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      For Beto O’Rourke, Talk of Gun Control Has Become Both a Political Risk and Reward

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      DALLAS — When Beto O’Rourke interrupted a news conference in Uvalde to criticize Gov. Greg Abbott, Jason Smith bristled.Mr. Smith, a Fort Worth lawyer and Democrat, worried that Mr. O’Rourke’s approach was too confrontational in that moment, a day after an 18-year-old gunman stormed into Robb Elementary School. But in the days that followed, as details emerged that the police waited in a school hallway for more than an hour as children called 911 for help and Mr. Abbott acknowledged being “misled” about the response to the massacre, Mr. Smith changed his mind.“I was really glad he did it,” he said of Mr. O’Rourke.Mr. O’Rourke, 49, clearly took a political gamble when he disrupted the governor in an emotional outburst that Republicans and some Democrats believed crossed a line in the aftermath of a mass shooting that left 19 students and two teachers dead. He was speaking not only as an outraged parent and Texan, but also as Mr. Abbott’s Democratic opponent in the race for governor.But interviews with Democratic lawmakers, strategists and voters in recent days showed that his return to speaking out about gun control and gun violence has helped him make a powerful connection with many over the tragedy in Uvalde, bringing a new energy to his long-shot campaign to unseat Mr. Abbott and a new urgency to efforts to overhaul the state’s lax gun laws.The very issue that had haunted his campaign for governor for months — his remarks during his 2020 presidential campaign calling for more aggressive gun restrictions — has suddenly helped revive it. Those past comments — “Hell yes, we’re going to take your AR-15, your AK-47,” he said on a debate stage in 2019 — had seemed politically foolish as he campaigned in gun-friendly Texas, and he had sought to moderate them. Now, to many Texans saddened and angered by a deadly attack on schoolchildren by a gunman with an AR-15-style rifle, Mr. O’Rourke’s stance on guns has taken on a fresh resonance.Mr. O’Rourke confronted Gov. Greg Abbott in Uvalde following the shooting at Robb Elementary School.Veronica Cardenas/Reuters“They say that cost him the election,” said Mary Taylor, 66, a retired human resources manager and former substitute teacher who attended a town hall event on guns that Mr. O’Rourke held in Dallas on Wednesday. “But he had the right idea last time, and now he has more people that are getting on the bandwagon.”In an address at the White House on Thursday, President Biden called on Congress to pass gun control measures. Many were similar to the ones Mr. O’Rourke has been pressing for in Texas — including stronger background checks, a ban on assault weapons and laws to require gun owners to keep their firearms safely stored and allow authorities to take guns away from people who may hurt themselves or others.For some Democratic state leaders, the massacre and Mr. Abbott’s response compounded their frustration with the governor after his hard-right push on abortion and his rhetoric against immigrants, as well as his handling of the state’s troubled electric grid. Mr. O’Rourke has embodied that breaking point.“He is frustrated just like me, just like everyone else,” said State Senator Roland Gutierrez, a Democrat who represents Uvalde and who made his own interruption at another Abbott news conference, urging the governor to call for a special session of the Texas Legislature to pass gun-control legislation.Mr. O’Rourke’s campaign for governor is an uphill battle that some say remains all but impossible in Texas, where Republicans have a solid grip on state power.No Democrat has won a statewide race in Texas since November 1994 and no Democrat has occupied the governor’s mansion since January 1995, the last day of Gov. Ann W. Richards’s tenure. Despite years of Democratic promises of a blue wave, Texas keeps passing and enforcing some of the most conservative policies in the country. Democratic organizers continue to grapple with low voter turnout as Republicans have made gains in South Texas border cities. And in the governor’s race, Mr. Abbott has a significant financial advantage — he had nearly $50 million in cash on hand compared to Mr. O’Rourke’s roughly $6.8 million as of Feb. 19, according to the latest Texas Ethics Commission filings.“Their prospects are bleak,” said Cal Jillson, a political analyst and professor at Southern Methodist University in Dallas. “In a good year, they can win some down-ballot offices and even some Texas state legislative seats, but they have not been able to break through statewide, and 2022 is not shaping up to be a good year.”For the longtime Democratic strategists and activists who have been working to turn the state blue, recent electoral contests have left them at once optimistic and worried. Mr. O’Rourke’s Senate bid in 2018 re-energized the party and helped sway down-ballot races in favor of Democrats as he came within three percentage points of unseating Senator Ted Cruz.But Texas Republicans were aided by higher turnout in smaller counties in the 2020 election, and those largely rural areas have been shifting even more to the right. In a Republican primary runoff for attorney general two weeks ago, Ken Paxton, the Trump-backed incumbent, trounced George P. Bush, the state’s land commissioner and the last member of the Bush family still in public office.Mr. O’Rourke, the former El Paso congressman, has cast the race between himself and Mr. Abbott as a choice between old leadership beholden to the gun lobby and his vision for a state where “weapons of war” are removed from civilian life. At the Dallas forum on Wednesday, he said he had rushed the stage to confront the governor in Uvalde because he wished someone had done the same after a mass shooting at a Walmart in his hometown of El Paso in 2019.“I am more worried that one of those AR-15s is going to be used against my kid or your kid,” he told reporters after the Dallas forum. “The problem we have is that people are more worried about the politics or polling than doing the right thing.”But Luke Macias, a Republican political consultant who has worked with some of the state’s most conservative lawmakers, said Mr. O’Rourke seems to be returning to the stances that he took as a presidential candidate, ones that damaged his credibility with independent Texas voters.“Once you lose their trust, it is hard to gain them back,” Mr. Macias said.Still, Democrats and some independents said they hoped this was the moment that would transcend politics. For many, the emotions from the attack are still raw as funerals have begun in Uvalde, and the trauma has made it difficult for many to even discuss its political ramifications. In conversations, the voices of Democratic leaders and voters often cracked with emotion, and some of them shed tears.Mr. Smith, the Fort Worth lawyer, spoke as he picked up his 12-year-old twins and 8-year-old son on the last day of school. His children had not been able to bring their backpacks on the last day before the summer break because officials had been concerned someone would bring a gun.“I think people are really heartbroken about what has happened,” Mr. Smith said. “I don’t think this is just another news story. Parents are scared.”Since 2017 alone, Texas has been the site of five mass shootings that have taken the lives of 87 victims, including attacks at the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs in 2017 and Santa Fe High School southeast of Houston in 2018. Yet even as the governor has held town halls and at times has expressed an openness to tightening gun laws, Texas continues to have some of the least restrictive rules in the country. In 2021, Mr. Abbott signed a law allowing anyone over 21 to carry a handgun without a permit or training.After the killings in Uvalde, he and other Republican leaders in Texas have focused on the need to increase school security and access to mental health care, though the Uvalde gunman had no known history of mental issues. On Wednesday, Mr. Abbott tweeted a letter to state leaders calling for a special committee to address mass violence in schools. Among the list of topics was “firearm safety.”Mark Miner, a spokesman for Mr. Abbott’s campaign, said the governor was focused on the response to the tragedy and was declining to speak on political issues at this time.Mr. O’Rourke’s supporters listened to a discussion on gun violence in Dallas. Emil Lippe for The New York TimesAt Mr. O’Rourke’s town hall in Dallas, where supporters welcomed him with cheers and a standing ovation, he held firm on his support for stronger gun control measures yet also pledged to work with Republicans. He challenged his supporters to knock on doors and have uncomfortable conversations with voters on gun measures in the hopes of finding common ground.Mr. O’Rourke described how he had promised the mother of Alithia Ramirez, a 10-year-old girl who was killed at Robb Elementary, that he would work to prevent another mother from going through the same trauma. Yet even in Alithia’s own home, the divide was evident: One of her relatives told Mr. O’Rourke that he did not want to give up his AR-15 because he hoped to serve in the military.“If you are going to trust me to give my life for this country, you should trust me to own an AR-15,” Mr. O’Rourke said the young man told him. But, Mr. O’Rourke added, “there was more that we agreed upon than we disagreed on.” More

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      Chris Jacobs Drops Re-Election Bid After Bucking His Party on Guns

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      In the wake of deadly mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas, Representative Chris Jacobs of New York, a congressman serving his first full term in the House, stunned fellow Republicans by embracing a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines.Speaking from his suburban Buffalo district a week ago, about 10 miles from the grocery store where 10 Black residents were slaughtered, Mr. Jacobs framed his risky break from bedrock Republican orthodoxy as bigger than politics: “I can’t in good conscience sit back and say I didn’t try to do something,” he said.It took only seven days for political forces to catch up with him.On Friday, facing intense backlash from party leaders, a potential primary from the state party chairman and a forceful dressing down from Donald Trump Jr., Mr. Jacobs announced that he would abandon his re-election campaign.“We have a problem in our country in terms of both our major parties. If you stray from a party position, you are annihilated,” Mr. Jacobs said. “For the Republicans, it became pretty apparent to me over the last week that that issue is gun control. Any gun control.” Citing the thousands of gun permits he had issued as Erie County clerk, Mr. Jacobs emphasized that he was a supporter of the Second Amendment, and said he wanted to avoid the brutal intraparty fight that would have been inevitable had he stayed in the race. But he warned Republicans that their “absolute position” on guns would hurt the party in the long run and urged more senior lawmakers to step forward.“Look, if you’re not going to take a stand on something like this, I don’t know what you’re going to take a stand on,” Mr. Jacobs added, citing the pain of families in Buffalo, Uvalde and elsewhere.The episode, which played out as President Biden pleaded with lawmakers in Washington to pass a raft of new laws to address gun violence, may be a portent for proponents of gun control, who had welcomed Mr. Jacobs’s evolution on the issue as a sign that the nation’s latest mass tragedies might break a decades-old logjam in Washington.It also serves as a crisp encapsulation of just how little deviation on gun policy Republican Party officials and activists are willing to tolerate from their lawmakers, despite broad support for gun safety measures by Americans.Mr. Jacobs’s decision to go against his party on gun control drew an immediate and vitriolic response: Local gun rights groups posted his cellphone number on the internet, and local and state party leaders began pulling their support, one by one.Understand the 2022 Midterm Elections So FarAfter key races in Georgia, Pennsylvania and other states, here’s what we’ve learned.Trump’s Invincibility in Doubt: With many of Donald J. Trump’s endorsed candidates failing to win, some Republicans see an opening for a post-Trump candidate in 2024.G.O.P. Governors Emboldened: Many Republican governors are in strong political shape. And some are openly opposing Mr. Trump.Voter Fraud Claims Fade: Republicans have been accepting their primary victories with little concern about the voter fraud they once falsely claimed caused Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.The Politics of Guns: Republicans have been far more likely than Democrats to use messaging about guns to galvanize their base in the midterms. Here’s why.Just last week, Mr. Jacobs, who is the scion of one of Buffalo’s richest families and was endorsed by the National Rifle Association in 2020, had been an easy favorite to win re-election, even after a court-appointed mapmaker redrew his Western New York district to include some of the state’s reddest rural counties, areas he does not currently represent.Now, his choice to not seek re-election has set off a scramble among Republicans in Western New York to fill his seat, including Carl Paladino, the Buffalo developer and the party’s nominee for governor in 2010, who said Friday that he would run. Mr. Paladino, who has had to apologize for making insensitive and racist remarks, immediately gained the endorsement of Representative Elise Stefanik, the powerful Republican congresswoman from New York’s North Country. After a mass shooting at a Tops supermarket in Buffalo, Mr. Jacobs backed a federal assault weapons ban and limits on high-capacity magazines.Kenny Holston for The New York TimesParty leaders and allies who spoke to Mr. Jacobs in recent days said he clearly understood the political ramifications of his decision to support powerful gun control measures — but he nonetheless refused to back away from it.Mr. Jacobs, 55, announced his support for a federal ban on assault weapons last week without having first consulted many of his political advisers, according to a person familiar with his decision who was not authorized to discuss it.After making his remarks, he conducted a poll that suggested he might have still had a path to re-election, though not an easy one.“His heart is in a good place, but he’s wrong in his thinking as far as we are concerned,” Ralph C. Lorigo, the longtime chairman of the Erie County Conservative Party, said before Friday’s announcement. “This quick jump that all of the sudden it’s the gun that kills people as opposed to the person is certainly not 100 percent true.”Mr. Lorigo said he had vouched for Mr. Jacobs earlier this year when other conservatives doubted him. But this past Monday, he demanded the congressman come to his office and made clear he would encourage a primary challenge.“He understood that this was potentially political suicide,” Mr. Lorigo said.Even before he made his decision not to run again, several Republicans were already lining up to face off against Mr. Jacobs, angered at both his comments and the way in which he had surprised fellow members of his party, including some who had already endorsed him.In addition to Mr. Paladino, other potential Republican challengers included Mike Sigler, a Tompkins County legislator; Marc Cenedella, a conservative businessman; and State Senator George Borrello.“We deserved the courtesy of a heads up,” said Mr. Borrello, a second-term Republican from Irving, N.Y., south of Buffalo.Mr. Borrello added that Mr. Jacobs’s actions were particularly galling considering the congressman had “actively and aggressively” sought out the support of pro-gun groups like the N.R.A. and the 1791 Society.“And those people rightfully feel betrayed,” he said.The most formidable threat to Mr. Jacobs, though, may have come from Nicholas A. Langworthy, a longtime Erie County Republican leader who currently serves as the chairman of the state’s Republican Party.Mr. Langworthy, who has yet to formally announce whether he will seek the seat, had been a supporter of Mr. Jacobs, helping him secure former President Donald J. Trump’s endorsement, but he began circulating petitions to get on the ballot himself in recent days and told associates that he would consider challenging Mr. Jacobs.Mr. Langworthy declined to comment on Friday.Gun control advocates and Democrats denounced the reaction to the congressman’s remarks, saying it showed the intolerance of Republicans’ hard-line approach to gun rights.Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Why Canada Races on Gun Policy When America Crawls

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      As Congress once more struggles through acrimonious and so far fruitless negotiations over gun reforms in the wake of a mass shooting, Americans may find themselves looking north in befuddlement.Canada’s government has begun moving to ban handgun sales and buy back military-style rifles — dramatic changes in a country with one of the world’s highest gun ownership rates outside of the United States, expected to pass easily and with little fuss.Ask Americans why Canada’s government seems to cut through issues that mire their own in bitterness and frustration, and you might hear them cite cultural differences, gentler politics, even easygoing Canadian temperaments.But ask a political scientist, and you’ll get a more straightforward answer.Differences in national culture and issues, while meaningful, do not on their own explain things. After all, Canada also has two parties that mostly dominate national politics, an urban-rural divide, deepening culture wars and a rising far-right. And guns have been a contentious issue there for decades, one long contested by activist groups.Rather, much of the gap in how these two countries handle contentious policy questions comes down to something that can feel invisible amid day-to-day politicking, but may be just as important as the issues themselves: the structures of their political systems.Canada’s is a parliamentary system. Its head of government, Justin Trudeau, is elevated to that job by the legislature, of which he is also a member, and which his party, in collaboration with another, controls.If Mr. Trudeau wants to pass a new law, he must merely ask his subordinates in his party and their allies to do it. There is no such thing as divided government and less cross-party horse-trading and legislative gridlock.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada with government officials and gun-control activists, during a news conference about firearm-control legislation in Ottawa, Ontario, on Monday.Blair Gable/ReutersCanada is similar to what the United States would be if it had only a House of Representatives, whose speaker also oversaw federal agencies and foreign policy.What America has instead is a system whose structure simultaneously requires cooperation across competing parties and discourages them from working together.The result is an American system that not only moves slower and passes fewer laws than those of parliamentary models like Canada’s, research has found, but stalls for years even on measures that enjoy widespread support among voters in both parties, such as universal background checks for gun purchases.Many political scientists argue that the United States’ long-worsening gridlock runs much deeper than any one issue or the interest groups engaged with it, to the basic setup of its political system.The Perils of PresidentsThe scholar Juan Linz warned in a much-discussed 1990 essay, as much of the developing and formerly Soviet worlds moved to democracy, that those countries not follow what he called one of the foundational flaws of the United States: its presidency.“The vast majority of the stable democracies in the world today are parliamentary regimes,” Dr. Linz wrote.Presidential systems, on the other hand, tended to collapse in coups or other violence, with only the United States having persisted since its origin.It’s telling that when American diplomats and technocrats help to set up new democracies abroad, they almost always model them on European-style parliaments.Subsequent research has found that parliamentary systems also perform better at managing the economy and advancing rule of law than presidencies, if only for the comparative ease with which they can implement policy — witnessed in Canada’s rapid response to gun violence or other crises.Gun control activists during a rally in Washington last week.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesAmerica’s legislative hurdles, requiring cooperation across the president, Senate and House to pass laws, are raised further by the fact that all three are elected under different rules.None represents a straight national majority. Presidential elections favor some states over others. The Senate tilts especially toward rural voters. All three are elected on different schedules. As a result, single-party control is rare. Because competing parties typically control at least one of those three veto points on legislation, legislation is frequently vetoed.Americans have come to accept, even embrace, divided government. But it is exceedingly uncommon. While Americans may see Canada’s legislative efficiency as unusual, to the rest of the world it is American-style gridlock that looks odd.Still, America’s presidential system does not, on its own, explain what makes it function so differently from a country like Canada.“As long as things are moderate, a presidential system is not so bad,” said Lee Drutman, a political scientist who studies political reform.Rather, he cited that America is nearly alone in combining a presidency with winner-take-all elections.Zero-Sum ContestsProportional votes, common in most of the world, award seats to each party based on its share of the vote.Under American-style elections, the party that wins 51 percent of a race controls 100 percent of the office it elects, while the party with 49 percent ends up with nothing.This all but ensured that politics would coalesce between two parties because third-ranked parties rarely win office. And as those two parties came to represent geographically distinct electorates struggling for national control, their contests took on, for voters, a sensation of us-versus-them.Canada, too, has winner-take-all elections, a practice inherited from Britain. Still, neither of those countries hold presidential contests, which pit one half of the nation against the other.And in neither country do the executive and legislative branches share power, which, in times of divided government, extends the zero-sum nature of American elections into lawmaking, too. And not only on issues where the parties’ supporters disagree.Mourners gathered at Newtown High School in Connecticut in 2012 for a service for those killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School.Luke Sharrett for The New York TimesIn 2013, shortly after a gunman killed 20 first graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., polls found that 81 percent of Republicans supported background checks for gun purchases. But when asked whether the Senate should pass such a bill — which would have required Republicans to side with the then-Democratic majority — support dropped to 57 percent. The measure never passed.The episode was one of many suggesting that Americans often privilege partisan victory, or at least denying victory to the other side, over their own policy preferences, the scholar Lilliana Mason wrote in a book on partisanship.“Even when policy debates crack open and an opportunity for compromise appears,” Dr. Mason wrote, “partisans are psychologically motivated to look away.”Unstable MajoritiesStill, there is something unusual to Canada’s model, too.Most parliamentary systems, as in Europe, elect lawmakers proportionally. Voters select a party, which takes seats in the legislature proportional to their overall vote share. As a result, many different parties end up in office, and must join in a coalition to secure a governing majority. Lawmaking is less prone to gridlock than in America but it’s not seamless, either: the prime minister must negotiate among the parties of their coalition.Canada, like Britain, combines American-style elections, which produce what is not quite a two-party system in those countries but is close, with European-style parliaments.As a result, Canada’s prime minister usually oversees a legislative majority, allowing him or her to breeze through legislation even more easily than in European-style parliaments.Handguns on display in Maple Ridge, British Columbia.Jennifer Gauthier/ReutersThis moment is an exception: Mr. Trudeau’s Liberal Party controls slightly less than half of the House of Commons. Still, his party dominates a legislative alliance in which he has only one partner. Canada also includes a Senate, though its members are appointed and rarely rock the boat.But the Canadian system produces what Dr. Drutman called “unstable majorities,” prone to whiplashing on policy.“If you have a 52 percent margin for one party, and then you throw the bums out because four percent of the vote went the other way, now you’ve moved completely in the other direction,” he said.Gun laws are a case in point. After a 1989 mass shooting, Canadian lawmakers passed registration rules, but phased them in over several years because they were unpopular among rural communities.Those rules were later abolished under a Conservative government. Though Mr. Trudeau has not reimposed the registry, he has tightened gun laws in other ways.In a European-style system, by contrast, a four-point shift to the right or left might change only one party in the country’s governing coalition, prompting a slighter policy change more proportional to the electorate’s mood.American liberals may thrill at the seeming ease with which Canada’s often-left-leaning government can implement policy, much as conservatives may envy Britain’s more right-wing, but similarly rapid, lawmaking under a similar system.But it is the slow-and-steady European model, with its frustratingly incremental advances, that, over the long run, research finds, tend to prove the most stable and effective. More

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      At Least Trump Didn’t Get What He Wanted This Week

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      Well, the people have spoken. Sort of.Several major elections this week, and the big story was Georgia. The race Donald Trump certainly seemed to care about most was a Republican primary there involving his enemy Gov. Brian Kemp.Trump, as the world knows, hates hates hates Kemp for insisting on reporting the accurate results of Georgia’s voting in the 2020 presidential race. The rancor runs so deep that Trump’s Save America PAC actually coughed up at least $500,000 toward Kemp’s defeat.Normally, our ex-president sits on his cash like a nesting hen. Must have tugged at his heartstrings to see it being carted away. And to no avail, hehehehehehe. Trump recruited former Senator David Perdue to run against his enemy, and Kemp demolished Perdue by more than three to one.Same story with Brad Raffensperger, Georgia’s secretary of state, who Trump told to “find 11,780 votes” after the presidential election and give him the win. Didn’t happen! Yet this week, Raffensperger did so well with Georgia Republican voters that he’s not even going to face a primary runoff.If you’ve got an optimistic nature, here’s a spin you can put on the whole story: Tuesday’s results showed regular Republicans aren’t all still steaming about how the 2020 presidential election was stolen from their man. And they’re not all going to the polls to get revenge.They’re ready to — dare I say it? — move on. No better example than Mike Pence. “I was for Brian Kemp before it was cool,” the former vice president told a crowd near Atlanta.Yes, he really said that. It will be remembered as yet another sign of the wrecked relationship between Trump and his former No. 2. It was also perhaps the only moment in American history when Mike Pence was linked with the word “cool.”OK, that’s enough voter happiness. Back down to Planet Earth. The newly reaffirmed Governor Kemp announced on Tuesday that he and his family were “heartbroken” by the “incomprehensible” school shooting in Texas.Now, Kemp recently signed a bill that will allow Georgians to carry handguns in public pretty much whenever they feel like it — no license or background check required. You’d think — at least wish — that he’d consider a possible link between the wide, wide availability of firearms in this country and the tragic line of mass shooting deaths. Anything can make a difference.Compared with the elementary school shooting in Texas, everything else about this week will be a political footnote. But some of the footnotes are certainly interesting. If we want to pick a theme for Tuesday’s elections, it might be that Donald Trump’s influence isn’t nearly as strong as he thinks it is, and that he may be the only American voter whose chief preoccupation is revisiting the 2020 election on an hourly basis.Getting over it is something Trump can’t abide. Consider the primary in Alabama for a Republican Senate candidate. Perhaps you remember — if you’re very, very, very into elections — that Trump began by backing Representative Mo Brooks, then changed his mind and unendorsed him? Cynics believed Trump had just decided Brooks was a loser, but it’s also possible the congressman had offended our former president by urging voters to “look forward.”That’s the wrong direction to mention when you’re hanging out with the Trump camp.“Mo Brooks of Alabama made a horrible mistake recently when he went ‘woke’ and stated, referring to the 2020 presidential election scam, ‘Put that behind you, put that behind you,’” Trump said as he retracted his endorsement.The outcome of all this drama was that Brooks got less than a third of the vote, behind Katie Britt, the former chief of staff of retiring Senator Richard Shelby. Since Britt failed to get 50 percent, there will be a runoff. Winner will face Democratic nominee Will Boyd this fall.One addendum — which you should really skip over if you’re feeling even modestly depressed: Both Britt and Brooks are in the gun camp as deep as humanly possible. Britt has ads in which she’s aiming a rifle and promising to “shoot straight.” The N.R.A., which endorsed Brooks, praised his efforts to protect “interstate transportation of firearms.” Those of us in states that are desperately trying to keep gun proliferation under control would appreciate it if he focused his energies on something else.Trump’s biggest election night triumph may have been Herschel Walker, the former football player he backed for a Georgia Senate nomination. But Walker’s competition wasn’t exactly top-notch, and now he’ll be running against Democratic Senator Raphael Warnock, who will probably take note of a few items on Walker’s résumé that Trump overlooked. Including allegations of domestic violence, refusal to take part in debates, and the day on the campaign trail when Walker expressed doubt about the theory of evolution. (If it were true, Walker mused, “Why are there still apes? Think about it.”)On the plus side, there was Walker’s eagerness to spend $200,000 entertaining people at Mar-a-Lago. Nothing, it appears, raises the former president’s enthusiasm for a candidate like a willingness to make Donald Trump wealthier.All told, reporters found that seven of the Republicans Trump endorsed this year spent a total of more than $400,000 in campaign money at the resort. So yeah, our ex-president lost a lot politically this election season. But he gained a chunk of cash.Maybe he’ll use some of it for tips when he speaks on Friday at the N.R.A.’s three-day convention in Houston.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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      Congress Is Paralyzed on Guns. Here’s Why Chris Murphy Is Still Hopeful.

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      The Democrat from Connecticut, who has spent his decade in the Senate trying and failing to enact gun safety bills, says his party should make the issue the core of its 2022 midterm message.WASHINGTON — It did not take long after the racist gun massacre in Buffalo for a familiar sense of resignation to set in on Capitol Hill about the chance that Congress would be able to muster the will to act on meaningful legislation to combat gun violence in America.In emotional remarks at the scene of the mass shooting on Tuesday, President Biden made no direct call for Congress to take such action. Afterward, he told reporters that he intended to do so, but was frank about his belief that persuading lawmakers to move would be “very difficult.”Around the same time, top Democrats on Capitol Hill were publicly conceding that their paper-thin majority in the Senate meant there was little they would be able to do to prevent the next tragedy.“We’re kind of stuck where we are, for the time being,” said Senator Richard J. Durbin, Democrat of Illinois and the chairman of the Judiciary Committee, playing down the chance that even a modest bill to strengthen background checks for gun purchases could overcome a Republican blockade.Senator Christopher S. Murphy, Democrat of Connecticut, shares his colleagues’ skepticism that any legislation can move. But he is also concerned that Democrats may squander a chance to turn the issue of gun safety into a rallying cry for the midterm elections.For a decade, the issue of gun violence has defined Mr. Murphy’s career; the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., took place a month after he won his seat.Mr. Murphy spoke to The New York Times from a Senate cloakroom about the chances for legislative action on guns, what Mr. Biden should do and why he thinks Democrats will lose control of Congress if they don’t make combating gun violence the core of their 2022 appeal to voters.The interview has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.After the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, when 20 young children and six adults were killed, did Democrats and President Barack Obama miss the opportunity to pass meaningful gun safety legislation?There was this popular meme in 2013, which said that if the killing of 20 children didn’t result in any action, nothing will. That’s fundamentally the wrong way to look at how Washington works. There are few epiphanies here. It’s all about political power, and political muscle, and we’re in the process of building our own.The National Rifle Association and the gun lobby was ready for us, and for those parents, in 2013. The anti-gun-violence movement was essentially nonexistent, and the N.R.A. was at its peak power.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.We needed time to build up a movement that is stronger than the gun lobby.My worry is that a lot of my colleagues still believe in the mythology of 1994, when everyone thought Democrats lost Congress over the assault weapons ban. That’s not true — that’s not why Congress flipped. Ever since then, Democrats are under the illusion that it’s a losing issue for us.It’s one of the most important wedge issues, and if we don’t talk about it, then we’re going to lose.Many are urging Senator Chuck Schumer and Mr. Durbin to bring up a bill to expand background checks. Even if it couldn’t pass, it would force Republicans to defend their opposition to a policy that polls show has broad support. Should they?There are times when show votes help define the parties. I’m not confident this is one of those moments, given the fact that it’s already pretty clear which side Republicans fall on and which side Democrats fall on.My main recommendation is for Democrats to go out and run on this issue, proudly and strongly. My worry is we would have a vote on the Senate floor, but then Democrats would not be willing to go out and talk about that vote in campaigns.The only way we actually change the dynamic on this issue is to make Republicans show we believe this is a winning electoral issue. That’s what we did in 2018. My worry is, we don’t feel the same confidence in this issue as a winning electoral issue in 2022.I don’t know why we don’t learn a lesson from 2018, that when we run strongly on the issue of guns, universal background checks, banning assault weapons, we turn out voters that otherwise would stay home in the midterms. I’ve talked to Senator Schumer about bringing a vote to the Senate floor. I’m not interested in taking a vote on the Senate floor if we don’t talk about it.If legislation can’t pass, what executive actions are you pushing the administration to take?There is still a ton of harmful gray area around the question of who needs to be a licensed gun dealer. There are a lot of folks peddling guns online and at gun shows who are truly in the business of selling guns, and should be required to do background checks. President Obama put out helpful, but not binding, guidance. The administration could put some real meat on the existing statute and define what it means to be in the business of selling guns.Have you pitched that to them?I have. There has been significant interest from the White House in pursuing that line of policy. I don’t know that they have made a commitment or issued any directive to the Justice Department.Do you support eliminating the filibuster in order to pass gun reforms?One hundred percent. The reason we can’t get this done is the rules of the Senate, not because the American people haven’t made a choice.Guns were one of the most important issues for voters in 2018; it ranked second behind health care. When voters came to the polls in 2018 and elected a Democratic majority in the House, it was with the explicit purpose of getting gun legislation passed. The same voters came back and elected a Democratic president. It’s simply the rules of the Senate that stopped the will of the American people from becoming law.Is there anything happening in terms of discussions with Senators Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, and Patrick J. Toomey, Republican of Pennsylvania, about trying to revive their bill to tighten background checks?There’s nothing new happening now. Manchin-Toomey doesn’t have 60 votes. I spent much of the last two years trying to find a piece of Manchin-Toomey that could get 60 votes. Ultimately, we couldn’t find a landing place. I’ll continue to try any creative avenue to find an expansion of background checks.Does a weakened National Rifle Association create any opening for Republicans to move off their opposition to gun safety measures?This N.R.A. stamp of approval still really matters to them. Inside a Republican Party that has become bereft of big ideas, they’ve only got one left, which is the destruction of government. Nothing signals that more than the endorsement of the organization that supports people arming themselves against the government. In this era of anti-government fervor, it’s more important than ever.Eventually, we have to figure out a way for Republicans to show how much they hate government other than the N.R.A. endorsement. Maybe I should be rooting for the Club for Growth to be a more effective voice within the Republican Party.Can guns really be a winning issue for Democrats in a year when Republicans are attacking your party over inflation, rising gas prices and not meeting the basic needs of American families?I think voters are emotionally moved by the slaughter of innocents. And I think they find it a little weird when Democrats who claim to care about this don’t actually talk about it.We live in an era where authenticity is the coin of the realm. You just have to show voters who you are. I don’t think there’s any more potent means by which to translate who you are, and what you care about, than this issue. I think when you leave this out when you list your priorities as a candidate, it causes voters to scratch their heads a bit.What grade would you give the Biden administration on this issue?The administration could have moved faster on executive actions and the appointment of a new A.T.F. director. I want them to keep going. There’s still more regulatory and executive action that this administration can take and more things the team can do to use the bully pulpit to make sure this is an election issue.Would you give the administration a grade?No.A number of gun violence prevention organizations have called on Mr. Biden to open a White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. Do you think that would make a difference?I do. It’s become clear to me we need a specific, driving focus on gun violence. The president is clearly personally committed to this issue, but he’s stretched thin due to myriad international and domestic crises. He would be best served by a high-level senior official who wakes up every day and coordinates the issue.After another mass shooting like the one in Buffalo, do you find yourself becoming resigned to the idea that nothing can be done on gun violence?I’ve studied enough great social change movements to know they often take decades to succeed. It was a full 10 years from the shooting of James Brady to the passage of the Brady handgun bill. I think I am part of one of these great social change movements, and I’m confident that you have to put up with a lot of failures before you’re met with success.I also don’t think democracy can allow for 80 percent of the American people to not get their way, forever. Eventually we will be able to break through. We just have not been able to find that pathway yet.This is an exhausting issue to work on, but I have this very deep sense that I will see my time in public service as a failure if I don’t meet the expectations of those parents in Sandy Hook, and Hartford and Bridgeport. And fear is a powerful motivator. More

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      For Hochul, Shooting in Buffalo Is a Hometown Tragedy

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      The governor grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives in the city now. The shooting has taken on political overtones in the 2022 race for governor of New York.Hours after an 18-year-old gunman killed 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket, Gov. Kathy Hochul convened a news conference just blocks away.She mourned for the tight-knit community and for the lives shattered by the cruelty of white supremacy. She spoke of the danger of hatred circulating online. And she talked knowingly of the neighborhood and the streets she had walked — and how it all hit so close to home.Ms. Hochul grew up in the Buffalo suburbs and lives with her husband in the city’s downtown area, less than four miles from the East Side, the mostly Black neighborhood where a white gunman orchestrated one of the deadliest racist massacres in recent memory.“This is personal” Ms. Hochul said a day later at True Bethel Baptist Church, a Black church one mile away from the site of the shooting. “You’ve hurt our family.”In recent days, Ms. Hochul has called out tech companies that she said were not doing enough to stop the spread of online hate that motivated the gunman, and denounced Washington for its failure to impose what she said should be common-sense gun control laws.On Tuesday, she appeared with President Biden as he visited Buffalo, a postindustrial city in western New York on the shores of Lake Erie. And in the coming days, Ms. Hochul has hinted that she plans to unveil a new gun safety package.With the Democratic primary for governor six weeks away, and Ms. Hochul running for her first full term, the shooting has presented the governor with both an opportunity to engage with voters in a moment of crisis and a challenge to demonstrate whether she is up to the task.From Opinion: The Buffalo ShootingCommentary from Times Opinion on the massacre at a grocery store in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Buffalo.The Times Editorial Board: The mass shooting in Buffalo was an extreme expression of a political worldview that has become increasingly central to the G.O.P.’s identity.Jamelle Bouie: G.O.P. politicians and conservative media personalities did not create the idea of the “great replacement,” but they have adopted it.Paul Krugman: There is a direct line from Republicans’ embrace of crank economics, to Jan. 6, to Buffalo.Sway: In the latest episode of her podcast, Kara Swisher hosts a discussion on the role of internet platforms like 4chan, Facebook and Twitch in the attack.Indeed, the shooting, which law enforcement officials said was motivated by a white supremacist ideology fanned by some factions of the country’s right wing, has swiftly taken on political overtones in the escalating race for governor of New York, where gun violence has become a central issue.One of Ms. Hochul’s primary opponents, Representative Thomas R. Suozzi, was in Buffalo when the shooting occurred. He immediately used the event as a political cudgel, proclaiming on Twitter, “Hochul refuses to make fighting crime a priority. I will.”Mr. Suozzi, a centrist Democrat from Long Island, later issued a statement that took issue with Ms. Hochul’s record in Congress and endorsement during that time by the National Rifle Association, which has vehemently opposed gun control measures, including background checks.“That is not leadership,” said Mr. Suozzi, who has received an F rating from the N.R.A. “It is hypocritical and it does nothing to protect New Yorkers from this kind of tragedy happening again.”Ms. Hochul, at a Sunday prayer service in Buffalo, lives less than four miles from the scene of the shooting.Gabriela Bhaskar/The New York TimesRepresentative Lee Zeldin, a Suffolk County Republican who is running to be his party’s nominee for governor, issued a statement over the weekend that pushed for the reinstatement of the death penalty in New York State, which was declared unconstitutional nearly two decades ago.“Those who commit fatal hate crimes, acts of terrorism and other extreme violence should be brought to justice, and in some of these cases, the only fitting form of justice is the death penalty,” said Mr. Zeldin, who, visited the shooting scene on Monday to pay his respects to those killed, but did not take questions from reporters and avoided overtly political remarks.But for Ms. Hochul, the shooting has more obvious resonance.“I think the governor feels it on a whole different level, because she’s passed by the Tops, if not been in the Tops,” said Darius G. Pridgen, a pastor at the True Bethel Baptist church.In the days since the shooting, the governor has visited churches and gone on television and radio, giving interviews to nearly a dozen outlets, from MSNBC and CNN to Buffalo’s long-running morning radio show, “Janet & Nick in the Morning.”She has highlighted the state’s existing gun safety laws, seizing the opportunity to emphasize actions she has already taken as governor, such as an interstate task force that she assembled last year to tackle the illegal flow of guns.And she has denounced the killings as “white supremacist acts of terrorism,” calling on white Americans to take a stand against racism.“To say that she is taking this personally is to say the least,” said Jeremy Zellner, the chair of the Democratic Party in Erie County.The governor has lived with her husband in a condo in the waterfront area of the city’s downtown area since 2013, shortly after she lost her seat in Congress — though she often splits her time between Albany and New York City since becoming governor in August.Ms. Hochul got her start in politics as a member of the town board in Hamburg, a suburban town just south of Buffalo that is overwhelmingly white. While she briefly represented the East Side as clerk of Erie County, the House district she was elected to in 2011 was largely rural and suburban and did not include Buffalo.Ms. Hochul, at a news conference on Sunday, once represented the East Side of Buffalo when she was Erie County’s clerk.Malik Rainey for The New York TimesShe later helped promote economic development projects and job training programs aimed at the city as lieutenant governor to former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. As governor, she visited the East Side as recently as March to tout the construction of new affordable housing.One of Ms. Hochul’s major priorities for the region involves addressing the racial and economic inequalities that were exacerbated by a stretch of highway that was built through the East Side. Ms. Hochul is spearheading a plan to reconnect neighborhoods that were divided by the Kensington Expressway over 60 years ago, saying last month that there was $1 billion available in federal and state funds for a project to potentially cover the expressway, or part of it.“She’s from the suburbs, but in no way, shape or form a stranger to that part of the city,” said State Senator Sean Ryan, a Democrat who represents parts of the city’s West Side. “She’s a known commodity in terms of boots on the ground in neighborhood centers.”The mass shooting came as New York’s gubernatorial primary, scheduled for June 28, looms large.Ms. Hochul has amassed a gargantuan $20 million war chest and a huge polling advantage, but her campaign has faltered in recent weeks, battered by the arrest of her lieutenant governor, Brian Benjamin, on corruption charges, and criticism of a deal she secured to subsidize the construction of a new football stadium for the Buffalo Bills with taxpayer money.Mirroring many Democrats nationwide, Ms. Hochul had recently pivoted her attention to the likelihood that the Supreme Court would overturn Roe v. Wade, radically redrawing the national landscape for women’s health care. Ms. Hochul has begun speaking more extensively about making New York a refuge for reproductive rights, vowing to enshrine abortion rights into state law and using her executive authority to create a $35 million fund to support abortion providers.Her campaign released a television ad this week that highlighted her commitment on the issue, even as the shooting’s aftermath overtook most of her public schedule.And on Monday, Ms. Hochul took the stage with Mr. Biden at a community center, seeking to draw parallels between Buffalo and the president’s hometown, Scranton, Pa. She said both leaders were used to their native cities failing to get the “respect” they deserved.“I’m a daughter of Buffalo, and I’m so proud to be governor,” she said ahead of the president’s remarks. “But right now I’m a daughter of Buffalo.” More

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      The Bloody Crossroads Where Conspiracy Theories and Guns Meet

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      Gail Collins: Bret, you and I live in a state that has some of the toughest gun laws in the country. But that didn’t stop a teenager with a history of making threats from getting his hands on a semiautomatic rifle and mowing down 10 people at a supermarket in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo on Saturday.Bret Stephens: It’s sickening. And part of a grotesque pattern: the racist massacre in Charleston in 2015, the antisemitic massacre in Pittsburgh in 2018, the anti-Hispanic massacre in El Paso in 2019 and so many others. There’s a bloody crossroads where easy access to weapons and increasingly commonplace conspiracy theories meet.I have diminishing faith that the usual calls for more gun control can do much good in a country with way more than 300 million guns in private hands. Please tell me I’m wrong.Gail: Sane gun control won’t solve the problem, but it’ll help turn things around — criminals and mentally ill people will have a harder time getting their hands on weapons. And the very fact that we could enact restrictions on firearm purchases would be a sign that the nation’s whole attitude was getting healthier.Bret: Wish I could share your optimism, but I’ve come to think of meaningful gun control in the United States as the ultimate Sisyphean task. Gun control at the state level doesn’t work because guns can move easily across state lines. Gun control at the federal level doesn’t work because the votes in Congress will never be there. I personally favor repealing the Second Amendment, but politically that’s another nonstarter. And the same Republican Party that opposes gun control is also winking at, if not endorsing, the sinister Great Replacement conspiracy theory — the idea that liberals/Jews/the deep state are conspiring to replace whites with nonwhite immigrants — that appears to have motivated the accused shooter in Buffalo.Bottom line: I’m heartbroken for the victims of this massacre. And I’m heartbroken for a country that seems increasingly powerless to do anything about it. And that’s just one item on our accumulating inventory of crippling problems.Gail: You know, we thought the country was going to be obsessed with nothing but inflation this election year. But instead, it’s hot-button social issues like guns, and of course we’ve spent the last few weeks reacting to the Supreme Court’s upcoming abortion decision, which probably won’t actually be out for weeks.Bret: And may not end up being what we were led to expect by the leaked draft of Justice Alito’s opinion. I’m still holding out hope — faint hope, because I fear that the leaking of the decision will make the conservative justices, including Justice Gorsuch and Chief Justice Roberts, less open to finding a compromise ruling that doesn’t overturn Roe.Gail: Is it possible things will get even more intense when it’s announced? And what’s your take on what we’ve seen so far?Bret: Much more intense and largely for the reasons you laid out in your terrific column last week: Abortion rights are about much more than abortion rights. They’re also about sex and all that goes with it: pleasure, autonomy, repression, male responsibility for the children they father and the great “who decides” questions of modern democracy. The justices will have to gird for more protests outside their homes.What do you think? And is there any chance of crafting an abortion rights bill that could get more than 50 votes in the Senate?Gail: Well, maybe if everybody hunkered down and tried to come up with something that would lure a few Republicans who say they support abortion rights like Susan Collins. Many Democrats don’t want to water down their bill and really there’s not much point in making the effort since they’d instantly run into the dreaded filibuster rule.Bret: Wouldn’t it have helped if Democrats had devised a bill that a majority could get behind, rather than one that had no chance of winning because it went well beyond Roe v. Wade by banning nearly all restrictions on abortions?Gail: Given the dispiriting reality of Senate life — 60 votes, Joe Manchin, etc., etc. — I can see why Chuck Schumer has pretty much given up the fight to change anything on that front and is just focused on drawing attention to the whole abortion issue in this year’s elections.Bret: Shortsighted. Democrats need to secure their moderate flank, including lots of voters who want to preserve abortion rights but have strong moral reservations about late-term abortions. It just makes the party seem beholden to its most progressive, least pragmatic flank, which is at the heart of the Democrats’ political problem.Gail: Now whatever happens isn’t going to directly affect folks who live in states like New York. But when I look at states that have already passed abortion bans in anticipation of a court decision, I do worry this won’t be the end of the story — that the legislatures might move further to ban at least some kinds of contraceptives, too.Am I being overly paranoid?Bret: It’s hard for me to imagine that happening, unless Republicans also intend to repeal the 19th Amendment to keep women from throwing them out of political office. Even most conservative women in America today probably don’t want to return to the fingers-crossed method of birth control.Can I go back to something we said earlier? How do you feel about the protests outside of the justices’ homes?Gail: Pretty much all in the details. The Supreme Court members have lifetime appointments and they’re immune from the normal constraints on public officials who have to run for re-election or who work for a chief executive who has to run for re-election.So I support people’s right to make their feelings known in the very few ways they have available. As long, of course, as the demonstrators are restrained and the justices and their families are provided with very good security.You?Bret: It seems like a really bad idea for a whole bunch of reasons. If the hope of the protesters is to get the justices to change their vote by making their home life unpleasant, it probably accomplishes the opposite: People generally don’t respond well to what they perceive as harassment. Those homes are also occupied by spouses and children who should have the right to remain private people. It’s also a pretty glaring temptation to some fanatic who might think that he can “save Roe” through an act of violence. And, of course, two can play the game: What happens when creepy far-right groups decide to stage protests outside the homes of Justices Kagan and Sotomayor and soon-to-be Justice Jackson?Gail: Well, I guess we’ll get to have this fight again. Meanwhile, let me switch to something even more, um, divisive. Baby formula!Bret: I wish I could joke about it, but it’s a seriously unfunny story.Gail: A plant that manufactures brands like Similac was shut down after concerns were raised about possible contamination. Things will eventually go back to normal, at least I hope they do, but in the meantime the supply dropped by about half.Lots to look into on how this happened. But it’s a reminder that parents have to rely on four companies for almost all the nation’s formula supply. Which then should remind us of the virtue of antitrust actions that break up mega-corporations.Bret: One lesson here is that when the F.D.A. decides to urge a “voluntary recall” of something as critical as baby formula, as it effectively did in February, it had better be sure of its reasons and think through the entire chain of potential consequences to public health. Another lesson is that when our regulations are so extreme that we won’t allow the formula made in Europe to be sold here commercially, something is seriously wrong with those regulations.Gail: I’ll go along with you about the imports from Europe, after noting that importation from Canada was restricted by the Trump administration.Bret: We will mark that down on the ever-expanding list of things we hate about Trump.Gail: However, recalling formula that’s given bacterial infections — some fatal — to babies doesn’t seem all that radical to me.Bret: I agree, of course, but it isn’t clear the bacteria came from the plant in question and surely there must have been a way to deal with the problem that didn’t create an even bigger problem.The broader point, I think, is that our zero-tolerance approach to many kinds of risk — whether it’s the possible contamination of formula or shutting down schools in reaction to Covid — is sometimes the riskiest approach of all. How did the most advanced capitalist country in the world become so incapable of weighing risks? Is it the ever-present fear of lawsuits or something else?Gail: Part of the problem is a general — and bipartisan — eagerness to restrict imports on stuff American companies produce.Bret: Am I hearing openness on your part to a U.S.-E.U. free trade agreement? That would solve a lot of our supply-chain problems and annoy protectionists in both parties.Gail: Yeah, but the last thing we ought to do is respond to an event like the formula shortage by saying, “Oh gosh, no more federal oversight of imports!” Really, there’s dangerous stuff out there and we need to be protected from it.Bret: Well, of course.Gail: Let’s move on to the upcoming elections. Really fascinated by that Pennsylvania Senate primary. Particularly on the Republican side, where we’re seeing a super surge from Kathy Barnette, a Black, very-very-conservative-to-reactionary activist. The other leaders are still Trump’s favorite, Mehmet Oz, and David McCormick, former head of the world’s largest hedge fund.Bret: Nice to see a genuinely competitive race.Gail: Barnette is doing very well despite — or maybe because of — her record of anti-Muslim rhetoric.A pretty appalling trio by my lights, but do you have a favorite?Bret: I’m in favor of the least crazy candidate on the ballot.Gail: Excellent standard.Bret: The problem the G.O.P. has had for some time now is that in many states and districts, not to mention the presidential contest, the candidate most likely to win a primary is least likely to win a general election. Republican primaries are like holding a heavy metal air guitar contest in order to compete for a place in a jazz ensemble, if that makes any sense.Gail: Yeah, although that particular music contest does sound sorta fascinating.Bret: Question for you, Gail: Do you really think President Biden is going to run for re-election? Truly, honestly? And can you see Kamala Harris as his successor?Gail: Well, I’m of the school that says Biden shouldn’t announce he’s not running and embrace lame duckism too early. But lately I have been wondering if he’s actually going to try to march on through another term.Which would be bad. The age thing aside, the country’s gotten past the moment when all people wanted in a chief executive was a not-crazy person to calm things down.Bret: If Biden decides to run, he’ll lose in a landslide to anyone not named Trump. Then again, if he decides to run, then he’ll also be tempting Trump to seek the Republican nomination.Gail: If Kamala Harris runs we will have to … see what the options are.Bret: I’ve always thought Harris would be a great secretary general of the United Nations. When does that job come open again?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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      Sometimes, History Goes Backward

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I don’t know if you remember the Lloyd Bridges character from the movie “Airplane,” the guy who keeps saying, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue.” We were away last week and … stuff happened. Your thoughts on what appears to be the imminent demise of Roe v. Wade?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, I have multitudinous thoughts, some of them philosophical and derived from my Catholic upbringing. Although I certainly don’t agree with it, I understand the philosophical conviction that life begins at conception.Bret: As a Jew, I believe that life begins when the kids move out of the house.Gail: But I find it totally shocking that people want to impose that conviction on the Americans who believe otherwise — while simultaneously refusing to help underprivileged young women obtain birth control.Bret: Agree.Gail: So we have a Supreme Court that’s imposing the religious beliefs of one segment of the country on everybody else. Which is deeply, deeply unconstitutional.You agree with that part, right?Bret: Not entirely.I’ve always thought it was possible to oppose Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds, irrespective of religious beliefs, on the view that it was wiser to let voters rather than unelected judges decide the matter. But that was at the time the case was decided in 1973.Right now, I think it’s appalling to overturn Roe — after it’s been the law of the land for nearly 50 years; after it’s been repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court; after tens of millions of American women over multiple generations have come of age with the expectation that choice is a fundamental right; after we thought the back-alley abortion was a dark chapter of bygone years; after we had come to believe that we were long past the point where it should not make a fundamental difference in the way we exercise our rights as Americans whether we live in one state or another.Gail: If we’re going to have courts, can’t think of many things more basic for them to protect than control of your own body. But we’ve gotten to the same place, more or less. Continue.Bret: I’m also not buying the favorite argument-by-analogy of some conservatives that stare decisis doesn’t matter, because certain longstanding precedents — like the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that enshrined segregation for 58 years until it was finally overturned in Brown v. Board of Ed. in 1954 — clearly deserved to be overturned. Plessy withdrew a right that was later restored, while Roe granted a right that might now be rescinded.I guess the question now is how this will play politically. Will it energize Democrats to fight for choice at the state level or stop the Republicans in the midterms?Gail: Democrats sure needed to be energized somehow. This isn’t the way I’d have chosen, but it’s a powerful reminder of what life would be like under total Republican control.Bret: Ending the right to choose when it comes to abortion seems to be of a piece with ending the right to choose when it comes to the election.Gail: And sort of ironic that overturning Roe may be one of Donald Trump’s biggest long-term impacts on American life. I guarantee you that ending abortion rights ranks around No. 200 on his personal list of priorities.Bret: Ha!Gail: When you talk about your vision of America, it’s always struck me as a place with limited government but strong individual rights. Would you vote for a Democratic Congress that would pass a legislative version of Roe? Or a Republican Congress that blows kisses to Justice Alito?Bret: I’ll swallow my abundant objections to Democratic policy ideas if that would mean congressional legislation affirming the substance of Roe as the law of the land. Some things are just more important than others.Gail: Bret, I bow to your awesomeness.Bret: Minimum sanity isn’t awesomeness, but thanks! Then again, Democrats could really help themselves if they didn’t keep fumbling the political ball. Like on immigration. And inflation. And crime. And parental rights in kids’ schooling. And all the stupid agita about Elon Musk buying Twitter. If you were advising Democrats to shift a little toward the center on one issue, what would it be?Gail: I dispute your bottom line, which is that the Democrats’ problem is being too liberal. The Democrats’ problem is not getting things done.Bret: Not getting things done because they’re too liberal. Sorry, go on.Gail: In a perfect world I’d want them to impose a windfall profits tax on the energy companies, which are making out like bandits, and use the money to give tax rebates to lower-income families. While also helping ease inflation by suspending the gas tax. Temporarily.Bret: “Temporarily” in the sense of the next decade or so.Gail: In the real world, suspending the gas tax is probably the quickest fix to ease average family finance. Although let me say I hate, hate, hate the idea. Not gonna go into a rant about global warming right now, but reserving it for the future.What’s your recommendation?Bret: Extend Title 42 immediately to avoid a summer migration crisis at the southern border. Covid cases are rising again so there’s good epidemiological justification. Restart the Keystone XL pipeline: We should be getting more of our energy from Canada, not begging the Saudis to pump more oil. Cut taxes not just for gasoline but also urge the 13 states that have sales taxes on groceries to suspend them: It helps families struggling with exploding food bills. Push for additional infrastructure spending, including energy infrastructure, and call it the Joe Manchin Is the Man Act or whatever other flattery is required to get his vote. And try to reprise a version of President Biden’s 1994 crime bill to put more cops on the streets as a way of showing the administration supports the police and takes law-and-order issues seriously.I’m guessing you’re loving this?Gail: Wow, so much to fight about. Let me just quickly say that “more cops on the street” is a slogan rather than a plan. Our police do need more support, and there are two critical ways to help. One is to create family crisis teams to deal with domestic conflicts that could escalate into violence. The other is to get the damned guns off the street and off the internet, where they’re now being sold at a hair-raising clip.Bret: Well, cops have been stepping off the force in droves in recent years, so numbers are a problem, in large part because of morale issues. It makes a big difference if police know their mayors and D.A.s have their backs, and whether they can do their jobs effectively. That’s been absent in cities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to Seattle. I’m all for getting guns off the streets, but progressive efforts such as easy bail, or trying to ban the use of Stop, Question and Frisk, or getting rid of the plainclothes police units, have a lot to do with the new gun-violence wave.Gail: About the Keystone pipeline — you would be referring to Oil Spill Waiting to Happen? And the answer to our energy problems can’t be pumping more oil, unless we want to deed the families of the future a toxic, mega-warming planet. Let’s spend our money on wind and solar energy.Bret: Right now Canadian energy is being shipped, often by train, and sometimes those trains derail and blow up.Gail: Totally against trains derailing. Once again, less oil in general, however it’s transported.But now, let’s talk politics. Next week is the Pennsylvania primary — very big deal. On the Republican side, Trump is fighting hard for his man, the dreaded Mehmet Oz. Any predictions?Bret: Full disclosure: Oz played a key role in a life-threatening medical emergency in my family. I know a lot of people love to hate him. But he’s always going to be good in my books, I’m not going to comment on him other than that, and our readers should know the personal reason why.However, if you want to talk about that yutz J.D. Vance winning in Ohio, I can be quite voluble.Gail: Feel free. And does that mean you’ll be rooting for the Democrat Tim Ryan to win the Ohio Senate seat in November? He’s a moderate, but still supports the general party agenda.Bret: I like Ryan, and not just because he’s not J.D. Vance. I generally like any politician capable of sometimes rebelling against his or her own party’s orthodoxies, whether that’s Kyrsten Sinema or Lisa Murkowski.As for Vance, he’s just another example of an increasingly common type: the opportunistic, self-abasing, intellectually dishonest, morally situational former NeverTrumper who saw Trump for exactly what he was until he won and then traded principles and clarity for a shot at gaining power. After Jan. 6, 2021, there was even less of an excuse to seek Trump’s favor, and still less after Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.Democracy: You’re either for it or against it. In Kyiv or Columbus, Vance is on the wrong side.Gail: Whoa, take that, J.D.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