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    Jared Polis Wants to Win Back the Hippies

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    It’s such a bother when politicians have to go and complicate your clean narrative about why they’re succeeding.Last week, I spoke to Jared Polis, the Democratic governor of Colorado. Polis’s state was, if not a bright spot for Democrats, a less-dark one. In New York, Democrats lost 11 points off their 2020 margin; in New Jersey, 10 points; in Massachusetts, nine and a half points; in California, nine points (though votes are still being counted); in Illinois, seven points. In Colorado, the difference was two and a half points. What is Polis, who won re-election in 2022 by a 19-point margin, doing right?One answer — and this, to be honest, was the answer I’d gone looking for — is focusing relentlessly on the cost of living. “You can’t just do one policy and expect, somehow, people will know it,” Polis told me. “But they generally understand the drumbeat of 30, 40 things you’re doing, each of which reduces costs in a different way. And so that’s been our strategy: to flood the zone with this work to reduce costs.”Polis points with pride to his successful efforts to expand pre-K and kindergarten and get a public insurance option onto the Colorado health exchanges — but also to his rejection of proposals to add benefits that would drive up costs. He’s happy to brag about reducing the tax rate for both businesses and individuals, walking me through every decimal-point reduction he achieved, and the many bills he’s signed to make it easier to build homes.“When you say something a lot, it means you generally believe it,” Polis said. “So here’s a line I often use: We want the best solutions from the left and the right to save people money.”But during our conversation, and in the days after, another answer emerged — and for Democrats this one is a little more challenging. Polis is a dissenter from the trends that swept through Democratic governance during the pandemic. He was unusual among Democratic governors for the emphasis he put on both personal responsibility and personal liberty. Colorado opened early, sparking a tourism boom, and Polis tried to rely more on information than compulsion.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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      Airport Food Prices at JFK and LaGuardia Are About to Go Up

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      The three big airports that serve New York City have proposed allowing concession prices to rise and adding a surcharge to cover higher wages and improved worker benefits.The prices of food and drinks in the airports that serve New York City, already a pet peeve of many travelers, are set to take a sharp upward turn next year.To cover the rising costs of labor at the three big airports it operates — LaGuardia, Kennedy International and Newark Liberty International — the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey has proposed rule changes that would allow restaurants and shops to raise their prices and tack on a 3 percent surcharge.Together, the changes could result in a 7.5 percent increase in January to prices that have long been the subject of complaints from travelers. An online menu for the Bobby Van’s steakhouse at Kennedy shows that a cheeseburger and fries costs $29.50 and a glass of chardonnay is $17. After a 7.5 percent increase, that meal could cost an additional $3.49, for a total of about $50.At LaGuardia on Tuesday, a bar charged $16 for chicken Caesar wraps and turkey-and-Swiss panini. Nearby, a shop sold a 12-ounce bag of almonds for $15.99.The Port Authority said the increases would help the concessions cover the costs of rising wages and better benefits for their employees. The agency, which sets the rules for the businesses that operate inside the airport terminals, has proposed gradual increases in the minimum wage for workers there.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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      Will NYC Revive Congestion Pricing After Trump’s Victory?

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      Gov. Kathy Hochul, facing pressure from supporters of the contentious tolling plan, is said to be exploring options for adopting it in some form.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York is exploring options for reviving a congestion pricing plan for New York City before President-elect Donald J. Trump has a chance to kill it, according to four people familiar with the matter.Ms. Hochul’s move to salvage the contentious plan comes as she faces pressure from various corners, including a group that represents transit riders and is planning to start an advertising blitz on Monday in support of the tolling program.The plan that Ms. Hochul, a Democrat, is now exploring differs slightly from the one she halted in June. She is trying to satisfy opponents who had complained about the $15 congestion-pricing toll that most motorists would have had to pay as well as supporters who want to reduce car traffic and fund mass transit improvements.The governor has talked to federal officials about the possibility of a $9 toll and about whether such a change might require the lengthy, involved process of additional environmental review, according to a Metropolitan Transportation Authority board member familiar with the matter. The discussions were first reported by Politico.Mr. Trump, a Republican, has said he opposes congestion pricing, and his victory on Tuesday has apparently pushed Ms. Hochul to try to find a compromise.“The timing is everything,” said Danny Pearlstein, a spokesman for Riders Alliance, the riders’ group that is planning the ad blitz. If congestion pricing has not started by January, he added “it’s very unlikely it would start.”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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      Democrats Got the Recovery They Wanted. It Wasn’t Enough.

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      America’s economic growth is the envy of its global counterparts. But voters wanted more from the Biden administration — specifically, lower prices.Every major U.S. ally is uncomfortably familiar with one of President Biden’s favorite charts. It is a graph of economic recoveries in the wealthy world since the end of the pandemic recession. It shows growth flatlining for the United Kingdom, Germany and Japan over the past two years — while in the United States, growth keeps rocketing up.That chart helps explain why voters have punished ruling parties in election after post-Covid election around the world. Sluggish growth, coupled with a surge in consumer prices, proved toxic for the Conservative Party in Britain. It helped hobble President Emmanuel Macron’s centrist coalition in France and contributed to Japan’s longtime leaders, the Liberal Democrats, losing their majority this fall.Germany’s governing coalition has been so weakened by recession and so flustered by disagreements over how to revive growth that it teetered this week on the brink of collapse.Advisers to Mr. Biden and to Vice President Kamala Harris, his successor candidate in the presidential election, had hoped that America’s outlier economy would rescue them from a similar fate.It did not.Ms. Harris lost to former President Donald J. Trump. Democrats will spend at least months parsing data for conclusions on what drove the defeat. Certainly, economic factors were only one contributor.But as Europe’s stumbling economies woke on Wednesday to the news of Ms. Harris’s defeat, one thing was immediately clear: America’s growth engine may be the envy of the world, but it is not the envy of the American public.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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      Democrats Use Gas Station Kiosks to Say Trump Will Make Life More Expensive

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      Americans bagging up their purchases at hundreds of gas stations and convenience stores across the Midwest will hear a message from Democrats that former President Donald J. Trump’s policies will increase the price of fuel and add thousands of dollars to the cost of raising a family.The Democratic National Committee is paying for short, 15-second video advertisements to play on digital kiosks at checkout counters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa and Nebraska. The six-figure ad blitz, which starts on Monday, is meant to emphasize an argument that Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently made on the campaign trail: Mr. Trump is no ally of middle-class and working people, and his economic policies will badly hurt their wallets.“Trump’s Project 2025 agenda would spike gas prices by 75 cents a gallon, on top of the $7,600 more families could be paying each year,” the ad’s narrator says. “Billionaires like Trump can afford it.”With Election Day now just eight days away, political advertisements have become inescapable for voters in battleground states, with text messages pinging on phones and attacks reverberating across television, the radio and social media. The D.N.C. is hoping that catching voters as they pay for gas and snacks is a new way to break through. The ads will run at roughly 1,600 gas stations and convenience stores, it said, with many located in communities with a large number of union households or on or near college campuses. Union members and young people are key Democratic constituencies.The ad’s message is based on studies of the potential effect of Mr. Trump’s proposed tariffs on imported goods, including an analysis from the website GasBuddy and research by the Budget Lab at Yale, which found that households could see their costs rise between $1,900 and $7,600 per year. Inflation was a persistent problem for much of the Biden administration but has slowed significantly. Voters consistently rate the economy as their top concern of the 2024 election.The D.N.C. chose to air the ads in two of the top presidential battleground states, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as in Nebraska, where Ms. Harris is leading in the race to pick up an electoral vote that is up for grabs in the state’s Second Congressional district. (Nebraska does not have a winner-take-all system like most states.) It is also investing in Minnesota, which is a light blue state, and Iowa, where there are competitive House races.“Donald Trump might’ve been handed a fortune on a silver platter by his daddy, but most of us have to work for a living,” Jaime Harrison, the chair of the D.N.C., said in a statement. “Vice President Harris is the only candidate in this race who understands the struggles working families face and will fight every day to make life more affordable.” More

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      Rare Copy of U.S. Constitution Sells for More Than $11 Million

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      The document, which was sold to an anonymous bidder at an auction in North Carolina, was among the first copies of the Constitution ever printed, experts said.A rare copy of the United States Constitution that was printed shortly after the Constitutional Convention in 1787 and played a role in the document’s adoption by the original 13 states sold for more than $11 million during a live auction on Thursday evening.The high bid, from a buyer whose identity was not disclosed, was $9 million. That does not include the buyer’s premium of 23 percent or the taxes, which were not disclosed.The sale was handled by Brunk Auctions, which is based in Asheville, N.C. Bidding began at $1.1 million but quickly jumped to $5 million. It took just over seven minutes before the bidding closed at $9 million, said Nancy Zander, director of external affairs for Brunk Auctions.“It was a spectacular price,” Ms. Zander said in an interview Friday night. “It’s really important that important things get strong prices.”The copy of the Constitution was found two years ago in a filing cabinet in the house at Hayes, a farm once owned by Samuel Johnston, who served as governor of North Carolina from December 1787 to December 1789. The document’s discovery garnered national attention for being an early copy of the document and for the role it played in the document’s ratification.After the Constitutional Convention and after Congress added a ratification resolution, copies were sent to the governors of the original 13 states, who then gauged interest among their residents. Among those copies was the one sold on Thursday.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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      China’s Lackluster Growth Continues, Signaling Why Beijing Acted on Economy

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      Falling prices, weak consumer spending and a housing market crash help to explain why the Chinese government is taking steps to stimulate the economy.The Chinese economy continued to grow at a lackluster pace over the summer, according to data released on Friday, underscoring the urgency of the government’s recent attempts to bolster the economy.Construction has slowed because of a housing market meltdown. Millions of young college graduates have been unable to find work. Many local governments have run out of money to build roads or even pay the salaries of teachers and other workers.Looming over it all are falling prices across the Chinese economy, from apartments to cars to restaurant meals. Broadly falling prices, a phenomenon called deflation, make it hard for companies and families to earn enough to pay their mortgages and other debts.China’s economy grew 0.9 percent in July through September over the previous three months, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said. When projected out for the entire year, the economy grew at an annual rate of about 3.6 percent in the third quarter.The growth in part reflected an official revision on Friday to show that the second quarter was even weaker than previously acknowledged. Growth then was at an annual pace of 2 percent, and not the previously reported pace of 2.8 percent.Beijing has announced a series of measures since Sept. 24 to address the lingering troubles that became clear in the numbers released on Friday. The central bank has cut interest rates and minimum down payments for mortgages. The finance ministry promised the sale of more bonds to raise money for local governments to pay municipal salaries and buy vacant apartments for conversion into affordable housing.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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      What an Escalating Middle East Conflict Could Mean for the Global Economy

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      The biggest risk is a sustained increase in oil prices.For nearly a year since the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7 and the start of the fighting in Gaza, investment strategists have warned that a wider war could break out in the Middle East, crimping the world’s oil supply and sending shock waves throughout the global economy.The markets have generally shrugged off the potential of a broader conflict: The price of oil has remained largely subdued, with traders reassured by the world’s plentiful supply.But after Iran launched a barrage of missiles at Israel on Tuesday, oil prices began to rise as the market appeared to factor in the risk of a growing regional conflict. After President Biden said on Thursday that there had been “discussions” about support for an Israeli attack on Iran’s oil facilities, the price of Brent crude, the global oil benchmark registered its biggest weekly gain in more than a year.“Investors are finally paying attention to the Middle East after having decided it wasn’t going to move the needle,” said Tina Fordham, a former chief global political analyst at Citi who now runs an independent consultancy.“It’s not a perfect storm yet,” she said, “but it’s a constellation of risks coming together at a time when market systems still haven’t gotten comfortable that we’ve avoided a hard economic landing.”Everyone is watching Israel’s next move. Attacking Iran’s oil infrastructure or nuclear facilities, for example, would intensify the conflict. Biden has said he will not support an attack on Iran’s nuclear sites, and yesterday cautioned Israel against hitting Iran’s oil fields. “The risk is not zero, which means it’s high enough to consider different scenarios that range from all-out conflict that curtails energy access to a peaceful off-ramp,” said Ronald Temple, the chief market strategist for Lazard’s financial advisory and asset management business.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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      Jobs Report Adds to Economic Momentum for Harris

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      Vice President Kamala Harris probably could not have hoped for a better run of pre-election economic data than what the United States has enjoyed over the last month, punctuated by Friday’s surprisingly strong jobs report.In recent weeks, key inflation indicators have fallen close to the Federal Reserve’s 2 percent target rate, after years of running hot under Ms. Harris and President Biden. Federal Reserve officials cut interest rates by a half-percentage point to stoke economic activity, immediately bringing mortgage rates to their lowest point in two years. The Commerce Department confirmed that the economy has grown at a robust 3 percent clip over the last year, after adjusting for rising prices. The Census Bureau reported that the typical household’s inflation-adjusted income jumped in 2023.Those numbers had encouraged Democrats, including policymakers in the White House and close to Ms. Harris’s campaign team. Recent polls have shown Ms. Harris closing the gap, or pulling even, with former President Donald J. Trump on the question of who can best handle the economy and inflation.But it was Friday’s employment report — 254,000 jobs gained, with wages growing faster than prices — that appeared to give Harris boosters a particularly large dose of confidence. The report came less than a day after striking dockworkers agreed to return to work through the end of the year, avoiding what could have been a major economic disruption with a month to go before the election.“The combination of this great job market and easing inflation is generating solid real wage and income gains,” said Jared Bernstein, the chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers. “While those continue to power this expansion forward, we’re also seeing record investment in key sectors, an entrepreneurial boom and gains in worker bargaining power to help ensure that workers get their fair share of all this growth.”Even Mr. Biden, who has attempted to strike a balance between cheering the economy’s performance and acknowledging the struggles created by years of fast-rising prices, sounded more upbeat than normal for a post-jobs-report statement.“Today, we received good news for American workers and families with more than 250,000 new jobs in September and unemployment back down at 4.1 percent,” he said.Independent economists were less cheerful. Several of them acknowledged the strong numbers but warned that they could be illusory, and that the Fed may need to continue to cut interest rates in the months to come to keep unemployment from rising.“The September jobs report is unambiguously strong,” James Knightley, the chief international economist at ING, wrote in a research note. But he immediately warned that other indicators, including Americans’ personal assessments that the job market is worsening, cloud the picture. “We feel that the risks remain skewed towards weaker growth.” More