Presidential Election of 2024

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      Francis Suarez Drops Out of the G.O.P. Presidential Race

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      The mayor of Miami, who had announced his run in June, had not qualified for the first Republican debate last week.Mayor Francis X. Suarez of Miami dropped out of the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, after failing to gain traction in a crowded field and falling short of the requirements to participate in the first Republican debate.“Throughout this process, I have met so many freedom-loving Americans who care deeply about our nation, her people and its future,” Mr. Suarez posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter. “It was a privilege to come so close to appearing onstage with the other candidates at last week’s first debate.”Mr. Suarez, 45, wrote in the posting on Tuesday that he was suspending his campaign for president. He had announced his run in June, joining an already-crowded cast of Republicans vying for the nomination, including a former vice president, a U.S. senator, several governors — and a former president whose dominance in polls has been steady throughout the race.No one has ever ascended to the presidency directly from a mayoral office. As the sole Latino candidate — he is Cuban American — Mr. Suarez played up his ability to appeal to a diverse group of voters. He promoted a boilerplate G.O.P. platform in which he called to curb violent crime, suggested giving U.S. companies incentives to leave China and expressed support for a 15-week national abortion ban with exceptions.The first in the 2024 race to drop out, Mr. Suarez told reporters at the Iowa State Fair on Aug. 11 that any candidate who failed to make the debate stage should bow out.To participate in the debate, candidates needed a minimum of 40,000 unique donors, which Mr. Suarez said he had attained, and at least 1 percent in three qualifying polls. Mr. Suarez posted a video online celebrating his supposed qualification on Aug. 18. But three days later, the Republican National Committee announced a debate stage lineup that left him out.After acknowledging his failure to make the debate stage on X, Mr. Suarez went dormant on social media and did not hold campaign events in the days following the debate.During his campaign, Mr. Suarez often took shots at the governor of his home state, Ron DeSantis, including criticizing legislation that banned discussions of gender identity and sexual orientation in schools and poking fun at Mr. DeSantis’s dispute with Disney. But he rarely attacked the party’s front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, and suggested that he would be open to pardoning him if convicted in any of his four indictments.A technology enthusiast, Mr. Suarez also experimented with novel means of attracting voters and created an “A.I. Suarez” in his likeness that, when prompted, explained his policy stances on a host of issues as its mouth moved in a somewhat-humanlike fashion. But his campaign never really took off, and his most favorable polls showed him hovering around 1 percent support, at best.The mayor faces allegations of peddling influence on behalf of a real estate development company. The Miami Herald reported that Mr. Suarez was paid at least $170,000 by Location Ventures “to help cut through red tape and secure critical permits.” The Herald later reported that the F.B.I. was investigating if those payments constituted bribes.In his statement on X on Tuesday, he stressed a need for Republicans to do “more to include and attract” Hispanic voters, among other demographics, whom he said “the left has taken for granted for far too long.”“Younger voters, independents, urban voters and suburban women — all of whom I’ve carried in previous elections — among others, should find a comfortable home in the G.O.P. and its policies,” he said. More

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      Today’s Top News: Trump Gets a Trial Date, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.Former President Donald J. Trump faces federal and state investigations in New York, Georgia and Washington.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:An Update on Tropical Storm IdaliaJudge Sets Trial Date in March for Trump’s Federal Election Case, with Glenn ThrushA.I. Comes to the U.S. Air Force, with Eric LiptonEli Cohen More

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      How Trump’s Election Lies Left the Michigan G.O.P. Broken and Battered

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      Infighting between Trump acolytes and traditionalists has driven away donors and voters. Can the Michigan Republican Party rebuild in time for the presidential election?The Michigan Republican Party is starving for cash. A group of prominent activists — including a former statewide candidate — was hit this month with felony charges connected to a bizarre plot to hijack election machines. And in the face of these troubles, suspicion and infighting have been running high. A recent state committee meeting led to a fistfight, a spinal injury and a pair of shattered dentures.This turmoil is one measure of the way Donald J. Trump’s lies about the 2020 election have rippled through his party. While Mr. Trump has just begun to wrestle with the consequences of his fictions — including two indictments related to his attempt to overturn the 2020 results — the vast machine of activists, donors and volunteers that power his party has been reckoning with the fallout for years.As the party looks toward the presidential election next year, the strains are glaring.Mr. Trump’s election lies spread like wildfire in Michigan, breaking the state party into ardent believers and pragmatists wanting to move on. Bitter disputes, power struggles and contentious primaries followed, leaving the Michigan Republican Party a husk of itself.The battleground has steadily grown safer for Democrats. No Republican has won a statewide election there since Mr. Trump won the state in 2016. (Republicans have won nonpartisan seats on the State Supreme Court.) G.O.P. officials in the state are growing concerned that they do not have a top-tier candidate to run for the open Senate seat.“It’s not going real well, and all you have to do is look at the facts,” said Representative Lisa McClain, a Republican from Eastern Michigan. “The ability to raise money, we’ve got a lot of donors sitting on the sideline. That’s not an opinion. That’s a fact. It’s just a plain fact. We have to fix that.”She added: “Everyone is in the blame game. We’ve got to stop.”Representative Lisa McClain at a Trump rally in Michigan in 2022. Ms. McClain says the “everyone is in the blame game” as the Michigan G.O.P. struggles with infighting and sluggish fund-raising. Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesMichigan Republicans were long a force in national politics. The state was home to Gerald Ford and George Romney and to many of the “Reagan Democrats” who helped transform the party four decades ago. Ronna McDaniel, the current chair of the Republican National Committee, was the chairwoman of the Michigan Republican Party until 2017. Betsy DeVos, the former secretary of education under Mr. Trump who resigned after Jan. 6, is a power broker in the state, managing vast wealth and a political network with influence far beyond state lines.The slow unraveling of the state party began well before the 2020 election. Throughout the Obama administration, the right wing of the party grew more vocal and active. After Mr. Trump’s victory in 2016, many party posts that were once controlled largely by megadonor families and the Republican establishment began to be filled by Trump acolytes.By 2021, the new activists wanted to support only candidates who believed the 2020 election, which Mr. Trump lost in Michigan by more than 154,000 votes, was fraudulent and were committed to trying to do something about it.Those leaders soon emerged. Matthew DePerno, a lawyer who advanced false election theories, became a folk hero in the state and ran for attorney general. Kristina Karamo, a poll worker who signed an affidavit claiming she had witnessed vote stealing, became a conservative media star and ran for secretary of state. And Meshawn Maddock, the leader of Women for Trump who organized buses to Washington on Jan. 6, became co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party.As co-chair of the Michigan Republican Party, Meshawn Maddock blamed big donors for not supporting their candidates and maintained falsehoods about the 2020 election.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesMr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo did not respond to requests for comment. The Michigan Republican Party did not respond to requests for comment. In a video released on Monday night, Ms. Karamo defended her actions as party chair and lashed out at more moderate Republicans she claimed were part of a “uniparty.”Their nominations exposed a rift within the party, with more moderate, traditional Republicans like the DeVos family swearing off both Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo and withholding funds from most of the state party. Other donors similarly expressed their frustration. County nominating conventions devolved into open conflict.“Meshawn was never connected to the donor base, and so having her as the vice chair for a lot of us was a showstopper,” said Dave Trott, a former Republican congressman from Michigan who retired in 2018 and is also a former donor to the state party. “Because we just knew she would never be someone that would be rational in her approach to state party politics.”Ms. Maddock, who is no longer involved in the party, responded to Mr. Trott, saying she was “not surprised at all that he takes no responsibility for disappointing Michigan voters or anyone.” “The state party needs the wealthy RINOs who often fund it to come to terms with what the actual voters on the right want,” Ms. Maddock said. “Instead of constantly gaslighting the Republican base, the wealthy donors need to treat them with an ounce of respect for once.”As standard-bearers for the state party during the 2022 midterm cycle, Mr. DePerno, Ms. Karamo and Ms. Maddock all maintained the falsehoods about the 2020 election. In their campaigns, Mr. DePerno and Ms. Karamo placed extra emphasis on the 2020 election, often at the expense of other issues more central to voters.They were resoundingly defeated. Republicans also lost control of both chambers of the State Legislature. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Democratic incumbent, sailed to a landslide victory.Republicans across the state were left pointing fingers. The state party blamed Tudor Dixon, the candidate for governor, for an unpopular abortion stance and anemic fund-raising. Ms. Dixon blamed state party leadership. Ms. Maddock blamed big donors for not supporting their candidates. Ms. Karamo refused to concede.A state party autopsy days after the election, made public by Ms. Dixon, acknowledged that “we found ourselves consistently navigating the power struggle between Trump and anti-Trump factions of the party” and that Mr. Trump “provided challenges on a statewide ballot.”Ms. Karamo, who succeeded Ms. Maddock at the helm, pledged to bring in a new donor class. But those donors never materialized. The party has lost money since Ms. Karamo took over, with under $150,000 in the bank as of June 30, according to federal campaign finance records. At the same time four years ago, the party had roughly three times as much cash on hand.Ms. Karamo and Matthew DePerno are prominent election deniers who stepped into the vacuum of leadership at the state party.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesShe has drawn condemnation from both Republicans and Democrats for her social media posts tying gun reforms to the Holocaust and has faced attempts to limit her power.The party has been plagued by infighting. In April, two county leaders were involved in an altercation, with one filing a police report claiming assault, according to video obtained by Bridge Michigan. In July, a brief brawl broke out during a state party gathering. The chairman of the Clare County Republican Party told police he had stress fractures in his spine, bruised ribs and broken dentures as a result of the fight.A memo circulated this month from the executive director and general counsel of the state party, obtained by The Times, warned of a rogue meeting being advertised under the banner of the state party that was “in no manner properly connected to or arising from the true and real Michigan Republican Party.”The issues facing the party extend beyond infighting and fund-raising; this month, Mr. DePerno, as well as a former Republican state representative and a lawyer, were charged with felonies related to a plan to illegally obtain voting machines. They have pleaded not guilty.“Tell me how that helps. Tell me how that helps get the swing voter,” said Ms. McClain. “Voters don’t care about the infighting. The swing voter wants to know, how are your policies going to help me have a better life for my family?”Prominent Michigan Republicans appear content to let the state party wither. Former Gov. Rick Snyder, among the last Republicans elected statewide in Michigan, has begun a fund-raising campaign directing money away from the state party and directly into the House Republican caucus in a desperate attempt to win back at least one chamber of the State Legislature.(The effort bears some similarities to one Gov. Brian Kemp undertook in Georgia, another state where division over Mr. Trump’s election claims hobbled the state party.)Mr. Snyder’s fund-raising, as well as some activity from the DeVos family network, have filled the coffers of the Republican House caucus, led by Matt Hall, the minority leader in the State Legislature whom many party elites are looking to as the de facto leader. The House Republican Caucus, despite being in the minority, is outpacing the House Democratic Caucus in fund-raising this year, with $2.3 million to the Democrats’ $1.7 million.Mr. Hall also has helped fuel 2020 election doubts. (He once was the chairman of a committee hearing featuring the Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani spreading lies about the election.) But he is far more likely to attack Democrats on spending or “pork” projects.Separate from Mr. Hall’s efforts, the DeVos family and other influential donors have begun raising money for congressional and state legislative races only, forgoing any presidential or Senate races, according to Jeff Timmer, a former executive director of the state party.But the problems looming ahead of next year’s election are not just about money.“What can’t be replicated is the manpower infrastructure,” said Mr. Timmer, who now advises the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump group. “You can’t just go out and buy the passion and zealousness of people who will go out knock on doors and put up signs and do all those things that require human labor in a campaign.”Prominent Republicans point to the coming Mackinac Republican Leadership Conference as a sign of how far the state party has fallen. It was once a marquee stop for presidential hopefuls looking to make an impression on the critical swing state, and not a single Republican candidate for president in 2024 is scheduled to make an appearance.Instead, the featured speaker at the September conference will be Kari Lake, who lost her race for governor in Arizona and has since claimed her loss was marred by fraud. More

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      Biden Looks for New Ways to Energize Black Voters

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      With much of his racial equity agenda thwarted by Congress or the courts, President Biden is trying to close an enthusiasm gap among the voters who helped deliver him to the White House.During a recent town hall with the Congressional Black Caucus, Vice President Kamala Harris offered a gut check to the 200 people who had gathered to take stock of the state of civil rights in America.“We are looking at a full-on attack on our hard-fought, hard-won freedoms,” Ms. Harris told the crowd, which erupted in applause as she spoke. “So much is at stake,” she said of the 2024 presidential election, “including our very democracy.”In 2020, President Biden promised Black voters he would deliver a sweeping “racial equity” agenda that included a landmark federal voting rights bill, student loan relief, criminal justice reform and more. Three years later, with much of that agenda thwarted by Congress or the courts, the White House is looking for new ways to re-energize a crucial constituency that helped propel Mr. Biden to the presidency.That means describing the stakes of the election in stark terms, as Ms. Harris did over the summer in Boston, arguing that the Republican Party is trying to reverse generations of racial progress in America. But Mr. Biden is also asking voters to judge him on a series of achievements that benefit Black Americans — but that are hardly the marquee promises from the early days of his administration.In recent weeks, the Biden administration has gone out of its way to highlight its economic accomplishments, which include the lowest Black unemployment rate on record and the fastest creation rate of Black-owned small businesses in over 25 years. It has pointed to social policy efforts, such as increased enrollment in Obamacare and closing the digital divide, as examples of real impacts on the Black community.Vice President Kamala Harris has defended the administration’s racial equity policies.David Degner for The New York TimesIn an opinion essay published on Sunday in The Washington Post, marking the 60th anniversary of the March on Washington, Mr. Biden said his stewardship of the economy — a top concern among Black voters — was helping to fulfill the nation’s promise of equality.The president wrote that his administration was “advancing equity in everything we do making unprecedented investments in all of America, including for Black Americans.”Administration officials acknowledge that some of those advances may not immediately resonate with a population that sees its constitutional rights under assault. While polls show continued strong support for Mr. Biden among Black voters, there are growing concerns about an enthusiasm gap among the most loyal constituencies in the Democratic Party.Neera Tanden, Mr. Biden’s domestic policy adviser, said the president was focused on dismantling inequities that had been embedded for decades.“I think we’ll have a transformative change,” Ms. Tanden said, pointing to executive orders Mr. Biden signed in his first days in office, which directed federal agencies to consider racial equity when it comes to the distribution of money and benefits.But, she added, “it won’t be something millions of people feel in a minute.”For Black Americans like Maeia Corbett, the promises of future benefits ring hollow.“Looking at these promises that this administration has made, it’s like a whirlwind,” said Ms. Corbett, 27. “What can I grasp onto when all of these things are being taken from me?”Ms. Corbett, who graduated from college just months before the coronavirus pandemic brought student loan payments to a pause, had been banking on Mr. Biden’s promise to cancel up to $20,000 in student loan debt for millions of borrowers.When the Supreme Court ruled in June that Mr. Biden’s plan was unconstitutional, Ms. Corbett, like many Black Americans, felt a familiar sting of disappointment. The fact that the decision came just 24 hours after the court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, a longstanding mechanism for economic and social mobility for Black people, was almost disorienting.“It’s like you get to the steps of equity and the steps are torn down,” she said.Ms. Corbett’s sentiments are a warning sign for the president, who has tied the success of his presidency to racial progress. Mr. Biden has said he would use the power of his office to address inequity in housing, criminal justice, voting rights, health care, education and economic mobility.“I’m not promising we can end it tomorrow,” Mr. Biden said in January 2021. “But I promise you: We’re going to continue to make progress to eliminate systemic racism, and every branch of the White House and the federal government is going to be part of that effort.”Melanie L. Campbell, the president of the nonpartisan National Coalition on Black Civic Participation, said Black women — widely credited with securing Mr. Biden’s win — could see tangible progress in historic appointments of Black women to cabinet positions and the federal judiciary, including Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court. But the courts, conservative activists and a bitterly divided Congress have curtailed a lot of Mr. Biden’s agenda. Lawsuits have held up the administration’s efforts to forgive the debts of Black and other minority farmers after years of discrimination. Congress has blocked two signature pieces of legislation Mr. Biden championed, the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act and the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. And conservative groups have vowed to pursue legislation challenging Mr. Biden’s plans to prioritize race-conscious policies throughout the federal government.Now, with aides describing him as frustrated over the setbacks, Mr. Biden is taking pains to cast the election as a choice between his agenda and the extremism of “MAGA Republicans,” or those loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.“My dad used to say: ‘Joey, don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative,’” Mr. Biden says in a common refrain.Cedric Richmond, a co-chairman of the Biden campaign, said the campaign would emphasize that Mr. Biden should not be blamed for the Supreme Court decisions. “It’s the court that just rolled back equity, and we’re going to point to it,” he said.The Biden administration has pointed to social policy efforts as examples of real impacts on the Black community.Samuel Corum for The New York TimesA recent Axios survey of more than 780 college students and recent graduates found that 47 percent of voters blamed the Supreme Court for student loans not being forgiven, 38 percent blamed Republicans and 10 percent blamed Mr. Biden.Still, polls show that Black voters under 30 have far less enthusiasm for Mr. Biden than their elders do.Mary-Pat Hector, the chief executive of Rise, a student advocacy organization that has pushed for student debt relief and college affordability, said the disillusionment among young voters was real. On issues like student loan debt and climate, Ms. Hector said, all the voters see are “things we were told were going to happen that just haven’t happened.”“When it comes to Gen Z,” she said, “they don’t forget, and it’s hard for them to forgive.”In the meantime, the White House says it has not given up on its most ambitious goals.This month, the Education and Justice Departments released guidance for how colleges should navigate the affirmative action decision, urging them to continue to strive for diversity. And the Education Department is preparing to start new loan programs, while delivering billions in loan relief by fixing existing programs that have long disenfranchised Black borrowers. And dozens of federal agencies are working through “equity action plans” tackling everything from disparities in home appraisals to maternal mortality.Stephen K. Benjamin, Mr. Biden’s director of public engagement, said he believed the administration’s economic record would resonate, even as he acknowledged that the White House needed help from Congress to make good on its broader agenda.“I do believe when the rubber hits the road,” he said, “people will pay more attention to these dramatic investments in their quality of life.”Lennore Vinnie, 53, said she felt the administration was looking out for people like her.Having benefited from affirmative action when she entered the white, male-dominated information technology field in the 1990s, Ms. Vinnie, a single mother of two, incurred $280,000 in student loan debt after years of pursuing a doctoral degree to advance to a senior leadership position. Some of the debt was acquired at predatory for-profit colleges.Lennore Vinnie is applying for loan relief through forgiveness programs that were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling.Carlos Bernate for The New York Times“I know for me, as an African American woman, you can never have too many degrees or too many credentials,” she said, “because that way I take away all your reasons for not putting me in the position.”Ms. Vinnie, who ultimately obtained her doctorate and her promotion, is applying for relief through loan forgiveness programs that were not affected by the Supreme Court ruling.Ms. Harris’s appearance before the Congressional Black Caucus in Boston encapsulated the administration’s strategy moving forward: highlighting its progress while rallying a community to remember — and repeat — history.In Boston, the crowd was rapt, shouting “preach!” as she called out “extremist so-called leaders” who sought to distract from the nation’s legacy of slavery and systemic racism.Ms. Harris then reminded the room that Black voters drove Mr. Biden to win the presidency in 2020, and made her the first Black vice president. “The future of America,” she said, “has always relied on the folks who are in this room.” More

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      ‘No Place for Hate in America,’ Haley Says, Recalling 2015 Church Massacre

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      Nikki Haley, fresh off a strong debate performance last week, was back on the trail and took a moment to condemn the weekend shooting in Jacksonville, Fla.Breaking from her usual stump speech at a South Carolina town hall event on Monday, Nikki Haley paused to condemn a deadly weekend rampage in Jacksonville, Fla., that the authorities were investigating as a hate crime.“I am not going to lie to you, it takes me back to a dark place,” Ms. Haley told an audience of roughly 1,000 people gathered in a corporate campus auditorium in Indian Land. “There is no place for hate in America.”Ms. Haley was governor in 2015 when a white supremacist opened fire in an African American church in Charleston, S.C., and killed nine Black parishioners at a Bible study. Ms. Haley eventually called for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the grounds of the South Carolina Capitol. She later described struggling with the beginning effects of post-traumatic stress disorder in response to the shooting, but she said that the victims’ families showed her what strength and grace looked like.Ms. Haley also toed the Republican Party line on guns and racism, suggesting that such violence and mass shootings could be prevented if Americans improved mental health services, abided by gun laws and rejected division and hate in their everyday lives.She renewed her calls for the need to reverse what she often describes as a “national self-loathing,” or the idea that “America is bad or that America is rotten or that it is racist.”“Don’t fall into the narrative that this is a racist country,” she told the mostly white and graying crowd, citing her own election in 2010 as the first woman and person of color to lead the state as progress. “It was only 60 years ago today that Martin Luther King gave that speech. Look at how far we have come.”The way Ms. Haley, a former United Nations ambassador, and other Republican presidential candidates tend to downplay structural racism and prejudice — and to focus on the nation’s racial progress — puts them at odds with most Black voters.On Monday, Ms. Haley’s home state rival in the presidential race, Senator Tim Scott, called the Florida rampage “heinous.” He said that the killings had prompted patrons at his church service to discuss “the absolute devastation” in 2015 at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston.Asked whether the Republican Party had done enough to denounce white supremacist violence, Mr. Scott argued that it was the duty of every American, regardless of party affiliation, to do their part. “The question is, Have humans done enough to talk about racism and discrimination that leads to violence and to death,” he said.Ms. Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy during the debate last week.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesOn Monday, Ms. Haley was back in her home state for a victory lap after a strong performance in the first Republican primary debate. In recent days, her polling numbers have climbed, and top donors have seen her as a standout. So many people packed into her town hall at the CrossRidge Center in Indian Land that attendees filled a balcony and an overflow room.As they return to the campaign trail, Ms. Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur and political newcomer, have continued the clashes they started on the debate stage, where they tussled over policy on China, Israel and the war in Ukraine. Mr. Ramaswamy has unveiled his foreign policy platform, and on his website, he accuses Ms. Haley of lying about his stances on Israel, and calls her by her first and maiden last name, Nimarata Randhawa. For her part, Ms. Haley did not mention Mr. Ramaswamy by name, but she elicited loud laughter from the audience on Monday when she asked voters if they had watched the debate.“Bless his heart,” she said. “I know I wear a skirt. But y’all see me at work. If you say something that is totally off the wall, I am going to call you out on it.”Leaving the town hall, Ross Payne, 62, a former managing director for Wells Fargo, said that he supported Ms. Haley, whom he called the “Iron Lady,” a reference to Margaret Thatcher and a hero of Ms. Haley. But he said he had been somewhat disappointed with her answer to his question on whether she would be willing to pull from both sides of the political aisle to regulate guns and automatic weapons.Ms. Haley said that though she worried about her own children, people should have the ability to protect themselves, and that she would improve access to mental health services and ensure that people arrested for gun violations stay behind bars.“Like with abortion, can’t we all agree that if you want an AR semiautomatic weapon, you’ve got to go through two or three weeks of training and extensive vetting before you can get your hands on a weapon like that?” Mr. Payne said, echoing Ms. Haley’s calls at the debate for consensus on abortion. “A weapon that can kill, you know, 10 people in 10 seconds.”Maya King More

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      Eminem Tells Vivek Ramaswamy to Stop Rapping His Songs

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      “To the American people’s chagrin, we will have to leave the rapping to the real Slim Shady,” Mr. Ramaswamy’s spokesman said after the campaign received a cease-and-desist letter.As it turned out, Vivek Ramaswamy only got one shot to lose himself in the music.Marshall B. Mathers III, better known as the rapper Eminem, has told Mr. Ramaswamy, a Republican presidential candidate, that he is no longer to use Eminem music on the campaign trail, just weeks after Mr. Ramaswamy broke into an impromptu version of Eminem’s “Lose Yourself” at the Iowa State Fair.The licensing arm of Mr. Mathers’s record company, BMI, informed the Ramaswamy campaign in a letter dated Wednesday and reprinted in The Daily Mail on Monday that “BMI will consider any performance of the Eminem works by the Vivek 2024 campaign from this date forward to be a material breach” of the firm’s licensing rules, “for which BMI reserves all rights and remedies with respect thereto.”The Ramaswamy campaign didn’t put up a fight. And it wasn’t a regular thing, this Eminem rap-along. At the fair, Mr. Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old political newcomer, had told Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa that his favorite “walk off” song was “Lose Yourself,” and an enterprising sound technician blared it over the fair’s loud speaker. The candidate picked up the mic and joined in.“Vivek just got on the stage and cut loose,” his campaign spokeswoman, Tricia McLaughlin, said on Monday. “To the American people’s chagrin, we will have to leave the rapping to the real Slim Shady,” another of Mr. Mathers’s noms de plume.Though Mr. Ramaswamy has professed his love for Eminem, the breakup was probably inevitable. Mr. Ramaswamy has clung more tightly to Donald J. Trump and his brand of right-wing populism than any other candidate in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, and Eminem is no fan of the former president. In 2017, Eminem famously performed a freestyle protest against Mr. Trump, calling him “a kamikaze that’ll probably cause a nuclear holocaust.” More

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      Trump Trial Set for March 4 in Federal Election Case

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      Judge Tanya S. Chutkan rejected efforts by the former president’s legal team to postpone the trial until 2026.A federal judge on Monday set a trial date of March 4 in the prosecution of former President Donald J. Trump on charges of conspiring to overturn the 2020 election, rebuffing Mr. Trump’s proposal to push it off until 2026.The decision by Judge Tanya S. Chutkan to start the trial in March amounted to an early victory for prosecutors, who had asked for Jan. 2. But it potentially brought the proceeding into conflict with the three other trials that Mr. Trump is facing, underscoring the extraordinary complexities of his legal situation and the intersection of the prosecutions with his campaign to return to the White House.The district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., has proposed taking Mr. Trump to trial on charges of tampering with the election in that state on March 4 as well. Another case, in Manhattan, in which Mr. Trump has been accused of more than 30 felonies connected to hush-money payments to a porn actress in the run-up to the 2016 election, has been scheduled to go to trial on March 25.And if the trial in Washington lasts more than 11 weeks, it could bump up against Mr. Trump’s other federal trial, on charges of illegally retaining classified documents after he left office and obstructing the government’s efforts to retrieve them. That trial is scheduled to begin in Florida in late May.The March 4 date set by Judge Chutkan for the federal election case at a hearing in Federal District Court in Washington is the day before Super Tuesday, when 15 states are scheduled to hold Republican primaries or caucuses.Judge Chutkan said that while she understood Mr. Trump had both other trial dates scheduled next year and, at the same time, was running for the country’s highest office, she was not going to let the intersection of his legal troubles and his political campaign get in the way of setting a date.“Mr. Trump, like any defendant, will have to make the trial date work regardless of his schedule,” Judge Chutkan said, adding that “there is a societal interest to a speedy trial.”Mr. Trump has now been indicted by grand juries four times in four places — Washington, New York, Atlanta and Florida — and prosecutors have been jockeying for position. All of them are trying to find time for their trials not only in relation to one another, but also against the backdrop of Mr. Trump’s crowded calendar as the candidate leading the field for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.While Judge Chutkan noted that she had spoken to the judge in the Manhattan case, it remained unclear how the judges, prosecutors and defense teams would address the problem of scheduling four criminal trials next year as Mr. Trump is campaigning.Hammering home the complexities, Judge Chutkan’s decision came the same day that Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s former chief of staff and a co-defendant in the Georgia indictment, testified in his bid to move his case to federal court, a step that could slow down at least some of the proceedings there.Before a federal judge in Atlanta, Mr. Meadows argued that his actions in the indictment fell within the scope of his duties as chief of staff, even while saying often that he could not recall details of events in late 2020 and early 2021. He is one of several defendants trying to move the case; any ruling on the issue could apply to all 19 defendants.After Judge Chutkan’s decision in Washington, Mr. Trump said in a social media post that he would appeal, though it was not clear what grounds he would be able to cite, given that scheduling decisions are not generally subject to challenges to higher courts before a conviction is returned.The former president has made no secret in conversations with his aides that he would like to solve his uniquely complicated legal woes by winning the election. If either of his two federal trials is delayed until after the race and Mr. Trump prevails, he could seek to pardon himself after taking office or have his attorney general dismiss the matters altogether.In remarks from the bench, Judge Chutkan, who was appointed by President Barack Obama, dismissed arguments made by Mr. Trump’s lawyers that they needed until April 2026 to prepare for the trial given the voluminous amount of discovery they will have to sort through. That extended period, the judge said, was “far beyond what is necessary” to prepare even for a trial of this magnitude.As part of the hearing on Monday, John F. Lauro, a lawyer for Mr. Trump, previewed some of his defense case, identifying several motions that he and his colleague, Todd Blanche, planned to file on Mr. Trump’s behalf.Mr. Lauro said he could file a motion as soon as next week arguing that Mr. Trump was immune to the charges, given that the indictment against him covers a period when he served as the nation’s commander in chief.Mr. Lauro also said he was considering attacking the charges with a so-called selective prosecution motion. That motion, he said, would argue that Mr. Trump’s election interference indictment — brought by a special counsel appointed by the Biden administration — had been filed at least in part as retaliation for the federal investigation of Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, which began in earnest during the Trump administration.Moreover, Mr. Lauro told Judge Chutkan that he was planning to challenge each of the three conspiracy counts in the indictment brought against Mr. Trump early this month by the office of the special counsel, Jack Smith. Those counts accuse Mr. Trump of plotting to defraud the United States, to disrupt the certification of the election at a joint session of Congress on Jan. 6, 2021, and to deprive people of the right to have their vote counted.“In our view, this is a political prosecution,” Mr. Lauro said.Still, the issues surrounding the schedule of the trial took center stage at the 90-minute hearing, which Mr. Smith attended.Prosecutors working for Mr. Smith have said in court papers that the government could take four to six weeks to present its case to the judge, with Mr. Trump’s lawyers estimating a roughly similar amount of time.That timetable would push the trial well past the March 25 date that Justice Juan M. Merchan has set for the Manhattan trial and could edge close to or even beyond the May 20 date set for Mr. Trump’s federal trial in Florida.Alvin L. Bragg, the Manhattan district attorney, signaled recently that he would be open to seeing the trial date for the Manhattan case moved, provided Justice Merchan agreed.Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the New York court system, said in a statement: “Justice Merchan and Judge Chutkan spoke last Thursday regarding their respective upcoming trials. At this time, there is nothing further to impart regarding the People of the State of New York v. Donald J. Trump.”A spokeswoman for Mr. Bragg declined to comment, as did a spokesman for Fani T. Willis, the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga.In the federal election case, Mr. Trump’s lawyers began complaining two weeks ago about the amount of evidence they would have to wade through as part of the discovery process when they first made their request to postpone the trial until April 2026 in court papers submitted to Judge Chutkan.Mr. Lauro echoed that position in court on Monday. He took a sometimes aggressive tone in declaring that his client deserved a fair trial “no different than any American.”“For a federal prosecutor to suggest that we could go to trial in four months is not only absurd, it’s a violation of the oath of justice,” Mr. Lauro said, adding, “We cannot do this in the time frame the government has outlined.”In their own court papers, prosecutors had pushed back against Mr. Lauro’s protests about burdensome discovery, noting that much of the material was publicly available or known to Mr. Trump, having come from his 2020 presidential campaign or from political action committees associated with it.Molly Gaston, one of the prosecutors in the case, added a few new details to the portrait of the discovery evidence on Monday, noting that even though the total number of pages had reached about 12.8 million, the defense could go through it electronically with keyword searches.Ms. Gaston also said the government had created a file of about 300 key documents that served to annotate the 45-page indictment prosecutors filed against Mr. Trump early this month.“It is essentially a road map to our case,” she said.One of Ms. Gaston’s colleagues, Thomas P. Windom, told Judge Chutkan that the discovery evidence would include “a limited amount” of classified information, including about five to 10 sensitive documents, totaling fewer than 100 pages, and a 125-page transcript of an interview with a witness during which classified issues were discussed.Mr. Windom asserted, however, that prosecutors did not expect to introduce any of the classified material during the trial.In seeking to persuade Judge Chuktan to move quickly to trial, Ms. Gaston reminded her that Mr. Trump had repeatedly attacked the “integrity of the court and the citizens of D.C.” on social media in ways that could affect the case’s jury pool.At a hearing last month, Judge Chutkan warned Mr. Trump that she would not tolerate him using social media posts to intimidate witnesses or taint potential jurors. Within days of that admonition, Mr. Trump tested Judge Chutkan’s resolve by making more dubious posts.During the hearing on Monday, Judge Chutkan sought to calm Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Mr. Lauro, cautioning him twice to turn down the “temperature” when he was speaking.At one point, she appeared upset by the way that Mr. Lauro in his filings about the trial schedule had cited Powell v. Alabama, a landmark 1932 Supreme Court decision that reversed the convictions of the Scottsboro Boys, nine young Black men who were falsely accused of raping a white woman.Judge Chutkan pointed out that Mr. Trump would face trial in seven months after he was indicted, compared with only one week in the Alabama case.The two cases, she added, were “profoundly different” at their core.Jonah E. Bromwich More

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      in Elections

      Vivek Ramaswamy Is Very Annoying. It’s Why He’s Surging in the Polls.

      by

      Of all the descriptors attached to Vivek Ramaswamy, the 38-year-old political tyro enjoying a bizarre surge in the Republican primary race for second place, the most common one seems to be “annoying.” After the Republican presidential primary debate on Wednesday, a Politico headline quoted a party strategist about Ramaswamy’s performance: “It just got to be annoying.” In a widely shared essay, the writer Josh Barro, a Harvard contemporary of Ramaswamy, probed the quality that “makes Vivek so annoying.” CNN’s S.E. Cupp called him, in a column: “Obnoxious. Annoying. Disrespectful. Inexperienced. Conspiratorial.”Matt Lewis, an anti-Trump conservative writer for The Daily Beast, marveled that there are some who actually like Ramaswamy’s cocky, know-it-all persona: “As Seinfeld might say, ‘Who are these people?’”The answer, of course, is much of the Republican Party. The Washington Post, FiveThirtyEight and Ipsos polled likely Republican primary voters before and after last week’s debate. Following his performance, Ramaswamy’s favorability rating rose from 50 percent to 60 percent, even though his unfavorability rating rose even more, from 13 percent to 32 percent. Participants in a CNN focus group of Iowa Republicans declared him the debate’s winner, as did a poll released on Thursday from JL Partners. The day after the debate, his campaign reportedly raised more than $1 million.The question is what Ramaswamy’s supporters see in this irksome figure. Some Republicans, clearly, appreciate the way he sucks up to Donald Trump, whom Ramaswamy has called “the best president of the 21st century.” But that doesn’t explain the roughly 10 percent of Republicans who tell pollsters they’re planning to vote for Ramaswamy instead of Trump. It can’t only be his shtick as Fox News’s “woke and cancel-culture guru,” as one anchor called him, since at this point even the Florida governor Ron DeSantis has learned that railing against wokeness is a losing message. Nor is Ramaswamy’s appeal tailored to the downwardly mobile Trump voters who appreciated the former president’s pledges to protect their entitlements, since Ramaswamy’s promise to “dismantle Lyndon Johnson’s failed ‘Great Society’” makes Paul Ryan look like a social democrat.Instead, I suspect that Ramaswamy’s fans are drawn to him for all the reasons his critics find him insufferable. Conservatives love being championed by representatives of groups that they think disdain them. Despite the right’s deep resentment of the entertainment industry, Republicans tend to adore celebrity candidates, from Ronald Reagan to Arnold Schwarzenegger and Donald Trump. Think of the infamous tweet from Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee: “Kanye. Elon. Trump.” (They deleted it once the rapper Kanye West’s right turn veered into outright Hitler fandom.) At Democratic conventions I’ve seen famous actors walk around either unrecognized or ignored, while at Republican conventions C-listers are feted like superstars.Ramaswamy, too, is a performer, but what he’s performing is a parody of meritocratic excellence. If you’ve spent time around entitled Ivy League grads, you likely recognize him as an exaggerated version of a familiar type: the callow and condescending nerd who assumes that skill in one field translates to aptitude in all others. But to his fans, the very fact that he’s such a pure product of elite institutions — in addition to Harvard, he went to Yale Law and made his fortune with a biotech start-up he ran from Manhattan — likely gives him extra oomph as a class traitor.People who care about the basic workings of government are gobsmacked by Ramaswamy’s apparent ignorance — on Sunday, for example, he said that if he’d been in Vice President Mike Pence’s shoes on Jan. 6, 2021, he would have pushed through election reform “in my capacity as president of the Senate.” But he’s good at sounding like he knows what he’s talking about. Sarah Longwell, a political strategist who has conducted extensive focus groups with Republican primary voters, said that people who like Ramaswamy inevitably say, “I think he’s really smart.”That’s why Chris Christie’s comparison of Ramaswamy to Barack Obama, whom conservatives saw as a smug, smooth-talking foreign interloper, fell flat. Ramaswamy’s very superficial similarities to Obama work for him, giving conservative audiences the satisfaction of hearing their resentments affirmed by a defector from the culture of the coastal gentry. At the debate, Ramaswamy encouraged the analogy when he ripped off an old Obama line to introduce himself as a “skinny guy with a funny last name.” Longwell doesn’t think Ramaswamy has a shot at beating Trump for the nomination, but, she said, “I think that Republicans want their own Obama.”Many older white conservatives, after all, feel threatened by multiethnic younger generations that largely reject their most fundamental values about faith, gender and patriotism. Ramaswamy is part of this menacing cohort, and he’s telling Republicans that their suspicions about it are correct. “More than anything, he has portrayed his generation and younger ones as empty souls living meaningless lives,” Jonathan Weisman wrote in The Times. He’s a young man running an anti-youth campaign; a centerpiece of Ramaswamy’s platform is a call to strip the franchise from most people under 25 unless they pass a civics test. And he’s a person of color who argues, even in the wake of another white supremacist mass shooting, that most American racism comes from the left. If he annoys those who find him most familiar, that’s surely part of the point.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: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More