Presidential Election of 2024

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      Joseph J. Ellis: The Ideals of the Founders Are on the Ballot

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      The jury remains out on the verdict of the American electorate. While historians are virtually omniscient at predicting the past, we are not much better than most observers at predicting the future.Two predictions are, however, reasonably obvious: first, that Donald Trump will struggle to accept the verdict if he loses; second, that Kamala Harris will almost certainly win the popular vote, but could lose the election because of that strange American contraption called the Electoral College.More broadly, a longstanding American dilemma is on the ballot. Are a majority of American voters prepared to accept and even embrace the fact that we are a multiracial society — in effect, that Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream has become reality? Ms. Harris’s supporters are betting that we are. Mr. Trump’s supporters are betting that we are not.The founding fathers did not think about the popular vote and electoral college vote the way we do. Yet that disjunction looms over this election.There is also a gender dimension to our American dilemma that further complicates the outcome. Do we fully and finally believe the last six words of the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag, “with liberty and justice for all”? Even more than Barack Obama, Ms. Harris puts that question to the acid test. And polls will not provide a reliable answer, because many white and Black men will not reveal their deeper motives, even to themselves. Namely, that they cannot vote for a woman.As we prepare to celebrate the 250th anniversary of American independence, the idea of human equality pronounced at the American founding will be front and center. We will be bombarded with Jefferson’s lyrical tribute to human equality. But we will also hear about the reality of racial and gender prejudice embraced by several prominent founders and the vast majority of American citizenry over which they presided.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times Endorsement Calls Are Self-Sabotage

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      I can think of some compelling reasons that leading independent newspapers should not be in the business of endorsing candidates for president.Unfortunately, the acts of self-sabotage by The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times do not reflect any of them. And so one more bulwark against autocracy erodes.The owners of both papers took as long as possible to reveal what they had already concluded: For the first time in years — since 2004 for The Los Angeles Times and 1988 for The Post — each would refrain from endorsing a presidential candidate. This inspired Donald Trump’s campaign to whoop that even Vice President Kamala Harris’s “fellow Californians know she’s not up for the job.” The Times’s editorial editor, Mariel Garza, resigned and said the decision made the organization look “craven and hypocritical.” Others followed.The Post’s endorsement of Ms. Harris had reportedly already been drafted, only to be shelved on the orders of its owner, Amazon’s founder, Mr. Bezos. But it fell to the paper’s publisher, William Lewis, to announce the decision, saying, “We are returning to our roots of not endorsing presidential candidates.” Its editorial editor, David Shipley, in the face of his mutinous editorial board, said he owned the outcome, which he called a way of creating “independent space” for voters to make up their own minds.I’m not worried that Post and Los Angeles Times readers will have trouble deciding how to vote. I’m worried they’ll have trouble deciding whom to trust.Both papers are owned by billionaires — Patrick Soon-Shiong at The Times and Mr. Bezos at The Post — and it is this grim similarity that raises alarms, especially in the case of The Post, whose “Democracy dies in darkness” motto now moans like an epitaph. Rightly or wrongly, readers will reasonably conclude The Post backed off an endorsement of Ms. Harris to protect the owner’s business interests. Those interests are vast, spread across commerce, the military and, increasingly, the frothing frontiers of artificial intelligence. How now can readers trust The Post’s often excellent news coverage of those topics, which are core to its mission? It did not help the paper’s credibility when, on the day the nonendorsement was announced, Mr. Trump was spotted greeting executives of Mr. Bezos’ Blue Origin space company in Austin, Texas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Michelle Obama Makes a Searing Appeal to Men: ‘Take Our Lives Seriously’

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      Michelle Obama issued an impassioned plea to American voters on Saturday — and, in particular, American men — anchored in a searing and intimate depiction of women’s bodies and reproductive health, and what she described as the life-or-death stakes of returning former President Donald J. Trump to power.In her first appearance on the campaign trail during this election, Mrs. Obama, long reluctant to engage in the political arena, described the far-reaching consequences of the 2022 Supreme Court decision overturning the constitutional right to abortion, in the concrete terms of personal tragedy.“If your wife is shivering and bleeding on the operating room table during a routine delivery gone bad, her pressure dropping as she loses more and more blood, or some unforeseen infection spreads and her doctors aren’t sure if they can act, you will be the one praying that it’s not too late,” Mrs. Obama said. “You will be the one pleading for somebody, anybody, to do something.”And while she acknowledged the anger that many Americans feel about the “slow pace of change” in the country, she warned: “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”Michelle Obama, the former first lady, spoke about the potential risks to women’s health care in frank language. “If we don’t get this election right, your wife, your daughter, your mother, we as women, will become collateral damage to your rage.”Emily Elconin for The New York TimesMrs. Obama’s words — at a rally in Michigan where she introduced Vice President Kamala Harris — amounted to an extraordinary centering of women’s bodies and their private experiences in an American presidential election. She discussed menstrual cramps and hot flashes, describing the shame and uncertainty girls and women feel about their bodies. She told women they should demand to be treated as more than “baby-making vessels.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ‘This Is Real’: Excerpts From Michelle Obama’s Speech on the Election

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      Michelle Obama made the case for Vice President Kamala Harris on Saturday night in Kalamazoo, Mich., with a striking speech about the consequences that the election will have for women’s bodies and reproductive health.Here are excerpts:“Do not put our lives in the hands of politicians, mostly men.”“I want folks to understand the chilling effect, not just on critical abortion care, but on the entirety of women’s health — all of it. There are good reasons why so many women and physicians are horrified by what’s happened since Donald Trump’s justices overturned Roe v Wade. We’re seeing women scrambling across state lines to get the care they need.”“This is real. So, do you think Donald Trump is thinking about the consequences for the millions of women who will be living in medical deserts? Does anyone think he has the emotional maturity and foresight to come up with a plan to protect us? Y’all, we are teetering on the edge.”“And this will not just affect women, it will affect you and your sons. The devastating consequences of teen pregnancy won’t just be borne by young girls, but also by the young men who are the fathers. They, too, will have their dreams of going to college, their entire future is totally upended by an unwanted pregnancy.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump, Who Once Proposed a Muslim Registry, Now Courts Their Votes

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      When he ran for president eight years ago, Donald J. Trump floated the idea of creating a national registry of Muslims and proposed banning immigration from Muslim countries. So it was striking to see him on Saturday at a rally in suburban Detroit celebrating endorsements from a handful of Muslim and Arab American leaders.It was a political turnaround that would have seemed unthinkable during Mr. Trump’s first campaign, when he frequently spouted anti-Muslim rhetoric. As president, Mr. Trump blocked travel from several predominantly Muslim countries, creating travel chaos. And at moments during this campaign, he has drawn on the anti-Muslim sentiments from earlier in his political career.But in a tight election, Mr. Trump and his campaign have been trying to win the support of Arab American and Muslim voters who may be disaffected with Democrats over President Biden’s handling of the war in Gaza and the party’s positions on social issues. Their support is seen as especially important in Michigan, a key battleground state with many Arab American and Muslim voters.At Saturday’s rally in Novi, Mich., a suburb of Detroit, Mr. Trump invited a group of people that his campaign said included a number of Muslim and Arab American leaders to the stage, where they endorsed him. (Mr. Trump claimed they were “highly respected leaders,” but his campaign has not provided any details about who most of them were, making it difficult to assess their prominence.)“We as Muslims stand with President Trump because he promises peace,” Belal Alzuhiry, an imam from the Detroit area, said in front of hundreds at Suburban Collection Showplace, an exhibition center. “We are supporting Donald Trump because he promised to end war in the Middle East and Ukraine.”Mr. Trump has not provided a plan by which he would end the war in Ukraine or the widening one in the Middle East, which began when Hamas invaded Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Mayor Adams Bucks Harris and Democrats on Calling Trump a ‘Fascist’

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      Mayor Eric Adams of New York said on Saturday that former President Donald J. Trump should not be called a “fascist” or compared to Adolf Hitler, a rejection of Democrats’ closing focus in the final days of the 2024 campaign on the eve of Mr. Trump’s rally in Midtown Manhattan.The embattled mayor, who has been indicted on federal bribery and corruption charges, made the comments at a time when Mr. Trump has been trying to make inroads with Black voters, and especially Black men, in his campaign against Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic nominee.Ms. Harris has said in recent days that she agrees with Mr. Trump’s former White House chief of staff, Lt. Gen. John F. Kelly, that the former president meets the definition of a fascist. Mr. Kelly also described Mr. Trump as offering praise for Hitler.Mr. Adams, mayor of America’s largest city and one of the country’s most prominent Black elected officials, was briefing reporters about security plans ahead of Mr. Trump’s rally Sunday at Madison Square Garden when he was asked if he believed the former president was a fascist.“I have had those terms hurled at me by some political leaders in the city, using terms like Hitler and fascist,” said Mr. Adams, a former police officer. “My answer is no. I know what Hitler has done and I know what a fascist regime looks like.”He added, “I think we could all dial down the temperature.”Mr. Adams said that he had heard people say “that the former president should not be able to have a rally in Madison Square Garden.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Attacks Bipartisan Semiconductor Law on Joe Rogan Podcast

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      Former President Donald J. Trump on Friday blasted the CHIPS and Science Act, a bipartisan law aimed at reducing America’s reliance on Asia for semiconductors by providing billions in subsidies to encourage companies to manufacture more chips in the United States.“That chip deal is so bad,” Mr. Trump said during a nearly three-hour episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience.” “We put up billions of dollars for rich companies.”Mr. Trump argued that the federal government could have imposed a series of tariffs to make chip manufacturers spend more of their own money to build plants in the United States. He also argued that the law would not make the “good companies” invest in the United States.“You didn’t have to put up 10 cents,” Mr. Trump said. “You tariff it so high that they will come and build their chip companies for nothing.”That argument does not take into account how reliant the United States is on foreign nations for chips, particularly those made in Taiwan. Semiconductors have become critical to the U.S. economy, given that they are used in everything from cars to weapons systems and computers. Yet only about 10 percent of the world’s semiconductors are produced in the United States, down from about 37 percent in 1990.America’s heavy reliance on Taiwan’s semiconductors has been a growing source of concern among U.S. officials, given China’s ongoing threats to invade the self-governing island.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More