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    How Trump and Harris Talked About Climate Change During the Debate

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    At the tail end of the hottest summer in recorded history, as wildfires tear through California and a hurricane heads toward Louisiana, both Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald J. Trump failed to say how they would fight climate change during their debate Tuesday night.It was the final question posed during the 90 minute exchange, about an issue that moderator Linsey Davis of ABC News noted was “important for a number of Americans, in particular younger voters.”The outcome of this presidential election could be critical to determining whether the United States, the world’s biggest historic source of the greenhouse gasses that are dangerously warming the planet, cuts its pollution enough to keep global warming within relatively safe limits. Scientists say the window for action is rapidly closing.Ms. Harris acknowledged the problem, noting “the former president has said that climate change is a hoax and what we know is that it is very real.”“We know that we can actually deal with this issue,” she said, but did not offer any specifics about how she would. Instead, Ms. Harris made a largely economic argument, noting that federal subsidies for clean energy, which includes wind and solar power, have created new jobs and spurred manufacturing.And, in an unusual turn, Ms. Harris boasted that under the Biden administration, gas production has reached record highs. It’s a point that until very recently the administration had been reluctant to emphasize. The burning of fossil fuels is the main driver of climate change and at the United Nations climate talks last year, the United States joined nearly 200 other countries in a pledge to transition away from coal, oil and gas.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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      Fact-Checking Haley and DeSantis in Their Race to Rival Trump

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, have attacked each other with misleading claims on dealings with Chinese companies, energy and refugees.Nikki Haley, a former governor of South Carolina, and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida are vying to dethrone the Republican Party’s clear presidential front-runner, Donald J. Trump. But first one needs to triumph over the other.As Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis battle to be the unequivocal alternative to the former president, they and their supporters have repeatedly turned to attacks, some of which distort the facts, to cast doubt on each other.The claims have centered on dealings with Chinese companies, energy, taxes and refugees.Here’s a fact check on some of their claims.WHAT WAS SAID“Ambassador Haley said somehow I wasn’t doing — she welcomed them into South Carolina, gave them land near a military base, wrote the Chinese ambassador a love letter saying what a great friend they were.”— Mr. DeSantis during the debate last weekThis requires context. As governor, Ms. Haley welcomed Chinese companies coming to South Carolina. On Facebook in 2016, Ms. Haley celebrated the fact that China Jushi, a fiberglass company, would be opening its first manufacturing plant in the United States in Richland County.China Jushi is partly owned by China National Building Material, which is tied to the Chinese government. The plant is about five miles from Fort Jackson, used for Army combat training.But South Carolina did not give the company land, as Mr. DeSantis claimed; the county did, with certain conditions.Richland County transferred 197 acres to China Jushi under a deal in which the company would invest $400 million in the project and create at least 800 full-time jobs, according to the 2016 agreement.The state did help: South Carolina’s Coordinating Council for Economic Development in 2016 approved a $7 million grant to Richland County to help fund site preparation and infrastructure improvements, said Kelly Coakley, a spokeswoman for the state’s Commerce Department.It is true that Ms. Haley wrote a 2014 letter to China’s ambassador to the United States at the time, thanking him for congratulating her on her re-election and calling the country a “friend.”During her bid for the presidency, Ms. Haley has positioned herself as being tough on China, casting the country as her foil and saying she came to better understand its dangers when she became ambassador to the United Nations.Mr. DeSantis attacked Ms. Haley because of her relationship with Chinese businesses while she was governor of South Carolina.John Tully for The New York TimesWHAT WAS SAID“DeSantis gave millions to Chinese companies. DeSantis even voted to fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals.”— A pro-Haley super PAC, SFA Fund Inc., in an adFalse. There is no evidence Mr. DeSantis directly gave “millions” to Chinese companies; the ad was referring to technology purchases by state agencies. And the trade-related vote in question, when Mr. DeSantis was in Congress, did not result in the Obama administration signing trade deals with China.In regards to the claim that Mr. DeSantis gave millions to Chinese companies, a representative for the super PAC cited a 2020 article in The Washington Times, a conservative publication. The article concerned a report that asserted that state governments around the country were introducing security threats because of technology contracts with two companies: Lexmark, which was acquired by a Chinese consortium in 2016, and Lenovo, a Chinese tech company. Both companies disputed the report in statements to the news outlet.Florida records do show state agencies have spent millions in purchases from the companies, mostly Lexmark, for printers and other products, since Mr. DeSantis took office on Jan. 8, 2019. South Carolina has also worked with the companies, including under Ms. Haley’s governorship.Florida used those companies before Mr. DeSantis’s tenure, too, and SFA Fund provided no evidence that Mr. DeSantis himself directly approved the purchases. Last year, Mr. DeSantis issued an executive order instructing state officials to create rules to prevent state entities from buying technology that presents security risks, including because of a connection to China or other “foreign countries of concern.”The ad’s contention that Mr. DeSantis “voted to fast-track Obama’s Chinese trade deals” is similarly flawed. It is based on a vote Mr. DeSantis made as a congressman in 2015 to extend the president’s authority to fast-track trade legislation. He was among 190 Republicans in the House to vote for it.But Mark Wu, a Harvard law professor with expertise in international trade, said no trade agreements subject to that authority were made with China.“In passing T.P.A. in 2015, Congress agreed only to fast-track trade agreements that addressed tariff barriers (along with possibly nontariff barriers),” Mr. Wu said in an email, referring to the trade promotion authority bill that bolstered the president’s power to negotiate trade deals with Asia and Europe. “None of the negotiations that the U.S. conducted with China during the Obama administration fell into this category. Nor did these negotiations result in any trade deals with China during the Obama administration.”WHAT WAS SAID“Ron, you are the chair of your economic development agency that, as of last week, said Florida is the ideal place for Chinese businesses. Not only that, you have a company that is manufacturer of Chinese military planes. You have it. They are expanding two training sites at two of your airports now, one which is 12 miles away from a naval base. Then you have another company that’s expanding, and they were just invaded by the Department of Homeland Security.”— Ms. Haley during the debate last weekThis requires context. Mr. DeSantis previously served as the board chairman of a public-private economic development organization known as Enterprise Florida. The governor signed legislation earlier this year that consolidated the organization’s work into what is now the state’s Commerce Department.Ms. Haley was referring to an old report. A 2019-2020 report by Enterprise Florida described Florida as “an ideal business destination for Chinese companies.” Ms. Haley’s campaign has hit Mr. DeSantis over reports that the document was taken down this month.Ms. Haley’s other points largely check out.In October last year, Cirrus Aircraft — which was acquired in 2011 by a Chinese state-owned company that makes military aircraft — announced it had expanded locations at the Orlando Executive Airport and Kissimmee Gateway Airport. The first location provides aircraft sales and concierge flight training, while the other offers aircraft maintenance and management. The Orlando complex is less than 10 miles from a Navy training systems center.Regarding the company raided by the Homeland Security Department, Ms. Haley was referring to a solar panel company, JinkoSolar, based in China. Homeland security officials in May executed search warrants at its factory in Jacksonville, Fla., and an office in California.While federal officials have not provided details on that inquiry, it appears to be linked to multiple concerns. Those include whether JinkoSolar misrepresented the source of some imports containing materials from the Xinjiang region of China and incorrectly classified products, resulting in an incorrect duty rate, The New York Times has reported. The company has said that it is confident in its supply chain traceability and that U.S. customs officials have reviewed and released JinkoSolar products.In June, Jacksonville’s City Council withdrew a bill that would have provided the company tax incentives to expand. A JinkoSolar representative said in a statement that the company still planned to pursue its $50 million expansion.WHAT WAS SAID“Nikki Haley promised South Carolina she would never support increasing taxes on gas. She broke that promise almost immediately.”— A pro-DeSantis super PAC, Never Back Down, in a post on X last weekThis is misleading. As governor, Ms. Haley rebuffed calls to increase South Carolina’s gas tax as a stand-alone measure.The ad included in the post features clips taken from Ms. Haley’s State of the State addresses. First she is shown saying, in 2013, “But I will not, not now, not ever, support raising the gas tax.” She is then shown in 2015 saying, “Let’s increase the gas tax by 10 cents over the next three years.”But Ms. Haley’s full 2015 remarks shows that the super PAC took her comments out of context. She first acknowledged that “some have advocated raising the state gas tax” to increase revenue for infrastructure projects and later said: “As I’ve said many times, I will veto any straight-up increase in the gas tax.”Instead, Ms. Haley said she would only support a gas tax increase if the state reduced the income tax rate to 5 percent, from 7 percent, and made changes to the state’s Department of Transportation.The state did not ultimately increase the gas tax under Ms. Haley.Ms. Haley has accused Mr. DeSantis as anti-fracking.John Tully for The New York TimesWHAT WAS SAID“DeSantis reacts to Nikki Haley wanting to import Gazan refugees to the U.S.”— Mr. DeSantis’s campaign in a post on X in OctoberFalse. Ms. Haley did not call for the United States to bring in refugees from Gaza. But Mr. DeSantis and his supporters homed in on an interview Ms. Haley did with CNN to erroneously claim she did.In that October interview, Ms. Haley was asked to respond to remarks in which Mr. DeSantis, seemingly referring to the Palestinian population, said: “If you look at how they behave, not all of them are Hamas, but they are all antisemitic. None of them believe in Israel’s right to exist.” (Survey data from before Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel suggested many Gazans wanted Hamas to stop calling for Israel’s destruction and supported maintaining a cease-fire with Israel, as the CNN host, Jake Tapper, pointed out.)“There are so many of these people who want to be free from this terrorist rule,” Ms. Haley said. “They want to be free from all of that. And America’s always been sympathetic to the fact that you can separate civilians from terrorists. And that’s what we have to do.”But Ms. Haley did not in that interview or elsewhere say the United States should take in Gazan refugees.In fact, Ms. Haley expressed sympathy for the “Palestinian citizens, especially the innocent ones,” but she questioned why Middle Eastern countries like Qatar, Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt were not taking in such refugees. She later explicitly said the United States should not take in such refugees.“Honestly, the Hamas-sympathizing countries should take these Gazans now,” Ms. Haley said days later on Fox News, adding: “There is no reason for any refugees to come to America.”WHAT WAS SAID“Ron DeSantis. He’s anti-fracking, He’s anti-drilling.”— Ms. Haley’s campaign in an adThis is misleading. During his presidential campaign, Mr. DeSantis has said that he supports fracking and offshore drilling nationally — a point that Ms. Haley has omitted when airing similar claims.It is true that while running for governor in 2018, he opposed such drilling and fracking in Florida. His campaign website said at the time that “Ron DeSantis has a proven track record in supporting measures to ban offshore drilling in the Gulf of Mexico” and called fracking a “danger to our state that is not acceptable.”That same election, Florida voters passed a constitutional amendment banning offshore oil and gas drilling in state waters. Once governor, Mr. DeSantis ordered the Florida Department of Environmental Protection to take “necessary actions to adamantly oppose all offshore oil and gas activities off every coast in Florida and hydraulic fracturing in Florida.”A formal ban on fracking in Florida was not enacted.Curious about the accuracy of a claim? Email factcheck@nytimes.com. More

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      Will Gas Prices Doom Democracy?

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      Will the price of gasoline — a price that has very little to do with which party controls the government — nonetheless determine the outcome of the midterm elections, and quite possibly the fate of American democracy?I wish that were a silly question, but it isn’t. This year there has been a strong correlation between the price of gasoline and political polls.Earlier this year, when gas reached an average of $5 a gallon, everything seemed to point to a Republican blowout. By mid-September, with gas prices down almost $1.50, the election looked much more competitive. And some apparent recent deterioration in Democrats’ prospects coincided with an upward tick in prices in late September and early October. (Prices are now falling again.)Now, this correlation might be spurious. Other things have been going on, notably a partisan Supreme Court’s overthrow of Roe v. Wade. And political scientists who have studied the issue find that normally the effect of gas prices on political outcomes is fairly weak.But we are arguably in a special situation right now. Americans have been shocked by a sudden surge in inflation, which had been quiescent for decades, and the price of gasoline — displayed on huge signs every few blocks — is a potent reminder of our economic difficulties.What we know for sure is that politicians are harping on gas prices. Republicans don’t talk about the core personal consumption expenditure deflator, they declare that “gas was only $2 a gallon when Trump was in office!” The Biden administration talked a lot about the long slide in prices and is trying to get out the word that this slide has resumed.So this seems like a good time to make three important points about gasoline prices.First, the most important determinant of prices at the pump is the world price of crude oil, over which the United States has little influence. And I do mean “world price”: Prices in Europe and the United States normally move almost perfectly in tandem.Crude prices and hence gas prices were unusually low during Donald Trump’s last year in office, not because of anything he did, but because Covid had the world economy flat on its back, greatly reducing oil demand. Crude temporarily shot up after Russia invaded Ukraine, out of fears that Russian oil exports would be greatly reduced; it fell again as it became clear that a lot of Russian oil would continue to find its way to world markets.Second, smaller fluctuations are usually driven by technical issues at the refineries that turn crude oil into gasoline and other products. The mini-surge in gas prices that began in September (and now seems to be over) was caused by shutdowns of several refineries for maintenance and a fire at one refinery in Ohio. Again, this has nothing to do with policy.What about accusations that energy companies are deliberately holding production back to raise prices and profits?We shouldn’t dismiss this possibility out of hand. Some readers may recall the California electricity crisis of 2000-2001. When some analysts, myself included, argued that the facts suggested that market manipulation was playing a large role, we faced considerable ridicule. But it turned out that markets were, in fact, being manipulated; we have the receipts.As far as I can tell, however, the refining issues that led to recent price increases were genuine. I don’t think it’s wrong to stay suspicious, and keep energy companies on notice against pulling an Enron. But it’s probably not a current problem.Finally, gas isn’t expensive compared with the fairly recent past.One way I like to look at this is to look at the ratio of the price of gasoline to the average worker’s hourly earnings. Right now this ratio is considerably lower than it was in the early 2010s. Gasoline prices did plunge in 2014 — yes, under Barack Obama, not Trump. But this reflected a surge in fracking, which actually did increase U.S. oil production enough to have a significant effect on world markets. Unfortunately the fracking boom turned out to be a bubble that eventually burned up more than $300 billion in investors’ money.So gas prices probably won’t go back to the levels of the late 2010s, not because the Biden administration is hostile to oil production, but because those low prices depended on investors’ delusions about fracking’s profitability. Taking a longer view, as I said, gas isn’t actually expensive at this point.Furthermore, experts believe that with some troubled refineries coming back online, gas prices will fall substantially over the next few weeks.So what does this tell us about the success or failure of Biden administration policy? Very little. Biden’s jawboning of refiners over their margins might be having some effect; so might his release of extra oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Overall, however, it’s hard to think of a worse metric for judging a president and his party than a price determined mainly by events abroad and technical production issues here at home, a price that isn’t even high compared with, say, a decade ago.Yet gas prices may sway a crucial election, a fact that is both ludicrous and terrifying.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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      Why Republicans Are Having Gas Pains

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      Until just the other day, Republicans and conservative media loved, just loved talking about the price of gasoline. Indeed, “Remember how cheap gas used to be under Trump?” became a sort of all-purpose answer to everything. Is there now overwhelming evidence that the former president conspired in a violent attempt to overthrow the 2020 election? “Real America doesn’t care about the January 6th Committee. Gas is over $5 a gallon!” declared Representative Jim Jordan.But now gas prices are falling. They’re down more than 50 cents a gallon at the pump; wholesale prices, whose changes normally show up later in retail prices, are down even more, suggesting that prices will keep falling for at least the next few weeks. And there’s a palpable sense of panic on Fox News, which has been reduced to whining about how the White House is taking a “victory lap.”Actually, from what I can see, Biden administration officials are being remarkably restrained in pointing out the good news (which is probably a result of a slowing global economy). The larger point, however, is that Republican politicians’ focus on gas prices is profoundly stupid. And if it’s coming back to bite them, that’s just poetic justice.Why is focusing on gas prices stupid? Let me count the ways.First, while presidential policy can have big effects on many things, the cost of filling your gas tank isn’t one of them. For the most part, gasoline prices reflect the price of crude oil — and crude prices are set on world markets, which is one reason inflation has soared around the world, not just in the United States. Government spending in the Biden administration’s early months may have contributed to overall U.S. inflation — we can argue about how much — but has hardly anything to do with gas prices.Second, while gas was indeed cheap in 2020, it was cheap for a very bad reason: Global demand for oil was depressed because the world economy was reeling from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.Third, even before the pandemic struck, gas prices were unsustainably low.Little-known fact: Prices at the pump plunged during President Barack Obama’s second term, falling from about $3.70 a gallon in mid-2014 — around $4.50 in 2022 dollars — to $2.23 on the eve of the 2016 election. News reports at the time marveled at Obama’s diffidence about claiming credit.What happened? Mostly a boom in fracking, which increased U.S. oil production so much that it drove prices down around the world. As it turned out, however, that production boom didn’t make financial sense. Energy companies borrowed huge sums to invest in new drilling but never generated enough revenue to justify the cost. The fracking industry lost hundreds of billions even before the pandemic struck.So high gas prices weren’t President Biden’s fault, and given the disappearance of the forces that used to keep gas cheap, it’s hard to think of any policy — short of creating a global depression — that would bring prices down to $2 a gallon, or even $3 a gallon. Not that Republicans are offering any real policy proposals anyway.But the G.O.P. nonetheless went for the cheap shot of trying to make the midterm elections largely about prices at the pump. And this focus on gas is now giving the party a bellyache, as gas prices come down.It is, after all, hard to spend month after month insisting that Biden deserves all the blame for rising gas prices, then deny him any credit when they come down. The usual suspects are, of course, trying, but it’s not likely to go well.Some right-wing commentators are trying to pivot to a longer view, pointing out that gas prices are still much higher than they were in 2020. This happens to be true. But so much of their messaging has depended on voter amnesia — on their supporters not remembering what was really going on in 2020 — that I have my doubts about how effective this line will be.More broadly, many Wall Street analysts expect to see a sharp drop in inflation over the next few months, reflecting multiple factors, from falling used car prices to declining shipping costs, not just gas prices. Market expectations of near-term inflation have come way down.If the analysts and the markets are right, we’re probably headed for a period in which inflation headlines are better than the true state of affairs; it’s not clear whether underlying inflation has come down much, if at all. But that’s not an argument Republicans, who have done all they can to dumb down the inflation debate, are well placed to make.This has obvious implications for the midterm elections. Republicans have been counting on inflation to give them a huge victory, despite having offered no explanation of what they’d do about it. But if you look at the generic ballot — which probably doesn’t yet reflect falling gas prices — rather than Biden’s approval rating, the midterms look surprisingly competitive.Maybe real Americans do care about violent attacks on democracy, overturning Roe v. Wade and so on after all.If we continue to get good news on inflation, November may look very different from what everyone has been expecting.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