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      Some Democrats Don’t Like Eric Adams. But Can They Beat Him in 2025?

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      A group of mostly left-leaning Democrats held an early strategy meeting to discuss how they might defeat Mr. Adams in 2025. It won’t be easy.On a warm July evening, as Mayor Eric Adams visited Staten Island to highlight his work on public safety at a town hall meeting, a cross section of some of New York City’s progressive class was nearby, plotting how to make the mayor’s first term his last.The group had been summoned for a “completely confidential” dinner meeting to discuss how to take on “a dangerous man,” according to an invitation obtained by The New York Times.The dinner included members of some of the city’s most important left-leaning institutions, including the Working Families Party, and staffers from former Mayor Bill de Blasio’s administration. There was also a potential challenger they were hoping to recruit: Antonio Reynoso, the 40-year old Dominican American lawmaker who succeeded Mr. Adams as Brooklyn borough president.As the group dined on a vegetarian menu of homegrown squash Parmesan and beet salad, they strategized over how to harness festering discontent and assemble a coalition capable of beating the mayor in the 2025 Democratic primary — an unusual pushback to a party incumbent, especially this early in his tenure.“This is a room full of people who truly believe in the ability to go up against Adams and win,” said Cristina González, one of the hosts, on Thursday, after word of the meeting leaked.Mr. Adams will likely be a heavy favorite to capture a second term.He remains broadly popular with the coalition of Black and Latino voters outside of Manhattan that sent him to Gracie Mansion. He has already built a campaign war chest that is expected to hit $4.6 million with matching funds, and barring a dramatic reversal, the incumbent mayor would likely enjoy the support of the city’s most powerful labor unions.Evan Thies, a spokesman for the Adams campaign, said in a statement that the mayor had lowered crime and “invested billions of dollars in working people” and that polls showed he had strong support from New Yorkers.“The fact that these folks would rather play politics in some back room two years before the election, instead of help the mayor help working people, tells you all you need to know about what they really care about: their own power,” he said.Liberal and progressive Democrats have made little secret of their dismay over Mr. Adams, a centrist former police captain who ran on a public safety message. They have assailed his moves to cut library funding and universal prekindergarten, his efforts to delay the closing of the Rikers Island jail complex, and his response to the migrant crisis, among other policies.The dinner was perhaps the clearest sign yet that they are now openly strategizing how best to put forward a formidable challenger.Ms. González, an alumni of the de Blasio administration who hosted the dinner with her partner Janos Marton, a civil rights advocate who ran for Manhattan district attorney in 2021, at their Staten Island home, described the event as part of a “serious effort” to rally around a progressive candidate who can actually win.Mr. Reynoso, the only elected official at the dinner, acknowledged that the left was “trying to coalesce early to find one candidate. The strategy is to start early and find one strong candidate this time.”In an interview, Mr. Reynoso said he was not interested.Antonio Reynoso, the Brooklyn borough president, said he was uninterested in challenging Mr. Adams, but understood the desire for the left to coalesce behind one candidate as early as possible.Hilary Swift for The New York Times“I got elected to be the borough president of Brooklyn,” Mr. Reynoso said. “It’s a big borough, and I have a big job.”Mr. Adams, the city’s second Black mayor, has made a habit of using the left as a foil, blaming progressives for spikes in crime because they support policies like bail reform and favor reducing the amount of money spent on policing. The mayor has challenged the definition of what it means to be a progressive and often refers to himself as the “original progressive.”But Mr. Adams has also faced a series of negative headlines in recent weeks and has struggled to respond to the migrant crisis — a situation that has soured his relationship with President Biden and led to people sleeping on the streets in Midtown Manhattan.Progressives are broadly unhappy with Mayor Adams and are looking for a challenger to face him in 2025. Dave Sanders for The New York Times“It’s clear that Adams is vulnerable. What remains to be determined is, if there’s a viable candidate to challenge him,” said Rebecca Katz, a liberal operative who has not been part of the anti-Adams discussions, but works with Representative Jamaal Bowman, whose name has been floated as a possible opponent.Some progressive leaders appear to be coalescing around the idea that the ideal candidate would be a Black or Latino Democrat running to the left of Mr. Adams, but with appeal to a broader ideological range of voters. Even so, that candidate would face a daunting challenge.Jessica Ramos, a state senator from Queens, has discussed running with people in politics, but has not made a decision, according to a person familiar with the matter.Zellnor Myrie, a state senator who represents the Brooklyn district Mr. Adams once did, is also said to be in the early stages of considering a run. Mr. Myrie, a lawyer who has made affordable housing a top priority in Albany, declined to comment. But a person familiar with his thinking said he had not moved toward assembling a campaign — despite being pushed by political allies.Others have tried to convince Mr. Bowman to enter the race. Mr. Bowman, an outspoken former middle school principal, has made no secret of his differences with Mr. Adams over policing and city resources for schools and libraries, but he currently lives in Yonkers in Westchester County and told The Times this spring that he was not interested in running.New York City officials were criticized for forcing migrants to sleep and stay outside for days, outside the Roosevelt Hotel in Midtown Manhattan.Jeenah Moon for The New York TimesOther attendees at the July dinner included Rodrigo Camarena, director of Immigration Advocates Network, and Nisha Agarwal, a former commissioner of the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs under Mr. de Blasio.Ms. González, who is Puerto Rican, said it was important that a viable challenger to Mr. Adams be a person of color. The mayor has already said that certain attacks against him were based on his race. He has begun to lean heavily on his base of religious supporters.“It needs to be a person of color to inoculate them against specific kinds of attacks,” she said. “Those are also the people who are most impacted by his policies right now — it’s important to have someone from the community who is most impacted.”In the 2021 mayoral primary, the city’s progressives had a disastrous showing. The former city comptroller, Scott Stringer, faced sexual harassment allegations and was abandoned by many of his progressive endorsers. Some on the left supported Dianne Morales, who faced a revolt from her staff. Much of the left finally threw their support behind Maya Wiley, a former top lawyer for Mr. de Blasio; she finished a distant third.“Whoever challenges this mayor has to be equipped — nothing amateurish,” said Councilwoman Shahana Hanif, a co-chairwoman of the Council’s progressive caucus. “We really need to prop up someone who will unite a broad coalition, understand the progressives and work in collaboration with us.”Alyssa Cass, a political strategist with Slingshot Strategies who worked on Mr. Yang’s campaign, said the mayor’s opponents should be looking someone with broad ideological appeal.“Any challenge to Mayor Adams that hopes to be anything other than a pipe dream requires a candidate who can make the case that the functioning of the city is reaching a point of no return — and can make that case with just about every voter who did not support the mayor in 2021,” Ms. Cass said.Another dinner guest was Bill Neidhardt, a former press secretary for Mr. de Blasio who worked on Brandon Johnson’s winning mayoral campaign in Chicago. He said the discussion focused on “frustrations with the Adams administration,” including his response to wildfire smoke that darkened the skies this summer.There was “a lot of shared urgency about the moment we’re in right now,” he said, adding: “Also Cristina might be the best chef in all of Staten Island.” More

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      The Secret History of Gun Rights

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      Shannon Lin, Lynsea Garrison and Marion Lozano, Elisheba Ittoop and Listen and follow The DailyApple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicHow did the National Rifle Association, America’s most influential gun-rights group, amass its power?A New York Times investigation has revealed the secret history of how a fusty club of sportsmen became a lobbying juggernaut that would compel elected officials’ allegiance, derail legislation behind the scenes, and redefine the legal landscape.Mike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The Times, sets out the story of the N.R.A.’s transformation — and the unseen role that members of Congress played in designing the group’s strategies.On today’s episodeMike McIntire, an investigative reporter for The New York Times.National Rifle Association members take their seats for the Leadership Forum at the NRA Convention in the Indianapolis Convention Center.Kaiti Sullivan for The New York TimesBackground readingOver decades, a small group of legislators led by a prominent Democrat pushed the gun lobby to help transform the law, the courts and views on the Second Amendment.The potential Republican 2024 presidential candidates showed strong support for gun owners’ rights — a core issue for the party’s base, but one that can be a tougher sell in a general election.There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.Mike McIntire More

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      Biden Shores Up Democratic Support, but Faces Tight Race Against Trump

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      A New York Times/Siena College poll found that President Biden is on stronger footing than he was a year ago — but he is neck-and-neck in a possible rematch against Donald Trump.President Biden is heading into the 2024 presidential contest on firmer footing than a year ago, with his approval rating inching upward and once-doubtful Democrats falling into line behind his re-election bid, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll.Mr. Biden appears to have escaped the political danger zone he resided in last year, when nearly two-thirds of his party wanted a different nominee. Now, Democrats have broadly accepted him as their standard-bearer, even if half would prefer someone else.Still, warning signs abound for the president: Despite his improved standing and a friendlier national environment, Mr. Biden remains broadly unpopular among a voting public that is pessimistic about the country’s future, and his approval rating is a mere 39 percent.Perhaps most worryingly for Democrats, the poll found Mr. Biden in a neck-and-neck race with former President Donald J. Trump, who held a commanding lead among likely Republican primary voters even as he faces two criminal indictments and more potential charges on the horizon. Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump were tied at 43 percent apiece in a hypothetical rematch in 2024, according to the poll.Mr. Biden has been buoyed by voters’ feelings of fear and distaste toward Mr. Trump. Well over a year before the election, 16 percent of those polled had unfavorable views of both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, a segment with which Mr. Biden had a narrow lead.John Wittman, 42, a heating and air conditioning contractor in Phoenix, is a Republican but said he would vote for Mr. Biden if former President Donald J. Trump were the Republican nominee. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York Times“Donald Trump is not a Republican, he’s a criminal,” said John Wittman, 42, a heating and air conditioning contractor from Phoenix. A Republican, he said that even though he believed Mr. Biden’s economic stewardship had hurt the country, “I will vote for anyone on the planet that seems halfway capable of doing the job, including Joe Biden, over Donald Trump.”To borrow an old political cliché, the poll shows that Mr. Biden’s support among Democrats is a mile wide and an inch deep. About 30 percent of voters who said they planned to vote for Mr. Biden in November 2024 said they hoped Democrats would nominate someone else. Just 20 percent of Democrats said they would be enthusiastic if Mr. Biden were the party’s 2024 presidential nominee; another 51 percent said they would be satisfied but not enthusiastic.A higher share of Democrats, 26 percent, expressed enthusiasm for the notion of Vice President Kamala Harris as the nominee in 2024.Mr. Biden had the backing of 64 percent of Democrats who planned to participate in their party’s primary, an indicator of soft support for an incumbent president. Thirteen percent preferred Robert F. Kennedy Jr., and 10 percent chose Marianne Williamson.Among Democratic poll respondents who have a record of voting in a primary before, Mr. Biden enjoyed a far wider lead — 74 percent to 8 percent. He was ahead by 92 percent to 4 percent among those who voted in a Democratic primary in 2022.The lack of fervor about Mr. Biden helps explain the relatively weak showing among small donors in a quarterly fund-raising report his campaign released two weeks ago.A common view toward Mr. Biden is illustrated in voters like Melody Marquess, 54, a retiree and left-leaning independent from Tyler, Texas. Ms. Marquess, who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 as “the lesser of two evils,” was not happy about his handling of the pandemic, blaming him for inflation and a tight labor market. Still, she said she would again vote for Mr. Biden, who is 80 years old, over Mr. Trump, who is 77.“I’m sorry, but both of them, to me, are too old,” she said. “Joe Biden to me seems less mentally capable, age-wise. But Trump is just evil. He’s done horrible things.”More Democrats Support Biden As Nominee Than a Year AgoDemocrats who think their party should renominate Joseph R. Biden in 2024 More

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      The Biden Family Drama Is Far From Over

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      Gail Collins: Bret, I suspect our first big argument today will be about Hunter Biden. But I feel sorta obliged to start with Donald Trump. I mean, how often do you have a former president facing the threat of multiple indictments on alleged transgressions ranging from paying hush money over a sex scandal to prompting a riot that stormed the Capitol to trying to fix an election?Bret Stephens: While reportedly ordering an employee to delete potentially incriminating security camera footage in Mar-a-Lago. My preferred nickname for the 45th president, as you know, is Benito Milhous Caligula, but maybe we could switch that to G. Gordon Berlusconi.Gail: Said former president is, of course, the front-runner for the next Republican nomination.What’s your take on all this?Bret: Two thoughts. First, Trump belongs in prison, assuming Jack Smith, the special counsel in the documents matter, can prove his case in court. At a minimum, it looks to me like an open-and-shut case of obstruction of justice. Apparently, nobody told The Donald that the cover-up is usually worse than the crime.Gail: From your lips to God’s ears.Bret: Second, the more the legal system comes after Trump, the more the Republican rank-and-file will rally around him as both a truth-teller and a martyr. The hard right increasingly views the U.S. justice system in ways that the far left traditionally has: as a rigged, corrupt system in which sinister insiders use the levers of power to advance the interests of the elite at the expense of ordinary people.And of course, the Hunter Biden saga plays right into that narrative.Gail: Knew you’d be dying to go on to Hunter. I thought the plea deal was pretty reasonable. His crimes were tax evasion and lying when he bought a gun by failing to acknowledge he was a drug addict. I hate the idea of virtually anybody being able to obtain a gun. But even I do not expect drug addicts will voluntarily share that information when they attempt to buy one. So, definite criminal behavior but not a real shocker.Bret: If Hunter had been poor and Black, would the justice system have been as indulgent?Gail: A fair point. But in most places, a poor Black defendant from a responsible family who’s subsequently been living a sober, well-supervised life probably could have made this kind of deal. Or, OK, at least in some places.Bret: Hmmm.Maybe Hunter is a swell guy in private, and I have sympathy for anyone struggling with addiction. But what’s in the public record about him — from his obvious willingness to trade on the perception of access to make his living from dubious foreign sources to his reluctance to acknowledge paternity of one of his daughters to his career as a mediocre artist selling work at curiously astronomical prices to not paying taxes and then almost getting off with what seemed like a wrist slap — doesn’t exactly brighten the Biden family name. And while Republicans are jumping to conclusions without rock-solid evidence, I’m not entirely confident that Joe Biden really had no inkling of what his son was up to or that the larger Biden family didn’t benefit from Hunter’s shenanigans.Gail: Absolutely no evidence Joe Biden knew about Hunter’s lawbreaking. But one charge I’d bet on is that Hunter dropped dad’s name a lot when trying to do business with foreign honchos. Sort of hard to imagine him being saintly enough to avoid it. And the whole idea of his making deals with foreign honchos in the first place while his father was vice president is … bad.Bret: When it came to the Trump family’s finances — from his tax avoidance schemes to his foreign hotels to Jared Kushner’s sweetheart financing with Saudi Arabia — the news media left no stone unturned. It behooves journalists to be as aggressively curious about the Biden family’s finances. Especially since a federal judge wasn’t at all keen on Hunter’s plea deal, and I.R.S. agents are alleging political interference in the case.Gail: Absolutely. And news of Hunter’s unacknowledged daughter — brought to us by The Times’s great reporting — is a deeply depressing embarrassment for both father and grandfather. I was happy to see Joe Biden acknowledge her last Friday.But I still don’t believe anything on the Biden bad-behavior ledger compares to the way Trump built a personal real estate empire on smarmy-to-corrupt practices.Bret: Yeah — probably.Gail: And you know, as irritating as I find Donald Jr. and Eric making pots of money off their family name, I wouldn’t find that alone a major reason to violently oppose their father’s presidential ambitions.I think it’s the same with Hunter Biden — the House Republicans may be trying to make him a big campaign issue, but voters mostly don’t care.Bret: I bet plenty of voters would like to know how the extended Biden family raked in $17 million from foreign sources between 2014 and 2019, as a whistle-blowing I.R.S. agent testified. This was a period that seems to have coincided with Hunter’s crack binges. Just what expert services was he providing for that kind of income? Glassblowing?Gail: Well, we’re not gonna resolve every part of this today. Always enjoy having a Hunter fight with you, Bret, and we’ll undoubtedly turn back to this subject. But let’s move on to Congress. Lots to discuss there.Bret: Ad aspera per aspera, as some Roman must have said.Gail: Mitch McConnell seemed to go totally blank while talking with reporters last week. People are wondering if he’s developed serious aging problems that should make him step down from his job as Senate minority leader. What do you think?Bret: That one is between him and his physician, and he seemed to recover his faculties later during the press conference. But as with Dianne Feinstein, Chuck Grassley or, ahem, Joe Biden, elderly politicians do themselves no favors by trying to hang on to office for too long. Interesting question is who might replace him. Any free advice for the Senate Repubs?Gail: We both agreed long ago that we wished the president wasn’t intent on running for re-election in his 80s. As to McConnell, I’ll never forgive him for squatting on Barack Obama’s final nomination to the Supreme Court. Still, I have to admit he’s generally seemed at least non-crazy as minority leader.But proposing a successor is your territory. Any ideas?Bret: I don’t think McConnell will step down right away, but someone I know who knows things tells me that the likeliest replacements are either South Dakota’s John Thune, the current No. 2, or Texas’ John Cornyn. My own preference would be Cornyn: a smart and sober guy and a non-MAGA conservative. Whatever else you might say about Cornyn, he is to the junior senator from Texas what pumpkin pie is to a jack-o’-lantern.Gail: Love your Ted Cruz reference. Hehehehe.Bret: Can I switch the subject to cultural issues? First, Kevin Spacey’s acquittal in a London courtroom on nine charges of sexual assault.Gail: Bret, not having really kept up on the Spacey situation, I’m going to have to defer to you.Bret: This is Spacey’s second acquittal, following last year’s in a case brought in New York by the actor Anthony Rapp. What bothers me is that even now, Spacey will face an “uphill battle” to get major roles again, according to a report in The Times. He’s one of the greatest actors alive, the Laurence Olivier of our day. He’s spent the last six years as persona non grata. He’s been declared not guilty by two juries in two countries. I think his case, like that of Armie Hammer, will be remembered as another ugly instance of #MeToo opportunism. To borrow a line from Raymond J. Donovan, Ronald Reagan’s unjustly indicted labor secretary, to which office does he go to get his reputation back?Sorry, I had to rant. I hope some major Hollywood director has the guts and grace to give him a starring role.Gail: Rant away! And as I said, I’m following your lead on this one. Except for your #MeToo swipe. The whole #MeToo opportunism reference hurts me.On a far less somber note, I have to say I’m siding with the law-and-order crowd when it comes to the Biden family dog, Commander, who’s allegedly bitten Secret Service agents at least 10 times over the last few months.I’m sure Commander has his own side of the story, but he should be exiled to the countryside forever. No deal with the prosecutor where he pleads guilty and then gets nothing but probation.Bret: Maybe Commander got hold of that stash of white powder that was found in the White House? “Cocaine K-9” could make an interesting sequel to “Cocaine Bear.”The other subject I wanted to raise is Sinead O’Connor, the Irish singer who sadly passed away last week. She basically blew up her musical career in the United States when in 1992 she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II on “Saturday Night Live” in protest of the church’s cover-up of clerical sexual abuse. Your thoughts?Gail: I’d love to see Sinead O’Connor’s story enshrined with other celebrities who did something righteous and fell into career limbo as a result. Many celebrities have been outspoken with few repercussions. But messing with religious leaders will almost always get you in deep trouble. Even when they deserve it.Bret: O’Connor was calling attention to hideous facts about the church a decade before The Boston Globe’s Spotlight stories put it on the national agenda. She used her musical celebrity in exemplary fashion to call out monstrous evil. She went directly after one of the most beloved public figures of the time, now canonized, and she did so at heavy cost to her own career. It was an exemplary use of free speech and an extraordinary act of courage.Nothing compared 2 her. Rest in peace.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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      Trump Says Republicans Should Investigate Democrats or Risk Losing Their Seats

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      Casting Republicans as meek, former President Donald J. Trump said members of his party should pursue investigations against Democrats — or risk losing their seats.Former President Donald J. Trump lashed out at Republicans in Congress while campaigning in Pennsylvania on Saturday, threatening members of his party who do not share his appetite for pursuing corruption investigations against President Biden and his family — and for retribution.In a litany of grievances about his deepening legal woes and the direction of the country, the twice-indicted former president cast G.O.P. holdouts as meek during a rally in Erie, Pa., criticizing their response to what he described as politically motivated prosecutions against him.“The Republicans are very high class,” he said. “You’ve got to get a little bit lower class.”And then Mr. Trump, the overwhelming front-runner for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, put party members on notice.“Any Republican that doesn’t act on Democratic fraud should be immediately primaried,” said Mr. Trump, to the roaring approval of several thousand supporters at the Erie Insurance Arena. Throughout the night he referenced the case against Hunter Biden and accused the president of complicity in his son’s troubles.It was the first solo campaign event and the second public appearance for Mr. Trump since the Justice Department added charges against him in connection with his mishandling of classified documents after leaving office.In a superseding indictment filed on Thursday in U.S. District Court in Florida, federal prosecutors presented evidence that Mr. Trump told the property manager of Mar-a-Lago, his private club and residence in Florida, that he wanted security camera footage there to be deleted.Prosecutors also charged him, along with one of his personal aides, with conspiring to obstruct the government’s repeated attempts to reclaim the classified material.On the same day that the additional charges were announced, Mr. Trump’s lawyers met with federal prosecutors to discuss another expected indictment, one centering on Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his actions during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.Mr. Trump’s rally on Saturday was his first solo campaign event since the Justice Department added new charges against him in the documents case.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTo Mr. Trump’s unflinching supporters gathered inside the arena, the cascade of indictments was a punchline — if not a badge of honor.Edward X. Young, 63, a debt consolidation company consultant and part-time actor who was dressed like Elvis Presley, wore a T-shirt with a mock-up mug shot of Mr. Trump. He said he had driven 10 hours from Point Pleasant, N.J., to attend Mr. Trump’s rally, his 59th.“I think he’s being persecuted,” he said of the former president. Ruth Jenkins, 61, a Republican from Rochester, N.Y., who works for a Wegmans grocery store, said that she did not believe that Mr. Trump had been motivated to run for president to avoid criminal liability.“Well, who wouldn’t want to be kept out of prison?” she said, claiming that the latest charges against Mr. Trump were the latest attempt to shift attention away from the case against the president’s son.As Mr. Trump prepared to take the stage, campaign workers helped fill in an empty section near the back of the arena, which had been configured to seat 8,000.The playlist for the rally featured “Try That in a Small Town,” the Jason Aldean hit that was filmed at the site of a lynching and pulled from Country Music Television amid criticism.With Mr. Trump as its standard-bearer, the Republican Party has watched Democrats in Pennsylvania secure high-profile victories in the last year, including flipping a U.S. Senate seat, holding on to the governor’s office and gaining control of the statehouse.In 2020, Mr. Trump lost the battleground state by nearly 82,000 votes to Mr. Biden, who was born there.Despite several courts rejecting his election lawsuits in Pennsylvania, Mr. Trump has continued to cling to falsehoods about results, including on Saturday.“We got screwed,” he said, baselessly claiming that news outlets had delayed their race calls because he had been ahead. “I said, ‘Why aren’t they calling Pennsylvania?’”Mr. Trump, who spoke for more than 100 minutes, said that he still had not decided whether he would take part in the first Republican presidential debate, which will take place on Aug. 23 and be televised by Fox News.Mr. Trump said that there appeared to be little upside to debating on a “hostile” network — Fox News began to fall out of favor with the former president after it became the first major outlet to call Arizona for Mr. Biden in 2020 — and noted his commanding polling lead over his G.O.P. opponents. His nearest competitor, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, trailed him by about 30 percentage points in national polls.“If I don’t go to the debate, they say — I’m not saying this — they say the ratings are going to be very bad,” he said. “Should I do it or not?”The crowd’s answer was resounding: “No.” More

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      Rep. Dean Phillips Says He Is Considering a Run Against Biden

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      Mr. Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat, has received attention for his outspoken calls for aging members of the Democratic Party to step aside.Representative Dean Phillips, a Minnesota Democrat who has for months been saying in public what many in his party only whisper in private — that the 80-year-old President Biden should not seek re-election because of his age — said he was considering challenging Mr. Biden in next year’s primary.Mr. Phillips, 54, is in his third term in Congress representing a district that includes the suburbs west of Minneapolis. In a text message, he confirmed his interest in running but declined a request to be interviewed. He said he had “been overwhelmed with outreach and encouragement” and needed to assess his next steps.Mr. Phillips would be an extreme long shot if he were to challenge Mr. Biden. Polls show that Democrats, who were once wary about Mr. Biden seeking re-election, have coalesced behind him. The party’s major donor class is backing the president, who raised $72 million with the Democratic National Committee and his joint fund-raising committee during the three-month reporting period that ended June 30.Mr. Phillips had $277,000 in his congressional fund-raising account at the end of June.An heir to a Minnesota liquor fortune who showcased himself driving a gelato truck in his first House campaign, Mr. Phillips has been known in Congress for embracing the moderate suburban politics that were at the core of the general election coalition that propelled Mr. Biden’s 2020 victory. He was first elected in 2018, when he and dozens of fellow Democrats flipped Republican-held districts as suburban voters turned against President Donald J. Trump.In Congress, Mr. Phillips has received attention for his outspoken calls for aging members of the Democratic Party to step aside. He said last year that Mr. Biden should not seek re-election, and he has called for the resignation of Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, whose health has visibly deteriorated in recent months.The Biden campaign and the D.N.C. have so far declined to comment about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Marianne Williamson, who began their own primary campaigns against Mr. Biden this year. Officials from both the D.N.C. and the Biden campaign declined to speak about Mr. Phillips. More

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      Democrats and Republicans Are Living in Different Worlds

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      Competing partisan views on how we see men and masculinity are emerging as key factors in the run-up to the 2024 election.Two books published last year, very different in tone — Senator Josh Hawley’s “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs” and Richard Reeves’s “Of Boys and Men” — have focused public attention on this debate.Hawley approached the subject from a decidedly conservative point of view.“No menace to this nation is greater than the collapse of American manhood,” he declared, placing full blame “on the American left. In fact they have helped drive it. In power centers they control, places like the press, the academy and politics, they blame masculinity for America’s woes.”Hawley added:More and more young men are living at home with their parents, apparently incapable of coping with life on their own. As for jobs, fewer and fewer young men have them. In 2015, nearly a quarter of men between the ages of 21 and 30, historically a cohort strongly attached to work and the labor force, had no work to speak of. These men had not engaged in labor during the previous 12 months. At all.Reeves painted a similarly downbeat picture of the state of men but contended that the solutions lie in an expansion of the liberal agenda. “Men account for two out of three ‘deaths of despair’ either from a suicide or overdose,” Reeves wrote, andyoung men are five times more likely to commit suicide than young women. The wages of the typical man are lower today than in 1979. Boys and men of color, and those from poorer families, are suffering most. In part, this reflects a dramatic reversal of the gender gap in education. In fact, the gender gap in college degrees awarded is wider today than it was in the early 1970s, just in the opposite direction. But there is also a big gap in what might be called personal agency: Men are now only about half as likely as women to study abroad or sign up for the Peace Corps, much less likely to buy their own home as a single adult and half as likely to initiate a divorce. In advanced economies today, women are propelling themselves through life. Men are drifting.Reeves and Hawley had quite dissimilar causal explanations for this phenomenon — as do so many Republicans and Democrats. Let’s take a look at a July survey, conducted by Ipsos for Politico, “The Best Way to Find Out if Someone Is a Trump Voter? Ask Them What They Think About Manhood.”“It turns out ideas about gender and masculinity can be reliable indicators of how people vote by party and by candidate,” Katelyn Fossett, an associate editor at Politico Magazine, wrote in an article describing the poll.In blunt terms, the poll asked, “Do you agree or disagree with the statement ‘The Democratic Party is hostile to masculine values’?” Republicans agreed, 68 to 8 percent; Democrats disagreed, 62 to 6 percent.One of the core differences between Republicans and Democrats lies in their views on family structure. Ipsos asked respondents whether they agreed or disagreed with the statement “Traditional family structure with a wage-earning father and a homemaking mother best equips children to succeed.”Republicans agreed 52 to 24 percent; Democrats disagreed 59 to 16 percent — once again almost mirror images of each other.A similar level of partisan disagreement emerged in responses to the statement “The MeToo movement has made it harder for men to feel they can speak freely at work.” Republicans agreed 65 to 10 percent; Democrats disagreed 43 to 21 percent.These differences were then reflected in key policy issues. For example, “Do you support or oppose increased military spending?” Republicans supported it, 81 to 11 percent; Democrats modestly opposed it, 47 to 40 percent. “Laws that limit access to firearms”? Republicans opposed them, 67 to 28 percent; Democrats supported them, 87 to 10 percent.The substantial 22-point gender gap found in the 2022 election pales in comparison with the policy and attitudinal differences found in the current Ipsos/Politico survey.Other polls provide further illumination.In its 2022 American Values Survey, the Public Religion Research Institute asked a related question: “Has American society as a whole become too soft and feminine?” Among those surveyed, 42 percent agreed, and 53 percent disagreed.There was, however, P.R.R.I. noted, a “partisan divide on this question of nearly 50 percentage points: Approximately two-thirds of Republicans (68 percent) say society has become too soft and feminine, compared with 44 percent of independents and less than one in five Democrats (19 percent).”What’s not clear in the data from the Ipsos/Politico poll is how these partisan differences on gender-linked issues will play out in November 2024.There are a number of additional emerging trends that have clear partisan implications, including generational schisms.In a July 10 Washington Post essay, “2024 Won’t Be a Trump-Biden Replay. You Can Thank Gen Z for That,” Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster, and Mac Heller, a producer of political documentaries, described the growing strength of young Democratic-leaning voters. “Every year,” they wrote,About four million Americans turn 18 and gain the right to vote. In the eight years between the 2016 and 2024 elections, that’s 32 million new eligible voters. Also every year, two and a half million older Americans die. So in the same eight years, that’s as many as 20 million fewer older voters.Which means that between Trump’s election in 2016 and the 2024 election, the number of Gen Z (born in the late 1990s and early 2010s) voters will have advanced by a net 52 million against older people. That’s about 20 percent of the total 2020 eligible electorate of 258 million Americans.Why is that significant? These Gen Z voters are turning out in higher percentages than similar-age voters in the past, and their commitment to a liberal or even progressive agenda has “led young people in recent years to vote more frequently for Democrats and progressive policies than prior generations did when of similar age — as recent elections in Kansas, Michigan and Wisconsin have shown,” Lake and Heller wrote.Ideologically and demographically, these voters tilt sharply left.The Lake-Heller essay continued:About 48 percent of Gen Z voters identify as a person of color, while the boomers they’re replacing in the electorate are 72 percent white. Gen Z voters are on track to be the most educated group in our history, and the majority of college graduates are now female. Because voting participation correlates positively with education, expect women to speak with a bigger voice in our coming elections. Gen Z voters are much more likely to cite gender fluidity as a value, and they list racism among their greatest concerns. Further, they are the least religious generation in our history.A February 2023 Brookings report, “How Younger Voters Will Impact Elections: Younger Voters Are Poised to Upend American Politics,” noted, “Younger voters should be a source of electoral strength for Democrats for some years to come.”The authors, Morley Winograd, a senior fellow at the U.S.C. Center on Communication Leadership and Policy; Michael Hais, a consultant; and Doug Ross, a former Michigan state senator, argued that “younger Americans are tilting the electoral playing field strongly toward the Democrats” and “their influence enabled the Democrats to win almost every battleground state contest” in 2022.The authors cited 2022 exit poll data for Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania showing a consistent pattern: Voters 45 and older cast majorities for Republicans, while those 18 to 44 backed Democrats by larger margins.There are, conversely, developments suggesting gains for the Republican Party.On June 8, Gallup reported a steady increase in the percentage of Americans who described themselves as “social conservatives” — from 30 percent in 2021 to 33 percent in 2022 to 38 percent this year. The percentage describing themselves as very liberal on social issues fell from 34 to 29 percent.Among Republicans, the percentage describing themselves as social issue conservatives rose from 60 in 2021 to 74 in 2023. More important politically, social issue conservatism among independents, who are most likely to be swing voters, grew from 24 to 29 percent from 2021 to 2023. The share of social issue conservative Democrats remained unchanged at 10 percent.In another signal of possible troubles for Democrats, Gallup reported this month that the percentage of Americans describing immigration as “a good thing for the county” had fallen to 68 percent this year from 77 percent in 2020. The percentage describing immigration as a “bad thing for the country” rose from 19 to 27 percent over the same period.On a different and perhaps more revealing question, Gallup asked whether immigration should be increased, kept the same or decreased. From 2020 to 2023, the percentage saying “decreased” grew sharply to 41 percent from 28 percent. The share supporting an increase fell to 26 percent from 34 percent.Gallup created a measure it called “net support for increased immigration” by subtracting the percentage of those calling for a decrease in immigration from the percentage of those calling for an increase.From 2020 to 2023, net support among Democrats fell from plus 38 to plus 22 percent. For Republicans, net support fell from minus 34 to minus 63 percent. Among the crucial block of self-identified independents, support fell from plus 6 to minus 12 percent.Exit polls from 2022 showed that voters who took conservative stands on social issues and those who were opposed to immigration voted by decisive margins for Republican candidates.There are other forces pushing voters to the right. One unanticipated consequence of the opioid epidemic, for example, has been an increase in Republican support in the areas that suffered the most.In a paper published this month, “Democracy and the Opioid Epidemic,” Carolina Arteaga and Victoria Barone, economists at the University of Toronto and Notre Dame, found that an analysis of House elections from 1982 to 2020 revealed that “greater exposure to the opioid epidemic continuously increased the Republican vote share in the House starting in 2006. This higher vote share translated into additional seats won by Republicans from 2014 and until 2020.”Not only did exposure to increased opioid usage correlate with higher Republican margins; it “was accompanied by an increase in conservative views on immigration, abortion and gun control and in conservative ideology in general,” Arteaga and Barone wrote.The two economists used an ingenious, if depressing, method quantifying opioid use by measuring different geographic levels of cancer deaths: “The opioid epidemic began with the introduction of OxyContin to the market in 1996,” they wrote. One of the key marketing strategies to increase sales of OxyContin was to concentrate on doctors treating cancer patients:We start by showing the evolution of prescription opioids per capita by cancer mortality in 1996. Commuting zones in the top quartile of cancer mortality in 1996 saw an increase of 2,900 percent in oxycodone grams per capita, while areas in the lowest quartile experienced growth that was one-third of that magnitude.There is, Arteaga and Barone wrote, “a positive and statistically significant relationship between mid-1990s cancer mortality and shipments of prescription opioids per capita. The connection between cancer mortality and opioid shipments tracks opioid-related mortality.”This linkage allowed Arteaga and Barone to use cancer mortality rates as a proxy for opioid use, so that they could show that “a rise of one standard deviation in the 1996 cancer mortality rate corresponds to an increase in the Republican vote share of 13.8 percentage points in the 2020 congressional elections.”There are other, less disturbing but significant developments emerging from growing partisan hostility.As Democrats and Republicans have become increasingly polarized, three political scientists have found that partisan schadenfreude has gained strength among both Democrats and Republicans.In another paper from July, “Partisan Schadenfreude and Candidate Cruelty,” Steven W. Webster, Adam N. Glynn and Matthew P. Motta of Indiana, Emory and Oklahoma State Universities wrote:Partisan schadenfreude is a powerful predictor of voting intentions in the United States. Moving from below the median to above the median on our schadenfreude measure predicts an increase of approximately 13 points.American voters “are not averse to supporting cruel candidates,” according to Webster, Glynn and Motta. “A significant portion — over one-third — of the mass public is willing to vote for a candidate of unknown ideological leanings who promises to pass policies that ‘disproportionately harm’ supporters of the opposing political party.”Among those high in schadenfreude, they continued, “cruel candidates are not merely passively accepted. On the contrary, for this subset of Americans, candidate cruelty is sought out.”I asked Webster whether schadenfreude was stronger in either party, and he replied by email:It is hard to say whether Democrats or Republicans are more prone to partisan schadenfreude. This is because we measured schadenfreude in slightly different ways according to one’s partisan identification. Democratic schadenfreude was measured after subjects saw a vignette of a Democrat losing government-provided health insurance following a vote for a Republican; Republican schadenfreude was measured after seeing a vignette about voting for a Democrat and losing take-home pay in the wake of tax increases.There was, Webster continued, “a clear pattern: Both Democrats and Republicans express partisan schadenfreude, and this attitude is most pronounced among those who are ideologically extreme (i.e., liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans).”I also asked whether a candidate signaling willingness to punish opponents would see a net gain or loss of votes. Webster replied:We find that most Americans do not register an intention to vote for candidates who promise legislative cruelty. It is only among those individuals who exhibit the greatest amount of schadenfreude that we see an acceptance of these candidates (as measured by a willingness to vote for them). So there is certainly a trade-off here. If political consultants and candidates think that their constituency is prone to exhibiting high amounts of schadenfreude, then campaigning on promises of legislative cruelty could be a successful tactic. As in most cases, the composition of the electorate matters a great deal.While partisan schadenfreude is present among voters on both sides, among politicians the two most prominent champions of its use are Republicans — Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis — and they share the honor of being most willing to adopt policies to hurt Democratic constituencies to win support.Given the assumption that turnout will be critical in 2024, the 2022 elections sent some warning signals to Democrats. In an analysis published this month, “Voting Patterns in the 2022 Elections,” Pew Research found:The G.O.P. improved its performance in 2022 across most voting subgroups relative to 2018 — due almost entirely to differential partisan turnout. Voters who were more favorable to Republican candidates turned out at higher rates compared with those who typically support Democrats.These trends were visible in Hispanic voting patterns:A higher share of Hispanic voters supported G.O.P. candidates in the 2022 election compared with in 2018. In November 2022, 60 percent of Hispanic voters cast ballots for Democrats compared with 39 percent who supported Republicans. This 21-point margin is smaller than in 2018, when 72 percent of Hispanic voters favored Democrats and 25 percent supported Republicans.Crucially, Hannah Hartig, Andrew Daniller, Scott Keeter and Ted Van Green, the authors of the report, wrote:among Hispanic voters who cast ballots in the 2018 election, 37 percent did not vote in the 2022 midterms. Those who did not vote had tilted heavily Democratic in 2018 — reflecting asymmetric changes in voter turnout among Hispanic adults.If Joe Biden and the Democratic Party allow the turnout patterns of 2022 to define turnout in 2024, Biden will lose, and Republicans will be odds-on favorites to control the House and Senate.Trump is a master of turnout. In large part because of Trump, voter turnout in 2020 — measured as a percentage of the voting-eligible population — was the highest in 120 years, at 66.7 percent.Trump is the Democrats’ best hope. In the past three elections — 2018, 2020 and 2022 — when he was on the ballot either literally or through candidate surrogates, he brought out Democratic voters by the millions, reminding a majority of Americans just what it is that they do not want.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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      There’s No Escaping Trump

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. We skipped our conversation last week because I was in Ukraine. But even from there, it was hard to miss the news about Donald Trump’s most recent pending indictment. Your thoughts?Gail Collins: Bret, I’m in awe of your Ukraine expedition but slightly depressed to realize that Americans can’t escape Trump, even when they’re at a hospital in Irpin.Bret: Trump returning to the White House and pulling the plug on American support for Kyiv is the second-biggest threat to Ukraine, after Vladimir Putin. And did you hear Trump call the Chinese dictator Xi Jinping both “smart” and “brilliant”?But back to the latest potential indictment ….Gail: Criminal-justice wise, I think it’s very important to assure the country that nobody, including a president, can just get away with urging an angry crowd to attack the Capitol.Bret: Especially a president.Gail: But politically, I have a terrible suspicion that indictment will help him in the Republican primaries. So sad the law-and-order party has apparently lost interest in the law — or, for that matter, order — when it doesn’t suit their purpose.Bret: If there were truth in advertising, Republicans would have to rename themselves the Opposite Party. They were the party of law and order. Now they want to abolish the F.B.I. They were the party that revered the symbols of the nation. Now they think the Jan. 6 riots were like a “normal tourist visit.” They were the party of moral character and virtue. Now they couldn’t care less that their standard-bearer consorted with a porn star. They were the party of staring down the Evil Empire. Now they’re Putin’s last best hope. They were the party of free trade. Now they’re protectionists. They were the party that cheered the Supreme Court’s 2010 Citizens United decision, which argued that corporations had free speech. Now they are being sued by Disney because the company dared express an opinion they dislike. They were the party that once believed that “family values don’t stop at the Rio Grande,” as George W. Bush put it. Now some of them want to invade Mexico.Gail: Woof …Bret: So that makes me want to ask you about your column last week. What’s not to like about No Labels?Gail: Bret, gonna skip my normal diatribe on the evils of Joe Lieberman, the spokesman-symbolic-head of No Labels, which is running around the country trying to get a presidential line on ballots in a bunch of states.Bret: Lieberman may be our one irreconcilable difference. I love the guy.Gail: My bottom line is that third parties — even those led by people far better than Mr. L. — are a danger to the American democratic system. You start a party that makes a big deal out of … helping hummingbirds. Tell voters who don’t love either of the two regular candidates that they can Vote Hummer and feel good. You won’t win the election, but you can throw everything into chaos. In some states, that little shift could be enough to bestow victory somewhere you’d never have wanted it to go. Say the Crow Coalition.Bret: I’d be opposed to No Labels if I were convinced that all they will do is take votes from Joe Biden and throw the election to Trump. But that depends on who takes the No Labels slot: If it’s a former Democrat, it probably hurts Biden. If it’s a former Republican, it could hurt Trump even more.Gail: Maybe. I’d rather just make people pick between the two real possibilities — each of them representing a broad coalition and certainly offering a stark choice. I don’t like plotting to win by cluttering up the ballot.Bret: But the main thing, Gail, is that I need a party I can vote for. And I think the feeling is shared by a growing fraction of voters who might be center-left or center-right but are increasingly appalled by progressive Democrats and reactionary Republicans. So any party that represents our views is good for democracy, not a threat to it.Gail: No, no Bret. Even if you vote for a third party that perfectly represents your views — or at least your view on a favorite issue — if it isn’t going to win, you’re throwing away your vote. A vote for the Green Party, for instance, is a vote that Biden would probably have gotten otherwise. Which means the Green Party is helping Trump.Bret: I agree — mostly. I used to vote exclusively for Republicans, even though I disagreed on a lot of social issues. Now I vote mostly for Democrats, even though I disagree on a lot of economic issues. But I’ve never before felt such a level of disaffection with both parties, which makes No Labels … intriguing. We’ll see if it goes anywhere.Gail: OK, I’ve ranted enough. Let’s talk about something important that no one ever wants to talk about: Congress. The big defense budget is being bogged down by some House Republicans who want to include right-wing social issues that everyone knows the Senate will never accept. Even the normal military promotions are stalled by one Republican Senator, Tommy Tuberville of Alabama, who wants to eliminate travel aid to enlisted women seeking abortions.These are all supposed to be your guys — explain what we can do about all this.Bret: Well, this is just another way in which I’m totally appalled by so many of today’s Republicans. They had no trouble effectively freezing and even reducing military spending for the sake of their debt-ceiling antics, despite claiming to be seriously concerned by the military threat from China (or Iran or Russia). And now they’re committing the exact sin they routinely accuse liberals of doing: injecting a partisan social agenda into questions of national security.But Gail, Congress is too depressing. Let’s talk about the actors’ and writers’ strikes. Should we join them, at least morally speaking?Gail: I see two big things about the strikes. One is complicated and important — how do you compensate the creative talent when movies and TV are available around the clock via streaming?The other is more emotional and understandable: The creative talent is scrambling to get adequate pay while the top guys — the producers and company executives — are making a mountain of money from the current system.In a word, I’m on the writer-actor side. How about you?Bret: Don’t tell anyone this, but I am, too. I think the strike is about more than the particulars of how the so-called creative class gets paid. It’s really about whether or not there can be a creative class at all.My working assumption is that within 20 years, if not much sooner, A.I. will be able to write, direct and act (via computer-generated images that are indistinguishable from real people) movies and TV shows. It will write credible novels and news stories and opinion columns, and compose film scores and pop music. That may not really affect me, if only because I’ll be close to retirement. But it will mean a growing number of creative endeavors will no longer easily find meaningful vocational outlets. It will amount to a kind of material degradation to human civilization that may prove irreversible.Gail: Grab a picket sign!Bret: Never thought I’d be a fan of any form of organized labor, but there it is. And it’s also a good occasion to praise President Biden for trying to create some shared ethical guidelines for the development of A.I.Gail: I’m the last one to make an informed prediction on anything relating to science and technology, but you’re right, it’s good to know we’ve got some principled leaders trying to figure things out.Bret: Even though the depressing reality is that humanity doesn’t have a particularly good track record of controlling new technologies, particularly when they can make some people richer or other people more powerful. The historian in me says the same might have been said with every past transformative technology, from the wheel to the printing press to nuclear energy. Maybe artificial intelligence will follow the same path. But A.I. is also the first technology I can think of that doesn’t supplement human creativity, but rather competes with it.Gail: And gee, Bret, we’ve agreed about almost everything this week — including organized labor! Next week I swear we’ll talk about something that stirs up a fight.Bret: I’m sure I’ll have strong views about the Oppenheimer film once I’ve seen it. Have I ever mentioned that I think Harry Truman was completely right to drop the bombs?Gail: We can compare thoughts then. Hope you get a chance to see “Oppenheimer” soon — although I should warn you it did feel as if three hours was a long time to contemplate atomic warfare. In an old theater with squeaky seats.I’m most certainly not an expert on World War II, but I hate the idea of killing something like 200,000 people to make a point about our nation’s breakthrough in technological firepower.Bret: History is filled with counterfactuals. I wonder how many American fighting men, including my grandfather — and, for that matter, how many Japanese soldiers and civilians — would have been killed if we had invaded the Japanese home islands the way we had to take Iwo Jima or Okinawa. I think the aggregate number would have been far higher.Gail: I can see that our ongoing conversation about this is going to be hard and deep, Bret. I’ll bring wine. And maybe we should also make it a point to see “Barbie” before we chat again. We can talk about global destruction and mass market capitalism at the same time.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