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      Gavin Newsom Promotes Biden and Himself in a Delicate Dance

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      The California governor has made himself the most visible Democrat-in-waiting. Still, he says that it’s time Democrats “buck up” and get behind President Biden.Over the past four months, Gavin Newsom, the Democratic governor of California, has traveled to six Republican-led states. He has goaded Gov. Ron DeSantis, the Republican presidential candidate from Florida, to debate on Fox News. He has assembled a small staff of political advisers and created a political action committee to distribute $10 million to Democratic causes and candidates.And this week, he raised $40,000 for a long-shot candidate for the United States Senate in Tennessee, one of the red states he has criticized his own party for neglecting.By all appearances, Mr. Newsom is a man with an eye on the White House, building a national network of supporters and accumulating the kind of good will among donors, party operatives and voters that could prove critical should he decide to move beyond Sacramento. Mr. Newsom said in an interview that he was not running for president, and that the time has come for Democrats to rally around President Biden.“The train has left the station,” Mr. Newsom said. “We’re all in. Stop talking. He’s not going anywhere. It’s time for all of us to get on the train and buck up.”But it may be difficult for Mr. Newsom to quiet speculation about his own future. He has spent months positioning himself as one of his party’s leading voices during a time of deep Democratic worry and lingering unease about the political strengths of Mr. Biden, who is 80, and his vice president, Kamala Harris.A CNN poll released on Thursday found that 73 percent of all respondents were “seriously concerned” that the president’s age might affect his mental and physical competence. Some 67 percent of Democrats said the party should nominate someone else.Mr. Newsom has, by his account, sought to reassure the White House in both public and private that he is no threat to Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign. And in turn, Mr. Biden’s team has appeared to pull him closer. The governor will be a top Democratic surrogate defending Mr. Biden when Republican candidates debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library later this month.This dance — of raising one’s profile without undercutting the president — is the challenge for a class of Democrats-in-waiting, which also includes Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan. But Mr. Newsom, a 55-year-old telegenic, popular-in-his-own-state leader, has made himself the most visible in this group, and he may serve as a reminder of Mr. Biden’s shortcoming as he seeks re-election.Mr. Newsom has raised $3.5 million for Democratic candidates, Mr. Biden among them.Doug Mills/The New York Times“He’s got to be careful about it,” Joel Benenson, a pollster who advised Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, said of Mr. Newsom’s effort to raise his profile. “You don’t want to be too cute by half. If you are going to run, do it. If not, go out there and make the connections and talk to Democrats, learn about these states. The worst mistake would be the way to do it and seem sly about doing it.”Mr. Newsom presents his travel to Republican states as an attempt to build up the Democratic Party in places he argues it has neglected. And while defending Mr. Biden, particularly on questions about his age and fitness, he also engages in a debate over cultural issues — transgender rights and gun control, to name two — that Democrats have sometimes avoided.Mr. Newsom spent nearly an hour with Sean Hannity on Fox News in June to make the case for Mr. Biden and to defend his own record in California. “You have to give Gavin Newsom a lot of credit,” Mr. Hannity said in an interview. “He knew it wasn’t going to be an easy interview.”Mr. Newsom recently turned up at a Boise, Idaho, bookstore to denounce “the insane book bans happening across the country. ” He has picked arguments with Republican governors like Mr. DeSantis of Florida and Greg Abbott of Texas, on abortion, gun control and trans rights.“He is taking the fight to the Republicans,” said Jared DeLoof, the executive director of the Democratic Party in Idaho, where Mr. Newsom appeared in July. “Too often Democrats shy away from things like critical race theory or transgender rights or some of these issues that Republican like to pop off about. The governor showed he was really effective on this issues — we can take them on, and we can win.”On his tour of Republican states, Mr. Newsom has engaged in the kind of cultural issues — transgender rights and gun control, to name two — that Democrats have at times avoided.Justin Sullivan/Getty ImagesMr. Newsom said his activities were done with the consultation and approval of the White House, an assertion confirmed by White House aides.“I am sensitive to that,” he said, noting that he has made a point of not visiting states that are at the center of the presidential battleground. “I am trying not to play into the presidential frame.”(Mr. Newsom, however, did suggest that his still-unscheduled debate with Mr. DeSantis take place in, among other states, Nevada and Georgia, both of which are likely to be in play in 2024.)A spokesman for Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, T.J. Ducklo, said in a statement Friday that Mr. Newsom had “forcefully and effectively makes the president’s case publicly and is an enormous asset to our fund-raising and organizing operations.”There are other potential sources of friction as Mr. Newsom’s profile rises. Mr. Newsom and Ms. Harris are both ambitious Democrats from the same state who are of similar ages — she is 58 — and have, over the years, had to navigate around each other as they traveled down the same political roads. Ms. Harris would almost certainly be a rival in a Democratic presidential primary in 2028.Mr. Newsom said he and Ms. Harris speak regularly and rejected the suggestion that his success comes at her expense. “This is a true story — I shouldn’t even share it. There were a couple of unknown numbers on my voice mail the other day, and it was Kamala checking in,” he said. “I am really proud of her, and I don’t say that to be patronizing.”Ms. Harris’s aides said she had most recently called the governor to ask how California was faring after it was struck by Hurricane Hilary and an earthquake.Mr. Newsom, who is barred from seeking a third term as governor, has assembled a skeleton structure of campaign aides, in effect a campaign-in-waiting.He has raised $3.5 million for Democratic candidates, Mr. Biden among them. He is also distributing money from his political action committee, Campaign for Democracy, further enhancing his standing with Democrats candidates and political operatives around the country. “If he ever ran for national office, he has a record to run on,” said Sean Clegg, one of Mr. Newsom’s top advisers.Still, should Mr. Newsom seek to expand his political ambitions, he faces some serious obstacles.Mr. Newsom has rejected the notion that his rising profile was undercutting Vice President Kamala Harris, about whom Democrats have expressed doubt.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesMr. Newsom won a second term as governor in 2022 with nearly 60 percent of the vote. But he is a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Democratic state and has never had to face a tough Republican opponent.Mr. Newsom has become the face of a state with a long history of innovation and prosperity, but that state also brings with it some of his party’s biggest challenges: homelessness, a housing crisis and what may be the end the kind of growth that has defined the California dream. California has always been a political and cultural outlier and has, more than ever, become a rallying point of the right on issues like crime.Jessica Millan Patterson, the leader of the California Republican Party, said Mr. Newsom could prove an appealing national candidate, but that he would not play well with swing voters in many states.“It’s a really difficult sale,” she said. “I don’t think most of the country is looking at California and saying, ‘That’s what we should be doing.”The last California governor elected president was Ronald Reagan, a Republican; but by the time of that election, in 1980, he had been out of office for five years.Jerry Brown, a former California governor who ran for the White House and lost three times, said that none of the hurdles Mr. Newsom faced were insurmountable. “The most important thing is the candidate and the times,” Mr. Brown said. “If the candidate fits the time, I don’t think the geography and the cultural differences matter as much.”Mr. Newsom acknowledged all the hurdles. “It’s the surround-sound nature of the anger machine that is 24/7, wall-to-wall anti-California,” he said. “People’s entire careers are built on tearing this state down.”But Mr. Newsom argued — while insisting he was engaging in a hypothetical discussion, since he is not running for president — that being governor of a state like California would make someone particularly qualified to run the nation.Not that it matters, by the governor’s telling. Mr. Newsom said becoming president was “never on my list” and that he was not one of those Democrats who grew up with a photograph of John F. Kennedy on his wall, as he put it, drawing an unstated comparison to Bill Clinton and Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary who ran for president in 2020 and may well run again in 2028.“Look, in 2028, 99.9999 percent of people will not remember a damn thing about what we did in this election,” he said. “They will all fall in love with whomever it is — and there will be 30 of them on the stage. No one is naïve about that.”Michael D. Shear More

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      Pelosi, Defying Predictions, Says She Will Seek Re-election in 2024

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      Since she stepped down from leadership last year, many observers expected Representative Nancy Pelosi of California to head toward retirement. But she has kept people guessing about her future.Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, who served for decades as the Democratic Party’s House leader and was the first woman to become speaker, announced on Friday that she would seek re-election in 2024, ending months of speculation about her political future.“In light of the values of San Francisco, which we’ve always been proud to promote, I’ve made the decision to seek re-election,” Ms. Pelosi said on Friday at an event in her hometown focused on organized labor.Since she stepped down from leadership last year after Democrats lost the House majority, many observers expected that Ms. Pelosi, who at 83 is the seventh-oldest member of the chamber, was headed for retirement. Some had been surprised to see her stay in Congress at all, a rare move for a former speaker, and speculated that she would not finish her term.But colleagues said she has relished her lower profile as a rank-and-file member with emeritus status. In that new role, Ms. Pelosi offers advice on an as-needed basis to her party’s new leadership team, often sits in the back rows of the House floor gabbing with her closest friends and focuses her attention on San Francisco while quietly remaining a fund-raising powerhouse for Democrats.“I’m emancipated now!” an ebullient Ms. Pelosi said in a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times.Even after Ms. Pelosi made clear she would stay on after giving up her leadership post, some Democrats assumed that she would leave Congress early, potentially clearing the way for her daughter Christine Pelosi, a party activist and a Democratic National Committee executive committee member, to run for her seat.Ms. Pelosi’s decision to carry on with her 36-year career in the House comes at a moment of renewed scrutiny on the advanced age and health status of the country’s leading public servants — including President Biden, 80, and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, 81, the longtime Republican leader — and questions about whether they have overstayed their time in power. Ms. Pelosi managed to somewhat insulate herself from those critiques when she decided last year to step down from leadership, essentially giving herself a demotion.Senator Dianne Feinstein, another California Democrat who at 90 is the oldest member of Congress, plans to retire after her term ends next year. But she is facing calls to step down sooner amid a precipitous health decline that has raised questions about her ability to do her job. Ms. Pelosi recently attributed those calls to sexism.A major factor in Ms. Pelosi’s decision to not only finish her term but to seek another, according to people close to her, was the health of her husband, Paul Pelosi, who was brutally beaten with a hammer at the couple’s home in San Francisco last year by an assailant who later said he had been targeting the speaker. With Mr. Pelosi on a solid path to recovery, allies said, Ms. Pelosi did not feel it was necessary to step away from a job she loved.“Nancy Pelosi has always been untraditional,” said Stacy Kerr, who for a decade served as a senior aide to Ms. Pelosi. “She’s done things her own way her whole career, driven by the needs of her district and the country. We shouldn’t expect that she won’t continue to be a trailblazer now.”Still, Ms. Pelosi, famous for keeping her own counsel, had not shared her plans with anyone. People close to her said on Friday that she had ultimately decided to run again because she also viewed it as an urgent priority to re-elect Mr. Biden and help Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the minority leader, become the next House speaker.Ms. Pelosi is still her party’s most prolific fund-raiser in Congress, a political skill that could be determinative in helping Democrats win back the House majority next year.The National Republican Congressional Committee quickly tried to frame her decision to stay on as a sign of Mr. Jeffries’s weakness.“The babysitter agreed to stay late!” the group’s press secretary, Will Reinert, said in a statement, noting that House Democrats still relied on Ms. Pelosi as the main engine of their fund-raising machine.In an online post, Ms. Pelosi characterized her decision to run again as one driven by local and global concerns.“Now, more than ever, our city needs us to advance San Francisco values and further our recovery,” Ms. Pelosi said in announcing her plans. “Our country needs America to show the world that our flag is still there, with liberty and justice for all.” More

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      Manchin Mulls His Political Future, Keeping Washington Guessing

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      The West Virginia Democrat could run for re-election to the Senate, make a third-party presidential bid or simply retire from politics. To his party’s consternation, he’s not ready to say which.Senator Joe Manchin III, the conservative West Virginia Democrat, was attending an event in his home state last month when he made a joke that quickly touched off the latest round of feverish speculation about his political future.“I will also endorse Jim for basketball coach,” Mr. Manchin said, suggesting that the popular Republican governor, Jim Justice, who has announced he will seek Mr. Manchin’s Senate seat next year, should instead be hired by West Virginia University to pursue his lifelong passion on the court.The comment seemed to suggest that Mr. Manchin, who has flirted with bolting his party and running for president as an independent, had not given up on defending his Senate seat.But as the last pivotal Democratic senator who has not yet said whether he will seek re-election, Mr. Manchin still has Washington and his party guessing about his plans.Behind closed doors, Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, has been relentlessly encouraging him to run, regarding Mr. Manchin — perhaps the only Democrat with a chance to win a statewide contest in deeply conservative West Virginia — as key to preserving his party’s tenuous control of the Senate. Democrats across the country have been praying that he will seek re-election rather than pursuing a presidential bid through the centrist political group No Labels, which could draw votes from President Biden and help elect a Republican.For a man who routinely seeks the spotlight when faced with politically consequential decisions, this is among the most closely watched dilemmas Mr. Manchin has confronted.“I don’t have a clue what he’s going to do, and I don’t think he knows what he’s going to do,” said Phil Smith, the longtime chief lobbyist for the United Mine Workers of America and a close ally of Mr. Manchin’s.In a brief interview in the basement of the Senate this week, Mr. Manchin said he would make a decision about his future by the end of the year. If he intends to run for re-election, he must inform the state by January.“The bottom line is, I’ve been in West Virginia for a long time and moving in the right direction,” he said. “Our approval rating’s up quite substantially in a very, very, very red state. So I feel very good about all those things.”He added, “We’ve got plenty of time.”Still, decisions will have to be made before the political terrain becomes completely clear. The most important of his considerations is which Republican he would face. To win the nomination, Mr. Justice, a wealthy Democrat turned Republican, would have to defeat Representative Alex X. Mooney, a more reliable ally of former President Donald J. Trump’s.A poll last week for the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce encapsulated Mr. Manchin’s conundrum. The senator and the governor are both popular in the state, with 56 percent of voters approving of the job Mr. Justice has done and 51 percent approving of Mr. Manchin’s performance, numbers above even Mr. Trump’s 49 percent approval rating.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia, a wealthy Democrat turned Republican, is very popular in the state.Shuran Huang for The New York TimesWhile the poll showed Mr. Justice beating Mr. Manchin handily in a hypothetical Senate contest, 51 percent to 38 percent, the poll also found that Mr. Manchin would narrowly lead Mr. Mooney, 45 percent to 41 percent.(Mr. Manchin’s allies point out that his approval rating increased by 9 percentage points since 2021 in the poll, while Mr. Justice declined by 5 points.)The conservative political action committee Club for Growth has said it will back Mr. Mooney in the primary. Joe Kildea, a spokesman for the group, said its political arm had raised about $14 million and would spend “whatever it takes.” That could bloody Mr. Justice, but money alone may not be enough for Mr. Mooney, who trails the governor among West Virginia Republican voters, 58 percent to 26 percent.“We beat big-government, establishment RINOs all the time,” said David McIntosh, the president of Club for Growth, referring to the conservative slur “Republicans in name only.”It is also unclear whether Mr. Trump will seek to get involved in the primary, set for May 14. In 2022, he endorsed Mr. Mooney in a House Republican primary against Representative David B. McKinley, and Mr. Mooney won easily. This time around, Mr. Trump is extremely unhappy with Club for Growth, which has funded an advertising campaign in Iowa imploring Republicans to back a different presidential candidate. Then again, he also likes to counter Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, who backs Mr. Justice.Mr. Manchin’s allies claim that none of that is weighing particularly heavily on the senator these days.“I know it’s shocking in D.C., but Joe Manchin isn’t focused on partisan politics this year,” said Jonathan Kott, his former senior adviser in the Senate. “He will sit down with his family at the end of the year and figure out how he can best serve the people of West Virginia and the country.”Yet the timeline set by No Labels for a possible independent presidential run has complicated Mr. Manchin’s calculations. So far, the group has qualified for a spot on the presidential ballot in only 11 states and is hustling to make the ballot in many more. And though No Labels leaders still insist they will only start a “unity” ticket for the White House if the major party nominees do not move to the political center, the group has set a date in April for a convention in Dallas to choose its candidates.That means Mr. Manchin would be choosing between the Senate run and a White House bid before he knew whether No Labels would select him.His third option might be simply to retire at 76. His alma mater, West Virginia University, is in deep trouble, slashing its budget, laying off faculty and even eliminating its foreign language program. Its president, E. Gordon Gee, turns 80 in February, and a chance to lead the university out of crisis would be tempting for the senator, Mr. Manchin’s allies said.Students protesting the budget cuts that led to the elimination of foreign language programs at West Virginia University in Morgantown, W.Va., last month.Leah Willingham/Associated PressOne official with close ties to the senator pointed to the decision of one of his former chiefs of staff, Larry Puccio, to sign on with Mr. Justice as an indication that Mr. Manchin will retire.Adding to the intrigue, the senator’s daughter Heather Manchin has started a nonprofit organization, reported earlier by The Wall Street Journal, that is trying to raise more than $100 million to promote centrist policies. Those familiar with the organization, which is currently independent from Mr. Manchin, said it could serve as a landing pad for the senator if he retires from politics. The group could also conduct market research on policies and messaging that would prove useful to his presidential aspirations should he run, though Ms. Manchin denied that had anything to do with it.“This movement is not about starting a third party or rallying behind any one individual,” she said. The No Labels flirtation has perplexed some of Mr. Manchin’s allies and some political observers. Senate aides say Mr. Manchin is seriously considering it, but others suggest that he is simply using the prospect of a third-party presidential run to keep his name in the news, pressure Mr. Biden to address his policy priorities as he carries out the Inflation Reduction Act and raise money for whatever he decides to do next.A possible rival for the No Labels ticket has already emerged in Larry Hogan, a moderate Republican and the former governor of Maryland.Mr. Hogan, appearing on CBS’s “Face The Nation” on Sunday, implied that the name at the top of the No Labels ticket would have to be a Republican to ensure that the independent campaign would take at least as many votes from the current Republican front-runner, Mr. Trump, as from Mr. Biden. Democrats, he said, should relax.Mr. Manchin’s possible candidacy “is really what set them off in a panic,” Mr. Hogan said.It was at an event in Beckley, W.Va., for former Representative Nick Rahall, one of the last Democrats to represent the state in Congress, that Mr. Manchin made the quip about West Virginia University hiring Mr. Justice to coach basketball, after Mr. Gee had suggested it.The event was a dedication of Mr. Rahall’s archives, and the crowd was full of former Democrats, including Mr. Justice. Mr. Manchin was the last of his kind.Still, Mr. Rahall left confident in the senator’s survival.“Joe Manchin has said if he enters the race, he will win, and I believe him when he says that,” Mr. Rahall said. “Now, he hasn’t said which race he’ll enter.” More

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      Behold the Free Speech Chutzpah of the Republican Party

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      A solid majority of Republicans continues to believe that Donald Trump won the 2020 election — evidence to the contrary notwithstanding. Virtually all Democrats believe that Trump did, in fact, lose the 2020 election and that Biden won fair and square.Now in an extraordinary display of chutzpah, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, and fellow Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have accused Democrats of violating the First Amendment rights of election deniers.In a June 26, 2023, interim staff report, Jordan and his colleagues charged that the Biden administration “colluded with big tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor” those who claimed that Trump won in 2020.The report, “The Weaponization of CISA: How a ‘Cybersecurity’ Agency Colluded With Big Tech and ‘Disinformation’ Partners to Censor Americans,” makes the argument thatThe First Amendment recognizes that no person or entity has a monopoly on the truth, and that the “truth” of today can quickly become the “misinformation” of tomorrow. Labeling speech “misinformation” or “disinformation” does not strip it of its First Amendment protection. As such, under the Constitution, the federal government is strictly prohibited from censoring Americans’ political speech.These civil libertarian claims of unconstitutional suppression of speech come from the same Republican Party that is leading the charge to censor the teaching of what it calls “divisive concepts” about race; the same party that expelled two Democratic members of the Tennessee state legislature who loudly called for more gun control after a school shooting; the same party that threatens to impeach a liberal judge in North Carolina for speaking out about racial bias; the same party that has aided and abetted book banning in red states across the country.In other words, it is Republicans who have become the driving force in deploying censorship to silence the opposition, simultaneously claiming that their own First Amendment rights are threatened by Democrats.One of the most egregious examples of Republican censorship is taking place in North Carolina, where a state judicial commission has initiated an investigation of Anita Earls, a Black State Supreme Court justice, because she publicly called for increased diversity in the court system.A June 2 Law360 piece examined the racial and gender composition of the North Carolina judiciary and found “that out of 22 appellate jurists — seven state Supreme Court justices and 15 Court of Appeals judges — 64 percent are male and 86 percent are white.”The article then quoted Earls: “It has been shown by social scientists that diverse decision-making bodies do a better job. … I really feel like everyone’s voice needs to be heard, and if you don’t have a diverse judicial system, perspectives and views are not being heard, you’re not making decisions that are in the interests of the entire society. And I feel like that’s wrong.”On Aug. 15, the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission notified Earls that it was opening an investigation “based on an interview you since gave to the media in which you appear to allege that your Supreme Court colleagues are acting out of racial, gender, and/or political bias in some of their decision-making.”Earls’s interview, the notification letter continued, “potentially violates Canon 2A of the Code of Judicial Conduct which requires a judge to conduct herself ‘at all times in a manner which promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary.’”On Aug. 29, Earls filed suit in federal court charging that there is “an ongoing campaign on the part of the North Carolina Judicial Standards Commission to stifle” her First Amendment free-speech rights “and expose her to punishment that ranges from a letter of caution that becomes part of a permanent file available to any entity conducting a background check to removal from the bench.”At the center of Republican efforts to censor ideological adversaries is an extensive drive to regulate what is taught in public schools and colleges.In an Education Week article published last year, “Here’s the Long List of Topics Republicans Want Banned From the Classroom,” Sarah Schwartz and Eesha Pendharkar provided a laundry list of Republican state laws regulating education:Since January 2021, 14 states have passed into law what’s popularly referred to as “anti-critical race theory” legislation. These laws and orders, combined with local actions to restrict certain types of instruction, now impact more than one out of every three children in the country, according to a recent study from UCLA.Schwartz and Pendharkar also noted that “many of these new bills propose withholding funding from school districts that don’t comply with these regulations. Some, though, would allow parents to sue individual educators who provide banned material to students, potentially collecting thousands of dollars.”What’s more, “Most prohibited teaching a list of ‘divisive concepts,’ which originally appeared in an executive order signed by then-President Donald Trump in fall 2020.”The Trump order, “Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping,” included prohibitions on the following “divisive concepts”:That an individual, by virtue of his or her race or sex, bears responsibility for actions committed in the past by other members of the same race or sex; that any individual should feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race or sex; or that meritocracy or traits such as a hard work ethic are racist or sexist, or were created by a particular race to oppress another race.The censorship effort has been quite successful.In a February 2022 article, “New Critical Race Theory Laws Have Teachers Scared, Confused and Self-censoring,” The Washington Post reported that “in 13 states, new laws or directives govern how race can be taught in schools, in some cases creating reporting systems for complaints. The result, teachers and principals say, is a climate of fear around how to comply with rules they often do not understand.”Larry Summers, a former president of Harvard who is a professor of economics there, argued in an email that issues of free speech are not easily resolved.The problem, Summers wrote, “comes from both sides. Ron DeSantis’s efforts to limit what he regards as critical race theory is deplorable as are efforts on Ivy League campuses to discredit and devalue those with unfashionable beliefs about diversity or the role of genes or things military.”But, Summers continued,It’s sometimes a bit harder than the good guys make out. What about cultures of intolerance where those who, for example, believe in genetic determinism are shunned, and graduate students all exhibit their academic freedom rights to not be the teaching fellows of faculty with those beliefs. Does ideological diversity mean philosophy departments need to treat Ayn Rand with dignity or biology departments need to hear out creationism?“What about professional schools where professional ethics are part of what is being instilled?” Summers asked:Could a law school consider hiring a lawyer who, while in government, defended coercive interrogation practices? Under what circumstances should one accept, perhaps insist on university leaders criticizing speech? I have been fond of saying academic freedom does not include freedom from criticism but when should leaders speak out? Was I right to condemn calls for divesting in Israel as antisemitic in effect, if not intent? When should speech be attacked?There is, at this moment, a nascent mobilization on many campuses of organizations determined to defend free speech rights, to reject the sanctioning of professors and students, and to ensure the safety of controversial speakers.Graduates of 22 colleges and universities have formed branches of the Alumni Free Speech Alliance “to support free speech, academic freedom, and viewpoint diversity.”At Harvard, 133 members of the faculty have joined the Council on Academic Freedom at Harvard, dedicated to upholding the free speech guidelines adopted by the university in 1990:Free speech is uniquely important to the university because we are a community committed to reason and rational discourse. Free interchange of ideas is vital for our primary function of discovering and disseminating ideas through research, teaching, and learning.Steven Pinker, a psychology professor at the school and a founder of the group, wrote in an email that achieving this goal is much tougher than generally believed:To understand the recent assaults on free speech, we need to flip the question: Not why diverse opinions are being suppressed, but why they are tolerated. Freedom of speech is an exotic, counterintuitive concept. What’s intuitive is that the people who disagree with me are spreading dangerous falsehoods and must be stifled for the greater good. The realization that everyone feels this way, that all humans are fallible, that however confident I am in my beliefs, I may be wrong, and that the only way we can collectively approach the truth is to allow opinions to be expressed and then evaluate them, requires feats of abstraction and self-control.The example I cited at the beginning of this column — the charge that the Biden administration “colluded with big tech and ‘disinformation’ partners to censor” the claims of election deniers — has proved to be a case study of a successful Republican tactic on several fronts.Republicans claimed the moral high ground as the victims of censorship, throwing their adversaries on the defensive and quieting their opponents.On June 6, The Washington Post reported, in “These Academics Studied Falsehoods Spread by Trump. Now the G.O.P. Wants Answers,” thatThe pressure has forced some researchers to change their approach or step back, even as disinformation is rising ahead of the 2024 election. As artificial intelligence makes deception easier and platforms relax their rules on political hoaxes, industry veterans say they fear that young scholars will avoid studying disinformation.One of the underlying issues in the free speech debate is the unequal distribution of power. Paul Frymer, a political scientist at Princeton, raised a question in reply to my email: “I wonder if the century-long standard for why we defend free speech — that we need a fairly absolute marketplace of ideas to allow all ideas to be heard (with a few exceptions), deliberated upon, and that the truth will ultimately win out — is a bit dated in this modern era of social media, algorithms and most importantly profound corporate power.”While there has always been a corporate skew to speech, Frymer argued,in the modern era, technology enables such an overwhelming drowning out of different ideas. How long are we hanging on to the protection of a hypothetical — that someone will find the truth on the 40th page of a Google search or a podcast with no corporate backing? How long do we defend a hypothetical when the reality is so strongly skewed toward the suppression of the meaningful exercise of free speech?Frymer contended thatWe do seem to need regulation of speech, in some form, more than ever. I’m not convinced we can’t find a way to do it that would enable our society to be more just and informed. The stakes — the fragility of democracy, the increasing hatred and violence on the basis of demographic categories, and the health of our planet — are extremely high to defend a single idea with no compromise.Frymer suggested that ultimatelyWe can’t consider free speech without at least some understanding of power. We can’t assume in all contexts that the truth will ever come out; unregulated speech does not mean free speech.From a different vantage point, Robert C. Post, a law professor at Yale, argued in an email that the censorship/free speech debate has run amok:It certainly has gone haywire. The way I understand it is that freedom of speech has not been a principled commitment, but has been used instrumentally to attain other political ends. The very folks who were so active in demanding freedom of speech in universities have turned around and imposed unconscionable censorship on schools and libraries. The very folks who have demanded a freedom of speech for minority groups have sought to suppress offensive and racist speech.The framing in the current debate over free speech and the First Amendment, Post contends, is dangerously off-kilter. He sent me an article he wrote that will be published shortly by the scholarly journal Daedalus, “The Unfortunate Consequences of a Misguided Free Speech Principle.” In it, he notes that the issues are not just more complex than generally recognized, but in fact distorted by false assumptions.Post makes the case that there is “a widespread tendency to conceptualize the problem as one of free speech. We imagine that the crisis would be resolved if only we could speak more freely.” In fact, he writes, “the difficulty we face is not one of free speech, but of politics. Our capacity to speak has been disrupted because our politics has become diseased.”He specifically faults a widely read March 2022 Times editorial, “America Has a Free Speech Problem,” that warnedAmericans are losing hold of a fundamental right as citizens of a free country: the right to speak their minds and voice their opinions in public without fear of being shamed or shunned.Post observes thatNo such right exists in any well-ordered society. If I walk into a room shouting outrageous slurs, I should expect to be shamed and shunned. Only a demoralized community would passively accept irresponsibly hurtful speech.People constantly “balance self-restraint against the need for candor.”Arguments that the protection of free speech is crucial to the preservation of democracy, Post maintains, “encourage us to forget that the fundamental point of public discourse is the political legitimation of the state. Our public discourse is successful when it produces a healthy public opinion capable of making state power answerable to politics.”In Post’s view, polarization “is not a simple question of speech. It is the corrosive dissolution of the political commitments by which Americans have forged themselves into a single nation. If we conceptualize public discourse as a social practice, we can see that its failures stem from this fundamental problem.”In this context, Post concludes,Politics is possible only when diverse persons agree to be bound by a common fate. Lacking that fundamental commitment, politics can easily slide into an existential struggle for survival that is the equivalent of war. We can too easily come to imagine our opponents as enemies, whose victory would mean the collapse of the nation.In such circumstances, Post continues,Political debate can no longer produce a healthy and legitimate democratic will. However inclusive we may make our public discourse, however tolerant of the infinite realms of potential diversity we may become, the social practice of public discourse will fail to achieve its purpose so long as we no longer experience ourselves as tied to a common destiny.“We cannot now speak to each other because something has already gone violently wrong with our political community,” Post writes. “The underlying issue is not our speech, but our politics. So long as we insist on allegiance to a mythical free speech principle that exists immaculately distinct from the concrete social practices, we shall look for solutions in all the wrong places.”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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      Gloria Johnson Announces Bid for Marsha Blackburn’s Senate Seat

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      Gloria Johnson, who barely avoided expulsion for her role in a gun control rally in the State Legislature, is hoping to unseat Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican.Gloria Johnson, a Democratic state representative from Tennessee who narrowly avoided being expelled from the Legislature in April after taking part in a gun control protest on the statehouse floor, announced plans on Tuesday to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Senator Marsha Blackburn, a Republican.Ms. Johnson, 61, received a flood of national attention after she joined two other Democrats, Representatives Justin Jones and Justin J. Pearson, to interrupt debate on the floor of the Republican-controlled Tennessee House of Representatives and rally for stricter gun control measures in late March, just days after a shooting at a Christian school in Nashville that killed six people.In retribution, Republicans moved to expel the three Democrats — sometimes called the Tennessee Three — from the Legislature. Mr. Jones and Mr. Pearson were both ousted. Ms. Johnson was stripped of her committee assignments but avoided expulsion by just one vote. (Both men were later voted back into their positions.)Last week, the State Legislature held an emotional and chaotic special session meant to be devoted to public safety that ended without agreement on any significant new restrictions on firearm access.In a video announcing her Senate campaign, Ms. Johnson led with that issue, playing clips of news coverage of the Nashville shooting and highlighting her involvement in the gun control protest.“When my friends and I believed mothers and fathers who lost children at Covenant deserved a voice, and we fought for it, they expelled them,” she says in the video.Ms. Johnson, who represents parts of Knoxville, was first elected to the Tennessee House in 2012, then lost subsequent elections in 2014 and 2016 before again winning in 2018. For the 2024 Senate race, she is running in a contested Democratic primary against Marquita Bradshaw, an environmental justice activist who unsuccessfully ran for U.S. Senate in 2020.Both hope to unseat Ms. Blackburn, 71, who in 2018 became the first woman elected to represent Tennessee in the Senate.In her video, Ms. Johnson suggested that Ms. Blackburn was beholden to “extremists and billionaires,” criticizing her views on abortion.Senator Blackburn’s campaign spokeswoman, Abigail Sigler, accused Ms. Johnson in a statement of being a “radical socialist” who “would be a puppet” for President Biden and progressive Democrats. More

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      Mark Gonzalez Seeks to Challenge Senator Ted Cruz in Texas

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      Mark Gonzalez, facing a conservative effort to remove him from the district attorney’s office in Nueces County, Texas, resigned and announced his campaign for the Senate.Mark A. Gonzalez, a progressive district attorney in Nueces County, Texas, took an unusual tack when he came under fire from conservatives who didn’t like how he was doing his job.He resigned — to run for the United States Senate.Mr. Gonzalez announced Tuesday that he would join a large field of candidates in the Democratic primary to challenge Senator Ted Cruz next year, the most prominent of whom is Representative Colin Allred. In an interview, Mr. Gonzalez said his decision was directly tied to efforts to remove him from his elected office.“Prior to that, I hadn’t really had any more taste or want for politics,” he said. But “with the petition and some of the stuff that’s been going on at least statewide, it just kind of — I don’t know if the word is just angered me or incited me or something — and so I just decided that I don’t want to represent or try to represent just Nueces County. I want to represent Texans that want change.”He said the other issues that animated him included preserving abortion rights and voting rights, and combating conservative efforts to limit the teaching of subjects like the United States’ racial history.His campaign announcement video highlights Mr. Cruz’s decision to leave Texas for a vacation in Cancún in 2021 while the state was dealing with a disastrous winter storm, and contrasts that decision with a clip of Mr. Gonzalez during the same storm, asking Nueces County residents to notify his office of any incidents of price gouging. Mr. Cruz, a Republican seeking a third term in the Senate, fended off an unexpectedly fierce challenge from Beto O’Rourke, a Democrat, in 2018. He won that race by about 2.5 percentage points, two years after Donald J. Trump had won the state by nine points.It will be an uphill battle for any Democrat to unseat Mr. Cruz given Texas’ partisan leanings, but his is one of the few Republican-held Senate seats — along with one in Florida — that Democrats may target amid a tough 2024 map. By contrast, Republicans see pickup opportunities in eight red or swing states. Democrats currently control the Senate by a narrow margin.Mr. Gonzalez does, however, have a record of winning difficult races. He was elected in Nueces County, home to the city of Corpus Christi, in 2016 and 2020, even as Mr. Trump narrowly won the county. He previously said he would not run for re-election as district attorney.“I think that more Texans probably can identify with a guy like me,” he said when asked what set him apart from the other Democratic candidates — a guy like him meaning, among other things, someone from a low-income family who has a criminal record.He added: “We have strong family values, we believe in small government, but I also believe in opportunity and giving people chances, and I think most Texans feel that way.”In his announcement video and his resignation letter to Gov. Greg Abbott, Mr. Gonzalez took the unusual step of emphasizing an element of his background that many candidates might have sidestepped: a drunk-driving arrest when he was 19. In the resignation letter, he said he had taken responsibility and pleaded guilty, then been dismayed to see the same charges dismissed for a defendant who, unlike Mr. Gonzalez, could afford a lawyer.“It dawned on me that the wealthy and well-connected have a different criminal legal system applied to them and accusations against them than everyone else does,” he wrote. “My ignorance of the system was detrimental to my life and has been to so many others just like me.”Mr. Gonzalez also drew attention to an effort by conservative activists to remove him from office, which his resignation has made moot. The conservative petition accused him of incompetence and official misconduct.The petition was both specific and broad. Specifically, it accused him of mishandling two capital murder cases. But it also accused him of having “intentionally nullified duly enacted laws of his oath of office,” reflecting a growing pattern of right-wing attempts to remove progressive prosecutors who have used their discretion to seek lower sentences or to decline to charge certain crimes.“They want to use me as a sacrificial lamb to send a foreboding message to other duly elected D.A.s in Texas who exercise their discretion,” Mr. Gonzalez wrote of state Republicans in his resignation letter.“I will not be used that way, nor will I run from a fight,” he added. “Quite the opposite, in fact.” More

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      11 Democrats Vie for Rhode Island House Seat

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      The vote on Tuesday will almost certainly determine who will succeed former Representative David Cicilline, and could hold clues to what voters are looking for in the run-up to 2024.Days before a Democratic primary that will almost certainly decide who represents her in Congress, Linda Vaughan Dubois of Rumford, R.I., still had not decided on a candidate.“There’s so many,” she said at a recent meet-and-greet at an East Providence sports bar for Gabriel Amo, a Rhode Island native who worked in the Biden and Obama administrations and is one of 11 Democrats competing in the race to represent this deep-blue district in the country’s smallest state.Not wanting to “waste” her vote on a candidate who had no chance of winning, Ms. Vaughan Dubois, an intensive care nurse for infants who described herself as a moderate, said she was tracking down each of her top candidates to see what they were like in person.As Rhode Islanders return from their state’s well-loved beaches after the long Labor Day weekend, they will cast votes on Tuesday in a special primary election to determine who will replace former Representative David N. Cicilline, the seven-term Democrat who stepped down in May to become president of the Rhode Island Foundation.Gabriel Amo speaking to Linda Vaughan Dubois at a campaign event last week. Ms. Vaughan Dubois said she was tracking down each of her top candidates to see what they were like in person.Sophie Park for The New York TimesHis resignation, a surprise to much of the Rhode Island political world, gave rise to a crowded and chaotic contest during an otherwise sleepy summer political season. With 11 Democrats and two Republicans comprising a historically diverse field, the candidates regularly bump into one another at community festivals, ice cream socials, meet-and-greets and more as they try to prove themselves to voters.“It was like with the Patriots when Tom Brady left,” said Rich Luchette, a political strategist who advised Mr. Cicilline for almost a decade. “Everybody who was sitting behind Tom Brady felt like they should be the starting quarterback.”The fate of the seat in Rhode Island’s solidly blue First Congressional District almost certainly will not change the balance of power in the House, now controlled by Republicans. But the outcome of the election, which has pitted factions of the Democratic Party against each other, could hold clues about what Democrats are looking for in the run-up to next year’s elections, particularly in a state where former president Donald J. Trump over-performed in 2020.The race — and its diverse field — “reflects the rapidly changing nature of the Democratic Party nationally,” said Wendy Schiller, a professor of political science at Brown University. “There are a lot of groups that have been excluded from power that are now vying for power successfully, and you wonder how it can all be harnessed” to drive voter turnout next year.While there has been no independent public polling indicating who is favored to win, two candidates have emerged as leaders after a series of controversies that have shaken the race.Aaron Regunberg, a progressive former state representative widely seen as the front-runner, is backed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York. Mr. Amo, a more centrist Democrat who is seen as a top alternative to Mr. Regunberg, has been endorsed by the Congressional Black Caucus, the former White House chief of staff Ron Klain and former Representative Patrick J. Kennedy, who represented the district before Mr. Cicilline.Senator Bernie Sanders headlined for Aaron Regunberg, to the right of Mr. Sanders, at a rally last week.Sophie Park for The New York TimesState Senator Sandra Cano has attracted a broad range of local endorsements. And Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos, who began the race as the only candidate who had won a statewide election, may still be in contention despite a scandal related to forged signatures on the nomination forms she filed to run.That was just one measure of the turbulence of the race. Don Carlson, another Democrat who had sought the nomination, dropped out just nine days before the primary. He suspended his campaign after an investigative report by WPRI, a Providence news station, found that Williams College had asked him not to return to teach there after he was accused of sending a text to a student in which he “suggested a relationship modeled on a website where people can pay to go on dates.” He has sought to clarify his conduct.Whoever wins the most votes in the Democratic primary on Tuesday is virtually assured of winning the general election. But with so many candidates dividing the vote, and no independent public polling, political observers say it’s difficult to predict how the election may go and how close it will be. Mr. Cicilline has stayed out of the contest, declining to throw his support behind any candidate.“It’s been rough,” Ms. Matos said. “I knew this was going to be a tough campaign. It has been really hard. But you know, it is worth it.”Lt. Gov. Sabina Matos saw her campaign slump after criminal investigations were opened into fraudulent signatures on her nomination papers. Sophie Park for The New York TimesIn East Providence, Ms. Vaughan Dubois said she was deciding between Mr. Amo and Mr. Regunberg, and above all was looking for someone who had “some experience” and could “play with the big boys — who don’t play nice.”That is at the heart of Mr. Amo’s pitch to voters, which emphasizes his professional background and his Ocean State roots. He frequently brings up his experience serving two presidents in the White House and former Gov. Gina Raimondo, now the U.S. secretary of commerce, in the Rhode Island State House.“People here in Rhode Island deserve a congressperson who can get the job done,” Mr. Amo said in an interview. “They want people who are not running to make a point. They want effectiveness.”Mr. Amo, a more centrist Democrat, is seen as a top alternative to Mr. Regunberg.Sophie Park for The New York TimesHe said that Mr. Regunberg would “go to Washington and grandstand to make a political statement.”Mr. Regunberg dismissed the attacks as expected in the final week before an election. He has criticized Mr. Amo for accepting contributions from corporate lobbyists.Mr. Regunberg has pledged not to accept corporate PAC or lobbyist money, and, as a former state legislator and activist, has made the case that he would be a liberal leader in Washington in the mold of Mr. Sanders, who headlined a rally for him last weekend.“This is a district that can support someone who’s actually going to organize” and push progressive policies in Washington, Mr. Regunberg said at the rally, where he addressed around 650 attendees — including young families, people donning “Bernie” merch and supporters from nearby Massachusetts — who had lined up on the sidewalk outside a historic theater in Providence to see him and Mr. Sanders.Although there has been no independent public polling indicating who is favored to win, Mr. Regunberg is widely seen as the front-runner.Sophie Park for The New York TimesLike Mr. Cicilline, who led the House Judiciary subcommittee on antitrust, Mr. Regunberg said corporate power was at the root of numerous political and economic crises, from climate change to prescription drug pricing, and the main issue for the Democratic Party to show voters it is taking on in order to win back control of Congress and re-elect President Biden in 2024.“2024 is an existential-threat-to-our-democracy kind of election,” Mr. Regunberg said in an interview at a vegan bakery in Pawtucket, R.I. “Substantively, we need to be taking on corporate power. But I also think, politically, it’s really important that we be showing that we’re the party that’s standing up for regular people.”But Mr. Regunberg also faced controversy during his campaign after his father-in-law, a top executive at the investment firm Janus Henderson, created and invested $125,000 in a super PAC on his behalf.Ms. Matos filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, accusing Mr. Regunberg of violating campaign finance law by coordinating with the super PAC. Mr. Regunberg has denied any wrongdoing.Ms. Matos, a moderate once seen as the front-runner in the race, saw her campaign slump after she was engulfed this summer in multiple criminal investigations into the fraudulent signatures on her nomination papers. Still, she maintains support from the Congressional Hispanic Caucus and a number of local unions.The race has spurred several historic bids, including seven candidates who would be the first person of color to represent a state whose Hispanic or Latino population increased 40 percent from 2010 to 2020, and three who would be the first Democratic woman.State Senator Sandra Cano has attracted a broad range of local endorsements.Sophie Park for The New York TimesMs. Cano, a Colombian American state senator who has worked her way up through local government, said the diversity reflects “the progress that our community is making” and is “something that we need to celebrate.”Ms. Cano immigrated to the United States from Colombia under political asylum, an experience she said has been at the core of her desire to be involved in politics.“My democratic values have always carried with me,” she said, “because I came from an unhealthy democracy.” More

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      New York’s Migrant Crisis Is Growing. So Are Democrats’ Anxieties.

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      The influx of asylum seekers has the makings of a potent political force, and Republicans are ready to test it in key 2024 house races.Republicans successfully made crime the defining issue of the 2022 midterm elections in New York, fanning fears about public safety to rout suburban Democrats and help secure the party its House majority.Barely a year later, as another critical election season begins to take shape, they appear to be aggressively testing a similar strategy, hoping that the state’s growing migrant crisis will prove as potent a political force in 2024.The rapid arrival in New York of more than 100,000 asylum seekers is already wreaking havoc on government budgets, testing the city’s safety net and turning Democratic allies against one another. Now, otherwise vulnerable Republicans in a half dozen closely watched districts have begun grabbing onto all of it as a lifeline to portray Democrats as out of touch and unable to govern.“This is a crisis of their own making,” said Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting to hold a suburban district Mr. Biden won by 10 points.“It’s very similar to cashless bail,” Mr. Lawler said. “When you create a sanctuary city policy that invites migrants to come regardless of their status, you are going to get a lot of people coming, and now they can’t handle the influx.”Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting to hold a suburban district President Biden won by 10 points, said the migrant crisis was of Democrats’ “own making.”Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesHearing the same echoes, Democrats are determined not to be caught flat-footed as they were a year ago. From the suburbs of Long Island to here in the Hudson Valley, their candidates are spending late summer openly clashing not just with Republicans who say they are to blame, but also with their own party leaders, including President Biden.In one of the most closely watched contests, Representative Pat Ryan, the lone frontline Democrat to survive the Republican suburban demolition last year, has teamed up with two Republicans to demand that Mr. Biden declare a state of emergency, and broke with his party to support a bill to discourage schools from sheltering migrants.“The No. 1 thing I learned as an Army officer: When in charge, take charge,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview. “We are in a crisis, the president is in charge, and he and his team need to take charge.”He is far from alone. Josh Riley, a Democrat who is trying to flip a neighboring district, called the president’s aloofness on the issue “offensive.”Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman mounting a comeback attempt further down the Hudson, warned of “consequences at the polls” if his party does not step up.And his primary opponent, Liz Whitmer Gereghty, said Democrats across New York should be responding in lock step. “It kind of feels like we’re not,” she said.Both parties caution that the reality on the ground, where 2,900 migrants arrived just last week, is shifting too quickly for them to know exactly where the battle lines will be by next fall, when voters will also be weighing abortion rights and the criminal trials of former President Donald J. Trump, currently the leading Republican candidate.Republicans have been using fears about immigrants pouring across the border for years with only mixed success. And unlike a year ago, Democrats are trying to go on offense, accusing Republicans like Mr. Lawler of engaging in demagogy and reminding voters that his party helped stall a major immigration overhaul in Washington that they say might have prevented the latest influx.“Everybody understands this is a potential liability,” said Tim Persico, a Democratic consultant who oversaw the party’s House campaign operation last cycle. “I know there’s been a lot of finger pointing and kerfuffles, but there’s also pretty good evidence the mayor and the governor are trying to figure out how to solve this.”Still, there is little doubt that New York, a city known as a bastion for immigrants, is in the midst of a challenge to its political system with few modern parallels. Privately, Democratic pollsters and strategists are beginning to use focus groups and polls to test possible defenses on an issue they view as a tinderbox capable of igniting new political fires, fast.New York is housing roughly 59,000 asylum seekers a night because of a unique right-to-shelter mandate that dates back decades and is preparing to enroll some 19,000 migrant children in public schools this fall. An archipelago of temporary shelters has cropped up in hotels, parks and on public land, prompting increasingly raucous protests.And Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly warned of budget cuts as the cost of caring for the newcomers spikes into the billions of dollars — taxpayer money that Republicans are quick to point out could otherwise be used to help New Yorkers.As the numbers keep climbing, Democratic leaders have been forced to choose from unpalatable policy responses.Mr. Adams, for instance, has repeatedly demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul force reluctant counties outside the city to help shelter migrants. But doing so would prompt fierce backlash in many of the communities Democrats need in order to win the House, and the governor, who was already blamed for Democrats’ 2022 losses, has refused.On the other hand, any attempt by the city or state to drastically curtail the services it offers migrants would meet blowback from the left.The governor and mayor — along with congressional Democrats as ideologically diverse as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Ryan — are united in demanding more help from Mr. Biden. But push too hard and they risk bloodying their party’s standard-bearer heading into an election year.The White House did announce on Wednesday that it would dedicate personnel to help New York process work papers for asylum seekers and request additional federal funds from Congress to help the state. But Mr. Biden, who has to make his own national political calculations around immigration, appears to have little interest in taking a more visible role.Voters are watching. A recent poll conducted by Siena College found that 82 percent of registered voters view the influx as a “serious” problem, and a majority said that the state had “already done enough” for the asylum seekers and should focus on slowing their arrivals. The same poll showed nearly every major Democrat, including Mr. Biden, underwater among suburban voters.In many ways, those poor ratings have freed Democrats facing competitive races to distance themselves from their party in ways that telegraph to voters their understanding of the problem while differentiating themselves from Republicans’ more hard-line views on immigrants.It is a tricky balancing act. At the same time Mr. Ryan is locking arms with Republicans to pressure his own party, he is also trying to shift responsibility onto Republicans and defend himself against their attacks for making the county he once led a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants.“Where you really get yourself in trouble as an elected official is when you don’t listen,” Mr. Ryan said, adding: “For political purposes, the MAGA Republicans want divisions and chaos. They are not actually working to resolve problems.”The task may be easier for challengers who are taking on Republican incumbents whom they can blame for failing to enact the kind of changes to the immigration system that could curb illegal border crossings, speed up the asylum system and eventually relieve pressure on New York.“In my district, the one person sitting at the table to fix this problem is Anthony D’Esposito, and he is doing nothing,” said Laura Gillen, a Democrat seeking a rematch against Mr. D’Esposito, who represents the South Shore of Long Island. (He and other New York Republicans helped pass an aggressive but partisan border security bill in May.)But Ms. Gillen, who wants to represent a district Mr. Biden won by 14 points, said the president deserved blame, too. She called a letter last week from his homeland security secretary critiquing New York’s handling of the migrants as “irresponsible.”Laura Gillen, a Democrat, plans to challenge Anthony D’Esposito, who represents the South Shore of Long Island and has taken aim at his approach to the migrant crisis.Heather Walsh for The New York TimesMr. Riley is taking a similar “all our politicians are failing us” approach, knocking both Mr. Biden and Representative Marc Molinaro, his Republican opponent.“Look, this is a federal problem and it requires a federal response, and I think President Biden needs to get his act together and help solve it,” he said.It is too soon to know whether the approach is working. In Mr. Ryan’s district, the views of voters interviewed near a hotel housing migrants appeared to break down on familiar lines. Dozens of voters, when asked by a reporter, voiced dissatisfaction with how migrants had been bused up from New York City, but they disagreed on who was to blame.“Not just the county but the country can handle this,” said Faith Frishberg, a Democrat, outside a waterfront restaurant in Newburgh. “Most of this failure is a failure to not address the immigration policy.”But there may also be a distinct drawback over time.Blaming Democratic leaders like Mr. Adams or Mr. Biden may be expedient short-term politics. But it risks reinforcing the notion that Democrats cannot govern — a potentially powerful boomerang effect in a state that has registered some signs of weariness of one-party rule in recent years.Republicans already appear eager to reinforce it.“I have not seen a less coordinated, less competent way of dealing with human lives,” Mr. Molinaro said. “I know the reporting today has become a little bit about how the president is pointing at the governor, the governor at the mayor. The story line is Democrat leaders are pointing at each other.”Timmy Facciola contributed reporting from Newburgh, N.Y., and More