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      Trump Is Selling Pieces of His Mug Shot Suit

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      It’s not just a piece of political memorabilia — it’s a strategy.When Donald J. Trump walked into a Georgia courthouse on Aug. 24 to be booked as part of his fourth criminal indictment, becoming the first former president (and only current presidential candidate) to have a mug shot taken, the picture seemed destined to become a symbol of this fraught, unprecedented moment in American history. As has become increasingly clear, however, Mr. Trump and his team have come to see the mug shot in a different way.Specifically, as the source material for a new strain of political pop culture mythmaking and memorabilia.Almost overnight they splashed the image, with Mr. Trump’s signature glower, across mugs, T-shirts and posters in their campaign store, using it and all it represents as a key component of their fund-raising. Then, this week, NFT INT, the official licensee of the Trump name and image for digital trading cards, began selling a special “Mugshot Edition” NFT set that includes, for a certain few willing to buy the whole thing, pieces of the blue suit and red tie Mr. Trump wore in the photo.Or, as the NFT INT website calls the garment, “The most historically significant artifact in American history.”The 47 cards on offer were created by the artist Clark Mitchell and depict Mr. Trump as, for example, Captain America, and sitting in for Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. Cards can be bought individually for $99 or as a full set that runs for $4,653 and includes a physical trading card (some of which will be signed by Mr. Trump) with a swatch of suit fabric and an invitation to a special dinner at Mar-a-Lago. Those who buy 100 of the NFT cards receive a swatch of the jacket or pants, plus a swatch of the tie and the dinner at Mar-a-Lago.According to the NFT INT website, the suit is “priceless.” There are enough tiny suit pieces for 2,024 buyers (because, you know, election year), and enough tie pieces for 225.In other words, it’s not just a suit. It’s a font of potential relics — one that positions the mug shot suit as the most important suit of Mr. Trump’s career so far, rather than, say, Mr. Trump’s inauguration suit.The mug shot edition is just the latest in a series of NFT cards released on the site portraying former President Donald J. Trump.NFT INTThe mug shot edition is the third set of NFT cards released, with the first two drops selling out in “a little more than 24 hours,” according to Kevin Mercuri, a spokesman for NFT INT and the chief executive of Propheta Communications. The new offering comes complete with a video of Mr. Trump endorsing the drop — and the suit — at the top of the web page. Mr. Mercuri said the idea for selling the suit swatches came from NFT INT and was inspired by the way sports figures sell pieces of their jerseys to fans. Mr. Trump was “aware of the trend and receptive” to the proposal, he said, and “generously gave the suit to NFT INT. He felt that members of the public would want to have a piece of history.”The suit was then authenticated by MEARS, a company that specializes in validating sports memorabilia. Troy R. Kinunen, the chief executive of the company, said that “the team at CollectTrumpCards provided the suit directly from the President” and that MEARS then verified certain design elements of the garment against photos and video, including pocket placement, buttons, and the collar of the suit jacket, which Mr. Trump had sewn down in the back to keep it in place. (Though given the number of blue suits Mr. Trump appears to own, it is hard to know how anyone could tell them apart.)Selling the mug shot suit tracks, to a certain extent, with other examples of fan culture. Paige Rubin, an assistant vice president and the head of sale for handbags at Christie’s, said there was an almost insatiable public appetite for souvenirs of the famous and infamous, and often the most valuable pieces of memorabilia at auction are determined by provenance: “Does the object you are selling resonate with the fan base? Does it connect to an iconic moment in a career?”Similarly, there is a long tradition of auctioning memorabilia from public figures, including many presidents, as Summer Anne Lee, a historian of presidential dress at the Fashion Institute of Technology, noted. Scraps of Abraham Lincoln’s bloodstained bedsheets regularly come up for auction, and a pair of Richard Nixon’s eyeglasses from around the time of his resignation were sold in 2005 for $1,955. In 2019, a pair of underpants believed to have belonged to Eva Braun, Hitler’s wife, were gaveled at almost $5,000.However, despite the fact that Melania Trump likewise sold one of her most notable White House outfits — the white hat she wore during the French state visit in 2018 — as part of her own NFT drop, and despite Mr. Trump’s own history of monetizing his own brand in a way other political candidates might not dare, it is almost unheard-of for a living president to hawk his own memorabilia for his own profits, Ms. Lee said. Though NFT INT is not related to the Trump organization and Mr. Trump is not a part of the company, as a licenser Mr. Trump would probably receive a percentage of sales.Which makes it in his interest to divide the suit into as many pieces as possible — both financially and, even more pointedly, conceptually.After all, if a garment is considered “historic,” keeping it whole would seem the more desirable choice. That would allow it to be exhibited in a museum, or a presidential library (or, in the case of Marilyn Monroe’s “Happy Birthday, Mr. President” dress, Ripley’s Believe It or Not! museum).On the other hand, most tiny scraps of clothing that exist in collections are religious curios, fragments of martyrs’ gowns. Treating the mug shot suit in the same way “suggests Trump believes the suit he wore for his mug shot will be even more motivational to his fans than any other,” Ms. Lee said. “They are offering it like pieces of religious clothing, which implies Mr. Trump is a saint who has been through trials and tribulations for the country.”Indeed, said Sean Wilentz, a professor of American history at Princeton University, the sale suggests a “quasi-religious element, as if the suit Trump wore in court has special charismatic qualities.”Well, one of the cards in the set does depict Mr. Trump as a golden god. More

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      The Real Reason Ron DeSantis’s Campaign Is Rotting

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      Over the past two weeks, I’ve been awash in condolences. Friends tell me how deeply sorry for me they feel. They say they can only imagine my pain. They wonder how I’ve gotten through it.They’re talking about the hours I had to spend with Ron DeSantis.To be more specific, they’re talking about my coverage first of his televised face-off with Gavin Newsom and then, six days later, his debate with Nikki Haley, Chris Christie and (is there no mercy in this world?) Vivek Ramaswamy, whose singularly manic smugness makes him the political equivalent of one of those carnival rides that just spin you in circles, faster and faster. I’ve endured many presidential candidates who had me reaching for a cocktail. Ramaswamy is the first who has me looking for Dramamine.But he isn’t the great puzzle of the race for the White House. That honor belongs to DeSantis, who won a second term as Florida governor in 2022 by an indisputably wowie margin of nearly 20 percentage points, had donors lining up for the pleasure of hurling big wads of cash at him, and was supposed to be MAGA magic — Donald Trump’s priorities without Donald Trump’s pathologies.He performed a nifty trick, all right. Abracadabra: His early promise disappeared.And while DeSantis’s downward trajectory recalls the sad arcs of Rudy Giuliani in the 2008 presidential race and Scott Walker eight years later, a big part of the explanation is peculiar to him. It’s a deficit of joy.His joylessness is why it’s so unpleasant to watch him, whether he’s at a lectern or a state fair, dressed up or dressed down, demonizing schoolteachers or migrants or Mickey Mouse.Oh, sure, there’s the demonizing itself, which positions him contemptuously and censoriously far to the right. But the scornful manner completes the spiteful message. You can get away with an air of meanness if there are gusts of exuberance along with it — if you relish your rants and exult in your evil, as Trump seems or long seemed to. But not if you project the sense that campaigning is some nuisance you’ve deigned to put up with. Not if you’re put out. Not if your every smile comes across as an onerous homework assignment in a class you were forced to take for your major.“Grinding away methodically” — that’s how Dan Balz, in an article in The Washington Post last weekend, described both DeSantis’s county-by-county trudge across Iowa and his point-by-point slog through debates. Balz was sizing up Haley’s surge past DeSantis into second place in many polls, and he was kinder than the CNN senior political commentator Ana Navarro, who several days later said that the DeSantis campaign had “that certain stench of political death.”It’s not moribund yet. As Balz rightly noted, Iowa is famously unpredictable and DeSantis has garnered some important endorsements in the state. He’s also concentrating his resources there in a manner that could well lift him above Haley (though not Trump) in the end.But even before his campaign’s stench of death, he often bore the expression of someone catching a whiff of something foul. And a sour puss is not the sweetest bait. It’s not the smartest presidential audition.Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump all had moments when they communicated an outsize delight at drawing near, and then reaching, the pinnacle of American politics. They had their resentments, too, and their degrees of interest in masking those, along with their success in doing so, varied widely. Trump devolved into all resentment all the time. It’s where he dwells — or, rather, rages — now.But a while back he, like the others, could flash a certain spark. Joe Biden still can — he clearly regards the presidency as a great privilege.Maybe DeSantis does, too, and perhaps his quest for it really does excite and inspire him. You wouldn’t know it from his debates or from his CNN town hall in Des Moines on Tuesday night, when his diminished chances to win his party’s nomination prompted a salvo of negative comments about Trump that he should have been firing off all along.Maybe he’s just terrible at glee or at anything glee adjacent. Maybe that won’t matter: We’ve entered a scarier, stranger chapter of American political life — of American life, period — in which a genuine smile may seem discordant and a grudging one in tune with mournful times.Whatever the case, it’s possible that DeSantis will be back on a debate stage just before the Iowa caucuses. I apparently haven’t suffered enough.For the Love of SentencesGetty ImagesIn The Washington Post, Monica Hesse marveled at the extent to which Paris Hilton has outsourced her newborn’s diaper changing to a nanny and has thus been spared “close encounters of the turd kind.” (Thanks to Trish Webster of Hudson, Ohio, and Marjorie Hollis of Port Angeles, Wash., for nominating this.) Also in The Post, Sally Jenkins deconstructed the wild finish of the N.F.L. game last Sunday between the Buffalo Bills and the Kansas City Chiefs: “It’s the time of year when some teams flex and some teams fold. The Chiefs have been hanging on to their accustomed dominance with their fingernails, and you can almost hear the titch, titch of them slipping.” (George Gates, Greensboro, N.C.)And Shane Harris and Samuel Oakford observed that the National Guardsman Jack Teixeira’s alleged leaking of classified documents reflected “an omnivorous appetite for information about global affairs.” “It was as if he had gone to the secrets buffet and sampled one of every dish,” they wrote. (Terry Burridge, Arlington, Va.)In The Times, Lindsay Zoladz nailed a seasonal annoyance: “When a nonholiday song is suddenly reclassified in the cultural imagination as a holiday song, often, one must blame Pentatonix.” (Chris Winters, Seattle)Also in The Times, Sarah Isgur defined the challenge of discussing Vivek Ramaswamy: “I think I speak for the entire pundit class when I tell you that we’re all running out of synonyms for ‘jerk.’” (Dave Powell, Longboat Key, Fla.)And Andrew Solomon, reviewing “The Covenant of Water,” by Abraham Verghese, defended Verghese’s idealistic sensibility, asking, “Why should we assume that sophistication requires cynicism?” “People may not be as good as Verghese’s characters,” he added, “but neither are they as bad as Philip Roth’s or Saul Bellow’s. Ugliness is not truer than loveliness, nor cruelty more so than kindness.” (Florence Nash, Durham, N.C.)On Semafor, Liz Hoffman surveyed the witnesses called by a Senate committee pondering new banking rules. “We all know the image: C.E.O.s lined up behind a wood table, wearing a practiced look of contrition and their third-best watch,” she wrote. (Alan Stamm, Birmingham, Mich.)On the music blog Stereogum, Tom Breihan noted the link of a No. 1 Kelly Clarkson hit, “Stronger (What Doesn’t Kill You),” to a certain German philosopher: “For a proto-fascistic theorist who died in an insane asylum after a syphilis-induced nervous breakdown, Nietzsche had a real knack for a catchy phrase.” (Mark Pitcock, Merrimack, N.H.)And in an article in The New Yorker with the terrifically clever (and frightening) headline “All the Carcinogens We Cannot See,” Siddhartha Mukherjee described a conversation with a researcher named William Hill: “Hill reached into a drawer and pulled out a vial filled with a coal-black sludge. ‘That’s a solution of suspended particles of dust and soot,’ he explained. ‘It’s liquid air pollution.’ I shook the vial, watching the particles rise and settle. It was as if someone had made a hideous snow globe with the grime wiped from my windows in New York.” (Susan Hacker, Willingboro, N.J.)To nominate favorite bits of recent writing from The Times or other publications to be mentioned in “For the Love of Sentences,” please email me here and include your name and place of residence.What I’m WatchingJoJo Whilden/NetflixMy end-of-year movie binge continues, at least to the extent that it can amid a storm of work obligations. Students’ final papers! Proofreading the pages of my forthcoming book! This newsletter! I was so far behind last weekend that I couldn’t use the ticket I bought to a Sunday night showing of “Maestro.”But I found time days before that for “May December,” which I enjoyed less than most critics apparently did. I found its jumble of tones and its melodramatic score distancing, though I’m never sorry to spend time watching Julianne Moore, who plays a woman who went to prison for the sexual abuse of a minor; married and had children with him; and is trustingly but tentatively welcoming an actress (Natalie Portman) who is about to play her into the couple’s home.I’m also never sorry to spend time with Tilda Swinton, whose one extended scene with Michael Fassbender is the high point of “The Killer,” an otherwise uneven, underbaked affair about a professional assassin (Fassbender) who botches a job, is marked for elimination and strikes back against the people coming after him.“Leave the World Behind” — about strangers warily sizing up one another as they confront what just might be the end of the world — held my interest more effectively than either of those other movies did. While it plays heavy-handedly with the question of whether we humans are worse than we admit or better than we realize — whether we’re drowning in our own malice or buoyed by our fugitive grace — it expertly builds tension and has a few bravura sequences. It also has a quartet of excellent performances by Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Mahershala Ali and Myha’la. On a Personal NoteTravis Dove for The New York TimesBoth courses that I taught this semester ended last week, and in the waning minutes, my students and I allowed ourselves conversations far afield of the topics at hand. That always seems to happen. I asked them questions about their lives that I hadn’t asked before. They asked me questions about mine. A few of them, eyeing the vast and scary expanse beyond college, were curious about my path to where I am now. Did I plan it all out?Yes.And no.“Plan” is a flexible verb, an elastic concept. The students were talking about a meticulous choreography, a step-by-step progression. That’s how many people approach the future, and for some of them, it’s the right call. But what those people see as a risk-minimizing strategy always seemed dangerous to me, because it presumes a degree of control over events that most of us don’t really have and a predictability by which the world doesn’t operate. It also creates a merciless yardstick: If things don’t happen a certain way by a certain point, you’re off course. You’re behind schedule. You’ve failed.But there’s another kind of planning. It involves knowing generally what you’re after, preparing for a range of possibilities therein, not so much writing a script as sculpting a space: You want a career in the law, but you choose your focus — or it chooses you — as you go along. You want to arm yourself with the skills and sensibility to start a business, but the nature of that enterprise will be determined by circumstances that you can’t, and shouldn’t, guess right now. You want to lavish your energy on — and earn your keep with — words, but whether they’re in screenplays, novels, magazines or newspapers is up for grabs.We talk too little about that kind of map, though it has much to recommend it, including its allowance for serendipity, for surprise, which can thrill as often as it disappoints.My students asked me: Did I plan to leave New York for North Carolina and trade the churn of Manhattan for the calm of my suburb? Was I determined to become a professor? Was I set on Duke?I wasn’t set at all. I didn’t time this to happen when it did, two and a half years ago. I felt an itch for just a bit of an adventure. I felt a pang for new scenery and a new challenge. I craved more green, less noise. And I’d arranged my life so that I could make such a pivot when the pivot made sense. Then I got an email about my current job, and I let life fill in the blanks. More

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      Why Jack Smith Is Taking Trump’s Immunity Claim Straight to the Supreme Court

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      The special counsel has substantive and procedural reasons for wanting a quick ruling on whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions as president.Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought two cases against former President Donald J. Trump, made a bold move this week designed to undercut one of Mr. Trump’s chief defenses against accusations of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule on Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election subversion charges dismissed on a sweeping claim of executive immunity before a lower appeals court even has the chance to consider the issue.Mr. Smith also asked the justices to make their decision quickly.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” he told the Supreme Court in a petition filed on Monday.But there was a reason it was needed.“This is an extraordinary case,” he wrote.Here is a look at the intersecting legal and political issues surrounding the special counsel’s move.What does Mr. Smith want the Supreme Court to do?He made two separate requests.First, he asked the justices to consider a legal issue they have never looked at before: whether the Constitution confers absolute immunity on a former president against a federal prosecution for crimes he committed while in office.Mr. Trump put that argument at the center of his initial motion to dismiss the election case, which he filed in October in Federal District Court in Washington. He contended that because the charges were based on official actions he took while in the White House, the indictment in its entirety had to be thrown out.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is handling the case, disagreed and rejected the motion two weeks ago. Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged her decision in the normal way in front of a federal appeals court in Washington and also asked her to freeze the case while the appeal was being heard.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to step in front of an appeals court to rule on former President Donald J. Trump’s claims of immunity.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWhile the lawyers obviously hoped to win the appeal, they also had another goal: to drag out the process for as long as possible and postpone a trial on the election interference charges.It was that delay strategy that appeared to underlie Mr. Smith’s second request to the Supreme Court. He asked the justices not only to rule on the immunity issue before the lower appeals court did, but also to do so on an expedited basis.Mr. Smith told the justices that an ordinary, even a relatively fast, appeal could take too much time. And he expressed concern in particular about keeping the trial, now set to go before a jury on March 4, more or less on schedule.What could happen if the trial is delayed?It depends on whom you ask and how long the trial is postponed.A significant delay could push the trial into summer or fall — the heart of the 2024 campaign season. That could cause problems for Mr. Trump because he would be obliged to attend the trial in Washington every weekday for two or three months when he could be holding rallies or meeting voters.Mr. Trump would likely respond to such a situation by bringing his campaign to the steps of the federal courthouse. He would almost certainly hold daily news conferences in front of the television cameras that would await his exit from the courtroom and use them to deliver his political talking points and attack the legal proceeding. He has employed a similar strategy during the civil fraud trial in New York in which he is accused of inflating his company’s net worth.There could also be serious consequences, however, if the trial is pushed off until after the election.If that happens and Mr. Trump wins the race, he would suddenly have the power to order the charges to be dropped. Moreover, millions of voters would never get to hear the evidence that Mr. Smith’s team collected about Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the last election before making a decision about whether to elect him again.What do we know about whether the Supreme Court will take the case on an expedited basis?It would require only four of the nine justices to come together for Mr. Smith’s request to be granted. Shortly after Mr. Smith filed his petition, the court issued an order telling Mr. Trump’s legal team to respond with their opinions on the issue by Dec. 20. While the schedule the justices set gave no indication of whether they might ultimately take the case, it did seem to suggest that the court was not inclined to drag its feet in reaching a decision.A significant delay in the case could plunge the trial into the heart of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesHistorically speaking, the Supreme Court has only rarely stepped in front of lower appeals courts by using the procedure known as “certiorari before judgment.” Before 2019, the court had not used the provision for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. But as of late last year, the court had used it 19 times since.The procedure has been used in cases involving national crises, like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor during a criminal investigation.Mr. Smith urged the court to use it in Mr. Trump’s criminal case as well, saying that the proceeding involved “issues of exceptional national importance.”How sympathetic has this Supreme Court been to Trump in such cases?While the court’s current majority has voted in favor of a number of staunchly conservative policies, from striking down abortion rights to reversing affirmative action, it has shown less of an appetite for supporting Mr. Trump’s attempts to monkey with the democratic process.Just months before Mr. Trump appointed his third Supreme Court justice, the court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote in 2020 that he had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records from investigators in a criminal inquiry.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.That same year, in a brief unsigned order, the court rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking to throw out the election results in four battleground states that Mr. Trump had lost. It also declined requests to review suits filed by pro-Trump lawyers claiming that voting machines across the country had been hacked by a cabal of foreign actors to flip votes away from Mr. Trump.Last year, the Supreme Court refused a request from Mr. Trump to block the release of White House records concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting his claims of executive privilege.The court’s unsigned order upheld the original decision made in the case by none other than Judge Chutkan. And she had scathing words for Mr. Trump in her initial decision rejecting his claims of executive privilege.“Presidents are not kings,” she wrote, “and plaintiff is not president.”What could happen next?If the Supreme Court takes the case and agrees with Mr. Trump’s immunity claims, then the indictment would be tossed out and there would be no trial on the election interference charges. But if the court hears the case and quickly sides with Mr. Smith, a trial would be held, likely before the election.On the other hand, if the justices decline to hear the case at this stage, then it would go back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But the Supreme Court could eventually come back into the picture and consider challenges to the decision of the appeals court. More

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      Las inquietudes sobre el autoritarismo de Trump abren un debate en EE. UU.

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      El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

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      Talk of a Trump Dictatorship Charges the American Political Debate

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      Former President Donald J. Trump and his allies are not doing much to reassure those worried about his autocratic instincts. If anything, they seem to be leaning into the predictions.When a historian wrote an essay the other day warning that the election of former President Donald J. Trump next year could lead to dictatorship, one of Mr. Trump’s allies quickly responded by calling for the historian to be sent to prison.It almost sounds like a parody: The response to concerns about dictatorship is to prosecute the author. But Mr. Trump and his allies are not going out of their way to reassure those worried about what a new term would bring by firmly rejecting the dictatorship charge. If anything, they seem to be leaning into it.If Mr. Trump is returned to office, people close to him have vowed to “come after” the news media, open criminal investigations into onetime aides who broke with the former president and purge the government of civil servants deemed disloyal. When critics said Mr. Trump’s language about ridding Washington of “vermin” echoed that of Adolf Hitler, the former president’s spokesman said the critics’ “sad, miserable existence will be crushed” under a new Trump administration.Mr. Trump himself did little to assuage Americans when his friend Sean Hannity tried to help him out on Fox News this past week. During a town hall-style meeting, Mr. Hannity tossed a seeming softball by asking Mr. Trump to reaffirm that of course he did not intend to abuse his power and use the government to punish enemies. Instead of simply agreeing, Mr. Trump said he would only be a dictator on “Day 1” of a new term.“Trump has made it crystal clear through all his actions and rhetoric that he admires leaders who have forms of authoritarian power, from Putin to Orban to Xi, and that he wants to exercise that kind of power at home,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, author of “Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present,” referring to Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Viktor Orban of Hungary and Xi Jinping of China. “History shows that autocrats always tell you who they are and what they are going to do,” she added. “We just don’t listen until it is too late.”Despite his public sparring with China’s leaders, President Trump has praised President Xi Jinping for his strongman policies.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesTalk about the possible authoritarian quality of a new Trump presidency has suffused the political conversation in the nation’s capital in recent days. A series of reports in The New York Times outlined various plans developed by Mr. Trump’s allies to assert vast power in a new term and detailed how he would be less constrained by constitutional guardrails. The Atlantic published a special issue with 24 contributors forecasting what a second Trump presidency would look like, many of them depicting an autocratic regime.Liz Cheney, the former Republican congresswoman from Wyoming who was vice chairwoman of the House committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, published a new book warning that Mr. Trump is a clear and present danger to American democracy. And of course, there was the essay by the historian, Robert Kagan, in The Washington Post that prompted Senator J.D. Vance, Republican of Ohio and a Trump ally, to press the Justice Department to investigate.To be sure, American presidents have stretched their power and been called dictators going back to the early days of the republic. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt, among others, were all accused of despotism. Richard M. Nixon was said to have consolidated power in the “imperial presidency.” George W. Bush and Barack Obama were both compared to Hitler.But there is something different about the debate now, more than overheated rhetoric or legitimate disagreements over the boundaries of executive power, something that suggests a fundamental moment of decision in the American experiment. Perhaps it is a manifestation of popular disenchantment with American institutions; only 10 percent of Americans think democracy is working very well, according to a poll in June by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Perhaps it is a reflection of the extremism and demagoguery that has grown more prevalent in politics in many places around the world. And perhaps it stems from a former president seeking to reclaim his old office who evinces such perplexing affinity for and even envy of autocrats.Mr. Trump once expressed no regret that a quote he shared on social media came from Mussolini and adopted the language of Stalin in calling journalists the “enemies of the people.” He told his chief of staff that “Hitler did a lot of good things” and later said he wished American generals were like Hitler’s generals.Last December, shortly after opening his comeback campaign, Mr. Trump called for “termination” of the Constitution to remove Mr. Biden immediately and reinstall himself in the White House without waiting for another election. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as whining by liberals who do not like him or his policies and are disingenuously trying to scare voters. They argue that President Biden is the real dictator because his Justice Department is prosecuting his likeliest challenger next year for various alleged crimes, although there is no evidence that Mr. Biden has been personally involved in those decisions and even some former Trump advisers call the indictments legitimate.“The dictator talk by Kagan and his fellow liberal writers is an attempt to scare Americans not just to distract them from the failures and weakness of the Biden administration but because of something they are even more afraid of: that a second Trump administration will be far more successful in implementing its agenda and undoing progressive policies and programs than the first,” Fred Fleitz, who served briefly in Mr. Trump’s White House, wrote on the American Greatness website on Friday.Mr. Kagan, a widely respected Brookings Institution scholar and author of numerous books of history, has a long record of support for a muscular foreign policy that hardly strikes many on the left as liberal. But he has been a strong and outspoken critic of Mr. Trump for years. In May 2016, when other Republicans were reconciling themselves to Mr. Trump’s first nomination for president, Mr. Kagan warned that “this is how fascism comes to America.”His essay on Nov. 30 sounded the alarm again. Mr. Trump may have been thwarted in his first term from enacting some of his more radical ideas by more conventional Republican advisers and military officers, Mr. Kagan argued, but he will not surround himself with such figures again and will encounter fewer of the checks and balances that constrained him last time. The former president’s defenders dismiss the fears about Mr. Trump’s autocratic instincts as complaints by liberals who are trying to scare voters.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesAmong other things, Mr. Kagan cited Mr. Trump’s effort to overturn an election that he had lost, disregarding the will of the voters. And he noted Mr. Trump’s overt discussion of prosecuting opponents and sending the military into the streets to quell protests. “In just a few years, we have gone from being relatively secure in our democracy to being a few short steps, and a matter of months, away from the possibility of dictatorship,” Mr. Kagan wrote.Mr. Vance, a freshman senator who has courted Mr. Trump’s support and was listed by Axios this past week as a possible vice-presidential running mate next year, took umbrage on behalf of the former president. He dispatched a letter to Attorney General Merrick B. Garland suggesting that Mr. Kagan be prosecuted for encouraging “open rebellion,” seizing on a point in Mr. Kagan’s essay noting that Democratic-run states might defy a President Trump.Mr. Vance wrote that “according to Robert Kagan, the prospect of a second Donald Trump presidency is terrible enough to justify open rebellion against the United States, along with the political violence that would invariably follow.”Mr. Kagan’s piece did not actually advocate rebellion, but simply forecast the possibility that Democratic governors would stand against Mr. Trump “through a form of nullification” of federal authority. Indeed, he went on to suggest that Republican governors might do the same with Mr. Biden, which he was not advocating either.But Mr. Vance was trying to draw a parallel between Mr. Kagan’s essay and Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election. By the Justice Department’s logic in pursuing Mr. Trump, the senator wrote, the Kagan article could be interpreted as “an invitation to ‘insurrection,’ a manifestation of criminal ‘conspiracy,’ or an attempt to bring about civil war.” To make his point clear, he insisted on answers by Jan. 6.Mr. Kagan, who followed his essay with another on Thursday about how to stop the slide to dictatorship that he sees, said the intervention by the senator validated his point. “It is revealing that their first instinct when attacked by a journalist is to suggest that they be locked up,” Mr. Kagan noted in an interview.Aides to Mr. Trump and Mr. Vance did not respond to requests for comment. David Shipley, the opinion editor of The Post, defended Mr. Kagan’s work. “We are proud to publish Robert Kagan’s thoughtful essays and we encourage audiences to read both his Nov. 30 and Dec. 7 pieces together — and draw their own conclusions,” he said. “These essays are part of a long Kagan tradition of starting important conversations.”It is a conversation that has months to go with an uncertain ending. In the meantime, no one expects Mr. Garland to take Mr. Vance seriously, including almost certainly Mr. Vance. His letter was a political statement. But it says something about the era that proposing the prosecution of a critic would be seen as a political winner. More

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      How Trump Would Govern

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      Donald Trump’s threats for another presidency are deeply alarming, historians and legal experts say.“2024 is the final battle,” Donald Trump has said.“Either they win or we win. And if they win, we no longer have a country,” he has argued.“Our country,” he has said, “is going to hell.”As he campaigns to reclaim the presidency, Trump has intensified his rhetoric of cataclysm and apocalypse, beyond even the tenor of his previous two campaigns. He has claimed that “the blood-soaked streets of our once great cities are cesspools of violent crimes” and that Americans are living in “the most dangerous time in the history of our country.”More specifically, he has promised to use the powers of the federal government to punish people he perceives to be his critics and opponents, including the Biden family, district attorneys, journalists and “the deep state.” He has suggested that Mark Milley, a retired top general, deserves the death penalty. Trump has called President Biden “an enemy of the state” and Nancy Pelosi “the Wicked Witch.” He has accused former President Barack Obama — “Barack Hussein Obama,” in Trump’s telling — of directing Biden to admit “terrorists and terrorist sympathizers” into the U.S.Trump’s threats, often justified with lies, are deeply alarming, historians and legal experts say. He has repeatedly promised to undermine core parts of American democracy. He has also signaled that, unlike in his first term in the White House, he will avoid appointing aides and cabinet officials who would restrain him.Many Americans have heard only snippets of Trump’s promises. He tends to make them on Truth Social, his niche social media platform, or at campaign events, which have received less media coverage than they did when he first ran for president eight years ago. Yet there is reason to believe that Trump means what he says.“He’s told us what he will do,” Liz Cheney, a member of Congress until her criticism of Trump led to her defeat in a Republican primary, told John Dickerson of CBS News this past weekend. “People who say, ‘Well, if he’s elected, it’s not that dangerous because we have all of these checks and balances’ don’t fully understand the extent to which the Republicans in Congress today have been co-opted.”Not simply policyI understand why many Americans would like to tune out — or deny — the risks facing our democracy. I also understand why many voters are frustrated with the status quo and find Trump’s anti-establishment campaign appealing.Incomes, wealth and life expectancy have been stagnant for decades for millions of people. The Covid pandemic and its aftermath contributed to a rise in both inflation and societal disorder. School absenteeism has risen sharply. The murder rate and homelessness have both increased. Undocumented immigration has soared during Biden’s presidency.But it’s worth being clear about what Trump is promising to do. He isn’t merely calling for policy solutions that some Americans support and others oppose. He is promising to undo foundations of American democracy and to rule as authoritarians in other countries have. He is also leading the race for the Republican nomination by a wide margin, and running even with, or slightly ahead of, Biden in general election polls.Today’s newsletter is the first of several in coming months meant to help you understand what a second Trump presidency would look like. For starters, I recommend that you read what Trump is saying in his own words. My colleagues Ian Prasad Philbrick and Lyna Bentahar have been tracking his campaign appearances and social media posts, and have compiled a list of his most extreme statements.I also recommend an ongoing series of Times stories by Jonathan Swan, Charlie Savage and Maggie Haberman, which previews a potential second Trump presidency. Among the subjects: legal policy, immigration and the firing of career government employees. The most recent story looks at why he is more likely to achieve his aims in a second term than he was in his first.“So many of the guardrails that existed to stop him are gone or severely weakened,” Maggie told me. “That includes everything from internal appointees to a changed Congress, where he has outlasted his few Republican critics there.”What democracy needsThe new issue of The Atlantic magazine is devoted to this subject as well, with 24 writers imagining a second Trump term. “Our concern with Trump is not that he is a Republican, or that he embraces — when convenient — certain conservative ideas,” Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic’s editor in chief, writes. “We believe that a democracy needs, among other things, a strong liberal party and a strong conservative party in order to flourish.” The problem, Goldberg explains, is that Trump is “an antidemocratic demagogue.”Regular readers of this newsletter know that I agree with Goldberg about the value of both conservative and liberal ideas, and that I find it uncomfortable to write about the likely nominee of a major party in such harsh terms. In 2024, we will also cover Biden’s record and campaign with appropriate skepticism.But it would be wishful thinking to portray Trump as anything other than antidemocratic. He keeps telling the country what he intends to do if he returns to the White House in 2025. It’s worth listening.Related: “The United States is heading into its greatest political and constitutional crisis since the Civil War,” Robert Kagan, a conservative who has advised both Republicans and Democrats, warns in The Washington Post.THE LATEST NEWSIsrael-Hamas WarIsrael has started an invasion of southern Gaza, satellite images show. Troops appear to be closing in on its main city, Khan Younis.The Israeli military has bombarded Gaza with airstrikes since the cease-fire ended. The U.N. said civilians had few safe places left to go.Extensive evidence, including videos, indicates that Hamas used sexual violence during its Oct. 7 attacks. Jewish women’s groups say the world has not paid sufficient attention.A rocket launched from Gaza on Oct. 7 hit an Israeli military base believed to house nuclear-capable missiles, a Times investigation found.After Iranian-backed proxy forces appear to have launched attacks in the Red Sea, the U.S. and its allies are discussing how to guard ships traveling there.A White House spokesman said a protest outside an Israeli restaurant in Philadelphia was antisemitic.Chinese EconomyUnfinished construction by China Evergrande.Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesWhen China’s housing bubble burst, the property giant Evergrande defaulted on its debt. Its collapse was accelerated by questionable accounting.China’s credit outlook was dropped to negative by Moody’s, the ratings agency, which cited concern over rising debt and the cost of possible bailouts.War in UkraineUkrainian soldiers.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesThe U.S. will run out of money for Ukraine by the end of the year if Congress does not approve more aid, the White House said.Evan Gershkovich, a journalist for The Wall Street Journal, has been in Russian jail for more than 250 days and is still awaiting trial.2024 ElectionTomorrow’s Republican presidential primary debate will feature only four candidates: Nikki Haley, Ron DeSantis, Vivek Ramaswamy and Chris Christie.Some anti-Trump Republicans want Christie to drop out and back Haley as an alternative to Trump.Doug Burgum, the Republican governor of North Dakota, ended his presidential campaign.A super PAC backing Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s independent bid for president plans to spend millions to get him on the ballot in several battleground states.Talk more about abortion and less about Trump: Democratic governors — almost all of them more popular in their states than Biden — have advice for the president’s campaign.BusinessChatGPT’s release in 2022 prompted a desperate scramble among tech firms, and alarm from some people who helped invent it.23andMe, the genetic testing company, said hackers obtained the personal data of nearly seven million profiles.Other Big StoriesThe 2023 hurricane seasons in the Atlantic and Eastern Pacific ended. The season had an above average number of storms, fueled by extremely warm ocean temperatures.A former U.S. ambassador is accused of working for years as a secret agent for Cuba as he rose up the ranks at the State Department.The U.N. said that hundreds of people were believed to be stranded on boats in the Andaman Sea, and that most were believed to be Rohingya.Brain implants helped five people in their recovery after trauma. This may be the first effective therapy for chronic brain injuries.OpinionsThis conservative wonk is happy when J.D. Vance and Elizabeth Warren work together, Jane Coaston explains.Americans trust police officers who solve crime. To do that, departments need more investigators, Jeff Asher argues.The bigger airlines get, the worse they become, Tim Wu writes.Here is a column by Michelle Goldberg on antisemitism.MORNING READSThe Albuquerque International Balloon Fiesta.Andrew Jogi for The New York TimesTaking flight: Behind the scenes at the world’s largest hot-air balloon festival.Food fraud: European officials seized nearly 70,000 gallons of “unfit” olive oil.That “meh” feeling: Persistent depressive disorder is underdiagnosed.Hormone difference: Women get more headaches than men.First cruise? Here’s how to prepare for smooth sailing.Lives Lived: For more than a decade, Robert H. Precht produced “The Ed Sullivan Show,” the Sunday night variety extravaganza that brought singers, comedians, bands, jugglers and more into millions of living rooms. He died at 93.SPORTSN.F.L.: Cincinnati backup quarterback Jake Browning led the 6-6 Bengals to an improbable overtime win against the 8-4 Jacksonville Jaguars.New York Jets: Zach Wilson is reluctant to return to a starting role as quarterback, and the Jets are considering a change.College football: This end of this four-team playoff can’t come soon enough, Stewart Mandel writes — not just because of snubs like Florida State, but because so many other great teams have nothing to play for.Transfer portal: More than 1,000 college football players entered the portal yesterday, the highest one-day total since its inception.ARTS AND IDEASBest of 2023: Reggie Ugwu advises that you read his list of the best podcasts of the year not as an objective ranking — tastes vary too much for that — but as a Michelin Guide to podcasts, leading you to some great new shows. Among of his favorites:Say More With Dr? Sheila, Amy Poehler’s hilarious, unscripted riff on couples therapy podcasts and the modern relationship guru.The Sound, a twisty investigation into the phenomenon known as Havana Syndrome, and the sound heard by diplomats who later reported cognitive injuries.The Turning: Room of Mirrors, a 10-part series on the elite, high-pressure world of the New York City Ballet.More on cultureThe assault case against Jonathan Majors, the actor, began with a debate: Was he an abuser or a victim? The Cut explains what you need to know about the trial.Tyler Goodson, a key figure in the popular “S-Town” podcast series, was shot and killed during a standoff with the police in Alabama, the authorities said.THE MORNING RECOMMENDS …Linda Xiao for The New York TimesSimmer meatballs in a lemony, spinach-filled broth.Weatherize your home.Get a flu shot. (It’s not too late.)Start new holiday traditions.GAMESHere is today’s Spelling Bee. Yesterday’s pangrams were inaptly and pliantly.And here are today’s Mini Crossword, Wordle, Sudoku and Connections.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidSign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. Reach our team at themorning@nytimes.com. More

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      Could a Democrat Really Challenge Biden at This Point? Here’s What to Know.

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      It’s really hard to run against a sitting president. And beginning at this point, just two months before primary voting starts, wouldn’t be feasible anyhow.The Democratic anxiety that has swirled around President Biden for over a year has kicked into overdrive in recent weeks, as his approval ratings have stayed stubbornly low and polls have shown the possibility of his losing to former President Donald J. Trump.That anxiety has crystallized into one question, repeated like a drumbeat: Can’t some big-name Democrat challenge him? Someone more prominent than Marianne Williamson or Dean Phillips?The answer: In theory, sure. In practice, the prospects are remote.There are several reasons for that, most of which boil down to it being really hard to run a successful primary campaign against a sitting president. And doing so at this point, just two months before voting starts, wouldn’t be feasible anyhow.Making things still more difficult for a would-be challenger is that Mr. Biden remains relatively popular among Democratic voters. According to a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 79 percent of party voters in six battleground states somewhat or strongly approve of his performance, which doesn’t leave a lot of room for another Democrat.“Logistically, it’s impossible,” said Tim Hogan, a Democratic strategist who has worked for Hillary Clinton and Amy Klobuchar. “Politically, it’s a suicide mission.”Ballot deadlines are approaching, or pastTo appear on each state’s primary ballot, candidates must submit paperwork along with, in many cases, a hefty filing fee and hundreds or even thousands of voter signatures.The deadlines for those submissions have already passed in South Carolina and Nevada, the first two states on the Democratic calendar; in New Hampshire, which is holding an unsanctioned primary in January; and in Alabama and Arkansas.Michigan, another early-voting state, released its list of candidates this month. By mid-December, the window to get added to the ballot there will have closed. The deadline is similar for California, which will account for more delegates than any other state; and for Arizona, Colorado, Louisiana, Maine, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont and Virginia.So even if a candidate entered the race tomorrow, they would be unable to get on the ballot in the first two primaries, and probably in a lot of others. It would be a tall order, for instance, to secure 26,000 signatures in California by its Dec. 15 deadline.Pretty soon, defeating Mr. Biden goes from difficult to mathematically impossible.Biden has an enormous financial advantageMr. Biden’s re-election campaign, the Democratic National Committee and a joint fund-raising committee said they raised a combined $71.3 million in the third quarter of this year. They reported having $90.5 million in cash on hand as of the end of September.That would put any new candidate at a staggering disadvantage. Consider that on the Republican side, Mr. Trump alone announced a $45.5 million haul in the third quarter, and his leading rivals, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and the former United Nations ambassador Nikki Haley, reported raising $15 million and $11 million.Big-name politicians are thinking long termMany voters looking for a savior candidate are, naturally, looking to people seen as rising stars in the Democratic Party — like Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois.But rising stars generally want to maximize their chances at the right time.“Ambitious candidates are risk-averse,” said Casey Dominguez, a professor of political science and international relations at the University of San Diego who studies primaries. “They don’t want to ruin their chances at a successful run for president by having an unsuccessful run for president, particularly one where you’re running against a sitting president, potentially dividing the party.”Crucially, there is no precedent in the last 50 years for candidates to look to for a path.Pat Buchanan, challenging an unpopular President George Bush in 1992, gave Mr. Bush an unexpectedly close call in New Hampshire but did not end up winning a single primary. Edward M. Kennedy, challenging an unpopular President Jimmy Carter in 1980, won 12 states and contested the nomination all the way to the Democratic convention, but did not come close to a majority.“History tells a story,” said Barbara Norrander, an emeritus professor at the University of Arizona’s School of Government and Public Policy who studies presidential primaries. “Ted Kennedy versus Jimmy Carter 1980 is what you would look back at, and Kennedy had a lot of pluses going for him, but he wasn’t able to unseat Carter. So it’s highly unlikely that someone today could unseat an incumbent president.”Democrats are worried about weakening BidenThe driving force behind many Democrats’ desire to jettison Mr. Biden is fear of another Trump presidency. But the same driving force is behind other Democrats’ desire to stick with him.Mr. Biden’s vulnerabilities, including his age and low approval ratings, are very real. But the electoral advantages of incumbency, universal name recognition and an established campaign organization are real, too.At this point, for a new candidate, “there’s just no way to build momentum and get the resources necessary,” Mr. Hogan said.Potential challengers also have to weigh the possibility that a primary battle could weaken Mr. Biden in the general election, even if he overcame it. Though there is no consensus, some historians believe primary challenges hurt Mr. Bush and Mr. Carter in 1992 and 1980.“Nobody wants to be the person that divided the party and helped to elect Donald Trump,” Professor Dominguez said.There is no ‘generic Democrat’Any challenger would come with their own weak points that would turn off one Democratic faction or another and be exploited by Republicans over the long months of a general-election campaign — a reality not necessarily captured by polls that show an unnamed Democratic candidate performing better than Mr. Biden.“You can’t run a generic Democrat,” Mr. Hogan said. “You have to run a person.”Take Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, who entered the race in October. After debuting around 7.5 percent in the FiveThirtyEight polling average, he quickly fell to about 4 percent.That reality played out in 1968, the only time in modern history that an incumbent president was successfully challenged in his party’s primary.Two challengers with substantial name recognition and support — Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy — helped drive President Lyndon B. Johnson not to seek re-election. He announced his decision in March 1968, as the primaries were underway. That August, his vice president, Hubert Humphrey, won the nomination of an agonizingly divided Democratic Party.Humphrey lost the general election with 191 electoral votes to Richard Nixon’s 301.What happens if Biden can’t run?To state the obvious, all of the considerations are what they are because Mr. Biden is running. If something were to change that — if he had a health crisis, for example — the party would be in a difficult situation.If he withdrew just before or early in the primary season, voters would be limited to the other options already in the race. It is highly unlikely that ballot access deadlines, which are set by individual states and not by national party officials, would be reopened.If he withdrew later in the primary season — after he had won enough delegates in early primaries that no candidate could surpass him — the nomination would be decided on the floor of the Democratic National Convention in August, where delegates have the final say in choosing a nominee. That would also be the case if he withdrew between the primaries and the convention. More

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      Trump Health Report Claims ‘Weight Reduction’ but Skimps on Specifics

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      The former president’s doctors have often offered hyperbolic or unverifiable claims in reports about his health.Former President Donald J. Trump posted a fawning but vague health report from his doctor on Monday that declares that Mr. Trump’s health is “excellent” and that he has recently lost weight through an “improved diet” and “daily physical activity.”Mr. Trump’s physician, Dr. Bruce Aronwald, wrote the single-page report over two months after Mr. Trump, 77, underwent a “comprehensive” health examination in September, the document says.In August, Mr. Trump reported to the Fulton County Jail, during an intake process for one of four criminal cases he is facing, that he weighed 215 pounds. That was nearly 30 pounds less than the White House doctor reported in 2020.But the report on Monday did not include even basic details such as Mr. Trump’s weight, his blood pressure, his cholesterol levels, any prescriptions or even how much weight he had lost. Dr. Aronwald instead wrote that Mr. Trump’s “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about specific details regarding Mr. Trump’s health.The timing of the report appeared to be taking a jab at President Biden on his 81st birthday. While Mr. Trump has repeatedly mocked Mr. Biden’s age, he has had his own verbal stumbles on the campaign trail.Mr. Trump’s doctors — an eclectic group of personal and White House physicians — have previously released memos and reports that have offered few details about his health and included hyperbolic claims and descriptions of his condition as “excellent.”Dr. Harold Bornstein, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal physician, declared in late 2015 that Mr. Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He then later told The New York Times that Mr. Trump was taking medication for various ailments, including a prostate-related drug to promote hair growth. Dr. Bornstein later said that Mr. Trump sent his bodyguard among others to seize his medical records from Dr. Bornstein’s office after the physician fell from Mr. Trump’s orbit.Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, a White House physician for Mr. Trump, asserted in 2018 that with a better diet, Mr. Trump could have lived to be 200 years old. Another White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, repeatedly misled the public about the severity of Mr. Trump’s illness after he contracted Covid in 2020.Mr. Biden, as president, has undergone annual physical exams and releases significantly more detailed health reports. His latest report, in February, was five pages long, noting specific ailments, like arthritis, and the regimen of tests taken — to detect neurological disorders, for example.But tests and reports have done little to reassure voters that Mr. Biden has not slowed in his senior years, and any slip of the tongue or stumble on a stairway draws further public attention. During remarks at the White House on Monday, he confused Taylor Swift with Britney Spears.Concerns about age and health have been a sore subject for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, who would each be well past 80 by the end of a term in 2029. They have repeatedly dismissed such concerns, and each asserts that he is more than capable of serving another four years in the Oval Office.In one notable episode, Mr. Trump repeatedly bragged in television appearances about acing a cognitive test that looks for signs of conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, wielding it as proof that he was sharper than Mr. Biden — who at the time was his opponent in the 2020 election.Mr. Trump was particularly boastful of completing a memory test that involved reciting the words “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in the correct order.Recent polls have found that roughly two of every three voters say Mr. Biden is too old to serve another four-year term. About half say the same about Mr. Trump. More