pat Hector, the chief executive of Rise, a student advocacy organization that has pushed for student debt relief and college affordability, said many young Americans will blame Mr. Biden if he cannot deliver significant debt relief.“Many young people, particularly Gen Z, don’t like things that seem performative, and they believe in holding people accountable,” she said. “I think that we are going to see that reaction from a lot of people.” More

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      Republican Presidential Candidates Hail the Affirmative Action Decision

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      The Republicans running for president applauded the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday to strike down race-based affirmative action in college admissions, a policy that for decades has stoked the conservative agenda.Former President Donald J. Trump called the decision a “great day for America” in a statement.“People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded,” he said, adding, “We’re going back to all merit-based — and that’s the way it should be!”Mr. Trump’s political organization, the MAGA War Room, cast him as a main catalyst for the court’s ruling to end affirmative action, saying on Twitter that “he delivered on his promise to appoint constitutional justices.”It also made an outlandish comparison between Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner who has been indicted twice since leaving the White House, and Abraham Lincoln, one of the party’s iconic forebears.“President Trump will end affirmative action like Lincoln ended slavery,” the group wrote on Twitter.Mr. Trump appointed three of the six justices who voted to reject affirmative action at colleges, the same conservative supermajority that delivered another seismic victory for conservatives a year ago when it overturned Roe v. Wade, eliminating the constitutional right to abortion.Mike Pence, Mr. Trump’s former vice president, who is now a 2024 rival, suggested in a statement on Thursday that he deserved a measure of credit for the court’s rightward shift and said that the “egregious” policy had “only served to perpetuate racism.”“I am honored to have played a role in appointing three of the justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision, and as president I will continue to appoint judges who will strictly apply the law rather than twisting it to serve woke and progressive ends,” he said.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, Mr. Trump’s chief G.O.P. rival, also welcomed the court’s move.“College admissions should be based on merit and applicants should not be judged on their race or ethnicity,” he wrote on Twitter. “The Supreme Court has correctly upheld the Constitution and ended discrimination by colleges and universities.”Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who is Black, said in a statement that race should not determine who gets certain opportunities.“We will not be judged solely by the color of our skin,” he said. “That’s what the ruling said today. But that is the story of America. That is a story of American progress, and we can all celebrate that today.”Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and onetime United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, said in a statement that the court’s ruling had reaffirmed how Americans value freedom and opportunity.“Picking winners and losers based on race is fundamentally wrong,” Ms. Haley said. “This decision will help every student — no matter their background — have a better opportunity to achieve the American Dream.”Vivek Ramaswamy, a multimillionaire entrepreneur who graduated from Harvard College, which was a defendant in the Supreme Court case, pledged to take further steps to end affirmative action. In a statement, he said would repeal a decades-old presidential executive order that requires federal contractors to adopt race-based hiring preferences.“I’m glad the U.S. Supreme Court finally laid to rest one of the worst failed experiments in American history: affirmative action,” he said. “Still, the ruling is likely to mark the beginning of a new era of ‘shadow’ racial balancing and quotas, where elite universities like Harvard and woke employers play games to suit their desires for preferences that benefit perceived ‘marginalized’ groups.” More