Presidential Election of 2024

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      Unsafe Roads: The Perils of Riding E-Bikes

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      More from our inbox:Why Indictments Boost Trump’s PopularityRename the Audubon SocietyRon DeSantis, BullyAshely Kingsley and her daughter, Scout, at Charlie’s Electric Bike store in Encinitas, where they were renting e-bikes for the day.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Teenagers’ Accidents Expose the Risks of E-Bikes” (front page, July 31):While it is clear that stronger regulation around the speeds of e-bikes is needed, roadway design determines the safety of our communities.What we are seeing is the deadly consequences of a system built for cars and cars only. As one of the people quoted in the article notes, the bikes’ speed is “too fast for sidewalks, but it’s too slow to be in traffic.”In a better system, bikes and cars would not have to share the road, and our roads would be designed to accommodate the reality that people get around in different ways, and everyone deserves to get around safely.Bikes are not motorcycles, and they should not be treated as if they were. These crashes are happening because people on bikes are forced to use unsafe roadways around cars that are often going too fast.Earl BlumenauerPortland, Ore.The writer, a member of Congress, is the founder and co-chair of the Congressional Bicycle Caucus.To the Editor:I have been riding motorcycles since 1972. One of the first things you learn, either from hard experience or from older riders, is that you are invisible to most traffic. They aren’t looking for you, so they don’t see you. E-bikes are even smaller, so the problem is likely worse.I rode one of the faster e-bikes about a month ago. It had a top speed of 35 miles per hour and was much closer to being a motorcycle than a bicycle. Parents, law enforcement and legislators need to wake up to that reality.Dale LeppoHudson, OhioTo the Editor:While “Teenagers’ Accidents Expose the Risks of E-Bikes” demonstrates the need for safety in planning and organizing the e-bike rollout, I think it’s important to note that the deaths and injuries cited are due to car drivers, not e-bike riders.As the article states, 15-year-old Brodee Champlain “did everything right,” including signaling to make a left turn, before a driver hit him. To frame such accidents as the fault of the e-bike is blaming the victim rather than the cause.Nor is this a problem that will be helped by slowing the introduction of e-bikes to our streets. The fewer people driving cars, the fewer e-bike accidents there will be.The best way, then, to make cyclists safer is to build up the cycling infrastructure and substantively change our cities’ car-centric design, rather than trying to regulate e-bikes around two-ton vehicles that are far deadlier.Charles BonkowskySalt Lake CityThe writer is an intern at the Salt Lake City Sustainability Department.To the Editor:As a former New Yorker, I thought I was accustomed to the perils of pedestrians when out and about, but I had a rude awakening upon moving to Southern California, where e-bikes are ubiquitous. The amazing climate and hilly terrain make it easy to understand why e-bikes have become so popular here, and they provide a handy alternative form of transportation for kids with busy parents.But seeing young people, often preteens, zip around at 30-plus miles an hour while looking at their phones or drinking a soda makes me concerned for the pedestrians who share the sidewalks with them and for the kids themselves.Regulation is needed before more lives are lost.Leigh JonesAliso Viejo, Calif.Why Indictments Boost Trump’s Popularity Mark Peterson for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Each Indictment Solidifies Trump’s Base,” by Rich Lowry (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 8):Mr. Lowry points out that Donald Trump’s recent indictments have enhanced his popularity with the Republican base.It is not that his supporters like him despite his wrongdoing; they adore him specifically because he thumbs his nose at the laws, rules and institutions that are the basis for our democracy. They are angry at the status quo and the foundational aspects of our government, and Mr. Trump appears anathema to what they perceive as the “deep state.”Mr. Lowry glosses over the Russia investigation and claims that in the end Mr. Trump was “vindicated.” This is nonsense. A clear case was made that Mr. Trump obstructed justice in the Mueller inquiry. Since he was never indicted for his attempts to thwart that investigation, he continued to obstruct justice in the cases for which he will now have to appear before a judge and jury.The next two years will test this nation in many ways because of the actions of Donald Trump.Ellen Silverman PopperQueensTo the Editor:During every campaign Republican politicians and pundits like Rich Lowry pound their fists and scream about “law and order!” But when it comes to Donald Trump’s rampant criminality, they promote every excuse in the book not to hold him accountable — the most ridiculous one being that it will just make him more popular with the MAGA crowd.We’ve heard that since the day Mr. Trump boasted about hypothetically shooting a person on Fifth Avenue with no loss of support. We’ve heard it a thousand times. His supporters’ sense of perpetual grievance is being fanned daily on Fox and Breitbart and even in the pages of Mr. Lowry’s publication, National Review.Mr. Lowry should have used his essay not to reinforce predictable right-wing talking points, but to persuade people on his side of the aisle that these indictments are not only appropriate, but absolutely critical to a healthy, functioning democracy.Bud LaveryHighland, N.Y.Rename the Audubon Society Hannah Beier for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Rising Racial Tensions Shake a Tranquil Pastime” (front page, Aug. 9) reports on a feud within the National Audubon Society, including “the question of whether the conservation group should drop its eponym, John James Audubon, who owned slaves.”I grew up worshiping the Audubon “brand” as a youthful birder, spent the better part of 20 years on the staff of the Audubon Society, and have studied and written about the life of John James Audubon. (Parts of a biographical sketch I wrote are still found on the Audubon.org website.)Here’s why I think the Audubon name should be dropped.It is essential in 2023 that we welcome birders of every background to the movement. The future of conservation depends on it. Social justice and conservation are deeply intertwined; they point to a sustainable future. And names are just a cultural artifact. There is no compelling reason to keep the Audubon name, just as we wouldn’t do for other enslavers and Confederate generals.I have a suggestion: Rename it the American Society for the Protection of Birds, to borrow a page from our friends across the pond in the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. Problem solved.Fred BaumgartenHaydenville, Mass.Ron DeSantis, BullyGov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, speaking in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, this month.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “DeSantis Suspends a 2nd Elected Prosecutor in Florida, a Democrat in Orlando” (news article, Aug. 10):Our hapless governor and would-be president, Ron DeSantis, goes back to the only thing that’s consistently worked for him: bullying.David ReddyTampa, Fla. More

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      Trump Says He Won’t Sign Loyalty Pledge Required for G.O.P. Debate

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      The Republican National Committee has demanded that 2024 contenders pledge to support the eventual nominee in order to debate. The former president is refusing.Former President Donald J. Trump said on Wednesday that he was unwilling to meet one of the requirements to participate in the first Republican presidential debate, refusing to sign a pledge to support the eventual nominee.“I wouldn’t sign the pledge,” he said in an interview with the conservative outlet Newsmax. “Why would I sign a pledge? There are people on there that I wouldn’t have.”The decision would seem to rule out the possibility of him being at the debate on Aug. 23, yet he also said that he would announce next week whether he planned to take part.Asked for comment on Thursday, the Republican National Committee, which sets the rules, referred to past interviews in which its chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, has defended the pledge and said the committee will hold everyone to it.“The rules aren’t changing,” she said on CNN last month. “We’ve been very vocal with them.”In the Newsmax interview, Mr. Trump said, “I can name three or four people that I wouldn’t support for president,” without naming them. “So right there, there’s a problem right there.”Mr. Trump also said in the interview that he wasn’t convinced it was worth it for him to debate given how far ahead he is in the primary. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll showed him leading the field by an enormous margin, more than 35 percentage points ahead of his nearest competitor, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.“Why would you do that when you’re leading by so much?” he asked.Some other Republicans criticized Mr. Trump on Thursday for his refusal to commit to supporting a nominee other than himself. “Every Republican running for President would be better than Joe Biden,” Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia said on Twitter. “Any candidate who does not commit to supporting the eventual nominee is putting themselves ahead of the future of our country.”Mr. Trump’s vacillation over the pledge is not new; he objected to signing the same loyalty pledge during his first campaign eight years ago. He ultimately did, but then took it back.That history underscores that the pledge is, in practice, unenforceable. Party leaders can refuse to let a candidate debate for not signing, but they can’t force someone who does sign to actually support another nominee next year.One of Mr. Trump’s opponents, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, has said that he will sign the pledge, but that he would not support Mr. Trump if he is the eventual nominee: “I’m going to take the pledge just as seriously as Donald Trump took it in 2016,” he told CNN.Another opponent, former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, has suggested that — if he otherwise qualifies for the debate, which he hasn’t yet — he would sign based on the far-from-safe assumption that Mr. Trump won’t be the nominee and Mr. Hutchinson won’t actually be tested. More

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      How to Beat Donald Trump

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      Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicDonald Trump was impeached twice. He has been indicted three times. He lost the 2020 election. And yet he’s the clear Republican front-runner for 2024.Today on “Matter of Opinion,” Michelle Cottle, Ross Douthat and Carlos Lozada explore how Trump has created a winning political strategy and what his potential nomination could mean for Joe Biden, the Republican Party and the future of the country.Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Scott Eisen/Getty ImagesMentioned in this episode:“The Normal Paths to Beating Trump Are Closing,” by Ross Douthat for The New York Times“The Right Way to Resist Trump,” by Luigi Zingales in The New York Times“Rules for Resistance: Advice From Around the Globe for the Age of Trump,” by David Cole and Melanie Wachtell Stinnett“Trump and Allies Forge Plans to Increase Presidential Power in 2025,” by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman for The New York Times“So Help Me God,” by Mike Pence“The Imperial Presidency,” by Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.Thoughts? Email us at [email protected] our hosts on X: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) and Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. Edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Isaac Jones, Efim Shapiro, Carole Sabouraud, Sonia Herrero and Pat McCusker. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      Racing to Stop Trump, Republicans Descend on the Iowa State Fair

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      Over decades of presidential campaigns, the Iowa way has been to hop from town to town, taking questions from all comers and genuflecting to the local culinary traditions. Going everywhere and meeting everyone has been the gospel of how to win over voters in the low-turnout midwinter caucuses that kick off the American presidential cycle.Now former President Donald J. Trump is delivering what could be a death blow to the old way.Five months from the 2024 caucuses, Mr. Trump holds a comfortable polling lead in a state he has rarely set foot in. If any of his dozen challengers hope to stop his march to a third straight nomination, they will almost certainly have to halt, or at least slow, him in Iowa after spending the better part of a year making their case. A commanding victory by Mr. Trump could create a sense of inevitability around his candidacy that would be difficult to overcome.As Mr. Trump and nearly all of his Republican rivals converge in the coming days at the Iowa State Fair, the annual celebration of agriculture and stick-borne fried food will serve as the latest stage for a nationalized campaign in which the former president and his three indictments have left the rest of the field starved for attention.“You’ve got to do it in Iowa, otherwise it’s gone, it’s all national media,” said Doug Gross, a Republican strategist who was the party’s nominee for governor of the state in 2002. “The chance to show that he’s vulnerable is gone. You’ve got to do it here, and you’ve got to do it now.”At the Iowa State Fair on Wednesday, Dana Wanken, known as Spanky, cleaned the grill outside the pork tent, one of the destinations where Republican presidential candidates will converge in the coming days to compete for the attention of voters.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMost of the Republican candidates are trying to do Iowa the old way, and all of them are less popular and receiving far less visibility than Mr. Trump, who has visited the state just six times since announcing his campaign in November.The same polling that shows Mr. Trump with a wide lead nationally and in Iowa also indicates that his competitors have a plausible path to carve into his support in the crucial first state. A recent New York Times/Siena College poll found that while Mr. Trump held 44 percent of the support among Iowa Republicans — more than double that of his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida — 47 percent of Mr. Trump’s supporters said they would consider backing another candidate.Mr. DeSantis, for all his bad headlines about staff shake-ups, campaign resets and financial troubles, holds significant structural advantages in Iowa.He has endorsements from a flotilla of Iowa state legislators; a campaign team flush with veterans from the 2016 presidential bid of Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, who beat Mr. Trump in the state; and a super PAC with $100 million to spend. Mr. DeSantis has also said he will visit all 99 counties, a quest that has long revealed a candidate’s willingness to do the grunt work of traveling to Iowa’s sparsely populated rural corners to scrounge for every last vote.Convincing Iowans that they should be searching for a Trump alternative may be Mr. DeSantis’s toughest task.“Trump’s supporters are very vocal, so sometimes being very vocal sounds like there’s a lot of them,” said Tom Shipley, a state senator from southwest Iowa who has endorsed Mr. DeSantis. “That doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the case.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and his family at the Clayton County Fair in Iowa last weekend. While Mr. DeSantis has drawn receptive crowds and has been cheered at the state’s big political events, there is no flood of Iowans rushing to support him.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesYet while Mr. DeSantis has drawn receptive crowds and has been cheered at the state’s big political events, there is no flood of Iowans rushing to support him. Through the end of June, just 17 Iowans had given his campaign $200 or more, according to a report filed to the Federal Election Commission. Nikki Haley, who lags far behind him in polls, had 25 such Iowa donors, while Mr. Trump had 117. Former Vice President Mike Pence had just seven.(The number of small donors Mr. DeSantis had in Iowa is not publicly known because his campaign has an arrangement with WinRed, the Republican donor platform, that effectively prevented the disclosure of information about small donors.)Mr. DeSantis’s supporters are quick to point out that the three most recent winners of competitive Iowa caucuses — Mr. Cruz, Rick Santorum in 2012 and Mike Huckabee in 2008 — each came from behind with support from the same demographic: social conservatives. None of the three won the presidential nomination, but all of them used Iowa to propel themselves into what became a one-on-one matchup with the party’s eventual nominee.Operatives and supporters of the non-Trump candidates warn that Iowa caucusgoers are notoriously fickle. Around this point in 2015, Mr. Cruz had just 8 percent support in a poll by The Des Moines Register. Mr. Trump was first at 23 percent and Ben Carson was second, with 18 percent.“It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” said Chris Cournoyer, a Republican state senator from Le Claire who is backing Nikki Haley, who was at 4 percent in the recent Times/Siena poll.What’s different about Iowa this time, according to interviews with more than a dozen state legislators, political operatives and veterans of past caucuses, is that before Republicans consider a broad field of candidates, they are asking themselves a more basic, binary question: Trump or not Trump?Jeanne Dietrich of Omaha, Neb., displayed an autograph from former President Donal J. Trump after attending the opening of his Iowa campaign headquarters in July. Five months from the 2024 caucuses, Mr. Trump holds a comfortable polling lead in the state.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesWhere in the past Iowans might have told those running for president that they were on a list of three or four top contenders, Mr. Trump’s dominance over Republican politics has left candidates fighting for a far smaller slice of voters. The longer a large field exists, the harder it will be for Mr. DeSantis or anyone else to consolidate enough support to present a challenge to Mr. Trump.“These people are absolutely going to vote for the former president, and those people are absolutely not going to vote for the former president,” said Eric Woolson, who has been in Iowa politics so long he was part of Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s 1988 presidential campaign before working for a series of Republican presidential hopefuls: George W. Bush, Mr. Huckabee, Michele Bachmann and Scott Walker.Now Mr. Woolson, who owns an organic catnip farm in southern Iowa, serves as the state director for Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota, who is polling at 1 percent in Iowa. Mr. Woolson said the first hurdle for 2024 campaigns was sorting out which voters would even consider candidates other than Mr. Trump.“In past elections, voters were keeping an open mind of, ‘Well, maybe I can still vote for this candidate, or maybe this one’s my second choice or whatever,’” he said. “Now there’s just such stark lines that have been drawn.”Those lines are compounded by a political and media environment centered not on Iowa’s local news outlets but on conservative cable and internet shows.Nikki Haley, who lags far behind Mr. DeSantis and Mr. Trump in polls, reported that just 25 Iowans had given her campaign $200 or more through the end of June, according to a report filed to the Federal Election Commission.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesFor decades, presidential candidates from both parties have flocked to The Des Moines Register’s state fair soapbox, a centrally located stage that has served as a gathering spot for the political news media and passers-by on their way to the Ferris wheel and the butter cow. It was at the soapbox in 2011 where Mitt Romney responded to a heckler with his infamous quip, “Corporations are people, my friend.”Mr. Trump skipped The Register’s soapbox in 2016 in favor of a far more dramatic appearance — landing at the fair in his helicopter and offering rides to children.This year, only lower-polling candidates — Ms. Haley, Mr. Pence and Vivek Ramaswamy, among others — are scheduled to speak at the soap box. All of the contenders except Mr. Trump will instead sit for interviews at the fairgrounds with Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, a Republican who has pledged to stay neutral but has clashed with Mr. Trump. The scripted nature of those appearances is likely to cut down on the kinds of viral moments that once drove politics at the fair.Mr. Trump does not need to participate in Iowa’s retail politics, his supporters say, because he is already universally known and has been omnipresent on the conservative media airwaves as he fights against his indictments.“Trump can rely on the network that’s out here already,” said Stan Gustafson, a Republican state representative from just south of Des Moines. “It’s already put together.”Yet at least a few Iowa Republicans supporting Mr. Trump say they are looking to the future — just a bit further out than next year’s caucuses. Mr. Gustafson, who has endorsed Mr. Trump, said he was eyeing which candidates he might support in 2028.Tim Kraayenbrink, a state senator who also backs Mr. Trump, said Iowa’s turn in the campaign cycle was a good opportunity to judge which candidates would make a good running mate — as long as it is not Mr. Pence, he clarified.“He’s going to have some quality people to choose from for vice president,” Mr. Kraayenbrink said of Mr. Trump.Andrew Fischer More

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      Ron DeSantis Faces Four Main Challenges Ahead of 2024

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      Ron DeSantis has cut back, reorganized, reset and refocused his presidential campaign. We talked to Republican strategists about what they think he ought to do next.The presidential campaign of Gov. Ron DeSantis is clearly in a downward spiral, whether measured by polling, internal upheaval, shifting strategies or money woes.Early this year, Mr. DeSantis seemed to have a clear path to the Republican nomination: He was a political fighter in the mold of Donald J. Trump, but without the chaos and with a solid record of conservative achievements in Florida.But those best-laid plans have met reality — a Trump rebound and a crowded Republican field — and now the Florida governor is desperately struggling to regain his footing after his campaign this week announced its third major shake-up in a month.In interviews, Republican strategists with experience in presidential races (but unaffiliated with Mr. DeSantis or his 2024 rivals) diagnosed some of the top problems of his campaign.What to do about Trump?There is no way around it. Solving the Trump problem is the master key to this election, and no one has found it. Mr. DeSantis, like almost every other Republican in the race, adopted a strategy of never criticizing Mr. Trump, for fear of alienating his ardent base. The theory was that at some point Mr. Trump would disqualify himself, and Mr. DeSantis would be positioned to inherit his supporters.But now, after three criminal indictments have failed to dent Mr. Trump’s popularity with Republican voters, pressure is mounting on Mr. DeSantis to stop pretending Mr. Trump isn’t in the race and take him on directly.“The people who want Trump don’t need a mini-me Trump,’’ said Barbara Comstock, a former Republican member of Congress from Virginia, who is not a fan of either the former president or Mr. DeSantis.This week, Mr. DeSantis took a small step in the direction of taking on Mr. Trump by stating plainly that “of course” he lost the 2020 election, a position that conflicts with what many Republican voters believe.“Trump is the de facto Republican incumbent, and in order to beat an incumbent you have to give voters a fire-able offense,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed Senator Marco Rubio’s presidential campaign in 2016.A related problem: Mr. DeSantis has failed to captivate voters, either with a charismatic stump speech or with a new charm offensive in which he wades into crowds, poses for selfies and engages in chitchat. Sarah Longwell, who conducts focus groups of Republican voters, said that recently she had witnessed something novel: Not one G.O.P. voter brought up Mr. DeSantis’s name in the groups. “People are like, we gave you a look and we’re not that interested,’’ she said.A muddled message.“The No. 1 failing for any campaign, and it’s clearly DeSantis’s problem — what is his elevator pitch?” said Dave Carney, a New Hampshire-based strategist who has advised multiple presidential campaigns.One day, Mr. DeSantis is reminding voters about taking on the Walt Disney Company over what he views as “woke” corporate meddling. Another day, he is picking a fight with Representative Byron Donalds, the only Black Republican in Florida’s congressional delegation, over the state’s new standards for teaching Black history.These headline-making fights may break into the Trump-dominated media coverage, but Mr. Carney said they hadn’t given voters a slogan they remember.“You have to have a message that’s relatable and simple and that you can communicate,’’ he said. “‘Morning in America,’ ‘Are you better off than four years ago?,’ Make America Great Again.’”Just what that should be, of course, is up for debate.Mr. Sullivan said he thought Mr. DeSantis was on point when he talks about electability. Mr. DeSantis has often suggested that Mr. Trump, now saddled with criminal charges stemming from his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, can’t win a general election.“The messaging the other day was very smart — if the election is about January 2021, and not about Joe Biden’s record, we will lose,” Mr. Sullivan said.Gail Gitcho, a consultant who worked on Mitt Romney’s presidential campaign, said Mr. DeSantis needed to talk about his achievements in Florida.“He’s got something no one else has — executive experience in a big state with countless examples of his effectiveness and conservatism,” she said. “Stop with the donor-induced shake-ups and run on his record.”Too much talk about donor-induced shake-ups?All summer, media reports have been filled with accounts of Mr. DeSantis’s struggles, fed by campaign insiders, his wealthy donors and other Republicans with a close view. It has led to steady headlines about campaign restarts and reboots and a revolving door of personnel. The coverage feeds a narrative of a campaign in trouble, which becomes self-fulfilling.Mr. Sullivan said Mr. DeSantis needed to just run the plays without discussing them.“You just have to keep your head down and execute. Win the day. Win the week. Then string them together,” he said.Putting all the chips on Iowa.In an earlier reboot, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign said it would zero in on Iowa, touring the state by bus, after spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on private air travel, and visit all 99 counties. Such a hyperlocal strategy of retail engagement with voters is traditionally what underfunded long shots pursue. But it also raises the stakes for Mr. DeSantis in Iowa, a state where he was trailing Mr. Trump by 24 percentage points in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll.Although the Iowa caucuses are still several months away, Mr. DeSantis is playing a risky expectations game, one that could make it difficult for him to rebound if he doesn’t post a strong showing in Iowa.“Clearly, they said they’re going to win Iowa,” Mr. Carney said. “I just think a campaign that talks too much, that brags about what they’re going to do — they set themselves up for traps.”Ms. Longwell, on the other hand, said an all-in-on-Iowa strategy made sense.“Iowa is hand-to-hand combat,” she said. “You have to get a story in Iowa that Ron DeSantis is running close to Trump — because now it’s all a downward death spiral.” More

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      Biden Pitches Manufacturing Boom on Southwest Tour

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      During a stop in New Mexico, the president highlighted how one of his signature pieces of legislation will benefit blue-collar workers.President Biden on Wednesday entered a wind tower manufacturing plant surrounded by desert boasting of declining unemployment, waning inflation and a manufacturing boom — all metrics that should make his three-state Southwest tour a victory lap.“Our plan is working,” Mr. Biden said, referring to his economic agenda. “When I think climate, I think jobs.”But hours before he entered Belen, the president reflected on the challenge hanging over the White House during his tour of Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. Even as he traverses the country to promote his economic policies, many voters are still skeptical of — or unclear on — Mr. Biden’s legislative record.He addressed the issue of voter sentiment during a fund-raiser at a private residence shortly after arriving in Albuquerque on Tuesday night.Noting recent infrastructure projects funded by his policies, Mr. Biden said: “They’re beginning to realize what we actually passed is having an impact. It’s just going to take a little while.”White House officials are hoping tours around the nation like Mr. Biden is doing this week can change that. As extreme weather rages across the country, the White House has framed one of its signature pieces of legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, as both a means to improve environmental justice and a source of manufacturing jobs for wind and solar.A day after seeking to galvanize environmental activists by designating a fifth national monument near the Grand Canyon on Tuesday, Mr. Biden traded talk of conservation for remarks focused on “renewable manufacturing” that can provide “high-paying jobs and dignity to the people who have long been waiting for that.”Mr. Biden talking to Ed Keable, the superintendent of Grand Canyon National Park, on Tuesday.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesThe president pointed to the company hosting him, Arcosa Wind Towers Inc., which received $1.1 billion of new orders for wind tower equipment after the signing of the Inflation Reduction Act, according to the White House.The message most likely resonated with people in New Mexico, where many rural communities are still focused more on job growth rooted in energy production than the fight against climate change, according to Brian Sanderoff, the president of New Mexico-based Research & Polling Inc. But it has not broken through to the nation at large, according to recent surveys.Mr. Biden remains broadly unpopular among a voting public that is pessimistic about the country’s future, and his approval rating is just 39 percent, according to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll. That survey found him in a neck-and-neck tie with former President Donald J. Trump.The poll did find that more Americans think the economy is in excellent or good shape: 20 percent, compared with 10 percent a year ago.On Wednesday, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, defended the administration’s messaging strategy, saying on CNN that “polls don’t tell the entire story.” She then indicated that the public would see more trips like Mr. Biden’s current swing through the Southwest.The president will be “talking directly to the American people about how wages are actually going up, about how inflation is going down over a long, extended period of time,” Ms. Jean-Pierre said.In the weeks ahead, however, Mr. Biden must convince Americans that they will feel the impact of provisions of his infrastructure, clean energy and semiconductor packages — even if much of the funding may not be spent for years to come.“People live through day-to-day challenges of the economy,” Mr. Sanderoff said. “You can tout big legislation, comprehensive legislation that you passed through Congress, but people are busy getting their kids through school and dealing with the cost of bread.”Matt Bennett, the executive vice president for public affairs at Third Way, a center-left think tank, said the way Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments have dominated Americans’ attention lately makes it even more important for Mr. Biden to travel to small markets and speak directly to the American people.“People have to begin to feel it in their life or understand what the president has done,” Mr. Bennett said. “That takes time.”During his visit to the wind tower facility on Wednesday, Mr. Biden appeared to agree.“I’m not here to declare victory on the economy,” he said. “We have a lot more work to do.” More

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      A Bipartisan Plan to Limit Big Tech

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      More from our inbox:DeSantis Admits the Inconvenient Truth: Trump LostScenarios for a Trump Trial and the Election‘Thank You, Mr. Trump’Mushroom CloudsMacho C.E.O.s Erik Isakson/DigitalVision, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “We Have a Way for Congress to Rein In Big Tech,” by Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren (Opinion guest essay, July 27):The most heartening thing about the proposal for a Digital Consumer Protection Commission is its authorship.After years of zero-sum legislative gridlock, to see Senators Warren and Graham collaborating is a ray of hope that governing may someday return to the time when opposing parties were not enemies, when each party brought valid perspectives to the table and House-Senate conference committees forged legislation encompassing the best of both perspectives.David SadkinBradenton, Fla.To the Editor:Senators Lindsey Graham and Elizabeth Warren propose a new federal mega-regulator for the digital economy that threatens to undermine America’s global technology standing.A new “licensing and policing” authority would stall the continued growth of advanced technologies like artificial intelligence in America, leaving China and others to claw back crucial geopolitical strategic ground.America’s digital technology sector enjoyed remarkable success over the past quarter-century — and provided vast investment and job growth — because the U.S. rejected the heavy-handed regulatory model of the analog era, which stifled innovation and competition.The tech companies that Senators Graham and Warren cite (along with countless others) came about over the past quarter-century because we opened markets and rejected the monopoly-preserving regulatory regimes that had been captured by old players.The U.S. has plenty of federal bureaucracies, and many already oversee the issues that the senators want addressed. Their new technocratic digital regulator would do nothing but hobble America as we prepare for the next great global technological revolution.Adam ThiererWashingtonThe writer is a senior fellow in technology policy at the free-market R Street Institute.To the Editor:The regulation of social media, rapidly emerging A.I. and the internet in general is long overdue. Like the telephone more than a century earlier, as any new technology evolves from novelty to convenience to ubiquitous necessity used by billions of people, so must its regulation for the common good.Jay P. MaillePleasanton, Calif.DeSantis Admits the Inconvenient Truth: Trump Lost Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “DeSantis Acknowledges Trump’s Defeat: ‘Of Course He Lost’” (news article, Aug. 8):It is sad to see a politician turn toward the hard truth only in desperation, but that is what the failing and flailing Republican presidential candidate Ron DeSantis has done.Mr. DeSantis is not stupid. He has known all along that Joe Biden was the legitimate winner of the 2020 presidential election, but until now, he hedged when asked about it, hoping not to alienate supporters of Donald Trump.Now Mr. DeSantis says: “Of course he lost. Joe Biden is the president.”In today’s Republican Party, telling the inconvenient truth will diminish a candidate’s support from the die-hard individuals who make up the party’s base.We have reached a sad point in the history of our country when we have come to feel that a politician who tells the truth is doing something extraordinary and laudable.Oren SpieglerPeters Township, Pa.Scenarios for a Trump Trial and the Election Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Layered Case in Indictment Reduces Risk” (news analysis, front page, Aug. 6):It may well be that the special prosecutor, Jack Smith, has fashioned an indictment ideally suited for achieving a conviction of Donald Trump. However, even in the event that the trial comes before the election, there is little reason to believe that it will relieve us of the scourge of Mr. Trump’s influence on American life.First, there is the possibility of a hung jury, even in Washington, D.C. Such an outcome would be treated by Trump supporters as an outright exoneration.A conviction would not undermine his support any more than his myriad previous shocking transgressions. While the inevitable appeals would last well past the election, his martyrdom might improve his electoral chances.And were he to lose the election, he would surely claim that he lost only because of these indictments. Here he would have a powerful argument because so many of us hope that the indictments will have precisely that effect.The alternative, that he wins the election, either before or after the trial, is too dreadful to contemplate.If there is anything that can terminate the plague of Trumpism, it is for a few prominent Republicans whose seniority makes their voices important — Mitch McConnell, Mitt Romney and George W. Bush — to speak out and unequivocally state that Donald Trump is unfit for office. That they all believe this is generally acknowledged.If they fail to defend American democracy at this time, they will be complicit in what Trumpism does to the Republican Party and to the Republic.Robert N. CahnWalnut Creek, Calif.‘Thank You, Mr. Trump’Former President Donald Trump has made his 2024 race principally about his own personal grievances — attempting to convince supporters to see themselves in him.David Degner for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Playing Indicted Martyr, Trump Draws In His Base” (news article, Aug. 9):Thank you, Mr. Trump, for sacrificing yourself for the greater good. And when you spend years and years and years in prison, we will never forget what you did to (oops, I mean for) us.Winnie BoalCincinnatiMushroom Clouds U.S. Department of DefenseTo the Editor:Re “A Symbol Evoking Both Pride and Fear,” by Nicolas Rapold (Critic’s Notebook, Arts, Aug. 1):Richland High School in Washington State is in an area, highly restricted during World War II, where plutonium essential to building the first atomic bombs was produced. As in areas of New Mexico, there have been numerous “downwind” cancer cases, as well as leakage of contaminated water into the Columbia River basin.Bizarrely, Richland High’s athletic teams are called the Bombers; a mushroom cloud is their symbol on uniforms and the gym floor. This must be the worst “mascot” on earth.Nancy AndersonSeattleMacho C.E.O.s Illustration by Taylor CalleryTo the Editor:Re “We’re in the Era of the ‘Top Gun’ C.E.O.” (Sunday Business, July 30):The propensity of the current class of business leaders to grab at team-building gimmicks knows no bounds. Simulating the role of fighter pilots at $100,000 a pop might give a C.E.O. a fleeting feeling of exhilaration, but it is a poor substitute for actual team-building.That happens when organizations and compensation levels are flattened to more down-to-earth levels. With some C.E.O.s pulling in pay rewards that are hundreds, if not thousands, of times more than their median employee, team-affirming commitment in the boardroom is far from genuine.Employees are not fooled by C.E.O.s trying to play Top Gun for a day, and making more in that short time than most employees will earn in a year.J. Richard FinlayTorontoThe writer is the founder of the Finlay Center for Corporate and Public Governance. More

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      in Elections

      Does Information Affect Our Beliefs?

      by

      New studies on social media’s influence tell a complicated story.It was the social-science equivalent of Barbenheimer weekend: four blockbuster academic papers, published in two of the world’s leading journals on the same day. Written by elite researchers from universities across the United States, the papers in Nature and Science each examined different aspects of one of the most compelling public-policy issues of our time: how social media is shaping our knowledge, beliefs and behaviors.Relying on data collected from hundreds of millions of Facebook users over several months, the researchers found that, unsurprisingly, the platform and its algorithms wielded considerable influence over what information people saw, how much time they spent scrolling and tapping online, and their knowledge about news events. Facebook also tended to show users information from sources they already agreed with, creating political “filter bubbles” that reinforced people’s worldviews, and was a vector for misinformation, primarily for politically conservative users.But the biggest news came from what the studies didn’t find: despite Facebook’s influence on the spread of information, there was no evidence that the platform had a significant effect on people’s underlying beliefs, or on levels of political polarization.These are just the latest findings to suggest that the relationship between the information we consume and the beliefs we hold is far more complex than is commonly understood. ‘Filter bubbles’ and democracySometimes the dangerous effects of social media are clear. In 2018, when I went to Sri Lanka to report on anti-Muslim pogroms, I found that Facebook’s newsfeed had been a vector for the rumors that formed a pretext for vigilante violence, and that WhatsApp groups had become platforms for organizing and carrying out the actual attacks. In Brazil last January, supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro used social media to spread false claims that fraud had cost him the election, and then turned to WhatsApp and Telegram groups to plan a mob attack on federal buildings in the capital, Brasília. It was a similar playbook to that used in the United States on Jan. 6, 2021, when supporters of Donald Trump stormed the Capitol.But aside from discrete events like these, there have also been concerns that social media, and particularly the algorithms used to suggest content to users, might be contributing to the more general spread of misinformation and polarization.The theory, roughly, goes something like this: unlike in the past, when most people got their information from the same few mainstream sources, social media now makes it possible for people to filter news around their own interests and biases. As a result, they mostly share and see stories from people on their own side of the political spectrum. That “filter bubble” of information supposedly exposes users to increasingly skewed versions of reality, undermining consensus and reducing their understanding of people on the opposing side. The theory gained mainstream attention after Trump was elected in 2016. “The ‘Filter Bubble’ Explains Why Trump Won and You Didn’t See It Coming,” announced a New York Magazine article a few days after the election. “Your Echo Chamber is Destroying Democracy,” Wired Magazine claimed a few weeks later.Changing information doesn’t change mindsBut without rigorous testing, it’s been hard to figure out whether the filter bubble effect was real. The four new studies are the first in a series of 16 peer-reviewed papers that arose from a collaboration between Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, and a group of researchers from universities including Princeton, Dartmouth, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford and others.Meta gave unprecedented access to the researchers during the three-month period before the 2020 U.S. election, allowing them to analyze data from more than 200 million users and also conduct randomized controlled experiments on large groups of users who agreed to participate. It’s worth noting that the social media giant spent $20 million on work from NORC at the University of Chicago (previously the National Opinion Research Center), a nonpartisan research organization that helped collect some of the data. And while Meta did not pay the researchers itself, some of its employees worked with the academics, and a few of the authors had received funding from the company in the past. But the researchers took steps to protect the independence of their work, including pre-registering their research questions in advance, and Meta was only able to veto requests that would violate users’ privacy.The studies, taken together, suggest that there is evidence for the first part of the “filter bubble” theory: Facebook users did tend to see posts from like-minded sources, and there were high degrees of “ideological segregation” with little overlap between what liberal and conservative users saw, clicked and shared. Most misinformation was concentrated in a conservative corner of the social network, making right-wing users far more likely to encounter political lies on the platform.“I think it’s a matter of supply and demand,” said Sandra González-Bailón, the lead author on the paper that studied misinformation. Facebook users skew conservative, making the potential market for partisan misinformation larger on the right. And online curation, amplified by algorithms that prioritize the most emotive content, could reinforce those market effects, she added.When it came to the second part of the theory — that this filtered content would shape people’s beliefs and worldviews, often in harmful ways — the papers found little support. One experiment deliberately reduced content from like-minded sources, so that users saw more varied information, but found no effect on polarization or political attitudes. Removing the algorithm’s influence on people’s feeds, so that they just saw content in chronological order, “did not significantly alter levels of issue polarization, affective polarization, political knowledge, or other key attitudes,” the researchers found. Nor did removing content shared by other users.Algorithms have been in lawmakers’ cross hairs for years, but many of the arguments for regulating them have presumed that they have real-world influence. This research complicates that narrative.But it also has implications that are far broader than social media itself, reaching some of the core assumptions around how we form our beliefs and political views. Brendan Nyhan, who researches political misperceptions and was a lead author of one of the studies, said the results were striking because they suggested an even looser link between information and beliefs than had been shown in previous research. “From the area that I do my research in, the finding that has emerged as the field has developed is that factual information often changes people’s factual views, but those changes don’t always translate into different attitudes,” he said. But the new studies suggested an even weaker relationship. “We’re seeing null effects on both factual views and attitudes.”As a journalist, I confess a certain personal investment in the idea that presenting people with information will affect their beliefs and decisions. But if that is not true, then the potential effects would reach beyond my own profession. If new information does not change beliefs or political support, for instance, then that will affect not just voters’ view of the world, but their ability to hold democratic leaders to account.Thank you for being a subscriberRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.I’d love your feedback on this newsletter. Please email thoughts and suggestions to [email protected]. You can also follow me on Twitter. More