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      Biden Has Something He’d Like to Tell You

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      Gail Collins: Well, Bret it looks like Joe Biden will be announcing his re-election bid this week.Bret Stephens: Proving my prediction from last week dead wrong.Gail: I know you disagree with him on many issues, particularly relating to the economy.But given the likely Republican presidential candidates, any chance you’ll actually be able to avoid voting for him?Bret: Arghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Probably not.It says something about the state of the Republican Party that the two current front-runners — let’s call them Don Caligula and Ron Torquemada — are nonstarters for a voter like me. And I’m a guy who believes in low taxes, a strong military, broken-windows policing, entitlement reform, a border wall and school choice. That’s the Nikki Haley side of the party — now reduced to single digits of the G.O.P. base.Gail: Sorry about Haley’s failure to take flight. I know you were rooting for her.Bret: Well, I’m still holding out hopes — increasingly faint though they are.On the other hand, I really, really wish Biden weren’t running, for all the reasons we’ve discussed. He’s just not a convincing candidate. And for all the talk of Donald Trump being unelectable in the general election, we’ve heard those predictions before. All it might take is a recession — which is probably coming — for swing voters to care a lot less about abortion rights in Florida or the Jan. 6 attempted coup than they will about jobs and the economy.Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?Gail: Nervous? Just because we’re talking about a presidential election in which one of the two major parties nominates either a loony ex-president drowning in legal problems or a deeply unappealing, extremely right-wing enemy of Disney World?Bret: It’s a game of Russian roulette, played with three bullets in the six-shooter.Gail: As for the Democrats, I’ve already told you I think 80 is too old to be planning another presidential campaign. And Biden has been around so long, it’s hard to make anything he talks about doing sound exciting.But what you’re worried about — a popular reaction against a bad economy — would be a problem for anybody in the party.Bret: True, but Amy Klobuchar or Gretchen Whitmer or some other plausible nominee can’t be accused of owning the economy the way Biden can.Gail: Biden certainly has negatives. But Trump has a lot more — all way more dire. And even if Ron DeSantis weren’t a terrible campaigner, I can’t see him winning over the electorate with his past plans to torpedo Medicare.Bret: You’re probably right about DeSantis, who seems too obsessed trying to slay Mickey and Minnie to appeal to regular voters outside Florida. As for Trump, this is a strange thing to say, but: The guy has demon energy. You know the movie “Cocaine Bear”? Trump is “Diet Coke Cujo,” if you get my Stephen King reference.Gail: Yeah, he’s never boring. Sigh. But we’ll see how energetic he looks when he’s defending himself for falsifying business records, and all the other investigations that await him.Alas, we’ll be conversing about this for a very long time, Bret. On the more immediate horizon, there’s the Fox-Dominion settlement. Tell me your thoughts.Bret: I am sorry we didn’t get to watch Tucker Carlson, Laura Ingraham and the rest of the gang of cynical, lying, repulsive and wretched propagandists squirm under oath in courtroom testimony. Would have paid money just to see that.But, realistically speaking, it’s probably the best possible result. $787.5 million is rich vindication for Dominion. It’s the closest Fox will ever come to admitting guilt. And it spares us the possibility of an appeals process that might have ended with the Supreme Court revisiting the strict libel standards of Times v. Sullivan and potentially limiting the freedom of the press.Gail: Yeah, for all my daydreams about Fox celebrities having to get up in court and apologize to the nation, in the real world this is probably the best you can get while protecting all the rights of a free press.Bret: The good news, Gail, is that Dominion still has suits pending against Rudy Giuliani, Sidney Powell, Newsmax and Mike Lindell, the MyPillow Guy, along with a few others. And there’s also the pending Smartmatic suit against Fox, too.Having fun, making bank and doing good at the expense of creeps has got to be the greatest joy adults can have in a boardroom.But we mentioned the Supreme Court. Any thoughts on the mifepristone ruling, staying the lower court’s ban on the abortion pill? I’m relieved, of course, that the court will allow the pill to remain on the market.Gail: Well, this is the nice thing about a democracy. You have the powers that be suddenly realizing the public is totally not on their side. So they fudge a little, dodge a little and quietly backtrack.Bret: It’ll be some irony if Republicans come to rue last year’s Dobbs decision for making them unelectable in all but the reddest parts of the country — and Democrats come to celebrate it for helping them cement a long-term majority that eventually changes the composition of the court so that abortion rights are restored.Gail: But we’re still a long way from living in a country where every woman has the right to control her own body when it comes to reproduction issues.Bret: As the dissents from Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in the mifepristone ruling make clear ….Gail: I’ve always wanted to see state lawmakers from both sides get together on a package of reforms that would couple abortion rights with easily available, easily affordable health and counseling services for poor pregnant women.Along, of course, with high quality child care for low-income working mothers. Ahem.Bret: Gail, would it shock you to know that I don’t disagree with anything you just said? Of course, child care won’t solve the root of so many of our problems, which is the near-destruction of stable two-parent families in too many poor households. But that’s a disaster whose cure lies beyond a government’s ability to solve.Gail: Wow — government support for high-quality early education? I think I’m hearing a major change of heart. If so, gonna buy a very nice bottle of wine for dinner tonight and drink a toast to you.Bret: I tend to soften in your presence.Gail: Awww. Well, go on — back to the issues of the day.Bret: Speaking of disasters, your thoughts on Biden’s E.P.A. rule controlling emissions from power plants?Gail: A worthy effort to protect future generations from environmental disaster, and of course the Republicans hate it.Bret: There should be a better way of saving the planet than by using administrative means to impose high costs on industry that will inevitably be passed along to consumers in the form of higher energy prices — which also hit poorer people harder — while setting wildly unrealistic target dates for an energy transition.Notice that I’m saying this and I still will probably have no choice but to vote for Biden. Unbelievable.Gail: Our colleague Jim Tankersley wrote a great analysis about the ongoing crisis over raising the debt limit, which has got to get done this spring. And how more than half of the Republicans’ 320-page version of a debt limit bill is actually about removing clean energy restrictions.Bret: I’d need to see the fine print before making a judgment, but a lot of what passes for “clean energy,” like biofuels, is really a dirty-energy, big government, big business boondoggle. As for the debt limit, it wouldn’t be a bad thing if Biden showed any willingness to meet Republicans halfway on spending cuts and work requirements for able-bodied adults taking federal subsidies.Gail: Bret, the debt limit is — something responsible people take care of without creating a political crisis with demands they’ll never achieve.But hey, that’s a mean way to end our talk. You’re always great about telling me about something new you’ve just read. Go ahead.Bret: Gail, I have to recommend Katie Hafner’s smart and humane obituary on Richard Riordan, the last Republican mayor of Los Angeles and a man who brought calm good sense to a city reeling from riots and racial strife. Riordan was a warts-and-all kind of guy, who cracked some dumb jokes that would have probably been politically fatal in our cancel-culture age. But he also brought common sense and a strong work ethic to his job and embodied a Republican pragmatism that we could sorely use today. He was the last of nine children born to an Irish Catholic family — California is better because his parents were persistent.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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      Will Biden Face a Democratic Challenger?

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      Joe Biden’s path to renomination by the Democratic Party, a journey reportedly likely to begin officially sometime next week, will represent a triumph of one seeming implausibility over another.From the beginning of Biden’s presidency, every serious conversation about his re-election has started with the near-impossibility of imagining a man palpably too old for the office putting himself through the rigors of another presidential campaign, selling himself as a steady hand when his unsteadiness is so widely recognized even by his own coalition’s voters.Yet that impossibility then collides with the impossibility of figuring out how Biden might be eased aside (barring a medical emergency, he clearly can’t be) or discerning how any ambitious Democrat could be induced to challenge him.The dynamics that made Biden the nominee in the first place, his moderate branding and just-left-enough positioning, still protect him from a consolidated opposition on either flank. The younger rivals who challenged him in 2020, Pete Buttigieg and Kamala Harris, have been co-opted into his administration (where their brands aren’t exactly flourishing). Meanwhile the rising generation of Democratic governors — Gavin Newsom, Jared Polis, Gretchen Whitmer and Josh Shapiro — have positioned themselves (Newsom especially) for the post-Biden landscape, ready to step in only if he steps out.Biden has also avoided the kind of gambits and defeats that might leave a large constituency ready to revolt. (Build Back Better diminished into the Inflation Reduction Act, but it eventually passed; our involvement in Ukraine has satisfied liberal hawks while stopping short of the direct conflict with Russia that might make the antiwar left bestir itself.) And he’s benefited from the way that polarization and anti-Trumpism has delivered a more unified liberalism, suffused by a trust-the-establishment spirit that makes the idea of a primary challenge seem not just dangerous but disreputable.None of this eliminates the difficulty of imagining his campaign for four more years. But it’s outstripped by the difficulty of seeing how any serious and respectable force inside the Democratic Party could be organized to stop it.However, as the Trump era has taught us, the serious and the respectable aren’t the only forces in American politics; disreputability has potency as well. Right now there’s no clear opening for a major rival like Newsom to replace Biden as the Democratic nominee. But with the president’s numbers consistently lousy, with a clear plurality of Democrats preferring that the president doesn’t run again, and with Biden scuffling in New Hampshire polling (he trailed Buttigieg in a January survey and led a more recent poll, but with only 34 percent), there is room for somebody with less to lose to try to run the same play as Eugene McCarthy in 1968 or Pat Buchanan in 1992 or for that matter Bernie Sanders in 2016 — to offer themselves as a protest candidate, to either channel hidden grievances or discover, through their campaign, what those grievances might be.Right now the only major figure auditioning for that role is Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the noted anti-vaccine activist who opened his own campaign in Boston earlier this week. He’s an interesting test case, because while he’s way outside the current liberal mainstream, his name trades on a distinctive kind of older-Democrat nostalgia, while his anti-corporate crankishness speaks to a tendency that used to be powerful on the left, before Trumpism absorbed a lot of paranoid energy and conspiracism.This makes it possible to imagine him discovering a real constituency of Democrats who aren’t fully happy being part of the coalition that valorizes official expertise, who blend holistic views on medicine with doubts about the mainstream narrative on — well, the Kennedy assassinations for a start (though he will have to compete for some of these voters with Marianne Williamson, whose hat is also in the ring again).At the same time his reputation as a conspiracist makes R.F.K. Jr. a poor vehicle for Democrats who might want to cast an anti-Biden vote without making an anti-vaccine statement. So it should be relatively easy for the party to establish a cordon sanitaire around his candidacy, such that 10 percent of the vote is possible but 30 percent is unimaginable.It’s that 30 percent threshold, broken by McCarthy and Buchanan in the New Hampshire primary, that would create actual problems for Biden were it breached. I suspect there’s enough discontent based on age and fitness issues alone for such a breach to happen. But is there anyone closer to the mainstream than R.F.K. Jr. who wants to create those problems, raising their profile at the risk of catching blame for a Trump or Ron DeSantis presidency?Ideally a column like this would end by identifying just that person, in a prophetic flourish. But since I don’t have a candidate ready at hand, maybe Biden can breathe easy — with all the impediments of age overcome, once again, by the absence of any credible alternative.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 Should Take Voters’ Concerns About Age Seriously

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      Only 47 percent of Democrats want to see Joe Biden on the ballot in 2024, according to the latest Associated Press poll. That’s not because they think he’s done a bad job in office. Democrats tend to like President Biden and continue to give him good marks on handling the economy and foreign policy.But many Democrats, particularly younger ones, are worried that he will simply be too old to be effective in a second term, which would end when he is 86. “My problem with him running in 2024 is that he’s just so old,” one Democrat told pollsters.That may be deeply unfair — people age at different rates — and in Mr. Biden’s case, it’s impossible to deny that politics and conspiracy theories, rather than facts, fuel at least some of the concern. But candidates shouldn’t pretend, as Mr. Biden often does, that advanced age isn’t an issue. Mr. Biden is 80 now, the oldest American to serve as president, and even supporters, including the political strategist David Axelrod, have expressed deep worries that his age will be both a political liability in 2024 and a barrier to a successful second term. If Mr. Biden runs again, as he recently said he intends to, questions will persist about his age until he does more to assure voters that he is up to the job.Mr. Biden’s age makes him an outlier even in an era when the nation’s political leadership is getting older. The current Senate, where the average age is 63.9 years, is the second oldest since 1789. The House, where the average age is 57.5 years, is the third oldest. By comparison, the average age in the United States is 38.8 years.Concerns about age — both in terms of fitness for office and being out of touch with the moment — are legitimate, as Mr. Biden acknowledged in an interview in February with ABC News. His standard line, repeated in that interview, is: “The only thing I can say is, ‘Watch me.’”But Mr. Biden has given voters very few chances to do just that — to watch him — and his refusal to engage with the public regularly raises questions about his age and health.The usual White House method of demonstrating a president’s mastery is to take tough questions in front of cameras, but Mr. Biden has not taken advantage of that opportunity, as The Times reported on Friday. He has held fewer news conferences and media interviews than most of his modern predecessors. Since 1923, only Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan took fewer questions per month from reporters, and neither represents a model of presidential openness that Mr. Biden should want to emulate. His reticence has created an opening for critics and skeptics.The president also needs to talk about his health openly and without embarrassment, and to end the pretense that it doesn’t matter. Those who are watching him with an open mind have seen a strong performance this year. His State of the Union address on Feb. 7 shattered the Republican attempts to portray him as doddering. With a passion rarely seen at one of these speeches — let alone in his political history — Mr. Biden presented a remarkably effective defense of his presidency and gave a preview of what is likely to be an imminent re-election campaign.The Times reported last summer that Mr. Biden’s overall energy level has declined, and he continues to stumble over words in his public appearances. But those flaws alone don’t signal a politician who is too old to run again. His first term, in fact, is already full of accomplishment: The economy has added 12.6 million jobs since he took office, inflation is cooling, and he has signed significant legislation to fight climate change, improve access to health care, and make investments in manufacturing and infrastructure. He has stood up to Russia’s destructive campaign in Ukraine, and rallied the West to Ukraine’s side.Nonetheless, as Mr. Biden nears his actuarial life expectancy, concerns about his ability to handle the demands of campaigning and a potential second term are unlikely to disappear. Only a combination of performance and complete candor will change the minds of skeptical voters. Old age remains a sensitive topic, and many people, particularly men, are reluctant to discuss personal infirmities for fear of demonstrating weakness or being pushed aside by impatient younger generations. There is good reason for the federal government’s prohibition of age discrimination in employment — a protection that begins at age 40. Ageism is real.That law, however, doesn’t apply to people who are running for office. Voters have every right to ask questions about the medical condition of a candidate who wants their support. In 2016 both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton gave the public very few details about their health. (Mr. Trump released a particularly preposterous doctor’s letter claiming he would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”)Mr. Biden acknowledged during the lead-up to the 2020 campaign that he was “chronologically” old but said it was up to voters to decide whether that was important. In that election, against an opponent who was only four years younger, the answer was clearly no. In November 2021, he released a medical report that said he was a “healthy, vigorous 78-year-old” and noted nothing more serious than a stiffened gait due to spinal changes and some acid reflux that caused him to cough.His most recent health summary, released on Feb. 16, said much the same thing, describing him as a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old male who is fit to successfully execute the duties of the presidency.” But his cognitive abilities went unmentioned. That’s something he should discuss publicly and also demonstrate to the voters, who expect the president to reflect the nation’s strength.If he runs again, Mr. Biden will need to provide explicit reassurance to voters; many of them have seen family members decline rapidly in their 80s. Americans are watching what Mr. Biden says and does, just as he has asked them to do.Source photograph by Azure-Dragon, via Getty Images.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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      What Older Voters Say About Biden 2024: From ‘He’s Fine’ to ‘Oh, God’

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      In interviews, dozens of left-leaning older Americans wrestled with the prospect of a president in his mid-80s, reflecting on their own abilities and changes to their lives — and even their mortality.Over the last three decades, Americans have chosen presidents who felt their pain and channeled their anger, who shattered historical barriers or seemed like enjoyable beer-drinking companions.But if voters often desire leaders who reflect themselves and their struggles, President Biden’s potential bid for a second term, which he would conclude at the age of 86, is prompting exceptionally complicated feelings among one highly engaged constituency: his generational peers.Three years after older voters helped propel Mr. Biden to the Democratic presidential nomination, embracing his deep experience and perceived general-election appeal, his age is his biggest political liability as he moves toward another presidential run, which he could announce as soon as Tuesday. It is a source of mockery and sometimes misinformation on the right — though the now-indicted Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential poll leader who faces a morass of legal troubles, is just a few years younger — and one of widespread anxiety among Democrats.The issue is particularly personal, however, for older voters who are inclined to like Mr. Biden, but often view his age through the prism of their own experiences.They are aging. He is aging. They are not the president of the United States.Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the sex therapist, encouraged Mr. Biden to run again. But, she said, “one has to know one’s limitations.” Gabby Jones for The New York TimesIn interviews with about three dozen voters, political veterans and prominent Americans between 67 and 98 years old, broaching Mr. Biden’s age prompted not only electoral analysis, but also wide-ranging discussions of their own abilities and adjustments to their lives. Some bluntly wrestled with questions of mortality, and others veered into grandparent mode, admonishing the president to take care of himself.“I’m 72 and I’m a young whippersnapper here in The Villages,” said Diane Foley, the president of The Villages Democratic Club at the Republican-tilted mega-retirement community in Florida, who encouraged Mr. Biden to run again. “There are incredibly energetic, active people well into their 80s, and some 90s.”“One has to know one’s limitations,” advised Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer, 94, the famed sex therapist. She keeps busy these days with a project on the grandparent-grandchild relationship, but prefers to take meetings from home.“I would say the president should run again, but he should also not run up to a podium,” she added. “I don’t want him to fall.”And former Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who at 92 has a dark sense of humor about his future — “at my age, I don’t buy green bananas” — signaled that he would support a Biden run. But he is eager for a new generation of leaders.“Maybe I’m feeling so strongly because I’m leaving relatively soon and I want to see what’s going to follow,” Mr. Rangel said in an interview. “I truly believe that we should have more candidates, more than two old white men.”Former Representative Charles B. Rangel of New York, who is 92, said he wanted to see a younger generation step into political leadership. Johnny Milano for The New York TimesParty leaders overwhelmingly plan to support Mr. Biden if he runs. But recent polling has shown that while many Democratic voters rate him favorably, they also have reservations about another bid. An Associated Press/NORC poll released Friday found that poll respondents were concerned about his age.Other surveys found that older Democratic voters were more likely to favor another Biden run than younger Democrats, even as roughly 30 to 50 percent of Democrats over 60 preferred that he step aside.“I can’t go on television and say, ‘Let’s not talk about this, let’s pivot to the real issues,’ because people think age is a real issue,” James Carville, 78, the Democratic strategist, said last month.It was top of mind for several people who milled around a community center recently as a canasta game ended in Plantation, Fla.Doreen W., 78, a Democrat who declined to share her last name on the record, citing fear of causing problems for her husband at work, said she hoped Mr. Biden would run again. But she worried about whether he was up to it.“I know how tiring it is for me, and I’m not doing anything but retire,” she said. “I’m aware of his age and I’m concerned about that.”Informed that Mr. Biden was not 78, as she had thought, but 80, she groaned, “Oh, God.”“If I could just keep him at age 80 and active the way he is, I’d be more than happy,” she said.Nursing a canasta defeat nearby, Jacque Deuser, 67, said the way Mr. Biden sometimes walked reminded her of her late husband, who had dementia.“It kind of looks like he’s going to fall down,” said Ms. Deuser, who voted for Mr. Trump in 2016, backed Mr. Biden in 2020 and is inclined to support him again if Mr. Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida win the Republican nomination.Mr. Biden’s doctor recently reported that he was a “healthy, vigorous 80-year-old” fit to serve, while acknowledging that Mr. Biden had a “stiffened gait,” citing factors including arthritis. But the doctor said there were no findings “consistent with any cerebellar or other central neurological disorder.”Mr. Biden works out at least five days a week and does not drink or smoke, and his recent travel, including a covert trip to Ukraine, impressed some of his peers.Mr. Biden made a long trip to Ukraine in February, meeting with President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.Daniel Berehulak/The New York Times“I don’t know if I could have been on my feet going to Ukraine and taking a 10-hour train ride,” said Peggy Grove, 80, the vice chair of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party. But his public appearances have been uneven. While Mr. Biden has long been gaffe-prone, he has made several striking misstatements as president, and he can sound halting. Moments like a stumble on a stairway or a fall off a bike have attracted attention.“I enjoyed working with him. I watch him from a distance now and I get concerned,” said former Senator Judd Gregg of New Hampshire, a 76-year-old self-described “not a Trumpian” Republican. “He’s lost a little of his sharpness.”The White House did not directly respond to Mr. Gregg.Several voters said Mr. Biden’s running mate would be important — and many Democrats have privately expressed concerns about Vice President Kamala Harris.But while health is unpredictable, some aging experts have said there are signs Mr. Biden could be a “super-ager.”Dr. John W. Rowe, a former president of the International Association of Gerontology and Geriatrics and a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia, said “super-agers” tend to live more of their lives without functional impairment. Dr. Rowe also said age could bring unexpected benefits.Older people, he said, are often better at resolving disputes, and “are less likely to do something imprudent.”“If you have, on the one hand, a super-ager, with no obvious evidence of something bad happening right now, and they bring along these other characteristics, I would feel pretty comfortable for the next four years,” he said, adding that he did not know Mr. Biden.Dr. Rowe, 78, a former head of Aetna, said he, too, had encountered occasional questions about retirement.“I do not feel that I’m functioning any less well than I was a couple years ago,” he said.He stressed that unlike 30-year-olds, older people vary greatly in their abilities.Some Democrats pointed to the differences in aging between Presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter.Mr. Reagan, who announced in 1994 that he had Alzheimer’s disease and died a decade later at 93, long faced questions about his cognitive functioning. Mr. Carter — now in hospice care at 98 — remained active until recently.“I just try to always look at the individual, factor in age as one of many considerations,” said Gloria Steinem, the women’s rights activist, 89. “For myself, retrieval time is longer, but the choice of what to retrieve is richer.”As for Mr. Biden, she said, “I feel fine about re-electing President Biden, depending on both the alternatives and his health.”Mr. Biden and his allies stress his legislative accomplishments, including on issues affecting older Americans.Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said Mr. Biden had inherited and helped the country overcome “the worst crises in decades,” and was “now bringing manufacturing back from overseas, rebuilding our infrastructure, empowering Medicare to lower drug prices and standing up for the rights and dignity of every American.” He emphasized Mr. Biden’s experience, judgment and values in office.A recent gathering of the Broward Democratic Senior Caucus at a pub in Plantation, Fla. Many attendees said they were unworried about Mr. Biden’s age.Melanie Metz for The New York TimesAt a recent gathering of the Broward Democratic Senior Caucus at a pub in Plantation, attendees dismissed concerns about Mr. Biden’s age.“If his head is working, he’s fine,” Muriel Kirschner, 94, pointedly told a reporter. “My head is still working, honey.”Patti Lynn, who will turn 80 this year, retired after having a heart attack, deciding it was “time to have some fun.” But Ms. Lynn, whose phone background was a picture of herself with Mr. Biden, did not think he should do the same just yet.“Does he stumble and forget and have to get his words? I understand that perfectly,” she laughed. “Been there, done that. Oh well, I’m having a senior moment. But he’s respected worldwide, he is stable.”“How do you put him down — because he is old?” she added. “He worked hard to get that old. Me too. I worked hard to get this old.” More

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      Abortion Surges to the Center of the 2024 Campaign

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      Nearly a year after the Supreme Court turned abortion into a dominant issue of the 2022 midterms, the battle over abortion rights has catapulted to the center of the emerging 2024 election season, igniting Democrats, dividing Republicans and turbocharging sensitive debates over health care.From North Carolina to Nevada, Democrats running at every level of government are vowing to make support for abortion rights a pillar of their campaigns, and to paint their opponents as extremists on the issue.And as races intensify, Republicans are caught between the demands of their socially conservative base and a broader American public that generally supports abortion rights, exposing one of the party’s biggest political liabilities as it tries to win back the White House, recapture the Senate and expand its narrow House majority.This month, a Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race after running on her support for abortion rights.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesAll of those dynamics have crystallized over the last month. First, a liberal Wisconsin judge won a crucial State Supreme Court race by a commanding margin after running assertively on her support for abortion rights. A few days later, a conservative judge in Texas took the extraordinary step of moving to invalidate the Food and Drug Administration’s approval of the abortion pill mifepristone. The Supreme Court on Friday said the pill would remain widely available for now, halting two separate rulings, including the Texas ruling, while an appeal moves forward.Democrats cast the Supreme Court’s order as a close call, and warned that many Republicans still want as many abortion restrictions as possible, including a national ban. At the same time, Republican presidential hopefuls — whose teams generally did not respond to requests for comment on the Supreme Court’s ruling on Friday night — are straining to find their footing on the issue.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida recently signed a ban on abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, when many women do not know they are pregnant, staking out a position that conservatives applauded, but one that could hurt him in a general election with moderate voters. Others, like Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, have struggled to articulate firm positions. And former President Donald J. Trump, whose choices for the Supreme Court helped overturn Roe v. Wade, recently angered anti-abortion leaders by emphasizing state power over the issue rather than a national ban.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said the Republican governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu, who signed a measure that banned abortions after 24 weeks, with some exceptions. Mr. Sununu, who calls himself “pro-choice,” was the rare possible Republican presidential candidate to offer a comment on the court’s ruling on Friday: “Good call by the Supreme Court.”Representative Suzan DelBene, a Washington Democrat who leads the House Democratic campaign arm, said Republicans had moved in an increasingly “extreme” direction on abortion. She pointed, for instance, to an Idaho law criminalizing those who help a minor get an out-of-state abortion without parental permission, and to threats more broadly to abortion medication.“It’s dangerous, and people are angry,” she said. “We’re going to see that in 2024 in elections across the country.”Anti-abortion demonstrators gathered in front of the Supreme Court as part of the 50th March for Life in Washington in January. Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAs President Biden moves toward announcing a re-election bid as soon as Tuesday, one of his advisers predicted that the issue of abortion rights would be more significant in 2024 than it was last year, as Americans experience the far-reaching results of overturning Roe.Democrats are carefully monitoring — and eagerly broadcasting — the positions on abortion taken by Republicans in the nascent stages of primary season. And they are pressing their own succinct message.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat who leads the Democratic Senate campaign arm. “Not politicians, not judges.”Republicans are far more divided on what their pitch should be — and party officials acknowledge this poses a steep challenge.“We support women making decisions regarding their health care,” said Senator Gary Peters, a Michigan Democrat. “Not politicians, not judges.”Julia Nikhinson for The New York TimesConflict always emerges between the demands of primary voters and the preferences of general-election swing voters. But the overturning of Roe has drastically complicated this calculus for Republican candidates. They now face detailed questions about whether to support national bans; how soon into a pregnancy abortion bans should apply; what exceptions, if any, to permit; and how they view medication used in instances of abortions and miscarriages.“We wrap ourselves around the axle trying to nuance our position as a candidate or a party through the primary, knowing that we’re going to have to reexplain ourselves in the general,” Mr. Sununu said. “It comes off as disingenuous, convoluted, and at the end of the day, it really chases away voters.”The fault lines in the party were illuminated again this past week. After a spokesman for Mr. Trump indicated to The Washington Post that the former president believed abortion should be decided at the state level, the anti-abortion group Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America issued a stern rebuke.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signing a 15-week abortion ban into law in April 2022. This month, he signed a more restrictive six-week ban.Paul Hennessy/SOPA Images, via Sipa USA“We will oppose any presidential candidate who refuses to embrace at a minimum a 15-week national standard to stop painful late-term abortions while allowing states to enact further protections,” Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of the organization, said in a statement.In a separate statement, Mr. Trump’s campaign said he “believes it is in the states where the greatest advances can now take place to protect the unborn,” while declaring him the “most pro-life president in American history.”There will be no shortage of opportunities for Republican candidates to highlight their anti-abortion credentials and to navigate the fallout from the Supreme Court’s decision, starting as soon as Saturday, at a gathering of the Iowa Faith and Freedom Coalition. On Tuesday, Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is also expected to give a speech on abortion.Bob Vander Plaats, a socially conservative leader in Iowa whose organization is expected to host a gathering with presidential candidates this summer, said, “There’s a lot of ways to determine a person’s bona fides when it comes to the sanctity of human life, but I guarantee you the Texas ruling will be discussed.”The issue of abortion, he said, “will be a cornerstone issue in the Iowa caucuses. It will be a cornerstone issue in the Republican primary.”On Thursday, Ronna McDaniel, the chair of the Republican National Committee, tried to help her candidates navigate the subject, suggesting that opposing abortion after 15 weeks of pregnancy was a strong position politically, somewhat mirroring polling she has been showing to members of her party.“In 2022, a lot of Republican candidates took their D.C. consultants’ bad advice to ignore the subject,” she said in a speech. Noting the onslaught of Democratic ads on the subject, she said, “most Republicans had no response.”She urged Republicans to cast Democrats as “extreme” on the issue, a message echoed by some working on House and Senate races who say Democrats should be pressed on what limitations they support.Nicole McCleskey, a Republican pollster who worked for the successful re-election campaign of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa last year, pointed to Ms. Reynolds, Gov. Mike DeWine of Ohio and Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia as examples of leaders who embraced tight abortion restrictions but were not defined by that issue alone. All three swept to comfortable victories in states that often lean right, but are not the nation’s most conservative states.“This last election saw some candidates who were unclear or changed their position, lacked conviction and were unprepared to talk about this issue,” she said. “If you have those things — if you have conviction, if you have empathy, if you are prepared and you know how to define yourself and your opposition,” she added, “we can successfully navigate this issue.”But some candidates have shown little interest in managing a rhetorical balancing act.The issue is likely to come to a head in North Carolina, home to what may be the most consequential governor’s race of 2024, with Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat, term-limited.“I’m worried that we let the Democrats use the issue to define us, because we aren’t very good at our own messaging,” said Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, a Republican. Sophie Park for The New York TimesMark Robinson, the state’s often incendiary lieutenant governor and a Republican, is expected to announce a run for governor as soon as Saturday. Mr. Robinson, who has said that he and his now-wife aborted a pregnancy decades ago, has since made clear that he wants greater restrictions on abortion rights in North Carolina, where Republicans now have supermajorities in the state legislature. The procedure is currently legal up to 20 weeks of pregnancy in the state.Josh Stein, the state’s Democratic attorney general who is running for governor, said in an interview that there was “no question” that he saw abortion rights as being directly on the ballot. That message was effective for Democrats in governor’s races in several critical states last year.“The only reason North Carolina doesn’t have a ban on abortion now is because we have a Democratic governor,” Mr. Stein said.A spokesman for Mr. Robinson declined to comment for this article.For Democrats elsewhere, it can be more challenging to argue that their races will decide the fate of abortion rights in their state, especially in places where abortion protections are codified. And it is far too soon to know what mix of issues will ultimately determine 2024 campaigns.Still, Democrats noted that if the Supreme Court had let the Texas ruling stand, that would have had major nationwide implications — and many stress the possibility of national abortion bans, depending on the makeup of the White House and Congress.“Even though we may have current protections for this in Nevada, if a nationwide abortion ban is imposed, Nevadans will suffer, and women will die,” Senator Jacky Rosen of Nevada, a Democrat who recently announced her re-election bid, said in an interview.In a statement, Ms. Rosen called the Supreme Court order “a temporary relief.” But in the interview, she said the Texas ruling underscored how one conservative judge could threaten the power of a major government agency.“It’s pretty frightening,” she said. More

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      Biden 2024 Re-election Announcement Could Come as Soon as Tuesday

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      A campaign video is said to be in production, and donors are being mobilized, for a run that could be announced early next week.President Biden is nearing a final decision to formally enter the 2024 presidential race as early as Tuesday, with a video to announce his run already in production, according to four people with knowledge of the plans.Mr. Biden, who said last week while in Ireland that he would enter the race “relatively soon,” will spend the weekend at Camp David, and he is expected to be joined by family members and some advisers. He has not yet given final approval to the announcement plan, according to one person with knowledge of the discussions.The New York Times reported on Monday that the Biden operation was discussing the possibility of a low-key video announcement next week on Tuesday, which marks the fourth anniversary of his entry into the 2020 race. One of Mr. Biden’s favorite poems, which he has often quoted, is about making “history and hope rhyme.”On Thursday, The Washington Post first reported that plans for an announcement next week were being finalized with Tuesday as a target.Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, declined to comment in a text Thursday evening. At a press briefing earlier in the day, she told reporters: “What I will say is that any announcement or anything that is related to 2024 certainly will not come from here.” The Democratic National Committee did not respond to a request for comment.At 80, Mr. Biden is already the oldest president in American history and, by the end of a potential second term, he would be 86.The timing of a 2024 decision has been closely held by Mr. Biden’s inner circle at the White House, where re-election planning has been underway for months, overseen by two top advisers, Jennifer O’Malley Dillon and Anita Dunn. Still, planning has intensified in recent weeks with meetings between White House advisers and Democratic Party officials, with a focus on what kind of apparatus would support the president from the outside.Mr. Biden has a long history of extending deadlines around making major political decisions, injecting a measure of uncertainty into the timetable in the eyes of some of his allies.The political durability of the Republican front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, has added to Mr. Biden’s ability to keep a coalition of Democrats together, including progressives who have at times taken issue with some White House policies. Mr. Trump, who has continued leading polls despite being indicted by the Manhattan district attorney this month, has proved to be a glue holding factions of the Democratic Party in place since 2020, when Mr. Biden won the South Carolina primary after losing the first two early state contests.Mr. Biden has already summoned donors to Washington next week, inviting those who have given at least $1 million to a two-day gathering starting on Friday. The event, which is not a fund-raiser, is intended to rally his army of bundlers and donors ahead of a 2024 campaign that is likely to top more than $1 billion, including super PAC spending.Cash considerations have been at the center of the Biden team’s thinking for when to enter the race. Announcing will allow him to begin banking contributions from big and small donors, but opening a campaign will incur significant expenses that might otherwise be deferred.Some outside groups have already begun preparing for a campaign, including a group called Future Forward that is expected to take the lead in television advertising; the long-running Democratic super PAC Priorities USA, which primarily focuses on digital work; and the group American Bridge, which has held events attended by administration officials.For instance, Ms. Dunn attended an American Bridge conference in Fort Lauderdale and appeared as a keynote speaker in her personal capacity.Mr. Biden is expected to face only token opposition in the primary. The author Marianne Williamson, who ran and lost in 2020, and the anti-vaccine activist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. are both running long-shot campaigns.Chris Cameron More

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      Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Makes His White House Run Official

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      Announcing his long-shot bid to challenge President Biden, he spoke to a crowd of people who voiced their shared skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.More than half a century after his father sought the White House to end a calamitous war in Vietnam and to salve the country’s racial wounds, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced a presidential campaign on Wednesday built on re-litigating Covid-19 shutdowns and shaking Americans’ faith in science.Mr. Kennedy, a California resident, traveled to Boston, once the citadel of his family’s power, to declare that he would challenge President Biden for the Democratic nomination in a long-shot bid for the White House.Appearing at the Park Plaza Hotel — a favorite fund-raising venue of his uncle Ted Kennedy’s — he sought to wrap himself in the Kennedy political luster.The event was saturated, in words and images, with reminiscences of Mr. Kennedy’s father as well as another uncle, President John F. Kennedy.In a rambling speech lasting nearly two hours, Mr. Kennedy, 69, evoked his father’s 1968 campaign and death, and spoke in detail about his career as an environmental lawyer decades ago. He also aimed criticisms at the pharmaceutical industry, big social media companies that he accused of censorship, Mr. Biden’s commitment to the war in Ukraine and former President Donald J. Trump’s “lockdown” of the country early in the pandemic.“This is what happens when you censor somebody for 18 years,” Mr. Kennedy said, a reference to his complaint that social media platforms and the mainstream media have not given him a fair hearing. “I got a lot to talk about. They shouldn’t have shut me up for that long because now I’m really going to let loose on them for the next 18 months. They’re going to hear a lot from me.”Late in his speech, an alarm sounded and an announcement asked people to evacuate. Nobody moved. “Nice try,” Mr. Kennedy said, and continued to speak.Numerous attendees, who had come from Boston, neighboring New England states and Florida, recounted in interviews their skepticism about vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry.While polls show that up to half of Democrats want someone besides Mr. Biden as their 2024 nominee, no party leader has stepped up with a challenge, and past opponents have rallied to the president’s side. Mr. Kennedy is the latest in a history of fringe presidential aspirants from both parties who run to bring attention to a cause, or to themselves.For Mr. Kennedy, that cause is vaccine skepticism, which he cloaked in terms of truth-seeking and free speech, a crusade that in the past led him to falsely link childhood vaccines to autism. At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, he sought to undermine public trust in vaccines, comparing government efforts to impose mandates in some places to “Hitler’s Germany.” Both Facebook and Instagram took down accounts of a group he runs for spreading medical misinformation.Family members have accused Mr. Kennedy of sowing distrust in the science behind vaccines. His campaign has appalled members of his famous Democratic clan.“I love my brother Bobby, but I do not share or endorse his opinions on many issues, including the Covid pandemic, vaccinations and the role of social media platforms in policing false information,” Kerry Kennedy, a sister of Mr. Kennedy’s, said in a statement.Bob Shrum, a former aide to Ted Kennedy, said Mr. Kennedy’s attacks on Dr. Anthony S. Fauci and the federal government’s top medical and scientific agencies would have infuriated his uncle. “It’s contrary to everything his uncle Ted Kennedy ever did,” he said. “He called health care the cause of his life.”In a statement of his own, Mr. Kennedy said he had made a “difficult choice to put my principles ahead of my personal affections” for Mr. Biden. “Some members of my family agree with me and others do not,” he added. “I bear them no ill will.”On Wednesday in Boston, Mr. Kennedy was introduced by his wife, Cheryl Ruth Hines, an actress, and he pointed out his children and grandchildren seated in a balcony of the hotel ballroom. But there was a notable absence of members of his family who have made careers in politics. A number of them affirmed their support for Mr. Biden’s re-election in recent days, part of a decades-long alliance between the Biden and Kennedy families.Ted Kennedy’s widow, Victoria Reggie Kennedy, is Mr. Biden’s ambassador to Austria. Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of President Kennedy, is ambassador to Australia. And Joe Kennedy III, a grandson of Robert F. Kennedy, is Mr. Biden’s special envoy to Northern Ireland, who flew with him this month to Belfast.Though his campaign is unlikely to pose a serious threat to Mr. Biden, the strength of emotions expressed by his supporters on Wednesday pointed to a group that is angry and distrustful of traditional Democrats when it comes to vaccines. Any link between childhood vaccines and autism has been widely rebuked by peer-reviewed scientific studies. Covid vaccines, which have been administered to millions of Americans, are safe and effective, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Nonetheless, misinformation about vaccines swirls online.Attendees, echoing Mr. Kennedy, took aim at a corrupt alliance of big business and government.“The Covid vaccines are not effective and not safe,” maintained Claire Mortimer, 69, a nurse practitioner who drove from Brooklin, Maine, to hear Mr. Kennedy. “I believe that only Bobby Kennedy Jr. is capable of getting rid of the corruption that is so deeply embedded in every agency of our government.”Andy Migner, 67, who works in regenerative healing in Boston, described herself as a “lifetime Democrat” who now feels politically homeless. She said “our ability to question,” as well as journalism and public debate, “has gone down the tubes.” More

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      Biden Summons Big Donors to Washington as 2024 Campaign Nears

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      The gathering is the latest in an intensifying series of planning moves ahead of Mr. Biden’s expected announcement of a re-election bid.Top donors to President Biden have received a last-minute invitation to travel to Washington at the end of next week to see Mr. Biden as he gears up for a 2024 campaign, according to more than a half-dozen people who have been invited to or briefed on the event.Invitations are going out to some of the biggest donors and bundlers for Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign — those who donated or raised at least $1 million, according to one person. The initial round of invitations is being made by phone instead of email.The event, which is not a fund-raiser, is seen as an effort to rally donors before what is expected to be an expensive 2024 run.The gathering is the latest in an intensifying series of discussions and planning meetings between the White House and Democratic National Committee officials ahead of Mr. Biden’s expected campaign. The president has said for months that he plans to run, and last week he said while traveling in Ireland that an announcement would come “relatively soon.”Even as Biden advisers say they feel under no immediate pressure to formally begin a campaign, there has been some discussion of an announcement as early as next week, which would coincide with the anniversary of Mr. Biden’s entry into the 2020 race.Some of the details of the donor event appear to still be coming together, but it is expected to include a meeting on Friday evening with Mr. Biden outside the White House, multiple people said. There might also be briefings from some of Mr. Biden’s top strategists on Saturday.One person familiar with the event described it as something of an outstretched hand after a relatively long drought of interactions between Mr. Biden’s world and some of its donors.Two governors who have previously been top Democratic fund-raisers, J.B. Pritzker of Illinois and Phil Murphy of New Jersey, have also been invited because of their past fund-raising, according to two people briefed on the event. Both have been seen as potential candidates in 2024 if Mr. Biden decides not to run.The White House and the Democratic National Committee did not immediately respond to requests for comment. More