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      The Fox Newsification of Nikki Haley

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      Here’s what I think is one of the most intriguing questions in American politics today: How would Nikki Haley talk about the country and its challenges if Fox News didn’t exist?Here’s why: We’ve learned a lot in recent days about both Fox and Haley, the former South Carolina governor who has just started running for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination.Let’s start with Fox News. We all sort of knew the truth about Fox, but now there can be no doubt: Fox News is to journalism what the Mafia is to capitalism — same basic genre, but a morally corrupt perversion of the real thing.Before, during and after the 2020 election, it was not crazy to assume that Fox’s main prime-time hosts — Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingraham — actually believed some of the pro-Trump, election-fraud conspiracy theories and theorists that they were putting on the air. But now we have learned from a batch of recently disclosed text messages and emails that they didn’t believe any of it.The internal messages reveal that the three prime-time hosts, as well as others at Fox, privately made fun of, and were at times appalled by, the election-fraud claims of Donald Trump advisers like Sidney Powell and Rudolph Giuliani. But they mostly kept their skepticism hidden from viewers. Having gotten the Fox audience totally aroused by — and addicted to — claims of election fraud, Fox News’s leaders were afraid to stop. Why? They feared they would lose viewers and ad revenue to even crazier networks — Newsmax and OAN.The Fox News text messages, emails and testimony that expose all of this to public view are from depositions and discovery contained in a recently released legal filing in Delaware state court by Dominion Voting Systems. It is part of the company’s lawsuit against Fox News for broadcasting what it allegedly knew were false claims that Dominion machines helped to rig the 2020 election. The cynicism they reveal is breathtaking.The depth of it is best summed up in this account by The Times last week of an exchange dated Nov. 12, 2020: “In a text chain with Ms. Ingraham and Mr. Hannity, Mr. Carlson pointed to a tweet in which a Fox reporter, Jacqui Heinrich, fact-checked a tweet from Mr. Trump referring to Fox broadcasts and said there was no evidence of voter fraud from Dominion. ‘Please get her fired,’ Mr. Carlson said. He added: ‘It needs to stop immediately, like tonight. It’s measurably hurting the company. The stock price is down. Not a joke.’ Ms. Heinrich had deleted her tweet by the next morning.”Yup, Fox hosts and the Murdoch family were OK with discrediting the core engine of America’s democracy — our ability to peacefully and legitimately transfer power — if it would hold their audience and boost their stock.Now enter Nikki Haley, who also last week announced her presidential bid.I’ve never met Haley, but from afar it seemed that she had a reasonably good story to tell — a successful South Carolina governor from 2011 to 2017, Trump’s first U.N. ambassador and the daughter of Indian immigrants. Her mother, Raj, studied law at the University of New Delhi, and after immigrating to South Carolina, earned a master’s degree in education and became a local public-school teacher. Her father, Ajit, earned a doctorate from the University of British Columbia and then taught as a biology professor at Voorhees College for 29 years. On the side, they even opened a clothing boutique.The whole family is a walking advertisement for how America has been enriched by immigration.And as governor, Haley’s best known — and most courageous — political act came in the aftermath of a white gunman killing nine Black parishioners during a June 2015 prayer session inside the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C. After it was discovered that the gunman had posed for numerous photos with Confederate symbols and was linked to a racist manifesto, Haley called for legislation that led to the removal of the Confederate flag that had flown on the State Capitol grounds since 1962.“We are not going to allow this symbol to divide us any longer,” Haley declared.Good on her. Now fast forward to Haley announcing her run for the presidency. Imagine all the ways she could have differentiated herself from Trump and Ron DeSantis.She could have said: “Friends, in the last two years, Congress passed bills to upgrade our infrastructure, our capacity to make advanced microchips and advanced clean energy systems. The first two were passed with bipartisan majorities. This legislation constitutes a launching pad that could enable America to dominate the 21st century. And I know how to get the most out of those launching pads.“During my time as governor, Greenville, S.C., became one of the nation’s most important hubs of wind energy innovation. As South Carolina’s Upstate Business Journal recently wrote, ‘According to a new study from the Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C., think tank, inventors in Greenville were responsible for 172 wind energy patents over the past five years, more than any other metro area in the country.’ You bet! That’s because we made Greenville home to General Electric’s Power & Water energy engineering team.”Haley could have added, “I also know a lot about building infrastructure for high-tech manufacturing, because during my time as governor I helped to make South Carolina one of the nation’s most active hubs of advanced manufacturing — from advanced aircraft to cars to tires.”Haley could have then pivoted to explain that every one of those manufacturers today is telling us that to realize their full potential they need workers schooled in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM). But they can’t find them. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2025 America could need one million more engineers and other STEM professionals than we can produce at home at our current rate. She could have said the only way to fill that gap is by welcoming the world’s most energetic and high-skilled immigrants.Legal immigrants grow our pie and invent things that enhance our national security. As the daughter of two such immigrants, Haley could have committed to forging a long needed compromise that would truly halt illegal immigration while expanding legal immigration. As a governor who dared yank down the Confederate flag, she could boast that she had the spine to pull the country together to do big, hard things.Sure, that kind of speech would have challenged the Republican base, but I bet it would have energized many others — particularly independents and moderate Republicans looking for alternatives to Trump.But Haley said none of it.Here’s Peggy Noonan of The Wall Street Journal on Haley’s presidential announcement: “I found myself thinking not about her candidacy but about the launch itself, which was creepily stuck in the past. A horrible, blaring song from a Sylvester Stallone sequel pumped her in as she strode out in the white suit. … An introducer said she will ‘lead us into the future’; she added, ‘America is falling behind.’ It was all so tired, clichéd and phony.”And here’s Washington Post political analyst Dan Balz on Haley’s opening campaign video, which twice featured The New York Times Magazine’s “1619 Project” — which details the persistence of racism in American history — as red meat to the anti-woke crowd: Haley’s “video also highlights the 2015 mass shooting at Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, where a white stranger killed nine Black people at a Bible study class. It does not mention Haley’s subsequent action to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina State House after years of controversy.”And now for the perfect ending to Haley’s presidential announcement events. The evening of her speech she appeared on — wait for it now — Hannity’s show on Fox, where she complained that the G.O.P. needs a message to “bring in” a variety of people and it must do a better job at messaging — but offered no actual message.The woman whose family immigration story could have so linked up with a concrete strategy for American renewal, the woman whose political courage in taking down the Confederate flag could have served as the perfect opening message to bring more minorities into the G.O.P., chose instead to do a bad imitation of Ron DeSantis.Why? Because like Hannity, Ingraham, Carlson and the Murdochs, Haley was more interested in following the Fox base than shaping it, let alone leading it to a better place.As I said, imagine what Nikki Haley might have sounded like if Fox News didn’t exist.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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      Biden Weighs State of the Union Focus on His Unfinished Agenda

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      As the president prepares for his national address, his aides debate an emphasis on his still-unrealized plans for child care, prekindergarten and more.WASHINGTON — President Biden’s top economic aides have battled for weeks over a key decision for his State of the Union address on Tuesday: how much to talk about child care, prekindergarten, paid leave and other new spending proposals that the president failed to secure in the flurry of economic legislation he signed in his first two years in office.Some advisers have pushed for Mr. Biden to spend relatively little time on those efforts, even though he is set to again propose them in detail in the budget blueprint he will release in March. They want the president to continue championing the spending he did sign into law, like investments in infrastructure like roads and water pipes, and advanced manufacturing industries like semiconductors, while positioning him as a bipartisan bridge-builder on critical issues for the middle class.Other aides want Mr. Biden to spend significant time in the speech on an issue set that could form the core of his likely re-election pitch to key swing voters, particularly women. Polls by liberal groups suggest such a focus, on helping working families afford care for their children and aging parents, could prove a winning campaign message.The debate is one of many taking place inside the administration as Mr. Biden tries to determine which issues to focus on in a speech that carries extra importance this year. It will be Mr. Biden’s first address to the new Republican majority in the House, which has effectively slammed the brakes on his legislative agenda for the next two years. And it could be a preview for the themes Mr. Biden would stress on the 2024 campaign trail should he run for a second term.Administration officials caution that Mr. Biden has not finalized his strategy. A White House official said Friday that the president was preparing to tout his economic record and his full vision for the economy.The Biden PresidencyHere’s where the president stands as the third year of his term begins.State of the Union: President Biden will deliver his second State of the Union speech on Feb. 7, at a time when he faces an aggressive House controlled by Republicans and a special counsel investigation into the possible mishandling of classified information.Chief of Staff: Mr. Biden named Jeffrey D. Zients, his former coronavirus response coordinator, as his next chief of staff. Mr. Zients replaces Ron Klain, who has run the White House since the president took office.Economic Aide Steps Down: Brian Deese, who played a pivotal role in negotiating economic legislation Mr. Biden signed in his first two years in office, is leaving his position as the president’s top economic adviser.Eyeing 2024: Mr. Biden has been assailing House Republicans over their tax and spending plans, including potential changes to Social Security and Medicare, as he ramps up for what is likely to be a run for re-election.Few of Mr. Biden’s advisers expect Congress to act in the next two years on paid leave, an enhanced tax credit for parents, expanded support for caregivers for disabled and older Americans or expanded access to affordable child care. All were centerpieces of the $1.8 trillion American Families Plan Mr. Biden announced in the first months of his administration. Mr. Biden proposes to offset those and other proposals with tax increases on high earners and corporations.Earlier this week, Mr. Biden hinted that he may be preparing to pour more attention on those so-called “care economy” proposals, which he and his economic team say would help alleviate problems that crimp family budgets and block would-be workers from looking for jobs.At a White House event celebrating the 30th anniversary of a law that mandated certain workers be allowed to take unpaid medical leave, Mr. Biden ticked through his administration’s efforts to invest in a variety of care programs in the last two years, while acknowledging failure to pass federally mandated paid leave and other larger programs.Mr. Biden said he remained committed to “passing a national program of paid leave and medical leave.”“And, by the way, American workers deserve paid sick days as well,” he said. “Paid sick days. Look, I’ve called on Congress to act, and I’ll continue fighting.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-1hvpcve em{font-style:italic;}.css-1hvpcve strong{font-weight:bold;}.css-1hvpcve a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.For Mr. Biden, continuing to call for new spending initiatives aimed at lower- and middle-income workers would draw a clear contrast with the still-nascent field of Republicans seeking the White House in 2024. It would cheer some outside advocacy groups that have pushed him to renew his focus on programs that would particularly aid women and children.The State of the Union speech “presents the president with a rare opportunity to take a victory lap and, simultaneously, advance his agenda,” the advocacy group First Focus on Children said in a news release this week. “All to the benefit of children.”The efforts could also address what Mr. Biden’s advisers have identified as a lingering source of weakness in the recovery from the pandemic recession: high costs of caregiving, which are blocking Americans from looking for work. The nonprofit group ReadyNation estimates in a new report that child care challenges cost American families $78 billion a year and employers another $23 billion.“Among prime-age people not working in the United States, roughly half of them list care responsibilities as the main reason for not participating in the labor force,” Heather Boushey, a member of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, told reporters this week. She noted that the jobs rebound has lagged in care industries like nursing homes and day care centers.“These remain economic challenges and addressing them could go a long ways towards supporting our nation’s labor supply,” she said.But focusing on that unfinished economic work could conflict with Mr. Biden’s repeated efforts this year to portray the economy as strong and position him as a president who reached across the aisle to secure big new investments that are lifting growth and job creation. On Friday, the president celebrated news that the economy created 517,000 jobs in January, in a brief speech that did not mention the challenges facing caregivers.Calling for vast new spending programs also risks further antagonizing House conservatives, who have made government spending their first large fight with the president. Republicans have threatened to allow the United States to fall into an economically catastrophic default on government debt by not raising the federal borrowing limit, unless Mr. Biden agrees to sharp cuts in existing spending.“Revenue into the government has never been higher,” Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, told reporters on Thursday, a day after he met with Mr. Biden at the White House to discuss fiscal issues and the debt limit. “It’s the highest revenue we’ve ever seen in. So it’s not a revenue problem. It’s a spending problem.”Catie Edmondson More

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      Will Americans Even Notice an Improving Economy?

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      Imagine that your picture of the U.S. economy came entirely from headlines and cable news chyrons. Would you know that real gross domestic product has risen 6.7 percent under President Biden, that America gained 4.5 million jobs in 2022 and that inflation over the past six months, which was indeed very high last winter, was less than 2 percent at an annual rate?This isn’t a hypothetical question. Most people don’t read long-form, data-driven essays on the economic outlook. Their sense of the economy is more likely to be shaped by snippets they read or hear.And there is a yawning gulf between public perceptions and economic reality. Recent economic data has been positive all around. Yet a plurality of adults believes that we’re in a recession. In an AP-NORC survey, three-quarters of Americans described the economy as “poor,” with only 25 percent saying it was “good.”You might be tempted to say, never mind the data, people know what’s happening to the economy from personal experience. But there’s a big disconnect on that front, too.Even with 75 percent of the public saying the economy is poor, a majority of Americans rate their own financial situation positively. On average, people seem to be saying that they’re doing reasonably well but that very bad things are happening to somebody else.This “I’m OK, you aren’t” syndrome was especially clear in a Federal Reserve survey carried out in late 2021; we won’t have the 2022 results until later this year, but I expect them to look similar. According to the 2021 survey, 78 percent of households said they were doing “at least OK” financially, a record high; only 24 percent said the national economy was “good or excellent,” a record low. Assessments of local economies, for which people have some personal knowledge, were in between.Now, this isn’t the first time I’ve written about the disconnect between economic perceptions and reality. In the past, however, I got a lot of pushback from people insisting that the public was in deep shock over the resurgence of inflation after years of more or less stable prices.At this point, however, that’s becoming a harder position to sustain. Since last summer prices of some goods, notably of eggs, have soared, but other prices, notably of gasoline, have plunged. As I said, the overall inflation rate in the second half of 2022 was around 2 percent, which has been normal for the past few decades, while the unemployment rate in December, at 3.5 percent, was at a 50-year low. Oh, and inflation-adjusted wages, which fell in the face of supply-chain problems and the Ukraine shock, have been rising again.So what explains the public’s sour view of what is objectively a pretty good economy?Partisanship is clearly part of the story. One striking aspect of that AP-NORC survey was that Democrats and Republicans weren’t that different in their assessments of their personal financial situation; majorities of both groups rated their condition as good. But 90 percent of Republicans said the national economy was poor. A longer view, from the Michigan Survey of Consumers, finds Republicans rating the current economy worse than they did in June 1980, when unemployment was above 7 percent and inflation was 14 percent.What about media coverage? Some of my colleagues get upset about any suggestion that economic reporting has had a negativity bias that affects public perceptions. Yet there’s actually hard evidence to that effect. The Michigan Survey asks respondents about what news they’ve heard about specific business conditions; all though 2022 — as the economy added 4.5 million jobs — more people reported hearing negative than positive news about employment.All of which raises an obviously important political question: Will Americans even notice an improving economy?To be fair, we don’t know whether the economic news will stay this good. Although many forecasters have backed off predictions of imminent recession, experts I talk to consider a growth hiccup over the next quarter or two to be likely. There’s also a raging debate among economists over whether we’ll need a sharp rise in unemployment to keep inflation low.But let’s assume that we get past any near-term wobbles and enter 2024 with both unemployment and inflation low. How many Americans will hear the good news?At this point we have to assume that as long as a Democrat sits in the White House, Fox News and Republicans in general will describe the economy as a disaster area whatever the reality. What’s less clear is how mainstream media will cover the economy, and what voters in general will perceive.Reports say that Biden’s political team plans to “lean into the economy” for the 2024 election. Indeed, while nothing is certain in economics (or life), Biden will most likely be able to run on a record of solid growth in incomes and jobs, with the inflation surge of 2021-22 receding in the rearview mirror.But we can safely predict that many people, not all of them Republican partisans, will insist, no matter what, that his record was a disaster. And I, at least, have no idea what voters will end up believing.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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      Britain’s Cautionary Tale of Self-Destruction

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      In December, as many as 500 patients per week were dying in Britain because of E.R. waits, according to the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, a figure rivaling (and perhaps surpassing) the death toll from Covid-19. On average, English ambulances were taking an hour and a half to respond to stroke and heart-attack calls, compared with a target time of 18 minutes; nationwide, 10 times as many patients spent more than four hours waiting in emergency rooms as did in 2011. The waiting list for scheduled treatments recently passed seven million — more than 10 percent of the country — prompting nurses to strike. The National Health Service has been in crisis for years, but over the holidays, as wait times spiked, the crisis moved to the very center of a narrative of national decline.Post-Covid, the geopolitical order has been thrown into tumult. At the beginning of the pandemic, commentators wondered about the fate of the United States, its indifferent political leadership and its apparently diminished “state capacity.” Lately, they have focused more on the sudden weakness of China: its population in decline, its economy struggling more than it has in decades, its “zero Covid” reversal a sign of both political weakness and political overreach, depending on whom you ask.But the descent of Britain is in many ways more dramatic. By the end of next year, the average British family will be less well off than the average Slovenian one, according to a recent analysis by John Burn-Murdoch at The Financial Times; by the end of this decade, the average British family will have a lower standard of living than the average Polish one.On the campaign trail and in office, promising a new prosperity, Boris Johnson used to talk incessantly about “leveling up.” But the last dozen years of uninterrupted Tory rule have produced, in economic terms, something much more like a national flatlining. In a 2020 academic analysis by Nicholas Crafts and Terence C. Mills, recently publicized by the economic historian Adam Tooze, the two economists asked whether the ongoing slowdown in British productivity was unprecedented. Their answer: not quite, but that it was certainly the worst in the last 250 years, since the very beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Which is to say: To find a fitting analogue to the British economic experience of the last decade, you have to reach back to a time before the arrival of any significant growth at all, to a period governed much more by Malthusianism, subsistence-level poverty and a nearly flat economic future. By all accounts, things have gotten worse since their paper was published. According to “Stagnation Nation,” a recent report by a think tank, there are eight million young Brits in the work force today who have not experienced sustained wage growth at all.Over the past several decades, the China boom and then the world’s populist turn have upended one of the basic promises of post-Cold War geopolitics: that free trade would not just bring predictable prosperity but also draw countries into closer political consensus around something like Anglo-American market liberalism. The experience of Britain over the same period suggests another fly in the end-of-history ointment, undermining a separate supposition of that era, which lives on in zombie form in ours: that convergence meant that rich and well-​governed countries would stay that way.For a few weeks last fall, as Liz Truss failed to survive longer as head of government than the shelf life of a head of lettuce, I found myself wondering how a country that had long seen itself — and to some significant degree been seen by the rest of the world — as a very beacon of good governance had become so seemingly ungovernable. It was of course not that long ago that American liberals looked with envy at the British system — admiring the speed of national elections, and the way that new governing coalitions always seemed able to get things done.Post-Brexit, both the outlook for Britain and the quality of its politics look very different, as everyone knows. But focusing on a single “Leave” vote risks confusing that one abrupt outburst of xenophobic populism with what in fact is a long-term story of manufactured decline. As Burn-Murdoch demonstrates in another in his series of data-rich analyses of the British plight, the country’s obvious struggles have a very obvious central cause: austerity. In the aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, and in the name of rebalancing budgets, the Tory-led government set about cutting annual public spending, as a proportion of G.D.P., to 39 percent from 46 percent. The cuts were far larger and more consistent than nearly all of Britain’s peer countries managed to enact; spending on new physical and digital health infrastructure, for instance, fell by half over the decade. In the United States, political reversals and partisan hypocrisy put a check on deep austerity; in Britain, the party making the cuts has stayed steadily in power for 12 years.The consequences have been remarkable: a very different Britain from the one that reached the turn of the millennium as Tony Blair’s “Cool Britannia.” Real wages have actually declined, on average, over the last 15 years, making America’s wage stagnation over the same period seem appealing by comparison. As the political economist William Davies has written, the private sector is also behaving shortsightedly, skimping on long-term investments and extracting profits from financial speculation instead: “To put it bluntly, Britain’s capitalist class has effectively given up on the future.” Even the right-wing Daily Telegraph is now lamenting that England is “becoming a poor country.”Of course, trends aside, in absolute terms Britain remains a wealthy place: the sixth-largest economy in the world, though its G.D.P. is now smaller than that of India, its former colony. And while the deluded promises of Brexit boosters obviously haven’t come to pass, neither have the bleakest projections: food shortages, crippling labor crunches or economic chaos.Instead, there has been a slow, sighing decay — one that makes contemporary Britain a revealing case study in the way we talk and think about the fates of nations and the shape of contemporary history. Optimists like to point to global graphs of long-term progress, but if the political experience of the last decade has taught us anything, it is that whether the world as a whole is richer than it was 50 years ago matters much less to the people on it today than who got those gains, and how they compare with expectations. Worldwide child mortality statistics are indeed encouraging, as are measures of global poverty. But it’s cold comfort to point out to an American despairing over Covid-era life expectancy declines that, in fact, a child born today can still expect to live longer than one born in 1995, for instance, or to tell a Brit worrying over his or her economic prospects that added prosperity is likely to come eventually — at the same level enjoyed by economies in the former Eastern Bloc.Can Britain even stomach such a comparison? The wealthy West has long regarded development as a race that has already and definitively been won, with suspense remaining primarily about how quickly and how fully the rest of the world might catch up. Rich countries could stumble, the triumphalist narrative went, but even the worst-case scenarios would look something like Japan — a rich country that stalled out and stubbornly stopped growing. But Japan is an economic utopia compared with Argentina, among the richest countries of the world a century ago, or Italy, which has tripped its way into instability over the last few decades. Britain has long since formally relinquished its dreams of world domination, but the implied bargain of imperial retreat was something like a tenured chair at the table of global elders. As it turns out, things can fall apart in the metropole too. Over two centuries, a tiny island nation made itself an empire and a capitalist fable, essentially inventing economic growth and then, powered by it, swallowing half the world. Over just two decades now, it has remade itself as a cautionary tale.David Wallace-Wells (@dwallacewells), a writer for Opinion and a columnist for The New York Times Magazine, is the author of “The Uninhabitable Earth.” More

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      Kevin McCarthy’s Business Ties Complicate His Rise to Power

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      To land the House speaker position, the California Republican will have to win over opponents who question his ties to Silicon Valley and his commitment to right wing causes.The House, divided.Michael Reynolds/EPA, via ShutterstockKevin McCarthy, Inc.Representative Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, is still working on landing the House speaker gig after six failed attempts. It’s the first such House floor showdown in a century, and business is at the heart of his woes.Mr. McCarthy’s critics say he’s too friendly with Big Tech. The ultraconservatives who have stymied his rise to power list a number of big objections with Mr. McCarthy. They say that he isn’t sufficiently committed to right-wing causes and that he hasn’t pushed back enough against perceived anti-conservative bias on social media. Yet the would-be speaker published a policy proposal over the summer to “Stop the Bias and Check Big Tech” if Republicans took control of the House.Mr. McCarthy’s messaging has not convinced hard-line party members. His hot-and-cold ties to Silicon Valley haven’t helped his standing either. Jeff Miller, a political adviser to Mr. McCarthy, also represents Apple and Amazon, and two former staff members are now Big Tech lobbyists. Meanwhile, Mr. McCarthy has benefited from tens of thousands of dollars in donations from tech companies and executives.The Republican leader has also alienated onetime corporate allies. Lobbyists once bet big on Mr. McCarthy, but relations have soured somewhat after he embraced former President Donald Trump’s antagonistic approach to corporations with perceived ties to the left.The Chamber of Commerce endorsed 23 Democrats for the House in 2020 and 15 won. That put the speakership out of reach for Mr. McCarthy at that time and he’s reportedly been sore since. The Republican pushed for Suzanne Clark, the Chamber’s C.E.O., to be removed but the organization was unmoved, and issued a statement in support of her.Even before Mr. McCarthy’s failure this week, lobbyists were giving up on him and Washington insiders — including Paul Ryan, the former Republican House speaker now at the executive advisory firm Teneo — were telling executives to stay out of the political fray.Meanwhile, the business of the government is stuck. Until Republicans resolve their internal conflicts, the House is at a standstill. Members have not been sworn in, administrative tasks and constituent services have been delayed and legislative work is on the back burner. Mr. McCarthy and his allies held talks with the holdouts last night to find a resolution. Democrats could step in to help (members of both parties have apparently discussed it), but that doesn’t appear to be on the table right now.Mr. McCarthy has vowed to continue for as long as it takes. In 1923, it took nine ballots to elect a speaker. The House is scheduled to meet again at noon.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING The Justice Department moves to seize Robinhood stock tied to Sam Bankman-Fried. Federal prosecutors argued on Wednesday that the $465 million worth of shares in the online brokerage weren’t part of the FTX bankruptcy estate. Bankman-Fried bought the shares through an investment vehicle with money borrowed from Alameda Research, FTX’s trading affiliate.Walgreens will sell abortion pills. The pharmacy giant said it would dispense mifepristone, becoming the first national chain to do so after the F.D.A. announced new rules for dispensing the drug. CVS and Rite Aid said they were still reviewing the agency’s new policy.China defends its handling of the Covid outbreak. Facing criticism from the World Health Organization and President Biden over the accuracy of its coronavirus tally, Beijing fired back on Thursday, saying the situation was “controllable.” It also plans to reopen its border with Hong Kong on Sunday after a three-year closure.The man behind the college admissions scandal is sentenced. Rick Singer, whom prosecutors accused of orchestrating a $25 million cheating scheme that involved actors, business executives, doctors and more, must serve three and a half years in prison. Singer, who had become an informant, received the longest sentence of anyone tied to the scandal.CES kicks off today. Enormous crowds are expected to return to the tech trade show in Las Vegas this year, after the pandemic clamped down on in-person attendance. Expect plenty of announcements about new televisions, smart-home gadgets, electric cars and more.The bleeding continues at Big Tech Amazon said on Wednesday that it would drastically expand its planned layoffs to a staggering 18,000 jobs as it seeks to rein in costs. Coupled with Salesforce’s plans to lay off about 8,000 employees, it’s the latest sign that tech giants are still grappling with the consequences of overhiring during the pandemic boom.Amazon’s cuts amount to around 6 percent of its corporate work force and will be focused on human resources and what the e-commerce giant calls its Stores division: its main online site, its field operations and warehouses, its physical stores and other consumer teams. (Hourly warehouse workers aren’t part of the tally.) That’s up from the roughly 10,000 the company had been weighing earlier.Salesforce is also laying off 10 percent of its employees and cutting back on office space. The move comes after a series of shake-ups at the business software giant, including the announced departures of Bret Taylor, its co-C.E.O. (reportedly after strains in his relationship with Marc Benioff, the company’s co-founder) and Stewart Butterfield, the C.E.O. of Slack, the messaging app Salesforce bought for nearly $28 billion.It’s a notable retrenchment for Salesforce, whose reputation over the past decade has become one of ever-growing ambition: The company is the largest private employer in San Francisco, and its flagship office tower is the city’s tallest.Both rounds of layoffs arose out of overexpansion. Amazon more than doubled its work force during the pandemic, to 1.5 million, as it became an indispensable seller to locked-down households. Salesforce nearly doubled its head count over the past three years, to 80,000 in October.Those hiring sprees have since run into a slowing global economy, with Amazon having warned in the fall that it could see its worst growth rate since 2001. “We hired too many people leading into this economic downturn we’re now facing, and I take responsibility for that,” Benioff wrote in a letter to employees.Amazon and Salesforce aren’t alone: Meta recently laid off 13 percent of its work force, while Snap and Twitter have also resorted to huge job cuts. Overall, the tech industry laid off over 153,000 workers last year, according to Layoffs.fyi. Things may not get better this year, with analysts cautioning that tech companies’ customers may further clamp down on spending, potentially leading to yet more cost cuts.“The parallels with Russia and Ukraine are hard to ignore. We must not make the same mistakes with Xi Jinping that we did with Vladimir Putin.” — Anders Fogh Rasmussen, a former secretary general of NATO, urged a robust and unified response to deter China from attacking Taiwan. His comments, made during a visit to Taipei, highlighted worries in Europe over China’s growing assertiveness in Asia.The Fed’s big challenge: exuberant marketsInvestors got the post-Christmas “Santa Claus rally” they were hoping for, a buying spree that was fueled in part by slumping energy prices. But the big cloud hanging over markets remains: the prospect that central banks will be emboldened to tame inflation with more interest rate increases.Fed officials gave investors an unambiguous warning on Wednesday: Don’t start pricing in a dovish pivot anytime soon. Many on Wall Street are banking on the U.S. central bank to end its policy of jumbo rate increases in the first half of 2023, and to begin cutting by year-end.But the Fed sees any pivot prediction as misguided, warning that such thinking could complicate its efforts to bring prices under control. Minutes from a December Fed meeting released on Wednesday, did not mince its words. “No participants anticipated that it would be appropriate” to cut rates.As the Times’s Jeanna Smialek reported, policymakers are concerned that markets might misinterpret any decision to slow the pace of rate moves in the near term as a sign that the Fed believed it was making enough progress in bringing inflation closer to its 2 percent target. (The I.M.F. has also weighed in, saying that it doesn’t believe the U.S. has “turned the corner on inflation yet” and that the Fed should “stay the course.”)The markets still don’t seem to be getting the message. “Right now data signals are mixed — like an ink blot, investors can see what they want,” Elsa Lignos, RBC Capital Market’s global head of FX Strategy, said in a note to clients this morning. She pointed out that manufacturing prices were in decline, but that job vacancies remained elevated, suggesting wages could continue creeping higher.A late-afternoon surge on Wednesday helped the S&P 500 and Nasdaq close higher. Between the Dec. 27 open and Wednesday’s close, the S&P 500 rose 0.8 percent, capping off the seventh consecutive annual Santa rally, measured by the stock market’s performance over the seven trading days that follow Christmas. The most bullish on Wall Street see such rallies as a sign that investors will keep buying well into the new year.Investors and Fed officials will be closely watching Friday’s jobs report. The Fed is concerned that the labor market is still too tight, belying the recent headline-grabbing layoffs at tech giants. A jobs report showing big gains in wages and hiring could force the Fed to remain locked in to its “higher for longer” rates policy, adding to additional market volatility.THE SPEED READ DealsShares in GE HealthCare Technologies rose 8 percent in their debut on Wednesday, after being spun off from General Electric. (Bloomberg)Western Digital has reportedly resumed talks to buy Kioxia, a Japanese memory chip maker. (Bloomberg)A unit of Tokyo Gas is said to be in advanced talks to buy the U.S. natural gas producer Rockcliff Energy for about $4.6 billion. (Reuters)Fanatics reportedly plans to divest its 60 percent stake in Candy Digital, a sports N.F.T. company. (CNBC)PolicyEuropean regulators fined Meta 390 million euros after finding it had illegally forced users to effectively accept personalized ads. (NYT)The S.E.C. has objected to Binance.US’s $1 billion bid to purchase the bankrupt crypto lender Voyager Digital. (Reuters)Silvergate, a bank, was forced to sell assets at a steep loss to cover $8.1 billion in customer withdrawals after the collapse in November of FTX. (WSJ)Best of the restA self-described Tesla fan filed a Tesla trademark for a boat and jet without the company’s knowledge. (Bloomberg)Amazon, SiriusXM and Spotify are cutting back on their spending on new podcasts. (Bloomberg)The stars of the 1968 film “Romeo and Juliet” sued the movie’s distributor, Paramount, for $500 million over being made to film a nude scene while they were teens. (NYT)A Princeton student said he had created a program to detect whether an essay was written by the A.I. chatbot ChatGPT. Meanwhile, New York City’s education department banned the use of ChatGPT on some city devices and internet networks. (Insider, Chalkbeat New York)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Gretchen Whitmer Rejected False Choices. All Democrats Should.

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      For years, the so-called Blue Wall states — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — have been not just politically but also emotionally important for Democrats. With the party poised to enact a new primary lineup that includes Michigan in an early slot, the state has grown even more important for Democrats.In many ways, Michigan offers a microcosm of American politics. It includes a diverse population of over 10 million people and a mix of big, medium and smaller urban areas, along with diverse suburbs and rural areas.For Democrats, much of the debate about running in and winning big northern industrial states is that we have to choose a style of campaign. Either we talk to blue-collar voters about issues like economics and manufacturing, or we talk to suburban women about abortion. Either we use progressive issues to turn out our base, or we take moderate positions on issues to persuade people in the middle.There is a model for running an effective campaign in Michigan and states like it — and it involves rejecting many of these false choices.Gretchen Whitmer illustrated that model in Michigan this year. With her midterm victory, she has now had two decisive general-election wins in a critical Blue Wall state. Last month, she won by 10.6 points (a margin bested by only two Democratic presidential candidates in the last 50 years, Barack Obama in 2008 and Bill Clinton in 1996).She ran on economics and abortion, increased Democratic turnout and persuaded swing voters, all while connecting with the party’s largest base: Black voters. She embodied the way smart campaigns in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and around the country operated this cycle, and she gave a blueprint for Democrats in 2024.The first lesson of Ms. Whitmer’s campaign is that economic good news and development — especially building things — really make a difference. Democrats should run on American manufacturing: Whether it was a new semiconductor plant (to help ease the chip shortage facing the auto industry) or generational-level investments from G.M. in electric-vehicle battery plants (to make sure the critical supply chains for electric cars will be based in Michigan, not China, where many E.V. batteries are currently built), Ms. Whitmer fought to bring them to Michigan.In in multiple TV ads, she told voters, “I can’t solve the inflation problem, but we’re doing things — right now — to help.” She listed tangible benefits that she proposed or got done, like more affordable community college, insurance refunds and tax cuts for seniors. She passed four balanced, bipartisan budgets with no tax increases, and she let voters know about that.A lot of Democrats talked about economics across the country, but few did so as consistently and effectively as Ms. Whitmer. And it wasn’t just talk: When businesses opened, she was often there to celebrate them.This was paired with a pocketbook attack. Her opponent, Tudor Dixon, took millions of dollars from the wildly unpopular (in Michigan) billionaire Betsy DeVos and her family. For months her campaign highlighted Ms. Dixon’s connections to Ms. DeVos and how Ms. Dixon’s tax plan would benefit Ms. DeVos and hurt the middle class — working-class tax hikes, cuts to schools and the like. Ms. Whitmer also highlighted abortion rights as a vote-deciding issue for swing voters. Again, this was not just talk. Through a ballot initiative, Michigan voters faced the decision on whether to place abortion protections in the state Constitution. Voters approved changing the state Constitution with strong support (57 percent).Months before the Dobbs decision overturned Roe v. Wade and could have effectively banned abortion in Michigan (because of a dormant law from the 1930s), Ms. Whitmer sued and got courts to block enforcement of that law. No doubt the issue helped Michigan Democrats and progressives to catalyze turnout. Estimates from the U.S. Elections Project show overall turnout in 2022 was down about 6 percent from the 2018 midterm, but in Michigan, turnout was up nearly 5 percent.Ms. Whitmer also developed a deep connection with Black voters well before she picked as her running mate and governing partner the state’s first Black lieutenant governor, Garlin Gilchrist. After winning Black voters decisively with high turnout in 2018, she deepened that connection. The “Big Gretch” song (“We ain’t even about to stress/we got Big Gretch”) and memes that came out of Black Michigan spoke to a deep appreciation Black voters had for her decisiveness in the pandemic to keep people safe.This was on top of a lot of other work to help Black voters, things like bringing the first new auto plant to Detroit in 30 years and making sure Detroiters had a first crack at the plant’s jobs.This did not come at the expense of talking to white voters: She won Macomb County, ground zero for voters who cast ballots for Barack Obama, then switched to Donald Trump, by about 60 percent more in 2022 from 2018.What Ms. Whitmer has done in Michigan can be done by Democrats across the country. We can talk about economics and abortion, we can invest in turnout and persuasion, and we can strengthen our appeal to voters of color while winning over white voters.Brian Stryker (@BrianStryker) is a partner at Impact Research and a strategist for Gretchen Whitmer, Tim Ryan and Mandela Barnes, among others.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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      The Prisoner Exchange That Freed Brittney Griner

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      More from our inbox:Selective Prosecution of TrumpTwo Views of BidenDiversity in Tech JobsA ‘Friend’ for Solo EldersA still from a video distributed by Russian state media shows Brittney Griner, in red, and Viktor Bout, holding a yellow envelope, on the tarmac at the Abu Dhabi International Airport on Thursday.To the Editor: Re “Griner Is Freed; Leaves Russia After a Trade” (front page, Dec. 9):On Thursday, the American basketball star Brittney Griner was freed from a Russian prison. This is indisputably joyous news, but it is bittersweet. To secure her release, President Biden had to agree to release a notorious Russian arms dealer whose weapon sales have supported death and misery around the world.It is great news, of course, for Ms. Griner and her family. Sadly, Paul Whelan, another American, remains in Russian custody, where he has been illegitimately detained for the past four years. The great news about Ms. Griner is blemished by the continued imprisonment of Mr. Whelan.President Biden has shown perseverance and dedication to securing the freedom of unjustly imprisoned Americans. But let us not forget that these deals come at a cost. Freeing Brittney Griner required that the U.S. release a soulless man who might now resume his arms dealing.Geopolitics sometimes requires painful compromise, and this moment clearly illustrates this point.Ken DerowSwarthmore, Pa.To the Editor:The exchange of a basketball player for a convicted arms dealer, leaving a former U.S. Marine in Russian custody, is a disgrace, patently wrong, unbalanced by any sense of equity and an affront to American values. President Biden should be ashamed.Richard M. FrauenglassHuntington, N.Y.To the Editor:While it is to be celebrated that Brittney Griner is coming home, my heart breaks for the family of Paul Whelan and for the families of other unjustly detained Americans all over the world.Ms. Griner’s release underscores the power of celebrity to drive more vigorous action. No doubt the advocacy of LeBron James and Stephen Curry, for example, on behalf of Ms. Griner played a significant role in pressuring the White House to get a deal done to bring her home, while Mr. Whelan and countless others continue to languish behind bars.Mark GodesChelsea, Mass.To the Editor:Viktor Bout, the Russian arms dealer, would have been out in seven years, back in business (maybe). So should we have let Brittney Griner stay in prison?Good for President Biden and our persistent officials. I travel internationally to dangerous places, and it’s good to know the U.S. has my back.Norbert HirschhornMinneapolisSelective Prosecution of TrumpProsecutors told jurors that Donald J. Trump personally paid for some perks and approved a crucial aspect of the scheme. Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “In a Blow to Trump, a Jury Finds His Business Guilty of Tax Fraud” (front page, Dec. 7):It is possible to view Donald Trump as deserving of accountability, retribution, even loathing, while recognizing that this tax fraud prosecution was selective.The money at stake is not worth the costs to pursue the case, and the nature of the crime seems unexceptional, especially in a private business. It is not a case prosecutors would ordinarily pursue.It may be noble in a larger or proportionate sense, but that can be respected while questioning the claims of prosecutors that it shows how everyone is equally subject to the law.Edward AbahoonieSparkill, N.Y.Two Views of Biden Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor: The other day I discovered a book by Joe Biden from 2017, “Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship and Purpose,” which focuses on his late son Beau’s battle with brain cancer. I was moved to discover that the book reveals not just his memories of his beloved son, but also his role as a husband, devoted father and seasoned politician familiar with the vicissitudes of dealing with bigwigs, foreign and domestic.What strikes one in reading Mr. Biden’s own heartfelt words is the sheer faith he has in the human ties he cherishes. Despite the tragedies he has suffered, he has held fast to his best qualities — compassion and faith.In short, he is a man of great trustworthiness, patience and forbearance, whose comparison to any probable rival in 2024 of either party clearly renders him, yet again, the best candidate for president.Richard OrlandoWestmount, QuebecTo the Editor:Re “America Deserves Better Than Donald Trump” (editorial, Nov. 20):Your editorial should have been titled “America Deserves Better Than Joe Biden.”The Biden administration has wrecked our economy with out-of-control inflation and government spending, has allowed undocumented immigrants to flood our southern border, and has destroyed our credibility as an international leader with our disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.There has been a large rise in crime and lawlessness, and many of us feel that the current administration is using the Justice Department, the F.B.I. and intelligence agencies against its political enemies and those who do not support its far-left and green agenda.Yes, we deserve better! Because we are a country where the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” have real meaning to our citizens.Sam TaylorColorado SpringsDiversity in Tech JobsAnnalice Ni, 22, was disappointed when Meta laid her off from her job as a software engineer last month. Now she is using the opportunity to expand her career horizons.Jason Henry for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Future in Big Tech Dims for Computing Students” (Business, Dec. 8):The article makes an important argument for students to seek jobs outside Big Tech, and look to start-ups and nontechnical industries that are hungry for fresh talent. However, it’s imperative for us to also address ways to support the most marginalized students, who are often left behind when the job market makes a significant shift.Today, only 26 percent of computer scientists are women, and only 8 percent are Black. Organizations like mine are working to correct this imbalance, but the onus remains on hiring managers to consider a wider range of qualified talent for technical roles.This could mean looking beyond Ivy League institutions and four-year universities, or placing less importance on technical interviews — which disproportionately benefit those with industry connections. Standards for computer science jobs should remain high, but we must be more nimble in how we measure a strong candidate.In moments of economic strain, we can’t forget that a diverse work force is critical for both equity and long-term success. All students, no matter their background, deserve access to the tech jobs they’ve worked so hard to secure.Tarika BarrettNew YorkThe writer is C.E.O. of Girls Who Code.A ‘Friend’ for Solo EldersJoan DelFattore, a retired English professor, objects to the perception that older people without immediate family are somehow needy.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesTo the Editor:A critical issue that wasn’t addressed in “Who Will Care for the Kinless Seniors?,” by Paula Span (The New Old Age, Dec. 6), is the absence of someone who could serve as a health care proxy in the event that a senior is not capable of making their own medical decision.There has been some research over the last several years about the increasing number of older people in that situation (sometimes called the “unbefriended”) and the programs that might provide a way to identify existing proxies or to develop new relationships in part to serve that function.Community organizations, together with the medical community, need to create joint initiatives, funded by the public and private sectors, to enable these seniors to have a “friend.”Alice YakerNew YorkThe writer served as a health care consultant on this issue with the New York Legal Assistance Group. More

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      A Times Square Hotel Was Set To Become Affordable Housing. Then the Union Stepped In.

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      At the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, the Paramount Hotel, sitting empty in Times Square, was on the verge of turning into a residential building, offering a rare opportunity to create affordable housing in Midtown Manhattan.A nonprofit was planning to convert the hotel into apartments for people facing homelessness. But after 18 months of negotiations, the plan collapsed this year when a powerful political player intervened: the Hotel and Gaming Trades Council, the union representing about 35,000 hotel and casino workers in New York and New Jersey.The union blocked the conversion, which threatened the jobs of the workers waiting to return to the 597-room hotel. Under the union’s contract, the deal could not proceed without its consent.The Paramount reopened as a hotel this fall, an illustration of how the union has wielded its outsized political power to steer economic development projects at a critical juncture in New York City’s recovery.The pandemic presented a devastating crisis for the city’s hotel workers, more than 90 percent of whom were laid off. But as the union has fought harder to protect them, its political muscle has also drawn the ire of hotel operators and housing advocates, who say the group’s interests can be at odds with broader economic goals.After the conversion failed, the Paramount reopened this fall, saving about 160 hotel jobs.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe union’s impact ripples throughout New York. It can block or facilitate the conversion of large hotels into housing and homeless shelters, a consequential role in a year when homelessness in the city reached a record high of about 64,000 people. The union pushed for the accelerated expansion of casinos, which could transform the neighborhoods of the winning bids. And it was a driving force behind a new hotel regulation that some officials warned could cost the city billions in tax revenue.The union’s influence stems from its loyal membership and its deep pockets, both of which it puts to strategic use in local elections. Its political strength has resulted in more leverage over hotel owners, leading to stronger contracts and higher wages for workers.In this year’s New York governor’s race, the union was the first major labor group to endorse Gov. Kathy Hochul, whose winning campaign received about $440,000 from groups tied to the union. The group was also an early backer of Eric Adams, whose mayoral campaign was managed by the union’s former political director.“H.T.C. is playing chess while everyone else is playing checkers,” said Chris Coffey, a Democratic political strategist, referring to the union’s more common name, the Hotel Trades Council. “They’re just operating on a higher playing field.”Origins of the union’s powerHistorically, the Hotel Trades Council avoided politics until its former president, Peter Ward, started a political operation around 2008.Mr. Ward and the union’s first political director, Neal Kwatra, built a database with information about where members lived and worshiped and the languages they spoke. This allowed the union to quickly deploy Spanish speakers, for instance, to canvass in Latino neighborhoods during campaigns.Candidates noticed when the Hotel Trades Council, a relatively small union, would send 100 members to a campaign event while larger unions would send only a handful, Mr. Kwatra said.The Aftermath of New York’s Midterms ElectionsWho’s at Fault?: As New York Democrats sought to spread blame for their dismal performance in the elections, a fair share was directed toward Mayor Eric Adams of New York City.Hochul’s New Challenges: Gov. Kathy Hochul managed to repel late momentum by Representative Lee Zeldin. Now she must govern over a fractured New York electorate.How Maloney Lost: Democrats won tough races across the country. But Sean Patrick Maloney, a party leader and a five-term congressman, lost his Hudson Valley seat. What happened?A Weak Link: If Democrats lose the House, they may have New York to blame. Republicans flipped four seats in the state, the most of any state in the country.To recruit members into political activism, the union hosted seminars explaining why success in local elections would lead to better job protections. Afterward, members voted to increase their dues to support the union’s political fights, building a robust fund for campaign contributions. Rich Maroko, the president of the Hotel Trades Council, said the union’s “first, second and third priority is our members.”Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesThe Hotel Trades Council ranked among the top independent spenders in the election cycle of 2017, when all 26 City Council candidates endorsed by the union won. Some of these officials ended up on powerful land use and zoning committees, giving the union influence over important building decisions in New York.In a huge victory before the pandemic, the union fought the expansion of Airbnb in New York, successfully pressuring local officials to curb short-term rentals, which the union saw as a threat to hotel jobs.Mr. Ward stepped down in August 2020, making way for the union’s current president and longtime general counsel, Rich Maroko, who earned about $394,000 last year in total salary, according to federal filings.The union’s sway has continued to grow. Some hotel owners, speaking on the condition of anonymity, say they are fearful of crossing the union, which has a $22 million fund that can compensate workers during strikes. In an interview, Mr. Maroko pointed out that the hotel industry is particularly vulnerable to boycotts.“The customer has to walk through that picket line,” he said, “and then they have to try to get a good night’s rest while there are people chanting in front of the building.”The Hotel Trades Council’s contract is the strongest for hotel workers nationwide, labor experts say. In New York City, where the minimum wage is $15 an hour, housekeepers in the union earn about $37 an hour. Union members pay almost nothing for health care and can get up to 45 paid days off.During the pandemic, the union negotiated health care benefits for laid-off workers, suspended their union dues and offered $1,000 payments to the landlords of workers facing eviction.Along the way, the union has become known for its take-no-prisoners approach to politics, willing to ally with progressives or conservatives, with developers or nonprofits — as long as they support the union’s goals.“There may be no union which has more discrete asks of city government on behalf of its members,” said Mark Levine, the Manhattan borough president, who was endorsed by the union. “You can’t placate them with nice rhetoric. To be a partner with them, you really need to produce.”Political wins during the pandemicLast year, the union scored a victory it had sought for more than a decade, successfully lobbying city officials to require a special permit for any new hotel in New York City.The new regulation allows community members, including the union, to have a bigger say over which hotels get built. The move is expected to restrict the construction of new hotels, which are often nonunion and long viewed by the Hotel Trades Council as the biggest threat to its bargaining power.Budget officials warned that the regulation could cost the city billions in future tax revenue, and some developers and city planners criticized the rule as a political payback from Mayor Bill de Blasio in the waning months of his administration after the union endorsed his short-lived presidential campaign in 2019. Mr. de Blasio, who did not return a request for comment, has previously denied that the union influenced his position.In the next mayoral race, the union made a big early bet on Mr. Adams, spending more than $1 million from its super PAC to boost his campaign. Jason Ortiz, a consultant for the union, helped to manage a separate super PAC to support Mr. Adams that spent $6.9 million.Mr. Ortiz is now a lobbyist for the super PAC’s biggest contributor, Steven Cohen, the New York Mets owner who is expected to bid for a casino in Queens.The union, which shares many of the same lobbyists and consultants with gambling companies, will play an important role in the upcoming application process for casino licenses in the New York City area. State law requires that casinos enter “labor peace” agreements, effectively ensuring that new casino workers will be part of the union.A new threatDuring the pandemic, as tourism stalled, there was growing pressure to repurpose vacant hotels. With New York rents soaring, advocates pointed to hotel conversions as a relatively fast and inexpensive way to house low-income residents.But the union’s contract, which covers about 70 percent of hotels citywide, presented an obstacle. A hotel that is sold or repurposed must maintain the contract and keep its workers — or offer a severance package that often exceeds tens of millions of dollars, a steep cost that only for-profit developers can typically afford.A plan to convert a Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center was scuttled by city officials after the effort failed to win the union’s endorsement.Ahmed Gaber for The New York TimesEarlier this year, Housing Works, a social services nonprofit, planned to convert a vacant Best Western hotel in Chinatown into a homeless drop-in center. There was opposition from Chinatown residents, but city officials signed off on the deal. It was set to open in May.Right before then, however, the Hotel Trades Council learned of the plan and argued that it violated the union’s contract.Soon, the same city officials withdrew their support, said Charles King, the chief executive of Housing Works. He said they told him that Mr. Adams would not approve it without the union’s endorsement. Mr. King was stunned.“Clearly they have the mayor’s ear,” Mr. King said, “and he gave them the power to veto.”A spokesman for the mayor said the city “decided to re-evaluate this shelter capacity to an area with fewer services,” declining to comment on whether the union influenced the decision.The Chinatown hotel remains empty.An obstacle to affordable housingIn the spring of 2021, state legislators rallied behind a bill that would incentivize nonprofit groups to buy distressed hotels and convert them into affordable housing. They sought the Hotel Trades Council’s input early, recognizing that the group had the clout to push then-Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo to oppose the bill, according to people involved in the discussions.The union supported the conversions, but only if they targeted nonunion hotels outside Manhattan. Housing groups have said that, unlike large Midtown hotels, nonunion hotels are not ideal candidates for housing because they tend to be much smaller and inaccessible to public transit.As a compromise to gain the union’s support, the bill allowed the Hotel Trades Council to veto any conversions of union hotels.“While we certainly support the vision of finding shelters and supportive housing for the people that need it,” Mr. Maroko said, “our first, second and third priority is our members.”One housing advocate involved in the legislation, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said she warned elected officials that the veto provision would diminish the law’s effectiveness.The law, which passed last year, came with $200 million for conversions. Housing experts criticized the legislation for not sufficiently loosening zoning restrictions, prompting another law this spring that made conversions easier.Still, no hotels have been converted under the new law.Now, with tourism rebounding, housing nonprofits say the window of opportunity has largely passed.“It’s not like hotel owners are clamoring to sell the way they were two years ago,” said Paul Woody, vice president of real estate at Project Renewal, a homeless services nonprofit.How the Paramount deal endedIn the fall of 2020, the owners of the Paramount Hotel began discussing a plan to sell the property at a discount to Breaking Ground, a nonprofit developer that wanted to turn it into rent-stabilized apartments for people facing homelessness.But as the deal neared the finish line, Breaking Ground failed to anticipate pushback from the Hotel Trades Council. In a series of meetings last year, the union said its obligation was to fight for every hotel job and it proposed a range of solutions, including keeping union employees as housekeepers for residents. Breaking Ground, however, said the cost was too high.The nonprofit even asked Mr. Ward, the union’s former president, to help facilitate the conversion. Mr. Ward said he agreed to call Mr. Maroko to gauge his interest in Breaking Ground’s severance offer.This spring, lobbying records show, union representatives met with Jessica Katz, Mr. Adams’s chief housing officer, and other officials about the Paramount. Soon after, Ms. Katz called Breaking Ground and said city officials would not be able to make the conversion happen, according to a person familiar with the conversation. A spokesman for the mayor said the city “cannot choose between creating the housing the city needs and bringing back our tourism economy,” declining to comment on whether the union swayed the decision on the Paramount.The failed conversion saved about 160 hotel jobs, and the Paramount reopened to guests in September.It was a relief for workers like Sheena Jobe-Davis, who lost her job there in March 2020 as a front-desk attendant. She temporarily worked at a nonunion Manhattan hotel, making $20 less per hour than at the Paramount. She was ecstatic to get her old job back.“It is something I prayed and prayed for daily,” she said. More