Presidential Election of 2024

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      Plagiarism Allegations Against Claudine Gay

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      More from our inbox:The Bronx Defenders and the Fallout From WarUndoing Roe: ‘A Shameful Saga’Buying Cashmere Without an Environmental CostKen Cedeno/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Why Claudine Gay Should Go,” by John McWhorter (column, nytimes.com, Dec. 21):Mr. McWhorter argues that Claudine Gay, the president of Harvard, should be held to the same academic standards as the institution’s undergraduates. If only that were true!When I was a graduate student there in the late 1990s, I was warned by a senior professor not to pursue a case of plagiarism because it might lead to a lawsuit. The university, he confided, had recently lost a costly court case brought by the parents of a student accused of plagiarism.Plagiarists are rarely brought to account, especially in academe, where it is often treated as a minor delict. How do I know? I’ve been plagiarized by at least two other academics, including a visiting professor at Harvard during my first year of graduate school. Neither she nor the other offender ever faced any consequences.Andrew I. PortDetroitThe writer is a professor of history at Wayne State University.To the EditorRe “Harvard Finds More ‘Duplicative Language’ of President” (news article, Dec. 22):I find it quite odd for The Times to consistently lead the coverage of Claudine Gay’s academic work with an overemphasis that “conservative” voices have driven the claims of plagiarism.The issue is not the political background of the whistle-blowers, but the actual charges. I (hardly a conservative if it matters) wrote articles, a master’s thesis, a Ph.D. dissertation and a book, and I can guarantee that in each case I knew my writing and what I got from other sources (primary and secondary).Nothing bothered my mentor and friend, the late historian Stan Kutler, more than plagiarists who claimed, after getting caught, that their stealing was an oversight, a little mistake, a slight error, a problem in checking content. No, they simply got caught.Dr. Gay would surely support a grad student’s expulsion for plagiarizing. Her turn.Joseph L. DavisMadison, Wis.To the Editor:The New York Times has devoted a startling amount of coverage to sorting out the question of Claudine Gay’s plagiarism. May I suggest that before devoting more, the newspaper’s reporters might want to examine publications by all the Harvard presidents who came before her? And perhaps some of those by its most famous professors, too.The computer technology that exists today may allow critics to scrutinize her writings far more than any past scholar’s work was scrutinized when such technological capabilities did not exist.Let’s see how much she is an outlier in her community — or not — before condemning her so roundly.Janna Malamud SmithMilton, Mass.The writer graduated from Harvard in 1973.The Bronx Defenders and the Fallout From WarSome lawyers in housing and family courts have said they want nothing to do with members of the Bronx Defenders.Angela Weiss/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Feud Over War Imperils Future of Legal Group; Claims of Antisemitism at Bronx Defenders” (front page, Dec. 15):I am an attorney and a former priest at St. Ann’s Episcopal Church in the South Bronx.The Bronx Defenders are among the best lawyers in the city. A lawyer’s duty is to represent a client “zealously,” and the Bronx Defenders represent their clients passionately. I always felt confident when they represented a parishioner or someone I knew from the community.Apparently they bring the same passion to advocating for Palestinians, seeing the hardships they face as similar to those of their South Bronx clients.I urgently hope that they can see that, throughout history, the Jewish people have suffered from prejudice that is also similar to the prejudice their clients have experienced, and, for the sake of their clients, save the Bronx Defenders.(Rev.) Martha OverallNew YorkTo the Editor:Your article about the Bronx Defenders epitomizes my deepest fears about the effects of the Israel-Hamas war on the United States.Longstanding progressive American allies in the campaigns for free speech, civil rights, marriage equality, reproductive freedom, L.G.B.T.Q. protections, educational and legal reform, health care for all, affordable housing, academic freedom, animal and environmental protection — and more — are fighting each other over support for Israel versus support for Palestine as if no compromise were possible and this one point of conflict outweighed years of cooperative work, personal friendships and even family ties.Marches, flag-waving and ill-informed slogan-shouting, especially on college campuses, will have little effect on the war, but they might alienate enough normally Democratic voters to let Donald Trump win a close election. That would harm the country beyond our wildest imagining far into the future.Judy OlinickMiddlebury, Vt.Undoing Roe: ‘A Shameful Saga’Erin Schaff/The New York Times; Illustration by Matt DorfmanTo the Editor:Re “Behind the Scenes at the Dismantling of Roe” (front page, Dec. 17):This brilliant account of the undoing of Roe v. Wade exposes a shameful saga of partisan judging by justices who were committed to ending a woman’s constitutional right to an abortion even as they misled the Senate about their respect for long-settled precedent.Appointed by then-President Donald Trump with the mandate of reversing Roe, the three newest justices joined the reactionary core of Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito to fashion a decision that will live in infamy, rivaled in disgrace only by the cases of Citizens United and Dred Scott.The story of how the conservative majority manipulated the calendaring and hearing of the case, and their activism in going beyond the limited relief initially sought by Mississippi, will further erode public confidence in the integrity of the court and undermine its legitimacy as a once revered institution.Gerald HarrisNew YorkThe writer is a retired New York City Criminal Court judge.Buying Cashmere Without an Environmental CostGoats grazing on the Mongolian Plateau in Central Asia.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Demand for Cashmere Is Harming the Environment,” by Ginger Allington (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 17):While, of course, we must do all we can to preserve the incredibly fragile world we walk on, we can own cashmere — buy it used!Dr. Allington’s vivid essay teaches us to eschew the fabric that comes from the destructive practices used in herding Mongolian goats. But, as she says, “consider vintage cashmere.” We can head to our nearest consignment shop or other retailer of preworn clothing and find cashmere treasures for our loved ones during these alarming times.Here’s to such warmth!Deborah FriedNew Haven, Conn.To the Editor:Thank you so much for Ginger Allington’s guest essay on cheap cashmere fibers. It is up to every one of us to make a difference by choosing sustainable options.I had the luxury of buying several real cashmere sweaters in the 1970s. I am still wearing them! And I have just inherited a batch from my mother’s closet that are all still perfectly wearable because of the quality. The cheap cashmere that is being produced is doubly egregious because it won’t last one season.At what cost fast fashion? Is it the chicken or the egg? Buyers should stop buying, or manufacturers should stop producing?Susan StockToronto More

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      Michigan Supreme Court Decides Trump Can Stay on Ballot

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      After Colorado’s top court ruled that the former president was disqualified for engaging in insurrection, justices in Michigan considered a similar challenge.The Michigan Supreme Court on Wednesday paved the way for Donald J. Trump to appear on the state’s primary ballot, a victory for the former president in a battleground state. The state’s top court upheld an appeals court decision that found that the former president could appear on the ballot despite questions about his eligibility to hold elected office because of his attempts to overturn the 2020 election.The Michigan decision followed a bombshell ruling by the Colorado Supreme Court, which on Dec. 19 determined in a 4-3 opinion that Mr. Trump should be removed from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by a pro-Trump mob.Mr. Trump applauded the Michigan ruling in a statement posted on his social media platform, Truth Social. “We have to prevent the 2024 Election from being Rigged and Stolen like they stole 2020,” the statement said. Ron Fein, the legal director of Free Speech For People, a group seeking to have Mr. Trump disqualified from running in the 2024 election, said the Michigan Supreme Court ruled narrowly, sidestepping the core questions at the heart of the case. The decision, he said, leaves the door open to challenge whether Mr. Trump can appear on the general election ballot in Michigan. “The Michigan Supreme Court did not rule out that the question of Donald Trump’s disqualification for engaging in insurrection against the U.S. Constitution may be resolved at a later stage,” Mr. Fein said in a statement. Michigan’s primary will be held Feb. 27.The question of Mr. Trump’s eligibility is widely expected to be answered by the U.S. Supreme Court. Some form of challenge to Mr. Trump’s eligibility has been lodged in more than 30 states, but many of those have already been dismissed.The challengers’ arguments are based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone from holding federal office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it.A lower-court judge previously decided the ballot eligibility case in Mr. Trump’s favor. Judge James Robert Redford of the Court of Claims in Michigan ruled in November that disqualifying a candidate through the 14th Amendment was a political issue, not one for the courts. A lower court in Colorado had also ruled in Mr. Trump’s favor before the Supreme Court there took up the case.Judge Redford also ruled that Michigan’s top elections official does not have the authority alone to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot. Free Speech for People, a liberal-leaning group that filed the lawsuit, appealed the ruling, asking the state Supreme Court to hear the case on an accelerated timetable.Jocelyn Benson, the Michigan secretary of state and a Democrat, echoed the request for a quick decision, citing approaching deadlines for printing paper primary ballots. She wrote that a ruling was needed by Dec. 29 “in order to ensure an orderly election process.”Jan. 13 is the deadline for primary ballots to be sent to military and overseas voters; absentee voter ballots must be printed by Jan. 18. The state’s presidential primary is set for Feb. 27.Mitch Smith More

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      Nikki Haley’s Bold Strategy to Beat Trump: Play It Safe

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      Ms. Haley still trails far behind the former president in polls. Yet she is not deviating from the cautious approach that has led her this far.At a packed community center in southwestern Iowa, Nikki Haley broke from her usual remarks this month to offer a warning to her top Republican presidential rivals, Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis, deploying a favorite line: “If they punch me, I punch back — and I punch back harder.”But in that Dec. 18 appearance and over the next few days, Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, did not exactly pummel her opponents as promised. Her jabs were instead surgical, dry and policy-driven.“He went into D.C. saying that he was going to stop the spending and instead, he voted to raise the debt limit,” Ms. Haley said of Mr. DeSantis, a former congressman, in Treynor, near the Nebraska border. At that same stop, she also defended herself against his attack ads and criticized Mr. DeSantis, the Florida governor, over offshore drilling and fracking, and questioned his choice of a political surrogate in Iowa.She was even more careful about going after Mr. Trump, continuing to draw only indirect contrasts and noting pointedly that his allied super PAC had begun running anti-Haley ads.“He said two days ago I wasn’t surging,” she said, but now had “attack ads going up against me.”With under three weeks left until the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley is treading cautiously as she enters the crucial final stretch of her campaign to shake the Republican Party loose from the clutches of Mr. Trump. Even as the former president maintains a vast lead in polls, Ms. Haley has insistently played it safe, betting that an approach that has left her as the only non-Trump candidate with any sort of momentum can eventually prevail as primary season unfolds.On the trail, she rarely takes questions from reporters. She hardly deviates from her stump speech or generates headlines. And she keeps walking a fine line on her greatest obstacle to the Republican nomination — Mr. Trump.“Anti-Trumpers don’t think I hate him enough,” she told reporters this month in New Hampshire, where she picked up the endorsement of Chris Sununu, the state’s popular Republican governor. “Pro-Trumpers don’t think I love him enough.”Ms. Haley’s consistent strategy has enabled her team to build a reputation as lean and stable where other campaigns have faltered: As Mr. DeSantis’s support has dipped and turmoil has overtaken his allied super PAC, even some of his advisers are privately signaling they believe hope is lost.“I keep coming back to the word ‘disciplined,’” said Jim Merrill, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire who served on Senator Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign and Mitt Romney’s 2008 and 2012 bids. “She has run an extraordinarily disciplined campaign.”This month, Ms. Haley secured the endorsement of Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, right. Sophie Park/Getty ImagesYet Mr. Trump remains the heavy favorite for the nomination despite facing dozens of criminal charges, as well as legal challenges that aim to kick him off the ballot in several states.Ms. Haley’s apparent reluctance to attack her rival even in the face of what would seem to be political setbacks for him has raised questions from voters and other Republican competitors — most notably, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — about whether she can win while passing up crucial opportunities to derail her most significant opponent.“A lot of the people in this field are running against Trump without doing very much to take him on,” said Adolphus Belk, a political analyst and professor of political science at Winthrop University in Rock Hill, S.C., Ms. Haley’s home state. “If you are running to be president of the United States, it seems like it would be an imperative to take on the person who has the biggest lead.”A recent poll from The New York Times and Siena College found Mr. Trump leading his Republican rivals by more than 50 percentage points nationally, a staggering margin.The poll offered a sliver of hope for Ms. Haley: Nearly a quarter of Mr. Trump’s supporters said he should not be the Republican nominee if he were found guilty of a crime. But 62 percent of Republicans said that if the former president won the primary, he should remain the nominee — even if subsequently convicted.The challenge for Ms. Haley is peeling away more of his support from the Republican Party’s white, working-class base. The Times/Siena poll found that she garnered 28 percent support from white voters with a bachelor’s degree or higher, but just 3 percent from those without a degree.As she barnstorms through Iowa and New Hampshire, Ms. Haley has remained committed to a calibrated approach that aims to speak to all factions of the Republican Party.Her stump speech highlights her background as the daughter of immigrants and her upbringing in a small and rural South Carolina town, but in generic terms. She nods to her status as the only woman in the Republican primary field and the potentially historic nature of her bid, but only in subtle ways.Even as she has risen in the polls and consolidated significant anti-Trump support among donors and prominent Republicans, she has continued to cast herself as an underestimated underdog, with a message tightly focused on debt and spending, national security and the crisis at the border.And she has not strayed from her broad calls for a “consensus” on abortion, even though some conservatives say she is not going far enough in backing new restrictions. At the same time, Democrats are looking to hit her from the other direction: The Democratic National Committee last week put up billboards in Davenport, Iowa, where she was campaigning, accusing her of wanting “extreme abortion bans.”Still, Ms. Haley has evolved on some fronts. In recent weeks, she has more aggressively made the case that she is the most electable Republican candidate — an argument that polls show has some merit — and ramped up her critiques of what she describes as a dysfunctional Washington.This month, after Republicans blocked an emergency spending bill to fund support for Ukraine, demanding strict new border restrictions in return, she accused both President Biden and some Republicans of creating a false choice among those priorities, as well as aid to Israel, which the legislation also included.“And now what are you hearing coming out of D.C. — do we support Ukraine or do we support Israel?” she said at an event in Burlington, Iowa. “Do we support Israel or do we secure the border? Don’t let them lie to you like that.”Ms. Haley has kept her message tightly focused on debt and spending, national security and the crisis at the border.Scott Olson/Getty ImagesShe has ramped up her criticism of Mr. Trump on his tone, leadership style and what she describes as his lack of follow-through on policy, hitting him for increasing the national debt, proposing to raise the federal gasoline tax and “praising dictators.”But when confronted with tougher questions from voters over Mr. Trump’s potential danger to the nation’s democracy or why she indicated at the first debate that she would support him as the nominee even if he were convicted of criminal charges, she tends to fall back on a familiar response. She says she thinks that “he was the right president for the right time” but that “rightly or wrongly, chaos follows him.”“The thing is, normal people aren’t obsessed with Trump like you guys are,” she told Jonathan Karl of ABC News this month, taking a swipe at the news media when asked for her thoughts on how Mr. Trump is campaigning on the idea of “retribution” against his political enemies.Such attempts to avoid alienating Trump supporters have helped generate interest, if not always commitment.Before her event in Treynor, Iowa, Keith Denton, 77, a retired farmer and longtime Republican, said he stood with Mr. Trump “100 percent,” and had come to watch Ms. Haley only because his wife was debating whether to support her. But after Ms. Haley wrapped up, he tracked down a reporter to acknowledge that he was now seriously considering her.“I have to eat my words,” he said, adding that Ms. Haley had said “some things that changed my mind.” For one, he said, “I thought she was more of a warmonger, but now I can see she is against war.”But at an Osceola distilling company the next day, Jim Kimball, 84, a retired doctor, veteran and anti-Trump Republican, elicited nervous laughter from the audience when he asked Ms. Haley a couple of bold questions regarding the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021: “Did Mr. Trump trample or defend the Constitution? And is he running for president or emperor?”As usual, Ms. Haley weighed her words. She said that the courts would “decide whether President Trump did something wrong” and that he had a right to defend himself against the legal charges he faces, but she expressed disappointment that when he had the chance to stop the Capitol attack, he did not.“My goal is not to worry about him being president forever — that is why I’m going to win,” she finished to loud applause.But afterward, Mr. Kimball said that he wished she would have said that Mr. Trump is unfit to be president and that he was still deliberating whether to caucus for her or for Mr. Christie.“I wish she had the courage of Liz Cheney,” he said, referring to the congresswoman pushed out of Republican leadership in Congress and then her Wyoming seat by pro-Trump forces in the party. “But she doesn’t want to end up like Liz Cheney, so you get the answer you get.”Ruth Igielnik More

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      TikTok’s Influence on Young Voters Is No Simple Matter

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      We’re in a season of hand-wringing and scapegoating over social media, especially TikTok, with many Americans and politicians missing that two things can be true at once: Social media can have an outsized and sometimes pernicious influence on society, and lawmakers can unfairly use it as an excuse to deflect legitimate criticisms.Young people are overwhelmingly unhappy about U.S. policy on the war in Gaza? Must be because they get their “perspective on the world on TikTok” — at least according to Senator John Fetterman, a Democrat who holds a strong pro-Israel stance. This attitude is shared across the aisle. “It would not be surprising that the Chinese-owned TikTok is pushing pro-Hamas content,” Senator Marsha Blackburn said. Another Republican senator, Josh Hawley, called TikTok a “purveyor of virulent antisemitic lies.”Consumers are unhappy with the economy? Surely, that’s TikTok again, with some experts arguing that dismal consumer sentiment is a mere “vibecession” — feelings fueled by negativity on social media rather than by the actual effects of inflation, housing costs and more. Some blame online phenomena such as the viral TikTok “Silent Depression” videos that compare the economy today to that of the 1930s — falsely asserting things were easier then.It’s no secret that social media can spread misleading and even harmful content, given that its business model depends on increasing engagement, thus often amplifying inflammatory content (which is highly engaging!) with little to no guardrails for veracity. And, yes, TikTok, whose parent company is headquartered in Beijing and which is increasingly dominating global information flows, should generate additional concern. As far back as 2012, research published in Nature by Facebook scientists showed how companies can easily and stealthily alter real-life behavior, such as election turnout.But that doesn’t make social media automatically and solely culpable for whenever people hold opinions inconvenient to those in power. While comparisons with the horrors of the Great Depression can fall far off the mark, young people do face huge economic challenges now, and that’s their truth even if their grasp of what happened a century ago is off. Housing prices and mortgage rates are high and rents less affordable, resurgent inflation has outpaced wages until recently, groceries have become much more expensive and career paths are much less certain.Similarly, given credible estimates of heavy casualties inflicted among Gazans — about 40 percent of whom are children — by Israel’s monthslong bombing campaign, maybe a more engaged younger population is justifiably critical of President Biden’s support of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government? Even the Israeli military’s own estimates say thousands civilians have been killed, and there is a lot of harrowing video out of Gaza showing entire families wiped out. At the same time, the Committee to Protect Journalists reports that at least 69 journalists and media workers have been among those killed in the war; Israel blocks access to foreign journalists outside of a few embedded ones under its control. (Egypt does as well.) In such moments, social media can act as a bypass around censorship and silence.There’s no question that there’s antisemitic content and lies on TikTok, and on other platforms. I’ve seen many outrageous clips about Hamas’s actions on Oct. 7 that falsely and callously deny the horrific murders and atrocities. And I do wish we knew more about exactly what people were seeing on TikTok: Without meaningful transparency, it’s hard to know the scale and scope of such content on the platform.But I’m quite skeptical that young people would be more upbeat about the economy and the war in Gaza if not for viral videos.Why don’t we know more about TikTok’s true influence, or that of YouTube or Facebook? Because that requires the kind of independent research that’s both expensive and possible only with the cooperation of the platforms themselves, which hold so much key data we don’t see about the spread and impact of such content. It’s as if tobacco companies privately compiled the nation’s lung cancer rates or car companies hoarded the air quality statistics.For example, there is a strong case that social media has been harmful to the well-being of teenagers, especially girls. The percentage of 12- to 17-year-old girls who had a major depressive episode had been flat until about 2011, when smartphones and social media became more common, and then more than doubled in the next decade. Pediatric mental health hospitalizations among girls are also sharply up since 2009. Global reading, math and science test scores, too, took a nosedive right around then.The multiplicity of such findings is strongly suggestive. But is it a historic shift that would happen anyway even without smartphones and social media? Or is social media the key cause? Despite some valiant researchers trying to untangle this, the claim remains contested partly because we lack enough of the right kind of research with access to data.And lack of more precise knowledge certainly impedes action. As things stand, big tech companies can object to calls for regulation by saying we don’t really know if social media is truly harmful in the ways claimed — a convenient shrug, since they helped ensure this outcome.Meanwhile, politicians alternate between using the tools to their benefit or rushing to blame them, but without passing meaningful legislation.Back in 2008 and 2012, Facebook and big data were credited with helping Barack Obama win his presidential races. After his 2012 re-election, I wrote an article calling for regulations requiring transparency and understanding and worried whether “these new methods are more effective in manipulating people.” I concluded with “you should be worried even if your candidate is — for the moment — better at these methods.” The Democrats, though, weren’t having any of that, then. The data director of Obama for America responded that concerns such as mine were “a bunch of malarkey.” No substantive regulations were passed.The attitude changed after 2016, when it felt as if many people wanted to talk only about social media. But social media has never been some magic wand that operates in a vacuum; its power is amplified when it strikes a chord with people’s own experiences and existing ideologies. Donald Trump’s narrow victory may have been surprising, but it wasn’t solely because of social media hoodwinking people.There were many existing political dynamics that social media played on and sometimes manipulated and exacerbated, including about race and immigration (which were openly talked about) and some others that had generated much grass-roots discontent but were long met with bipartisan incuriosity from the establishment, such as the fallout from the 2008 financial crisis, America’s role in the world (including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan) and how international trade had reshaped the economy.As we head into the 2024 elections, in some ways, little seems to have changed since Obama’s victory in 2008 — the first election dubbed the “Facebook Election.” We’re still discussing viral misinformation, fake news, election meddling, but there’s still no meaningful legislation that responds to the challenges brought about by the internet and social media and that seeks to bring transparency, oversight or accountability. Just add realistic A.I.-generated content, a new development, and the rise of TikTok, we’re good to go for 2024 — if Trump wins the Republican nomination as seems likely, only one candidate’s name needs updating from 2016.Do we need proper oversight and regulation of social media? You bet. Do we need to find more effective ways of countering harmful lies and hate speech? Of course. But I can only conclude that despite the heated bipartisan rhetoric of blame, scapegoating social media is more convenient to politicians than turning their shared anger into sensible legislation.Worrying about the influence of social media isn’t a mere moral panic or “kids these days” tsk-tsking. But until politicians and institutions dig into the influence of social media and try to figure out ways to regulate it, and also try addressing broader sources of discontent, blaming TikTok amounts to just noise.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      ¿Qué le espera a la economía global en 2024?

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      Con dos guerras persistentes y la incertidumbre de 50 elecciones nacionales, la inestabilidad financiera podría agravarse en todo el mundo.Los ataques al tráfico marítimo indispensable en los estrechos del mar Rojo por parte de una decidida banda de militantes en Yemen —una repercusión de la guerra entre Israel y Hamás en la franja de Gaza— le está inyectando otra dosis de inestabilidad a una economía mundial que está batallando con las tensiones geopolíticas en aumento.El riesgo de escalada del conflicto en Medio Oriente es la última de una serie de crisis impredecibles, como la pandemia del COVID-19 y la guerra en Ucrania, que han ocasionado profundas heridas a la economía mundial, la han desviado de su curso y le han dejado cicatrices.Por si fuera poco, hay más inestabilidad en el horizonte debido a la oleada de elecciones nacionales cuyas repercusiones podrían ser profundas y prolongadas. Más de dos mil millones de personas en unos 50 países —entre ellos India, Indonesia, México, Sudáfrica, Estados Unidos y los 27 países del Parlamento Europeo— acudirán a las urnas el año entrante. En total, los participantes en la olimpiada electoral de 2024 dan cuenta del 60 por ciento de la producción económica mundial.En las democracias sólidas, los comicios se están llevando a cabo en un momento en que va en aumento la desconfianza en el gobierno, los electores están muy divididos y hay una ansiedad profunda y constante por las perspectivas económicasUn barco cruza el canal de Suez en dirección al mar Rojo. Los ataques en el mar Rojo han hecho subir los fletes y los seguros.Mohamed Hossam/EPA, vía ShutterstockUna valla publicitaria anunciando las elecciones presidenciales en Rusia, que tendrán lugar en marzo.Dmitri Lovetsky/Associated PressWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Vivek Ramaswamy Stops TV Ad Spending

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      The campaign’s abrupt shift, focusing on other voter outreach efforts, reflects a significant change in strategy less than three weeks before the Iowa caucuses.Vivek Ramaswamy, the wealthy entrepreneur seeking the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, has stopped spending money on cable television ads, a campaign representative said on Tuesday.With just weeks to go until the Iowa caucuses kick off the voting for the nomination, Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign is maintaining its total advertising outlays, Tricia McLaughlin, a spokeswoman for the campaign, said. However, it is shifting away from traditional television toward other methods of voter outreach for a “higher return on investment,” she added. NBC News first reported the campaign’s halt in TV ad spending.“We’re just following the data,” Ms. McLaughlin said in a statement, adding that “we are focused on bringing out the voters we’ve identified — best way to reach them is using addressable advertising, mail, text, live calls and doors to communicate with our voters.”She pointed out the huge sums that have already been sunk into the presidential campaign, saying that “$190 million in traditional advertising has been spent in this race nationally. Polls have barely changed.”It is nevertheless an abrupt shift in strategy for Mr. Ramaswamy’s campaign, which has spent millions on advertising. The Ramaswamy campaign reserved about $1 million in television ads in Iowa last month — nearly double what his campaign and an allied super PAC spent in the prior month.But Mr. Ramaswamy has struggled to make headway in Iowa, despite the intense spending and a packed schedule of campaign appearances. He estimated to reporters last month that he had spent around $20 million on his run to that point.He maintains a distant fourth place in state polls, with less than 10 percent support. His approval ratings among Republicans nationally have also steadily declined since September, and his disapproval ratings among all Americans hit a new peak in national polls.He has recently pushed right-wing conspiracy theories in campaign appearances. He has called the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol an “inside job,” claimed that the 2020 election was stolen by “big tech” and suggested that the “great replacement theory” was Democratic policy.Ms. McLaughlin noted that the Ramaswamy campaign would continue to field some ads through digital television providers — for example, YouTube TV. More

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      How Trump Is Running Differently This Time

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      A wrecking ball. A bull in a China shop. A “chaos candidate.” During Donald Trump’s whirlwind rise to the presidency, his opponents and critics frequently noted his penchant for havoc. Surely, they believed, voters would not want to steer the country toward disorder and mayhem.The problem? In 2016, being a chaos candidate turned out to be a feature, not a bug, of American politics: Enough voters were tired of bland, establishment candidates and a system that didn’t improve their lives, and they put Mr. Trump over the top. The Trump team was so confident that these voters and the president were in sync that by the summer of 2020, one of his re-election campaign’s most oft-aired ads used those exact “bull in a china shop” words again.But if Mr. Trump ran before as the disrupter, don’t count on him doing so a third time in 2024. Voters don’t want chaos anymore. In my assessment of the dynamics of this election, what I see and hear is an electorate that seems to be craving stability in the economy, in their finances, at the border, in their schools and in the world. They want order, and they are open to people on the left and the right who are more likely to provide that, as we saw with the rejection of several chaos candidates in 2022, even as steady-as-she-goes incumbents sailed to re-election.And though Mr. Trump may seem a poor fit for such a moment, with his endless drama and ugly rhetoric, much of his candidacy and message so far is aimed at arguing that he can restore a prepandemic order and a sense of security in an unstable world. And unlike 2020, there’s no guarantee most voters will see President Biden as the safer bet between the two men to bring order back to America — in no small part because Mr. Biden was elected to do so and hasn’t delivered.By 2020, some of those voters who originally took a chance on President Chaos turned to what they viewed as the safer choice in Mr. Biden. Following a first Trump term marked by tweets that threatened to set off geopolitical firestorms, the global upheaval of the Covid-19 pandemic and rising domestic unrest around race, voters instead opted to send Mr. Biden to the White House with the ostensible mandate to unify the country and make politics boring again.To be fair, Mr. Trump at times seemed to see where things were headed, and tried to paint Mr. Biden as the more chaotic of the two for a brief spell in that 2020 campaign. Back then, clearly, it didn’t work — the argument that “Sleepy Joe” was secretly going to usher in more mayhem fell flat. Even Mr. Trump’s advantage over Mr. Biden among voters in exit polls on the issue of the economy was not enough to secure victory. And on potential factors like Mr. Biden’s own health, a theme Mr. Trump relished, voters in 2020 decided that Mr. Biden was healthy enough to handle the presidency by a slim 53-47 margin. Fine, they said, give us the sleepy guy who spent the campaign in his basement — he’s better than the alternative.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      in Elections

      Haley quiere que la respalden por su experiencia, no por su género

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      La aspirante a la nominación republicana sería la primera mujer en llegar a la Casa Blanca. Hasta ahora ha evitado presentarse de una forma que espante a algunos votantes.Dentro de la bodega de una lujosa cadena de tiendas departamentales al este de Iowa, Michele Barton, vestida con una camiseta blanca engalanada con el rótulo de “Mujeres por Nikki” en letras de color rosa brillante, reflexionaba emocionada sobre la posibilidad de llevar a la primera mujer a la Casa Blanca.Sin embargo, Barton, de 52 años, una madre de cuatro hijos y republicana de toda la vida, se apresuró a insistir en que no apoyaba a Nikki Haley por ser mujer.“Creo que es la candidata correcta”, opinó el miércoles mientras esperaba que Haley apareciera en un evento del ayuntamiento en Davenport. “Solo resulta que es mujer”.Es un estribillo familiar que repiten algunas de las simpatizantes más entusiastas de Haley, quienes, como la candidata misma, le restan importancia a su género en la contienda presidencial de 2024, aunque celebran el carácter potencialmente histórico de su candidatura.Haley está haciendo este acto de equilibrismo en un momento notable de la política estadounidense. Su ascenso en las encuestas y las complicaciones del gobernador de Florida, Ron DeSantis, implican que el candidato republicano con más esperanzas de impulsar al partido más allá del expresidente Donald Trump —quien tiene un largo historial de comentarios misóginos y acusaciones de conducta sexual inadecuada— bien podría ser una mujer.A lo largo de su campaña, Haley ha procurado ser muy cautelosa al hablar de su género. Enfatiza elementos originales de su vida y carrera que la hacen destacar en un terreno que por lo demás está dominado por candidatos masculinos, pero evita tocar políticas de identidad que puedan disgustar a la base de votantes conservadores que necesita para ganar la nominación, los cuales en su mayoría son blancos y canosos.“No quiero ser solo una mujer”, le comentó a Charlamagne Tha God en “The Daily Show” el mes pasado. “No quiero ser solo india. No quiero ser solo madre. No quiero ser solo republicana. No quiero ser solo todas esas cosas. Soy más que eso. Y creo que todas las personas son más que eso”.Su discurso político incluye referencias a sus experiencias como esposa de un militar y como madre. Sus réplicas concisas a los rivales invocan sus tacones de 10 centímetros. Su lista de canciones para cerrar los actos municipales incluye “Woman in the White House”, de Sheryl Crow.Un acto de campaña de Haley en Iowa el mes pasado. Cuando Haley menciona que fue la primera mujer y la primera persona de color en ocupar el cargo de gobernadora de Carolina del Sur, lo hace en gran parte para argumentar que Estados Unidos no está “podrido” ni es “racista”.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesNo obstante, Haley, hija de inmigrantes indios, casi nunca, o nunca, menciona de manera directa que aspira a romper el techo de cristal más alto en la política estadounidense. (En el video de su anuncio de campaña, señaló que no creía en esos límites).En la campaña electoral en los estados de Iowa y Nuevo Hampshire, donde se vota primero, casi no menciona su género, lo cual para sus aliados podría ser una ventaja potente para ganarse a los votantes con estudios universitarios y a las mujeres de los suburbios en unas elecciones generales, si venciera a Trump en las primarias.Chris Cournoyer, senadora por Iowa y presidenta de la campaña de Haley en ese estado, declaró que estos sectores demográficos también podrían ayudarla a ser más competitiva en el estado, donde ha quedado detrás de Trump en las encuestas por un amplio margen y, hasta hace poco, también iba a la zaga de DeSantis.“He oído decir a muchas mujeres independientes, a muchas mujeres demócratas, que van a cambiar de partido para votar por ella el 15 de enero”, comentó Cournoyer.Aunque suele mencionar su victoria histórica, pues se convirtió en la primera mujer y la primera persona de color en ocupar el cargo de gobernadora de Carolina del Sur, Haley lo hace sobre todo para argumentar que Estados Unidos no está “podrido” ni es “racista”.Su evento del miércoles en la bodega de Von Maur en Davenport se pudo haber promocionado como uno de Mujeres por Nikki, pero, aparte de tres camisetas de la coalición expuestas cerca de la entrada, en el lugar había pocas señales de los grupos de base conformados solo por mujeres que han ayudado a difundir su mensaje.Los estrategas republicanos y los especialistas en estudios de género afirman por igual que el enfoque relativamente moderado de Haley en materia de género tiene sentido: el camino de las mujeres hacia los altos cargos suele estar lleno de dobles raseros y prejuicios de género, independientemente del partido o la ideología del candidato. Pero puede ser especialmente difícil para las mujeres republicanas. Los votantes conservadores tienden a albergar opiniones tradicionales sobre la feminidad al tiempo que esperan que las candidatas parezcan “duras”.Un informe reciente del Centro de Mujeres Estadounidenses y Política de la Universidad de Rutgers reveló que los republicanos eran menos propensos que los demócratas a ver obstáculos claros a la representación política de las mujeres, a apoyar esfuerzos particulares para aumentar la diversidad en la política y a presionar a los líderes de los partidos para que adopten estrategias que amplíen la cantidad de mujeres en el poder.Kelly Dittmar, quien, como directora del centro trabajó en el informe y ha analizado las propuestas políticas de Haley, dijo que le parecía que había paralelos entre las campañas de Haley a la gobernación y a la presidencia. En ambas, los anuncios de Haley dicen que es “nueva” y “distinta”, lo que ofrece a los votantes pistas sobre su raza y su género pero, dijo Dittmar, les permite interpretar estas palabras a su antojo.“Es al mismo tiempo estratégico y coherente con la identidad conservadora de ella”, dijo Dittmar, y añadió que como candidata a la gobernación Haley rechazó los pedidos de sus votantes que querían que se comprometiera a nombrar el mismo número de hombres y mujeres en su gestión.Ninguna mujer ha conseguido la nominación presidencial del Partido Republicano a la presidencia, y ni siquiera a una primaria presidencial estatal del partido y Haley solo es la quinta republicana destacada en buscar la nominación de su partido. Carly Fiorina, la ex directora ejecutiva de Hewlett-Packard, fue la última que lo intentó, en 2016, y en su campaña el asunto del género era clave.Con su enfoque mesurado, Haley ha intentado apoyarse en su experiencia de política exterior y ejecutiva, desafiar las ideas erróneas sobre las mujeres y la posibilidad de ser elegidas, y posicionarse como una de las mensajeras más eficaces de su partido en materia de aborto, a pesar de haber aprobado algunas de las restricciones antiabortistas más duras del país como gobernadora de Carolina del Sur. Hace poco declaró que, como gobernadora, habría autorizado una prohibición del aborto a las seis semanas.El camino de las mujeres a los altos cargos públicos a menudo está lleno de dobles raseros y sesgos de género, sin importar el partido o la ideología. En especial, los votantes conservadores tienden a tener opiniones tradicionales sobre la feminidad. Sophie Park/Getty ImagesEse enfoque le ha granjeado el apoyo de algunas de sus seguidoras más leales que, a menudo, también hacen trabajo voluntario no remunerado: son mujeres dispuestas a conducir durante horas para ir a instalar sillas, recabar información de contacto de los asistentes y animar su esfuerzo. Los líderes de campaña dicen que ya hay capítulos de Mujeres por Nikki en los 50 estados del país. En eventos recientes en Iowa, al menos dos mujeres le pidieron que reafirmara su postura sobre el aborto, a pesar de que ya la habían escuchado, con el fin de que otras de las asistentes también la escucharan.“No creo que los muchachos sepan hablar de esto de forma adecuada”, dijo en ambas ocasiones.Y, a pesar de todo, el tema del género ha sido ineludible. En el cuarto debate presidencial republicano, el emprendedor Vivek Ramaswamy lanzó ataques de género, en los que la acusó de beneficiarse de la “política de la identidad”, mientras el exgobernador de Nueva Jersey Chris Christie fue en la otra dirección para defenderla, una maniobra que para algunos de los partidarios de Haley fue tan solo una actuación para quedar como su salvador. Y, luego está Trump, quien la llama “cerebro de pájaro” y sigue siendo popular entre las mujeres republicanas.Una encuesta de The New York Times y la universidad Siena College publicada este mes reveló que el 63 por ciento de las votantes en las primarias republicanas apoyaba a Trump. Haley obtuvo un 12 por ciento de apoyo de ese grupo. Otras encuestas la muestran con un mayor apoyo entre los hombres que entre las mujeres. Sin embargo, en enfrentamientos hipotéticos, Haley ha vencido al presidente Joe Biden por el margen más amplio de todos los aspirantes republicanos, pues casi dividió los votos de las mujeres con él.“Nikki tiene una elegibilidad poderosa contra Biden, pero necesita encontrar una elegibilidad poderosa contra Trump”, opinó Sarah Longwell, una estratega republicana que ha trabajado para derrotar a Trump. “En este momento, los votantes simplemente no creen que ella pueda hacerlo, así que debe cambiar esa percepción”.En un evento reciente celebrado en Agency, Iowa, tal vez Haley reflejó mejor su propuesta al responder a una pregunta de una posible votante. Tras escuchar a Haley en la bodega de una empresa de semillas de maíz, Sarah Keith, una ingeniera química de 28 años, quiso saber qué haría la candidata para atraer a más mujeres al partido, en particular quienes están descontentas con la agenda liberal.“Hablan de los problemas de las mujeres”, respondió Haley, para referirse a los demócratas y definiendo esas inquietudes como las mismas que le preocupan a la mayoría de los votantes, incluidas la economía y la seguridad nacional. “Creo que las mujeres están hartas. Creo que todo el mundo está harto del ruido y quiere ver resultados”.Jazmine Ulloa es reportera de política nacional para el Times y cubre la campaña presidencial de 2024. Reside en Washington. Más de Jazmine Ulloa More