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      Did Fox News Just Pay for the Privilege of Continued Corruption?

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      In many legal settlements, both sides declare victory. The settlements themselves are often confidential, or are for amounts so far below the plaintiff’s original demand that a defendant can argue, with a straight face, that he settled essentially to make the case go away. Rather than deal with the risk of a rogue jury, defendants can settle for a reasonable sum and then often, in exchange for the cash, gain the silence of the plaintiff. The public, to the extent it cares, is left to argue over what “victory” truly meant.Not so with Dominion’s settlement against Fox. The moment the amount of the settlement emerged — $787,500,000 — I knew that Dominion had won and Fox had lost, and it wasn’t even close. The reason was clear to anyone who’d followed the case carefully: Damages, not guilt, were the weakest part of Dominion’s case. It had asked for $1.6 billion in damages, based in part on a theory outlined in the complaint that Fox’s “viral disinformation campaign” had “destroyed the enterprise value of a business that was worth potentially more than $1 billion.”To call that claim speculative is an understatement. According to a 2020 report in Forbes, Dominion had been paid $118.3 million for its election services between 2017 and 2019. I’ve litigated lost profit/lost enterprise value cases, and I know how difficult it is to prove estimated future financial fortunes.In other words, it was going to be straightforward to prove that Fox employees lied and deliberately platformed lies. It was going to be much harder to prove the kind of damages that Dominion claimed. Then, in the settlement, Fox paid Dominion a sum larger than Dominion could reasonably presume a jury would require. Why?This brings us to the difference between justice and accountability. The legal system can achieve justice when an aggrieved party is made whole. And make no mistake, Dominion received justice. It was more than made whole for Fox’s lies, and its quest for even more justice continues. Its lawsuits against OAN, Newsmax, Sidney Powell, Rudy Giuliani and Mike Lindell are still pending.But accountability is different. Accountability occurs when the people responsible for misconduct — and not merely their corporate bank accounts — experience proportionate consequences for their actions. One of the #MeToo movement’s greatest achievements was exposing to the world the degree to which corporations essentially paid for the privilege of continued corruption. They’d write checks to the survivors of abuse (granting them justice) without taking action against the abusers (enabling them to avoid accountability).This is not a critique of the plaintiffs at all. They need justice, and they don’t have the power to impose accountability. They can’t mandate that corporations apologize or terminate employees without the agreement of the corporation. The system itself can generally only give them money. Do we want to ask people who’ve been harmed by misconduct to delay or risk their own quest for justice for the sake of using the settlement process to mandate apologies or terminations that the courts don’t have the power to compel?The end result, however, is a system whereby wealthy institutions can essentially build in their corruption as a cost of doing business. In 2021, for example, my wife and I published a report detailing years of sexual abuse at one of the largest and most prominent Christian summer camps in America, Kanakuk Kamp. The pattern there was clear: pay survivors, get them to sign confidential settlements, and continue on with the same leaders who had abjectly failed to protect the kids in their care.The Fox settlement reeks of justice without accountability. Not only is Fox not publicly apologizing for its misconduct, it has released deceptive descriptions of the settlement and the court’s findings. Its initial statement said in part: “We acknowledge the court’s rulings finding certain claims about Dominion to be false. This settlement reflects Fox’s continued commitment to the highest journalistic standards.”That is not what the settlement reflects. The settlement reflects Fox’s abandonment of even the most minimal journalistic standards.Fox’s “news” story about the settlement was perhaps even worse. The headline stated that “Fox News Media, Dominion Voting Systems reach agreement over defamation lawsuit,” but it didn’t state the amount of the settlement and instead mainly focused on the judge’s compliments of Fox’s legal team. No, really:Delaware Superior Court Judge Eric Davis, who was overseeing the defamation lawsuit, praised both parties for their handling of the case.“I have been on the bench since 2010. … I think this is the best lawyering I’ve had, ever,” Davis said, adding, “I would be proud to be your judge in the future.”No mention, of course, that less than a week before, the same judge rebuked Fox’s lawyers, said he was concerned about “misrepresentations to the court” and lamented, “What do I do with attorneys that aren’t straightforward with me?” And then the Fox story ends with this howler of a paragraph:Then-President Donald Trump and his allies fiercely challenged Joe Biden’s victory in the weeks following the election. Some of them, including members of his legal team, made false and unsubstantiated claims against Dominion Voting Systems and are the subject of separate defamation lawsuits.Note the deflection of responsibility. It was Trump’s legal team that made “false and unsubstantiated claims.” That’s unquestionably true, but those same lawyers were enthusiastically put on the air by Fox for the purpose of spreading their “false and unsubstantiated claims.” And as the court’s summary judgment ruling made clear, Fox employees also made what they knew to be false and unsubstantiated claims.The end result is that Fox has paid an immense price for its lies, but it recognizes that its true vulnerability isn’t in its bank account but in its audience. It can absorb huge financial losses so long as those losses are fleeting. It cannot prosper if it loses its audience. Shielding its audience from the truth is easily worth almost $800 million to a company that made $1.2 billion in net income last year and is sitting on $4 billion in cash reserves.In the meantime, many of the viewers who keep the company so very profitable won’t know anything meaningful about the Dominion settlement or Fox’s lies — because Fox won’t tell them. I can think of any number of friends, relatives and neighbors who regularly consume conservative media and know nothing about the case. They know nothing about Fox’s falsehoods. Their ignorance is of incalculable worth to Fox.While this newsletter is admittedly rather bleak even in the face of Fox’s decisive court defeat, the story is far from over. Smartmatic’s $2.7 billion lawsuit against Fox is pending in New York State court in Manhattan, and the larger right-wing media world is facing a series of reckonings in cases across the country. My friends at Protect Democracy have filed cases against Project Veritas, Gateway Pundit, Rudy Giuliani, Dinesh D’Souza and several additional defendants related to some of the most grotesque lies in the entire Stop the Steal effort.There is a chance that great weight of legal judgments will lead to legal accountability. Justice can be so punishing that even the most amoral institutions have to respond as a matter of self-preservation. But true accountability remains elusive.Indeed, the Dominion lawsuit is perfectly representative of a vital lesson we’ve learned during the Trump era. The law can stave off disaster, but only moral norms truly preserve the republic. The law (and law enforcement) blocked Trump’s attempted coup. Legal processes are underway to hold Trump responsible for his alleged criminal misdeeds. Court cases are likely to compensate multiple victims of defamation for their profound losses. Yet still our public square is overrun with ignorance and outright lies. A Machiavellian spirit stalks the land.But the legal system does give our nation a chance to come to its senses. In the words of the old Fox show “The X-Files,” “The truth is out there.” Not only did Dominion receive justice, but its litigation gave the public the gift of truth. Now it’s incumbent on our nation to receive that truth and react accordingly. Fox News has tried to purchase the privilege of continued corruption, but even its vast bank account can’t protect it from the public — but only if that public possesses a trace of curiosity and preserves a moral core. More

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      Is a 6-Week Abortion Ban a Disaster for DeSantis? Two Theories.

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      There were plenty of midterm elections where Republicans didn’t seem to pay a price over new abortion restrictions.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Will the abortion issue define him?Eze Amos for The New York TimesAfter the liberal triumph in this month’s Wisconsin Supreme Court race, you probably don’t need much convincing that abortion rights can be a big political winner for Democrats.But after Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed a law last week banning abortion after six weeks of pregnancy, it is worth considering another set of races: the elections where Republicans didn’t seem to pay a stiff political price for new abortion restrictions.Surprisingly, Republicans tended to fare just as well in the midterms in the states where abortion was recently banned as they did in the states where abortion remained legal.This is a little perplexing. There isn’t a definitive explanation, but I’ll offer two basic theories. Depending on your preferred answer, Mr. DeSantis’s anti-abortion stance may be an electoral death wish — or abortion simply may not be quite as helpful to Democrats as it seems based on the highest-profile elections, like the recent Wisconsin Supreme Court race.Oddly enough, Wisconsin offers a stark example of how abortion may not always help Democrats. Abortion was banned there after the Dobbs decision, but in the midterms Republican candidates for U.S. House still won more votes than Democrats in a state Joe Biden carried in 2020. The Republican senator Ron Johnson won re-election as well. The Democratic governor, Tony Evers, won re-election by three percentage points — a fine performance, but not a Democratic romp.It’s worth noting the unusual circumstances of Wisconsin’s abortion ban. The law banning abortion was originally enacted in 1849 — not by today’s Republicans — and went info effect after Roe v. Wade was overturned, giving the G.O.P. some maneuvering room. The Republican state Legislature argued for adding exceptions; Mr. Johnson pushed for an abortion referendum. Perhaps Republicans in the state just weren’t seen as responsible for the ban.But Wisconsin isn’t alone. A similar story played out in Texas, Ohio, Iowa, Indiana, Missouri and Georgia. In some of these states, Republican governors enacted bans or other major restrictions that went into effect after the Dobbs decision. In others, Republican bans were blocked by the courts. But in all of them, Republicans nonetheless posted average to above-average midterm results.In fact, there was only one state — West Virginia — where abortion was banned and where Democrats posted well above-average results in House races. Overall, Republican House candidates outran Donald J. Trump by a typical or above average amount (six points or more) in 10 of the 13 states where abortion was banned after Roe.What makes sense of this pattern? Of the two basic possibilities, one would augur well for Democrats; the other would bode better for Mr. DeSantis.Theory No. 1: It’s about demographics.Abortion is relatively unpopular in states where today’s Republicans successfully banned abortion, like Texas or Georgia. These states tend to be relatively religious states in the South. There aren’t many of the secular, white, college-educated liberal Democrats who could bring about a “Roevember” backlash.There seems to be a lot to this theory. Not only does it explain many of the cases in question, but it also fits a broader pattern from last November: Democratic strength in the House vote was somewhat correlated with support for abortion (though big Democratic failures in New York and California stand out as obvious exceptions).But this theory doesn’t quite explain everything. In particular, it doesn’t work outside the South, including in places like Ohio or Wisconsin, where we know the right to abortion is popular. That’s where it’s important to notice my qualifier: where today’s Republicans successfully banned abortion. If demographics are the predominant explanation, then the Republican resilience in the North must be because voters simply didn’t hold them responsible for banning abortion. Democrats could hope Republicans will pay a greater political cost when they unequivocally restrict abortion, like what Mr. DeSantis is doing now in Florida.Theory No. 2: When abortion is the most important issue.This is what I’ll call the salience theory: It takes a special set of circumstances for Democrats to make abortion the most important issue to voters, like a Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate who promises to represent the decisive vote to legalize abortion when an abortion case is pending before the court, or a Michigan referendum that explicitly decides the future of abortion in a state.As with the demographics theory, the salience theory is also consistent with polling and the general story of the 2022 midterms. Only a sliver of voters said abortion was the most important issue, not because abortion rights wasn’t important to them but because there were lots of other genuinely important issues at stake — the economy and inflation, crime, guns, democracy, immigration, and so on. With so many other issues, it makes sense that abortion plays only a marginal role in vote choice unless a distinct set of circumstances focuses the electorate on abortion alone.The salience theory also fits one of the patterns of the election: the highly localized results. There were states where Democrats excelled, like Michigan or Pennsylvania, even as they struggled in California or New York. Where Democrats did well, they had the fodder to focus voters on one of their best issues, like attacking stop-the-steal candidates. Where they struggled, Republicans managed to focus the electorate on an issue like crime (democracy or abortion seemed less important).It’s worth emphasizing that the salience theory doesn’t mean that abortion as an issue didn’t help Democrats in 2022. If Roe hadn’t been overturned, abortion would have been less salient everywhere and perhaps Democrats would have fared a bit worse across the board. But it would mean that Republican support for an abortion ban is not, on its own, sufficient to make abortion the predominant issue and bring stiff political costs to conservatives.While this theory offers better news for Mr. DeSantis, it would nonetheless contain a lesson for Democrats: It seems they would be wise to find creative ways to keep the electorate focused on abortion. State referendums might be one option, much as Republicans put same-sex marriage on the ballot in 2004. A campaign to pass federal abortion legislation might be another path as well. More

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      Why Are We So Obsessed With the Way Politicians Eat?

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      I never thought I would relate to Ron DeSantis, a man whose political beliefs I vehemently oppose. But a few weeks ago, when I read this report about the Florida governor’s eating habits, I felt a deep sense of somewhat shameful recognition.“He would sit in meetings and eat in front of people,” an unnamed former DeSantis staffer told The Daily Beast, “always like a starving animal who has never eaten before.”This is me. I don’t eat my food; I inhale it.Actually, this is my entire family. I sometimes joke that my husband and I got married because we both eat so quickly and aggressively. Dinner at our house rarely lasts more than 10 minutes. When I eat in public, I have to consciously try to slow down — and I hate that.Where DeSantis lost me, though, is in the one detail about his manners that went viral. Per The Daily Beast:Enshrined in DeSantis lore is an episode from four years ago: During a private plane trip from Tallahassee to Washington, D.C., in March of 2019, DeSantis enjoyed a chocolate pudding dessert — by eating it with three of his fingers, according to two sources familiar with the incident.It’s an image so specific — scooping pudding with not one, not two, but three fingers — that I can’t erase it from my mind. It’s so indelible that it ricocheted around the internet: Talking Points Memo called it “PuddingGate.” In an interview covering DeSantis’s possible run for president, Piers Morgan asked the governor if he’d really eaten pudding with three fingers. “I don’t remember ever doing that,” DeSantis hedged. “Maybe when I was a kid.”PuddingGate reminded me of a similar uproar in 2019, after The Times published an anecdote about Senator Amy Klobuchar, at the time a presidential contender, eating salad with a comb, another surprising and unforgettable moment in the annals of political dining. Then memories of other politicians-and-food stories came flooding back to me: Why do I remember that Barack Obama’s White House chef joked that Obama ate exactly seven almonds as a snack? (An allegation Obama was moved to debunk.) And why is any of my precious brain space, what little is left of it, occupied by a 2016 report that Donald Trump prefers his steak so well done “it would rock on the plate”? (In 2017, The Takeout asked if Trump dunking a $54 steak in ketchup was “a crime” — though not one he was recently charged with.)“I think in our minds, what and how people eat tells us a lot about who they are,” said Priya Fielding-Singh, a sociologist and an assistant professor of family and consumer studies at the University of Utah, and the author of “How the Other Half Eats.” The public believes that a person’s eating habits tell us something unique and authentic about them, she said, “something that we can’t learn through their political speeches or policy endorsements. It gives us this window into their character, their values, their willpower, self-discipline, virtuousness, laziness.”Our interest in politicians’ eating habits isn’t new, either. According to Harold Holzer, the director of the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College and the author of “The Presidents vs. the Press: The Endless Battle Between the White House and the Media — From the Founding Fathers to Fake News,” Americans have been turning a spotlight on the diets of presidents at least since Thomas Jefferson served ice cream at the White House. “People were amazed at what he was eating,” Holzer said.Holzer, who has studied Abraham Lincoln most extensively, said Lincoln didn’t have much of an appetite, “but when he was hungry, he would take out a pen knife and core an apple,” cutting off chunks and eating them, which some people apparently found odd.Perhaps these stories are able to take hold because they correspond with our perceptions of each of these men — Jefferson as the well-traveled aristocrat, bringing a delicacy to greater recognition in the States, and Lincoln as more of a common man, less concerned with appearances. Remember the hubbub when Obama bemoaned the price of arugula during his first presidential run? People glommed onto that detail because it fit with the claims that he was too elitist to appeal to regular, vegetable-hating Americans. (Good thing he didn’t call the bitter green “rocket” or he might not have made it out of the primaries.)As Holzer notes, part of any presidential campaign — any high-profile campaign, really — involves traveling around and eating local delicacies in the correct way: Lord help you if you eat pizza with a knife and fork. Heaven forfend if you order lox, capers and onions on a cinnamon-raisin bagel, Cynthia Nixon’s “troubling” selection during New York’s 2018 gubernatorial race that prompted commentator George Conway to tweet “Lox her up?”Writing for The Atlantic in 2018, the food anthropologist Kelly Alexander called this “gastropolitics”:Since the advent of American democracy, politicians have deployed foods in order to show how populist they are — how much they are like you and me. They attend barbecues in the South (and in Arizona) and corn festivals in the Midwest; they visit citrus growers in Florida, Mexican restaurants in California, and fishermen in Maine and Massachusetts, all while eating whatever the local specialty is in front of as many people and as much press as possible.But there’s a difference between information about eating habits that politicians control or release themselves (for example, Canada’s Green Party leader giving President Biden a “Peace by Chocolate” bar from a company founded by Syrian immigrants) and the often unflattering details that leak, sometimes from anonymous former staffers who seem to have an ax to grind. The latter tend to make more headlines because we may think that the way someone eats in private is more representative of their true self.Which brings me back to DeSantis. I don’t share the view of New York magazine’s Margaret Hartmann, who entertained the possibility that eating pudding with three fingers is “so weird it may end his 2024 presidential bid before it officially starts.” If you’re a fan of the governor, I doubt you’d be moved to vote against him because his hunger overcame his sense of good manners. Though he’s dipping in the national polls against Trump, he beat Trump among regular Florida Republican primary voters in one new poll, and his approval rating is higher in his home state than it was in September. The brand he’s trying to create is that of a regular (you know, Yale-and-Harvard-educated regular) guy who’s battling “elites” on every front. As an unfazed DeSantis said to Morgan: “They’re talking about pudding? Like, is that really the best you’ve got? OK, bring it on.”One sure takeaway, though? If you’re ever running for office, keep spare utensils handy at all times.Tiny VictoriesParenting can be a grind. Let’s celebrate the tiny victories.My oldest daughter is 19 and in her second year of university. The tiny victories are just as sweet, even though she no longer needs me to wipe her face. As this semester began, she was juggling two part time jobs as well as full time study. I urged her to reduce her waitressing shifts the same week that lectures started. She was sure that she’d be fine to keep working at the restaurant at the same pace for a couple of weeks. Turns out, it was too much. Oh, my friends, how sweet it is to receive a text message that begins “Mum! You were right.”— Miriam McCaleb, North Canterbury, New ZealandIf you want a chance to get your Tiny Victory published, find us on Instagram @NYTparenting and use the hashtag #tinyvictories; email us; or enter your Tiny Victory at the bottom of this page. Include your full name and location. Tiny Victories may be edited for clarity and style. Your name, location and comments may be published, but your contact information will not. By submitting to us, you agree that you have read, understand and accept the Reader Submission Terms in relation to all of the content and other information you send to us. More

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      Three Takeaways From a Tumultuous Day in Politics

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      A blowout in Wisconsin, an indictment in New York and a progressive victory in Chicago.Supporters of the victorious Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate, Janet Protasiewicz, on Tuesday night in Milwaukee. Abortion was a key issue. Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIt has been a big — even historic — week in American politics. Donald J. Trump was indicted. The liberal candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court, Janet Protasiewicz, easily prevailed over a conservative, Daniel Kelly. And Brandon Johnson, a progressive, was elected the mayor of Chicago.What did we learn? While in some cases it’s too soon to say much, here are a few early takeaways:It’s still 2022, at least in WisconsinIf the 2022 midterm elections offered any lesson, it was that liberals excel when abortion and democracy are on the ballot. Liberal voters turn out en masse. A crucial sliver of voters — perhaps as few as one in every 30 or 40 — will flip to vote for the Democrat when they otherwise would have voted Republican.That pattern continued in Wisconsin on Tuesday, when the liberal candidate won by 11 points, a striking margin for Wisconsin. Like many of the best Democratic showings of 2022, the Wisconsin race seemed likely to decide the fate of the state’s abortion ban and its gerrymandered legislative maps.Interestingly, Wisconsin was not a state where Democrats excelled last November. They didn’t fare poorly, but Senator Ron Johnson still won re-election and the incumbent Democratic governor won by just three points. The 2022 showing was no Democratic romp like in Pennsylvania or Michigan, where a stop-the-steal candidate or abortion referendum helped Democrats.This time, the issues facing Wisconsin voters were more like those in Michigan and Pennsylvania. As a result, Wisconsin liberals won a Pennsylvania-like and Michigan-like landslide.Too early to tell on Trump, but a short-term bumpIt’s still far too soon to say how the indictment of Mr. Trump will play out. But there are already plenty of signs that he has gained among Republican primary voters since last Thursday, when news of the indictment broke. Indeed, all four polls taken over this period showed Mr. Trump gaining compared with their previous survey.We’ll probably return to this question in more depth next week. After all, none of these polls were taken after his flight to New York or his surrender to authorities in Manhattan. And he was already gaining before the news of his indictment, so it’s hard to distinguish his latest gains from the continuation of a longer-term trend.Still, it would be no surprise if Mr. Trump is benefiting from the indictment. For days, the conservative media ecosystem has been dominated by a chorus of his defenders, including none other than his chief rival, Ron DeSantis. This is about as favorable of a media environment as it gets for a Republican primary candidate.How this will play over the longer term — especially if Mr. Trump faces other indictments — remains to be seen.Brandon Johnson, a progressive, as he concluded his victory speech on Tuesday in Chicago.Evan Cobb for The New York TimesBlack voters are the fulcrum of a divided Democratic electorateThe Chicago mayoral race wasn’t a Democratic primary, but it was about as close as it gets for a general election: Both candidates were Democrats, and 82 percent of Chicago voters backed Mr. Biden in 2020. Like many Democratic primaries over the last decade, it pitted an activist-backed progressive against a more moderate candidate.But while we’ve grown accustomed to victories for moderate Democrats in most of these intra-primary fights, in Chicago it was the progressive candidate Brandon Johnson who prevailed. That’s in no small part thanks to the backing of Black voters, who have often offered decisive support to high-profile establishment-backed candidates, from Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden to Eric Adams.With many examples of Black voters backing moderate candidates over the years, it can be tempting to assume that they are the reliable moderate allies of the establishment. In reality, it’s not so simple. In particular, Black voters have often backed Black progressives over white moderates and liberals.In the New York mayoral race, Black voters overwhelmingly backed Mr. Adams over the liberal Kathryn Garcia, even though they also preferred the Black progressive Maya Wiley over Ms. Garcia, based on data from ranked choice balloting. When Black voters side with progressives, the establishment’s position suddenly looks a lot weaker: Black voters represent around 20 percent of Democratic voters.Mr. Johnson, who is Black, routinely won 80 percent of the vote in the South Side’s majority Black wards, helping him squeak past the moderate Paul Vallas, who won a lot of the rest of the city.Mr. Johnson’s success doesn’t necessarily mean that Black Democrats are feeling the Bern, or otherwise itching to support progressive candidates. In this year’s primary, Mr. Johnson fared best in relatively young and white progressive areas on Chicago’s North Side, while the incumbent, Lori Lightfoot, carried the South Side wards where Mr. Johnson would dominate just a month later.But the importance of Black voters to progressive fortunes might offer a lesson for activists who hope one of their own might win a Democratic presidential primary.After all, the last candidate to beat the Democratic establishment in such a Democratic primary was none other than Barack Obama. More

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      If DeSantis Thinks His Competence Will Help Him Beat Trump, He May Want to Think Again

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      The Republican establishment thought it could have Donald Trump’s political appeal without Donald Trump himself.That’s why many of the most prominent voices in conservative politics and media have lined up behind Ron DeSantis, the governor of Florida, as the presumptive leader of the Republican Party in the 2024 presidential race. He combines traditional, elite credentials and orthodox conservative views with a pugilistic, Trumpish affect. DeSantis, goes the thinking, could hold Trump’s working-class supporters and reclaim suburban Republicans who decamped for bluer pastures in the 2020 presidential election.To be the nominee, of course, DeSantis has to win the nomination. And to win the nomination, he has to topple Trump, who remains the largest orbital body in Republican politics. Trump’s pull is so powerful — his influence is so great — that he basically compelled much of the Republican Party, including would-be rivals, to defend him in the wake of his indictment by a Manhattan jury.Besting Trump, in other words, will require a certain amount of skill, finesse and political daring.DeSantis has to find an avenue of attack on the former president and actually take the shot, knowing that he could alienate legions of Republican voters in the process. He has to somehow persuade Trump supporters that he could do a better job — more effective and less chaotic — without disparaging Trump to the point where he, DeSantis, is no longer viable. And he has to do all of this before Trump can build steam and roll over him like he did his rivals in the 2016 Republican primary.The problem for DeSantis is that it might already be too late.According to a recent Fox News poll, more than 50 percent of Republican voters support Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, compared with 24 percent for Gov. DeSantis. According to a recent Quinnipiac University poll, 51 percent of Republican voters support Trump, compared with 40 percent for DeSantis. And according to a recent Morning Consult poll, 52 percent of Republicans support Trump, compared with 26 percent for DeSantis.A lot could change between now and next year. Trump could collapse and DeSantis could pick up the pieces. But let’s consider the context of the last 13 years of Republican politics. Republican voters have always liked Trump. When asked in a 2011 NBC News poll whom they wanted to win the party nomination, 17 percent said Trump, just behind Mitt Romney and beating both Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich. Trump was so influential even then that Romney asked for his endorsement, sharing the stage with the real estate mogul at an embarrassing Las Vegas news conference.The weakest Trump has ever been among Republican voters was in the wake of Jan. 6, when it seemed as if the entire political class, Republicans included, was ready to cut him loose. But they didn’t. Prominent Republican leaders kept him in the fold. Conservative media defended his actions. He was vulnerable, yes. But he remained the dominant figure in Republican politics.DeSantis could have struck when the former president was weak. He didn’t. And now the most likely outcome is that Trump takes the crown again, tossing his rivals aside like a collection of old dolls.What’s clear in all of this is that the Republican establishment — DeSantis included, it seems — is as clueless about its situation now as it was when Trump came down the escalator in 2015. They seem to think that they can harness Trump’s energy without submitting to Trump himself. But Republican voters want Trump, and they won’t take any substitutes.The draw of Trump is that he is an entertainer and a showman who will turn those skills against their political enemies. DeSantis might be more competent, but Republican voters don’t want a manager, they want a performer. If Trump’s opponents can outperform him, then, maybe, they have a chance. But in a fight for attention between a seasoned celebrity and a conservative apparatchik, I know where I would place my bet.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on the slogan “parents’ rights” and what it actually means.The reality of the “parents’ rights” movement is that it is meant to empower a conservative and reactionary minority of parents to dictate education and curriculums to the rest of the community. It is, in essence, an institutionalization of the heckler’s veto, in which a single parent — or any individual, really — can remove hundreds of books or shut down lessons on the basis of the political discomfort they feel. “Parents’ rights,” in other words, is when some parents have the right to dominate all the others.And my Friday column was on the farce that is the Republican Party’s claim to want to “protect children.”When you put all of this together, the picture is clear. The Republican Party will use the law and the state to shield as many children as possible from the knowledge, cultural influences and technologies deemed divisive or controversial or subversive by the voters, activists and apparatchiks that shape and guide its priorities. When Tucker Carlson, Christopher Rufo and Moms for Liberty say jump, their only question is: How high?But when it comes to actual threats to the lives of American children — from poverty, from hunger, from sickness and from guns — then, well, the Republican Party wants us to slow down and consider the costs and consequences and even possible futility of taking any action to help.Now ReadingEdward Ongweso Jr. on venture capitalists for Slate.Adam Serwer on “wokeness” for The Atlantic.Claire Potter on gun violence in her newsletter.Simona Foltyn on the consequences of the Iraq War for Boston Review.Adolph Reed Jr. on Bayard Rustin for Nonsite.Photo of the WeekJamelle BouieI have a few more pictures I want to share from my trip to Hawaii last December. This is the Makapu‘u Point Lighthouse, which comes at the end of a nice trail with a decent amount of elevation. I took a few different pictures of this lighthouse, from a few different angles, but this was the one that I think worked best.Now Eating: Pasta and LentilsWe’re all about pasta and legumes in this house — the kids are big fans of the combination — and this recipe from New York Times Cooking is a nice variation on the theme. I usually make this vegetarian, but you can fry pancetta and cook the vegetables in the rendered fat if you prefer.Ingredients3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil, plus more for serving1 yellow onion, coarsely chopped8 garlic cloves, smashed and peeledkosher salt and black pepper1 cup brown or green lentils3 thyme sprigs3 fresh or dried bay leaves (optional)1 (28-ounce) can whole peeled tomatoes, crushed10 ounces tubular or ridged pasta, like penne½ cup freshly grated Parmesan, plus more for servingfresh parsley for garnishDirectionsIn a large pot or Dutch oven, heat the oil over medium-high. Add the onion and garlic, season with salt and pepper and cook, stirring occasionally, until golden brown and tender, 5 to 7 minutes. Add 5 cups of water, the lentils, the thyme and bay leaves (if using). Partially cover, bring to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer, partially covered, until the lentils are al dente, 25 to 30 minutes.Add the tomatoes and 1 teaspoon salt, and bring to a boil over high. Add the pasta and cook, stirring often to keep the pasta from sticking to the pot, until the pasta is al dente, 10 to 20 minutes. (It may take longer than the cook time on the package.) If the pot starts to look dry at any point, add more water, ¼ cup at a time.Turn off the heat, discard the thyme and bay leaves, then stir in the Parmesan. Cover and let sit for 3 minutes so the flavors meld and the sauce thickens. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Eat with more Parmesan and a drizzle of olive oil. More

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      What’s ‘Woke’ and Why It Matters

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      A marker of just how much American politics has changed over the last eight years.Gov. Ron DeSantis after signing HB7, dubbed the “stop woke” bill, during a news conference in Hialeah Gardens, Fla., last April.Daniel A. Varela/Miami Herald, via Associated PressBelieve it or not, the term woke wasn’t uttered even once in the Republican debates back in 2015 and 2016.Now, I’d be surprised if we make it out of the opening statements of the first primary debate without hearing the term.Whatever you think of the phrase, the rise of “woke” to ubiquity is a helpful marker of just how much American politics has changed over the last eight years.There’s a new set of issues poised to loom over the coming campaign, from critical race theory and nonbinary pronouns to “cancel culture” and the fate of university courses. Fifteen years ago, I would have said these topics could divide a small liberal arts campus, not American politics. I would have been wrong.This change in American politics is hard to analyze. It is hard to craft clear and incisive questions on these complex and emerging topics, especially since the phrase “woke” is notoriously ill-defined. Last week, the conservative writer Bethany Mandel became the subject of considerable ridicule on social media after she was unable to concisely define the term in an interview. She’s not the only one. Apparently, there’s a “woke” part of the federal budget. “Wokeness” was even faulted for the Silicon Valley Bank collapse.But while the definition of “woke” may be up for debate, there’s no doubt that the term is trying to describe something about the politics of today’s highly educated, young “new” left, especially on cultural and social issues like race, sex and gender.As with the original New Left in the 1960s, the emergence of this new left has helped spark a reactionary moment on the right. It has split many liberals from their usual progressive allies. And it has helped power the rise of Gov. Ron DeSantis, who has done more to associate himself with fighting “woke” than any other politician. Like it or not, “woke” will shape this year’s Republican primary.What’s woke?The new left emerged in the aftermath of Barack Obama’s re-election in 2012. At the time, liberalism seemed utterly triumphant. Yet for young progressives, “hope” and “change” had given way to the realization that Mr. Obama’s presidency hadn’t cured income inequality, racial inequality or climate change. These dynamics opened a space for a new left, as young progressives started to reach for more ambitious politics, just as the triumph of the Obama coalition gave progressives the confidence to embrace ideas that would have been unimaginable in the Bush era.A decade later, this new left is everywhere. On economic issues, there has been the Bernie Sanders campaign and calls for Medicare for all; democratic socialism; and the Green New Deal. On race, there has been the Black Lives Matter movement; kneeling in protest during the national anthem; and defund the police. On gender and sex, there has been the Me Too movement and the sharing of preferred pronouns and more.On class and economics, it’s easy to delineate the new left. Mr. Sanders helpfully embraced the democratic socialism label to distinguish himself from those who would incrementally smooth out the rough edges of capitalism. It’s harder to distinguish the new left from Obama-era liberals on race, gender and sexuality. There is no widely shared ideological term like democratic socialism to make it easy.And yet the differences between Obama-era liberals and the new left on race, sexuality and gender are extremely significant, with big consequences for American politics.Here are just a few of those differences:The new left speaks with righteousness, urgency and moral clarity. While liberals always held strong beliefs, their righteousness was tempered by the need to accommodate a more conservative electorate. Mr. Obama generally emphasized compromise, commonality and respect for conservatives, “even when he disagreed.”As Obama-era liberalism became dominant, a more righteous progressive discourse emerged — one that didn’t accommodate and even “called out” its opposition. This was partly a reflection of what played well on social media, but it also reflected that progressive values had become uncontested in many highly educated communities.The new left is very conscious of identity. Obama-era liberals tended to emphasize the commonalities between groups and downplayed longstanding racial, religious and partisan divisions. Mr. Obama was even characterized as “post-racial.”Today’s new left consciously strives to include, protect and promote marginalized groups. In everyday life, this means prioritizing, trusting and affirming the voices and experiences of marginalized groups, encouraging people to share their pronouns, listing identities on social media profiles, and more. This extension of politics to everyday life is a difference from Obama-era liberalism in its own right. While the Obama-era liberals mostly focused on policy, the new left emphasizes the personal as political.Today’s new left is conscious of identity in policymaking as well, whether it’s arguing against race-neutral policies that entrench racial disparities or advocating race-conscious remedies. Obama-era liberals rarely implemented race-conscious policies or mentioned the racial consequences of racially neutral policies.The new left sees society as a web of overlapping power structures or systems of oppression, constituted by language and norms as much as law and policy. This view is substantially informed by modern academic scholarship that explains how power, domination and oppression persist in liberal societies.Indeed, almost everything debated recently — critical race theory, the distinction between sex and gender, we can go on — originated in academia over the last half-century. Academic jargon like “intersectional” has become commonplace. It can be hard to understand what’s going on if you didn’t read Judith Butler, Paulo Freire or Kimberlé Williams Crenshaw in college.Academic scholarship is also the source of the expanded, academic meanings of “trauma,” “violence,” “safety” and “erasure,” which implicitly equate the psychological harm experienced by marginalized groups with the physical harms of traditional illiberal oppression.This does not readily lend itself to a “politics of hope,” as virtually everything about America might have to change to end systemic racism. No law will do it. No candidate can promise it. But it does imbue individual actions that subvert oppressive hierarchies with liberatory and emancipatory implications, helping explain the urgency of activists to critique language and challenge norms in everyday life.The new left view that racism, sexism and other oppressive hierarchies are deeply embedded in American society all but ensures a pessimistic view of America. This is quite different from Obama-era liberalism. Indeed, Mr. Obama himself was cast as a redeeming figure whose ascent proved American greatness.When in conflict, the new left prioritizes the pursuit of a more equitable society over enlightenment-era liberal values. Many of the academic theories, including critical race theory, critique liberalism as an obstacle to progressive change.In this view, equal rights are a veneer that conceal and justify structural inequality, while some liberal beliefs impede efforts to challenge oppression. The liberal value of equal treatment prevents identity-conscious remedies to injustice; the liberal goal of equal opportunity accepts unequal outcomes; even freedom of speech allows voices that would offend and thus could exclude marginalized communities.Is this a definition of woke? No. But it covers much of what woke is grasping toward: a word to describe a new brand of righteous, identity-conscious, new left activists eager to tackle oppression, including in everyday life and even at the expense of some liberal values.A protester during a gathering of trans, queer and Black Lives Matter activists in New York in June 2020.Demetrius Freeman for The New York TimesWhy woke matters for Republicans The rise of the new left on race and gender is already reshuffling conservative politics.For this year’s Republican primary, one of the most important things about this rise is that it has helped bridge the usual divide between the conservative base and the establishment.At least for now, the establishment and the base share the fight against “woke,” for two reasons:The new left is far enough left that there’s room to side with the right while keeping one or both feet in the center. Whether it’s a MAGA fan or a zombie-Reaganite, there’s a path for an enterprising politician to bash “woke” and get on Fox News without alienating donors. Anyone can be a conservative hero, even a private equity magnate who would have been seen as an establishment squish in 2015, like Gov. Glenn Youngkin.Anti-woke politics seems to animate elite conservatives as much as the activist, populist base. After all, the new left is most prevalent in highly educated liberal bastions like New York or Washington, and among the young in highly educated industries like the news media and higher education. Its rise has probably been felt most acutely by highly educated conservatives as well.Whether this dynamic changes is an important question as the primary heats up.Over the last few months, Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis have staked out farther-right positions that might put this question to the test. Mr. Trump, for instance, said he would pass a federal law recognizing only two genders and would punish doctors who provide gender-affirming care for minors. Mr. DeSantis, for example, would ban gender studies. As the campaign gets underway, they may go further. We will learn whether other candidates match their positions, and whether there’s a cost if they do not. There is even a chance conservatives go too far.Another big question is whether anti-woke politics can supplant older culture war fights, like abortion or immigration. Most anti-new-left conservatives still vigorously oppose the old liberals on immigration, secularism, feminism and more. It remains to be seen whether attacking D.E.I., Disney and university professors, as Mr. DeSantis did in a recent trip to Iowa, is the red meat for rank-and-file conservatives that it is for conservatives in big cities who feel under siege by an increasingly assertive left.Unfortunately, there is almost no survey data that helps answer these questions at this stage. The behavior of Fox News producers and the rise of DeSantis suggest that there’s some kind of mass constituency for this politics, but whether it amounts to 30 percent or 60 percent of the Republican base and whether it’s compelling enough to carry a primary bid is entirely unclear.In the most extreme case for Democrats, the backlash against the new left could end in a repeat of how New Left politics in the 1960s facilitated the marriage of neoconservatives and the religious right in the 1970s. Back then, opposition to the counterculture helped unify Republicans against a new class of highly educated liberals, allowing Southern opponents of civil rights to join old-school liberal intellectuals who opposed Communism and grew skeptical of the Great Society. The parallels are imperfect, but striking.On the other end of the spectrum, there’s the possibility that a populist, working-class conservative base perceives little distinction between “woke” and “liberal,” and would rather hear the old classics on illegal immigration, crime and coarse language about women and Mexicans than fight new battles against “woke capital,” critical race theorists and transgender teenagers. The range of possibilities for the general election are similarly wide. We’ll save the general election for another time. More

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      DeSantis, on Defense, Shows Signs of Slipping in Polls

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      For now, the Florida governor isn’t firing back at Trump.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida with Donald J. Trump in 2019. He has not attacked Mr. Trump, who has not hesitated to attack him. Manuel Balce Ceneta/Associated PressIt’s been a tough few months for Ron DeSantis.Donald J. Trump and his allies have blasted him as “Meatball Ron,” “Ron DeSanctimonious,” a “groomer,” disloyal and a supporter of cutting entitlement programs. Now, he’s getting criticism from many mainstream conservatives for calling Russia’s invasion of Ukraine a “territorial dispute.”Is all of this making a difference in the polls? There are signs the answer is yes.In surveys taken since the Trump offensive began two months ago, Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, has steadily lost ground against Mr. Trump, whose own numbers have increased.It can be hard to track who’s up and who’s down in the Republican race, since different pollsters have had such wildly divergent takes on Mr. Trump’s strength. In just the last few days, a CNN/SSRS poll showed a tight race, with Mr. DeSantis at 39 percent and Mr. Trump at 37 percent among registered voters, while a Morning Consult poll found Mr. Trump with nearly a two-to-one lead, 52 percent to 28 percent.In this situation, the best way to get a clear read on recent trends is to compare surveys by the same pollsters over time.Over the last two months, we’ve gotten about a dozen polls from pollsters who had surveyed the Republican race over the previous two months. These polls aren’t necessarily of high quality or representative, so don’t focus on the average across these polls. It’s the trend that’s important, and the trend is unequivocal: Every single one of these polls has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than before, and Mr. Trump faring better.A Widening Gap Between Trump and DeSantisEvery recent poll has shown Mr. DeSantis faring worse than he did two months ago — around the time Mr. Trump began publicly attacking him. More

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      Reader Mailbag: Bots and Other Business

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      Answering questions on topics including polling, independent voters and Black turnout.Voters in College Park, Md., in November. There are still some things to review about the midterm elections. T.J. Kirkpatrick for The New York TimesWe’ve gotten a lot of great questions and feedback over the last few months, and I think we’re inclined to make a mailbag a regular feature, especially during the off-season. If you have a question, send it to dear.upshot@nytimes.com.Bots in pollingLet’s start with a question on an issue that I’d already been mulling:Mr. Cohn, you mentioned “bots” in passing as a potential issue for nonprobability polls. Which makes me wonder, how easy/hard would it be for a malign outside actor to interfere in the polling and make Donald Trump’s chances look better than they are? Because if that would be possible, I’d say countries with an interest in a divided U.S. (Russia and China come to mind) would certainly be tempted to pull that off. — Moritz, ViennaThis is a serious question. A Pew Research study a few years ago used a few simple techniques to find that 4 percent to 7 percent of respondents to nonprobability surveys were “bogus,” to use their term. These “bogus” respondents took the survey multiple times, took the poll too quickly, stated that they lived outside the United States, or offered nonsensical answers in open-ended questioning.Anecdotally, I’ve heard more complaints about these kinds of issues from pollsters. I routinely hear about pollsters who toss as many as half of their respondents for data quality issues. It is reasonable to assume that the better-known pollsters take these challenges seriously, but we don’t know much about their practices, let alone whether they work.Could this be part of Donald J. Trump’s strength in online panel polls? It’s hard to prove, but one emerging pattern has caught my attention: Mr. Trump has fared quite poorly in two online nonprobability polls linked to voter registration files, which require the panelist to provide personal information that matches a real registered voter.Or put differently: Mr. Trump has done quite poorly in the nonprobability polls where there’s an extra layer of confidence that the respondents are human. It’s the pattern we would expect if bogus respondents were a factor.Still, I wouldn’t get too excited about this emerging pattern if you’re a Ron DeSantis fan. It’s just two polls, after all. And Mr. Trump’s poll numbers have gone up over the last few weeks, including in telephone polling. So perhaps these voter-file-matched polls are really the outliers. As we’ve written before, voter-file-matched polls like these can be biased in other ways.I’ve asked a few smart and well-positioned pollsters to look into the “bogus” respondent question in their own data. If you’re a similarly well-positioned pollster interested in digging in, you know where to find me.The tilt of independent voters in the midtermsWe’ve written that Republicans enjoyed a pretty meaningful turnout advantage in the midterm elections, but a few of you thought we overlooked one important group in this analysis: independents.It’s always the independents who determine who wins. How did they vote?— Ed from Calhoun, Ga.Article does not mention the impact of the growing number of independent voters who choose not to vote in the primaries but decide final elections.— Julio Stieffel, MiamiDemocrats did quite well among independent voters, and that’s partly why the party held up despite a Republican turnout advantage.Nationwide, self-identified independent voters backed Democrats by two percentage points, according to the network exit polls. It doesn’t sound so impressive, but it is by the standards of recent midterms, when the president’s party has tended to lose independent voters by double digits.And in the high-profile statewide contests — think Senate races in Pennsylvania and Arizona — the Democratic candidates fared even better among independent voters than that, allowing Democrats to win marquee races by unusually wide margins.Black turnout before ObamaOn a related midterm note, we observed that the Black share of the electorate was the lowest it has been since Barack Obama won the presidency in 2008. That left an important question unaddressed:I am interested if the Black voter turnout, which has dropped, is higher or lower than historical norms before the 2008/2012 increase in turnout due to Obama. Thank you. — Lisa Pate, Birmingham, Ala.It depends a bit on how you measure it.By the simplest measure — the proportion of Black adult citizens who vote — Black turnout actually remains slightly higher than it was before Mr. Obama’s historic campaign in 2008.The catch, however, is that turnout is higher across the board than it was before 2008. As a result, the racial gap in turnout in 2020 — that is, the difference between the share of eligible Black voters who turn out, compared with the share of eligible white voters who do — returned almost exactly to what it looked like in the 2004 presidential election. Based on what we’ve seen so far, the racial turnout gap in 2022 will probably look like 2006 or 2002.There’s one last twist to consider: the Black share of the electorate. Oddly enough, the Black share of the electorate has usually remained above pre-Obama levels, even though the gap between white and Black turnout is basically the same as it was back then. That’s because white voters, who turn out at higher rates than Black voters, have dipped as a share of eligible voters, while Hispanic and Asian voters, who turn out at lower rates than Black voters, have increased their share of eligible voters.Put it all together and the Black share of the electorate in 2020 was about halfway between where it was in 2004 and 2012.Alternatives to BidenWe haven’t done much to touch on the possibility of a Democratic primary, but that hasn’t stopped many of you from asking about it:Here is a question my friends and I keep wondering: Is there are any Democrat who could stand a chance if Mr. Biden decided not to run? Thanks much!— The Rev. Lorenzo LebrijaWhoever wins the Democratic nomination will at least stand a chance, and probably more than a chance if Mr. Trump is the nominee. Whether there’s a Democrat who would do as well as or better than President Biden is a slightly different question, and it’s really quite hard to say. I hope you don’t ask me that next time!Mrs. Clinton?Believe it or not, the most frequent question we received was about this sentence I wrote:“After all, most modern presidential nominees — Joe Biden, Mrs. Clinton, George W. Bush, Bob Dole, John McCain, John Kerry, Mitt Romney, Al Gore, to name eight recent ones — were not exactly superstar political talents distinguished by soaring oratory, made-for-television charisma, clap-backs on social media or dominant debate performances.”Here’s one (nice) version of the question it raised:“Can you please explain why you thought it was appropriate to list each male you were referring to with their full name (first and last) and list Hillary Clinton as Mrs. Clinton?” — Maura FitzgeraldThe answer is actually quite mundane. The Times uses people’s full names when they’re mentioned for the first time, but they typically receive courtesy titles, like Mr. and Ms., when mentioned again. In this case, Hillary Clinton had already been mentioned, but the male presidential candidates were being mentioned for the first time. Consequently, Mrs. Clinton, who prefers Mrs. to Ms., received her courtesy title while the male candidates got their full names.I see how it ended up looking a little weird in this case, so we adjusted the sentence after publication. More