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    Democrat Donna Deegan Wins Jacksonville’s Mayor Race in Florida Upset

    Donna Deegan is only the second Democrat to be elected mayor of Florida’s biggest city in the past three decades.MIAMI — Donna Deegan, a Democrat, was elected mayor of Jacksonville on Tuesday, shaking up the politics of Florida’s largest city, where Republican mayors have been in power for all but four of the last 30 years.Ms. Deegan, a former television news anchor, defeated Daniel Davis, a Republican endorsed by Gov. Ron DeSantis, who had been seen as the likely favorite in the traditionally Republican stronghold. In recent years, Jacksonville had been the most populous city in the country with a Republican mayor, Lenny Curry, who is term-limited; that distinction now goes to Fort Worth, Texas.Ms. Deegan’s victory is a rare bright spot for Florida Democrats, whose losses have mounted in recent elections to the point that the party has little sway in the State Capitol and a thin candidate bench.But while Florida has become decidedly more Republican — and while many have viewed Mr. DeSantis, a likely 2024 presidential contender, as all-powerful in state politics — Jacksonville has emerged as a swingy corner of the state. A majority of voters in Duval County, which shares a consolidated government with the city of Jacksonville, voted for the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, for the Republican mayor in 2019, for President Biden in 2020, for Mr. DeSantis last year, and now for Ms. Deegan, who will be the city’s first female mayor.“We made history tonight,” Ms. Deegan told cheering supporters Tuesday night after Mr. Davis conceded.Mr. Davis, the chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, out-raised Ms. Deegan by a margin of four to one and seemed like the sort of business-friendly Republican that has long dominated elections in Jacksonville.Corey Perrine/The Florida Times-Union, via Associated PressMs. Deegan campaigned as a change candidate, leaning into the relationships she had made in the community as she overcame breast cancer three times while working on television and as she later created the Donna Foundation, a nonprofit organization that helps people diagnosed with breast cancer.“I made a decision when we got into this race that, no matter what happened, no matter what the landscape was like, we were going to lead with love over fear,” Ms. Deegan said Tuesday night. “We would not go with division. We would go with unity.”Mr. Davis, the chief executive of the local chamber of commerce, out-raised Ms. Deegan by a margin of four to one and seemed like the sort of business-friendly Republican that has long dominated elections in Jacksonville, a Navy and shipping town. Mr. Curry, the outgoing mayor, was previously the chairman of the Republican Party of Florida.Mr. Davis was known as more of a moderate when he was a state lawmaker, and as the leader of JAX Chamber he supported positions such as protections for the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But as a mayoral candidate, he campaigned from the political right, promising to promote causes espoused by the conservative group Moms for Liberty, which is closely aligned with Mr. DeSantis. He also pledged to be tough on crime in a city that has struggled with stubbornly high crime rates for years, including under Republican leadership.In advertisements, Mr. Davis and other Republicans cast Ms. Deegan as “radical” for backing demonstrators after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 — though Mr. Curry and other local Republicans also supported the protests at the time.On Tuesday night, Mr. Davis said he would be willing to help Ms. Deegan for the good of the city. “I’m going to do everything I can to make sure Mayor-elect Deegan is successful in making Jacksonville the best Jacksonville it can be,” he said. The city has a strong-mayor form of government, giving the mayor broad administrative powers.Mr. DeSantis, who won Duval County by an 11 percentage-point margin in November, did not endorse Mr. Davis until late March — after Mr. Davis had already been forced into Tuesday’s runoff against Ms. Deegan.Beyond his lukewarm endorsement, which took place via Twitter on a Friday afternoon, Mr. DeSantis offered Mr. Davis little support. The governor did not visit Jacksonville to campaign, unlike one of Florida’s other top Republicans, Senator Rick Scott, who spent last weekend knocking on voters’ doors.In 2020, Ms. Deegan lost a congressional race by 22 percentage points. On Wednesday morning, unofficial results showed she had won about 52 percent of the vote, compared with Mr. Davis’s 48 percent, a difference of about 9,000 votes. Turnout was about 33 percent.Though 39 percent of Duval County voters are registered Democrats, compared with 35 percent registered Republicans and 24 percent registered without party affiliation, Republican voters outnumbered Democratic ones by about 3.5 percentage points on Tuesday — meaning that Ms. Deegan won independents and crossover Republican votes.Five other Jacksonville Democrats were elected on Tuesday, one as property appraiser and four to the City Council.Ashley Walker, a political consultant for Ms. Deegan, said that campaigning on local issues and with a candidate who connected well with voters were key to flipping Jacksonville from red to blue.“Democrats in Florida have to eat the elephant piece by piece,” she said. “We have to go win in these local areas that are purple and get down to the base of some local campaigns to have any chance of coming back statewide.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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    Cherelle Parker Wins Democratic Mayoral Primary in Philadelphia

    If she wins the general election in November, she will be the first woman to lead the city.After a crowded primary, Cherelle Parker, a former state representative and City Council member who campaigned on hiring more police, won the Democratic nomination for Philadelphia mayor on Tuesday night, emerging decisively from a field of contenders who had vied to be seen as the rescuer of a struggling and disheartened city.If she wins in November, which is all but assured in a city where Democrats outnumber Republicans more than seven to one, Ms. Parker will become the city’s 100th mayor, and the first woman to hold the job.Of the five mayoral hopefuls who led the polls in the final stretch, Ms. Parker, 50, was the only Black candidate, in a city that is over 40 percent Black. She drew support from prominent Democratic politicians and trade unions, and throughout the majority Black neighborhoods of north and west Philadelphia. Some compared her to Mayor Eric Adams of New York City, noting her willingness to buck the party’s progressives with pledges to hire hundreds of police officers and bring back what she has called constitutional stop-and-frisk.But she said that many of her proposed solutions had roots in Philadelphia’s “middle neighborhoods” — working and middle-class areas that have been struggling in recent years to hold off decline.“They know it’s not Cherelle engaging in what I call ‘I know what’s best for you people’ policymaking, but it’s come from the ground up,” Ms. Parker said on Tuesday morning at a polling place in her home base of northwest Philadelphia.Solutions should come from the community, she said, “not people thinking they’re coming in to save poor people, people who never walked in their shoes or lived in a neighborhood with high rates of violence and poverty. I’ve lived that.”Ms. Parker did not attend her own victory party on Tuesday. Her campaign told the Philadelphia Inquirer that she had emergency dental surgery last week, and issued a statement saying that she had required immediate medical attention at the University of Pennsylvania on Tuesday evening for a “recent dental issue.” Her Republican opponent in the November general election is David Oh, a former City Council member.If Ms. Parker wins in November, she would be taking the reins of a city facing a host of problems, chief among them a surge in gun violence that has left hundreds dead year after year. Philadelphians routinely described crime as the city’s No. 1 problem, but the list of issues runs long, including crumbling school facilities, blighted housing stock, an opioid epidemic and a municipal staffing shortage.The punishing list of challenges had exhausted the current mayor, Jim Kenney, a Democrat whose second term was consumed with Covid-19, citywide protests and a soaring murder rate, and who spoke openly of his eagerness to be done with the job.The primary to replace Mr. Kenney was congested from the start and remained so into its final days. Up to the last polls, no front-runner had emerged and five of the candidates seemed to have a roughly equal shot at winning, each representing different constituencies and different parts of town.The candidates at the finish line included Rebecca Rhynhart, a former city controller with a technocratic pitch who was endorsed by multiple past mayors; Helen Gym, a former councilwoman endorsed by Bernie Sanders and a range of other high-profile progressives; Alan Domb, who made millions in real estate and served two terms on the City Council; and Jeff Brown, a grocery store magnate and a newcomer to electoral politics.The early days of the race were dominated by TV ads supporting Mr. Brown and Mr. Domb, but other campaigns soon joined the fray and in the final weeks the ad war grew increasingly combative. SuperPACs spent millions on behalf of various candidates and eventually became an issue themselves, when the Philadelphia Board of Ethics accused Mr. Brown, who led in early polls of the race, of illegally coordinating with a SuperPAC.But for all the money and the negative campaigning, no candidate seemed to rise above the crowded field for Philadelphians who were busy with their daily lives.“People have option fatigue,” said State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, a Democrat, who on Tuesday was chatting with candidates and local politicos as they packed into a traditional Election Day lunch at South restaurant and jazz club.In the last polls before the election, large numbers of voters remained undecided, but many of them seemed to break in the end for Ms. Parker, whose win was more substantial than many were expecting.The victory of a moderate like Ms. Parker in Philadelphia stood in contrast to some races elsewhere around the state. In Allegheny County, where Pittsburgh lies, progressives racked up one primary win after another on Tuesday, with candidates from the left flank of the Democratic Party winning the nominations for a range of top offices, including county executive and district attorney.Democrats also held onto their slim control of the Pennsylvania House on Tuesday, as Heather Boyd won a special election in southeast Delaware County. Top Democrats, including President Biden and Gov. Josh Shapiro, had made a push in the race, framing it as crucial to protecting reproductive rights in Pennsylvania.In a separate special election, Republicans held a safe state House seat in north-central Pennsylvania when Michael Stender, a school board member and a firefighter, won his race.Neil Vigdor More

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    Kentucky and Philadelphia Hold Crucial Elections: What to Watch

    In Kentucky, Republicans are choosing a nominee to take on the popular Democratic governor. In Philadelphia, Democrats are knotted in a crowded primary to lead the influential liberal city.Though 2023 is an off year for American politics, largely dominated by the emerging Republican presidential primary race and a series of scandals and controversies, there are still critical elections this year, offering an early window into the mood of voters in both parties before 2024.In Kentucky, a divisive Republican primary for governor will come to a close on Tuesday. Two pillars of the state’s Republican apparatus have escalated attacks on each other as they seek to challenge Gov. Andy Beshear, a rare Democratic leader of a red state who also happens to be one of the most popular governors in the country. On Monday, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida waded into the race with an endorsement of one top contender, turning the contest into something of a last-minute 2024 proxy battle against Donald J. Trump, who long ago backed the other leading candidate.In Philadelphia, the nation’s sixth most populous city and a liberal stronghold in purple Pennsylvania, voters will pick the Democratic nominee for mayor, who is all but certain to become the city’s next leader and has the potential to become a high-profile player in next year’s presidential election. And two special elections in the state could determine control of the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where Democrats have a slim majority.Clockwise from upper left, some of the candidates in the Democratic primary for mayor in Philadelphia: Rebecca Rhynhart, Allan Domb, Cherelle Parker and Helen Gym.Rachel Wisniewski for the New York Times; Matt Rourke/Associated PressAnd in Delaware County, one of the suburban “collar counties” outside Philadelphia, a surprisingly close special election for an open State House seat in a once reliably Democratic district will determine who controls the Pennsylvania legislature.There is also a notable mayoral contest unfolding in Jacksonville, Fla., the most populous American city to have a Republican mayor. The candidates to succeed Mayor Lenny Curry are Donna Deegan, a Democrat who has the support of abortion rights groups, and Daniel Davis, a Republican who has emphasized his party’s messages on crime and policing.Political celebrity vs. cash vs. old schoolFirst test of a rising star: Daniel Cameron was already a trailblazer as the first Black man elected attorney general in Kentucky and the first Republican elected to the post in nearly 50 years. But his political celebrity skyrocketed after he delivered a prime-time speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention.Mr. Cameron is a close ally of Senator Mitch McConnell’s; some in the state call him Mr. McConnell’s protégé. The Republican nomination for governor appeared to be his to lose after he announced his candidacy a year ago.But what was once a double-digit lead over the rest of the field dwindled significantly during the spring as Kelly Craft, a former ambassador to the United Nations and part of a Republican megadonor family, poured millions of her own money into an aggressive ad campaign, attacking Mr. Cameron and heightening her own name identification. Though she has not completely closed the gap in polling, Republican operatives in the state have deemed it a race that is suddenly too close to call.On Monday, Mr. DeSantis added even more uncertainty to the race by endorsing Ms. Craft, recording a message on her behalf to be used in automated phone calls. The move pits Mr. DeSantis, who is expected to announce a 2024 campaign soon, directly against Mr. Trump, who backed Mr. Cameron in June 2022.Daniel Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, and Kelly Craft, a member of an influential political family, are rivals in the race for the Republican nomination for Kentucky governor.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesLess a fracture than a freeze: The heated primary in Kentucky hasn’t fractured the party like similarly contentious primaries last year, mostly because the top candidates belong to the conservative wing of the party yet do not embrace its more fringe issues, like voting machine conspiracy theories.And of course, money plays a role. Though no Republican in the state is eager to dampen Mr. Cameron’s trajectory, they also don’t want to be on the wrong side of the Crafts, who are some of the most prolific donors in Republican politics.The friendly wild card: Attention in the race has largely focused on Mr. Cameron and Ms. Craft. But there is a third candidate with a viable path to victory: Ryan Quarles, the agricultural commissioner and a longtime fixture in Frankfort.Rather than splashy ads or television appearances, Mr. Quarles’s campaign has instead focused heavily on local endorsements, earning the backing of more than 230 mayors, magistrates and county officials. Those endorsements, coupled with significant support from the farming community, could give Mr. Quarles enough of a base to win an election in which support is splintered among all three.Trump as kingmaker? Or could it be DeSantis?What scandals? Even as he faces mounting legal challenges and an unfavorable verdict in the civil case in which he was successfully sued by E. Jean Carroll, Mr. Trump remains the most popular and influential figure in a Republican primary election, especially in a state like Kentucky, which he carried by more than 25 points in 2020.When asked during a debate about a jury’s finding Mr. Trump liable for sexually abusing and defaming Ms. Carroll, Mr. Cameron reiterated that he was “honored” to still have the support of the former president.No, he endorsed me. Both candidates can claim the affection of the former president. Ms. Craft served in his administration, has donated to his campaigns and was joined by Mr. Trump at the Kentucky Derby in 2022. She has run several ads comparing her style to Mr. Trump’s.But Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Cameron (granted, that was before Ms. Craft had officially entered the race), a fact Mr. Cameron mentions several times in his stump speeches and ads.“Despite what some others might tell you,” Mr. Cameron told a crowd at a Republican dinner in Meade County last month, “President Donald J. Trump has endorsed this campaign for governor.”Now, of course, Mr. DeSantis has endorsed Ms. Craft — and they will both hope that his late support will be fresher in voters’ minds as they head to the polls.Mr. Cameron, the Kentucky attorney general, greeted supporters during the Meade County dinner in Guston, Ky.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMs. Craft, a former member of the Trump administration and a candidate for Kentucky governor, spoke during a campaign stop.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesEducation and ‘woke’ politics at the forefront2017 redux? Gov. Glenn Youngkin, a Republican in light-blue Virginia, built his surprise victory in 2017 through a relentless focus on education. He portrayed Democrats as intent on introducing inappropriate material to young students and argued that a school’s curriculum was something parents, and not teachers, should decide.Both Mr. Cameron and Ms. Craft have made education reform the bedrock of their campaign speeches. Mr. Cameron said that it was the No. 1 issue he had heard about from voters, and he has pledged to fire the Democratic-appointed commissioner of the education department. Ms. Craft, during her stump speeches, holds up copies of books she would ban.“Woke” wars: Both candidates repeatedly blast “woke” ideology in their pitches. For months, visitors to Ms. Craft’s website were greeted with a video denouncing “woke” policies.This loosely defined conservative catchall — a term frequently used by Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida as well — has certainly taken root in the Republican base. It is often the biggest applause line for both Ms. Craft and Mr. Cameron.But beyond the primary, it remains to be seen how voters in a general election will respond to an explicitly anti-“woke” campaign, even in deeply red Kentucky.A battle over Philadelphia’s futureA test of left-wing strength: In the crowded Democratic mayoral contest, the former City Council member Helen Gym has emerged as the most prominent progressive candidate, bolstered by national left-wing leaders including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York.Both of them rallied with her on Sunday, and Brandon Johnson, who won the Chicago mayor’s race last month, has endorsed her and raised funds for her.A win for Ms. Gym, a veteran community organizer who is especially focused on schools, would be celebrated by national progressive leaders as the latest in a stretch of left-leaning victories in major cities, though their success at the national level in recent years has been far more mixed.But whatever the outcome, many political observers in Pennsylvania caution against drawing sweeping conclusions about the mood of the city from a race that may have low turnout or could be decided by a narrow margin — or both. Sparse polling has suggested a tight and unpredictable contest.In a crucial Democratic primary contest for Philadelphia’s next mayor, Helen Gym, second from left, has earned the support of progressive leaders.Matt Rourke/Associated PressPublic safety debates dominate: Like many major American cities, Philadelphia has struggled with gun violence and other crime in the wake of the pandemic. The full picture of safety in the city is complex, but there is no question that it has been the defining issue in the mayor’s race.The Democrats running for mayor have differed on issues like police stops of citizens — and in particular, the use of stop-and-frisk — and whether to emphasize adding more police officers to the force.But across the ideological spectrum, they have stressed their commitment to making the city safer, and there is broad agreement on the need to both fill police vacancies and denounce police abuse.Control of the Pennsylvania legislatureConcerns for Democrats: Democrats have a single-vote majority in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, but there are two special elections on Tuesday that could flip control back to Republicans.One empty seat is in the 108th Legislative District in north-central Pennsylvania, where voters will most likely elect a Republican.The race for the 163rd Legislative District in southeast Delaware County should be a layup for Democrats. It was vacated by former State Representative Mike Zabel, who resigned in March after being accused of harassment. But Mr. Zabel won his district by roughly 30 points in November, and the seat is in a reliably Democratic area.Yet there are growing concerns that the seat may not be as safe as it has seemed, and Democrats across the state are mobilizing voters in the area to turn out to the polls. Gov. Josh Shapiro, a Democrat, recently made a 30-second video highlighting the race.Abortion rights: Democrats are framing the race as critical to protecting abortion rights in Pennsylvania, where abortion is still legal. If Republicans take control of the House, they could, along with the Republican-controlled Senate, put a potential abortion ban on the ballot as a constitutional amendment.But such bans largely failed in 2022, and were often a galvanizing force for Democratic candidates or causes — most notably in deep-red Kansas, where voters rejected an abortion ban months before the 2022 midterms.Reid J. Epstein More

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    No Degree? No Problem. Biden Tries to Bridge the ‘Diploma Divide.’

    President Biden is trying to appeal to working-class voters by emphasizing his plans to create well-paid jobs that do not require a college degree.When President Biden told a crowd of union workers this year that every American should have a path to a good career — “whether they go to college or not” — Tyler Wissman was listening.A father of one with a high school education, Mr. Wissman said he rarely heard politicians say that people should be able to get ahead without a college degree.“In my 31 years, it was always, ‘You gotta go to college if you want a job,’” said Mr. Wissman, who is training as an apprentice at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia, where the president spoke in March.As Mr. Biden campaigns for re-election, he is trying to bridge an educational divide that is reshaping the American political landscape. Even though both political parties portray education as crucial for advancement and opportunity, college-educated voters are now more likely to identify as Democrats, while those without college degrees are more likely to support Republicans.That increasingly clear split has enormous implications for Mr. Biden as he tries to expand the coalition of voters that sent him to the White House in the first place. In 2020, Mr. Biden won 61 percent of college graduates, but only 45 percent of voters without a four-year college degree — and just 33 percent of white voters without a four-year degree.“The Democratic Party has become a cosmopolitan, college-educated party even though it’s a party that considers itself a party of working people,” said David Axelrod, a top adviser to former President Barack Obama.Mr. Axelrod added that the perception that Wall Street had been bailed out during the 2008 recession while the middle class was left to struggle deepened the fissure between Democrats and blue-collar workers who did not attend college.The election of Donald J. Trump, who harnessed many of those grievances for political gain, solidified the trend.“There’s a sense among working-class voters, and not just white working-class voters, that the party doesn’t relate to them or looks down on people who work with their hands or work with their backs or do things that don’t require college education,” Mr. Axelrod said.Now, in speeches around the country, Mr. Biden rarely speaks about his signature piece of legislation, a $1 trillion infrastructure bill, without also emphasizing that it will lead to trade apprenticeships and, ultimately, union jobs.“Let’s offer every American a path to a good career whether they go to college or not, like the path you started here,” Mr. Biden said at the trades institute, referring to its apprenticeship program.The White House says apprenticeship programs, which typically combine some classroom learning with paid on-the-job experience, are crucial to overcoming a tight labor market and ensuring that there is a sufficient work force to turn the president’s sprawling spending plan into roads, bridges and electric vehicle chargers.Mr. Biden has offered incentives for creating apprenticeships, with hundreds of millions of dollars in federal grants for states that expand such programs.“Biden is the first president that’s reducing the need to get a college degree since World War II,” said Douglas Brinkley, a presidential historian.Mr. Biden now rarely mentions his investments in infrastructure without citing trade apprenticeships that can lead to union jobs.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s approach is a shift from previous Democratic administrations, which were far more focused on college as a path to higher pay and advancement. Mr. Obama, during his first joint session of Congress, said that the United States should “once again have the highest proportion of college graduates in the world.”Mr. Obama’s wife, Michelle Obama, started a campaign encouraging Americans to go to college, at one point suggesting in a satirical video that life without higher education was akin to watching painting dry.Democrats have long walked a careful line on the issue. Mr. Biden has been a champion of higher education, particularly community colleges, and one of his most ambitious proposals as president was a $400 billion program to forgive up to $20,000 in student loan debt for individuals who earn under $125,000 a year. Republicans have portrayed that proposal as a giveaway for elites.Mitch Landrieu, the president’s infrastructure coordinator, said Mr. Biden had always believed college was important, but “it is absolutely not the only way to build an economy.”“He sees that men and women like that have been left behind for a long time,” Mr. Landrieu said of people without college degrees. “They’ve always been part of the Democratic Party. It’s not until recently that’s changed.”The shift coincides with a stark political reality.The battleground states that voted for the winning candidate in both 2016 and 2020 rank roughly in the middle on higher-education levels, which means that Mr. Biden’s effort to appeal to those without a degree could make a real difference in 2024, according to Doug Sosnik, a former senior adviser to President Bill Clinton.“You need to both try to mitigate losses with noncollege voters and at the same time try to exploit the advantage in those states with educated voters,” Mr. Sosnik said. “You can’t rely on the diploma divide solely to win. But it’s part of the formula.”Instructors at the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia say they have noticed an increase in demand.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesA similar dynamic is playing out nationwide.Gov. Josh Shapiro, Democrat of Pennsylvania, released campaign ads focused on expanding apprenticeships and removing requirements for college degrees for thousands of state government jobs — a pledge he made good on when he entered office. His fellow Democratic governor in New Jersey has also removed similar degree requirements, as have Republicans in Maryland, Alaska and Utah.Gov. Spencer Cox, Republican of Utah, said he was not only hoping to address a stigma attached to those who do not attend college but also appease employers increasingly anxious about persistent worker shortages.“We can’t do any of this stuff if we don’t have a labor force,” Mr. Cox said.Christopher Montague, 29, an Air Force veteran from the Philadelphia suburbs, who trained as an apprentice in drywall instead of going to college, said he had noticed an “awakening” by politicians on the upside of pursuing training in trades.“There is money in working with your hands,” he said.At the Finishing Trades Institute in Philadelphia, instructors say they have noticed an increase in demand. Drew Heverly, an industrial painting instructor, said he typically had 10 apprentices working on construction projects in “a good year.”“We’ve definitely seen the ramp-up and the need for manpower,” Drew Heverly said about industrial painting.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesThis year, he has already sent nearly 40 apprentices to work on projects in Philadelphia that are partially funded by Mr. Biden’s infrastructure package.“We’ve definitely seen the ramp-up and the need for manpower,” Mr. Heverly said.The prospect of pursuing an education in trade while earning money on projects has also gained momentum among high school students, according to the Finishing Trades Institute’s recruitment coordinator, Tureka Dixon. Community colleges in the area are even reaching out to see if they can form joint partnerships to train students on trade.“Whether it’s cranes, high-rise buildings, bridges, that is trade work,” Ms. Dixon said as the apprentices in hard hats listened to a lesson on lead removals. “That is physical labor. That is the country, so I think people need to consider it more.”Mark Smith, 30, who is training as an apprentice at the institute, said learning a trade was not a fallback position for him — it was his preferred career.“School wasn’t for me,” Mr. Smith said. “I did the Marine Corps and then I started right in this. For me it was a waste of money.”Mr. Wissman, who has never voted in a presidential election and identifies as an independent, said he was not sure yet if the recognition from the White House would move him to finally vote in the 2024 election.“I want in office whoever is going to help me put food on my table,” said Mr. Wissman, whose girlfriend is pregnant with their second child. “At the end of the day, that’s all it’s going to come down to.” More

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    Trump Cannot Be Unseen

    Gail Collins: Hey Bret, good to be conversing again. Heck of a lot going on. Before we get to the border or the budget, though, let me admit I’m shallow and start with the Trump town hall on CNN.Bret Stephens: Not shallow, Gail. But you are depressing me.Gail: Trump lost your Republican vote a long time ago, but if you were still on the fence, was there anything on display that evening that would have had an impact?Bret: I’m not exactly a reliable gauge of how today’s Republicans think: In November, I wrote a column called “Donald Trump Is Finally Finished,” which I may have to spend the rest of my life living down.That said, I would guess that if you’re the sort of voter who liked 80-proof Trump, you’re gonna love 120-proof Trump. And that’s what he was in that CNN town hall: more mendacious, more shameless, more unapologetic, more aggressive, nastier. But also undeniably vigorous, particularly when compared with Joe Biden. My guess is the town hall will consolidate his lead as the Republican front-runner.Your take? Should CNN have given him the platform?Gail: Don’t see any reason CNN shouldn’t have done the interview. Except that it reduces pressure on Trump to show up for any Republican primary debates. Which he naturally wants to avoid, given his ineptitude when it comes to actual policy questions.Bret: I’m of two minds. The media has a responsibility to cover the Republican front-runner, and I thought Kaitlan Collins, the CNN moderator, handled the responsibility about as well as anyone could have. Yet nonstop media attention is the oxygen on which Trump thrives. The more attention we give him — which is what we are doing right now — the stronger he gets.Gail: About the impact: Yeah, if you liked Trump before, you wouldn’t be deterred by his willingness to let the nation default, or his being “inclined” to pardon a lot of the Jan. 6 rioters.Really would like to hear an everybody-in primary debate, though. Without Trump, I guess the only suspense would be whether Ron DeSantis is capable of being … not terrible.Bret: Well, as much as I dislike DeSantis for his views on abortion and Ukraine and free speech, I also have to ask whether I’d prefer him to Trump as the Republican nominee. And there the answer is a resounding yes, much as I’d much prefer a peptic ulcer to stomach cancer.Gail: I’m still not inclined to pick DeSantis over — pretty much anybody. Yeah, Trump is worse when it comes to personal morality, and DeSantis probably wouldn’t be as divisive in the sense of not being exciting enough to really rile up the base.But his position on social issues like abortion is scary: He truly believes in imposing his extremist convictions on the country.Bret: True, but Trump believes in imposing his despotic convictions on the country.I also think it’s imperative that Democrats — and I don’t mean Robert Kennedy Jr. — start thinking about challenging Biden in the primary. That Washington Post-ABC poll showing Biden with a 36 percent approval rating and running 6 points behind Trump should scare the bejeezus out of Democrats — and that’s before we wind up in a recession or a full-scale banking crisis or a shooting war with China (or all three).Gail: Real-life fact is that no Democrat with the standing to potentially win a primary would challenge a sitting president. Especially one like Biden whose performance is … not bad. He’s had some real achievements, particularly in the super-important battle against global warming. Overall yes, he’s unexciting, and these days incapable of forcing the House Republicans to do anything really constructive. But his standards and character are high.Bret: As you know, I will vote for him over Trump or DeSantis. But Democrats overstate his achievements and underestimate his unpopularity at their own — actually, our own — peril.Gail: We both were wishing he’d announce he wasn’t running and open the door for other promising candidates to jump in. But since it’s not gonna happen … it’s not gonna happen.Bret: Probably right. Next subject: Your thoughts about the budget negotiations?Gail: I have faith that there’s not going to be a crushing default — that in a total crisis the Fed will figure out something. But when it comes to the bottom line I’m on the side of Joe Biden. (Surprise!) You do not use the country’s credit standing to stage a stupid battle about cutting funds for the poor.Bret: Well, by the same token, you do not use the country’s credit standing to insist that no spending cuts should even be countenanced and that able-bodied single adults should not have to find work as a condition of obtaining government benefits.Gail: The Republicans are attacking the status quo, not some new program the Democrats are trying to push through. And I’ve always been wary of the must-work stuff because all the paperwork, even in our technological era, makes it so easy for people to get cut off for no reason except bureaucratic confusion.Bret: The conservative in me hates subsidizing indolence, especially when jobs are abundant. Welfare should go to those who truly need it, not people who just can’t be bothered to work.Gail: Also, I think this must-work discussion has to begin with quality child care for every low-income family that needs it. Very bottom bottom line is that kids come first.About the budget — I guess Congress could just decide there just shouldn’t be a debt ceiling. After all, we went more than 125 years without one. Is that something you think they should rally around?Bret: The debt ceiling reminds me a bit of the Doomsday machine in Stanley Kubrick’s “Dr. Strangelove.” In theory, it’s supposed to encourage restraint and responsibility. In practice, it’s likely to destroy the world. I’d be interested to see the administration test the theory that the 14th Amendment, which says that the public debt of the United States “shall not be questioned,” makes the debt ceiling unconstitutional, although I doubt they could win that case in court.The other crisis, Gail, is happening at the southern border. Looking back, anything the administration might have done to avert it?Gail: Not gonna be silly enough to claim the Biden folks have been completely on top of the whole situation.Bret: Our awesome veep ….Gail: But it looks like we’ll finally be getting a lot of new federal workers to deal with the people who show up at the border.And the Biden administration is working on it. The Trump administration was totally useless on the problem.Bret: Not useless but definitely cruel. But what voters will remember is that under Trump, we didn’t have this scale of a crisis.Gail: Not sure the scale is really going to be that overwhelming as the year moves on. And I still have to note that I hate, really hate, your idea of finishing that wall.Bret: A wall won’t stop all illegal immigration. But it can help deter the most dangerous and reckless border crossings, which have left thousands of migrants dead. It should be part of an overall immigration compromise that includes automatic citizenship for Dreamers and more permissive rules for legal immigration through normal consular channels in the migrants’ home countries. Right now we have the worst of both worlds: a totally chaotic border that makes a bipartisan legislative compromise a political nonstarter.Gail: Bret, these people have a lot of reasons for coming — including seeking asylum from government oppression. But most of them are coming for jobs, and as you’ve always pointed out, our economy really needs the workers. In New York, we’ve gotten a ton of newcomers. They’re having a terrible time, particularly with housing, but employers, especially in the service industries, are desperate for their help. We just need to work out a system to make it possible.Bret: Sadly, as our news-side colleague Hannah Dreier chronicled last month, many recent border crossers are children working in conditions worthy of Dickens or Dreiser. Seeing mothers with young children strapped to their backs while hawking candies at traffic stops was something I was accustomed to in my hometown of Mexico City. It’s jarring to encounter them at road intersections and on subway platforms in New York City. If Biden doesn’t get a handle on this, it could cost him the election and lead to an ugly public backlash that will make Trump’s immigration policy seem tame.Speaking of subways, Gail, your thoughts on the killing of Jordan Neely?Gail: We’re talking about a former Michael Jackson impersonator who used to entertain subway passengers, but had deteriorated into a homeless man who was mentally ill and sometimes scary.Bret: Very scary. He was a person who had previously been arrested more than 30 times. He had punched an elderly woman in the face. He had exposed himself and peed inside of a subway car. He had walked out on a residential treatment program. There was a warrant for his arrest at the time of his death — but cops probably wouldn’t have found out about it because a group sued to stop the police from detaining people solely to check for arrest warrants. He was the sort of guy who makes the subway frightening for a lot of passengers, particularly women. People ought to know these facts before rushing to judgment.Gail: Neely was acting out and frightening people on the day he died. Daniel Penny, the former Marine who tackled him, was trying to stop an unnerving incident from happening. But he used chokehold force in a way that killed Neely.I can’t absolve Penny. But the big problem here is that the low-or-no-income mentally ill need more services than they’re getting in New York or pretty much anywhere.Bret: Obviously, I don’t support vigilantism. But that’s what you get when police are hampered from maintaining public order. The answer is to give the police the authorities and resources they need to deal with someone like Neely before a tragedy occurs.Gail, this is too grim a note on which to end — and we haven’t even touched on George Santos’s indictment.Gail: Now there’s a high note!Bret: Before we go, I want to put in a word for Sam Roberts’s obituary for Mike Pride, a former editor of The Concord Monitor, who died last month in Florida at 76, and whom we both knew through his stewardship of the Pulitzer Prizes. Mike showed that you can often make the greatest difference as a newsman by writing about issues that are near to people’s everyday lives. He reminded us that local journalism matters. And that it’s at least one thing that deserves to be made great again.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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    5 Things to Know About the Philadelphia Mayoral Race

    The winner of the Democratic contest is all but certain to become the next mayor of Philadelphia and could play a key role in the 2024 presidential election.Amid grave concerns about public safety, education and the direction of a major American city, Philadelphians will take a major step on Tuesday toward electing their 100th mayor in a contest with implications that will reverberate across a crucial presidential battleground.The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary is all but certain to become the mayor of Philadelphia — the largest city in Pennsylvania, a premier presidential swing state — and the spending on the race has reflected those stakes. The crowded and increasingly acrimonious mayoral contest is the most expensive in the city’s history, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.Five contenders are generally considered to be the leading Democratic candidates: the former City Council members Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker and Allan Domb; Rebecca Rhynhart, a former city controller; and Jeff Brown, who has owned grocery stores.Ms. Parker, Ms. Rhynhart and Ms. Gym are often regarded as in the strongest positions, but the race is fluid and highly competitive. Sparse polling shows that there are many undecided voters, and some Democrats worry about low turnout, factors that make the outcome difficult to predict.Here are five things to know about Tuesday’s primary.It’s a test — however imperfect — of progressive power.Nearly two years ago, left-wing Democrats were bitterly disappointed by New York, as the relatively moderate Eric Adams swept into Gracie Mansion on a message of law and order.But since then, mayoral candidates identified with the more liberal wing of the party have notched other notable victories, including Michelle Wu in Boston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles. Last month, Brandon Johnson, a left-leaning Chicagoan, electrified progressive Democrats across the country with his mayoral win.The Philadelphia mayor’s race offers the next significant, if imperfect, citywide test of progressive power. Some of the same players who engaged in other key races — including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, teachers’ union activists and organizations like the Working Families Party — are backing Ms. Gym. Mr. Johnson endorsed her on Friday.Ms. Gym joined striking Writers Guild of America members at a rally in front of the Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia on Friday.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesShe is a veteran community organizer focused in particular on schools, who is pledging to deliver “transformative” change.“My opponents think my plans are too big,” she said in an ad. “I think their ideas are too small.”Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are expected to rally with her on Sunday. In an interview, Mr. Sanders sought to connect the candidacies of Mr. Johnson, Ms. Bass and Ms. Gym.“What Karen and Brandon and hopefully Helen will be able to do,” said Mr. Sanders, who is himself the former mayor of Burlington, Vt., “is say, ‘You know what? This government, our governments, are working for you, not just wealthy campaign contributors.’”A low turnout or a slim margin of victory in any direction could make it challenging to draw sweeping conclusions about the mood of the city, but many observers see Ms. Gym’s candidacy as a notable test for the left.“If Helen wins, that’s a big story, because it means the progressive movement won,” said former Gov. Ed Rendell, a former Philadelphia mayor who is supporting Ms. Rhynhart.Philadelphia could elect its first female mayor.Philadelphia’s mayors to date have at least one thing in common: They have all been men.“Let’s just say I’ll bring a different touch,” Ms. Parker, a former state representative, says in a campaign ad that highlights images of some of those who would be her predecessors.Ms. Parker, who has advocated for a more robust police presence while stressing her opposition to police abuse, has often used her identity as a mother of a young Black man to argue that she can strike the appropriate balance on matters of public safety.“I am a Black woman who has lived my real life at the intersection of race and gender,” said Ms. Parker, who has the support of much of the party establishment, in an interview. “I know what it feels like to be marginalized.”And Ms. Gym, who could also be the city’s first Asian American mayor, has branded herself a “tough Philly mom” — but she made it clear that the history-making potential of her candidacy was part of a much broader argument.Ms. Rhynhart canvassing with Kayzar Abdul Khabir, a member of her campaign staff, in the business district of West Philadelphia on Friday.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times“It is really important that change is more than just a change of faces,” Ms. Gym said. “People want a transformation of how people live.”Ms. Rhynhart, who is running on her government experience while promising to take on the status quo as a critic of the current mayor, took a similar tack.“There’s been 99 male mayors,” she said. “It’s an important time, and likely long overdue, to have a woman as the leader of our city. But I’m focused on being the best overall leader.”The city’s self-image is also at stake.No one doubts the pride many Philadelphians feel in their city, the birthplace of the nation’s democracy and the home of aggressively devoted sports fans.But several current and former city leaders said the city’s challenges with issues surrounding crime, education and other postpandemic concerns had taken a significant toll on morale.Philadelphians, said State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, are looking for someone “who can sort of bring the city back — I think almost in an emotional way.”The current mayor, Jim Kenney, made headlines last year for declaring that he would “be happy” when he was done being mayor, comments he later sought to walk back.“The mood in the city is despair — a lot of people have given up,” Mr. Rendell said. “For a lot of people, it is the last chance to turn it around.”Mr. Rendell was elected mayor in 1991, at a moment of crisis for the city. Mr. Domb drew parallels between that race and the current moment.“This is a turning-point election,” he said.The next mayor could be a prominent player in the 2024 presidential election.When President Biden wants to project patriotism, talk about the future of American democracy or just count on a warm reception, he often heads to Philadelphia, a city he knows well as a former senator from nearby Delaware.There will be a natural opening for Philadelphia’s next Democratic mayor to serve as a party surrogate as Mr. Biden seeks re-election. Philadelphia’s lower turnout rates have also disappointed Democrats in recent federal elections, and a number of candidates pledged in interviews to focus on turnout and voter access as mayor.The Democrats will be looking to increase turnout in Philadelphia in the 2024 presidential election.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe success or failure of the next mayor to manage the city may be noticed by Republicans, said Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who supports Ms. Parker.“If we have a Democratic mayor in Philadelphia who is not doing well or is unpopular, that does make winning in the Philadelphia metro area more challenging,” he said. “That’s something Republicans would certainly use statewide.”Public safety is the dominant issue.On Monday, a canvasser working with a progressive political organization was fatally shot after a dispute with another canvasser with the group — a stunning moment that underscored how problems of gun violence are shaping the city, and the mayoral race.“Public safety is virtually everyone’s No. 1 issue,” said former Mayor Michael Nutter, who backs Ms. Rhynhart.While the full crime picture in Philadelphia is complex, leading candidates have made it clear that they see it as the biggest force in the contest and have moved assertively to address it in advertising.Some who once opposed an increase in police funding after the killing of George Floyd have struck starkly different tones in discussing law enforcement this primary contest, and there is broad agreement across the ideological spectrum on the need to fill police vacancies, while candidates also denounce police abuse.Certainly, there are notable distinctions in emphasis and policy, too. Mr. Brown has been endorsed by Philadelphia’s police union.“The most urgent concern is crime, and especially violent crimes,” he said. “Philadelphia really isn’t doing well.”Candidates differ about how to balance investments in social services with those in law enforcement, and some have clashed over police stops of citizens.“We can’t go backwards to racist, unconstitutional practices,” Ms. Rhynhart said. “But we can’t have the current chaos.” More

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    When Their Idea of Liberty Is Your Idea of Death

    At the heart of the American ethos is the contested idea of freedom.In the video announcing his 2024 re-election bid — pointedly called “Freedom” — President Biden staked out his vision, declaring:Around the country, MAGA extremists are lining up to take on bedrock freedoms, cutting Social Security that you’ve paid for your entire life, while cutting taxes from the very wealthy, dictating what health care decisions women can make, banning books and telling people who they can love all while making it more difficult for you to be able to vote.“The question we’re facing,” Biden told viewers, “is whether in the years ahead, we will have more freedom or less freedom. More rights or fewer,” adding:Every generation of Americans will face the moment when they have to defend democracy. Stand up for our personal freedom. Stand up for the right to vote and our civil rights. And this is our moment.The 2024 election shows every sign of becoming a partisan battle to claim ownership of the ideal of freedom, with each side determined to persuade voters that the opposition’s assertions are not just false but a threat to individual and group rights.This dispute is possible because freedom as an abstraction is fraught with multiple and often conflicting meanings. The debate over where to draw the lines between freedom, liberty, rights, democracy, responsibility, autonomy, obligation, justice, fairness and citizenship has been going on for centuries, but has steadily intensified with the success of the liberation movements of the past seven decades — the civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights and sexual rights revolutions.In sharp contrast to Biden, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, in “The Courage to Be Free” — his campaign book, published in February — warns that “the threat to freedom is not limited to the actions of governments, but also includes a lot of aggressive, powerful institutions hellbent on imposing a woke agenda on our country.”The enemies of freedom, DeSantis contends, are “entrenched elites that have driven our nation into the ground,” elites that “control the federal bureaucracy, lobby shops on K Street, corporate media, Big Tech companies and universities.”These privileged few, DeSantis argues, “use undemocratic means to foist everything from environmental, social, and governance (E.S.G.) policies on corporations, forcing as well critical race theory on public schools,” in what the Florida governor calls “an attempt to impose ruling class ideology on society.”This debate fits into a larger context famously described by the political philosopher Isaiah Berlin in his 1958 Oxford University speech, “Two Concepts of Liberty”:If I am prevented by others from doing what I could otherwise do, I am to that degree unfree; and if this area is contracted by other men beyond a certain minimum, I can be described as being coerced, or, it may be, enslaved.Positive freedom, Berlin continued,derives from the wish on the part of the individual to be his own master. I wish my life and decisions to depend on myself, not on external forces of whatever kind. I wish to be the instrument of my own, not of other men’s, acts of will. I wish to be a subject, not an object.Jefferson Cowie, a history professor at Vanderbilt, captured the intensity and depth of division over freedom during the civil rights movement in his book “Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power,” which won the Pulitzer Prize for history this week.Cowie wrote that the governor of Alabama, George Wallace, in his “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow and segregation forever” inaugural speech, on Jan. 14, 1963,invoked “freedom” 25 times — more than Martin Luther King Jr. used the term later that year in his “I Have a Dream” address at the March on Washington. “Let us rise to the call of freedom-loving blood that is in us,” Wallace told his audience, “and send our answer to the tyranny that clanks its chains upon the South.”For Wallace, in other words, the right to maintain segregation was a form of freedom.The dichotomy between the notions of freedom promulgated by George Wallace and the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continues to polarize the nation today.Rogers M. Smith, a political scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, wrote by email in response to my inquiry about the contest over freedom:Biden stands in the liberal tradition going back to F.D.R., which holds that to be truly free, people have to be able to meet their material needs, so that they have opportunities for their diverse pursuits of happiness; and they also need democratic institutions giving them a share in shaping their collective destinies.Ronald Reagan, according to Smith, “thought freedom meant being largely free of government interference in people’s lives, whether through regulation or assistance. He did believe in freedom as democratic self-governance.”For Trump and DeSantis, Smith argued, freedom is more constrained and restrictive. For these two:Freedom means having governmental policies that protect the ways of life they favor against those they don’t. Their notion of freedom is the narrowest: in fact, it is primarily an argument for using coercive governmental power, and in Trump’s case private violence, against all who they see as threats to their preferred ways of life. They support democracy as long as, but only as long as, it produces the results they want.Jack Citrin, a political scientist at Berkeley, pointed out in his email that different types of freedom can impinge on each other as well as create different winners and losers:Negative liberty is freedom from external constraints, particularly from the government. This is the dominant idea, I think, in the Bill of Rights. It is linked to individualism and libertarianism. So I am free to carry a gun on the right, free to have an abortion or change my sex on the left. Positive liberty means the freedom to act to provide collective goods so it is easy to see that there can be a tension between the two.As with many political concepts, Citrin continued:There is an elasticity in this term that allows competing parties to stake a claim for their version of freedom. Biden paints Trump as a threat to one’s freedom to have an abortion or to vote; Trump claims the deep state is a threat to your privacy or legal rights. In addition, one group’s freedom constrains another’s.On April 29, Conor Friedersdorf published “Ron DeSantis’s Orwellian Redefinition of Freedom” in The Atlantic. As its headline suggests, the essay is a wide-ranging critique of the policies adopted under the DeSantis administration in Florida.Friedersdorf cited a recent DeSantis speech — “I don’t think you have a truly free state just because you have low taxes, low regulation, and no Covid restrictions, if the left is able to impose its agenda through the education system, through the business sphere, through all these others. A free state means you’re protecting your people from the left’s pathologies across the board” — which, Friedersdorf remarks, he would describe instead “as an anti-woke nanny state, not a state that values and protects freedom.”Friedersdorf does not, however, limit his critique to the conservative governor and quite likely presidential candidate, pointedly noting that in his own state of California, a Democratic bastion,Our dearth of freedom to build new dwellings has burdened us with punishing housing costs and immiserating homelessness. Our dearth of educational freedom consigns kids from poor families to failing schools. Our higher-than-average taxes do not yield better-than-average public services or assistance. And during the coronavirus pandemic, far from being a refuge of sanity, California responded with a lot of unscientific overzealousness, like the needless closure of beaches and parks.In practice, neither the left nor right has clean hands on the question of freedom.Conservative Republicans, including but not limited to DeSantis, have enacted restrictions on teaching about race and sex in public schools; have banned books in public libraries; barred cities from passing ordinances on the minimum wage, paid sick leave, firearms policy, plastic bags and marijuana decriminalization; and purposefully sought to suppress voting by minorities and college students.While certainly not equivalent, left-leaning students and faculty have led the charge in seeking to “cancel” professors and public figures who violate progressive orthodoxy, in disrupting conservative speakers on campuses and in seeking to bar or restrict teaching material considered hurtful or harmful to marginalized groups.Isabel V. Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, proposed in an email that Biden and the Democratic Party are well positioned to claim the freedom mantle:I want to suggest two reasons why this focus may not only be warranted but also have great appeal. The first is the battle over abortion rights. The second is the new attitude of Republicans toward the business community.On abortion, she continued, “I would argue that the ability to choose whether or not to have a child is a fundamental right,” adding her belief that:Before the Dobbs decision, we had found a workable compromise on this issue: no or limited abortions after fetal viability around 24 weeks. But the kind of six-week limit that is now the law in Florida and Georgia, not to mention the total ban in 14 other states, is an almost complete abrogation of the rights of women.On the treatment of business, Sawhill wrote: “Republicans have always been the party of corporate America, dedicated to limiting regulation and keeping taxes low. Gov. DeSantis’s attack on Disney and other so-called ‘woke’ companies is beginning to undermine the party’s reputation.”The bottom line, she concluded, was that “when Democrats talk about freedom, it’s not just rhetoric. There is substance behind the message.”Francis Fukuyama, senior fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford, makes the case that the threats to freedom from the right are far more dangerous than those from the left.In an April 24 essay, “When Conservatives Used to be Liberals,” he argues that traditionally American conservatives differed from their European counterparts in “their emphasis on individual liberty, a small state, property rights and a vigorous private sector.” These principles, he continued, “defined the Republican Party under Ronald Reagan, which wanted lower taxes, deregulation, federalism and multiple limits on state power.”This understanding of conservatism, Fukuyama writes, “has been upended with the rise of Trumpist populism.”The result: “American conservatives are now talking more like older European ones,” older ones “like Spain’s Francisco Franco or Portugal’s Antonio Salazar, who were happy to see democracy abolished in their countries altogether.”Fukuyama acknowledged:There is plenty to criticize on the woke left, but this new type of conservative is not talking about rolling back particular policies; they are challenging the very premises of the liberal state and toying with outright authoritarianism. They are not simply deluded by lies about the 2020 election, but willing to accept nondemocratic outcomes to get their way.How, Fukuyama asks, could such a dire situation occur in this period of American history?The new illiberal conservatives talk about an “existential” crisis in American life: how the United States as traditionally understood will simply disappear under pressure from the woke left, which then justifies extreme measures in response.In fact, Fukuyama counters:It is hard to think of a time when the United States has been more free than it is in 2023. The much-feared tyranny of the woke left exists only in certain limited sectors of U.S. society — universities, Hollywood, and other cultural spaces, and it only touches on certain issues related to race, ethnicity, gender and sexual identity. It can be bad in these spaces, but most Americans don’t live there.Fukuyama is correct in citing the right’s exaggerated fears of the “woke” political agenda to justify authoritarian assaults on democracy, but he underestimates the adverse consequences of what many voters view as the freedom-threatening excesses of unrestrained liberalism.These include progressive policies that support the release of potentially violent criminals without bail; progressive prosecutors who refuse to press gun cases; the presence of homeless camps with open drug dealing on the sidewalks of Democratic cities; and the mentally ill roaming urban neighborhoods.For many voters, the consequences of these policies and situations are experienced as infringing on their own freedom to conduct their lives in a safe and secure environment, protected from crime, disease and harassment.Homelessness has become the subject of an ongoing debate over the meaning of freedom, a debate taking place now in New York City, where Mayor Eric Adams provoked angry protests — even before the chokehold death of a homeless man, Jordan Neely, by a passenger on an F train in Manhattan on May 1 — with his call to “involuntarily hospitalize people” who are a danger to themselves.In city centers large and small across the country, advocates for the homeless argue that street people without homes should be allowed to live and camp in public places, while others argue that the state should be empowered to close camps that allegedly pose threats to sanitation and public health — with no resolution in sight.William Galston, a senior fellow at Brookings, argues in a 2005 essay, “Taking Liberty,” that “for much of the 20th century, progressives took the lead in both defining freedom and advancing its borders.”From Teddy Roosevelt’s expansion of “the 19th-century laissez-faire conception of freedom to include the liberties of workers and entrepreneurs to get ahead in the world” to F.D.R.’s redefinition “to include social protection from the ills of want and fear,” to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s appeal to a “civil and political freedom that included all Americans,” Galston maintains that liberals have successfully argued that freedom often can “be advanced only through the vigorous actions of government.”Liberals began to lose command of freedom in the 1960s, Galston concludes:What began honorably in the early 1960s as the effort to expand freedom of speech and self-fulfillment was transformed just a decade later into an antinomian conception of freedom as liberation from all restraint. Enthusiasts could no longer distinguish between liberty and license, and so lost touch with the moral concerns of average citizens, especially parents struggling to raise their children in what they saw as a culture increasingly inhospitable to decency and self-restraint.“As progressives abandoned the discourse of freedom,” Galston writes, “conservatives were more than ready to claim it.”I asked Galston whether he stood by what he wrote 18 years ago. He replied by email:Mostly, but some of it is dated. I did not anticipate that a commitment to fairness and equality of results would morph into a culture of intolerance on college campuses and other areas where a critical mass of progressives has been reached.Looking toward Election Day, Nov. 5, 2024, there are conflicting signs favoring both left and right in the competition to determine which side is a more effective proponent of freedom.On the right, conservatives can point to two positive developments, both reflected in polls.The first was the May 7 ABC News/Washington Post survey that suggested Joe Biden is more vulnerable than previously recognized. Both Donald Trump and DeSantis led Biden — Trump by 45 percent to 38 percent, DeSantis by 42 percent to 37 percent.The second survey was a May 5 Washington Post-KFF poll showing that “Clear majorities of Americans support restrictions affecting transgender children” and “Most Americans (57 percent) don’t believe it’s even possible to be a gender that differs from that assigned at birth.”By nearly two-to-one margins, respondents said, “trans women and girls should not be allowed to compete in sports with other women and girls” — in high school sports, 66 percent to 34 percent, and in college sports, 65 percent to 34 percent.These data points are politically significant because Biden is a strong proponent of trans rights, committed to protecting the “fundamental rights and freedoms of trans Americans,” including challenges to state laws barring transgender students from “playing on sports teams” consistent with their gender identity.Conversely, there is no question that Republican state legislators and governors have initiated concerted attacks on freedoms supported by liberals, and that many of these freedoms have wide backing among the public at large.These attacks include book banning, opposed by at least four to one, and bans on abortion as early as six weeks into pregnancy. A Wall Street Journal poll in September 2022 found that “62 percent opposed an abortion ban at 6 weeks of pregnancy that only included an exception for the health of the mother, and 57 percent opposed a ban at 15 weeks with an exception only for the health of the mother.”The outcome of the election will determine, at least for a brief period, the direction in which the nation is moving on freedom and liberty. Given the near parity between Republicans and Democrats, neither side appears to be equipped to inflict a knockout blow. But the ABC/Washington Post survey showing both Trump and DeSantis easily beating Biden is a clear warning signal to the Democratic Party and to liberals generally that they cannot — and should not — take anything for granted.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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    Biden’s Slow Start Worries Democrats. Aides Insist All Is Well.

    Some Democrats fear that the campaign’s early sluggishness shows a lack of urgency ahead of a possible rematch against Donald Trump. His aides say they know what they’re doing.Two weeks after President Biden unveiled his re-election bid, his campaign manager has yet to start the job, his seven co-chairs have not had a group discussion and his team has made little outreach to allies in Congress.For all the attention on Mr. Biden’s gauzy announcement video and the symbolism his campaign attributed to the day he entered the race — precisely four years after he began his 2020 bid and with the same message of saving the nation’s very soul — there is little evidence of the typical preparation for a national political campaign.Mr. Biden’s top advisers insist the limited-release nature of his 2024 campaign is boring by design. They say they are holding down costs by outsourcing as much as possible to the Democratic National Committee while the president’s senior staff members remain ensconced in top White House roles that allow them to engage in campaign strategy.“All of the pieces that should and need to fall into place will,” Jeffrey Katzenberg, the Hollywood mogul and Democratic megadonor and one of the Biden campaign co-chairs, said in an interview.But for an incumbent president in full control of his own re-election timeline, the decision to begin with such a skeletal operation has left even supporters confused. Democratic allies worry, some in public and more in private, that Mr. Biden and his political team — whose successes have come chiefly by running against Donald J. Trump rather than through organic liberal enthusiasm — are not displaying the necessary urgency for the coming battle.“Part of me is troubled that people are more enthusiastic about doing the often unglamorous work of government policymaking when there’s an extremely important political campaign that is staring us in the face,” said John Del Cecato, a strategist on Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 presidential campaigns. “I don’t know if that speaks to a belief that this will be a joyless campaign re-election effort or if it’s something else.”In the coming weeks and months, Mr. Biden will face two of the thorniest political issues of his presidency: an expected upturn of migrants at the Mexican border as a pandemic-era restriction on asylum requests expires this week and a looming debt limit crisis that threatens the American economy.A Trump-era immigration policy that led to the swift expulsion of many migrants at the southern border will lift on Thursday. Officials are bracing for an increase in migrants at the border.Ivan Pierre Aguirre for The New York TimesOn Wednesday, Mr. Biden is headed to a suburb of New York, where he will discuss the debt limit in the district of one of the 18 House Republicans who represent areas that the president carried. Then he will head to Manhattan for two fund-raisers.Representative Mike Lawler, the freshman Republican who represents the district, said that the president’s trip was not intimidating and that he had been invited and planned to attend.“I guess he’s trying to exert pressure in a district he won by 10 points,” Mr. Lawler said. “It speaks volumes that that same district elected me to represent it. And I ran on serving as a check and balance on the Biden agenda.”Money, Biden advisers say, was a driving factor in entering the race. The campaign has already entered into a joint finance agreement with 47 of the 50 state Democratic Parties, which will allow it to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time from individual donors.Top Biden officials dismiss the early concerns from inside the party as sideline sniping. In their view, they rightfully ignored naysayers to keep Mr. Biden in his Delaware basement during the early months of the pandemic, disregarded calls to knock on doors in the fall of 2020 and highlighted threats to democracy in the midterm elections last year despite pleas from many Democrats to focus on the inflation-racked economy.That string of victories has given Biden aides supreme confidence in their stay-the-course instincts, an ethos shared by Mr. Biden and top White House advisers including Jennifer O’Malley Dillon, Mike Donilon and Anita Dunn.“We are meeting all of the goals and metrics we’ve set for ourselves to assemble another winning coalition in 2024,” said Kevin Munoz, a campaign spokesman.Jim Messina, who served as Mr. Obama’s campaign manager in 2012, said the Biden team had some advantages that Mr. Obama did not, including a fully operational Democratic National Committee, which Mr. Obama had allowed to fall into a state of disrepair.“They’re staffed in the one place they need to be staffed,” Mr. Messina said of the party and its fund-raising operation, which is organizing the New York events.Polls show that a majority of Democrats want the party to nominate someone other than Mr. Biden. A gloomy Washington Post/ABC News survey released over the weekend found that 58 percent of Democratic-leaning adults felt this way.When it comes to raising money online, this lack of excitement has been a worry for Biden advisers, especially those who recall his 2019 struggles in that arena against his leading liberal rivals.Mr. Munoz declined to say how much money the campaign had raised in its first 24 hours, but ActBlue, the online portal for contributions to Democratic candidates, reported $6.1 million in donations in the first 24 hours after Mr. Biden announced his candidacy. That is about the same as the amounts that Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and former Representative Beto O’Rourke of Texas raised in the first day of their 2020 presidential campaigns.But not all of those ActBlue donations went to Mr. Biden; they make up the total given to every Democrat in the country that day.Mr. Biden is facing a looming showdown over the nation’s debt limit with Speaker Kevin McCarthy and his fractious Republican caucus. Al Drago for The New York TimesThe campaign is preparing to lean heavily on major donors in the first months of the race, and invited top bundlers to Washington on the first weekend of the campaign for a private briefing. Mr. Katzenberg said the campaign’s fund-raising would rely equally on Mr. Biden’s popularity among Democratic donors and a liberal fear that Mr. Trump could return to the White House.“The difference between passion and anxiety is not discernible,” Mr. Katzenberg said. “Whether somebody is doing this out of their passion and belief in the president — fantastic. If they’re doing it out of anxiety of what the alternative is — fantastic. The color of the green is the same.”Last week, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire LinkedIn co-founder and one of the party’s most important financiers, organized a donor briefing at the Rosewood hotel in San Francisco, pulling in several dozen donors for the pro-Biden super PAC American Bridge, according to two attendees.Notably, the early television ads that the Biden campaign has announced were paid for by the Democratic National Committee, which had $28.7 million on hand at the beginning of April. For now, senior Biden officials are planning to push as many costs as they legally can to the party, which can raise far larger sums. The campaign does not have a physical headquarters yet; for now, aides are working out of the D.N.C.’s building in Washington.Mr. Biden’s New York trip will include two small fund-raisers that are being pulled together relatively hastily. Tony James, a former top executive at the private equity giant Blackstone, is hosting one event, where tickets begin at $25,000, according to invitations. Donors were told that Pete Buttigieg, the transportation secretary, would also attend, and the goal for the two events was to bring in $3 million, according to a person briefed on the plans.For now, the White House seems happy to cede the national stage to the Republican primary race. Mr. Biden’s first television interview after his announcement, on MSNBC, was buried at 10 p.m. last Friday.“It would be unfortunate if they let the Republican nominee govern the conversation on a day-to-day basis,” said Faiz Shakir, the campaign manager for Mr. Sanders’s 2020 bid. “It feels like too much of a wild card to sit back. You’ve got to figure out a way to excite and energize people about your own conversation and to drive Donald Trump into that one.”Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat, said she had yet to hear any outreach about the president’s re-election bid from Biden campaign aides or the campaign’s co-chairs. She said she had seen little excitement about Mr. Biden in her Dallas-area district and had told worried constituents to get behind the president’s re-election.“The stakes are too high for us to play chicken with this,” she said. “We all know that we’ve got issues with our family. But at the end of the day, I would not trade my family in for the alternative.”Mitchell Berger, a South Florida campaign bundler who has been involved in Democratic politics for decades, said the onus should not be on the Biden campaign to generate excitement. He said comparisons to Mr. Obama were not helpful.“President Biden is an exceptional political actor and he does very well with people, but, you know, the excitement generated by the Obamas is a once-in-a-generation kind of thing,” said Mr. Berger, who attended the campaign’s donor gathering in Washington last month.Mr. Katzenberg said Mr. Biden’s campaign had made a deliberate choice to begin without a full staff in place. The campaign manager, Julie Chávez Rodríguez, remains in her White House job until next week, and other critical roles, including a finance director and a communications director, remain unfilled.“It’s not a question of whether it could or couldn’t have been done, it just wasn’t a priority,” Mr. Katzenberg said. “It’s simply not material, let alone essential, that it get done before.” More