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      Nikki Haley’s Views on Social Security

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      More from our inbox:A Climate Protest at the OperaMore Trump Coverage? Brian Snyder/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Haley Is Coming for Your Retirement,” by Paul Krugman (column, Nov. 28):Mr. Krugman is right in pointing out the inequality connected to proposals to raise the age at which one becomes eligible for Social Security. As he points out, the proposals are, “in effect, saying that the aging janitors must keep working (or be cast into extreme poverty) because rich bankers are living longer.”But it’s even worse than that. The problem of an impending shortfall of the Social Security Trust Fund is in significant part a consequence of our rising economic inequality. High-income people pay a smaller share of their income into Social Security because salary over $160,200 — the so-called “tax max” — is not subject to the Social Security tax.Also, there is no Social Security tax on income from capital (including dividends, interest, capital gains and rents), which tends to go to wealthy people. Consequently, as a larger and larger part of our national income goes to the rich, the share collected by the Social Security tax declines.The solution is not hard to envision: Raise the “tax max” and tax income from capital. Better yet, adopt a set of policies that would move us toward a more equal distribution of income.Arthur MacEwanCambridge, Mass.The writer is professor emeritus of economics at the University of Massachusetts Boston.To the Editor:As a member of Gen Z, I commend Nikki Haley for suggesting ideas to keep Social Security solvent. Raising the retirement age is not a pleasant thought, but tough times require tough decisions. Our national debt is at a record high, and interest repayments are reaching worrying levels. Changes have to be made if the country’s finances are to stay healthy. Numbers don’t lie.I, for one, do not expect to ever be able to collect Social Security, despite having paid 6.2 percent of my income into it over my entire working life. I would rather get rid of the tax altogether than continue to pretend that Social Security will still be around when I retire.I have absolutely zero faith that members of Congress will fix this problem; they have been kicking this can down the road for longer than I’ve been alive.Eric FuquaAtlantaTo the Editor:Paul Krugman’s piece on Nikki Haley makes it quite clear that she is far from the perfect candidate, but what it does not address is the critical role that she may play.The Economist recently described Donald Trump as the gravest danger to the world in 2024, and considering viable alternatives, apart from Nikki Haley, there is only one 81-year-old man with major failings of his own standing in Donald Trump’s way.Even with all her shortcomings, there are strong reasons to support Nikki Haley, as she may be best positioned to save our democracy and the world from Donald Trump.Jon LandauPhiladelphiaA Climate Protest at the OperaThe Metropolitan Opera House, center, at Lincoln Center.Kathy Willens/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Climate Protesters Interrupt Met Performance of Wagner’s ‘Tannhäuser’” (news article, nytimes.com, Dec. 1):The recent climate protest at the opera made my heart sink.I’m a climate activist. I’ve marched, I’ve lobbied, I’ve contacted legislators. I’m co-leader of a local chapter of Citizens’ Climate Lobby, a grass-roots organization that believes that effective change will come about through respectful dialogue — and the sheer force of numbers.I’m also a professional singer and an operagoer. And I cringe when I see protesters disrupt the arts to make their point. The very people who might be inclined to help contribute to the urgent cause of fighting global warming may well be sitting in that opera house. But these protesters chose to alienate them. How in the world is that productive?The most effective path toward change is to work with others, not against them. We need dedicated, respectful activists who do their work by finding common ground and then gently but insistently nudging all of us forward.What we don’t need is this kind of spectacle, which gives the rest of us climate activists a bad name, and serves as an affront to the music and art we all need to inspire us in a troubled world.Francesca Huemer KellyHighland Park, Ill.More Trump Coverage?For years, President Biden and Democrats have been happy to mostly ignore Donald J. Trump. But now their thinking appears to be changing as the 2024 election season begins to ramp up.Sophie Park for The New York Times, Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Democrats Want Trump Plastered All Over the News” (news article, Nov. 22):How soon we forget. Think back to Wednesday morning, Nov. 9, 2016. Whether you supported and voted for Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, you were likely shocked when you heard the final results.Now, Democrats are hoping that heavy media coverage of Mr. Trump, assuming he is the nominee, will remind Americans of his flawed character, his lies, his legal troubles and his hate-filled rhetoric, and this will repel them.But back in 2015 and 2016, Mr. Trump was far from invisible, enjoying plenty of media coverage: as a failed TV star and businessman, as a clown and an entertainer, not to be taken seriously. The polls at the time were suggesting that Mrs. Clinton was the heavy favorite, so many Americans either stayed home or voted for Mr. Trump as a joke or an anti-Hillary statement.Why would we think next year’s coverage won’t still focus on Mr. Trump’s entertainment value as much as on his lies, his threats and his crimes?Democrats may ask for more news coverage, but we should be careful what we wish for.Betsy FrankMattituck, N.Y. More

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      Rishi Sunak Promises to Honor Britain’s Climate Commitments at COP28 Summit

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      Prime Minister Rishi Sunak of Britain rejected claims on Friday that he had lowered his country’s net-zero ambitions and pledged to meet targets in a more pragmatic way.At a news conference, Mr. Sunak, who was spending just a few hours at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, committed 1.6 billion pounds, or about $2 billion, for international climate finance projects, including for renewable energy and forests, fulfilling a promise to spend a total of £11.6 billion over five years.Mr. Sunak said that Britain was “leading by example” but then added swiftly that excessive costs from the transition to net zero should not be borne by ordinary Britons.“We won’t tackle climate change unless we take people with us,” he said. “Climate politics is close to breaking point.”“The British people care about the environment,” added Mr. Sunak, who has been trailing in opinion polls ahead of an election that is likely to take place next year. “They know that the costs of inaction are intolerable, but they also know that we have choices about how we act. So, yes, we will meet our targets but we will do it in a more pragmatic way which doesn’t burden working people.”Mr. Sunak has recently stressed his determination to limit costs to Britons, whose living standards are being squeezed by inflation as their economy stagnates.That emphasis on Friday from the British prime minister was in striking contrast to the more idealistic tone of King Charles III, a lifelong supporter of environmental causes, who told leaders earlier at the same meeting that “hope of the world” rested on the decisions they took.Britain has been regarded as one of the global leaders in combating climate change, but this year Mr. Sunak signaled a shift in policy when he said he would delay a ban on the sale of gas and diesel cars by five years, and lower targets for replacing gas boilers.That followed a surprise victory in July in a parliamentary election in northwestern London, where his Conservative Party campaigned against moves by the city’s Labour mayor to expand an air-quality initiative that raised fees for drivers of older, more polluting vehicles.On Friday, Mr. Sunak emphasized pragmatism in climate policy even as he insisted that Britain had “done more than others up until now” and would continue to do so.When asked about the brevity of his visit and why he would spend more time in his plane than on the ground in Dubai, Mr. Sunak responded: “I wouldn’t measure our impact here by hours spent. I would measure it by the actual things we are doing.” More

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      Missing COP28 Summit Complicates Biden’s Climate Credentials

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      The president is facing some pressure to focus on oil drilling and gas prices at home, while boosting climate ambition on the world stage.President Biden signed the country’s first major climate law and is overseeing record federal investment in clean energy. In each of the past two years, he attended the annual United Nations climate summit, asserting American leadership in the fight against global warming.But this year, likely to be the hottest in recorded history, Mr. Biden is staying home.According to a White House official who asked to remain anonymous to discuss the president’s schedule, Mr. Biden will not travel to the summit in Dubai. Aides say he is consumed by other global crises, namely trying to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas in its war with Israel and working to persuade Congress to approve aid to Ukraine in its fight against Russia.At home, Mr. Biden’s climate and energy policies are crashing against competing political pressures. Concerned about Republican attacks that Mr. Biden is pursuing a “radical green agenda,” centrists in his party want him to talk more about the fact that the United States has produced record amounts of crude oil this year. At the same time, climate activists, particularly the young voters who helped elect Mr. Biden, want the president to shut down drilling altogether.Internationally, developing countries are pushing Mr. Biden to deliver on promises for billions of dollars to help cope with climate change. But Republicans in Congress who control spending scoff at the idea and have been unable to reach agreement among themselves on issues like aid to Israel and Ukraine.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Javier Milei y sus similitudes con Donald Trump

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      Se hizo famoso denigrando personas en la televisión. Lanza duros ataques contra sus críticos en línea. Porta un revoltoso corte de cabello que se ha convertido en meme. Y hoy es el líder de la extrema derecha de su país.Donald Trump, y su ascenso a la presidencia estadounidense en 2016, comparte algunas similitudes sorprendentes con el hombre detrás del momento que se desarrolla en la actualidad en Argentina, la nueva sensación política del país, Javier Milei.Milei, un economista libertario y comentarista televisivo, solía ser visto como un actor secundario en la contienda presidencial argentina, al que ni los medios de noticias ni sus rivales tomaban en serio. Pero actualmente, tras una campaña impetuosa y desde una postura de outsider basada en la promesa de que solo él puede solucionar los profundos problemas económicos del país, es el favorito para ganar los comicios este mismo domingo o pasar a una segunda vuelta el próximo mes.Milei, de 52 años, ya ha trastocado la política de su país de 46 millones de habitantes. Sus promesas de eliminar el banco central de Argentina y abandonar su moneda en favor del dolar estadounidense han dominado el debate nacional, y al mismo tiempo han ayudado a impulsar un mayor colapso en el valor del peso argentino.Sin embargo, ha sido su estilo político belicoso el que le ha ganado comparaciones con Trump, así como una preocupación generalizada en Argentina y la región sobre el daño que su gobierno podría infligir en la tercera economía más grande de América Latina.Milei ha atacado a la prensa y al papa; ha declarado que el cambio climático forma parte de la “agenda socialista”; calificó a China, el segundo socio comercial más importante de Argentina, de asesina; prometió la desregulación del mercado legal de armas; afirmó que es víctima de un fraude electoral; cuestionó las elecciones presidenciales más recientes en Estados Unidos y Brasil; y sugirió que los disturbios de extrema derecha que siguieron a esos procesos electorales habían sido complots de la izquierda.Milei rodeado de seguidores en Salta, Argentina. Su campaña impetuosa y desde una perspectiva de outsider lo ha convertido en uno de los favoritos para las elecciones del domingo.Sarah Pabst para The New York Times“Muy claramente es un mini Trump”, dijo Federico Finchelstein, un argentino que dirige el departamento de historia en la New School en Nueva York y estudia a la extrema derecha en todo el mundo.Milei, Trump y Jair Bolsonaro, expresidente de Brasil, son todos practicantes destacados de la corriente moderna de la política de extrema derecha, dijo Finchelstein, marcada por la vulgaridad, los ataques a las instituciones, el descrédito de los medios de comunicación, la desconfianza en la ciencia, el culto a la personalidad y el narcisismo.“Trump es un ícono de esta nueva forma de populismo extremo”, afirmó Finchelstein. “Y Milei quiere emularlo”.Milei ha aceptado con beneplácito las comparaciones con Trump, a quien ha llamado “uno de los mejores presidentes” en la historia de Estados Unidos. Ha utilizado gorras con el eslogan en inglés de “Make Argentina Great Again” (“Haz que Argentina sea grande de nuevo”) y, al igual que Trump, ha forjado su campaña en mayor parte en las redes sociales. Y en los dos meses previos a la votación del domingo, le concedió una entrevista a una personalidad televisiva estadounidense: el expresentador de Fox News, Tucker Carlson.El grupo de campaña de Milei rechazó repetidas solicitudes de entrevista con The New York Times.Partidarios de Milei en la sede de su partido en Salta. El uso de Milei de las redes sociales lo ha hecho especialmente popular entre los argentinos jóvenes.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesCon dos maestrías en economía, Milei puede llegar a sonar como profesor en ocasiones, cuando opina sobre la política monetaria y una corriente del libertarismo que sigue llamada anarcocapitalismo.Ha llamado al Estado “una organización criminal” que “vive de una fuente coactiva de ingresos llamada impuestos”. Además, afirma que lo impulsa una misión de reducir el gobierno y eliminarlo de las vidas de las personas, comenzando con el banco central argentino.Sus ideales libertarios también lo han hecho menos conservador en algunos temas sociales. Ha dicho que mientras el Estado no tenga que pagar por ello, podría apoyar la legalización de las drogas, la inmigración abierta, el trabajo sexual, los derechos de las personas trans, el matrimonio igualitario y la venta de órganos.Sin embargo, ha calificado al aborto de “asesinato” y ha prometido someterlo a referendo en Argentina, donde ha sido legal desde 2020.Milei sorprendió a las encuestadoras en agosto cuando ganó las elecciones primarias de Argentina, con cerca del 30 por ciento de los votos. Desde entonces ha liderado en las encuestas, superando a sus dos principales rivales: Sergio Massa, político de centroizquierda y ministro de Economía del país; y Patricia Bullrich, exministra de Seguridad de derecha.Milei ha recibido una cobertura periodística casi general durante la campaña, tanto por sus propuestas económicas radicales como por su personalidad excéntrica. Es un autoproclamado profesor de sexo tántrico con cinco perros mastines clonados. Su novia es una imitadora profesional de una de sus archirrivales políticos. Su directora de campaña y principal asesora política es su hermana.Un dólar con la imagen de Donald Trump en la oficina de uno de los asesores de Milei. El candidato ha elogiado la presidencia de Trump.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesAl igual que Trump, Milei habla sobre la importancia de la imagen, como cuando le dijo a Carlson que su pasado como portero de fútbol semiprofesional y cantante de una banda de versiones de The Rolling Stones conforman una “combinación atractiva en términos de producto televisivo”. Milei hace casi siempre la misma mirada con el ceño y los labios fruncidos en todas las selfies que se toma con los votantes, lo que también hace recordar a Trump.El estilo característico de Milei —una chaqueta de cuero, una melena indomable y patillas largas— está diseñado para evocar al personaje de los cómics Wolverine, según Lilia Lemoine, una artista de cosplay profesional quien también es la estilista de Milei y se está postulando para el Congreso en su fórmula. Esto, según Lemoine, es porque, al igual que Wolverine, “él es un antihéroe”.El resultado es una legión de seguidores que se asemeja a un culto. En un evento reciente en Salta, una ciudad en el noroeste montañoso de Argentina, Milei iba en la caja de una camioneta mientras miles de votantes se empujaban para verlo de cerca. Sus partidarios llevaban pelucas despeinadas, repartían billetes falsos de 100 dólares con su cara y exhibían arte de sus perros, cuatro de los cuales llevan nombres de economistas conservadores.“Sí, todos lo califican por loco, por todo, pero qué mejor que un loco para que saque adelante el país”, dijo María Luisa Mamani, de 57 años, dueña de una carnicería. “Porque los que estuvieron cuerdos no hicieron nada”.Los argentinos han sobrellevado una de las peores crisis financieras del país.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesMilei tuvo una aparición breve pero no habló. En realidad, el evento fue en gran medida un escenario para generar contenido para redes sociales creado por influentes en edad universitaria a los que no se les paga y que viajan con Milei y lo graban.Ellos lo han ayudado a construir una enorme presencia en línea así como una intensa base de simpatizantes jóvenes. (La edad legal para votar en Argentina es de 16 años).Luján López Villa, un estudiante de último año de bachillerato de 20 años, proveniente de a pequeña localidad de Chicoana, dijo que Milei tenía un apoyo casi unánime entre sus compañeros de clase, porque era el candidato “cool”, a pesar de las advertencias de sus profesores de que sus planes para dolarizar la economía eran peligrosos.“Nos quieren cambiar el pensamiento para no votarlo”, dijo. “Igual lo seguimos”.No sorprende que los argentinos estén ansiosos por un cambio. Décadas de mala gestión económica, gran parte de ella en manos del movimiento peronista en el poder, del que Massa es parte, han sumido a la Argentina en un agujero financiero.En abril de 2020, al inicio de la pandemia, con un dólar se compraban unos 80 pesos; un día de la semana pasada, ese mismo dólar podía comprar más de 1000 pesos. Esas cifras están basadas en un tipo de cambio no oficial que refleja mejor la visión del mercado sobre el peso, parte de un sistema bizantino de controles cambiarios que el gobierno utiliza para tratar de mantener los dólares estadounidenses en el país.Seguidores de Milei en Salta. Quiere reducir el gobierno, empezando por eliminar el banco central de Argentina.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesMilei quiere eliminar esas regulaciones cuando sea presidente, en parte haciendo una transición al dólar.Tanto Milei como varios economistas han dicho que dolarizar la economía muy probablemente requiera de decenas de miles de millones de dólares, pero no se sabe con certeza dónde podría Argentina obtener una inversión de esa escala. El país ya tiene problemas para pagar una deuda de 44.000 millones de dólares al Fondo Monetario Internacional.Milei tampoco tendría mucho apoyo en el Congreso para la dolarización, aunque ha afirmado que tiene pensado someter el tema a un referendo nacional.Emmanuel Alvarez Agis, exviceministro de Economía de Argentina durante un gobierno de izquierda, afirmó que si Milei lograra la dolarización, resolvería en gran medida la inflación, pero produciría una serie de otros problemas, incluida la disminución de los salarios reales, una mayor tasa de desempleo y menor flexibilidad para suavizar los efectos de las crisis económicas.Milei también ha expresado su compromiso con implementar cambios a favor del mercado y con una presencia menor del gobierno, y ha prometido: reducir los impuestos; eliminar regulaciones; privatizar las industrias estatales; cambiar la educación pública a un sistema basado en vouchers y la atención de salud pública a un sistema basado en seguros; reducir el número de ministerios federales de 18 a ocho; y recortar el gasto federal en un 15 por ciento del producto interno bruto de Argentina.Estos profundos recortes del gasto requerirían reducciones significativas en las pensiones, la educación y la seguridad pública, dijo Alvarez Agis. “No creo que estén discutiendo los números de manera seria”, dijo.Carteles de campaña en Salta para otro de los candidatos principales en la elección del domingo, Sergio Massa, el ministro de Economía de centroizquierda.Sarah Pabst para The New York TimesTras meses de campañas de los candidatos, este domingo será la prueba que determinará si los votantes están dispuestos a darle una oportunidad a Milei. Podría ganar las elecciones de forma directa con el 45 por ciento de los votos, o con el 40 por ciento si tiene un margen de diferencia de al menos 10 puntos porcentuales. Si ningún candidato obtiene algunas de esas condiciones, la contienda irá a una segunda vuelta el 19 de noviembre, entre los dos candidatos con más votos.Aunque ganó las elecciones primarias, Milei siguió afirmando que hubo fraude electoral y que sus rivales se robaron boletas de su partido de los establecimientos de votación, evitando que los ciudadanos votaran por él. Milei también afirmó que se encontraron boletas de su partido escondidas en una escuela. Su partido no proporcionó ninguna prueba.Milei dijo que su partido había puesto la denuncia ante las autoridades electorales, pero los funcionarios electorales la cuestionaron.“No hubo denuncia ni impugnación, ni que ocurriera robo de boletas de modo sistemático”, declaró la Cámara Nacional Electoral de Argentina a través de un comunicado. “Nos preocupa que se hagan declaraciones así sin acompañarlas con presentaciones judiciales para investigar”.El equipo de campaña de Milei dijo que había reclutado a 100.000 voluntarios para monitorear las mesas el día de las elecciones. Pero en una entrevista televisiva el jueves, Milei afirmó que todavía le preocupaba el robo de votos.Milei afirmó que el presunto fraude en las primarias le había costado al menos varios puntos porcentuales de apoyo. “Hay unos que dicen que son dos puntos y medio, otros dicen que son tres. Y otros que dicen cinco”, dijo. “Sea al número que sea, puede ser determinante”.Natalie Alcoba More

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      Javier Milei, a ‘Mini-Trump,’ Could Be Argentina’s Next President

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      He made his name disparaging people on television. He levels harsh attacks against critics online. He sports an unruly hairdo that has become a meme. And he is now the leader of his country’s far right.Donald J. Trump, and his rise to the American presidency in 2016, shares some striking similarities with the man behind the moment unfolding in Argentina, the nation’s new political sensation, Javier Milei.Mr. Milei, a libertarian economist and television pundit, was once seen as a sideshow in Argentina’s presidential race, not taken seriously by the news media or his opponents. Now — after a brash, outsider campaign based on a promise that he alone can fix the nation’s deep economic woes — he is the favorite to win the election outright on Sunday or head to a runoff next month.Mr. Milei, 52, has already upended the politics of this nation of 46 million. His pledges to eliminate Argentina’s central bank and ditch its currency for the U.S. dollar have dominated the national conversation, while also helping to fuel a further collapse in the value of the Argentine peso.But it has been his bellicose political style that has attracted comparisons with Mr. Trump, as well as widespread concern in Argentina and beyond about the damage his government could inflict on Latin America’s third-largest economy.Mr. Milei has attacked the press and the pope; declared climate change part of “the socialist agenda”; called China, Argentina’s second-largest trade partner, an “assassin”; pledged looser controls on guns; claimed he is the victim of voter fraud; questioned the most recent presidential elections in the United States and Brazil; and suggested that the far-right riots that followed those votes were leftist plots.Mr. Milei surrounded by supporters in Salta, Argentina. His brash, outsider campaign has made him a favorite in Sunday’s election. Sarah Pabst for The New York Times“He is quite clearly a mini-Trump,” said Federico Finchelstein, an Argentine who chairs the history department at the New School in New York and studies the far right around the world.Mr. Milei, Mr. Trump and Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s former president, are all leading practitioners of the modern strain of far-right politics, Mr. Finchelstein said, marked by vulgarity, attacks on institutions, discrediting of the news media, distrust of science, a cult of personality and narcissism.“Trump is an icon of this new form of extreme populism,” Mr. Finchelstein said. “And Milei wants to emulate him.”Mr. Milei has embraced comparisons to Mr. Trump, whom he has called “one of the best presidents in the history of the United States.” He has worn “Make Argentina Great Again” hats and, much like Mr. Trump, waged his campaign largely on social media. And in the two months before Sunday’s vote, he granted an interview to one American broadcast personality: the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.Mr. Milei’s campaign declined repeated requests for an interview with The New York Times.Supporters of Mr. Milei in the headquarters of his party in Salta. Mr. Milei’s use of social media has made him especially popular among younger Argentines.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesWith two master’s degrees in economics, Mr. Milei can sound professorial at times, opining on monetary policy and a strain of libertarianism he follows called anarcho-capitalism.He has called the state “a criminal organization” that collects taxes “at gunpoint.” And he says he is driven by a mission to shrink government and remove it from people’s lives, starting with Argentina’s central bank.His libertarian ideals have also made him less conservative on some social issues. He has said that as long as the state doesn’t have to pay for it, he could support drug legalization, open immigration, sex work, transgender rights, same-sex marriage and selling organs.Abortion, however, he calls “murder” and promises to put it to a referendum in Argentina, where it has been legal since 2020.Mr. Milei surprised pollsters in August when he won Argentina’s open primaries with about 30 percent of the vote. He has since led his two main challengers in the polls: Sergio Massa, Argentina’s center-left economy minister; and Patricia Bullrich, a right-wing former security minister.Mr. Milei has received nearly blanket news coverage during the campaign, both for his radical economic proposals and his eccentric personality. He is a self-proclaimed tantric-sex teacher with five cloned mastiff dogs. His girlfriend is a professional impersonator of one of his political archrivals. And his campaign manager and chief political adviser is his sister.A dollar note with Donald J. Trump’s image in the office of one of Mr. Milei’s advisers. The candidate has praised Mr. Trump’s tenure as president in the United States. Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesLike Mr. Trump, he speaks about the importance of image, telling Mr. Carlson that his past as a semipro soccer goalie and a singer in a Rolling Stones cover band “make for an attractive television product.” Mr. Milei makes nearly the same furrowed-brow, pursed-lip look for every selfie with voters, also calling to mind Mr. Trump.Mr. Milei’s signature look — a leather jacket, an untamable mop of hair and long sideburns — is designed to conjure the comic-book character Wolverine, according to Lilia Lemoine, a professional cosplay performer who is Mr. Milei’s stylist and is running for Congress on his ticket. Because, like Wolverine, she said, “he is an antihero.”The result is a cultlike following. At a recent event in Salta, a city in Argentina’s mountainous northwest, Mr. Milei rode in a truck bed as thousands of voters pushed in for a closer look. Supporters wore messy wigs, passed out fake $100 bills with his face and displayed art of his dogs, four of which are named for conservative economists.“Yes, everyone describes him as crazy, for everything, but who better than a crazy person to move the country forward?” said María Luisa Mamani, 57, a butcher-shop owner. “Because the sane ones didn’t do anything.”Argentines have weathered one of the country’s worst financial crises.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesMr. Milei appeared briefly but did not speak. Instead, the event was largely a stage for social-media content created by unpaid college-age influencers who travel with Mr. Milei and film him.They have helped him build an enormous online presence and intense youth following. (The legal voting age in Argentina is 16.) Luján López Villa, 20, a high school senior in the small town of Chicoana, said Mr. Milei had near-unanimous support among her classmates, largely because he was the “cool” candidate, despite warnings from teachers that his plans to dollarize the economy are dangerous.“They want to change our minds,” she said. “We’re going to keep following him.”It is no surprise that Argentines are eager for change. Decades of economic mismanagement, much of it in the hands of Mr. Massa’s incumbent Peronist party, have plunged Argentina into a big financial hole.In April 2020, at the start of the pandemic, $1 bought about 80 pesos; one day last week, $1 bought more than 1,000 pesos. Those figures are under an unofficial exchange rate that best reflects the market’s view of the peso, part of a byzantine system of currency controls the government uses to try to keep U.S. dollars in the country.Supporters of Mr. Milei in Salta. He wants to shrink government, starting with getting rid of Argentina’s central bank.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesMr. Milei wants to discard those rules as president, partly by switching to dollars.Both Mr. Milei and economists have said that dollarizing the economy will most likely require tens of billions of dollars, but it is not clear where Argentina could get such an investment. The country is struggling to pay a $44 billion debt to the International Monetary Fund. Mr. Milei would also not have much congressional support for dollarization, though he has said that he would put the issue to a national referendum.Emmanuel Alvarez Agis, Argentina’s former deputy economy minister under a leftist administration, said that if Mr. Milei could dollarize, it would mostly solve inflation — but produce a host of other problems, including a decrease in real wages, higher unemployment and less flexibility to soften the effects of economic downturns.Mr. Milei has also promised a pro-market, small-government overhaul, including pledges to: lower taxes; slash regulations; privatize state industries; shift public education to a voucher-based system and public health care to insurance based; reduce the number of federal ministries to eight from 18; and cut federal spending by 15 percent of Argentina’s gross domestic product.Such deep spending cuts would require significant reductions to pensions, education and public safety, Mr. Alvarez Agis said. “I don’t think that they are discussing numbers in a serious way,” he said.Campaign signs in Salta for another top candidate in Sunday’s election, Sergio Massa, Argentina’s center-left economy minister.Sarah Pabst for The New York TimesAfter months of campaigning by the candidates, Sunday will test whether voters are ready to take a chance on Mr. Milei. He could win the election outright with 45 percent of the vote, or 40 percent with a margin of at least 10 percentage points. If no candidate reaches any of those thresholds, the race will go to a runoff on Nov. 19 between the top two finishers.Even though Mr. Milei won the primary, he still claimed fraud, saying rivals stole his parties’ ballots from polling stations, preventing citizens from voting for him. Mr. Milei also said his party’s ballots were found in the trash at a school. His party did not provide any evidence.Mr. Milei said his party had complained to election officials, but election officials disputed that.“There was no complaint or challenge, nor was there any systematic ballot theft,” Argentina’s electoral court said in a statement. “We are concerned that such statements are made without accompanying legal filings to investigate.”Mr. Milei’s campaign said it had recruited 100,000 volunteers to monitor polling stations on Election Day. But in a television interview on Thursday, Mr. Milei said he was still worried about stolen votes.He claimed that the alleged fraud in the primaries had cost him at least several percentage points of support. “Some say two and a half points, others say three, and others say five,” he said. “Whatever the number is, it may be decisive.”Natalie Alcoba More

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      The Republican Meltdown Shows No Sign of Cooling Off

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      Gail Collins: Bret, when we started our conversations, you generously agreed to stick to domestic issues. I’ve always steered away from commenting on foreign affairs because I have so very many colleagues who know so very much more about them than I do.But I know you’re weighed down by the situation in the Middle East. I’m gonna hand off to you here so you can share your thoughts.Bret Stephens: Thanks for raising the subject, Gail. And since I’ve written a column about it, I promise to keep it brief so we can talk about marginally less depressing things, like the increasingly plausible prospect of a second Trump term.Israel occupies such a big place in the public imagination that people often forget what a small country it is. When an estimated 700 Israelis (a number that is sure to grow, out of a total population of a little over nine million) are killed in terrorist attacks, as they have been since Hamas’s rampage began Saturday morning, that’s the proportional equivalent of around 25,000 Americans. In other words, eight 9/11s.I know some of our readers have strong feelings about Israeli policies or despise Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But what we witnessed on Saturday was pure evil. Habitual critics of Israel should at least pause to mourn the hundreds of young Israelis murdered at a music festival, the mothers and young children kidnapped to Gaza to be used as human shields, the Israeli captives brutalized, the thousands of wounded and maimed civilians who were just going about their morning on sovereign Israeli territory. And the critics should also ask whether the version of Palestine embodied by Hamas, which tyrannizes its own people even as it terrorizes its neighbor, is one they can stomach.Gail: Horrific stories like the music festival massacre make it flat-out clear how this was an abomination that has to be decried around the globe, no matter what your particular position on Palestine is.Now I will follow my own rule and dip back into domestic politics.Bret: OK, and I will have lots more to say about this in my regular column this week. I also know you’re raring to talk about those charming House Republicans who ended Kevin McCarthy’s speakership last week. But first I have to ask: How do you feel about Build the Wall Biden?Gail: I knew you were going to head for the wall! Couple of thoughts here, the first being that the money was appropriated by Congress during the Trump administration for his favorite barrier and President Biden was right when he asked for it to be reallocated to a general migration-control program.Which, of course, didn’t happen. I still hate, hate, hate the wall and all it symbolizes. But also understand why Biden didn’t want to give Republicans ammunition to claim he wasn’t trying to control the immigration problem.Now feel free to tell me that you differ.Bret: It ought to be axiomatic that you can’t have a gate without a wall. If we want more legal immigration, which we both do, we need to do more to prevent illegal immigration. It’s also a shame Biden didn’t do this two years ago when he could have traded wall building for something truly constructive, like citizenship for Dreamers and a higher annual ceiling for the number of political refugees allowed into the United States. Now he just looks desperate and reactive and late to address a crisis he kept trying to pretend wasn’t real.Not to mention the political gift this whole fiasco is to Donald Trump, who now has a slight lead over Biden in the polls. Aren’t you a wee bit nervous?Gail: Impossible not to be a wee bit nervous when Trump’s one of the options. But I still think when we really get into all the multitudinous criminal and civil trials, it’s going to be very hard for the middle-of-the-road, don’t-ask-me-yet voters to pick the Trump option.Bret: I wouldn’t get my hopes up on that front. For so many Americans, Trump’s indictments have gone from being the scandal of the century to just so much white noise on cable TV, like all of Trump’s other scandals. The only thing millions of Americans care about is whether they are better off in 2023 than they were in 2019, the last full year under Trump that wasn’t affected by the pandemic. And the sad truth is: Many believe that they aren’t.Gail: I will refrain from veering off into a discussion of how the Trump tax cuts caused the deficit to surge. Or mentioning the latest jobs report, which was really good.Bret: Shame about the high gas prices, rising mortgage rates, urban decay, a border crisis and all the other stuff my liberal friends keep thinking is just some sort of American hypochondria.Gail: It’s settled — we disagree. Time for us to get on to those embattled House Republicans. Anybody in contention for speaker of the House you actually like?Bret: You’re asking me to pick my poison. I’d say Steve Scalise, the majority leader who once described himself as “David Duke without the baggage,” is still better than Jim Jordan, but that’s because almost everyone is better than Jim Jordan, the former wrestling coach. Republicans don’t have particularly good experiences with former wrestling coaches who become speakers of the House.Admit it: You’re sorta enjoying this G.O.P. meltdown, right?Gail: At the moment, absolutely. Once again, this is a Trump creation. He was the one who engineered the nomination of so many awful House candidates that the Republicans couldn’t get the usual postpresidential election surge in the out-party’s seats. They’re not even a majority if you subtract the total loons, like our friend Matt Gaetz.But I’m not looking forward to a government shutdown, and I doubt these guys will be able to get the votes together to avoid one next month.Bret: We are in agreement. All the clichés about lunatics running the asylum, letting the foxes in the henhouse, picking the wrong week to stop sniffing glue and really futile and stupid gestures apply. A government shutdown will accomplish exactly nothing for Republicans except make them seem like the party of total dysfunction — which, of course, is what they are. Not exactly a winning political slogan.Gail: Can you make dysfunction a slogan? Maybe: Vote for this — total dys!Bret: Our colleague Michelle Goldberg got it right last week when she said that centrist Republicans would have been smart to team up with Democrats to elect a unity candidate as speaker, someone like Pennsylvania’s Brian Fitzpatrick, a moderate Republican. But of course, that would have meant putting country over party, a slogan that John McCain ran for president on but hardly exists today as a meaningful concept.Gail: You know, my first real covering of a presidential race was the one in 2000, and McCain was my focus. I followed him around on his early trips to New Hampshire. He’d drive to a town and talk to some small veterans’ gathering or student club or anybody who’d ask him. And his obsession was campaign finance reform.It was pretty wonderful to watch up close. Later, he got a bill passed that improved the regulations. Can’t think of a current Republican candidate who is superfocused on driving out big-money donors.Bret: I thought McCain was wrong about campaign finance reform; he would often be the first to admit that he was wrong about a lot of stuff. But politics was more fun, more functional, more humane and more honorable when his way of doing business ruled Congress than it is with the current gang of ideological gangsters.Gail: So true.Bret: Speaking of our political malfunctions, our colleague Alex Kingsbury had a really thoughtful Opinion audio short talking about how violent Trump’s rhetoric has become. Trump had suggested that Gen. Mark Milley had behaved treasonously and said shoplifters deserved to be executed. One point Alex makes is that a second Trump term would very likely be much worse than the first. Do you agree, or do you think it will be the same Spiro Agnew-Inspector Clouseau mash-up we had last time?Gail: You know, a basic rule of Trumpism is that he always gets worse. Alex’s piece is smart, and his prediction is deeply depressing.Bret: The scary scenario is that Trump 2.0 makes no concessions to the normal conservatives who populated the first administration: people like Gary Cohn and H.R. McMaster and Scott Gottlieb. So imagine Stephen Miller as secretary of homeland security, Tucker Carlson as secretary of state, Sean Hannity as director of national intelligence and Vivek Ramaswamy as vice president. This could be an administration that would pull the United States out of NATO, defund Ukraine, invade Mexico and invite Vladimir Putin for skeet shooting at Camp David.Gail: As I’ve pointed out before, this is one reason people watch football.Bret: Just wait until Steve Bannon somehow becomes N.F.L. commissioner during the second Trump term.Gail: One last issue: I know you’re not in favor of bringing up global warming when it’s time to admire the leaves, but whenever the weather gets bad now, I worry that it’s a hint of more dire things to come. This winter, if it’s colder than usual, I’ll be miserable because it’s … cold. But now I can’t really feel totally chipper if it’s warm, either.Bret: I really am concerned with the climate. But, hey, we may as well enjoy some nice fall weather while we still can.Gail: You totally win that thought. Look for the good moments whenever you can.Here at the end, you generally conclude with a poem or a nod to a great piece you read. Particularly eager to hear it this week.Bret: Did you know that one of Shakespeare’s sonnets touches on climate change? Here is another gem my dad had the good sense to make me memorize:When I have seen by Time’s fell hand defac’dThe rich proud cost of outworn buried age;When sometime lofty towers I see down-ras’dAnd brass eternal slave to mortal rage;When I have seen the hungry ocean gainAdvantage on the kingdom of the shore,And the firm soil win of the wat’ry main,Increasing store with loss and loss with store;When I have seen such interchange of state,Or state itself confounded to decay;Ruin hath taught me thus to ruminate,That Time will come and take my love away.This thought is as a death, which cannot chooseBut weep to have that which it fears to lose.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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      If Biden Wins Election, Industry Pollution Will Be a Target for Climate Policies

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      If the president wins re-election, his climate team is likely to try to cut greenhouse gases from steel, cement and other hard-to-clean-up manufacturing.If President Biden wins a second term, his climate policies would take aim at steel and cement plants, factories and oil refineries — heavily polluting industries that have never before had to rein in their heat-trapping greenhouse gases.New controls on industrial facilities, which his advisers have begun to map out and described in recent interviews, could combine with actions taken on power plants and vehicles during his first term to help meet the president’s goal of eliminating fossil fuel pollution by 2050, analysts said. Industrialized nations must hit that target if the world has any hope to avoid the most catastrophic impacts from climate change, according to scientists.“If people look at what this administration has done on climate and say ‘This is enough,’ this country is not going to get to our goals,” said John Larsen, a partner at Rhodium Group, a nonpartisan energy research firm whose analyses are regularly consulted by the White House.But talking about more regulations at the start of what promises to be a bruising election cycle is perilous, strategists said. In particular, the prospect of new mandates from Washington regarding steel and cement, the bedrock materials of American construction, could sour the swing-state union workers courted by Mr. Biden.“If you are seen as imposing debilitating regulations on heavy industry that employs large numbers of people, you’re not only going to get a backlash from manufacturing, but labor as well,” said David Axelrod, the Democratic strategist who ran former President Barack Obama’s campaigns. “How to do that without looking like you are stabbing these industries in the back, or in the front for that matter, is a real political challenge.”Still, the urgency of global warming requires action, Mr. Larsen said. “Most other problems in America aren’t going to be 10 times worse in 10 years if we don’t do something right now,” he said. “Climate’s not like that. If this year has shown us anything, with the extreme weather and fires, it’s that it won’t just stay at this level — it’s going to break all the records we’ve just broken.”President Biden during a visit to Lahaina on Maui, which was devastated by wildfires, last month.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesRepublicans are eager to seize on the suggestion of additional regulations at a time when many Americans think the economy is in a downturn.“Apparently skyrocketing gas and energy prices weren’t enough for Biden, he wants to raise the prices on building and infrastructure costs and put hard working Americans further into debt,” said Emma Vaughn, a spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee. “Biden will not be elected to a second term — American families can’t afford it.”But Collin O’Mara, chief executive of the National Wildlife Federation, and others believe that after Americans have sweltered through a summer of the hottest temperatures in recorded history, watched the nation’s deadliest wildfire in over a century decimate a Hawaiian island, inhaled wildfire smoke from Detroit to Atlanta, and experienced hot-tub ocean temperatures off the Florida coast, at least some voters will be ready to embrace more climate action.Solar panel installation at a home in Norman, Okla.Mason Trinca for The New York TimesA second-term Biden climate agenda would come after the president has already delivered transformative policies to reduce greenhouse gases generated by the United States, the country that has pumped the most carbon dioxide into the atmosphere since the Industrial Revolution.Last year, Mr. Biden signed into law the Inflation Reduction Act, a landmark climate law, which will provide at least $370 billion over the next decade for incentives to ramp up sales of electric vehicles and expand wind, solar and other renewable energy. Under Mr. Biden, the Environmental Protection Agency has proposed regulations, expected to be finalized next year, designed to compel the phaseout of gasoline-powered cars and coal-fired power plants.Together, those policies could help cut the nation’s emissions nearly in half over the next decade, analysts say.And yet, it’s not enough.The United States and nearly 200 other countries agreed in 2015 to try to limit the rise in average global temperatures to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) by 2100, compared with preindustrial levels. Beyond that point, scientists say, the effects of deadly heat waves, flooding, drought, crop failures and species extinction would become significantly harder for humanity to handle. But the planet has already warmed by an average of about 1.2 degrees Celsius and the United States and other nations are far from meeting their goals.As emissions in the United States decline from energy and transportation, the country’s two biggest sources of greenhouse gases, industry would become the most polluting sector of the economy. That makes businesses like steel and cement manufacturing — among the most difficult to clean up — the obvious target for the next round of climate regulation.At the White House, Mr. Biden’s climate team has already envisioned a multi-step plan to cut industrial pollution if he wins re-election.The first step would use carrots, steering incentives from the 2022 Inflation Reduction Act toward nascent technologies to help factories to reduce their carbon footprint.For example, green hydrogen, a fuel produced by using wind and solar power, is muscular enough to run a steel mill but emits only water vapor as a byproduct. And cement production involves heating limestone and releasing large amounts of carbon dioxide, but several companies have been developing cement that does not emit carbon and may even absorb it.Damage to Horseshoe Beach, Fla., after Hurricane Idalia last month.Paul Ratje for The New York TimesThe second step would be to try to compel global competitors to clean up their operations through a “carbon tariff” — a fee added to imported goods like steel, cement and aluminum based on their carbon emissions.Congress would need to approve such a tax, which has support from Democrats and some Republicans. The European Union imposed a similar carbon border tax earlier this year.To justify a carbon tariff to the World Trade Organization, the United States would likely have to impose the same type of taxes on industrial pollution at home. While efforts to impose a carbon tax have long been seen as dead on arrival in Congress, the administration could instead use its executive authority to impose new top-down regulations on industrial pollution by using the 1970 Clean Air Act, which formed the basis for its proposed regulations on cars and power plants.But those policies are already under fire.Candidates seeking the Republican presidential nomination have argued that Mr. Biden’s promotion of electric vehicles and solar energy makes the United States more reliant on its chief economic rival, China, for necessary components and that cutting emissions at home does not matter when other countries continue to pollute.“If you want to go and really change the environment, then we need to start telling China and India that they have to lower their emissions,” said former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley at the first Republican debate last month.Mr. O’ Mara, an informal adviser to the Biden re-election campaign, said that the United States needs to push other nations to act before Mr. Biden can build support for new domestic climate measures.“If we don’t hold polluters in India and China accountable first, the politics are almost impossible,” Mr. O’Mara said.Perhaps even worse for Mr. Biden, unionized autoworkers are uneasy about his regulations designed to pivot the American market away from gasoline-powered cars and toward electric vehicles. Concerned that electric vehicles require fewer workers and a transition could cost jobs, the United Auto Workers has so far declined to endorse Mr. Biden. The union went on strike Thursday against the nation’s largest carmakers, in part over demands that workers at electric vehicle battery factories be covered by the U.A.W. contract.That discontent could spread to workers in the steel and cement industries if new regulations mean fewer jobs.Sean O’Neill the senior vice president of government affairs at the Portland Cement Association, which represents the majority of the nation’s 20 cement manufacturers, said his industry would welcome federal help to decarbonize and would consider supporting some form of a carbon tariff, under certain circumstances. But it would oppose regulations that could limit the availability of materials to build and repair buildings and bridges, he said.“Any policy that could hamper the domestic production of cement could be problematic to the downstream industries — concrete, construction,” he said.At the Biden campaign headquarters in Wilmington, the messaging strategy steers away from regulations and instead highlights the impacts of extreme weather and climate denial on the part of Republicans.Mr. Biden leaned into those themes at a Sept. 10 news conference, saying, “The only existential threat humanity faces even more frightening nuclear war is global warming going above 1.5 degrees in the next 20 — 10 years. That’d be real trouble. There’s no way back from that.”Recent surveys show that Americans are concerned about climate change and think the government and large corporations should do more to fight it, but opinion is mixed when it comes to specific policies.Representative Maxwell Frost of Florida. “Climate is paramount across the South, especially here in Florida where we are on the front lines of the climate crisis,” he said.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn surveys by the Pew Research Center this year, 66 percent of adults said the government should encourage wind and solar energy while just 31 percent want the country to phase out fossil fuels. Respondents were divided on the question of whether the government should encourage the use of electric vehicles, with 43 percent saying it should, 14 percent saying it should not and 43 percent saying it should neither encourage or discourage.While 54 percent of adults polled by Pew said climate change was a major threat to the country’s well-being, respondents ranked it 17th out of 21 national issues in a January survey. “Even for Democrats, who say it’s important, it’s not the top issue,” said Alec Tyson, a researcher who helped conduct the survey.The Biden campaign is betting that the real-time damage from weather disasters made worse by climate change will turn out one demographic the president especially needs — young voters in high numbers.“Climate is one of the biggest issues for us — and as we get older it will continue to be,” said Representative Maxwell Frost, 26, Democrat of Florida, who serves on the Biden campaign’s advisory board and is the only member of Congress from Generation Z.“Climate is paramount across the South, especially here in Florida where we are on the front lines of the climate crisis, with hot-tub temperatures in the surrounding ocean,” said Mr. Frost, speaking by telephone from his Orlando district soon after it was flooded by Hurricane Idalia. “The ocean water, the record heat post-hurricane, the record temperatures in the water — these are things we know and feel.” More

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      DeSantis, Undaunted by Florida Storms, Shrugs Off Climate Change

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      The Florida governor, who has cast himself as a Teddy Roosevelt-style conservationist, sounds far different as a presidential candidate, pledging to expand fossil fuel production and fight electric-vehicle mandates.During his 2018 run for governor, Ron DeSantis not only pledged to protect Florida’s Everglades and waterways, he also acknowledged that humans played a role in exacerbating the climate change that threatened them.“I think that humans contribute to what goes on around us,” Mr. DeSantis told the editorial board of The Florida Times-Union, a Jacksonville newspaper, according to a recording obtained by The New York Times.“The resiliency and some of the sea-level rise, we have to deal with that,” he added, although he pointedly said he was “not Al Gore,” referring to the former Democratic vice president who reinvented himself as a climate change activist.Now running for president five years later, the Florida governor no longer repeats his previous view that humans affect the climate, even as scientists say that the hurricanes battering his state are being intensified by man-made global warming. Those storms include Hurricane Idalia, which killed three people this month, and last year’s catastrophic Hurricane Ian, which killed 150 Floridians.On the debate stage last month, Mr. DeSantis declined to raise his hand when a moderator asked the Republican candidates if they thought human behavior was causing climate change. His campaign and the governor’s office did not respond to requests for comment about his views.Instead, Mr. DeSantis has seemingly reverted to an old Republican Party line that climate change is happening naturally, without being accelerated by human behavior like the burning of fossil fuels. Decades of scientific research contradict that position. And it is also out of step with what polling shows many Americans believe.On the 2024 campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis has promised to ramp up domestic oil and gas production and fight against mandates on the introduction of electric vehicles — the kinds of steps that could worsen the sea-level rise that is flooding coastal cities in Florida and around the world. Mr. DeSantis says he is simply being realistic about the country’s economic and national security needs.Asked to describe his climate plan in an interview on Fox Business last month, Mr. DeSantis said: “It’s going to be to rip up Joe Biden’s Green New Deal.” (Mr. Biden’s policies do not actually go as far as the so-called Green New Deal, a wide-ranging climate proposal from progressives in Congress.)As the governor of a traditionally purple state on the front lines of climate change, Mr. DeSantis has been confronted with clear evidence that the environment is changing. But he has largely tried to treat global warming’s symptoms — funding local projects to address flooding and storm surge, for instance — rather than take steps to address what climate scientists say are the human-made underlying causes, such as by cutting back on the use of fossil fuels.Mr. DeSantis has also cast himself as a conservationist in the Teddy Roosevelt mold, embracing a brand of environmentally friendly outdoor-ism long pushed by Republicans in Florida — where swimming, boating, fishing and hunting are popular and profitable — as well as in Western states. That philosophy led him, especially early in his tenure, to attack the state’s powerful sugar industry, which contributes to water and air pollution.“In terms of environment, what I care about is the environment people enjoy,” Mr. DeSantis said in a radio interview this year. “I want to conserve Florida, leave it to God better than we found it.”More recently, however, he rejected roughly $350 million in federal funding for energy efficiency initiatives. And in a nod to the nation’s culture wars, he gave tax breaks to people who bought gas stoves.Florida environmentalists describe Mr. DeSantis’s mixed record as one that gave them optimism early on in his administration but has since left them feeling somewhat disappointed. Mr. DeSantis’s narrow but intense focus on Everglades restoration felt “very hopeful out of the gate,” said Eve Samples, executive director of Friends of the Everglades, a nonprofit advocacy group. “But the follow-through has been problematic and lacking.”The governor created a toxic algae task force, she noted, but the group’s scientific recommendations had mostly been ignored. And projects to lessen climate change’s impact have not taken a comprehensive approach, she said.“‘Resilience’ has become a euphemism for installing diesel-powered pumps at the shoreline to keep developed areas dry,” she said. “That approach is not going to serve Florida in the long term.”At the first Republican debate last month, Mr. DeSantis reacted angrily when a Fox News moderator asked the candidates onstage to raise their hands if they thought human behavior was causing climate change.“We’re not school children,” Mr. DeSantis said. “Let’s have the debate.”But he did not answer the question, instead jumping into an attack on the “corporate media” and President Biden’s response to the wildfires in Maui. One of the moderators, Bret Baier, followed up: “Is that a yes? Is that a hand raise?”Mr. DeSantis stared at the camera without speaking, allowing another candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, to jump in. “I think it was a hand raise for him,” Mr. Ramaswamy said.“No, no, no,” Mr. DeSantis replied. “I didn’t raise a hand.”In contrast, nearly half of Americans believe that climate change is “mostly” caused by human activity, according to a poll by Ipsos released in May. Roughly a quarter said climate change was mostly caused by natural patterns. (Smaller percentages said that it was “not really happening” or that they did not know its cause.)There is a clear partisan divide, however. Among Republicans, only 22 percent of people said climate change was mostly caused by human activity, compared with 75 percent of Democrats.Mr. Biden seemed to weigh in last weekend during a visit to Florida after Idalia. “Nobody intelligent can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore,” he said.President Biden visiting a Florida community affected by Hurricane Idalia this month. Climate change has become a clearly partisan issue, with only 22 percent of Republicans saying in a recent poll that climate change was mostly caused by human activity, compared with 75 percent of Democrats.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesIn an interview with Fox News that aired on Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis shot back. “The idea that we’ve not had powerful storms until recently, that’s just not factually true,” he said, adding that Democrats were trying to “politicize the weather.”But scientists say that climate change is making hurricanes more powerful, though not more frequent, as warmer ocean waters strengthen and sustain those storms. The proportion of the most severe storms — Categories 4 and 5 — has increased since 1980, when satellite imagery began reliably tracking hurricanes.When Mr. DeSantis ran for governor in 2018, relations between Florida Republicans and environmentalists had hit a low point. Under Rick Scott, the Republican governor at the time, state officials said they had been warned against even using the phrases “climate change” or “global warming.” (Mr. Scott said there was no policy banning those terms.) Toxic algae blooms were choking many of Florida’s beautiful bays, canals and rivers.Mr. DeSantis made improving water quality one of his top campaign issues. Other Republicans, including Representatives Vern Buchanan and Brian J. Mast, whose districts were being harmed by the harmful algae, also campaigned on water quality. The G.O.P. had used the issue to attract independent and crossover Democratic voters at a time when Florida was still a true political battleground.The message, said Jacob Perry, who ran Mr. Mast’s 2016 campaign, was intended to be: “This isn’t your father’s Republican Party.”Mr. DeSantis appeared to embrace a similar approach.“The environment was a big reason he won that race,” said Stephen Lawson, Mr. DeSantis’s 2018 communications director, who added that it was one of the top reasons, if not the leading one, that he was able to appeal to swing voters.As a candidate in the 2018 Republican primary for governor, he criticized his party’s close ties to the sugar industry, which had supported his opponent. He said he backed “resiliency” but did not want to be a climate “alarmist.” Once elected, he seemed to relish signing off on billions of dollars to restore state waterways and the Everglades.During his first year in office, his environmental policies gave Mr. DeSantis the veneer of a center-right governor. He appointed the state’s first chief science officer and hired a “chief resilience officer,” whose job description included a mandate to prepare the state for the “impacts of climate change, especially sea-level rise.”He signed the first bill passed by the Republican-held Legislature that directly addressed climate change, after what a Republican state senator acknowledged had been a “lost decade” of inaction. This year, Mr. DeSantis vetoed legislation that would have allowed electric utilities to impose fees on property owners who install solar panels.But Mr. DeSantis has made other decisions that let down conservationists during his governorship. He limited local governments from making stringent environmental regulations. He backed the building of new rural highways known as the “roads to nowhere.”On the campaign trail, Mr. DeSantis does not often talk about what his environmental policies would be as president. But he has suggested in broad terms that reducing fossil fuel emissions would be a good thing, while saying that the free market is a more appropriate tool for doing so than government intervention.At a barbecue in New Hampshire last month, he laid out some of his positions on climate change in response to a voter’s question, taking the opportunity to criticize Democrats for pushing renewable energy in the United States while China and India continue to rely on oil and gas.“They’ve taken this position that you can never burn a fossil fuel,” Mr. DeSantis said. “That is not going to work for our economy.”But in a reflection of how divisive climate change — and science more generally — has become for Republicans, the governor almost did not get to answer the question. The man who asked it was bombarded with boos and catcalls from other members of the audience until the event’s host, former Senator Scott Brown of Massachusetts, asked for civility.“Science!” one woman in the crowd jeered sarcastically. “Facts!”Ruth Igielnik More