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      Schumer Urges New Leadership in Israel, Calling Netanyahu an Obstacle to Peace

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      Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, on Thursday delivered a pointed speech on the Senate floor excoriating Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel as a major obstacle to peace in the Middle East and calling for new leadership in Israel, five months into the war.Many Democratic lawmakers have condemned Mr. Netanyahu’s leadership and his right-wing governing coalition, and President Biden has even criticized the Israeli military’s offensive in Gaza as “over the top.” But Mr. Schumer’s speech amounted to the sharpest critique yet from a senior American elected official — effectively urging Israelis to replace Mr. Netanyahu.“I believe in his heart, his highest priority is the security of Israel,” said Mr. Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish elected official in the United States. “However, I also believe Prime Minister Netanyahu has lost his way by allowing his political survival to take precedence over the best interests of Israel.”He added: “He has been too willing to tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza, which is pushing support for Israel worldwide to historic lows. Israel cannot survive if it becomes a pariah.”Mr. Schumer’s speech was the latest reflection of the growing dissatisfaction among Democrats, particularly progressives, with Israel’s conduct of the war and its toll on Palestinian civilians, which has created a strategic and political dilemma for Mr. Biden. Republicans have tried to capitalize on that dynamic, hugging Mr. Netanyahu closer as Democrats repudiate him.The majority leader’s remarks came a day after Senate Republicans invited Mr. Netanyahu to speak as their special guest at a party retreat in Washington. Senator John Barrasso of Wyoming, the No. 3 Republican, invited Mr. Netanyahu to address Republicans virtually, but he could not appear because of a last-minute scheduling conflict. Ambassador Michael Herzog, Israel’s envoy to the United States, spoke in his place.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Kamala Harris Will Visit Abortion Clinic, in Historic First

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      The vice president plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members in Minneapolis, a striking political move that shows how assertive Democrats have grown on the issue.Vice President Kamala Harris plans to meet with abortion providers and staff members on Thursday in the Twin Cities, a visit that is believed to be the first stop by a president or vice president to an abortion clinic.The appearance at a health center will be the latest leg in a nationwide tour by Ms. Harris, who has emerged as the most outspoken defender of abortion rights in the administration. While White House officials say they have largely reached the limits of their power to protect abortion rights, the issue has emerged as a linchpin of their re-election strategy.Ms. Harris plans on Thursday to tour the center with an abortion provider and highlight what the administration has done to try to preserve access to the procedure as conservative states enact growing restrictions.Minnesota has become a haven for abortion seekers since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, ushering in restrictive laws and bans in neighboring states. The Society of Family Planning, a health research organization, found that the average number of abortions in the state increased by about 36 percent in the year after the Supreme Court decision.Last year, Gov. Tim Walz signed legislation enshrining abortion rights into state law, an effort to ensure the procedure remains legal no matter who takes office in the state. Ms. Harris will be joined on Thursday by Minnesota Democrats including Mr. Walz and Representative Betty McCollum. The tour is part of a White House initiative led by Ms. Harris to highlight abortion rights.The mere sight of a top Democratic official walking into an abortion clinic will offer the clearest illustration yet of how the politics of abortion rights have shifted for the party — and the nation.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Democrats Meddle in Ohio G.O.P. Senate Primary, Pushing Trump’s Choice

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      A Democratic group is wading into the Republican Senate primary in Ohio with a new television spot aimed at promoting the conservative credentials of Bernie Moreno, a Cleveland-area businessman who has been endorsed by former President Donald J. Trump.The spot criticizes Mr. Moreno as ultraconservative and too aligned with Mr. Trump. But by running the ad in the final week of the primary, those critiques are likely to be viewed as badges of honor by Republican primary voters, a tactic Democrats have employed in other races in recent years.A group called Duty and Country is spending roughly $879,000 on the ad, which is set to run across the state, according to AdImpact, a firm that tracks advertising.The group is funded largely through the Senate Majority PAC, the principal super PAC supporting Democratic efforts to maintain control of the chamber.Mr. Moreno is running for the Republican nomination against State Senator Matt Dolan and Ohio’s secretary of state, Frank LaRose. The winner will face Senator Sherrod Brown, the Democratic incumbent.“Democrats constantly underestimate the America First movement at their own peril,” said Reagan McCarthy, communications director for Mr. Moreno. “They thought President Trump would be easy to beat in 2016 and then they got their clocks cleaned when he demolished Hillary Clinton. The same thing is going to happen to Sherrod Brown this year.”Mr. Moreno has struggled to pull away from his primary challengers despite the endorsement from Mr. Trump and others, including Senator J.D. Vance, a Trump-backed Republican who was elected in 2022. Mr. Moreno won their backing by embracing hard-line conservative positions that Democrats view as potentially easier to run against in a general election.“When Ohio voters head to their polling place, they deserve to know the truth about Bernie Moreno — and the truth is that Moreno is a MAGA extremist who embraced Donald Trump just like he embraced his policies to ban abortion nationwide and repeal” the Affordable Care Act, said Hannah Menchhoff, a spokeswoman for Senate Majority PAC.Republicans need to flip two seats to win back power if President Biden is re-elected, but just one if the White House returns to Republican hands. Republicans already are expected to gain one seat in West Virginia after Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, announced he would not seek re-election.In the California Senate primary last month, Representative Adam Schiff, a Democrat, ran a spot describing Steve Garvey, a Republican and a former Major League Baseball player, as too conservative. Mr. Schiff and Mr. Garvey will face off in November in their deep-blue state.In the Pennsylvania governor’s race in 2022, the Democrat, Josh Shapiro, ran an ad in the Republican primary playing up the conservative credentials of Doug Mastriano, the Trump-backed candidate in the race. Mr. Mastriano won and Mr. Shapiro easily defeated him to win the governor’s office. More

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      Donald Trump and Joe Biden Clinch Their Party Nominations

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      President Biden and former President Donald J. Trump on Tuesday secured the delegates necessary to clinch their parties’ presidential nominations, according to The Associated Press, cementing a general election rematch in November months in the making.Both men and their campaigns have long anticipated this moment. Mr. Biden faced only token opposition in the Democratic primary, as is typical for a sitting president, while Mr. Trump had been his party’s dominant front-runner for months.Their November collision began to look even more likely after Mr. Trump scored a decisive win in Iowa in January. His victory cleared the field of all but one of his major Republican rivals and put him on a glide path to his party’s nomination. His last remaining primary challenger, Nikki Haley, suspended her campaign last week, further clearing a path that had already been remarkably free of obstacles.The Associated Press named Mr. Biden the presumptive Democratic nominee after projecting his victory in Georgia, while Mr. Trump was designated the presumptive Republican nominee after he swept the G.O.P. contests in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington State.Tuesday’s results cleared the way for a 2024 general election campaign that, at just under eight months, is set to be one of the longest in modern American history and will be the country’s first presidential rematch in nearly 70 years.Already, Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden had shifted their focus away from the primaries. With the president facing no significant challengers, Mr. Biden’s campaign speeches emphasized not just his record but the danger he believes is posed by Mr. Trump.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Biden Clinches Democratic Nomination as Trump Awaits

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      President Biden clinched the Democratic nomination on Tuesday, securing enough delegates to send him into a looming rematch against former President Donald J. Trump after a mostly uncontested primary campaign that was nevertheless marked by doubts — even from supporters — over his age, foreign policy and enduring strength as a candidate.Mr. Biden faced little opposition in his march to the nomination. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the political scion and environmental lawyer, dropped out of the Democratic nominating contest to run as an independent. Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and the self-help guru Marianne Williamson never attracted more than a fraction of the vote.In fact, Mr. Biden’s most serious rival was not a candidate but a protest movement over his support for Israel in its war in Gaza. The movement — organized by Muslim American activists and progressives — urged voters to cast their ballot for the “uncommitted” option rather than Mr. Biden.It received significant support in Michigan, winning more than 101,000 votes, as well as in Minnesota and Hawaii. Organizers also targeted Washington State, which held its primary on Tuesday, although the full results there will not be known for several days.Still, with his victory in Georgia, Mr. Biden on Tuesday crossed the necessary threshold of 1,968 delegates to become his party’s standard-bearer this year.In a statement, Mr. Biden said he was honored that Democratic voters “have put their faith in me once again to lead our party — and our country — in a moment when the threat Trump poses is greater than ever.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Washington State and ‘Uncommitted’ Will Test Biden Again Over Gaza War

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      Washington State’s primary voters will offer the next glimpse of how many Democratic voters oppose President Biden’s policy toward Israel’s war in Gaza, though it may be days before a full picture of the results is clear.The state’s primary on Tuesday comes after noteworthy numbers of Democratic voters in other states chose “uncommitted” in apparent protest of Mr. Biden’s position, including 13 percent in Michigan, 19 percent in Minnesota and 29 percent in the little-watched Democratic caucuses in Hawaii, where the antiwar advocacy groups that organized elsewhere did not have a presence.Washington’s brand of anti-establishment Pacific Northwest liberalism has the potential to be a good fit for the “uncommitted” vote that has won increasing slices of the Democratic electorate in recent weeks.And it is unlikely Mr. Biden’s forceful performance in his State of the Union address last week would have a strong impact on the results in Washington, which votes entirely by mail. More than 512,000 Democratic primary ballots had already been received by Thursday, when he delivered the speech, according to data from the Washington secretary of state’s office.Stuart Holmes, the director of elections for the secretary of state, said to expect about half the state’s ballots to be counted and reported when polls close on Tuesday night. The rest of the ballots will be tabulated and reported once a day until all votes are counted, with the vast majority of the counting expected to be complete by the end of this week, Mr. Holmes said.Shasti Conrad, the chairwoman of the Washington State Democrats, said the party would support Mr. Biden.“We know President Biden and Vice President Harris are working tirelessly toward an end to the violence and a just, lasting peace in the Middle East,” Ms. Conrad said. “Voters in Washington understand the tremendous progress Democrats have made.”“Uncommitted” backers have offered a low bar for success in each of the preceding states where they have been active.Larry Cohen, the chairman of Our Revolution, the political organization begun by supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders that is backing “uncommitted,” put the goal for success in Washington State at 10 percent — far less than previous states but more than “uncommitted” received in 2020, when 6,450 people, about 0.4 percent of Democratic primary voters, chose “uncommitted.”The state canceled its presidential primaries in 2012, the last time an incumbent Democratic president was seeking re-election. The parties held nominating caucuses instead. More

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      Fine, Call It a Comeback

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      If the Joe Biden who showed up to deliver the State of the Union address last week is the Joe Biden who shows up for the rest of the campaign, you’re not going to have any more of those weak-kneed pundits suggesting he’s not up to running for re-election. Here’s hoping he does.But that’s not the only thing from Thursday night that I hope Biden holds onto. So far, the Biden team has been more sure-footed attacking Donald Trump’s threat to democracy than it has been defending Biden’s incumbency. That reflects a strange problem they face. By virtually any measure save food prices, Biden is presiding over a strong economy — stronger, by far, than most peer countries. As Noah Smith has noted, the Biden economy looks far better than Ronald Reagan’s “Morning in America”: Unemployment is lower, inflation is lower, interest rates are lower, stock market returns are better.But Americans feel otherwise. The most recent Times/Siena poll found that 74 percent of registered voters rated the economy either “poor” or “fair.” By a 15-point margin, voters said Trump’s policies helped them personally. By a 25-point margin, they said Biden’s policies hurt them personally.Voters seem to remember the tail end of Trump’s third year, when the economy was strong, and not the utter calamity of his fourth year, when his Covid response was chaos and the economy was frozen. In November of 2020, unemployment was 6.7 percent and Trump had just turned a White House celebration into a superspreader event. Republicans who say Americans should ask whether they’re better off than they were four years ago should be careful what they wish for.But Biden is in a tough spot. You don’t want to run for re-election telling voters they’re wrong and the economy is actually great. Nor can you run for re-election telling voters that they’re right and the economy is bad. Biden has often seemed a little unsure what to say about his own record. Thursday night, he figured it out.“I came to office determined to get us through one of the toughest periods in the nation’s history,” Biden said. “We have. It doesn’t make news, news — in a thousand cities and towns, the American people are writing the greatest comeback story never told.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Supermartes: quién ganó, quién perdió y qué está por definirse

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      Donald Trump y Joe Biden avanzan hacia una revancha y se espera que Nikki Haley retire su candidatura. Pero los aspirantes presidenciales no eran los únicos en la contienda.Donald Trump y el presidente Joe Biden salieron victoriosos del Supermartes, el día más importante de la temporada de primarias, y solo la estrecha victoria de Nikki Haley en Vermont la ayudó a evitar quedar fuera en las 15 contiendas republicanas. Se esperaba que pusiera fin a su campaña el miércoles.Pero los candidatos presidenciales que han ido avanzando hacia una revancha no fueron los únicos en la votación. He aquí algunas de las otras contiendas importantes que se decidieron el martes.CaliforniaEl representante Adam Schiff, congresista demócrata desde hace mucho tiempo, y Steve Garvey, un novato republicano, pasaron a las elecciones generales en la contienda por el Senado, asegurándose dos pases de salida de la “jungla” de las primarias para competir por el escaño que quedó libre tras la muerte el año pasado de la senadora Dianne Feinstein. Con un electorado dominado por los liberales, Schiff tendrá una ventaja significativa en noviembre.Tres escaños de la Cámara de Representantes de tendencia demócrata quedaron vacantes porque sus titulares se habían presentado para el escaño vacante del Senado: el Distrito 12, representado por Barbara Lee; el Distrito 30, representado por Schiff; y el Distrito 47, representado por Katie Porter. Esas contiendas están aún por decidirse.El que fuera el escaño del expresidente de la Cámara de Representantes Kevin McCarthy en el Distrito 20 también quedó vacante porque renunció a la Cámara. El representante David Valadao, uno de los 10 republicanos de la Cámara que votaron a favor de la destitución de Trump en 2021, también se enfrenta a serios retos en las primarias del Distrito 22. Ambas primarias están aún por definirse.Carolina del NorteWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More