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      Scalise and Jordan Seek House Speaker Backing as Trump Hangs Over Race

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      The two lawmakers sought support from members of their fractured party as the former president threatened to get involved in a potentially fierce struggle over who will lead the House.The two leading candidates to become the next Republican speaker of the House worked the phones and the halls of the Capitol on Thursday, vying for support from within their party’s fractured ranks as the chamber remained in a state of paralysis after the ouster of Representative Kevin McCarthy of California.Representatives Steve Scalise, the majority leader, and Jim Jordan, the Judiciary Committee chairman, had each landed more than a dozen endorsements by the afternoon as they raced toward a vote of Republicans tentatively scheduled for Tuesday. An election on the House floor could follow the next day, though the process could stretch much longer if no consensus can be reached.Far from the Capitol, former President Donald J. Trump, whose far-right acolytes in Congress helped lead the rebellion that has plunged the House into chaos, weighed in on what could become an epic struggle.Representative Troy Nehls of Texas wrote Thursday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he had spoken with Mr. Trump, and that he had said he was endorsing Mr. Jordan. “I believe Congress should listen to the leader of our party,” Mr. Nehls said. “I fully support Jim Jordan for Speaker of the House.”Mr. Jordan picked up an important G.O.P. backer and cleared a potential challenger from the field with the endorsement of Representative Byron Donalds of Florida, who had previously been exploring his own run for speaker, according to a person familiar with his calls to lawmakers. Mr. Donalds said on the social media site X that Mr. Jordan “has my full support to become the next Speaker of the House!”Both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan are faced with the difficult challenge of attempting to unite a fractious Republican conference that is reeling after Mr. McCarthy’s removal from the speakership.For Mr. Jordan, an Ohioan and co-founder of the ultraconservative House Freedom Caucus, the task will be to convince more mainstream Republicans that he can govern and not simply tear things down. He met on Thursday with members of the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-minded Republicans.For Mr. Scalise, a Louisianian who has won conference elections before as majority leader, the challenge will be to stay one step ahead of Mr. Jordan, and make better inroads with the right wing of the party.Both men are considered further to the right than Mr. McCarthy, a point Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who led the drive to oust Mr. McCarthy, has noted with a sense of satisfaction.“If it’s Speaker Jim Jordan or Speaker Steve Scalise, there will be very few conservatives in the country who don’t see that as a monumental upgrade over Speaker McCarthy,” Mr. Gaetz said on Newsmax.Casting a long shadow over the race is Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. presidential front-runner who holds heavy sway among congressional Republicans because of his strong standing with the party base, including many of their constituents.Some right-wing Republicans had been encouraging Mr. Trump to make a run for speaker himself, though the party’s current conference rules would block him from doing so because he is under multiple felony indictments and facing the possibility of significant prison time. Speaking Wednesday outside a Manhattan courthouse where he is facing a civil fraud case, Mr. Trump seemed to enjoy dangling the possibility of a run for speaker, telling reporters: “Lot of people have been calling me about speaker. All I can say is we’ll do whatever is best for the country and for the Republican Party.”“If I can help them during the process,” he added, “I’ll do it.”Back in the halls of the Congress, a serious race was taking shape.Mr. Scalise, who has been in leadership since 2014, has built relationships across the Republican conference. He has been quietly securing commitments through one-on-one calls with members.On such calls seeking support, Mr. Scalise has emphasized that he is second only to Mr. McCarthy in fund-raising prowess, and he has locked up a string of commitments from the south and the Midwest, according to a person familiar with his private calls, who described them on the condition of anonymity.“Not only is Steve a principled conservative, he has overcome adversity far beyond the infighting in our conference right now,” said Representative Ashley Hinson of Iowa, who endorsed Mr. Scalise after speaking with him.One clear point of contrast between Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan is their dueling positions on continued aid to Ukraine for its war against Russian aggression, which has become increasingly politicized and is now regarded by many Republicans as toxic.Mr. Jordan was one of 117 Republicans who voted last week against continuing a program to train and equip Ukrainian troops, while Mr. Scalise sided with 101 Republicans in supporting it.“Why should we be sending American tax dollars to Ukraine when we don’t even know what the goal is?” Mr. Jordan said Thursday on Fox News. “No one can tell me what the objective is.”Several Republicans said they were waiting to hear more from the candidates before deciding whom to support.Representative Marc Molinaro of New York said he had spoken with both Mr. Scalise and Mr. Jordan by phone.“There really wasn’t any one person in Congress who worked harder to help me get to Congress or to earn my support than Kevin McCarthy,” Mr. Molinaro said.“We now have individuals who have a week,” he added. “And so I’m going to observe, I’m going to listen, and I’m going to demand that members like me and the people we represent have a seat at the table, and then make a decision.”Robert Jimison More

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      Donor Who Backed DeSantis Re-election Is ‘Still on the Sidelines’ in 2024

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      The hedge fund billionaire Kenneth Griffin supported Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign in Florida last year, but has not backed a Republican for president.Kenneth Griffin, a billionaire hedge-fund executive and major Republican donor who has made it clear that he wants the party to move on from former President Donald J. Trump, still has yet to settle on an alternative in the primary — even as time dwindles for Mr. Trump’s opponents to cut into his enormous lead before voting begins in January.Mr. Griffin’s continued absence from the primary fight, which he confirmed in an interview with CNBC that was broadcast on Monday night, points to a deep dissatisfaction among some anti-Trump Republican megadonors with their choices in the race.It is also a particular snub to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. When Mr. DeSantis was up for re-election as governor last year, Mr. Griffin supported him to the tune of $5 million, but he has expressed dissatisfaction with his presidential campaign.“I don’t know his strategy,” he told CNBC, in a major departure from his assertion last year that the country would be “well served” if Mr. DeSantis were president. “It’s not clear to me what voter base he is intending to appeal to.”Zia Ahmed, a spokesman for Mr. Griffin’s company, Citadel, confirmed those remarks but emphasized to The New York Times that Mr. Griffin “never said who he’s supporting or not supporting in 2024.”“I’m still on the sidelines,” Mr. Griffin said in the CNBC interview. He added: “Look, if I had my dream, we’d have a great Republican candidate in the primary who was younger, of a different generation, with a different tone for America.”That description might once have seemed to refer to Mr. DeSantis, who is 45 and has tried to present himself as someone who can restyle the Republican message and win back the swing voters turned off by Mr. Trump.But Mr. DeSantis has leaned hard into the cultural grievances that animate the Republican base, denouncing transgender rights and the teaching of race in schools, among other things, while echoing or trying to one-up much of Mr. Trump’s rhetoric on issues like immigration.Polls show him badly trailing Mr. Trump, at times by dozens of percentage points.People close to Mr. Griffin have described him as particularly upset by Mr. DeSantis’s characterization of the Russian invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute,” and by the six-week abortion ban he signed in Florida.Mr. Griffin spent more than $100 million in the 2022 midterm cycle, and his largess could make a big difference for a Trump opponent — if, or when, he settles on one. More

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      Kristi Noem, Likely to Endorse Trump, Kicks Off Fight to Be His V.P.

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      At a rally on Friday, Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota threw her support behind the former president, whose large lead in polls has stirred speculation about the No. 2 job.Donald J. Trump’s resilience in polls of the Republican presidential primary field is shifting attention to what, for the moment at least, is the only truly competitive national race for 2024: the contest to be his running mate.Speculation over Mr. Trump’s potential vice president — a decision that would rest solely with him — has remained an undercurrent in the primary race as his rivals for the nomination, including former Gov. Nikki Haley and Senator Tim Scott, a pair of South Carolina Republicans, regularly distance themselves from questions about their possible interest in the No. 2 job.One Republican welcoming those questions has been Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota. She isn’t running for the White House, and she recently told Fox News that “of course” she would consider joining a ticket with Mr. Trump.Ms. Noem, 51, fueled further vice-presidential conjecture by endorsing the former president at a rally on Friday evening in her home state.“Tonight, Mr. President, my message is clear: It is an honor to have you with us in South Dakota,” Ms. Noem said in front of a crowd of thousands in Rapid City. “You made America great again once. Let’s do it again.”Mr. Trump took the stage, briefly hugging Ms. Noem and exchanging words. Then, for a quick second, a graphic reading “TRUMP NOEM 2024” flashed on the giant screen above the stage.“Kristi is a warrior for American values,” Mr. Trump said, going on to compliment her handling of the coronavirus pandemic and her policies in South Dakota.“I get endorsements, some good, some bad,” he said. “Some don’t mean anything. Hers means a lot.”While South Dakota holds little sway in the Republican presidential primary contest — and even less in a general election — Ms. Noem’s endorsement is noteworthy, because only eight of the nation’s 26 Republican governors have publicly picked sides so far.Beyond Ms. Noem, just three — Mike Dunleavy of Alaska, Jim Justice of West Virginia and Henry McMaster of South Carolina — have backed Mr. Trump. Two others — Ron DeSantis of Florida and Doug Burgum of North Dakota — are running against him.“Everybody should consider it,” Ms. Noem told Fox News about a potential vice-presidential slot. “If President Trump is going to be back in the White House, I’d do all I can to help him be successful.”Still, Mr. Trump is said to be giving little direct thought to a running mate.Some close to the former president said that was most likely rooted in superstition that such consideration would jeopardize his own nomination. Others said he had devalued the position, viewing it as little more than a White House staff position that carries little political sway with voters.Mr. Trump raised eyebrows among some associates with private, offhand comments that Mr. Scott had not received much coverage for his performance during the first Republican presidential debate. Mr. Scott has been mentioned as a potential vice-presidential pick even though he is currently running against Mr. Trump, who didn’t participate in his party’s first debate.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said the vice-presidential speculation showed that “everyone knows President Trump will be the nominee and he continues to dominate every single poll.”Along with Mr. Scott, other Republican candidates mentioned as potential running mates for Mr. Trump have included Ms. Haley and the businessman Vivek Ramaswamy. Mr. Trump’s two-time running mate, former Vice President Mike Pence, has split with the former president over the 2020 election results. This week, he cast Mr. Trump’s populism as “a road to ruin” for the party.In a radio interview this week, Mr. Trump told Hugh Hewitt, a conservative talk show host, that he was unlikely to make an early decision on a vice president — brushing aside the idea that his running mate could help campaign next spring when the former president is facing multiple criminal trials.“There’s never been a vice president that got a president elected, because it doesn’t work that way,” Mr. Trump said. “It sounds good and everything, but the president gets himself elected.”Mr. Trump endorsed Ms. Noem for governor in 2018, and she was an ardent ally during his presidency. When she hosted him in 2020, her laudatory public remarks prompted speculation that she was hoping to replace Mr. Pence on the Republican ticket.Ms. Noem changed her tune somewhat after Republicans fell short of expectations in last year’s midterm elections. In an interview with The New York Times at the time, Ms. Noem — who was frequently cited as a potential 2024 candidate — floated the thought that she did not believe Mr. Trump offered “the best chance” for Republicans.Still, Ms. Noem stayed out of a crowded Republican primary in which Mr. Trump is far and away the front-runner, and she has more recently voiced support for him in cable news appearances.On Thursday, she told the conservative news channel Newsmax that she would “in a heartbeat” consider being Mr. Trump’s running mate if asked.Maggie Haberman More

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      Trump Is Said to Have Told Blake Masters He’d Lose Senate Primary to Kari Lake

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      Neither potential candidate has entered the race to unseat Senator Kyrsten Sinema in Arizona.Former President Donald J. Trump on Sunday called Blake Masters, the failed Arizona Senate candidate considering a second run next year, and told him he didn’t think Mr. Masters could win a primary race against Kari Lake, the former news anchor who ran unsuccessfully for governor last year, according to two people briefed on the conversation.Mr. Trump’s delivery of this blunt political assessment — which could indicate that Mr. Trump may endorse Ms. Lake if she has a relatively open path to the nomination — is at odds with Mr. Trump’s posture so far this political cycle, in which he has shown more restraint in endorsing candidates than he had in the 2022 midterms.Mr. Trump’s call on Sunday came days after a report that Mr. Masters, a 37-year-old venture capitalist, was preparing to make a second run for the Senate in the swing state after his loss to Senator Mark Kelly, the Democratic incumbent, in 2022.Ms. Lake, who lost a bitter contest with Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, is looking at announcing a Senate campaign in the first half of October, two people familiar with the matter said. The race to unseat Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat who last year became an independent, is expected to be a crowded one in a state where the Republican Party is fractured.Last year, Mr. Trump endorsed both Mr. Masters, a political newcomer and an anti-immigration hard-liner who has close ties to the populist New Right, and Ms. Lake, who embraced Mr. Trump’s false claims of a stolen election with particular intensity.Mr. Masters parlayed Mr. Trump’s endorsement and around $15 million from the billionaire Peter Thiel into a victory in a hard-fought Republican primary. At the time, Republican leaders resented Mr. Trump’s intervention, believing he had propped up a weak candidate.Mr. Trump went on an endorsement spree ahead of the 2022 midterms, backing several candidates who won their primaries only to go on to lose what Republican leaders considered to be winnable Senate races, including Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania, the former football star Herschel Walker in Georgia and Mr. Masters.By contrast, so far in this cycle, Mr. Trump, the dominant front-runner for the G.O.P. presidential nomination, has endorsed only one Republican Senate candidate who isn’t an incumbent, and it was a safe choice: Representative Jim Banks of Indiana, who is backed by the Republican establishment and is regarded as a lock for that seat.Mr. Trump’s comparative caution is by design and serves not only his own interests but also those of the same Republican leaders who despaired of his interventions in 2022 midterm primaries.A spokesman for Mr. Trump, Steven Cheung, said he would not comment on any private conversations “that the president may or may not have had.” Mr. Masters did not respond to a request for comment.The call between the former president and Mr. Masters was described by two people familiar with it who insisted on anonymity because they weren’t authorized to discuss the private conversation. One of the people said Mr. Trump had not definitively ruled out supporting Mr. Masters’s candidacy and that in conversations with others, Mr. Trump had left open the possibility that Ms. Lake might not run.In a statement shared by an aide, Ms. Lake said, “I am strongly considering getting in the race and will be making my final decision in the coming weeks,” and cast herself as someone who would be loyal to Mr. Trump in the Senate. Sheriff Mark Lamb of Pinal County is already in the race.A person close to Mr. Masters who was not authorized to speak publicly stressed that Mr. Masters “believes the party needs a candidate with a proven ability to fund-raise and campaign and is prepared to run in the absence of such a candidate.”Mr. Masters has told associates that he thinks another “bloody” primary would hurt the party’s chances of winning the seat — and that a battle against Ms. Lake would surely be bloody, according to the person close to him. Mr. Masters has also privately questioned whether Ms. Lake will run, that person said.The person said Mr. Masters had seriously considered announcing his candidacy shortly after Labor Day but that no plans were set.Mr. Trump’s skepticism about Mr. Masters long predates their weekend conversation. The former president has told associates he thinks Mr. Masters was a “bad candidate” in 2022, according to two people who have spoken to the former president.Among Mr. Trump’s complaints about Mr. Masters was that he had tempered some of his comments related to Mr. Trump’s false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from him. When Mr. Masters said in a debate in October 2022 that he hadn’t seen evidence of widespread fraud in the state, Mr. Trump called him, in a moment captured by a Fox News camera.“If you want to get across the line, you’ve got to go stronger on that one thing,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Masters. “That was the one thing, a lot of complaints about it.” Then he mentioned Ms. Lake, then the Republican nominee for governor.“Look at Kari — Kari’s winning with very little money,” Mr. Trump said. “And if they say, ‘How is your family?’ She says, ‘The election was rigged and stolen.’ You’ll lose if you go soft. You’re going to lose that base.”Regardless of Mr. Trump’s motivations, his more cautious approach to endorsements has been appreciated by party leaders. Mr. Trump has told several people that he made too many endorsements in the 2022 midterms — including some for people who have yet to endorse him in his own race for president — and that he plans to be less involved this time, according to two people with direct knowledge of his comments.Mr. Trump has established a strong relationship with Senator Steve Daines of Montana, the chair of the Senate Republicans’ campaign arm. Mr. Daines’s endorsement of Mr. Trump for president months ago was a strategic move: It gave him entree with the Republican Party’s most influential figure in the hopes of getting him to support the committee’s favored candidates, or at least to refrain from attacking them.To that end, Mr. Trump has quietly helped Mr. Daines by telling two House Republicans running for Senate — Representatives Matt Rosendale of Montana and Alex Mooney of West Virginia — that he would not endorse them in Senate primaries in their states. In West Virginia, Mr. Daines has issued a statement supportive of a different candidate: the state’s governor, Jim Justice.A person with direct knowledge confirmed those conversations, adding that part of Mr. Trump’s motivation for delivering the messages was his anger at the anti-tax Club for Growth, a one-time ally that more recently has attacked him. The Club for Growth is spending money to support Mr. Mooney and potentially could do the same for Mr. Rosendale. Mr. Trump’s conversations with Mr. Rosendale and Mr. Mooney were first reported by CNN.A spokesman for Mr. Rosendale could not be reached for comment.In a statement attacking Mr. Justice as part of the “big-spending D.C. swamp uniparty,” Mr. Mooney’s campaign manager, John Findlay, noted that “the congressman has endorsed President Trump and would of course like to have his endorsement again.” He added, “As of now, President Trump has chosen to stay neutral.” More

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      Matt DePerno, Trump Meddler in Michigan, Is Charged in Election Breach

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      A key figure in a multistate effort to overturn the 2020 election, Mr. DePerno lost his race for Michigan attorney general in 2022. He later finished second to lead the state’s Republican Party.Matthew DePerno, a key orchestrator of efforts to help former President Donald J. Trump try to overturn the 2020 election in Michigan and an unsuccessful candidate for state attorney general last year, was arraigned on four felony charges on Tuesday, according to documents released by D.J. Hilson, the special prosecutor handling the investigation.The charges against Mr. DePerno, which include undue possession of a voting machine and a conspiracy to gain unauthorized access to a computer or computer system, come after a nearly yearlong investigation in one of the battleground states that cemented the election of Joseph R. Biden Jr. as president.Former State Representative Daire Rendon was also charged with two crimes, including a conspiracy to illegally obtain a voting machine and false pretenses.Both Mr. DePerno and Ms. Rendon were arraigned remotely on Tuesday before Chief Judge Jeffery Matis, according to Richard Lynch, the court administrator for Oakland County’s Sixth Circuit, and remained free on bond.The charges were first reported by The Detroit News.Mr. DePerno denied any wrongdoing and said that his efforts “uncovered significant security flaws” in a statement from his lawyer, Paul Stablein.“He maintains his innocence and firmly believes that these charges are not based upon any actual truth and are motivated primarily by politics rather than evidence,” Mr. Stablein said.The criminal inquiry in Michigan has largely been overshadowed by developments in Georgia, where a grand jury is weighing charges against Mr. Trump for trying to subvert the election, but both are part of the ongoing reckoning over the conspiracy theories about election machines promoted by Mr. Trump and his allies.The efforts to legitimize the falsehoods and conspiracy theories promoted widely by Mr. Trump and his allies continued long after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and after Mr. Biden took office. In Arizona, such efforts included the discredited election audit of Maricopa County led by Republicans in the state legislature.In a statement, Mr. Hilson said, “Although our office made no recommendations to the grand jury as to whether an indictment should be issued or not, we support the grand jury’s decision and we will prosecute each of the cases as they have directed in the sole interests of justice.”Dana Nessel, Michigan’s attorney general and a Democrat who went on to defeat Mr. DePerno in the November election, has not been involved in the investigation since the appointment of a special prosecutor in August last year. In a statement on Tuesday, Ms. Nessel said that the allegations “caused undeniable harm to our democracy” and issued a warning for the future.“The 2024 presidential election will soon be upon us. The lies espoused by attorneys involved in this matter, and those who worked in concert with them across the nation, wreaked havoc and sowed distrust within our democratic institutions and processes,” Ms. Nessel said. “We hope for swift justice in the courts.”The charges stemmed from a bizarre plot hatched by a group of conservative activists in early 2021 to pick apart voting machines in at least three Michigan counties, in some cases taking them to hotels and Airbnb rentals as they hunted for evidence of election fraud.In the weeks after the 2020 election, he drew widespread attention and the admiration of Mr. Trump when he filed a lawsuit challenging the vote tallies in Antrim County, a rural area in Northern Michigan where a minor clerical error fueled conspiracy theories.He falsely claimed that voting machines there had been rigged, a premise that was rejected as “idiotic” by William P. Barr, an attorney general under Mr. Trump, and “demonstrably false” by Republicans in the Michigan Senate.Mr. Hilson, the prosecutor in Muskegon County appointed as special prosecutor, had initially delayed bringing charges, asking a state judge to determine whether it was against state law to take possession of a voting machine without the secretary of state’s permission or a court order. A judge determined last month that doing so was against the law, clearing the way for charges.Democrats swept the governor’s race and other statewide contests last fall, in addition to flipping the full Legislature for the first time in decades. Mr. DePerno, who was endorsed by Mr. Trump, lost the attorney general’s race by eight percentage points.This year, Mr. DePerno had been a front-runner to lead the Michigan Republican Party after its disappointing showing in last year’s midterm election, but he finished second to another election-denier: Kristina Karamo.In his campaign to lead the G.O.P. in Michigan, Mr. DePerno had vowed to pack the party’s leadership ranks with Trump loyalists, close primaries to just Republicans and ratchet up the distribution of absentee ballot applications to party members — despite what he said was lingering opposition to voting by mail within the party’s ranks.His candidacy was supported by Mike Lindell, the MyPillow chief executive who has spread conspiracy theories about election fraud and appeared at a fund-raising reception for Mr. DePerno in Lansing on the night before the chairmanship vote.Mr. DePerno lost to Ms. Karamo after three rounds of balloting at the state party convention, a process that was slowed for several hours by the use of paper ballots and hand counting.Danny Hakim More

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      Trump Seeks UAW Endorsement as the Union Wavers on Backing Biden

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      A video from the former president attacked electric vehicles, predicting the demise of the American automotive industry.Donald J. Trump, seeing an opening with organized labor, appealed on Thursday for an endorsement from the United Auto Workers for his White House bid and said only his return to the presidency could save the automotive industry from President Biden’s “ridiculous Green New Deal crusade.”Mr. Trump’s apocalyptic vision of the state of the American auto industry does not comport with the reality of an auto sector that has steadily gained jobs over the past three years. But there has been friction between the White House and the new leadership of the old-line industrial auto union.The United Auto Workers, which has a record of backing Democratic candidates for president, including Mr. Biden, has been angered with the Biden administration for pumping tax money into nonunion electric vehicle suppliers, and has withheld its endorsement, even as most labor unions have rushed to back Mr. Biden’s re-election. The U.A.W.’s new president, Shawn Fain, met with Mr. Biden in the White House on Wednesday as contract talks with the Big Three automakers heat up over electric vehicle parts suppliers.In a video on Thursday, Mr. Trump predicted the demise of American auto manufacturing and the “slaughter” of 117,000 auto jobs. “I hope United Auto Workers is listening to this because I think you’d better endorse Trump,” he said. He explicitly warned that Mr. Biden’s policies would cost jobs in the key swing state of Michigan, as well as the more reliably Republican states of Ohio and Indiana.The auto industry has actually gained jobs steadily since Mr. Trump left office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Employment among auto manufacturers and their parts suppliers reached 1,071,600 in June, up 129,000 since December 2020, the last full month of Mr. Trump’s presidency.Mr. Trump’s insistence that electric vehicles are piling up unsold on car lots contradicts the industry’s own view of its inventory.“We would assert that demand for traditional vehicles and for electric vehicles is strong,” said Matt Blunt, a former Republican governor of Missouri, now president of the American Automotive Policy Council, the domestic auto industry’s trade association in Washington. “This is a time of dramatic transition, but the U.S. industry is well positioned.”But the tension between the U.A.W. and the Biden administration is real. It takes fewer workers to assemble an electric vehicle than one with an internal combustion engine. That has made organizing parts suppliers, especially battery makers, an imperative of the union’s insurgent new leadership.Yet much of the new battery investment prompted in part by Mr. Biden’s climate change policies and infrastructure law is landing in the union-resistant Southeast, especially Georgia, a vital battleground state in the 2024 election. That state has had more than 40 electric vehicle-related projects introduced since 2020, promising investments worth $22.7 billion and the creation of 28,400 jobs.Mr. Biden was at Philadelphia’s shipyard on Thursday, talking up new rules attached to his climate change law intended to help union apprenticeship programs vault workers into the middle class without a college degree.“A lot of my friends in organized labor know, when I think climate, I think jobs,” he said. “I think union jobs.”But Mr. Trump, looking beyond the Republican primaries to a rematch with Mr. Biden, continues to aim for the vote of union workers, if not their leaders. More

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      Key Environmentalists Back Biden, Despite Broken Oil Promises

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      Four major environmental groups are endorsing President Biden’s re-election bid, but some climate activists say his approval of drilling projects has been a betrayal.Four of the country’s largest environmental organizations said they are endorsing President Biden’s bid for re-election, despite anger from activists over his approval of a string of fossil fuel projects, including an enormous oil drilling plan in Alaska and a natural gas pipeline from West Virginia through Virginia.The League of Conservation Voters, the Sierra Club, the Natural Resources Defense Council and NextGen America said they were setting aside their concerns over those projects — and the planet-warming emissions they will release.The endorsements are some of the earliest by major environmental groups in a presidential contest. It is also the first time the four groups have made a joint endorsement.In lining up behind the president more than 16 months before the election, some advocates said they hoped to remind Democratic voters that Mr. Biden had enacted the biggest climate legislation in U.S. history, pouring at least $370 billion into clean energy and electric vehicles. His administration has also proposed strict regulations on pollution from automobiles, trucks and power plants that are designed to slash the nation’s emissions to their lowest levels in decades.“This is an administration that has done more to advance climate solutions than any by far,” said Tiernan Sittenfeld, the senior vice president of government affairs for the League of Conservation Voters.The joint endorsement was announced Wednesday night at the League’s annual dinner event in Washington, where Mr. Biden gave remarks showcasing his environmental record. He is expected to pick up another endorsement, from the A.F.L.-C.I.O., at a labor rally in Philadelphia on Saturday.“Certainly we don’t agree with every decision that they’ve made, but on balance this administration has done far more than any in history,” Ms. Sittenfeld said. She said the groups intend to recruit members to raise money for Mr. Biden’s campaign, participate in phone banks and attend rallies, particularly in battleground states.Mr. Biden campaigned in 2020 on the most ambitious climate agenda of any candidate, promising to slash U.S. emissions roughly in half this decade. Young voters, who surveys show are particularly concerned about global warming, turned out in force during that election. Half of eligible voters aged 18 to 29 cast ballots in that election, one of the highest rates of participation since the voting age was lowered to 18, according to the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement at Tufts University.The landmark climate law Mr. Biden signed last year is projected to reduce America’s climate-warming carbon dioxide emissions by up to one billion tons in 2030, and proposed regulations could eliminate as much as 15 billion tons of carbon dioxide by 2055.But Mr. Biden also promised “no more drilling on federal lands, period. Period, period, period.”Despite that pledge, he has agreed to green-light a drilling project known as Willow on pristine federal land in Alaska and mandated the sale of offshore drilling leases as part of a deal to pass the climate bill. During negotiations with Republicans on the debt ceiling last month, Mr. Biden agreed to expedite the $6.6 billion Mountain Valley Pipeline, intended to carry natural gas about 300 miles from the Marcellus shale fields in West Virginia through Virginia to the North Carolina line. Environmental activists have been fighting that project for nearly a decade.For many young climate activists, it was the final straw.“You cannot honor the president and call him a climate champion when he is actively approving new fossil fuel projects,” said Michael Greenberg, president of Climate Defiance, a nonprofit group that has been disrupting events featuring Biden administration officials and other Democrats.Climate Defiance members intended to protest outside the League of Conservation Voters dinner on Wednesday night, Mr. Greenberg said.At a demonstration against the Mountain Valley Pipeline in front of the White House last week, Alice Hu, 25, said Mr. Biden’s climate legacy has been undercut by his approval of oil and gas development. As smoke from hundreds of Canadian wildfires hung in the air, Ms. Hu said the president needed to take on the fossil fuel industry in order to get her vote.“If he wants to count on progressive votes, if he wants to count on youth votes, he needs to stop being a climate villain,” she said.Cristina Tzintzun Ramirez, president of NextGen America, which is focused on young voters’ participation, said her group hoped to counter that dissent by endorsing Mr. Biden now. She noted that since Mr. Biden was elected in 2020, 17 million people have reached voting age.“We know we need to spend the time and money to tell young people about why their vote still matters, and that’s why we’re doing this endorsement so early.,” she said.The front-runner in the 2024 Republican field, former President Donald J. Trump, has attacked Mr. Biden’s climate policies, mocked climate science and championed the production of the fossil fuels chiefly responsible for warming the planet.Geoff Garin, a Democratic strategist and pollster, said young, climate-minded voters are going to be critical to Mr. Biden’s re-election. But he also argued that while young people want to see the president do more to tackle climate change, there is little evidence that those angry over Willow or the Mountain Valley Pipeline will have much influence.Still, Mr. Garin said, the Biden campaign needs to be better at communicating his climate achievements. “For Biden, what he’s dealing with young voters is a lack of recognition of what he’s done rather than hostility to any particular decision or policy,” he said. More

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      Erdogan Is Endorsed by Sinan Ogan

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      The support of Sinan Ogan gives the Turkish president a boost as he takes on the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu.The candidate who came in third in Turkey’s presidential election last week announced on Monday that he was endorsing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the runoff vote on Sunday, granting Mr. Erdogan an additional boost against his remaining challenger.Mr. Erdogan, the dominant figure in Turkish politics for 20 years, appears to have an edge in the runoff, whose victor will shape Turkey’s domestic and foreign policies for the next five years. Throughout the campaign, Mr. Erdogan aimed to link himself in voters’ minds with the image of a strong Turkey, with expanding military might and geopolitical clout.Although most polls in the run-up to the initial vote on May 14 showed Mr. Erdogan trailing his main challenger, the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, the president overcame voter anger at high inflation and frustration with the government’s initially slow response to catastrophic earthquakes in February to win 49.5 percent of the vote.Mr. Kilicdaroglu, the joint candidate of a coalition of six opposition parties that came together to try to unseat Mr. Erdogan, won 44.9 percent.In his campaign, Mr. Kilicdaroglu vowed to undo Mr. Erdogan’s legacy, which he said had damaged the economy and pushed the country away from democracy and toward one-man rule.The third-place candidate, Sinan Ogan, is a far-right nationalist who defied expectations to win 5.2 percent of the vote, preventing either of the top contenders from winning the simple majority that would have granted instant victory.In an interview with The New York Times after the first-round results were released last week, Mr. Ogan said he was negotiating with figures on both sides of the political divide to decide whom to endorse for the runoff.Sinan Ogan, who came in third in the first round of presidential voting in Turkey, with supporters in Ankara this month.Burhan Ozbilici/Associated PressHe said he was seeking to ensure that the winning candidate adopts nationalist causes, including a scheduled plan to deport millions of refugees and a refusal to cooperate with pro-Kurdish and hard-line Islamist parties that he considers connected to terrorism.In exchange for his endorsement, Mr. Ogan said he wanted a senior post in the new administration, such as vice president.But it remains unclear whether his support will deliver many voters. Mr. Ogan has no significant party apparatus to mobilize his backers, and in the eight days since the election, his hard-right electoral alliance has broken apart.Political analysts said that many voters who chose him in the first round probably did so to protest the top two contenders and so might not vote at all in the runoff.Mr. Erdogan met with Mr. Ogan on Friday, but neither man released details of what was discussed. That same day, Mr. Erdogan said in an interview with CNN that he did not want to bargain with Mr. Ogan.“I am not a person who likes to negotiate in such a manner,” Mr. Erdogan said. “It will be the people who are the kingmakers.”In announcing his endorsement of Mr. Erdogan at a news conference on Monday, Mr. Ogan said nothing of any agreement the men had reached but characterized his impact on the election as a victory for far-right causes.“We uplifted Turkish nationalists to a key role,” he said, listing the major issues facing Turkey as refugees, earthquake preparedness, the economy and the fight against terrorism.“We recommend that those who belittle our voters watch our work more closely,” he said, apparently referring to a change in rhetoric by the opposition after far-right figures such as himself did better in the election than expected. More