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      Jackson Confirmation Aside, G.O.P. Sees an Opening With Black Voters

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      With inflation, war and the pandemic looming larger, Democrats who hope that the browbeating of Ketanji Brown Jackson will rally Black voters behind their candidates may be disappointed.The spectacle created by Republican senators with presidential ambitions as they browbeat the first Black woman nominated to the Supreme Court — after which 47 Republicans voted against her on Thursday — might have seemed like glaring evidence that the G.O.P. had written off the Black vote this November.Far from it. In rising inflation, stratospheric gas prices, lingering frustrations over Covid and new anxieties over the war in Ukraine, Republicans see a fresh opening, after the Obama and Trump eras, to peel away some Black voters who polls show are increasingly disenchanted with the Biden administration.Thanks to gerrymandering, Republicans need not win over too many Black voters to affect a handful of races, and dozens of Black Republican House candidates — a record number of them — are reshaping the party’s pitch.If anything, the G.O.P.’s treatment of the Supreme Court nominee, Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, was a testimony to the party’s confidence that amid so many more powerful political forces and more consuming objects of public attention, their handling of her confirmation simply didn’t matter much.“I think the Black people that this would turn off weren’t voting for Republicans anyway, no matter what,” said Wesley Hunt, a Black Army veteran and a Republican newcomer to politics who is running for a deep-red Texas House seat.Senate Republican leaders had warned colleagues before the confirmation fight to keep the proceedings civil and cordial, clearly worried that the sight of a phalanx of white Republican inquisitors would turn voters off in an election year. But if Democrats still believe that Judge Jackson’s rough treatment will energize Black voters to come out this November and vote Democratic in big numbers, it appears likely that they will be disappointed.For frustrated voters of all colors who are struggling to pay their bills and fill their tanks, November’s vote may simply be a chance to vote against the party in power.“We are not a monolith,” said Jennifer-Ruth Green, a Black Air Force veteran who is running for Congress in Northwestern Indiana as a Republican. “We see inflation and gas prices. Voters are not stupid.”In Gary, Ind., Roshaun Knowles, 42, a cosmetologist taking a break at the Billco Barber Shop, summed up how the confirmation hearings would play as she considered her vote this fall. She said she had felt despair as an accomplished Black woman was interrogated by white senators who, she believed, lacked Judge Jackson’s intellect and poise.Roshaun Knowles said she had felt despair at the grilling of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson by Republican senators but was unhappy with President Biden. “He hasn’t been doing anything,” she said. “What has he done?Carlos Javier Ortiz for The New York Times“To be in a room full of white people asking her questions about where she learned what she learned and what she is capable of — you know, it didn’t sit well with me,” Ms. Knowles said. “She should have been treated as a white man would have been treated,” she added.But, she said, vaccine mandates cost her a job as a property manager for a housing authority after she refused to get the shot. Stimulus checks kept too many people out of the work force. And President Biden? “He hasn’t been doing anything,” she said. “What has he done?”Ms. Knowles said she was leaning toward voting Republican this fall, as she did in 2020, when she voted for Donald J. Trump, after voting for Hillary Clinton four years before and for Barack Obama twice.Republicans on the campaign trail and over the airwaves are pressing the image of a faltering Democratic leadership that has no clue how to handle economic uncertainty, the persistent pandemic and rising crime. When Republican officials are asked about the party’s strategy toward Black voters, they invariably call on the few Black Republican elected officials and candidates to make the pitch. But tellingly, Black Republican candidates such as Ms. Green and John James, who is running for a Michigan House seat, are not advertising their party affiliations, just their biographies — a sign that the G.O.P. brand remains toxic in some corners.And Republican outreach efforts amount to little more than seizing on Black disaffection with Democrats.Paris Dennard, director of Black media affairs for the Republican National Committee, said the party had opened eight community centers nationwide to engage Black voters. Candidates like Mr. Hunt are proof that the party’s message is inspiring Black Republicans to run, he said.But a message focused on Democrats’ shortcomings deprives Black voters of hearing about policies they actually want, said Leah Wright Rigueur, author of “The Loneliness of the Black Republican: Pragmatic Politics and the Pursuit of Power.”“It’s an incredibly effective strategy, but it’s also insidious,” said Dr. Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University. “It only works when there’s that dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party.”It does work, however, even with Black voters who during the Obama and Trump years were remarkably united behind the Democratic Party.“I don’t think Biden’s really even in office,” Robert Sanders scoffed as he cut hair in Gary, echoing criticism from the political right about the 79-year-old president. “I think he’s being escorted through office.”The softening of Mr. Biden’s approval among Black voters is a clear warning to Democrats. Approval of the president among Black registered voters slid to 62 percent in March from 83 percent last summer in an NBC News poll and was not affected by the Supreme Court fight, said Bill McInturff of Public Opinion Strategies, a Republican polling firm that conducted the survey with the Democratic firm Hart Research.The percentage of Black voters in the poll who said they strongly approved of the president’s performance fell to 28 percent last month, from 46 percent between April and August of last year. And intensity of support predicts turnout in elections.Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster who is Black, said polls were picking up a reversion to the days before Mr. Obama energized Black voters positively and Mr. Trump then energized them negatively. Before 2008, he noted, it was normal for 12 percent to 14 percent of the Black electorate to vote Republican.“What is more problematic is the lack of energy levels among younger voters, particularly younger African Americans,” Mr. Belcher said, noting that young voters of color in 2018 had delivered Democrats the House. “It’s a not-excited, disenchanted, frustrated, younger electorate right now, more like the electorate of 2014 and 2010 than 2018 — and that’s disastrous.”Democratic officials say they are responding with Black voter mobilization projects that have started earlier than in previous midterm cycles. Last spring, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee hired organizers in five battleground states to focus on key Democratic constituencies. On Thursday, the committee announced a new round of ad purchases with Black news outlets.Chris Taylor, a committee spokesman, said efforts by Republicans to court Black voters were disingenuous given the voting records among those in the party on pandemic relief, criminal justice reform and clean air and water legislation.“Nearly every Republican in Congress opposed our priorities,” said Mr. Taylor, who is Black.Because of gerrymandered district lines, most Republican candidates for the House do not need many — if any — Black voters. But in districts like Indiana’s First, with its narrow Democratic lean and a Republican target on its back, a Republican challenger will need to make inroads with Black voters, or at least hope for soft turnout for Democrats.Mr. Cruz talking with Senator Josh Hawley and Senator Marsha Blackburn during a break in the confirmation hearing for Judge Jackson last month.T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesJudge Jackson’s rough reception does not appear to be a threat to that hope. Even Black voters who watched the hearings attentively were surprisingly forgiving of her Republican inquisitors.“I don’t think she was treated fairly,” said Greg Fleming, 72, a financial adviser in Gary. “But that’s the way things are in this country. In today’s climate, unfortunately, it’s to be expected.”Like Indiana’s First, Georgia’s Second District still leans Democratic, but if a candidate can chip into its rural Black vote, he has a strong chance. For Jeremy Hunt, an Army veteran and Black candidate running in the Republican primary to challenge Representative Sanford Bishop, a long-serving Democrat who is also Black, the Supreme Court is not part of his calculus.“We can talk about Republicans versus Democrats, but ultimately, that’s not what voters want to hear from us as leaders,” Mr. Hunt said. “There is a huge temptation to get into national-level stuff and make it about what’s going on, you know, on different levels, but a big part of our campaign is keeping it local.”Still, when he talks about what is afflicting local farmers and truckers, Mr. Hunt said, he invariably comes back around to the economy, gas prices and inflation.Black voters were the most likely to say they were personally falling behind because of inflation, according to the NBC News poll. And that is producing anxieties that Republicans are eager to exploit.Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, one of two Black Republicans in the House, said Republicans had nothing to apologize for in the Jackson confirmation process.Stefani Reynolds for The New York TimesRepresentative Byron Donalds of Florida, one of two Black Republicans in the House, said: “We’ve got rich Black people. We’ve got rich white people. We have poor Black people. We have poor white people. If you’re poor in the United States, you’re feeling the effects of $4.30 gasoline. You’re feeling the effects of home heating oil prices that have gone up 60 percent. You’re feeling the impacts of meat and bread and milk, all going up dramatically.”Mr. Donalds said he had watched most of Judge Jackson’s hearings and had seen nothing that Republicans needed to apologize for.“Never once did they go into her personal life,” he said. “Never once did they go into her personal background. Never once were their accusations about her character.”With Democrats disappointing and Republicans offering a weak alternative, some Black voters said they didn’t know where to turn politically.In Gary, Mr. Fleming said he worried about the rising power of the Democratic left wing. But until more Republicans drop their “conspiracy theories” and extreme comments, he said, they weren’t much of an option.“I mean, they thought everything that happened on Jan. 6 was AOK? That’s crazy,” Mr. Fleming said. “If a Mitt Romney-type Republican ran, I could go for that. But Republicans, they’re on another planet right now. I can’t even call them far right. They’re defying gravity.” More

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      Bob Gibbs, House Republican Facing Primary Challenge in Ohio, Will Retire

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      The state’s redistricting process had drawn Mr. Gibbs into a primary fight against Max Miller, who served in the Trump White House and was endorsed by the former president.Representative Bob Gibbs of Ohio announced on Wednesday that he would not seek re-election, just as early voting got underway in the state. Ohio’s redistricting process had forced Mr. Gibbs, who has served in Congress since 2011, into a Republican primary against a Trump-backed challenger, Max Miller, among others.Mr. Gibbs said in a statement that the tumultuous effort to redraw the state’s congressional map had become a “circus,” and he criticized the last-minute changes to his rural district south of Cleveland.“It is irresponsible to effectively confirm the congressional map for this election cycle seven days before voting begins, especially in the Seventh Congressional District where almost 90 percent of the electorate is new,” he said.Mr. Gibbs’s name will still appear on the ballot in the district but signs will be posted at voting locations stating that votes for him will not be counted, said Rob Nichols, a spokesman for the Ohio Secretary of State, in a brief interview.Mr. Gibbs was facing a serious primary challenge from Mr. Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump. Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Miller last year when the Ohio candidate was aiming to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez, who had voted to impeach Mr. Trump. But Mr. Gonzalez said in September that he would not run for re-election.Mr. Gibbs and Mr. Gonzalez were later drawn into the new Seventh District. Mr. Gibbs voted against impeaching Mr. Trump after the Capitol riot and voted to overturn the results of the presidential election, positions that the former president has treated as litmus tests for which Republicans he will support in 2022.Mr. Miller on Wednesday praised Mr. Gibbs’s tenure.Ohio is losing one of its 16 congressional seats as part of the once-a-decade redistricting process after the latest census. The state’s efforts to redraw its district lines have been mired in legal challenges.In January, the Ohio Supreme Court rejected a congressional map drawn by the state’s Republican-dominated Redistricting Commission, calling it too partisan for a state where the G.O.P. has lately won about 55 percent of the statewide popular vote.Max Miller, an aide to former President Donald J. Trump, had originally aimed to unseat Representative Anthony Gonzalez.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesThe court is planning to hold a hearing on the new congressional map sometime after the May 3 primary, and is hearing challenges to a fourth set of state legislative maps. Frank LaRose, Ohio’s Secretary of State, removed the state legislative races from the May 3 ballot and a new date for those elections has not been set.Jen Miller, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Ohio, echoed Mr. Gibbs’s frustration with redistricting. “Ohio is swingable but it doesn’t seem that way because we have this history of extreme gerrymandering,” she said.Redistricting is a potentially decisive factor in determining which party will control Congress. Both parties have sought to give themselves advantages in states across the country — giving rise to legal wrangling in several states, including New York, Maryland, Alabama and North Carolina.Michael Wines More

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      Fred Upton, House Republican Who Supported Impeachment, Will Retire

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      Mr. Upton is the fourth House Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald Trump to decline to run for re-election.Representative Fred Upton, a Michigan Republican who has served in the House for more than three decades, announced his retirement on Tuesday, becoming the fourth House Republican who voted to impeach former President Donald J. Trump to decline to run for re-election.Of the 10 House Republicans to vote for Mr. Trump’s impeachment last year, the others who have chosen retirement are Representatives Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio and John Katko of New York.“This is it for me,” Mr. Upton said in an emotional departure speech on the House floor, lamenting the divisiveness of politics today. “Hopefully civility and bipartisanship versus discord can rule and not rue the day.”Mr. Upton, whose long career included a stint as chairman of the powerful Energy and Commerce Committee, had seen his Western Michigan district redrawn after reapportionment, and he was facing a tough primary campaign against Representative Bill Huizenga, whom Mr. Trump has endorsed.In retiring, Mr. Upton invoked his early service in the Reagan administration, where he worked in the Office of Management and Budget. “Reagan worked both sides of the aisle to get things done, caring less about who got the credit,” Mr. Upton said. “And I made a promise that such a principle would be my guiding light.”He was followed immediately on the floor by a Democrat, Representative Debbie Dingell of Michigan, who called his retirement a “loss for this country.”“Fred and I always managed to disagree without vitriolic rhetoric,” she said, calling him a “best friend” to her late husband, former Representative John Dingell, who died in 2019. More

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      Judge Keeps New York’s New Electoral Map Intact for Now

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      The stay by an appellate judge puts on hold a lower-court ruling that New York’s newly drawn congressional and legislative districts were unconstitutional.A New York appellate judge on Monday hit the brakes on a sweeping lower-court decision that invalidated newly drawn legislative districts favorable to Democrats and threatened to throw the state’s election season into turmoil.Justice Stephen K. Lindley of New York’s Fourth Appellate Department in Rochester issued the temporary stay after state Democratic leaders formally contested the lower court’s opinion last week that the maps were unconstitutional and, in some cases, gerrymandered for partisan gain.He did not address the merits of the case but indicated that he hoped to expedite his own ruling on whether the lines were constitutional.“The appeal will be greatly accelerated for obvious reasons, and I anticipate that a decision could be rendered within the next three weeks, if not sooner,” Justice Lindley wrote in a note instructing both Democrats and the Republicans challenging the maps to attend a Thursday hearing.In the short term, the stay means that the maps approved by the Democrat-led Legislature in February, as well as the state’s June primary calendar, will remain in effect. But it remains to be seen whether the maps will survive the appeals process.What to Know About RedistrictingRedistricting, Explained: Here are some answers to your most pressing questions about the process that is reshaping American politics.Understand Gerrymandering: Can you gerrymander your party to power? Try to draw your own districts in this imaginary state.Analysis: For years, the congressional map favored Republicans over Democrats. But in 2022, the map is poised to be surprisingly fair.Killing Competition: The number of competitive districts is dropping, as both parties use redistricting to draw themselves into safe seats.Analysts generally believe the Appellate Division is more likely to defer to the Legislature’s prerogative to draw the maps and less likely to intercede in a way that would blow up this year’s elections calendar than was the lower court judge, Patrick F. McAllister, a State Supreme Court justice in rural Steuben County and a Republican.The outcome in New York has attracted intense national interest, with partisan control of three to four seats in the House of Representatives hanging in the balance at a time when the two parties are vying for the majority from coast to coast. The New York lines as currently construed promise to boost House Democrats while also safeguarding the party’s State Senate majority, prompting national Republicans to spend richly on the legal challenge.Inside New York, the tangled legal machinations have had a more immediate effect on candidates for office from both parties, who are watching the proceedings carefully.Before it was stayed, Justice McAllister’s decision had set campaigns racing to determine what districts — if any — they were actually running in. Candidates who had already spent a month gathering petitions to run in the newly drawn congressional, State Senate and Assembly districts faced the prospect that the lines would be erased, their costly work temporarily nullified and June’s primary elections postponed just days before the petitioning process was scheduled to end.“On the eve of the petitioning deadline, candidates — incumbents and insurgents alike — were thrown for a loop,” said Jerry H.​ Goldfeder, an elections lawyer at Stroock & Stroock & Lavan who advises Democratic candidates.He called it “a perfect example of why courts shouldn’t interfere with election procedures at the 11th hour.”Though Justice McAllister did not explicitly delay the primary, his order for lawmakers to redraw new district lines that could win bipartisan support almost certainly would have required the primary to be rescheduled.The ruling prompted the State Board of Elections to issue guidance late last week that prematurely said the decision had been stayed and advised candidates that “all other deadlines provided for by law are still in effect pending further court determinations and the petitions would still be due this week.”How U.S. Redistricting WorksCard 1 of 8What is redistricting? More

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      Sarah Palin Knows How to Get Attention. Can She Actually Win?

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      Endorsed by Donald Trump for Alaska’s lone House seat, the former vice-presidential candidate hopes she can mount a political comeback. But she’s not the phenomenon she once was.The last time Sarah Palin and Donald Trump shared a stage together, the former Alaska governor gave a meandering endorsement speech that displayed her inventiveness with the English language — and her instinctive connection to the Republican base.She spoke of “right wingin’, bitter clingin’, proud clingers of our guns, our God, and our religions and our Constitution” and railed against “squirmishes” abroad. It was 20 minutes of vintage Palinisms: “He’s going rogue left and right” — “No more pussy footin’ around!” — “Doggone right we’re angry!” — “us Joe six-packs.” BuzzFeed published the transcript in full, calling it “bizarre.”Beneath the malapropisms and the circumlocutions, though, Palin turned out to have a shrewder feel for Republican voters than those in the press who scorned her, and who underestimated him.Palin’s endorsement of Trump in January 2016 gave him credibility on the populist right at a crucial moment, though it didn’t put him over the top in Iowa, where Senator Ted Cruz of Texas won the caucuses that year. The move even briefly fueled speculation that the two might form a ticket — him the brash, unpredictable New York billionaire; her the snowmobile-drivin’, moose-huntin’ Mama Grizzly from Wasilla. Tabloid dynamite!Trump has now returned the favor, offering Palin his “Complete and Total Endorsement” in her race to succeed Representative Don Young, Alaska’s lone House member, who died on March 18.But six years after they shared that stage in Iowa, both Trump and Palin are somewhat diminished figures. He, of course, is a twice-impeached former president. And though he remains the Republican Party’s most powerful person, his endorsements don’t carry the punch they once did.Palin, meanwhile, has been left to lament, during her libel trial against The New York Times, how she lost her TV gigs and her national political platform. In October, the last time anyone tried to gauge her popularity in Alaska, Palin’s approval rating was just 31 percent, according to the Alaska pollster Ivan Moore.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Midterms Effect: Mr. Trump has become a party kingmaker, but his involvement in state races worries many Republicans.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.So the question must be asked: Can Donald Trump help Sarah Palin win?“I think she’s the favorite right now,” said Kristopher Knauss, a political consultant in Alaska. But that does not mean Palin is a lock.What’s going for herPalin enters the race with some significant advantages.She’ll have near-universal name recognition. She should be able to raise significant sums of money from small donors — a must, given how soon the June 11 primary will be held. She was a popular governor, though by the end of her tenure, her approval rating had slunk from the low 90s to the mid-50s. And the national interest in the race will lead to free media coverage that her opponents can’t match.Palin and Trump share much in common. She ran for governor in 2006 as an outsider taking on a corrupt political establishment. In 2008, as the vice-presidential running mate for Senator John McCain of Arizona, she pioneered the raucous style of political rallies that Trump would turn into the defining feature of his 2016 run. Many of his campaign themes were first hers: battling the media, railing at cultural elites, trashing Washington insiders.Like Trump, Palin parlayed her celebrity into a reality TV show — “Sarah Palin’s Alaska,” which was produced by Mark Burnett, the mastermind of “The Apprentice.” The show got decent ratings, but was canceled after just one season.The two saw each other as kindred spirits, their allies say. In 2011, when Palin was flirting with a presidential run, she visited New York and sat down with Trump and his wife for pizza at Famous Famiglia. (They shared “a pepperoni pizza, a sausage pizza and a meatball pizza,” according to an account at the time by our colleague Trip Gabriel.)Today, Palin is being represented by Michael Glassner, who was the chief operating officer of Trump’s 2020 campaign. The two go way back: Glassner worked with Palin on the McCain campaign, then was the chief of staff of Palin’s political action committee before Trump hired him as his national political director.But that was all long ago, and Palin is no longer a novelty — she’s a 58-year-old former governor who hasn’t held office in more than a decade, and whose star has faded considerably.Trump has backed Palin in her race to succeed Representative Don Young, Alaska’s lone House member, who died on March 18.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesWhat’s going against herPalin’s strong name recognition is unlikely to be decisive, said Mike Murphy, a former McCain adviser. Noting her high negative ratings, he said “Palin fatigue” could doom her chances among voters who revered Young and take his replacement seriously.“Crazy times deserve crazy politicians, so it’s not impossible that she wins,” Murphy said. “Though I would bet against it.”Palin will be competing in a huge field — 51 candidates, including Santa Claus.That’s partly by design. The voting system Alaska adopted in 2020 was meant to encourage a wide range of candidates to compete. Rather than begin with separate primary elections held by the major political parties, the race will start with one primary that is open to everyone who qualifies. The top four candidates then advance to a general election in which voters rank their favorites.The system was intended to discourage negative campaigning. Because voters’ second choices are factored into the results, candidates must be careful not to alienate voters who support their rivals. In the New York mayor’s race, this led some candidates to form alliances and campaign together. Does Palin have the discipline to play nice?“Ultimately, someone’s got to get to 50 percent,” said Moore, the pollster. “That’s tough to do when 56 percent don’t like you.”Moore said that in the fall, when he modeled Palin’s inclusion in a hypothetical four-way Senate general election between Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican incumbent; Kelly Tshibaka, the hard-right Republican challenger; and Elvi Gray-Jackson, a Democratic state lawmaker, Palin was eliminated in the first round.Alaska’s fierce independent streak could also hurt Palin’s chances. More than 60 percent of its voters are not registered members of either major political party, and Trump is not especially popular. According to Moore, 43 percent of Alaskans have a “very negative” opinion of the former president.“Alaskans don’t like people from ‘outside’ telling them how to vote,” said Dermot Cole, an author and political blogger in Alaska. For that reason, he said, Trump’s endorsement is unlikely to carry much weight.Why Palin would want to return to politics is a bit of a mystery. She never enjoyed being governor, according to emails published by a disgruntled former aide, and she always seemed to resent the bruising coverage she received from the national news media. Alaska political observers could not recall her participating in any local causes over the 13 years since she announced that she would not be finishing her term, either.That abrupt departure, in favor of cultivating her national celebrity status, could undermine whatever advantages her famous name and Trump’s endorsement have given her, several of the observers said.“When she quit, she lost a great deal of whatever support she had left,” Cole said.But Palin has always made her own choices. Announcing her resignation in July 2009, she explained that she had no intention to do the expected.“We’re fishermen,” she said. “We know that only dead fish go with the flow.”What to read tonightPresident Biden called Russian attacks on civilians in Bucha, a suburb of Ukraine’s capital, a “war crime.” And an analysis of satellite images by The Times refuted claims by Russia that the killings in Bucha had occurred after its soldiers had left the town. Read the latest on the war in Ukraine.Democrats’ calls for the Justice Department to take more aggressive action in the Jan. 6 investigation are putting pressure on Attorney General Merrick Garland, who has maintained a deliberative approach.A major report from a United Nations panel found that while nations have made some progress in moving away from fossil fuels, they need to move much faster to retain any hope of preventing a perilous future for the planet.As Republican activists aggressively pursue conservative social policies in state legislatures across the country, liberal states are taking defensive actions, our colleagues Shawn Hubler and Jill Cowan report. This flurry of action is intensifying the differences between life in liberal- and conservative-led parts of the country — and it’s a sign of the consequences when state governments are controlled increasingly by single parties.Thanks for reading. We’ll see you tomorrow.— Blake & LeahIs there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      These Days, ‘Help Wanted’ Has So Many Meanings

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      Gail Collins: Bret, let’s relax and talk about long-term goals that we totally do not share. For instance, how would you feel about raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour?Bret Stephens: Why not raise the standard of living for everyone by making the minimum wage $100? Just kidding. I think the correct figure is $0.Gail: If your goal is a self-supporting populace that doesn’t depend on government aid, you’ve got to make sure employers are shelling out at least minimal survival salaries. The current bottom line is $7.25 an hour. Nobody can live on that.Bret: I’m taking my $0 cue from a famous Times editorial from 1987, which made the case that “those at greatest risk from a higher minimum wage would be young, poor workers, who already face formidable barriers to getting and keeping jobs.” The editorial may be old but the economic logic is right. Raising the minimum wage is a well-intentioned idea that won’t help its intended beneficiaries. It will hurt them by giving companies like McDonald’s additional incentives to move toward even more automation.Tell me why I’m wrong.Gail: Well, I could quote an editorial from 2020 that said raising the minimum wage “ought to be a priority of economic policymakers ….”And you know, I was once the Times Opinion editor, and the editorial page does evolve in its outlook. Back when the Civil Rights Act passed in the 1960s, our editorial writers made fun of the idea of applying it to gender employment discrimination, theorizing that federal enforcers “may find it would have been better if Congress had just abolished sex itself” and warning it could lead to male Bunnies at the Playboy clubs.Bret: I’m sure we agree that The Times has been wrong about many things in the past — and might even be wrong about a thing or two in the present. I’m still not seeing how the economics have changed since the 1980s.Gail: A higher minimum wage might cause some employers to reduce the number of jobs, at least temporarily. But the danger there is always way overplayed, and those higher-paid minimum wage workers will be spending their new money to lift the economy.Bret: We are living through a period of deep labor shortages, especially in service industries, that allows workers to bargain for higher wages. That makes raising the minimum wage a faulty solution to a fading problem. But I see your point, and this is one of those issues on which conservatives and liberals will argue forever — or at least until automation and robots make it moot.Gail: Meanwhile, on a totally completely different subject, last week we missed the chance to converse about The Slap. Any lingering thoughts about Will Smith hitting Chris Rock at the Oscars?Bret: The truly nauseating part was the standing ovation Smith got for his interminable, self-pitying acceptance speech after hitting Rock. It’s a good reminder of why the American romance with Hollywood is coming to an end, as our colleague Ross Douthat reminded us recently. The best thing the Oscars could do now is to cancel itself.Gail: I have to confess, my husband and I are really into the Oscars. Not the program, which I acknowledge is frequently dreadful. But all the run-up publicity encourages us to catch some fine movies in the more obscure categories like foreign films. I’ll bet you haven’t seen “Lunana: A Yak in the Classroom.”Bret: Should I? The only movie I’ve seen in ages is “King Richard,” which, I have to admit, I liked.Gail: I truly hated Will Smith’s performance in “King Richard.”Bret: Really?Gail: Really, from the start. Don’t know why he turned me off, but acting-wise, I’d go with the yak from Lunana every time.As to The Slap, one of the many things that ticked me off was the whole gender aspect. If a female comedian made fun of an actor’s hair loss, would anybody expect his wife to come storming up and slug the offender? No, in part because a guy going semi-bald is regarded as normal. In part because physical violence is still sort of accepted for men.Bret: If the other Rock, Dwayne Johnson, had made the same joke in Chris Rock’s place, it would have been interesting to watch Smith try to slap him.Gail: Chris Rock’s joke was in bad taste the way a lot of the jokes you hear in public performances are in bad taste. It’s presumed that some people’s feelings may get hurt. Someday I’m going to make a list of all the age-related laugh lines comics in their 40s make about people who are older.Bret: Speaking of tasteless jokes, how about Madison Cawthorn?Gail: You mean the part when the young congressman from North Carolina claimed Washington was a wild place where people he admired invited him to orgies and snorted cocaine? I want to say right off the bat that Cawthorn’s behavior should not be a blot on the reputation of 26-year-olds in general.Bret: To fall afoul of House Republican leader Kevin McCarthy, as Cawthorn did, is like having George Carlin rebuke you for an excessively foul mouth.Gail: Cawthorn’s Republican colleagues in the House sure are ready to dump him, but Donald Trump seems to still be in his corner.Sort of amazing how consistent our former president is in gravitating to the worst politicians imaginable.Bret: If by some miracle Democrats hang on to one or both houses of Congress this November, it will be because of Cawthorn, Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and other would-be G.O.P. candidates trying to be just like them — the Radioactive Republicans. Trump’s embrace of these characters diminishes his chances of being renominated in 2024.In that respect, my money is on Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, winning the Republican nomination and facing the governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer, in the general, with Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado as their respective running mates. Placing any bets of your own?Gail: Impressed by your long-range thinking. If for some reason Trump doesn’t run again — which I can’t really imagine — DeSantis certainly has positioned himself to be next in line. By being as loathsome as possible. I find him completely appalling, but you’re mainly opposed to him as a Trump backer, right? How would you rate him as governor?Bret: I’m no fan of the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. But Democrats underestimate DeSantis at their peril. Florida is hopping, Miami feels like the hottest destination in the country and, barring some scandal or mishandled crisis, DeSantis is going to crush his most likely Democratic opponent, Charlie Crist, in his race for re-election this fall. He also has a genius for baiting liberals and the media and he’s figured out a way to triangulate between the evangelical, business and Trumpian wings of the Republican Party.Long and short of it: If Biden doesn’t dramatically turn his presidency around to boost the Democratic brand and Trump doesn’t torpedo DeSantis’s candidacy out of spite — two big ifs, I’ll admit — DeSantis is going to be awfully hard to defeat in a general election. How would you propose to beat him?Gail: As far as his current re-election race in Florida goes, this is one of those contests where the impartial experts, asked to comment on the opposition’s chances, say things like “There’s always hope.” Don’t think I’m going to invest any energy in dreaming of a DeSantis defeat this year. But definitely going to keep watching him warily on the national level. I’m kinda fascinated that right now he’s at war with Disney over the Magic Kingdom’s defense of gay rights. Who’d have thought?Bret: Strange to say this, but one of the few things Trump did to the G.O.P. that I liked was try to push it to embrace gay rights. So much for that.The larger question here is how far private companies like Disney should go to take politically divisive positions, especially when corporate executives are dealing with a more politically active work force. My general sense is that it’s a bad idea for them to do so — but an even worse idea for politicians to punish them for essentially making business decisions. If people are offended by Disney’s stances, they’re free to skip Disney World.Gail: Florida aside, it’s gonna be a heck of an election year. One of my own fascination points is Ohio, my old home state, where there seem to be more Republicans running for the Senate than squirrels in Central Park. Recently one of them tweeted that when it comes to Ukraine, “We’ve got our own problems.”Bret: You’re referring to J.D. Vance of “Hillbilly Elegy” fame, whose political views seem to spin about as fast as the revolving doors at Macy’s. The last time I saw him, right before the election in 2016, we were on Fareed Zakaria’s show agreeing that Donald Trump should lose. One of us stuck to his guns.Gail: Any contest you’re focused on at the moment? If you want a break until the end of March Madness, I would totally understand …Bret: The only contest that really matters to me right now is the one between Volodymyr Zelensky and Vladimir Putin, between democracy and darkness. On this, I’m happy that you and I and most Americans are on the same page — whatever people like Vance, Tucker Carlson and the rest of the mental wet-burp gang happen to think.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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      Sarah Palin Announces She’s Running for Congress in Alaska

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      Ms. Palin released a statement on Friday that she was entering the race to replace Representative Don Young, who died last month.Sarah Palin, a former Alaska governor and the Republican nominee for vice president in 2008, said Friday that she was entering the race for Alaska’s lone congressional seat, marking her return to national politics after she helped revive the anti-establishment rhetoric that has come to define the Republican Party.She will be joining a crowded field of nearly 40 candidates to fill the House seat left vacant by Representative Don Young, whose unexpected death last month has spurred one of the largest political shifts in the state in 50 years.Ms. Palin said in a statement that she planned to honor Mr. Young’s legacy, while painting a dystopian picture of a nation in crisis and criticizing the “radical left,” high gas prices, inflation and illegal immigration.“America is at a tipping point,” she said in the statement. “As I’ve watched the far left destroy the country, I knew I had to step up and join the fight.”Ms. Palin has suggested launching various campaigns for elected office several times in the years since August 2008, when Senator John McCain plucked her from obscurity and named her as his running mate on the Republican presidential ticket.But after a long hiatus from political life, Ms. Palin had hinted in recent weeks that she was more serious than she had been in the past about running for office again. In a recent appearance on Fox News with Sean Hannity, Ms. Palin said, “There is a time and a season for everything.”And she invoked former President Donald J. Trump as an inspiration. The two had shared a stage in 2016 when she endorsed him for president. “We need people like Donald Trump, who has nothing to lose. Like me,” she said.On the conservative cable network Newsmax, she did not rule out the possibility of running for Mr. Young’s seat last week, saying that she would consider it an honor. “If I were asked to serve in the House and take his place, I would be humbled and honored,” Ms. Palin told the network. “In a heartbeat, I would.”In her statement on Friday, Ms. Palin pointed to her legacy of service in Alaska, where she was first elected to the City Council in Wasilla three decades ago. She said she still lives in Wasilla and said her loyalty would remain with the state even if she was sent to Washington.Echoing the red-meat politics that have energized Republican voters, she said the nation needed leaders who would “combat the left’s socialist, big-government, America-last agenda.”Her decision to enter the race came as she has received national attention for suing The New York Times for libel.Ms. Palin claimed that The Times defamed her when it published a 2017 editorial erroneously linking her political rhetoric to a mass shooting. A jury threw out the suit, a day after the federal judge in the case indicated he would dismiss the claims if the jury ruled in her favor because her legal team had failed to meet the high legal standards for public figures who claim defamation. The Times, which acknowledged and corrected the error in question soon after it was published, has not lost a libel case in an American courtroom in at least 50 years.Mr. Young, 88, who was the longest-serving Republican in Congress and who was first elected in 1973, died on March 18. The scramble among potential candidates to fill his unexpired term started almost immediately. Friday was the deadline to file official paperwork, and the Alaska Division of Elections had received submissions from 37 candidates by Friday afternoon.A special election will be held on June 11. The top four candidates who get the most votes move ahead to the special general election on Aug. 16. The state will be using a unique “top four” system for the first time. The regular open primary for Mr. Young’s seat and the special general election are being held on the same day, a move that might lead to confusion.Ms. Palin will face a host of both far-right and establishment Republican rivals, including Nick Begich III, the Republican scion of Alaskan political royalty; State Senator Joshua Revak, an Iraq war veteran who previously worked for Mr. Young; and Tara Sweeney, who served in the Trump administration as assistant secretary of the interior for Indian affairs.“She certainly has a constituency,” Art Hackney, a consultant on Mr. Revak’s campaign, said of Ms. Palin, adding that “whoever wants to file” will have to “bring it on” to defeat Mr. Revak.Ms. Palin will also have some formidable progressive challengers, including Al Gross, a former orthopedic surgeon who ran unsuccessfully for Senate in 2020 and is running as an independent, and Christopher Constant, an openly gay Democrat who is a member of the Anchorage Assembly.Ms. Palin, who became one of only three women to run on a major party’s presidential ticket, had declined to seek the presidency in 2012, when several of the activists who would help Mr. Trump get elected tried to convince her to run against former President Barack Obama.Lately, she has been back on Fox News, which once employed her as a contributor for $1 million a year, laying the groundwork for her campaign. 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      Battleground Nevada

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      The state will help determine Senate control in this year’s midterm elections. Nevada, perhaps more than any other state, has showcased the potential for a more diverse America to move the country’s politics to the left. Rising numbers of Asian American and Latino residents have helped Democrats win the state in the past four presidential elections. The party also holds both of Nevada’s Senate seats.How Nevada’s population has changed More