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    Republicans Plan to Skirt Senate Rules to Push Through More Tax Cuts

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    G.O.P. leaders are planning to use the “nuclear option” to steer around the Senate’s in-house referee and allow the use of a gimmick that makes trillions of dollars in tax cuts appear to be free.For decades, senators looking to push major budget and tax legislation through Congress on a simple majority vote have had to win the blessing of a single unelected figure on Capitol Hill.The Senate parliamentarian, a civil servant who acts as the arbiter and enforcer of the chamber’s byzantine rules, has traditionally been in a position to make or break entire presidential agendas. That includes determining whether budget and tax legislation can be fast-tracked through Congress and shielded from a filibuster, allowing it to pass along party lines through a process known as reconciliation.Now, in their zeal to deliver President Trump’s domestic policy agenda in “one big beautiful bill” of spending and tax cuts, Senate Republicans are trying to steer around the parliamentarian, busting a substantial congressional norm in the process.The strategy would allow them to avoid getting a formal thumbs up or thumbs down on their claim that extending the tax cuts that Mr. Trump signed into law in 2017 would cost nothing — a gimmick that would make it easier for them cram as many tax reductions as possible into their bill without appearing to balloon the deficit.In recent days, all eyes have been on Elizabeth MacDonough, the parliamentarian, to see whether she would bless the trick, smoothing the path for the G.O.P. bill. But on Wednesday, Republicans signaled that they planned to take extraordinary action to go around her altogether.Rather than have Ms. MacDonough weigh in, they asserted that Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, as chairman of the Budget Committee, could unilaterally decide the cost of the legislation, citing a 1974 budget law. Senate Republicans on Wednesday unveiled a new budget resolution they planned to put to a vote as early as this week. And Mr. Graham declared in a statement that he considered an extension of the 2017 tax cuts to be cost-free.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Senate G.O.P. Passes Budget Resolution, and Punts on Tough Questions

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      The budget plan that Republicans pushed through the Senate early Friday was a necessary first step toward enacting President Trump’s ambitious domestic goals, but it punted the most difficult and divisive questions about how Congress will do so.On a largely party-line vote, 52-48, Senate Republicans won adoption of a blueprint that calls for a $150 billion increase in military spending and $175 billion more for border security over the next decade.How will they pay for it? That’s a question for another day. What about the huge tax cuts they and Mr. Trump have promised? We’ll figure that out later, senators say.Over in the House, Republicans have been agonizing to come up with at least $2 trillion in spending cuts to pay for Mr. Trump’s fiscal agenda and placate their most conservative members. Their plan, which G.O.P. leaders hope to put to a vote as early as next week, loads vast tax cuts and policy changes into one huge package and calls for slashing government programs deeply to finance it all. But it faces a perilous road through the closely divided House, where Republicans hold a razor-thin majority.Republicans in the Senate have essentially delayed any decision on those thorny details, focusing instead on delivering an early win to Mr. Trump in the form of money for his hard-line anti-immigration agenda. They said they would address questions of spending and tax cuts later in a separate bill.“We’ve decided to front-end load security,” said Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the chairman of the Budget Committee. “We want to make the tax cuts permanent. We’re going to work with our House colleagues to do that. They expire at the end of the year, but we have time to do that. It is the view of the Republican Senate that when it comes to border security, we need not fail. We should have the money now to keep that momentum going.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Defying Johnson, Graham and Senate G.O.P. Push Their Own Budget Plan

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      For days, Speaker Mike Johnson had called and texted Senator Lindsey Graham, imploring him to wait for the House to take the lead in the legislative drive to enact President Trump’s sweeping tax, budget and immigration agenda.When the three men converged in New Orleans on Sunday in the president’s suite at the Super Bowl, Mr. Graham shut him down in person.“I’m a huge fan, and nothing would please me more than one big, beautiful bill passing the House,” Mr. Graham recounted telling the speaker, a Louisiana Republican. But, he said, the Senate would press ahead with its own bill, adding, “We are living on borrowed time.”Senate Republicans have waited for weeks for their House colleagues to resolve their differences and agree to a budget blueprint that could unlock the party’s push to pass a vast fiscal package with only a simple majority vote. But House Republicans have remained divided over major issues, including how deeply to cut federal programs to pay for the bill, and have blown past several self-imposed deadlines.Enter Mr. Graham, the fast-talking fourth-term Republican senator from South Carolina and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee.A loyal Trump ally who has long relished the opportunity to be in the middle of the action, Mr. Graham has made it clear in recent days that he has no intention of waiting for the House. Instead, Mr. Graham has advanced a budget plan that his committee is set to take up on Wednesday that would increase spending for the military and border security measures. He has promised that another bill extending the 2017 tax cuts will come later.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Sen. Laphonza Butler Discusses the Election During Her Last Days in Office

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      An interview with Senator Laphonza Butler, Democrat of California, during her final week in the Senate.Laphonza Butler will have served as a senator from California for only about 15 months. But she has been a close ally of Vice President Kamala Harris for 15 years.This week, I spoke with Butler, whose long partnership with Harris — they first met when Butler was a Los Angeles-based union leader — gives her an intriguing perspective on why her party lost the presidential election and how it might rebuild.Harris hasn’t said much publicly about why she lost. In Butler’s view, some of the fault starts with President Biden, who she believes broke what was a clear campaign promise by running for re-election. But just blaming Biden isn’t enough: Democrats, she says, must stop talking and start listening. Really listening.Butler was appointed by Gov. Gavin Newsom to fill the U.S. Senate seat left open by the death of Senator Dianne Feinstein in September 2023. Because she decided not to run for re-election, this week is her last in the body: On Monday, Representative Adam Schiff will be sworn in as the state’s newest senator.This interview was edited for length and clarity.LL: Why do you think Harris lost?LB: The American people wanted a change. They wanted a candidate who they thought represented change. And I think that might simply be it.Should Biden not have run?President Biden said initially that he was going to be a transitional leader. I think that is the expectation that people had. So in that sense, I think that he probably would have been better to remain in that posture. We can’t deny the success of his presidency. When history looks back, his presidency will be one of the most impactful in my lifetime, for sure. But I think once you sort of create an expectation with people, there is the need to hold to that.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      In a Tight Presidential Race, Omaha Is Basking in Its Political Relevance

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      Reliably conservative Nebraska’s one small “blue dot” could make a difference to Vice President Kamala Harris’s campaignFor many in Nebraska, autumn typically involves screaming at the television during Cornhusker football games, but the state’s sudden potential to swing the outcome of the super-close presidential race has given voters here something equally exciting: electoral relevance.High-profile politicians and their surrogates have been parachuting into Nebraska, which is often derided as flyover country when it comes to elections and beyond. The airwaves are clogged with spirited political advertising. Yards are dotted with red or blue signs. Bulletins in churches are stuffed with opinionated voting guides, and preachers are delivering election thoughts from the pulpit.Nebraska is one of just two states that split its Electoral College votes. (The other is Maine.) By some calculations in the complicated math of predicting the unpredictable outcome of this neck-and-neck race, the Omaha area’s Second Congressional District — a “blue dot” in an otherwise red state — could deliver a single tiebreaking vote for Vice President Kamala Harris on Election Day, a prospect that has focused attention on the region like never before.Overall, Nebraska votes reliably conservative, just like the other states stacked in a strip in the center of the country. Omaha generally voted Republican too, until it flipped for Barack Obama in 2008, leading Democrats to nickname the city “Obamaha.” It also voted Democratic in the 2020 presidential race, officially marking it as up for grabs.Democrats are hoping to maintain that hold this year. Some have nicknamed the city “Kamaha” and have decorated lawns, light poles, T-shirts and cheeks with blue dots.“There are too many people across the United States who feel like their vote, their voice doesn’t matter,” said Ruth Huebner-Brown, who along with her husband was spray-painting blue dots on white yard signs in their driveway on Saturday and ferrying stacks of them to arriving cars. “And honestly, there’s some truth to that if you live in a completely red or completely blue state.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      On Abortion, Trump Chose Politics Over Principles. Will It Matter?

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      With his video statement on Monday, Donald Trump laid bare how faulty a messenger he had always been for the anti-abortion cause.When Donald J. Trump ran for president in 2016, the leaders of the anti-abortion movement extracted a series of promises from him in exchange for backing his nomination.They demanded Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. They insisted that he defund Planned Parenthood. They pushed for a vice president who was a champion of their cause. And each time, he said yes.But that was then.With Roe v. Wade left on the “ash heap of history,” as anti-abortion leaders are fond of saying, they find themselves no longer calling the shots. Their movement remains mighty in Republican-controlled statehouses and with conservative courts, but it is weaker nationally than it has been in years. Many Republican strategists and candidates see their cause, even the decades-old term “pro-life,” as politically toxic. And on Monday, their biggest champion, the man whom they call the “most pro-life president in history,” chose politics over their principles — and launched a series of vitriolic attacks on some of their top leaders.With his clearest statement yet on the future of abortion rights since the fall of Roe in 2022, Mr. Trump laid bare how faulty a messenger he had always been for the anti-abortion cause. When he first flirted with a presidential run in 1999, Mr. Trump was clear about his position on abortion: “I’m very pro-choice,” he said. He reversed that stance a dozen years later: “Just very briefly, I’m pro-life,” he told attendees at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2011.His support shifted again after the Supreme Court’s decision. While he bragged about appointing three of the justices who overturned Roe, he blamed the movement for Republican losses in the midterm elections. He mused aloud about the idea of a federal ban, but refused to give it the kind of ringing endorsement anti-abortion leaders wanted.In his four-minute video statement on Monday, Mr. Trump said that states and their voters should decide abortion policies for themselves, in language that sounded like a free-for-all to the staunchest abortion opponents. He backed access to fertility treatments such as I.V.F., and supported exceptions to abortion bans in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Wartime Election in Ukraine? It’s a Political Hot Potato.

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      In normal circumstances, Ukraine’s president would face voters next spring. Analysts say a wartime election is unlikely, but the prospect is causing some anxiety in Kyiv.It might seem like a huge distraction at the height of a full-scale war, not to mention a logistical nightmare: holding a presidential election as Russian missiles fly into the Ukrainian capital and artillery assaults reduce whole towns to ruins.But President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine has not ruled it out. His five-year term ends in several months, and if not for the war, he would be preparing to either step down or campaign for a second term.Analysts consider the possibility of wartime balloting a long shot, and under martial law, elections in Ukraine are suspended. Still, there is talk among Kyiv’s political class that Mr. Zelensky might seek a vote, with far-reaching implications for his government, the war and political opponents, who worry he will lock in a new term in an environment when competitive elections are all but impossible.The debate over an election comes against the backdrop of mounting pressure on Ukraine to show to Western donors Ukraine’s good governance credentials, which Mr. Zelensky has touted. Opponents say a one-sided wartime election could weaken that effort.A petition opposing such an election has drawn signatures from 114 prominent Ukrainian civil society activists.A new electoral mandate could strengthen Mr. Zelensky’s hand in any decision about whether to commit to an extended fight, or insulate him if eventual settlement talks with Russia dent his popularity and hurt his chances of re-election later.Mr. Zelensky has said he favors elections, but only if international monitors can certify them as free, fair and inclusive, and he has outlined multiple obstacles to holding a vote. Political opponents have been more categorical in rejecting elections, which before the Russian invasion were scheduled for March and April next year, saying the war was creating too much turmoil to properly conduct a vote.Serhiy Prytula, who runs a charity in support of the war effort, ranks high among the most respected leaders in the country.Brendan Hoffman for The New York Times“The first step is victory; the second step is everything else,” including a revival of domestic politics in Ukraine, said Serhiy Prytula, an opposition figure and the director of a charity assisting the military. Opinion surveys regularly rank him in the top three most respected leaders in the country, along with Mr. Zelensky and the commander of the military commander, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny.Mr. Prytula, a former comedic actor, had set up an exploratory committee to run for Parliament before Russia’s full-scale invasion in February 2022, following the path from show business to politics taken by Mr. Zelensky, who had played a president in a television series before winning the presidency in 2019. For now, Mr. Prytula has halted all political activity during the war. The Biden administration and European governments supporting Ukraine militarily have not weighed in publicly on an election. But the idea garnered wider attention when Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said the country should go ahead with a vote despite the war.“You must also do two things at the same time,” Mr. Graham said on a visit to Kyiv in August. “I want this country to have free and fair elections, even when it’s under attack.”To hold elections, Ukraine would have to lift, at least temporarily, martial law in the case of a vote for Parliament or amend the law in the case of a vote for president. In a photo provided by the Ukrainian government, Gen. Valery Zaluzhny, center, attended a ceremony in July. He is seen as a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections.Agence France-Presse, via Ukrainian Presidential Press ServiceMr. Zelensky has cited as a major obstacle the need to ensure that Ukrainians living under Russian occupation can vote without retribution. “We are ready,” he told a conference in Kyiv last month. “It’s not a question of democracy. This is exclusively an issue of security.”The Ukrainian leader has said online voting might be a solution.Among the states of the former Soviet Union, Ukraine is the country with the largest population to have succeeded in transferring power democratically. Its criminal justice system has been riddled with corruption, and the privatization of state property has been mismanaged, but elections had been consistently deemed free and fair by international monitors. Ukrainians have elected six presidents since gaining independence in 1991.“Ukraine’s commitment to democracy is not in question, and being forced to postpone elections due to war doesn’t change this,” said Peter Erben, the Ukraine director of the International Foundation for Electoral Systems, a pro-democracy group funded by Western governments. Ukrainian politics have revolved around parties formed by prominent personalities rather than policy positions. There is Fatherland, led by Yulia Tymoshenko, the most prominent woman in Ukrainian politics; the Punch, led by Vitali Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv and a former boxer; the Voice, led by Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, a rock star; and Mr. Zelensky’s Servant of the People party, named for a TV show.Senator Lindsey Graham visited Kyiv in May. He returned in August and spoke about potential elections.Sergei Supinsky/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMilitary veterans are widely expected to play an outsize role in Ukrainian politics when elections resume, as voters and as candidates who could challenge the current political class.Holding an election before the war ends could lock in seats for parties in Parliament now, including Mr. Zelensky’s, while soldiers are still serving in the military and unable to run for office.“A scheduled election isn’t necessary for our democracy,” said Olha Aivazovska, the director of OPORA, a Ukrainian civil society group that monitors elections. There is no means now for refugees, frontline soldiers and residents of occupied territory to vote, she said.An election in “the hot phase of the war” would almost certainly undermine, not reinforce, Mr. Zelensky’s legitimacy, she said.Even those who favor an election cite concerns about a potential consolidation of power. Oleg Soskin, an economist and adviser to a former Ukrainian president, has called for elections despite the war, warning that Mr. Zelensky could otherwise usurp authority under martial law. But that is an outlying view in Kyiv. The debate about a potential election represents some re-emergence of familiar political clashes in a Ukrainian government long marked by infighting and vendettas. Most of Mr. Zelensky’s political opponents have refrained from being overly critical of him during the war, but they say a vote now would be unfair.Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, center, and his brother Vladimir Klitschko, left, visiting a residential area after shelling in 2022.Roman Pilipey/EPA, via Shutterstock“I understand the government wants to maintain its position while ratings are high,” said Dmytro Razumkov, a former chairman of Parliament in the political opposition. Mr. Zelensky’s chances of victory, he said, “will almost certainly be lower after the end of the war.”An election now would only weaken Ukraine as politicians campaigned, competing with and criticizing one another, said Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament from the opposition European Solidarity party. He has advocated for Mr. Zelensky to form a national unity government that would include members of the opposition.“It jeopardizes the unity of society,” he added.Public opinion surveys have consistently suggested that a prospective challenger to Mr. Zelensky in future elections could be the commander of his army, General Zaluzhny. As a serving military officer, he is barred from participating in an election during the war.Dmytro Razumkov, former chairman of Ukraine’s Parliament, in his office on Wednesday.Brendan Hoffman for The New York TimesMr. Zelensky still consistently leads in surveys of leaders whom Ukrainians trust. A recent poll by United Ukraine, a nonpartisan research group, showed 91 percent of Ukrainians trusted Mr. Zelensky, 87 percent trusted General Zaluzhny, and 81 percent trusted Mr. Prytula.Polls have also shown high support for Mr. Klitschko, the mayor of Kyiv; Vitaly Kim, the head of the civil military administration in the southern region of Mykolaiv; and Oleksiy Danilov, the secretary of Ukraine’s national security council.Mr. Prytula’s charity has boosted his national stature during the war. It draws donations from millions of Ukrainians to provide drones, body armor, rifle scopes and other supplies to the army at a time when activities supporting the army are immensely popular domestically.Mr. Prytula said he was focused solely on keeping Ukrainians united behind the war effort. Holding an election now, he said, would be pointless because Mr. Zelensky would all but certainly win.“He is No. 1,” he said. “Our society supports him.”Maria Varenikova More

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      Special Grand Jury in Georgia Recommended Charging Lindsey Graham in Trump Case

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      A special grand jury made the recommendation last year after hearing from dozens of witnesses on whether Donald J. Trump and his allies interfered in the 2020 election.A special grand jury that investigated election interference allegations in Georgia recommended indicting a number of Trump allies who were not charged, including Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, the former senators David Perdue and Kelly Loeffler of Georgia, and Michael Flynn, a former national security adviser.In its final report, which a judge unsealed on Friday, the panel also recommended charges against Boris Epshteyn, one of former President Donald J. Trump’s main lawyers, as well as a number of other Trump-aligned lawyers, including Cleta Mitchell and Lin Wood.Mr. Trump and 18 allies were charged in a racketeering indictment that was handed up last month by a regular grand jury in Fulton County, Ga.The special grand jury, which Fulton County prosecutors convened to help with the investigation, met at an Atlanta courthouse from June to December of last year. It spent much of that time hearing testimony from 75 witnesses on the question of whether Mr. Trump or any of his allies had sought to illegally overturn his 2020 election loss in the state.Under Georgia law, the panel could not issue indictments itself. In the Trump case, that task fell to a regular grand jury that was seated over the summer. The regular grand jury heard evidence from prosecutors for one day in early August before voting to indict all 19 defendants whom prosecutors had sought to charge.The special grand jury’s mandate was to write a report with recommendations on whether indictments were warranted in the investigation, which was led by Fani T. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney. Ms. Willis asked to convene a special grand jury because such panels have subpoena powers, and she was concerned that some witnesses would not cooperate without being subpoenaed.Portions of the report were publicly released in February, but those excerpts did not indicate who had been recommended for indictment, or on what charges. The release of the full nine-page report this week was ordered by Judge Robert C.I. McBurney of Fulton County Superior Court.Read the Report by the Special Grand Jury in Georgia That Investigated President TrumpThe special grand jury investigated whether Mr. Trump interfered in the 2020 election in the state. Their report included recommendations on whether indictments were warranted, and for whom.Read DocumentMr. Epshteyn declined on Friday to comment about the report. Others whom the advisory panel recommended for indictment did not immediately respond to requests for comment.After the special grand jury recommended indictments of about 40 people, the district attorney had to weigh which prosecutions would be the most likely to succeed in court. A potential case against Mr. Graham, for example, would have been hampered by the fact that there were conflicting accounts of telephone calls he made to a top Georgia official. Mr. Graham has repeatedly said that he did nothing wrong.Fulton County prosecutors indicated in court filings last year that they were interested in those calls by Mr. Graham, a onetime critic of Mr. Trump who became a staunch supporter. They were made shortly after the November 2020 election to Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state.Mr. Raffensperger has said that in those calls, Mr. Graham suggested the rejection of all mail-in votes from Georgia counties with high rates of questionable signatures, a step that would have excluded many more Democratic votes than Republican ones. But the phone calls are not known to have been recorded, and recollections differ about exactly what was said — factors that probably figured in the decision not to charge Mr. Graham.In a filing seeking Mr. Graham’s testimony, prosecutors said that he “questioned Secretary Raffensperger and his staff about re-examining certain absentee ballots cast in Georgia in order to explore the possibility of a more favorable outcome for former President Donald Trump,” and “made reference to allegations of widespread voter fraud” during those calls.A few weeks after the calls, Mr. Trump followed up with a call of his own to Mr. Raffensperger on Jan. 2, 2021, saying that he wanted to “find” roughly 12,000 votes, enough to reverse his loss in Georgia. Mr. Trump’s call, which was recorded, is the basis for a number of charges in the 98-page indictment.Mr. Graham has characterized as “ridiculous” the idea that he had suggested to Mr. Raffensperger that he throw out legally cast votes, and the senator’s lawyers have argued that he was carrying out a legitimate investigative function as a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. In a bid to avoid testifying before the special grand jury last year, Mr. Graham waged a legal battle that made its way to the U.S. Supreme Court. Ultimately, he was forced to testify.Afterward, he said that he had spent two hours giving testimony behind closed doors, where he said he “answered all questions.”Mr. Graham has been critical of prosecutors in the Georgia case and the three other criminal cases against Mr. Trump, characterizing them as liberals who were “weaponizing the law” to unfairly target the former president.After the Georgia indictment, Mr. Graham told reporters in South Carolina that he was not cooperating with the Fulton County prosecutors, dismissing the idea as “crazy stuff.”“I went, had my time, and I haven’t heard from them since,” he said. More

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      A Bipartisan Plan to Limit Big Tech

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      More from our inbox:DeSantis Admits the Inconvenient Truth: Trump LostScenarios for a Trump Trial and the Election‘Thank You, Mr. Trump’Mushroom CloudsMacho C.E.O.s Erik Isakson/DigitalVision, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “We Have a Way for Congress to Rein In Big Tech,” by Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren (Opinion guest essay, July 27):The most heartening thing about the proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection Commission is its authorship.After years of zero-sum legislative gridlock, to see Senators Warren and Graham collaborating is a ray of hope that governing may someday return to the time when opposing parties were not enemies, when each party brought valid perspectives to the table and House-Senate conference committees forged legislation encompassing the best of both perspectives.David SadkinBradenton, Fla.To the Editor:Senators Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren propose a new federal mega-regulator for the digital economy that threatens to undermine America’s global technology standing.A new “licensing and policing” authority would stall the continued growth of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence in America, leaving China and others to claw back crucial geopolitical strategic ground.America’s digital technology sector enjoyed remarkable success over the past quarter-century — and provided vast investment and job growth — because the U.S. rejected the heavy-handed regulatory model of the analog era, which stifled innovation and competition.The tech companies that Senators Graham and Warren cite (along with countless others) came about over the past quarter-century because we opened markets and rejected the monopoly-preserving regulatory regimes that had been captured by old players.The U.S. has plenty of federal bureaucracies, and many already oversee the issues that the senators want addressed. Their new technocratic digital regulator would do nothing but hobble America as we prepare for the next great global technological revolution.Adam ThiererWashingtonThe writer is a senior fellow in technology policy at the free-market R Street Institute.To the Editor:The regulation of social media, rapidly emerging A.I. and the internet in general is long overdue. Like the telephone more than a century earlier, as any new technology evolves from novelty to convenience to ubiquitous necessity used by billions of people, so must its regulation for the common good.Jay P. MaillePleasanton, Calif.DeSantis Admits the Inconvenient Truth: Trump Lost Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “DeSantis Acknowledges Trump’s Defeat: ‘Of Course He Lost’” (news article, Aug. 8):It is sad to see a politician turn toward the hard truth only in desperation, but that is what the failing and flailing Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has done.Mr. DeSantis is not stupid. He has known all along that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election, but until now, he hedged when asked about it, hoping not to alienate supporters of Donald Trump.Now Mr. DeSantis says: “Of course he lost. Joe Biden is the president.”In today’s Republican Party, telling the inconvenient truth will diminish a candidate’s support from the die-hard individuals who make up the party’s base.We have reached a sad point in the history of our country when we have come to feel that a politician who tells the truth is doing something extraordinary and laudable.Oren SpieglerPeters Township, Pa.Scenarios for a Trump Trial and the Election Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Layered Case in Indictment Reduces Risk” (news analysis, front page, Aug. 6):It may well be that the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, has fashioned an indictment ideally suited for achieving a conviction of Donald Trump. However, even in the event that the trial comes before the election, there is little reason to believe that it will relieve us of the scourge of Mr. Trump’s influence on American life.First, there is the possibility of a hung jury, even in Washington, D.C. Such an outcome would be treated by Trump supporters as an outright exoneration.A conviction would not undermine his support any more than his myriad previous shocking transgressions. While the inevitable appeals would last well past the election, his martyrdom might improve his electoral chances.And were he to lose the election, he would surely claim that he lost only because of these indictments. Here he would have a powerful argument because so many of us hope that the indictments will have precisely that effect.The alternative, that he wins the election, either before or after the trial, is too dreadful to contemplate.If there is anything that can terminate the plague of Trumpism, it is for a few prominent Republicans whose seniority makes their voices important — Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush — to speak out and unequivocally state that Donald Trump is unfit for office. That they all believe this is generally acknowledged.If they fail to defend American democracy at this time, they will be complicit in what Trumpism does to the Republican Party and to the Republic.Robert N. CahnWalnut Creek, Calif.‘Thank You, Mr. Trump’Former President Donald Trump has made his 2024 race principally about his own personal grievances — attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him.David Degner for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Playing Indicted Martyr, Trump Draws In His Base” (news article, Aug. 9):Thank you, Mr. Trump, for sacrificing yourself for the greater good. And when you spend years and years and years in prison, we will never forget what you did to (oops, I mean for) us.Winnie BoalCincinnatiMushroom Clouds U.S. Department of DefenseTo the Editor:Re “A Symbol Evoking Both Pride and Fear,” by Nicolas Rapold (Critic’s Notebook, Arts, Aug. 1):Richland High School in Washington State is in an area, highly restricted during World War II, where plutonium essential to building the first atomic bombs was produced. As in areas of New Mexico, there have been numerous “downwind” cancer cases, as well as leakage of contaminated water into the Columbia River basin.Bizarrely, Richland High’s athletic teams are called the Bombers; a mushroom cloud is their symbol on uniforms and the gym floor. This must be the worst “mascot” on earth.Nancy AndersonSeattleMacho C.E.O.s Illustration by Taylor CalleryTo the Editor:Re “We’re in the Era of the ‘Top Gun’ C.E.O.” (Sunday Business, July 30):The propensity of the current class of business leaders to grab at team-building gimmicks knows no bounds. Simulating the role of fighter pilots at $100,000 a pop might give a C.E.O. a fleeting feeling of exhilaration, but it is a poor substitute for actual team-building.That happens when organizations and compensation levels are flattened to more down-to-earth levels. With some C.E.O.s pulling in pay rewards that are hundreds, if not thousands, of times more than their median employee, team-affirming commitment in the boardroom is far from genuine.Employees are not fooled by C.E.O.s trying to play Top Gun for a day, and making more in that short time than most employees will earn in a year.J. Richard FinlayTorontoThe writer is the founder of the Finlay Center for Corporate and Public Governance. More