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      The Permanent Migration Crisis

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      On Wednesday the Biden administration announced that it will offer work permits and deportation protections to over 400,000 Venezuelans who have arrived in the United States since 2021. On paper this is a humanitarian gesture, a recognition of the miseries of life under the Maduro dictatorship. In political practice it’s a flailing attempt to respond to a sudden rise in anti-immigration sentiment in blue cities, particularly New York, as the surge of migrants overwhelms social services and shelters.I say flailing because the fundamental problem facing the Biden administration is on the southern border, where every attempt to get ahead of the extraordinary numbers trying to cross or claim asylum has been overwhelmed.In Eagle Pass, Texas, The Wall Street Journal reports that in a week, an estimated 10,000 migrants have entered the city, whose entire population is less than 30,000. The subsequent movement of migrants to places like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., has been encouraged by red-state governors, but under any circumstances such crowds in Eagle Pass would eventually mean rising numbers in big cities. And policies that make it easier to work in those cities, like the Biden move, are likely to encourage more migration until the border is more stable and secure.The liberal confusion over this situation, the spectacle of Democratic politicians like Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul sounding like Fox News hosts, is a foretaste of the difficult future facing liberals across the Western world.For decades, liberal jurisdictions have advertised their openness to migrants, while relying on the sheer difficulty of international migration and restrictions supported by conservatives to keep the rate of arrivals manageable, and confine any chaos to the border rather than the metropole.What’s changed, and what will keep changing for decades, are the numbers involved. Civil wars and climate change will play their part, but the most important shifts are, first, the way the internet and smartphones have made it easier to make your way around the world, and second, the population imbalance between a rich, rapidly-aging West and a poorer, younger Global South, a deeply unstable equilibrium drawing economic migrants north.All of this is a bigger problem for Europe than the United States — European aging is more advanced, Africa’s population will boom for decades (in 50 years there may be five Africans for every European) while Latin America’s birthrates have declined. The European equivalent of Eagle Pass is the island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost possession, where the number of recent migrants exceeds the native population. This surge is just the beginning, Christopher Caldwell argues in an essay for The Spectator on the continent’s dilemmas, which quotes a former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy: “The migration crisis has not even started.”America’s challenge is less dramatic but not completely different. The world has shrunk, and there is no clear limit on how many people can reach the Rio Grande. So what’s happening this year will happen even more: The challenges of mass arrivals will spread beyond the border, there will be an increased demand for restrictions even from people generally sympathetic to migrants, but the sheer numbers will make any restrictions less effectual.This combination can yield a pattern like what we’ve seen in Britain after Brexit and Italy under Giorgia Meloni: Politicians are elected promising to take back control of borders, but their policies are ineffective and even right-wing governments preside over high migration rates. The choice then is to go further into punitive and callous territory, as the Trump administration did with its family-separation policy and its deal with Mexico — or else to recoil as many voters did from Trump’s policies, which encouraged the Democrats to move leftward, which left them unprepared to deal with the crisis when they came to power, which now threatens to help elect Trump once again.In a sense you might distill the challenge facing liberals to a choice: Take more responsibility for restricting immigration, or get used to right-wing populists doing it for you.But in fact the problems for both left and right will be messier than this. The populists themselves will not always know how to fulfill their promises. The interests of liberals in immigrant destinations like New York City may diverge from liberals in college towns or suburbs. The scale and diversity of migration will create unexpected alliances (a lot of Venezuelan migrants might vote for Trump if given the chance, after their experience with socialism) and new lines of internal fracture.Most likely there will be neither a punitive end to the crisis nor a successful humanitarian means of managing it. There will be a general rightward evolution, a growing tolerance for punitive measures (“Build the wall” could be a liberal slogan eventually), that has some effect on the flow of migration — but doesn’t prevent it from being dramatic, chaotic and transformative, on the way to whatever new world order may await.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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      Which Crisis Should We Talk About First?

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. Democratic mayors and governors are warning the Biden administration that the migrants crossing our southern border are straining their cities and states to the breaking point. New York City alone is sheltering and feeding an average of 59,000 migrants a day. What’s your advice to the White House?Gail Collins: Easy stuff first, Bret. There are job openings many newcomers could fill in areas like food service, if they’re given the ability to work. And the federal government needs to give stressed-out regions — particularly New York City — a whole lot more help when it comes to housing.Bret: I’m definitely in favor of handing out work permits, if that’s what you mean. Please go on.Gail: Making more housing available has to include building new accommodations and transforming existing city buildings, both residential and those with unneeded office space. Over the long run, we absolutely have to open up options for multifamily housing in suburban areas that have long resisted it.As to the border itself, Biden is trying to tighten up the whole immigration process, but a lot of his initiatives have been challenged in court. The administration has expanded federal border resources in an effort to make processing families faster. Although of course there’s still more that should be done.OK, your turn.Bret: Assuming the president wants to get re-elected, while preserving the possibility of immigration reform sometime in the next, oh, 100 years, he has to get control of the border. Right now. Jobs can take months to fill and housing takes years to build — not to mention that there are plenty of U.S. citizens who ought to be the administration’s first priority when it comes to affordable housing.In the meantime, we’ve had a 30-month crisis that too many Democrats downplayed until it became a blue-state problem. Millions of people have entered the country illegally and tens of thousands in New York are now living off government assistance. Working-class people are afraid they are going to be priced out of low-paying jobs by desperate migrants.My advice to the president: Ask for the resignation of Alejandro Mayorkas, his failed homeland security secretary. Put a highly respected former military officer, like retired Adm. William McRaven, in the job. Call up 10,000 active duty troops to help police the border. Work with Mexico to further strengthen its border with Guatemala. And invest infrastructure funds to build that damned wall. Because if Biden doesn’t get control of the border, it will become Donald Trump’s signature — and possibly winning — issue in next year’s campaign.Gail: Ah, Bret, once again you lose me at the wall. Which isn’t very useful at stopping migrants but is great as a symbol of our worst impulses — the evolution from our image as welcoming land of liberty to cranky neighbor warning the kids to stay out of his backyard.Bret: It’s one thing when several kids come into the cranky neighbor’s backyard. It’s quite another when several million do, then raid his fridge and medicine cabinet and never want to go home.Gail: Speaking of kids — I know this is not a terrific segue — I guess we should discuss the Hunter Biden situation.Bret: I think of it as two situations: the first about Hunter, the second about Joe.Regarding the first, I don’t see why the son of any president — but particularly a Democratic president who favors gun control and believes the rich should pay their taxes — should not face stiff penalties for blowing off paying his taxes and also for buying a gun while addicted to drugs.As for the second, at a minimum I’d like to know how the president’s story went from “I’ve never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings” to the White House’s tacit admission that Hunter would put his dad on the line when speaking to business associates, ostensibly just to make small talk but very likely as a way of selling the Biden “brand.” I’d also like to know why Biden used email aliases during his vice presidency to communicate with Hunter. The answers might well turn out to be innocent. But that’s all the more reason to respond to the questions rather than evade them.Gail: We definitely have two different Hunter Biden issues: what punishment he deserves and how much of an impact his messy saga should have on our opinion of his father.Bret: The father who, I should underscore, I will probably find myself voting for next year barring the miracle of a Nikki Haley or Chris Christie candidacy on the Republican line. Go on.Gail: As to the first, we have a guy who lied, when filling out the paperwork to buy a gun, about whether he was a drug addict. And who failed to pay all his 2017 and 2018 taxes. Hunter was going to get 24 months probation, until his plea deal collapsed.This is a combo for which low-income folks with no friends in high places would probably get a stiffer punishment. But I am also sure that any Republican senator’s son who got in similar trouble would not in a billion years go to jail.Do you disagree?Bret: I’m sure you’re right — and that’s wrong in itself. But Hunter definitely deserved stiffer punishment than the wrist-slap he seemed on his way to getting before his plea bargain fell apart this summer.Gail: On the second count, it is pretty clear that Joe Biden helped Hunter get some business cred by reminding potential clients that Dad was vice president.Bret: Meaning that Joe could have been turning himself into a willing participant in some pretty shady business dealings in places like Ukraine, where he was supposed to be the Obama administration’s point man for fighting corruption.Gail: Even if that’s the version of the saga voters buy, I find it extremely hard to imagine this is going to have any impact on the president’s re-election prospects. You have here a guy who lost his first wife and a daughter in a terrible car crash and his beloved older son after a long cancer battle. Don’t think most Americans will hold his attempts to aid the surviving son against him. While he’s running against a man whose family profited shamelessly from foreign business ties during the presidency.Bret: I truly feel for the president when it comes to the tragedies in his life. And I have zero sympathy for Trump or his sleazy family. But that doesn’t change the fact that Hunter is also sleazy and that, at a minimum, Joe shouldn’t make a habit of having Hunter constantly by his side.Gail: I know the Republicans can’t let a day go by without howling about Hunter, but I truly don’t think the country cares.Bret: Not sure you’re right about that. Democrats are really underestimating the impact this could have on the election. A CNN poll published last week found that 61 percent of Americans think Joe was involved in Hunter’s business dealings and that 55 percent think he acted inappropriately regarding the investigation into Hunter. What that does is to diminish Biden’s claim to represent honesty and decency in the White House. A similar thing happened in 2016 when Democrats went after Trump on his sexual ethics, and Trump struck back by bringing Juanita Broaddrick to his second debate with Hillary Clinton, to remind the country about Bill’s sexual ethics. The risk is that undecided voters conclude that both sides are morally tainted so they may as well vote their pocketbook interests.Gail: I just feel the only people who are going to vote against Biden because of Hunter are people who were going to vote against Biden for something anyway.Bret: Different subject, Gail. Nancy Pelosi just announced she intends to run for re-election, when she’ll be 84. I realize she’s no longer in a leadership position, but given Mitch McConnell’s and Dianne Feinstein’s and, well, Joe Biden’s diminished capacities, wouldn’t it be better for her to retire in good health and make way for someone a little younger?Gail: The super-important fact about Nancy Pelosi’s career decision is that she opted to give up one of the nation’s most powerful posts because she felt a younger leader could do it better.Bret: True, and she deserves credit for that. I’d still suggest she take a look at some of her generational peers in politics, including McConnell and Feinstein, and ask herself if that’s the best way to walk off the political stage.Gail: The nation is growing older and people need to believe that they can step aside for the next generation of leaders without totally retiring from public life. So, hey, I’m a Pelosi rooter on this front.Bret: I’ll defer to you on this subject. And speaking of immortality, I need to put in a word for Rebecca Chace’s wonderful obituary of Edith Grossman, the great translator of Gabriel García Márquez and Miguel de Cervantes. I started reading García Márquez in Spanish as a kid — he lived just a few blocks from us on the south side of Mexico City — and then I read some of the same books in her English translations when I was a bit older. Grossman’s translations somehow managed to make him a more vivid, lucid, enchanting writer.She wasn’t just a translator. She was an artist.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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      Border Crisis Comes to Blue Cities After Migrants Are Bused North

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      The strain of migrants in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles and other cities has taxed resources, divided Democrats and put pressure on President Biden to act.When Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas began sending migrants and asylum seekers from the southwestern frontier to New York, Washington and Chicago, he vowed to bring the border to the Democratic cities he said were naïvely dismissing its costs.A year later, the migrant waves he helped set in motion have put northern “sanctuary” cities increasingly on edge, their budgets stretched, their communities strained. And a border crisis that has animated Republican politics for years is now dividing the Democratic Party. Humanitarian impulses are crashing into desperate resource constraints and once-loyal Democratic allies have reluctantly joined Republicans to train their fire on President Biden.Eric Adams, the mayor of the nation’s largest city, declared this week that without a federal bailout and clampdown at the border, swelling migration “will destroy New York City.” The nation’s second-largest city, Los Angeles, has promised to sue Mr. Abbott. And the liberal mayor of the third-largest city, Chicago, began pleading last month for the White House to step in.“Let me state this clearly: The city of Chicago cannot go on welcoming new arrivals safely and capably without significant support and immigration policy changes,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said.Gov. Maura Healey of Massachusetts, a liberal Democrat, has declared a state of emergency, activated the National Guard and started petitioning the White House for help.The migrants on state-funded buses from Texas are a fraction of the total number arriving in northern cities. Texas brags that its “Operation Lone Star” has sent more than 13,100 migrants to New York City since August 2022, but the overall strain there stems from the total, more than 110,000. Some of those migrants have family in New York, while others are attracted to the city’s history of welcoming immigrants.Still, the rising clamor is creating a rare convergence between the two parties, which for years have fought in seemingly parallel political universes. Democrats focused on issues like abortion, the preservation of democracy and expansion of health care, while Republicans warned of a migrant “invasion” and railed against “woke” liberal ideology, socialism and expanding L.G.B.T.Q. rights. Endless Republican news conferences at the border and threats to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, were dismissed as political bluster.Now, suddenly, some Democrats are sounding remarkably like Republicans.“Upstate New Yorkers shouldn’t be forced to bear responsibility for decades of failed immigration policy, dysfunction and stupidity out of Washington, Albany and places like New York City,” said Josh Riley, the Democratic candidate seeking to unseat Representative Marc Molinaro, a Hudson Valley Republican. Mr. Riley added that it was time for Mr. Biden to “to step up and help out.”For Republicans, the response to Mr. Abbott’s gambit has gone beyond what they could have hoped for — a spreading of the pain, as millions of migrants stream across the southern border, fleeing violence and poverty, drawn to what they see as a more welcoming administration in Washington and plentiful work.Representative Ronny Jackson, a conservative Republican from Texas, praised the bus caravans as “bold” and “thinking outside the box.” Even more moderate Republican voices have praised the move. “The reality is, Abbott was shining a light on existing issues that nobody was talking about,” said Will Hurd, a moderate Republican and former House member from a Texas border district now running for president as a fierce critic of Donald J. Trump. “Blue governors and mayors are having to deal with what Republican governors have had to deal with for three years now.”Democrats seem paralyzed by a surge of urban migration that has defied easy answers — and increasingly threatens their political aspirations, from crucial tossup congressional races in the suburbs of New York City to the race for the White House.Democrats in the cities continue to castigate their Republican opponents for using migrants as political weapons, with little regard for their health or safety. Last month, a 3-year-old child traveling to Chicago on a Texas-funded bus became ill, was put on an ambulance and later died at a hospital. The party’s candidates are quick to point out that Republicans deserve a large share of blame for blocking previous attempts to enact a bipartisan immigration overhaul in Washington.But many Democrats realize complaints only go so far as they enter an election year, when immigration, border security and appeals to nativism from Mr. Trump and his imitators will roil the electorate far from the Mexican border.“The potency of the issue has not abated, and Democrats who think that it has are fooling themselves,” said Howard Wolfson, a top Democratic strategist who steers hundreds of millions of dollars in political spending as Michael R. Bloomberg’s adviser.“This is not just going to be a local New York City or Chicago or Boston issue,” he added. “This is going to be top of mind for voters all over the country next year, and my strong advice to the White House is they need to get off the sidelines and take action to address this.”In Chicago, migrants have jammed police stations and O’Hare Airport.Sebastian Hidalgo for The New York TimesThe numbers are becoming impossible to ignore. New York City is sheltering 59,000 migrants each night and projects that caring for them could eat up $12 billion in the next few years, threatening the viability of other city services.Chicago has taken in 13,500 migrants, and spent at least $250 million. Migrants have jammed police stations and O’Hare Airport, and prompted fierce recriminations from Black residents on the South Side who see disparities between investment in their communities and the money spent on migrant care.In Washington, the city has taken in 10,500 migrants since the first bus arrived outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris.And in Massachusetts, the arrival of thousands of migrant families has driven the state’s shelter population up by 80 percent in the last year.“When is enough enough?” asked Representative Henry Cuellar, a conservative Democrat who represents a border district around Laredo, Texas. “You’ve got to be able to control your borders and be able to handle the number of people that come in. You just can’t open up the faucet and let everybody in.”Mr. Cuellar said that even before Mr. Biden’s inauguration, he warned Biden transition officials that a crisis was looming with the receding Covid-19 emergency and the end to draconian border rules imposed by the Trump administration. He recalled meeting Mayor Adams at a reception this year and listening to his complaints.“I didn’t tell him who I was,” Mr. Cuellar said. “I was just smiling and thinking to myself, ‘You guys only get a drop of what we get here at the border.’”Asylum seekers, many from Venezuela, at a Catholic Charities respite center in Laredo, Texas.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesAs the appeals grow louder, the White House has slowly ramped up its response.The Federal Emergency Management Agency in June allocated huge “shelter and service” grants to cities and states unused to such attention — $105 million to New York City, $10.6 million for Chicago, $19 million to Illinois, more than $5 million to Washington. Those numbers, however, hardly meet the need: Chicago and Illinois alone have allocated about $200 million on migrant care in the city this year.After Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York traveled to Washington last month, Biden administration officials said they would ask Congress to allocate more money to reimburse cities and states and pledged to help asylum seekers fill out paperwork to obtain work permits more quickly. They also blamed Congress for refusing to take up a comprehensive immigration plan Mr. Biden first proposed in 2021.Tom Perez, director of the White House Office of Intergovernmental Affairs, has begun convening weekly phone calls with Mr. Adams and Ms. Hochul, and he spoke with Governor Healey on Thursday.White House officials said they were rushing work permits to migrants who cross the border using a new app issued by Customs and Border Protection and said the administration had spent $1 billion to ease the crisis. An additional $600 million request is awaiting congressional action.But the officials said ultimately Congress must act to broaden immigration legislation.Angelo Fernández Hernández, a White House spokesman, dismissed Mr. Abbott’s “cruel political stunts” and chided “Republicans in Congress who not only refuse to pass comprehensive immigration reform but are also not providing” the Department of Homeland Security with the resources it needs.He said the Biden administration was “using the tools it has available to secure the border and build a safe, orderly and humane immigration system while leading the largest expansion of lawful pathways for immigration in decades.”But the White House has quietly said no to more aggressive unilateral actions, such as using executive powers to accelerate work permitting. And Mr. Biden himself appears to want nothing to do with the issue publicly, forgoing the kind of high-profile leadership local officials have been clamoring for.“When some of these governors and blue cities like New York started calling out, I thought the Biden administration would get its head out of the sand, but not a lot has changed,” said Mr. Jackson, the Republican congressman from Texas. “I just think they don’t know what to do at this point. They’ve created a crisis they can’t manage.”Some Democrats fear that their standard-bearer for 2024 may be misreading the potency of a volatile issue heading into an election year.Tom Suozzi, a Democratic former congressman from Long Island mulling a comeback attempt next year, urged Mr. Biden to take a page from one of his predecessors, Bill Clinton. Mr. Suozzi said the president should propose to Republicans a moderate package of reforms that balances border security with “the very real human suffering that exists.”“If the Republicans come to the table with the president and the Democrats, America has a path forward,” Mr. Suozzi said. “If the Republicans reject the president’s moderate solution, it exposes them as simply playing politics on this issue.”Washington, D.C., has taken in 10,500 migrants since the first bus arrived outside the home of Vice President Kamala Harris.Valerie Plesch for The New York TimesBut Democrats are divided on how the administration should respond. Leaders in some of the affected cities want an expansion of humanitarian parole programs and temporary protected status for whole classes of migrants, such as Venezuelans. Those steps would help rush work permits to overcrowded shelters, police stations and airports now housing people who are either forced to sit idle or enter the underground economy.“This does require a national response, but it has to be a humanitarian response, not an iron hand across the border,” said Nubia Willman, who led Chicago’s Office of New Americans as the first buses began arriving.And public displays of division have liberal Democrats worried that more moderate Democratic leaders like Mr. Adams may just play into Republican hands. Former Vice President Mike Pence and House Speaker Kevin McCarthy have both quoted Mr. Adams in recent days in their own appeals to harden the southwestern border.Representative Delia Ramirez, a Chicago Democrat, said she understood the “frustration” of some Democrats. But, she said, “I just really hope that my colleagues would show why Democrats need to stick together. The blame game doesn’t get us anywhere.”She called Mr. Adams’s comments “anti-immigrant” and “despicable.”For now, even the fastest way to relieve cities’ burdens — requests for federal funds to help reimburse cities and states — has been caught up in politics. Republicans are threatening to stop any funding that would share the cost of the crisis.“The city and state made a choice,” said Mr. Molinaro, the Republican congressman from New York. “There is no willingness by the president and governor to intervene in a real way. I don’t see subsidizing the city to be a sanctuary city.” More

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      Why So Many Americans Are So Down on Biden

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      Unemployment is near historic lows, and inflation has come way down. We are inflicting a strategic humiliation on Russia by arming Ukraine without putting American forces at risk. The homicide rate fell by about 10 percent across 30 cities compared with last year. Democrats defied electoral trends by holding the Senate, scoring major legislative victories and easily confirming a Supreme Court nominee.Why, then, do only 20 percent of voters rate the economy as “excellent” or “good,” versus 49 percent who call it “poor,” according to a New York Times/Siena poll? Why are Americans overwhelmingly pessimistic about the country’s future, according to the Pew Research Center? Why does Gallup find a significantly smaller percentage of Americans have confidence in the presidency today than they did in the last, disastrous year of Donald Trump’s tenure? And why is President Biden polling dead even with his predecessor in multiple surveys despite the former president’s 91 felony charges?In short, with everything so great, why are people so down? That’s a question that, as The Times’s Reid Epstein wrote last week, stumps the White House and its political allies, who seem to think the problem is a failure to communicate all the good news.But there’s another explanation: The news isn’t all that good. Americans are unsettled by things that are not always visible in headlines or statistics but are easy enough to see.Easy to see is the average price of a dozen eggs: up 38 percent between January 2022 and May of this year. And white bread: up 25 percent. And a whole chicken: up 18 percent. As for the retail price of gasoline, it’s up 63 percent since January 2021, the month Biden became president.Yet none of these increases make it into what economists call the core rate of inflation, which excludes food and energy. The inflation ordinary people experience in everyday life is not the one the government prefers to highlight.Easy to see is the frequent collapse of public order on American streets. In April hundreds of teenagers wreaked havoc in the Chicago Loop. Two boys were shot. A young couple was beaten by the doorway of a building on North Wabash. Yet only 16 people were arrested. Similar scenes unfolded last month in New York’s Union Square and again in Boston, where police officers were assaulted in two separate riots largely by juveniles.In New York, there were at least 66 arrests. In Boston, just 13.Easy to see is that the kids are not alright. The causes are many; social media companies have a lot to answer for. But so do teachers’ unions, handmaids of the Democratic Party, who pushed to keep school doors closed during the pandemic, helping themselves while doing lasting harm to children. The Biden administration spent much of its early months saying it wanted more than half of schools open at least one day per week by the 100th day of his presidency.“It is a goal so modest and lacking in ambition as to be almost meaningless,” Politico’s Playbook newsletter noted at the time.Easy to see is that the border crisis has become a national one. In May the administration boasted that new policies had contributed to a sharp decline in the “number of encounters” between border patrols and migrants crossing the southwestern border illegally. By August, arrests of migrants who crossed the border with family members had hit a monthly record of 91,000. In New York City alone, more than 57,000 migrants seek food and shelter from the city’s social services on an average night.Nobody can say for certain how many migrants who crossed the border during Biden’s presidency remain in the U.S., but it’s almost certainly in the millions. In 2021 the president dismissed the initial surge of migrants as merely seasonal. “Happens every year,” he said.Easy to see is that the world has gotten more dangerous under Biden’s watch. The president deserves credit for arming Ukraine, as he does for brokering a strategic rapprochement between Japan and South Korea. But he also deserves the blame for a humiliating Afghanistan withdrawal that almost surely played a part in enticing Vladimir Putin into launching his invasion of Ukraine and whetted Beijing’s appetite for Taiwan.How large a part is unquantifiable. Yet it was predictable — and predicted.Easy to see is that the president is not young for his age. The stiff gait and the occasional falls. The apparent dozing off. The times he draws a blank or struggles to complete a thought. Yet the same people yelling #ResignFeinstein or #ResignMcConnell don’t appear to be especially vocal when it comes to the president’s fitness, as if noting the obvious risks repeating a Republican talking point.But people notice, and they vote.Easy to see are tents under overpasses, from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway in New York to the I-5 in Seattle. And the zombified addicts passed out on sidewalks in practically every city and town. And the pharmacies with everyday items under lock and key to prevent shoplifting. And women with infants strapped to their backs, hawking candy or gum at busy intersections. And news reports of brazen car thefts, which have skyrocketed this year.“There is a great deal of ruin in a nation,” Adam Smith said. Not all the ruin mentioned above is Biden’s fault, and none of it is irreversible. But there’s much more ruin than his apologists — blinkered by selective statistics and too confident about the president’s chances next year — care to admit.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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      New York’s Migrant Crisis Is Growing. So Are Democrats’ Anxieties.

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      The influx of asylum seekers has the makings of a potent political force, and Republicans are ready to test it in key 2024 house races.Republicans successfully made crime the defining issue of the 2022 midterm elections in New York, fanning fears about public safety to rout suburban Democrats and help secure the party its House majority.Barely a year later, as another critical election season begins to take shape, they appear to be aggressively testing a similar strategy, hoping that the state’s growing migrant crisis will prove as potent a political force in 2024.The rapid arrival in New York of more than 100,000 asylum seekers is already wreaking havoc on government budgets, testing the city’s safety net and turning Democratic allies against one another. Now, otherwise vulnerable Republicans in a half dozen closely watched districts have begun grabbing onto all of it as a lifeline to portray Democrats as out of touch and unable to govern.“This is a crisis of their own making,” said Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting to hold a suburban district Mr. Biden won by 10 points.“It’s very similar to cashless bail,” Mr. Lawler said. “When you create a sanctuary city policy that invites migrants to come regardless of their status, you are going to get a lot of people coming, and now they can’t handle the influx.”Representative Mike Lawler, a Republican fighting to hold a suburban district President Biden won by 10 points, said the migrant crisis was of Democrats’ “own making.”Anna Moneymaker/Getty ImagesHearing the same echoes, Democrats are determined not to be caught flat-footed as they were a year ago. From the suburbs of Long Island to here in the Hudson Valley, their candidates are spending late summer openly clashing not just with Republicans who say they are to blame, but also with their own party leaders, including President Biden.In one of the most closely watched contests, Representative Pat Ryan, the lone frontline Democrat to survive the Republican suburban demolition last year, has teamed up with two Republicans to demand that Mr. Biden declare a state of emergency, and broke with his party to support a bill to discourage schools from sheltering migrants.“The No. 1 thing I learned as an Army officer: When in charge, take charge,” Mr. Ryan said in an interview. “We are in a crisis, the president is in charge, and he and his team need to take charge.”He is far from alone. Josh Riley, a Democrat who is trying to flip a neighboring district, called the president’s aloofness on the issue “offensive.”Mondaire Jones, a former Democratic congressman mounting a comeback attempt further down the Hudson, warned of “consequences at the polls” if his party does not step up.And his primary opponent, Liz Whitmer Gereghty, said Democrats across New York should be responding in lock step. “It kind of feels like we’re not,” she said.Both parties caution that the reality on the ground, where 2,900 migrants arrived just last week, is shifting too quickly for them to know exactly where the battle lines will be by next fall, when voters will also be weighing abortion rights and the criminal trials of former President Donald J. Trump, currently the leading Republican candidate.Republicans have been using fears about immigrants pouring across the border for years with only mixed success. And unlike a year ago, Democrats are trying to go on offense, accusing Republicans like Mr. Lawler of engaging in demagogy and reminding voters that his party helped stall a major immigration overhaul in Washington that they say might have prevented the latest influx.“Everybody understands this is a potential liability,” said Tim Persico, a Democratic consultant who oversaw the party’s House campaign operation last cycle. “I know there’s been a lot of finger pointing and kerfuffles, but there’s also pretty good evidence the mayor and the governor are trying to figure out how to solve this.”Still, there is little doubt that New York, a city known as a bastion for immigrants, is in the midst of a challenge to its political system with few modern parallels. Privately, Democratic pollsters and strategists are beginning to use focus groups and polls to test possible defenses on an issue they view as a tinderbox capable of igniting new political fires, fast.New York is housing roughly 59,000 asylum seekers a night because of a unique right-to-shelter mandate that dates back decades and is preparing to enroll some 19,000 migrant children in public schools this fall. An archipelago of temporary shelters has cropped up in hotels, parks and on public land, prompting increasingly raucous protests.And Mayor Eric Adams has repeatedly warned of budget cuts as the cost of caring for the newcomers spikes into the billions of dollars — taxpayer money that Republicans are quick to point out could otherwise be used to help New Yorkers.As the numbers keep climbing, Democratic leaders have been forced to choose from unpalatable policy responses.Mr. Adams, for instance, has repeatedly demanded that Gov. Kathy Hochul force reluctant counties outside the city to help shelter migrants. But doing so would prompt fierce backlash in many of the communities Democrats need in order to win the House, and the governor, who was already blamed for Democrats’ 2022 losses, has refused.On the other hand, any attempt by the city or state to drastically curtail the services it offers migrants would meet blowback from the left.The governor and mayor — along with congressional Democrats as ideologically diverse as Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Mr. Ryan — are united in demanding more help from Mr. Biden. But push too hard and they risk bloodying their party’s standard-bearer heading into an election year.The White House did announce on Wednesday that it would dedicate personnel to help New York process work papers for asylum seekers and request additional federal funds from Congress to help the state. But Mr. Biden, who has to make his own national political calculations around immigration, appears to have little interest in taking a more visible role.Voters are watching. A recent poll conducted by Siena College found that 82 percent of registered voters view the influx as a “serious” problem, and a majority said that the state had “already done enough” for the asylum seekers and should focus on slowing their arrivals. The same poll showed nearly every major Democrat, including Mr. Biden, underwater among suburban voters.In many ways, those poor ratings have freed Democrats facing competitive races to distance themselves from their party in ways that telegraph to voters their understanding of the problem while differentiating themselves from Republicans’ more hard-line views on immigrants.It is a tricky balancing act. At the same time Mr. Ryan is locking arms with Republicans to pressure his own party, he is also trying to shift responsibility onto Republicans and defend himself against their attacks for making the county he once led a “sanctuary” for undocumented immigrants.“Where you really get yourself in trouble as an elected official is when you don’t listen,” Mr. Ryan said, adding: “For political purposes, the MAGA Republicans want divisions and chaos. They are not actually working to resolve problems.”The task may be easier for challengers who are taking on Republican incumbents whom they can blame for failing to enact the kind of changes to the immigration system that could curb illegal border crossings, speed up the asylum system and eventually relieve pressure on New York.“In my district, the one person sitting at the table to fix this problem is Anthony D’Esposito, and he is doing nothing,” said Laura Gillen, a Democrat seeking a rematch against Mr. D’Esposito, who represents the South Shore of Long Island. (He and other New York Republicans helped pass an aggressive but partisan border security bill in May.)But Ms. Gillen, who wants to represent a district Mr. Biden won by 14 points, said the president deserved blame, too. She called a letter last week from his homeland security secretary critiquing New York’s handling of the migrants as “irresponsible.”Laura Gillen, a Democrat, plans to challenge Anthony D’Esposito, who represents the South Shore of Long Island and has taken aim at his approach to the migrant crisis.Heather Walsh for The New York TimesMr. Riley is taking a similar “all our politicians are failing us” approach, knocking both Mr. Biden and Representative Marc Molinaro, his Republican opponent.“Look, this is a federal problem and it requires a federal response, and I think President Biden needs to get his act together and help solve it,” he said.It is too soon to know whether the approach is working. In Mr. Ryan’s district, the views of voters interviewed near a hotel housing migrants appeared to break down on familiar lines. Dozens of voters, when asked by a reporter, voiced dissatisfaction with how migrants had been bused up from New York City, but they disagreed on who was to blame.“Not just the county but the country can handle this,” said Faith Frishberg, a Democrat, outside a waterfront restaurant in Newburgh. “Most of this failure is a failure to not address the immigration policy.”But there may also be a distinct drawback over time.Blaming Democratic leaders like Mr. Adams or Mr. Biden may be expedient short-term politics. But it risks reinforcing the notion that Democrats cannot govern — a potentially powerful boomerang effect in a state that has registered some signs of weariness of one-party rule in recent years.Republicans already appear eager to reinforce it.“I have not seen a less coordinated, less competent way of dealing with human lives,” Mr. Molinaro said. “I know the reporting today has become a little bit about how the president is pointing at the governor, the governor at the mayor. The story line is Democrat leaders are pointing at each other.”Timmy Facciola contributed reporting from Newburgh, N.Y., and More

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      Ramaswamy Relies on Denialism When Challenged on Flip-Flopping Positions

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      In clashes with the news media and his rivals, the Republican upstart has retreated from past comments and lied about on-the-record statements.In his breakout performance in the Republican primary race, Vivek Ramaswamy has harnessed his populist bravado while frequently and unapologetically contorting the truth for political gain, much in the same way that former President Donald J. Trump has mastered.Mr. Ramaswamy’s pattern of falsehoods has been the subject of intensifying scrutiny by the news media and, more recently, his G.O.P. opponents, who clashed with him often during the party’s first debate last Wednesday.There are layers to Mr. Ramaswamy’s distortions: He has spread lies and exaggerations on subjects including the 2020 election results, the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol and climate change. When challenged on those statements, Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who is the first millennial Republican to run for president, has in several instances claimed that he had never made them or that he had been taken out of context.But his denials have repeatedly been refuted by recordings and transcripts from Mr. Ramaswamy’s interviews — or, in some cases, excerpts from his own book.Here are some notable occasions when he sought to retreat from his past statements or mischaracterized basic facts:A misleading anecdoteAt a breakfast round table event organized by his campaign on Friday in Indianola, Iowa, Mr. Ramaswamy recounted how he had visited the South Side of Chicago in May to promote his immigration proposals to a mostly Black audience.He boasted that nowhere had his ideas on the issue been more enthusiastically received than in the nation’s third most populous city, where his appearance had followed community protests over the housing of migrants in a local high school.“I have never been in a room more in favor of my proposal to use the U.S. military to secure the southern border and seal the Swiss cheese down there than when I was in a nearly all-Black room of supposedly mostly Democrats on the South Side of Chicago,” he said.But Mr. Ramaswamy’s retelling of the anecdote was sharply contradicted by the observations of a New York Times reporter who covered both events.The reporter witnessed the audience in Chicago pepper Mr. Ramaswamy about reparations, systemic racism and his opposition to affirmative action. Immigration was barely mentioned during the formal program. It was so absent that a Ramaswamy campaign aide at one point pleaded for questions on the issue. With that prompting, a single Republican consultant stood up to question Mr. Ramaswamy on his proposals.Trump criticismAt the first Republican debate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey accused Mr. Ramaswamy of changing positions on Donald Trump.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn one of the more heated exchanges of last week’s G.O.P. debate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey criticized Mr. Ramaswamy for lionizing Mr. Trump and defending his actions during the Jan. 6 attack.He sought to cast Mr. Ramaswamy as an opportunist who was trying to pander to Mr. Trump’s supporters by attributing the riot to government censorship during the 2020 election.“In your book, you had much different things to say about Donald Trump than you’re saying here tonight,” Mr. Christie said.Mr. Ramaswamy bristled and said, “That’s not true.”But in his 2022 book “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence,” Mr. Ramaswamy had harsh words for Mr. Trump and gave a more somber assessment of the violence.“It was a dark day for democracy,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote. “The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”When asked by The Times about the excerpt, Mr. Ramaswamy insisted that his rhetoric had not evolved and pointed out that he had co-written an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal five days after the Jan. 6 attack that was critical of the actions of social media companies during the 2020 election.“Also what I said at the time was that I really thought what Trump did was regrettable,” he said. “I would have handled it very differently if I was in his shoes. I will remind you that I am running for U.S. president in the same race that Donald Trump is running right now.”Mr. Ramaswamy parsed his criticism of the former president, however.“But a bad judgment is not the same thing as a crime,” he said.During the debate, Mr. Ramaswamy also sparred with former Vice President Mike Pence, whose senior aide and onetime chief of staff Marc Short told NBC News the next day that Mr. Ramaswamy was not a genuine populist.“There’s populism and then there’s just simply fraud,” he said.By blunting his message about the former president’s accountability and casting himself as an outsider, Mr. Ramaswamy appears to be making a play for Mr. Trump’s base — and the G.O.P. front-runner has taken notice.In a conversation on Tuesday with the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Mr. Trump said that he was open to selecting Mr. Ramaswamy as his running mate, but he had some advice for him.“He’s starting to get out there a little bit,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s getting a little bit controversial. I got to tell him: ‘Be a little bit careful. Some things you have to hold in just a little bit, right?’”Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11Since entering the race, Mr. Ramaswamy has repeatedly floated conspiracy theories about a cover-up by the federal government in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a narrative seemingly tailored to members of the G.O.P.’s right wing who are deeply distrustful of institutions.In a recent profile by The Atlantic, he told the magazine, “I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the twin towers.”While he acknowledged that he had “no reason” to believe that the number was “anything other than zero,” Mr. Ramaswamy suggested that the government had not been transparent about the attacks.“But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to,” he said.Yet when Mr. Ramaswamy was asked to clarify those remarks by Kaitlan Collins of CNN two nights before last week’s debate, he backtracked and accused The Atlantic of misquoting him.“I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually,” he said.Soon after Mr. Ramaswamy claimed that his words had been twisted, The Atlantic released a recording and transcript from the interview that confirmed that he had indeed been quoted accurately.When asked in an interview on Saturday whether the audio had undercut his argument, Mr. Ramaswamy reiterated his contention that the news media had often misrepresented him.“I think there’s a reason why,” he said, suggesting that his free-flowing way of speaking broke the mold of so-called scripted candidates. “I just don’t speak like a traditional politician, and I think the system is not used to that. The political media is not used to that. And that lends itself naturally then to being inaccurately portrayed, to being distorted.”Mr. Trump’s allies have used similar justifications when discussing the former president’s falsehoods, citing his stream-of-consciousness speaking style. His allies and supporters have admired his impulse to refuse to apologize or back down when called out, an approach Mr. Ramaswamy has echoed.Mr. Ramaswamy said that he was asked about Sept. 11 while discussing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and his repeated calls for an accounting of how many federal agents were in the field that day. His campaign described The Atlantic’s recording as a “snippet.”At the start of The Times’s conversation with Mr. Ramaswamy, he said that he assumed that the interview was being recorded and noted that his campaign was recording, too.“We’re now doing mutually on the record, so just F.Y.I.,” he said.Pardoning Hunter BidenIn one of many clashes with the news media, Mr. Ramaswamy accused The New York Post of misquoting him in an article about Hunter Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesNo news outlet has been off-limits to Mr. Ramaswamy’s claims of being misquoted: This month, he denounced a New York Post headline that read: “GOP 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy ‘open’ to pardon of Hunter Biden.”The Aug. 12 article cited an interview that The Post had conducted with him.“After we have shut down the F.B.I., after we have refurbished the Department of Justice, after we have systemically pardoned anyone who was a victim of a political motivated persecution — from Donald Trump and peaceful January 6 protests — then would I would be open to evaluating pardons for members of the Biden family in the interest of moving the nation forward,” Mr. Ramaswamy was quoted as saying.The next morning on Fox News Channel, which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp, Mr. Ramaswamy told the anchor Maria Bartiromo that the report was erroneous.“Maria, that was misquoted and purposeful opposition research with the headline,” he said. “You know how this game is played.”The Post did not respond to a request for comment.In an interview with The Times, Mr. Ramaswamy described the headline as “manufactured” and said it was part of “the ridiculous farce of this gotcha game.”Aid to IsraelMr. Ramaswamy clashed with Fox News host Sean Hannity Monday night when confronted with comments he has made about aid to Israel. Mr. Ramaswamy accused Mr. Hannity of misrepresenting his views.“You said aid to Israel, our No. 1 ally, only democracy in the region, should end in 2028,” Mr. Hannity said in the interview. “And that they should be integrated with their neighbors.”“That’s false,” Mr. Ramaswamy responded.“I have an exact quote, do you want me to read it?” Mr. Hannity asked.Mr. Ramaswamy’s rhetoric about support for Israel has shifted.During a campaign event in New Hampshire earlier this month, Mr. Ramaswamy called the deal to provide Israel with $38 billion over 10 years “sacrosanct.” But a few weeks later in an interview with The Free Beacon, a conservative website, he said that he hoped that Israel would “not require and be dependent on that same level of historical aid or commitment from the U.S.” by 2028, when the deal expires.Wearing masksIn the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, the Masks for All Act, a bill proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that aimed to provide every person in the United States with three free N95 masks, appeared to receive an unlikely endorsement on Twitter — from Mr. Ramaswamy.“My policy views don’t often align with Bernie, but this strikes me as a sensible idea,” he wrote in July 2020. “The cost is a tiny fraction of other less compelling federal expenditures on COVID-19.”Mr. Ramaswamy was responding to an opinion column written for CNN by Mr. Sanders, who is a democratic socialist, and Andy Slavitt, who was later a top pandemic adviser to Mr. Biden. He said they should have picked someone from the political right as a co-author to show that there was a consensus on masks.But when he was pressed this summer by Josie Glabach of the Red Headed Libertarian podcast about whether he had ever supported Mr. Sanders’s mask measure, he answered no.When asked by The Times for further clarification, Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged that he was an early supporter of wearing masks, but said that he no longer believed that they prevented the spread of the virus. He accused his political opponents of conflating his initial stance with support for mask mandates, which he said he had consistently opposed.An analogy to Rosa Parks?Mr. Ramaswamy appeared to compare Edward J. Snowden to Rosa Parks before immediately distancing himself from the comment.Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesWhen he was asked by the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt on his show in June whether he would pardon the former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden for leaking documents about the United States government’s surveillance programs, Mr. Ramaswamy said yes and invoked an unexpected name: the civil rights icon Rosa Parks.He said that Mr. Snowden, a fugitive, had demonstrated heroism to hold the government accountable.“Part of what makes that risk admirable — Rosa Parks long ago — is the willingness to bear punishment he already has,” he said. “That’s also why I would ensure that he was a free man.”To Mr. Hewitt, the analogy was jarring.“Wait, wait, wait, did you just compare Rosa Parks to Edward Snowden?” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy immediately distanced himself from such a comparison, while then reinforcing it, suggesting that they had both effectuated progress of a different kind.“No, I did not,” he said. “But I did compare the aspect of their willingness to take a risk in order for at the time breaking a rule that at the time was punishable.” More

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      On Immigration, Republican Candidates Show Little Disagreement at Debate

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      Donald Trump’s signature issue from 2016 still reverberates powerfully and prompts aggressive rhetoric on ways to shore up the southern U.S. border.Asked whether he would send special forces into Mexico to combat drug cartels, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida didn’t hesitate to swing for the fences.“Yes, and I will do it on day one,” he said.He pledged to declare a national emergency and added: “When these drug pushers are bringing fentanyl across the border, that is going to be the last thing they do. We are going to use force and leave them stone-cold dead.”Republicans participating in the first presidential debate on Wednesday traded barbs and clashed repeatedly over abortion, climate change and how much fealty they owe to former President Donald J. Trump.But, when it came to immigration, there was little disagreement, only efforts to outdo each other in offering aggressive recommendations for military responses to unauthorized immigration and drug trafficking across the southern border. The overwhelming majority of illicit substances are brought into the United States in commercial vehicles coming through official ports of entry, rather than by migrants, according to law enforcement.Former Vice President Mike Pence did say that the United States would partner with the Mexican military, “and we will hunt down and destroy the cartels that are claiming lives in the United States.”During the debate, there were almost no evocations of immigration as one of the triumphant strains in the American tapestry, just a steady drumbeat of menace. In part, that reflects the degree to which Donald Trump’s signature issue has become so ingrained in the Republican playbook and psyche.But it also reflects the steady toll from drugs smuggled across the border, especially fentanyl, and the bitter trail of addiction and death that has stalked Americans across barriers of race, geography and class.As a result, like so much else in Republican politics, proposals that were once fringe have become mainstream since Mr. Trump made the border a core issue of his 2016 campaign and, once elected, of his domestic political agenda.Cars lining up to cross into the U.S. via Tijuana, Mexico, earlier this year. Drug smuggling across the border has been cited by Republican candidates as a main reason to secure the border.Guillermo Arias/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesRepublican candidates in this campaign cycle have picked up his baton, embracing ideas that would have been deemed unthinkable before the Trump presidency.For months, they have amped up their rhetoric about the southern border, raising the prospect of sending military troops to target drug cartels and stop what they call an invasion of migrants. And polls show growing frustration among many demographic groups, including Democrats, about the influx of migrants, which has created chaotic scenes at the border in recent years and strained cities, from New York to Denver, where many of the arrivals have ended up.But there are clear partisan divides, with two-thirds of Republicans saying that there should be fewer immigrants and asylum-seekers allowed into the country, compared to about a quarter of Democrats, according to an Associated Press poll earlier this year.A poll by Gallup in July found that the percentage of Americans who believe immigration is a “good thing” is the lowest since 2014. The poll found a growing minority — 41 percent — of Americans believe immigration should be decreased, with Republicans far more likely to say so than Democrats. Still, a majority of Americans polled remain largely supportive of immigration and opposed to decreasing the number of immigrants.The political fallout has been especially sharp in New York, where more than 100,000 migrants have arrived, with nearly 60,000 of those staying in shelters.A poll released this week by the Siena College Research Institute found that large majorities of Democrats, Republicans and independents in both the city and upstate New York believe the migrants, many of them asylum-seekers, pose a “serious problem” for the state.Roughly 46 percent of voters said that migrants resettling in New York in the last two decades have been more of a “burden” than a “benefit” to the state. Nearly 60 percent said that “New Yorkers have already done enough for new migrants and should now work to slow the flow” rather than “accept new migrants and work to assimilate them into New York.”Unauthorized border crossings have declined in recent months, a result of measures that the Biden administration has introduced to enable people to enter the United States in a more orderly fashion, such as by making an appointment on a government mobile app for an interview with U.S. authorities at the border or being sponsored by a relative already in the country.During Wednesday’s debate, the fentanyl crisis loomed large, with the candidates invoking overdose deaths as emblematic of the border crisis.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina called for firing 87,000 newly hired I.R.S. agents and doubling the number of border patrol agents. “The most pressing need of the American people is our southern border,” he said.“If we spend $10 billion, we could finish the wall,” he said. “For $5 billion more, we could have the military-grade technology to surveil our southern border to stop the flow of fentanyl and save 70,000 Americans a year. “Vivek Ramaswamy, who has called for securing the border by any means necessary, including with military force, said that resources the United States has been sending to Ukraine should be employed instead to “protect against the invasion across our southern border.”Chris Christie, the former New Jersey governor, called for the detention of everyone entering the country unlawfully.But in a rare sentiment respectful of immigration at the debate, he said, “We have so many wonderful people from around the world who are waiting in line following the law to try to come here and pursue the American dream. Those people are waiting and waiting and waiting because we haven’t dealt with the problem of the folks who are here.”President Biden has repeatedly reminded Americans that only Congress can fix the broken immigration system. But, in an increasingly polarized political environment, prospects for a legislative solution backed by both parties have only become dimmer. More

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      Compassionate Release for Those Aging Behind Bars

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      More from our inbox:Living Well, and Pursuing One’s Passion, With Parkinson’sThe ‘Absurd Contradictions’ of the Migrant SystemA Civilized Argument A Debate QuestionCecilia CarlstedtTo the Editor: Re “Inside a Dementia Unit in a Federal Prison” (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 13):Katie Engelhart vividly describes the absurdity and cruelty of incarcerating frail elders with debilitating dementia. It would be a mistake, though, to conclude simply that expanding compassionate release is the answer. Certainly, that’s warranted, but policymakers should be proactive, not just reactive.As a former parole commissioner, I know that dementia is just the tip of the iceberg of the problem of mass aging behind bars.Countless people (not just men) effectively face a slow death penalty behind bars because of extreme sentences or repeated denials of parole release despite these individuals’ complete transformations. Far from being helpless, many are violence interrupters, mentors, scholars and artists, including people previously convicted of causing serious harm. They have changed.Enacting elder parole bills, which do not guarantee release based on age but rather allow older adults to be individually considered for release by a parole board, can help resolve the crisis of aging behind bars, save substantial money, and return people to the community to repair the harm they long ago caused — before they are on death’s doorstep.Carol ShapiroNew YorkTo the Editor:Dementia units in prisons should primarily serve as a conduit to helping achieve compassionate release. As physicians volunteering with the Medical Justice Alliance, we review the medical care of numerous patients with dementia who are undiagnosed and untreated in the prison system. Patients wake up unsure why they are in prison, hoping that President Nixon might pardon them.We must consider the high cost of normalizing the imprisonment of elderly patients with dementia. Financially, developing “dementia-friendly” prison units incurs significant costs; that money could instead be used to improve community resources such as nursing facilities. Ethically, we must grapple with punishing people who do not pose a threat to others and are unable to understand why they are being punished.Compassionate release laws at the state and federal levels should make dementia an explicit criterion for early release. Facilities should also screen older patients for dementia on a regular basis and develop protocols for requesting compassionate release and expediting placement in memory care facilities. The U.S. prison population is aging and change is urgently needed.Caitlin FarrellNicole MusheroWilliam WeberTo the Editor:As a person who has served three federal prison terms for antiwar protests for a total of almost three years, I found myself shaking my head that the Federal Bureau of Prisons maintains Federal Medical Center Devens to hold men with dementia.The essay noted that most of the men in the dementia unit have no memories of their crimes or why they are incarcerated, yet few are deemed eligible for compassionate release. The United States incarcerates nearly two million people in our thousands of jails and prisons. The U.S. prison system is primitive, lacks redemption and only metes out punishment. The term rehabilitation is simply not part of this cruel system.In my time in more than a half dozen federal prisons, I never met a man I would not have to my home as a dinner guest. Our jails and prisons are filled mostly with people convicted of nonviolent crimes. Many — perhaps the majority — of incarcerated people are poor, mentally ill or substance abusers. Most need medical treatment, not incarceration.I agree with F.M.C. Devens’s clinical director, Dr. Patricia Ruze, who thinks it would be “totally appropriate” to release the whole unit on compassionate grounds and relocate the men to community nursing homes.I’d go one step further: Let’s release all nonviolent people from prison with appropriate community support to help them prosper and avoid recidivism, as well as offer programs of human uplift to the remaining prisoners using the money we save by closing the prisons we will no longer need.Patrick O’NeillGarner, N.C.Living Well, and Pursuing One’s Passion, With Parkinson’sThe pianist Nicolas Hodges has continued to perform and record — with alterations and tough decisions — after receiving a Parkinson’s disease diagnosis.Roderick Aichinger for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Pianist Adapts His Life to Parkinson’s” (Arts & Leisure, Aug. 13):Thank you for demonstrating how the pianist Nicolas Hodges is adapting to life with Parkinson’s disease. Mr. Hodges is testament to the fact that it is possible to continue to live well with Parkinson’s, and the article highlights two key ways to manage symptoms: consistently taking medications (dopamine) and reducing commitments or stress. Exercise and physical activity are also critical to managing symptoms.Recent research published by the Parkinson’s Foundation shows that the number of people in the U.S. diagnosed with Parkinson’s annually has increased by 50 percent, from approximately 60,000 to 90,000. This means that every six minutes, someone in the U.S. is diagnosed with the disease and may encounter similar challenges to those faced by Mr. Hodges.Further funding to support research and drug development are needed in order to find a cure, and the Parkinson’s Foundation and other organizations work tirelessly to advance this.In the meantime, we applaud Mr. Hodges for speaking about his experience with the disease and continuing to pursue his passion. Play on, Mr. Hodges.John L. LehrNew YorkThe writer is president and C.E.O. of the Parkinson’s Foundation.The ‘Absurd Contradictions’ of the Migrant SystemTo the Editor: We have millions of square feet of office space no longer being used and tens of thousands of homeless people and displaced immigrants needing shelter. Many employers cannot fill open jobs while the talents and proven determination of immigrants sit untapped in detention.We can strengthen our economy and confirm our commitment to human dignity and decency by correcting these absurd contradictions.It would be far more cost-effective to use the migrant detention system funds to create a system where people can be quickly helped and trained to be productive contributors to society instead of expensive drains on us all.Even if common decency is not a motivation, pure selfish economic need dictates that we end the waste and do the right thing.Michael E. MakoverGreat Neck, N.Y.A Civilized Argument Christopher Smith for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Imagining the Face-Off in Trump’s Jan. 6 Case,” by David French (column, Aug. 12):I started feeling odd as I read Mr. French’s column. It was so quiet! Two measured, rational voices speaking through the ink, each backing up their arguments with researchable references and free of bitter, ad hominem jabs. A few bits of pique and tooth grinding to humanize both the defense and the prosecution, but all for the sake of clarifying a complex position.How civilized! How rare! It’s a shame that the essay was the voice of one man working his careful way through a thicket of legal complexity and not a real-life exchange of ideas in search of a mutually arrived at truth.Leslie BellDavenport, IowaA Debate QuestionTo the Editor: At the Republican debate I would like to see the moderator ask each of the participants if as president they would pardon Donald Trump if he is convicted of federal crimes.Walter RonaghanHarrison, N.Y. More