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      It’s Not America’s Unhappiest Birthday

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, happy almost Independence Day. In the spirit of the holiday: Is America toast?Gail Collins: Well, gee, Bret, happy almost Independence Day back. Hope you’re not planning to celebrate by, um, shooting things off.Bret: Only my mouth. As usual.Gail: Seriously, please elaborate. If you’re thinking of the Supreme Court, I’m happy to join in any hand-wringing. But somehow I suspect you’ve got a different vision of doom.Bret: It won’t surprise you that I’ve been pretty happy with the court’s rulings this term, which I’m sure we’ll get to in a moment. But what I mean is the brokenness of almost every institution I can think of, a thought I’m borrowing from Alana Newhouse, the editor of Tablet magazine. Congress: broken. Public education: broken. The I.R.S.: broken. The Roman Catholic Church: broken. The immigration system: broken. Cities: broken. Civil discourse: broken. Families: broken. Race relations: broken.And the most broken thing of all: public trust. Trust in government, in news media, in police, in the scientific establishment. There’s a ton of scholarly research showing that when societies become low-trust, like in Lebanon or Brazil, they tend to fare poorly.Gail: I know that many very smart people are in the throes of despair, but I just can’t get there. People have been complaining about the schools since the beginning of time — and that’s a good thing; you certainly don’t want to be complacent about education.Bret: Did you know that The Times won a Pulitzer Prize for public service in 1944 for reporting on how shockingly ignorant American college freshmen were about U.S. history? And them wuz the good ol’ days.Gail: The I.R.S. is broken only to the extent that Republicans in Congress are refusing to supply funding to make the tax system work.Bret: And because the agency runs with the sort of peerless efficiency we generally expect from federal bureaucracies.Gail: And let’s see — as a longtime fallen-away Catholic, I don’t think the church is going to fix itself until we have both women priests and married priests. But it’s not as if it’s more broken now than it was throughout my life.Bret: I defer to you on this one. Just trying to think of the last time I read a story about a Catholic priest that didn’t involve child molestation or an effort by the church hierarchy to cover it up.Gail: The cities: They aren’t broken — most of them just need a whole lot more federal aid for housing and public safety. And gee, federal gun laws that crack down on villains from buying weapons down South and illegally shipping them to gun-control states like New York.I could go on, but I don’t want to monopolize our civil discourse. Are you really so superpessimistic?Bret: It’s easy to get carried away with gloom, and America has a history of bouncing back from bouts of depression and disorder. But I find it really hard to feel any optimism when Donald Trump seems to be cruising to the Republican renomination and Joe Biden is generating excitement among Democrats the way a colonoscopy generates excitement among people turning 50: something your doctor says you must do but only because the potential alternative is lethal.Gail: Oh, gosh, Bret, now whenever I look at Joe Biden, I’m going to think “colonoscopy president.”You know I’m very sorry he decided to run again and put a damper on all the promising younger Democrats who might have been great options to replace him. But still, he’s been a good president. Our problem isn’t really on the Democratic side. The Trump-remodeled Republican Party is one thing I’d put on a list of national disasters.Bret: Don’t forget it’s also an international disaster.Gail: Know you’re as down on Donald as I am. Should we talk Supreme Court? The big decisions — affirmative action, gay rights, student loans. Am I right guessing you agreed with all three?Bret: Well, don’t forget the court striking down the independent state legislature theory in Moore v. Harper, in which three conservative judges joined with three liberals to uphold the right of state judiciaries to have a say in how state legislatures draw congressional districts and conduct elections. Or the Counterman v. Colorado case, in which four conservative justices joined Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a 7-to-2 decision protecting free-speech rights. This may be a conservative court, but it’s not a MAGA court.Gail: Can see the Trump campaign calls …Bret: Regarding the cases you mentioned, I think even the Biden administration knew deep down that its effort to forgive billions in student loans without action from Congress was legally doubtful. And I don’t have to agree with a web designer’s religious beliefs about same-sex marriage to accept that she has a free-speech right not to participate in something she finds morally objectionable.Gail: How would you feel about a wedding dress designer who refused to take business from a mixed-race couple because her own moral beliefs are against Black people being able to marry white people?Bret: Well, obviously I’d find it abhorrent. But this current case is different, because it turned on whether a business owner could be obliged to design a website for a same-sex couple. That’s clearly a matter of speech, not the identity of the customer.Gail: This case comes out of Colorado, which has a very specific state law prohibiting discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. Once again our Supremes have made it clear that they’re only going to rule for stuff they like — to hell with details like legality.Bret: I don’t think either of us questions the right of the Supreme Court to overturn any state laws that violate fundamental constitutional rights, even if we don’t like the views of the people claiming those rights. As for the affirmative action case, I think it was one of the best decisions in the court’s history. I know you, um, dissent ….Gail: We had a big argument about that one last week. Having a diverse student body or workplace isn’t just a good goal; it’s critical to building and maintaining a truly free and equal society.Bret: Sure, provided diversity isn’t achieved by giving advantages to some racial groups at the expense of others. In the Harvard and University of North Carolina cases, Asian Americans were put at a significant disadvantage in the admissions process simply on account of their race.Gail: I’m still hopeful business leaders and school administrators will be able to work to the same end by concentrating on other factors — like, say, looking for applicants who have been able to overcome an impoverished upbringing.Bret: We agree on this. And as our colleague David French pointed out in a terrific column last week, Harvard could have long ago redesigned its admissions process to favor students on account of socioeconomic status rather than race and achieved roughly the same kind of diversity without putting race at the center of its admissions calculus.Gail: We’ll see. Still hate the idea that striving to have a student body or work force that’s racially diverse is some kind of mortal sin.Can we talk presidential politics for a minute? Feel kinda guilty for bringing it up, given that the nominating conventions are still more than a year away, but it does continue to fascinate me.Bret: By all means …Gail: I noticed that the proudly middle-middle-class governor Ron DeSantis got $1.25 million for his political memoir. Also that he just signed a bill allowing Florida roads to be built with a radioactive material.Bret: Phosphogypsum, a byproduct of making fertilizer, which is now kept in mountainous stacks across Florida. Used for construction in Europe, Australia and Japan, to no apparent ill effect. As for the memoir, Andrew Cuomo, a former New York governor, got $5.1 million for his book, shortly before he completely disgraced himself. I’d say the Florida governor’s advance is pretty modest, in the scheme of things.Gail: I retreat. For the moment. Anyhow, the DeSantis stories are just silly details in a race when the Republican front-runner keeps getting charged with major crimes. Now, this is supposed to be your flock, Bret. How do you keep focused?Bret: Gail, I read about the Republican Party the way I would about a former friend with whom I was once close but who tragically turned to a life of debauchery and crime in his demented old age.Gail: Is that why you’re feeling so down on everything, from the cities to religion?Bret: Might be. Hard to feel optimistic, politically, when you don’t really have a team to root for. But maybe you’re right and I’m too depressed about America. Still would much prefer to live here than in Britain, with its sky-high inflation. Or France, with its riots. Or Mexico, with its corruption and creeping authoritarianism. Or Canada, with its Justin Trudeau.So I’m back where we started. Happy Fourth of July!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

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      As DeSantis Campaigns, Disney Sees a Long Road Ahead

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      The company, long allergic to controversy, is likely to be the subject of very public and partisan criticism throughout the Republican primary.As Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has embarked on his presidential run, a main pillar of his message is “holding woke corporations accountable,” as a fund-raising email put it on Tuesday. And to hammer home that sentiment, he has been railing against one target at nearly every campaign stop: Disney.“We’ve put this company on a pedestal — in the past it has been like the all-American company,” Mr. DeSantis said at a town hall in New Hampshire last week. “But they’ve really embraced the idea of getting the sexualized content in the programming for the young kids. And that is just a line that I am not willing to cross.”It’s a theme he has repeated at recent rallies in South Carolina, Oklahoma and Iowa, alongside his claim that Disney is seeking “to rob our children of their innocence.”The two sides have been at loggerheads since last year, with Mr. DeSantis bragging in speeches and on a book tour about how he punished the company for opposing a contentious education law that opponents labeled “Don’t Say Gay.”Despite the partisan attacks, Disney remains one of the strongest brands in the world. But cracks in its public reputation are showing, and the company is now facing the uncomfortable possibility that it will remain under attack by Mr. DeSantis for at least another year. The Republican presidential primary runs until July 2024.That is an eternity for Disney, which has zealously tried for 100 years to avoid political and cultural pitfalls for fear of tarnishing its happily-ever-after brand. At least in theory, Disney’s family-friendly movies, TV shows and theme park rides are aimed at everyone. The last thing it wants is for Mickey Mouse to get dragged through the presidential campaign mud.“If you have a blue brand or red brand, regardless, you have less of a brand,” said John Gerzema, chief executive of the Harris Poll and a former brand consultant. The Axios Harris Poll’s latest corporate reputation rankings, published in May and based on surveys with 16,310 people, placed Disney at No. 77, down from No. 7 in 2017.How to handle the inflammatory claims by Mr. DeSantis has been a subject of debate among Disney executives. In April, Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, attacked Mr. DeSantis as “anti-business” and “anti-Florida” for his actions against the company, but he has not spoken publicly on the matter since May 10. (Mr. Iger declined an interview request for this article.) Swatting back at Mr. DeSantis now would most likely exacerbate the situation. A recent Reuters/Ipsos poll showed that half of Americans are not paying enough attention to the fight to have a fully formed opinion. Why risk more headlines?Unless attendance at the company’s theme parks begins to drastically weaken — no sign so far — there is no reason to worry about Disney’s overall business, analysts said. But the political fight has had an impact. The Axios Harris Poll ranked Disney as the fifth-most-polarizing brand in America; the company had been nearly neutral in 2021. “Disney’s intangible value, the perceptions of trust, citizenship, ethics and growth (a measure of its future potential and relevance in my life) are the fastest falling,” Mr. Gerzema said in an email.Privately, Disney executives poke holes in polls showing brand erosion. At the same time, they have taken steps to protect the company’s reputation. In April, Mr. Iger named Asad Ayaz as the company’s first-ever chief brand officer, saying he will be responsible for “stewarding and elevating the Disney brand globally.”Robert A. Iger, Disney’s chief executive, is also dealing with significant pressures of the company’s business.Mario Anzuoni/ReutersThe company has also put pressure on Mr. DeSantis in subtle ways.Mr. Iger, for instance, was photographed with Gov. Gavin Newsom of California at Disneyland on June 13. Mr. Newsom was there to discuss an expansion plan that would generate thousands of jobs. It was a reminder to Mr. DeSantis that Disney had halted a project in Florida. Mr. Newsom also attended Disneyland’s first-ever Pride Nite, posing for photos with visitors outfitted in rainbow Mickey Mouse ears.Part of Disney’s challenge involves the sound-bite nature of the campaign trail. Mr. DeSantis likes to say Disney is in favor of “sexualizing children.” Those words make their way onto local newscasts and social media platforms.When it joined more than 200 other companies in opposing the Florida education law, Disney said it was doing so because the statute “could be used to unfairly target gay, lesbian, nonbinary and transgender kids and families.” That is a long way from being in favor of sexualizing children.In a recent television advertisement that aired in Iowa and South Carolina, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis falsely suggested that the company was surreptitiously working to brainwash children. “Once upon a time, Disney films were for kids, not secret sexual content,” the ad’s narrator intones ominously.Disney executives have watched in horror as attacks by Mr. DeSantis have spread. “DeSantis and Trump Spar Over Who Hates Disney More,” a headline in The Orlando Sentinel read on May 30.A group of demonstrators, some displaying Nazi symbols and others holding DeSantis campaign signs, gathered outside Disney World’s entrance a few weeks ago, drawing national attention. “Oh my God, Mickey is trending in video next to swastikas,” an aghast Disney executive in Orlando texted a reporter that day.Mr. Iger is also dealing with unwelcome business developments, including poor results at the box office, a lingering screenwriters’ strike and the departure of Disney’s chief financial officer. Investors are growing antsy: Disney shares have been trading at about $89, down 7 percent from a year ago and 55 percent from their peak in March 2021.Disney’s earnings engine for the last 30 years — traditional television, including ESPN — has become a shadow of its former self, the result of cord cutting, advertising weakness and rising sports programming costs. Mr. Iger is betting that streaming will return the company to growth. But Disney+ has been shedding subscribers, and a broader streaming division remains unprofitable, losing nearly $2 billion since the start of the fiscal year.Disney is in the midst of a campaign to cut $5.5. billion in costs across the company. That involves the elimination of 7,000 jobs, about 4 percent of its global total, including notable layoffs at Pixar and ESPN.Another headache: Mr. Iger’s contract expires at the end of 2024. Who will take over? So far, it’s a mystery.Mr. Iger, 72, was supposed to be yachting in retired bliss by now. He ended his first run at Disney in 2021, handing the company’s reins to Bob Chapek, a former theme park executive. Mr. Chapek was fired in November, and Mr. Iger returned as chief executive.Mr. Chapek’s successes were overshadowed by missteps — one of the biggest being his response to the Florida education law. Among other things, it prohibits classroom discussion of sexual orientation and gender identity through the third grade and limits it for older students. (Florida has since extended the ban to all grades.)At first, Mr. Chapek tried not to take a side, prompting an employee revolt. He then denounced the law, angering Mr. DeSantis and leading to the fight that Disney is still contending with today.Mr. DeSantis moved to restrict the autonomy with which Disney was able to oversee its Disney World resort. The company quietly worked to sidestep the effort, catching the governor by surprise. In April, Mr. DeSantis punched back — and so did Disney, suing the governor in federal court, pulling the plug on a $1 billion project in Florida and saying another $17 billion in Disney World expansion spending was imperiled.Disney’s lawsuit is inching ahead, but any resolution is likely to take years. In the meantime, the political crossfire continues.On Tuesday, Disney filed paperwork with a federal court to propose a starting date for a trial in its lawsuit against Mr. DeSantis: July 15, 2024, the day the Republican National Convention begins.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      In North Carolina, a Voting Rights Clash Ahead of 2024

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      Republicans, whose edge in the state has narrowed in recent years, have gone on offense politically, leading to clashes over voting access and control over elections.A closely watched political fight is developing in North Carolina over voting rights and control of elections, as Democrats aim to recapture a presidential battleground and Republicans look to win back the governor’s office.Much as Georgia, Florida and Texas drew an outpouring of national attention and political cash as Republicans moved to restrict voting in the heated months after the 2020 election, North Carolina is poised for headline-grabbing confrontations over nearly every lever of the electoral apparatus.In the Republican-led legislature, the State House is considering two bills passed by the Senate that would sharply alter how elections are run, adding voting restrictions and effectively neutering the state elections board, which is now controlled by Gov. Roy Cooper, a Democrat. And in a looming redistricting clash, the newly conservative State Supreme Court has ordered lawmakers to redraw the state’s congressional and state legislative maps, which will most likely be far friendlier to Republicans.In North Carolina, every little edge could matter: The state, despite a long string of Republican presidential victories interrupted by Barack Obama’s 2008 triumph, has grown increasingly close. Donald J. Trump squeezed by in 2020 by just over a percentage point, and President Biden’s allies have signaled that they plan to invest in the state in 2024, seeing it as potentially winnable. Mr. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and other Republican candidates have already held events in North Carolina as they contend for their party’s nomination.“North Carolina is one of the states that have both of the factors that exacerbate this,” said Wendy Weiser, the vice president for democracy at the Brennan Center for Justice, referring to Republican attempts to wield more power over voting and elections. “It is a battleground state and a state that has a history of discrimination in voting.”She added, “It is definitely one of the most critical states to be worried about.”Seismic shifts in North Carolina politics cleared the runway for Republicans to go on offense. They now have veto-proof legislative majorities after a Democratic representative defected to the G.O.P. in April, limiting what Mr. Cooper can halt. And conservatives captured the State Supreme Court in last year’s elections, upending it from a 4-to-3 liberal lean to a 5-to-2 conservative advantage.Republicans gained veto-proof majorities in the North Carolina General Assembly this spring, and last year they won control of the State Supreme Court. Travis Dove for The New York TimesBehind the scenes, a network of right-wing activists and election deniers led by Cleta Mitchell, a lawyer who played a key role in efforts by Mr. Trump and his allies to overturn the 2020 election, has been meeting with North Carolina lawmakers, pushing its priorities and helping shape certain provisions.Across the country, Republicans continue to try to tighten voting laws, arguing that they are needed to protect “election integrity” and pointing to voters’ Trump-fueled worries about election fraud.So far this year, at least 11 states have passed 13 laws adding such restrictions, according to the Brennan Center. That is a slightly slower clip than in 2021, when Republican-led legislatures passed a flurry of voting laws, often in response to election lies spread by Mr. Trump and his supporters.North Carolina has a particularly tortured past on voting rights. Under the Voting Rights Act, parts of the state were forced to obtain federal clearance to change voting laws because of their history of racially discriminatory election rules. More recently, in 2016, a federal court struck down a Republican-led voter identification law, saying it had targeted “African Americans with almost surgical precision.”Republicans have defended the latest measures. State Senator Warren Daniel, one of the primary sponsors of the bill to change voting laws, said on the chamber floor that the measure “increases confidence and transparency in our elections.” He added that certain changes, including a provision requiring that all absentee ballots be received by the time polls close on Election Day, would bring North Carolina in line with many other states.Democrats, however, have denounced the voting proposals, with one state senator, Natasha Marcus, going so far as to call them a “jumbo jet of voter suppression.” During final debate on the bill, she said it “includes a lot of problematic things that are going to dissuade people from voting, throw out ballots, and suppress the votes of certain people in a way that I think is discriminatory and anti-democratic.”A key provision would effectively eliminate same-day voter registration and replace it with a system in which voters would cast provisional ballots, then be required to follow up and verify their identities. Only some forms of identification would be acceptable: Data from the State Board of Elections found that in the four general elections since 2016, over 36 percent of voters who used same-day registration had provided IDs that the new law would not allow.Gov. Roy Cooper at an abortion-rights rally in downtown Raleigh, N.C., in May. Republicans will seek to reclaim the governor’s office next year.Kate Medley for The New York TimesIn 2016, when Republican state lawmakers tried to eliminate same-day registration, a Federal District Court found that it was “indisputable that African American voters disproportionately used” that method of voting. Black voters, the court found, made up 35 percent of same-day registrants in the 2012 election, while representing only 22 percent of the electorate.The new legislation also makes mail voting more complicated, adding a requirement that voters’ signatures be verified and a “two-factor” authentication process that would be unique to North Carolina and has left voting experts confused as to how it would work. As in other states, far more Democrats in North Carolina now vote by mail, with Mr. Trump and his allies instilling a widespread Republican distrust of the practice. In the 2022 midterm elections, more than 157,000 people in the state voted by mail. Forty-five percent were Democrats, and 35 percent were independents.As Republican lawmakers wrote the legislation, they received outside help.Three G.O.P. lawmakers, including Mr. Daniel, met in May with Ms. Mitchell, the Trump-allied lawyer, and Jim Womack, a leader of the North Carolina Election Integrity Teams. That organization is part of a national network of right-wing election activists coordinated in part by Ms. Mitchell, who declined to comment.The two activists pressed the lawmakers on their laundry list of changes to election laws, including measures on same-day registration, absentee ballots and maintenance of voter lists, according to a video in which Mr. Womack summarized the meeting. The video was obtained by Documented, a liberal investigative group, and shared with The New York Times.“Same-day registration, we’re all in agreement, violent agreement, that same-day registration will now be a provisional ballot,” Mr. Womack said in the video of the meeting. “So if you’re going to same-day register, it’s going to give you at least a little bit of time, maybe 7 to 10 days, to have a chance at researching and challenging that voter under the law as opposed to where it is now, where it’s less than 24 hours’ opportunity to do that.”Mr. Daniel declined to answer questions about the role Ms. Mitchell and Mr. Womack played in drafting the bills.Republicans have defended their proposed voting measures, saying that they will increase confidence in elections.Kate Medley for The New York TimesA 2017 law aiming to restructure the state election board was struck down by the State Supreme Court. Now that the court is more conservative, Republicans have resurrected the effort.Currently, Mr. Cooper appoints all five members of the board, but only three can be Democrats. Under the Republican proposal, the board would have eight members, all appointed by state lawmakers — four by Democratic leaders and four by Republican ones.State Senator Paul Newton, the bill’s Republican sponsor, introduced it as a measure “intended to take partisan advantage out of elections administration entirely.”The bill would all but certainly cause deadlock on many major election issues — a prospect that has alarmed election officials and democracy experts.The current election board, after reports of harassment of election officials in 2022, stepped in with rules limiting access for poll watchers, a move that angered conservatives.And there is one big unknown: What would happen if the new election board deadlocked over the certification of an election?That possibility is unaddressed in the bill. Phil Berger, the Republican leader of the State Senate, told The News and Observer that any such deadlock would probably send the matter to the courts, where decisions could depend on the partisan lean of the judge or court in question.“That’s a tell right there,” said Robyn Sanders, a counsel at the Brennan Center. “It seems pretty clear to me that it was deliberately designed so that there would be those kinds of situations.” More

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      Biden Is Trying to Co-opt Trump’s Biggest Strength

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      Joe Biden just offered a window into what a Biden-Trump rematch might look like. Well, part of it, at least.The wildness of Donald Trump’s political style often obscures — at least to his critics — the more banal dimensions of his appeal. The strongest of Trump’s arguments, and the one Biden has the most to fear from in 2024, is economic. In 2016, Trump ran as a businessman savant who would wield his mastery of the deal in service of the American people. “My whole life I’ve been greedy, greedy, greedy,” Trump said. “I’ve grabbed all the money I could get. I’m so greedy. But now I want to be greedy for the United States.”Trump said that elites had sold you out. They traded your job to China. They let your bridges and roads and buildings crumble. They respected the work they did — work that happens behind a computer screen, work that needs fancy degrees, work that happens in offices rather than factories and cities rather than towns — and dismissed the work you did. They got rich and you got nothing. Exit polls found that Trump won large majorities among those who thought the economy was “fair” or “poor.”Trump did not, during his presidency, turn that critique into an agenda. There were islands of action — trade policy foremost among them — but the order of the day was incoherence. Infrastructure weeks came and went. Tax cuts were tilted toward the rich. There was no strategy to restore America’s manufacturing prowess or rebuild bargaining power for workers without college degrees.But Trump had the good fortune to take office during an economic boom. And he kept that boom going. He worked with congressional Republicans to tax less and spend more, budget deficits be damned. He appointed Jay Powell to the Federal Reserve, and Powell kept money cheap and the labor market hot. Unemployment, in February 2020, was 3.5 percent. Wages were rising and inflation was low.Then Covid hit, and Trump worked with Speaker Nancy Pelosi to flood the economy with trillions of dollars in support payments. Joblessness spiked, but workers overall didn’t suffer. This is Trump’s deepest well of strength in a 2024 rematch. Only about a third of voters approve of the job Biden has done on the economy. Polls show Trump is the more trusted economic manager, by far.On Wednesday, in Chicago, Biden previewed the counterargument he’ll make in a much-hyped speech defining “Bidenomics.” Biden’s case is this: What Trump only promised, I delivered.Biden set his economic policies in contrast to “40 years of trickle-down.” Trickle-down economics usually describes the theory that tax cuts at the top will lead to prosperity at the bottom. Biden is using it to describe a more expansive economic order — what sometimes gets called “neoliberalism.” Trickle-down, in his telling, was the philosophy that “it didn’t matter where you made things.” It “meant slashing public investment” and looking the other way as “three-quarters of U.S. industries grew more concentrated.” Forty years, as alert readers will note, encompasses not just the administrations of Donald Trump and George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush and Ronald Reagan, but Bill Clinton and, yes, Barack Obama.This is a point worth dwelling on. The Biden administration is thickly populated with veterans of the Obama and Clinton White Houses. But it doesn’t see itself in comfortable continuity with those legacies. It sees itself, in key ways, as a break with them.Back in May, Jake Sullivan, Biden’s national security adviser (and a key aide, before that, to both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama), made this explicit during a speech to the Brookings Institution. Sullivan slammed the belief that “the type of growth did not matter.” That had led, he said, to administrations that let Wall Street thrive while “essential sectors, like semiconductors and infrastructure, atrophied.” He dismissed the “assumption at the heart of all of this policy: that markets always allocate capital productively and efficiently.”And he tendered a modest mea culpa for his own party. “Frankly, our domestic economic policies also failed to fully account for the consequences of our international economic policies,” he said. In letting globalization and automation hollow out domestic manufacturing, Democrats had been part of a Washington consensus that “had frayed the socioeconomic foundations on which any strong and resilient democracy rests.”Biden’s speech in Chicago tried to show he was a Democrat who had learned these lessons. First, there was his emphasis on place. “I believe every American willing to work hard should be able to say where they grew up and stay where they grew up,” he said. “That’s Bidenomics.” Later, he said it again. “I believe that every American willing to work hard should be able to get a job no matter where they are — in the heartland, in small towns, in every part of this country — to raise their kids on a good paycheck and keep their roots where they grew up.”I talked to Jared Bernstein, the chairman of Biden’s Council of Economic Advisers, about the thinking here. “One of the pretty bereft assumptions of traditional economics is that you don’t need to worry about place because, as long as there are good jobs somewhere, people will go there and get them,” Bernstein told me. “It doesn’t really work that way.” One reason it doesn’t work that way is housing costs. “The idea that you can relocate from rural America, where housing is cheap, to expensive-housing America, even with the pay differentials, is a bit of a fantasy,” he said.Biden’s answer is built around the investments being made by the Inflation Reduction Act and the bipartisan infrastructure bill. You don’t install wind and solar farms in Manhattan and San Francisco. You don’t even necessarily do it in blue states, much to the chagrin of Democratic governors. Biden pointed to Weirton, W.Va., “where a steel mill closed in the beginning of the century” and, because of him, an iron-air battery plant is “being built on the same exact site, bringing back 750 good-paying jobs, bringing back a sense of pride and hope for the future.” The Rocky Mountain Institute, a clean energy research firm, estimates that Biden’s red states will get $623 billion in clean energy investments by 2030, compared with $354 billion for blue states.All these factories and battery plants and electric-vehicle charging stations and auto manufacturing facilities give Biden his strongest line against Trump. After comparing the infrastructure weeks Trump never delivered and “the infrastructure decade” he did, Biden noted: “Construction of manufacturing facilities here on U.S. soil grew only 2 percent on my predecessor’s watch in four years. Two percent. On my watch, it’s grown nearly 100 percent in two years.”Biden made a point of saying that in the economy he’s building, “we don’t need everyone to have a four-year degree. It’s great if you can get one; we’re trying to make it easier for you to get one. But you don’t need it to get a good-paying job anymore.”Bernstein didn’t pull his punch on this one. “I’ve been part of Democratic administrations where, basically, the solution to labor market woes was to go to college. The president has seen through that.” Biden, he continued, “realizes something everybody should know. About two-thirds of the work force isn’t college-educated. And there’s no version of Bidenomics that leaves two-thirds of the labor force out.”But here, Biden’s policy argument was a little thinner. He talked up his support for unions and apprenticeship programs, but he named more proposals to help people go to college than to help them get good jobs without a degree.The best thing Biden has done for less-educated workers is preside over a tight labor market. Unemployment has been below 4 percent since February 2022, and workers who are often on the margin are making gains. The Black-white employment gap has nearly closed, and wage gains have been particularly strong for workers without a college education. But the Biden administration’s pride in those numbers only underscores the real problem it faces: Americans felt good about the economy under Trump. They don’t feel good about it under Biden.The reason is simple: Real wages have been falling because inflation has been rising. Biden’s long-term investments, his efforts to rebuild American manufacturing and create millions of news jobs decarbonizing the American economy, will take time to pay off. People have to live in the economy now, not a decade from now.The good news — for both Biden and America — is that real wages have risen over the past few months. Inflation is down by more than half since its peak. Forecasters who were confidently predicting a recession in 2023 are now hedging. Mark Zandi, of Moody’s Analytics, thinks we’ll escape the downturn altogether. Whether the good economic news continues may well decide the 2024 election. Biden has co-opted the best of Trump’s ideas and pursued them with a diligence and focus that Trump never did. But that won’t mean much if voters still find themselves yearning for Trump’s economy.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

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      Trump Attacks Biden and Federal Law Enforcement at Fourth of July Event

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      Ahead of a holiday meant to celebrate the country’s history, the former president tore into American institutions and attacked his political opponents.Former President Donald J. Trump drew a crowd of thousands on Saturday to a quiet South Carolina town’s Independence Day event, where he assailed the integrity of major American institutions and painted a dark portrait of the country ahead of a holiday meant to celebrate its underpinnings.Speaking for nearly 90 minutes on Main Street in Pickens, S.C., with at least 20 American flags behind his back, Mr. Trump often eschewed the rhetorical flag-waving and calls for unity that have long been as central to Independence Day as hot dogs, baseball and fireworks.Instead, the twice-impeached and twice-indicted former president railed against Democrats and liberals, who he said threatened to rewrite America’s past and erase its future. He skewered federal law enforcement, which he accused without evidence of rampant corruption. And he attacked President Biden, enumerating what he saw as his character flaws and accusing him of taking bribes from foreign nations.“We want to have a respect for our country and for the office” of the presidency, Mr. Trump said. “But we really have no interest in people who are sick.”Mr. Trump’s comments were largely familiar. But the event highlighted the hold he has on his most fervent supporters — a challenge for his Republican rivals as they seek their party’s presidential nomination from far behind Mr. Trump in the polls.Despite sweltering humidity and heat, thousands of people swarmed the streets of Pickens — a town of about 3,000 in the shadow of the Blue Ridge Mountains — beginning at dawn.Pam Nichols, who described herself as an “insurrectionist,” said that she flew from Mundelein, Ill., to proudly support Mr. Trump in person. She had last done so in Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, she said, when a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol building. She did not talk in detail about her actions that day.“I was told to lay low after,” Ms. Nichols said, adding that she had watched a number of Mr. Trump’s speeches online since. “But I felt like it’s time to come out now. I’m tired of laying low.”The event in Pickens was only Mr. Trump’s second full-scale rally since he kicked off his campaign in November. Though such rallies were a hallmark of his past two campaigns, he has so far largely taken the stage at events organized by other groups.Bryan Owens, the director of marketing for Pickens, said that a representative for the Trump campaign reached out two weeks ago to ask to come to the town for its Independence Day celebration.Mr. Trump drew thousands of supporters, who began filling the streets of Pickens at dawn.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSouth Carolina, an early nominating state, was a key victory for Mr. Trump in the 2016 primaries as he sought to unite the Republican Party behind him. In 2020, he won the state handily, drawing overwhelming support in this region, a conservative swath of 10 counties in the northwest corner known as the Upstate.Mr. Owens said that the town’s decision was easy. Though he personally would not support Mr. Trump in 2024, he said, the opportunity to bring a former president to Pickens was too good to pass up.“This is a once-in-a-lifetime event for Pickens,” Mr. Owens continued, gesturing behind him to a crowd that packed the streets and stretched for several blocks. “And people that aren’t that familiar with small towns — they’ll get that experience.”Pickens’s Independence Day festivities began with a 5K race to raise money to repair water fountains on a local nature trail. American flags lined the streets, and signs encouraged visitors to shop local, even as businesses on Main Street were closed because of Secret Service measures.With parking near the site of the rally limited, residents were charging up to $100 — cash, many were quick to clarify — to let visitors leave cars in their driveways or on their lawns. For another $20, a golf cart might shuttle you from your car toward the rally’s entrance, outside a McDonald’s at the end of Main Street.Red, white and blue were the wardrobe colors of the day, from hat to boots. Tammy Milligan, of Myrtle Beach, S.C., arrived dressed in a Wonder Woman costume, which she said she started wearing around the time of Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in 2019.Even as she stood behind Mr. Trump wholeheartedly and called him a patriot, she acknowledged that much of the country felt differently — which she framed as an American ideal.“Well, everyone’s entitled to think what they want to think,” Ms. Milligan said. “That’s our country.”Mr. Trump was not so generous. He dwelled on the federal indictment that charged him with illegally retaining national security documents and obstructing the government’s efforts to reclaim them. And even as he denounced the prosecution as an egregious and politically motivated step, he vowed, as he has before, that he would reciprocate in kind if elected.Outlining a dark vision of America, Mr. Trump called his political opponents “sick people” and “degenerates” who were “running our country to the ground.” More

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      Hunter Biden’s Daughter and a Tale of Two Families

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      The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who has not yet met her father or her grandfather, is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.There is a 4-year-old girl in rural Arkansas who is learning to ride a camouflage-patterned four-wheeler alongside her cousins. Some days, she wears a bow in her hair, and on other days, she threads her long blond ponytail through the back of a baseball cap. When she is old enough, she will learn to hunt, just like her mother did when she was young.The girl is aware that her father is Hunter Biden and that her paternal grandfather is the president of the United States. She speaks about both of them often, but she has not met them. Her maternal grandfather, Rob Roberts, described her as whip-smart and funny.“I may not be the POTUS,” Mr. Roberts said in a text message, using an acronym for the president, but he said he would do anything for his granddaughter. He said she “needs for nothing and never will.”The story surrounding the president’s grandchild in Arkansas, who is not named in court papers, is a tale of two families, one of them powerful, one of them not. But at its core, the story is about money, corrosive politics and what it means to have the Biden birthright.Her parents ended a yearslong court battle over child support on Thursday, agreeing that Mr. Biden, who has embarked on a second career as a painter whose pieces have been offered for as much as $500,000 each, would turn over a number of his paintings to his daughter in addition to providing a monthly support payment. The little girl will select the paintings from Mr. Biden, according to court documents.“We worked it out amongst ourselves,” Lunden Roberts, the girl’s mother, said in an interview with The New York Times. “It was settled” in a discussion with Mr. Biden, she said.Hunter Biden did not respond to a request for comment for this article.Hunter Biden remains close to his father and often appears at White House events.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesMs. Roberts said she dropped a request to have the girl’s last name changed from Roberts to Biden. (Mr. Biden had fought against giving their daughter the Biden surname.) Ms. Roberts would only say that the decision to drop the request was mutual. “We both want what is best for our daughter, and that is our only focus,” she said.Though a trial planned for mid-July has been averted, people on both sides fear that the political toxicity surrounding the case will remain. Already, it has been extensively covered in conservative media, from Breitbart to Fox News, and conservative commentators assailed the Biden family after news of the settlement.Both Hunter Biden, the privileged and troubled son of a president, and Ms. Roberts, the daughter of a rural gun maker, have allies whose actions have made the situation more politicized. There is no evidence the White House is involved in those actions.Clint Lancaster, Ms. Roberts’s attorney, has represented the Trump campaign. He also called Garrett Ziegler, an activist and former Trump White House aide who has cataloged and published messages from a cache of Hunter Biden’s files that appear to have come from a laptop he left at a repair shop, to serve as an expert witness in the child support case. In the other corner, allies of Democratic groups dedicated to helping the Biden family have disseminated information about Mr. Ziegler and the Roberts family, seeking to highlight their Trump ties.And then there is President Biden.His public image is centered around his devotion to his family — including to Hunter, his only surviving son. In strategy meetings in recent years, aides have been told that the Bidens have six, not seven, grandchildren, according to two people familiar with the discussions.The White House did not respond to questions about the case, in keeping with how officials have answered questions about the Biden family before.Several of the president’s allies fear that the case could damage his re-election prospects by bringing more attention to a son whom some Democrats see as a liability. Others say the far right has focused on Hunter Biden, a private citizen, but ignored any moral and ethical failings of the former president, Donald J. Trump.“He’s under more indictments than two Super Bowl teams’ worth of players,” the author and political strategist Stuart Stevens, who left the Republican Party in 2016, said of Mr. Trump. “But that doesn’t matter: You have Hunter Biden. It’s just anger in search of an argument.”‘People Have an Image of Me’Lunden Roberts, 32, comes from a clan as tight-knit as the Bidens. Her father is a red-state gun manufacturer whose hunting buddies have included Donald Trump Jr., and who taught her at a young age how to hunt turkeys and alligators. She works for the family business, which sits on a winding country road dotted with pastures on the outskirts of Batesville.The pride of her family, the 5-foot-8 Ms. Roberts graduated with honors from Southside High School in Batesville and played basketball for Arkansas State University, where a team biography said she enjoyed hunting and skeet shooting. After graduating, she moved to Washington to study forensic investigation at George Washington University. She never completed the program. Photos from that time show her attending baseball games at Nationals Park and attending Drake and Kanye West concerts.Lunden Roberts arriving for a hearing in the paternity case in Batesville, Ark., in May. Ms. Roberts and Mr. Biden settled the case on Thursday.Karen Pulfer Focht/ReutersAlong the way, she met the son of a future president who was sliding into addiction and visiting Washington strip clubs.In mid-2018, Ms. Roberts was working as a personal assistant to Mr. Biden, according to a person close to her and messages from a cache of Mr. Biden’s files. Their daughter was born later that year, but by then, Mr. Biden had stopped responding to Ms. Roberts’s messages, including one informing him of the child’s birth date. Shortly after their daughter was born in November 2018, he removed Ms. Roberts and the child from his health insurance, which led Ms. Roberts to contact Mr. Lancaster.She filed a lawsuit in May 2019, and DNA testing that year established that Mr. Biden was the father of the child. In a motion for custody filing in December 2019, Ms. Roberts said that he had never met their child and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”Ms. Roberts said in an interview that she had grown used to the onslaught of scrutiny around the case: “I read things about myself that I have no clue about,” she said. But one thing she said she can’t stand is being called a bad mother. “People can call me whatever they want, but they can’t call me that,” she said.Her public Instagram account tells its own story: “I hope one day when you look back you find yourself proud of who you are, where you come from, and most importantly, who raised you,” she captioned a photo of the two of them at the beach earlier this year. In another photo, shared to her account in April 2022, her daughter wore an Air Force One baseball cap and stood in front of the Jefferson Memorial.“People have an image of me, but few get the picture,” Ms. Roberts wrote on another photo in July 2022.Ms. Roberts posted a photo of herself and her daughter in Washington last year. Seen through one prism, the photos are a powerful public testament of love from a mother to her daughter. Seen through another, they are exploitative, certainly from the perspective of Biden allies, who fear the images — and the child — are being weaponized against the Biden family.For her part, Ms. Roberts said she did not bring her daughter to Washington to punish the Bidens. She said she brought her to Washington because not many little girls get to say that their grandfather is the president.“She’s very proud of who her grandfather is and who her dad is,” Ms. Roberts said. “That is something that I would never allow her to think otherwise.”A Troubled SonHunter Biden, 53, is recovering from crack cocaine addiction and is the last surviving son of the president, who lost his eldest, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015. The younger Mr. Biden has five children, and has said that he fathered his fourth at a low point in his life.“I had no recollection of our encounter,” Mr. Biden wrote in his 2021 memoir. “That’s how little connection I had with anyone. I was a mess, but a mess I’ve taken responsibility for.”Before Thursday’s settlement, Mr. Biden had paid Ms. Roberts upward of $750,000, according to his attorneys, and had sought to reduce his $20,000-a-month child support payment on the grounds that he did not have the money. The new amount is lower than what had been originally ordered by the court, according to a person familiar with the case.“I’m very proud of my son,” President Biden told reporters recently.Al Drago for The New York TimesTrial or no trial, Mr. Biden will remain one of his father’s political vulnerabilities. Since his addiction spiraled out of control and his dealings with foreign governments caught the attention of conservatives, the younger Mr. Biden’s choices have become grist for memes, conservative cable news panels and Republican fund-raising. The most recent round kicked off after he struck a deal with the Justice Department to plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and accept terms that would allow him to avoid prosecution on a separate gun charge.On top of that, Mr. Biden has been the subject of multiple congressional investigations, and the contents of the laptop he left at a repair shop have been pored over and disseminated by activists, who say his private communications show criminal wrongdoing.In the White House, matters involving Hunter are so sensitive that only the president’s most senior advisers talk to him about his son, according to people familiar with the arrangement.Through it all, the president has been staunchly supportive. Rather than distance himself, Mr. Biden has included Hunter on official trips, traveled with him aboard Marine One, and ensured that he is on the guest list at state dinners.“I’m very proud of my son,” the president told reporters recently.‘Life’s Greatest Blessing’President Biden has worked over the past half-century to make his last name synonymous with family values and loyalty. The strength of his political persona, which emphasizes decency, family and duty, was enough to defeat Mr. Trump the first time around, and he would need to keep it intact if Mr. Trump is the Republican nominee in 2024.On a proclamation issued on Father’s Day, Mr. Biden said that his father had “taught me that, above all, family is the beginning, middle and end — a lesson I have passed down to my children and grandchildren.” He added that “family is life’s greatest blessing and responsibility.”President Biden; Jill Biden, the first lady; and their children and grandchildren watching fireworks from the White House after Mr. Biden’s inauguration in 2021.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince they entered the White House, President Biden and Jill Biden, the first lady, have centered their family lives around their grandchildren, and have given them the benefits that come with living in close contact with the White House.Naomi Biden, 29, is Hunter’s eldest child, from his first marriage, to Kathleen Buhle, which ended in 2017. Ms. Biden was married on the South Lawn of the White House last year in a Ralph Lauren dress that she called the product of her “American(a) dreams.” She and her sisters have taken trips around the world with the president and first lady. Hunter married Melissa Cohen in 2019. His youngest child, who is named for Beau and was born in 2020, is photographed frequently with his grandparents.In April, President Biden told a group of children that he had “six grandchildren. And I’m crazy about them. And I speak to them every single day. Not a joke.”Hunter Biden’s youngest son, Beau, is frequently seen traveling and attending events with his grandparents.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesBut the president has not yet met or publicly mentioned his other grandchild. His White House has not answered questions about whether he will publicly acknowledge her now that the child support case is settled.Still, Mr. Stevens, the political strategist, said that Mr. Biden’s support of his son, even against an onslaught of Republican criticism and ugly scandals, has only emphasized his unconditional love for his family.“The net positive of this has gone to Biden, by the way,” Mr. Stevens said of the president. “He stuck by him.”Political ConcernsFew involved think the particulars of this case, even though it has been settled, will stay at a simmer, especially given its ubiquity in right-wing media.“In yet another sweetheart deal, Hunter Biden got off easy in his child support case,” wrote the editorial board of The New York Post, which has followed the proceedings closely.Aside from the news coverage and commentary, allies of the Biden family are privately worried that the involvement of right-wing operatives in the matter has made any engagement harder for the family.Mr. Ziegler, who was named as an expert witness in the case, had a footnote role in Mr. Trump’s efforts to challenge the 2020 election results: In December 2020, Mr. Ziegler escorted Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, and the attorney Sidney Powell into the Oval Office, where a group discussed with Mr. Trump a plan to seize control of voting machines in key states. Mr. Ziegler’s White House guest privileges were later revoked.Mr. Ziegler declined to confirm his involvement in the child support case.Ms. Roberts’s attorney, Mr. Lancaster, also has a background in conservative activism. He is vocal on social media about his support for Mr. Trump, often retweeting criticism from conservative outlets and Elon Musk, the owner of Twitter. He also worked as an attorney for the Trump campaign during an electoral vote recount in Wisconsin after the 2020 election.Supporters of former President Donald J. Trump at a rally in 2020. Allies of the Biden family are concerned that the paternity case will be used against President Biden in the 2024 campaign.Al Drago for The New York TimesOn the other side, people affiliated with left-leaning organizations, including Facts First USA, an advocacy group run by David Brock, are wary of what the team surrounding Ms. Roberts may do as the 2024 campaign gets underway.Members of the group, which operates independently of the White House and has taken a more adversarial approach to critics than the Biden administration does, have circulated a photo of Ms. Roberts’s father posing with Donald Trump Jr. Mr. Roberts said in a text message that he has gone hunting with Mr. Trump but that he did not recall when they had first met.The Republican pollster Frank Luntz said it was “a waste of time” for activists to focus on attacking the president’s family because voters do not care about Hunter Biden as much as they care about other issues, including Ukraine and inflation.“You have the responsibility to hold people accountable, but I want to be clear: It will not change a single vote,” he said of Hunter Biden’s legal and personal problems.If the Roberts family is taking political advice — outside of any that might come from the family attorney — they aren’t saying. In Batesville, the girl’s maternal grandmother, Kimberly Roberts, said in a brief telephone interview that she would not comment on the case.She did have one thing to say, though.“My granddaughter is happy, healthy, and very loved,” Ms. Roberts said, before hanging up.Kenneth P. Vogel More

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      DeSantis Uses L.G.B.T.Q Issues to Attack Trump in Twitter Video

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      The Florida governor sought to contrast his record opposing gay and transgender rights in a video highlighting comments made by the former president during the 2016 campaign — but has gotten some pushback.Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign shared a provocative video on Friday attacking the record of former President Donald J. Trump regarding L.G.B.T.Q. people that was widely condemned as homophobic, including by a prominent group representing gay and lesbian Republicans.The video, posted on Twitter by the “DeSantis War Room” account, opens by showing Mr. Trump proclaiming, “I will do everything in my power to protect our L.G.B.T.Q. citizens.” Mr. Trump made those remarks at the Republican National Convention in July 2016, after invoking the horror of the Pulse nightclub shooting the previous month. The massacre, at a popular gay nightclub in Orlando, in Mr. DeSantis’s home state of Florida, left 49 people dead.The video goes on to show Mr. Trump expressing support for transgender people using the bathrooms of their choice. It then attempts to contrast Mr. Trump’s position with the hard-line stance of Mr. DeSantis, abruptly transitioning into a jarring series of images of Mr. DeSantis (including one with lasers shooting out of his eyes) that are interspersed with right-wing internet memes (the smiling, heavily muscled man known online as “GigaChad”), news headlines (“Pride event in St. Cloud canceled after DeSantis signs ‘Protection of Children Act’ into law”) and pop culture references (among them shots of the titular character from the film version of the serial killer narrative “American Psycho”).The DeSantis team shared the video the same day that the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Christian web designer who refused to create wedding websites for same-sex couples, putting the rights of L.G.B.T.Q. people on shaky legal footing.Mr. DeSantis has frequently cast himself as a lightning rod for unfair criticism by liberals and has used such attacks to rally support from his political base. The video, compiled by another Twitter user, seemed intended, in part, to attract more liberal outrage at a time when he is struggling to gain traction in polls against Mr. Trump.It was the type of move — devised to provoke a reaction — that Mr. Trump often deployed from his Twitter account during the 2016 campaign.Earlier in his career, as a congressman, Mr. DeSantis did not seem consumed by combating the L.G.B.T.Q. community. At the time, he privately told a counterpart he didn’t care about people’s sexuality.And when he first ran for governor five years ago, Mr. DeSantis suggested he would take a more moderate approach on some L.G.B.T.Q. rights issues, saying that Republicans needed to move beyond debating which bathrooms transgender people should use. “Getting into bathroom wars, I don’t think that’s a good use of our time,” he said at a Republican candidate forum in 2018.But in this campaign for the Republican nomination, Mr. DeSantis has sought to highlight — and expand — his ultraconservative credentials in an effort to position himself to the right of his chief rival.The new video drew criticism not only from Democrats but also from some in his own party, including the Log Cabin Republicans, which describes itself as the nation’s largest organization for “L.G.B.T. conservatives and allies.” The group, which endorsed Mr. Trump in 2019 and has used his Mar-a-Lago club for events, called the video “divisive and desperate” and said it “ventured into homophobic territory.”Sarah Longwell, a moderate Republican political strategist, wrote on Twitter: “The consultants who think this kind of ‘running to Trump’s right’ is going to be effective should be sacked.” And Adam Kinzinger, a former Republican congressman and Trump critic, said, “Outrage after outrage is the only way these guys know how to campaign.”Mr. DeSantis’s campaign shared the video on Twitter with the text: “To wrap up ‘Pride Month,’ let’s hear from the politician who did more than any other Republican to celebrate it,” referring to Mr. Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump, who spoke this week at an event in New Hampshire, is well ahead of Mr. DeSantis in national polls.John Tully for The New York TimesMr. Trump, who grew up in liberal New York and was a businessman for decades, was seen during his 2016 campaign by some Republicans as more open to the L.G.B.T.Q. community. But he also chose Mike Pence, then the governor of Indiana and a staunch conservative who had signed into a law a religious freedom act that was seen as hostile to L.G.B.T.Q. people, as his running mate. As president, Mr. Trump systematically dismantled L.G.B.T.Q. protections put into effect by President Barack Obama, particularly those concerning transgender people. The video shared by the DeSantis campaign reflects a race to the right on a number of issues in the primary. In Florida, Mr. DeSantis has signed bills restricting classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity, punishing businesses that admit minors to “adult live performances” such as drag shows and making it a misdemeanor trespassing offense for people to use bathrooms in public buildings that do not correspond to their sex at birth.And with its barrage of references to obscure right-wing memes, the video also shows how heavily Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has leaned into the brash and provocative parlance of fringe online conservatives. The Florida governor, who is running well behind Mr. Trump in national polls, signaled from the beginning of his campaign that he hoped to connect with right-wing voters online, including by announcing his candidacy in a glitchy livestream event on Twitter with Elon Musk.But by openly courting such insular conservative communities, Mr. DeSantis, who has told donors that he is the only Republican who can beat President Biden, may risk alienating the more moderate voters he will most likely need in a general election.The video also risks putting off some Republican donors, some of whom are more moderate on issues like L.G.B.T.Q. rights and are watching to see how Mr. DeSantis progresses before committing to his candidacy.In addition to implicitly comparing Mr. DeSantis to Christian Bale’s homicidal character in “American Psycho,” who in the book is a mega-fan of then-businessman Donald J. Trump, the video — set to a thrumming bass — without much explanation also highlights Leonardo DiCaprio’s role as a hedonistic, drug-addicted financial fraudster in the film “The Wolf of Wall Street,” as well as Brad Pitt’s depiction of Achilles in “Troy.” (Achilles, the hero of “The Iliad,” was often portrayed in later Classical Greek literature as the lover of his male companion, Patroclus.)For his part, Mr. Trump noted last month, sounding pleased, that the issue of limiting rights for transgender people had become a major animating force for conservative Republican voters.“It’s amazing how strongly people feel about that,” Mr. Trump said during a speech in North Carolina in June. “I talk about transgender, everybody goes crazy. Five years ago, you didn’t know what the hell it was.” More

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      Bolsonaro ha sido inhabilitado en Brasil. Trump busca la presidencia en EE. UU.

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      Aunque el comportamiento de ambos expresidentes fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas que enfrentan han sido drásticamente diferentes.El presidente de extrema derecha, que no era el favorito en las encuestas, alertó sobre un fraude electoral a pesar de no tener ninguna prueba. Tras perder, afirmó que las elecciones estaban amañadas. Miles de sus seguidores —envueltos en banderas nacionales y engañados por teorías de la conspiración— procedieron a asaltar el Congreso, buscando anular los resultados.Ese escenario describe las elecciones presidenciales más recientes en las democracias más grandes del hemisferio occidental: Estados Unidos y Brasil.Pero si bien el comportamiento de los dos expresidentes —Donald Trump y Jair Bolsonaro— fue muy similar, las consecuencias políticas han sido drásticamente diferentes.Si bien Trump enfrenta cargos federales y estatales que lo acusan de pagarle a una actriz de cine porno por su silencio y de manejar de manera indebida documentos clasificados, sigue siendo la figura más influyente de la derecha estadounidense. Más de dos años después de dejar la Casa Blanca, Trump parece estar destinado a convertirse en el candidato republicano a la presidencia, con una amplia ventaja en las encuestas.En Brasil, Bolsonaro ha enfrentado represalias más rápidas y feroces. También enfrenta numerosas investigaciones criminales. Las autoridades allanaron su casa y confiscaron su teléfono celular. Y el viernes, menos de seis meses después de que dejara el poder, el Tribunal Superior Electoral de Brasil votó para inhabilitar a Bolsonaro de optar a un cargo político durante lo que queda de la década.Las secuelas de un asalto en el complejo de oficinas del gobierno brasileño por parte de los partidarios de Bolsonaro en enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesEl tribunal dictaminó que el expresidente abusó de su poder cuando hizo afirmaciones sin fundamento sobre la integridad de los sistemas de votación de Brasil en la televisión estatal. Su próxima oportunidad a la presidencia sería en las elecciones de 2030, en las que tendría 75 años.Trump, incluso si es hallado culpable en un caso antes de las elecciones del año que viene, no sería descalificado automáticamente de postularse a la presidencia.El contraste entre las consecuencias que enfrentan ambos hombres refleja las diferencias de las estructuras políticas y gubernamentales de los dos países. El sistema estadounidense ha dejado el destino de Trump en manos de los votantes y del proceso lento y metódico del sistema judicial. En Brasil, los tribunales han sido proactivos, rápidos y agresivos para eliminar cualquier cosa que consideren una amenaza para la joven democracia de la nación.Las elecciones estadounidenses están a cargo de los estados, con un mosaico de reglas en todo el país sobre quién es elegible para postularse y cómo. En muchos casos, uno de los pocos obstáculos para aparecer en una boleta es recolectar suficientes firmas de votantes elegibles.En Brasil, las elecciones están regidas por el Tribunal Superior Electoral, el cual, como parte de sus funciones, sopesa regularmente si los candidatos tienen derecho a postularse para un cargo.“El alcalde, el gobernador o el presidente tienden a abusar de su poder para ser reelectos. Por eso creamos la ley de inelegibilidad”, dijo Ricardo Lewandowski, juez jubilado del Supremo Tribunal Federal de Brasil y expresidente del Tribunal Superior Electoral.La ley brasileña establece que los políticos que abusen de sus cargos sean temporalmente inelegibles para cargos. Como resultado, el Tribunal Superior Electoral ha bloqueado rutinariamente la postulación de políticos, incluidos, junto con Bolsonaro, tres expresidentes.“Lo que nuestro sistema trata de hacer es proteger al votante”, dijo Lewandowski. “Quienes cometieron delitos contra el pueblo deben permanecer fuera del juego durante cierto periodo de tiempo hasta que se rehabiliten”.Según algunos analistas, esta estrategia ha puesto demasiado poder en manos de los siete jueces del Tribunal Superior Electoral, en lugar de que sean los votantes quienes decidan.“Es una diferencia estructural entre los dos países”, dijo Thomas Traumann, analista político y exsecretario Especial de Comunicación Social de una presidenta brasileña de izquierda. Los políticos en Brasil conocen las reglas, dijo, y el sistema ha ayudado a mantener alejados del poder a algunos políticos corruptos. “Por otro lado, estás impidiendo que la gente decida”, dijo.El sistema electoral centralizado de Brasil también impidió que Bolsonaro librara una batalla tan prolongada por los resultados de las elecciones como lo hizo Trump.En Estados Unidos, un conteo lento de votos retrasó una semana la proclamación del ganador y luego el proceso del Colegio Electoral tomó varios meses más. Cada estado también realizó sus propias elecciones y auditorías. Eso le dio a Trump, y a los políticos y grupos que lo apoyaban, tiempo y varios frentes para implementar ataques contra el proceso.En Brasil, un país con 220 millones de habitantes, el sistema electrónico de votación contó las boletas en dos horas. La autoridad electoral central y no los medios de comunicación, procedieron a anunciar al ganador esa noche, en una ceremonia que involucró a líderes del Congreso, los tribunales y el gobierno.El sistema de votación electrónica de Brasil contó las papeletas en dos horas.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesBolsonaro permaneció en silencio durante dos días pero, con pocas opciones, al final se hizo a un lado.Sin embargo, ese enfoque también conlleva riesgos.“Se podría alegar que ser tan centralizado también te hace propenso a más abusos que en el sistema estadounidense, que está más descentralizado y permite básicamente una supervisión local”, dijo Omar Encarnación, profesor del Bard College que ha estudiado los sistemas democráticos en ambos países.Sin embargo, añadió, en Estados Unidos, varios estados han aprobado recientemente leyes de votación restrictivas. “Resulta claro que son dos modelos muy diferentes y, dependiendo del punto de vista, se podría argumentar cuál es mejor o peor para la democracia”.En el periodo previo a las elecciones, el sistema de Brasil también le permitió combatir de manera mucho más agresiva contra cualquier desinformación o conspiración antidemocrática. El Supremo Tribunal Federal ordenó redadas y arrestos, bloqueó a miembros del Congreso de las redes sociales y tomó medidas para prohibir a las empresas de tecnología que no cumplieran con las órdenes judiciales.El resultado fue una campaña radical e implacable destinada a combatir la desinformación electoral. Sin embargo las medidas también generaron reclamos generalizados de extralimitación. Algunas redadas se enfocaron en personas solo porque estaban en un grupo de WhatsApp que había mencionado un golpe de Estado. Algunas personas fueron encarceladas temporalmente sin juicio por criticar al tribunal. Un congresista fue sentenciado a prisión por amenazar a los jueces en una transmisión en vivo.Estas acciones estrictas de los tribunales han ampliado su enorme influencia en la política brasileña en los últimos años, incluido su papel central en la llamada investigación Lava Jato que envió a prisión al presidente Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.“La audacia, la temeridad con la que los tribunales han actuado, no solo contra Bolsonaro, sino incluso contra Lula, sugiere que los tribunales se están comportando de una manera un tanto —odio usar la palabra irresponsable— pero tal vez incluso represiva”, dijo Encarnación.Sin embargo, a pesar de los esfuerzos del tribunal, miles de partidarios de Bolsonaro procedieron a atacar y saquear los recintos del poder de la nación en enero, una semana después de la toma de posesión de Lula.Si bien la situación fue inquietantemente similar al asalto al Capitolio de Estados Unidos el 6 de enero de 2021, los roles de los dos expresidentes fueron diferentes.Cientos de simpatizantes de Bolsonaro fueron detenidos temporalmente después de los disturbios de enero.Victor Moriyama para The New York TimesAmbos avivaron los reclamos y convencieron a sus seguidores de que se cometió un supuesto fraude, pero Trump les ordenó de manera explícita que marcharan hacia el Capitolio durante un discurso en las inmediaciones del lugar.Cuando los simpatizantes de Bolsonaro formaron su propia turba, Bolsonaro se encontraba a miles de kilómetros en Florida, donde permaneció por tres meses.En ambos países, cientos de invasores fueron arrestados y condenados, e investigaciones de los congresos están investigando lo sucedido. Por lo demás, las consecuencias han sido distintas.Al igual que Trump, Bolsonaro también ha defendido a sus seguidores.El viernes, Bolsonaro dijo que la revuelta no había sido un intento de golpe de Estado sino “viejitas y viejitos con banderas brasileñas en sus espaldas y biblias bajo sus brazos”.Pero las repercusiones políticas han sido diferentes.En Estados Unidos, gran parte del Partido Republicano ha aceptado las afirmaciones infundadas de fraude electoral, los estados han aprobado leyes que dificultan el voto y los votantes han elegido candidatos para el Congreso y las legislaturas estatales que niegan los resultados de las elecciones presidenciales.En Brasil, la clase política se ha alejado en gran medida del discurso de fraude electoral, así como del propio Bolsonaro. Los líderes conservadores están impulsando en la actualidad a un gobernador más moderado como el nuevo abanderado de la derecha brasileña.Encarnación afirmó que, a pesar de sus problemas, el sistema democrático de Brasil puede proporcionar un modelo sobre cómo combatir las nuevas amenazas antidemocráticas.“Básicamente, las democracias están luchando contra la desinformación y Dios sabe qué otras cosas con instituciones muy anticuadas”, dijo. “Necesitamos actualizar el hardware. No creo que haya sido diseñado para personas como las que enfrentan estos países”.Jack Nicas es el jefe de la corresponsalía en Brasil, que abarca Brasil, Argentina, Chile, Paraguay y Uruguay. Anteriormente reportó de tecnología desde San Francisco y, antes de integrarse al Times en 2018, trabajó siete años en The Wall Street Journal. @jacknicas • Facebook More