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      Possible Cyberattack Disrupts The Philadelphia Inquirer

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      The Inquirer, citing “anomalous activity” on its computer systems, said it was unable to print its regular Sunday edition and told staff members not to work in the newsroom at least through Tuesday.A possible cyberattack on The Philadelphia Inquirer disrupted the newspaper’s print operation over the weekend and prompted it to close its newsroom through at least Tuesday, when its staff will be covering an expensive and fiercely contested mayoral primary.Elizabeth H. Hughes, the publisher and chief executive of The Inquirer, said that the newspaper discovered “anomalous activity on select computer systems” on Thursday and “immediately took those systems offline.”But The Inquirer was unable to print its regular Sunday edition, the newspaper reported. Instead, print subscribers received a Sunday “early edition,” which went to press on Friday night. The newspaper also reported on Sunday that its ability to post and update stories on its website, Inquirer.com, was “sometimes slower than normal.”The Monday print editions of The Inquirer and The Philadelphia Daily News, which The Inquirer also publishes, were distributed as scheduled, Evan Benn, a company spokesman, said.But employees will not be permitted to work in the newsroom at least through Tuesday because access to The Inquirer’s internet servers has been disrupted, Ms. Hughes said in an email to the staff on Sunday evening that was shared with The New York Times.Ms. Hughes said that the company was looking for a co-working space for Tuesday, when The Inquirer will be covering a closely contested Democratic primary that is all but certain to determine the next mayor of Philadelphia — the largest city in Pennsylvania, a presidential swing state.“I truly don’t think it will impact it at all, short of us not being able to be together in the formal newsroom,” said Diane Mastrull, an editor who is president of The Newspaper Guild of Greater Philadelphia, the union that represents reporters, photographers and other staff members at The Inquirer. “Covid has certainly taught us to do our jobs remotely.”She said on Monday that the newspaper’s content management system, which staff members use to write and edit stories, was “operating with continued workarounds.”“I would not use the word ‘normal,’” Ms. Mastrull said.Ms. Hughes said that The Inquirer had notified the F.B.I. and had “implemented alternative processes to enable publication of print editions.”The newspaper was also working with Kroll, a corporate investigation firm, to restore its systems and to investigate the episode, Ms. Hughes said.The Inquirer, in its news story on the “apparent cyberattack,” said it was the most significant disruption to the publication of the newspaper since January 1996, when a major blizzard dropped more than 30 inches of snow on Philadelphia.The newspaper reported that Ms. Hughes, citing a continuing investigation, had declined to answer detailed questions about the episode, including who was behind it, whether The Inquirer or its employees appeared to have been specifically targeted, or whether any sensitive employee or subscriber information might have been compromised.In an email on Monday, Mr. Benn, the company spokesman, said: “As our investigation is ongoing, we are unable to provide additional information at this time. Should we discover that any personal data was affected, we will notify and support” anyone who might have been affected.Special Agent E. Edward Conway of the F.B.I. field office in Philadelphia said that while the agency was aware of the issue, it was the bureau’s practice not to comment on specific cyber incidents. “However, when the F.B.I. learns about potential cyberattacks, it’s customary that we offer our assistance in these matters,” Mr. Conway said in an email.Ms. Mastrull, who was working as an editor over the weekend, said that staff members had noticed on Saturday that they could not log on to the content management system.They were given a workaround, she said, but the process created “very, very difficult working conditions” as the staff covered the last weekend of campaign events before the primary, Taylor Swift concerts at Lincoln Financial Field and Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between the Boston Celtics and the Philadelphia 76ers.Employees were “a little concerned that there weren’t enough protections against this, and very frustrated that the company’s communication was lacking specifics,” Ms. Mastrull said.In 2018, The Los Angeles Times said that a cyberattack had disrupted its printing operations and those at newspapers in San Diego and Florida. Unnamed sources cited by The Los Angeles Times suggested that the newspaper might have been hit by ransomware — a pernicious attack that scrambles computer programs and files before demanding that the victim pay a ransom to unscramble them.The Guardian reported that it was hit by a ransomware attack in December in which the personal data of staff members in Britain was compromised. The Guardian reported that the attack forced it to close its offices for several months.In an email to the staff of The Inquirer on Sunday night, Ms. Mastrull summarized the day’s news and paid tribute to the staff members who covered it, “despite a publishing system rendered virtually inoperable.”“Now all we have to do is find some co-working space so we can cover a really important election Tuesday,” she wrote. “Can’t keep us down!” More

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      DeSantis Impresses Voters and Trolls Trump in Iowa Swing

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      The former president canceled a rally in Des Moines, citing a storm warning. The Florida governor made the most of his rival’s absence, as DeSantis allies taunted Mr. Trump.For the first time in months, Gov. Ron DeSantis on Saturday showed the aggressive political instincts that his allies have long insisted he would demonstrate in a contest against former President Donald J. Trump.After headlining two successful political events in Iowa, Mr. DeSantis made an unscheduled stop in Des Moines — a move aimed at highlighting the fact that Mr. Trump had abruptly postponed a planned Saturday evening rally in the area because of reports of possible severe weather.Mr. Trump’s explanation for postponing the event drew skepticism from local Iowa officials and derision from DeSantis allies about the “beautiful” weather. And Mr. DeSantis — who has avoided direct conflict with Mr. Trump — essentially kicked sand in the former president’s face by coming to an area that Mr. Trump claimed to have been told was too dangerous for him to visit.After wrapping up his events on Saturday evening elsewhere in the state, Mr. DeSantis headed to Jethro’s BBQ Southside, where he and his wife, Casey DeSantis, stood on a table outside and spoke to a cheering crowd. The barbecue joint was a short drive from where Mr. Trump had planned to host his own rally.“My better half and I have been able to be all over Iowa today, but before we went back to Florida we wanted to come by and say hi to the people of Des Moines,” a grinning Mr. DeSantis said. “So thank you all for coming out. It’s a beautiful night, it’s been a great day for us.”Mr. DeSantis’s pointed pit stop was a clear rebuke to Mr. Trump, who has tried to torment the Florida governor for months, mocking him for his falling poll numbers and perceived dearth of charisma. Mr. DeSantis’s resistance to hitting back while not a declared candidate as he finished the state’s legislative session, combined with a handful of unforced errors, had allowed the former president to take control of the race for 2024 and frustrated some of Mr. DeSantis’s allies. But as he prepares to take on Mr. Trump, who has dominated every Republican he has campaigned against in the past, Mr. DeSantis moved to show he doesn’t intend to suffer the same result. “If someone’s punching you in the face, you better punch them back,” said Terry Sullivan, who managed the 2016 presidential campaign of Senator Marco Rubio of Florida — a race in which Mr. Rubio was criticized for not fighting back enough against Mr. Trump.Mr. DeSantis has been outflanked by Mr. Trump’s team at various turns until now. Saturday was the first time Mr. DeSantis has taken advantage of an opportunity to show up Mr. Trump over a perceived misstep. Mr. DeSantis needs to string together many more days like Saturday in a campaign that will rely heavily on winning the Iowa caucus early next year. But Republican activists in the state say there is an opening with caucus-goers for someone other than Mr. Trump. And the visit Saturday, where he also traveled to Sioux Center — populated by Christian conservatives whose support he must gain — was seen as a positive development by Republicans who want to defeat Mr. Trump but have been dismayed by Mr. DeSantis’s stumbles as he steps onto the national stage.Casey DeSantis mingled with attendees at the event in Cedar Rapids on Saturday.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDespite the unforeseen — albeit indirect — jab at Jethro’s, the governor is unlikely to criticize Mr. Trump directly until after he formally announces his campaign, according to two people familiar with his political operation. And even when he does jump into the race, which is expected to happen imminently, he will largely focus on contrasting his record with Mr. Trump’s — particularly on issues like the coronavirus pandemic — while making the case that he is the candidate better equipped to defeat President Biden in a general election. It’s a strategy that avoids relitigating Mr. Trump’s false claims about the 2020 election, and one the governor is foreshadowing as he barnstorms Republican events around the country. It also positions Mr. DeSantis — who is decades younger than the 76-year-old Mr. Trump, who was recently indicted and faces the possibility of additional ones in other investigations — as interested in the future and not the past.“If we make this election about a referendum on Joe Biden and his failed policies, and we provide a positive alternative to take America in a new direction, I think Republicans will win across the board,” Mr. DeSantis said at a Saturday evening fund-raiser for the Republican Party of Iowa in Cedar Rapids. That event was shown on Fox News during time that Mr. Trump had claimed Fox News was reserving to show his rally. Mr. DeSantis’s message is already appealing to some voters, including Amy Seeger, who traveled from Milwaukee to see him speak earlier in the day at a picnic in Sioux Center.“I would vote for a shoe over Trump,” Ms. Seeger said in an interview. “It is time to move forward. Trump is very wrapped up in 2020 and playing the victim.”Mr. DeSantis also used the Iowa trip to show off the sometimes enigmatic lighter side of his personality, flipping burgers at the picnic and talking about his life as a family man with his wife at the evening fund-raiser in Cedar Rapids.At that second event, Ms. DeSantis joined her husband on stage for an interview conducted by the state Republican Party chair, Jeff Kaufmann, following remarks from the governor. Mr. DeSantis’s stump speech focuses almost exclusively on policy, leaving out the biographical details that politicians are generally expected to supply. His wife seemed to try to fill in those gaps, telling personal stories about Mr. DeSantis’s childhood in Florida, his military service, and their three young children.“When he gets home, don’t think for a second that he goes and goes right to bed,” she said. “I hand three small kids over to him and I go to bed.”The moment resonated with the crowd. “There was a tender side to him, a family side, that I didn’t really have an appreciation for,” said Bob Carlson, a physician from Muscatine who was in the audience.Mr. DeSantis greeted supporters after making an unscheduled visit to the Jethro’s BBQ Southside in Des Moines on Saturday.Bryon Houlgrave/USA Today NetworkAs Mr. DeSantis builds toward an announcement, he is beginning to show other signs of political strength in ways that matter beyond having financial backing. The outing to Iowa — where he is expected to make a return visit fairly soon — came as a super PAC backing his all-but-official presidential campaign announced support from 37 state lawmakers. Local elected officials tend to pay less attention to national polls than members of Congress, who have been slower to endorse the governor.In contrast, Mr. Trump — who had scheduled a rally to try to blot out Mr. DeSantis’s visit by appearing on the same day — abruptly called off his own event in the middle of the afternoon, citing a tornado watch.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s campaign, said the Iowa event was sold out but that “due to the National Weather Service’s Tornado Watch in effect in Polk and surrounding counties, we were unfortunately forced to postpone the event. We will be there at the first available date.”But although it rained heavily at points, it was sunny mid-afternoon and no severe weather such as a tornado materialized, which raised questions among Iowans about whether Mr. Trump was concerned he would fail to draw the crowd he had anticipated. The lack of dangerous storms was noted by local activists who want to see the party move on from Mr. Trump. “We’re all outside on a nice night,” the influential podcast host Steve Deace wrote on Twitter from the scene of Mr. DeSantis’s barbecue victory lap. “Pretty big crowd too. No severe weather in sight. Planes landing and taking off as scheduled.”While Mr. Trump canceled his Iowa appearance, he later called in to an event hosted by the ReAwaken America Tour, a Christian nationalist, far-right movement led by Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, the QAnon promoter and national security adviser who Mr. Trump forced out early in his term. The group, which helps promote conspiracy theories, paid one of Mr. Trump’s clubs in Florida, the Doral, to hold it there. Mr. DeSantis’s hope for a win in the Iowa caucuses involves uniting a careful coalition of social conservatives who backed candidates like Rick Santorum and Mike Huckabee in 2016, along with suburban moderates who went for Mr. Rubio.Yet Mr. DeSantis may be poised to pick up support from enough corners of the state to increase his support. For instance, the influential social conservative leader Bob Vander Plaats has met with the governor and has praised him publicly.Mr. DeSantis’s day was also punctuated with appearances with Senator Joni Ernst and Gov. Kim Reynolds, both Iowa Republicans. Those visits don’t necessarily mean endorsements from those officials are in the offing, but they do indicate a willingness in the state to support someone other than Mr. Trump and less concern than once existed about retribution from the former president.Bret Hayworth contributed reporting from Sioux Center, Iowa. More

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      5 Things to Know About the Philadelphia Mayoral Race

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      The winner of the Democratic contest is all but certain to become the next mayor of Philadelphia and could play a key role in the 2024 presidential election.Amid grave concerns about public safety, education and the direction of a major American city, Philadelphians will take a major step on Tuesday toward electing their 100th mayor in a contest with implications that will reverberate across a crucial presidential battleground.The winner of Tuesday’s Democratic primary is all but certain to become the mayor of Philadelphia — the largest city in Pennsylvania, a premier presidential swing state — and the spending on the race has reflected those stakes. The crowded and increasingly acrimonious mayoral contest is the most expensive in the city’s history, according to The Philadelphia Inquirer.Five contenders are generally considered to be the leading Democratic candidates: the former City Council members Helen Gym, Cherelle Parker and Allan Domb; Rebecca Rhynhart, a former city controller; and Jeff Brown, who has owned grocery stores.Ms. Parker, Ms. Rhynhart and Ms. Gym are often regarded as in the strongest positions, but the race is fluid and highly competitive. Sparse polling shows that there are many undecided voters, and some Democrats worry about low turnout, factors that make the outcome difficult to predict.Here are five things to know about Tuesday’s primary.It’s a test — however imperfect — of progressive power.Nearly two years ago, left-wing Democrats were bitterly disappointed by New York, as the relatively moderate Eric Adams swept into Gracie Mansion on a message of law and order.But since then, mayoral candidates identified with the more liberal wing of the party have notched other notable victories, including Michelle Wu in Boston and Karen Bass in Los Angeles. Last month, Brandon Johnson, a left-leaning Chicagoan, electrified progressive Democrats across the country with his mayoral win.The Philadelphia mayor’s race offers the next significant, if imperfect, citywide test of progressive power. Some of the same players who engaged in other key races — including Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, teachers’ union activists and organizations like the Working Families Party — are backing Ms. Gym. Mr. Johnson endorsed her on Friday.Ms. Gym joined striking Writers Guild of America members at a rally in front of the Comcast headquarters in Philadelphia on Friday.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York TimesShe is a veteran community organizer focused in particular on schools, who is pledging to deliver “transformative” change.“My opponents think my plans are too big,” she said in an ad. “I think their ideas are too small.”Mr. Sanders and Ms. Ocasio-Cortez are expected to rally with her on Sunday. In an interview, Mr. Sanders sought to connect the candidacies of Mr. Johnson, Ms. Bass and Ms. Gym.“What Karen and Brandon and hopefully Helen will be able to do,” said Mr. Sanders, who is himself the former mayor of Burlington, Vt., “is say, ‘You know what? This government, our governments, are working for you, not just wealthy campaign contributors.’”A low turnout or a slim margin of victory in any direction could make it challenging to draw sweeping conclusions about the mood of the city, but many observers see Ms. Gym’s candidacy as a notable test for the left.“If Helen wins, that’s a big story, because it means the progressive movement won,” said former Gov. Ed Rendell, a former Philadelphia mayor who is supporting Ms. Rhynhart.Philadelphia could elect its first female mayor.Philadelphia’s mayors to date have at least one thing in common: They have all been men.“Let’s just say I’ll bring a different touch,” Ms. Parker, a former state representative, says in a campaign ad that highlights images of some of those who would be her predecessors.Ms. Parker, who has advocated for a more robust police presence while stressing her opposition to police abuse, has often used her identity as a mother of a young Black man to argue that she can strike the appropriate balance on matters of public safety.“I am a Black woman who has lived my real life at the intersection of race and gender,” said Ms. Parker, who has the support of much of the party establishment, in an interview. “I know what it feels like to be marginalized.”And Ms. Gym, who could also be the city’s first Asian American mayor, has branded herself a “tough Philly mom” — but she made it clear that the history-making potential of her candidacy was part of a much broader argument.Ms. Rhynhart canvassing with Kayzar Abdul Khabir, a member of her campaign staff, in the business district of West Philadelphia on Friday.Rachel Wisniewski for The New York Times“It is really important that change is more than just a change of faces,” Ms. Gym said. “People want a transformation of how people live.”Ms. Rhynhart, who is running on her government experience while promising to take on the status quo as a critic of the current mayor, took a similar tack.“There’s been 99 male mayors,” she said. “It’s an important time, and likely long overdue, to have a woman as the leader of our city. But I’m focused on being the best overall leader.”The city’s self-image is also at stake.No one doubts the pride many Philadelphians feel in their city, the birthplace of the nation’s democracy and the home of aggressively devoted sports fans.But several current and former city leaders said the city’s challenges with issues surrounding crime, education and other postpandemic concerns had taken a significant toll on morale.Philadelphians, said State Representative Malcolm Kenyatta, are looking for someone “who can sort of bring the city back — I think almost in an emotional way.”The current mayor, Jim Kenney, made headlines last year for declaring that he would “be happy” when he was done being mayor, comments he later sought to walk back.“The mood in the city is despair — a lot of people have given up,” Mr. Rendell said. “For a lot of people, it is the last chance to turn it around.”Mr. Rendell was elected mayor in 1991, at a moment of crisis for the city. Mr. Domb drew parallels between that race and the current moment.“This is a turning-point election,” he said.The next mayor could be a prominent player in the 2024 presidential election.When President Biden wants to project patriotism, talk about the future of American democracy or just count on a warm reception, he often heads to Philadelphia, a city he knows well as a former senator from nearby Delaware.There will be a natural opening for Philadelphia’s next Democratic mayor to serve as a party surrogate as Mr. Biden seeks re-election. Philadelphia’s lower turnout rates have also disappointed Democrats in recent federal elections, and a number of candidates pledged in interviews to focus on turnout and voter access as mayor.The Democrats will be looking to increase turnout in Philadelphia in the 2024 presidential election.Al Drago for The New York TimesThe success or failure of the next mayor to manage the city may be noticed by Republicans, said Representative Brendan Boyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who supports Ms. Parker.“If we have a Democratic mayor in Philadelphia who is not doing well or is unpopular, that does make winning in the Philadelphia metro area more challenging,” he said. “That’s something Republicans would certainly use statewide.”Public safety is the dominant issue.On Monday, a canvasser working with a progressive political organization was fatally shot after a dispute with another canvasser with the group — a stunning moment that underscored how problems of gun violence are shaping the city, and the mayoral race.“Public safety is virtually everyone’s No. 1 issue,” said former Mayor Michael Nutter, who backs Ms. Rhynhart.While the full crime picture in Philadelphia is complex, leading candidates have made it clear that they see it as the biggest force in the contest and have moved assertively to address it in advertising.Some who once opposed an increase in police funding after the killing of George Floyd have struck starkly different tones in discussing law enforcement this primary contest, and there is broad agreement across the ideological spectrum on the need to fill police vacancies, while candidates also denounce police abuse.Certainly, there are notable distinctions in emphasis and policy, too. Mr. Brown has been endorsed by Philadelphia’s police union.“The most urgent concern is crime, and especially violent crimes,” he said. “Philadelphia really isn’t doing well.”Candidates differ about how to balance investments in social services with those in law enforcement, and some have clashed over police stops of citizens.“We can’t go backwards to racist, unconstitutional practices,” Ms. Rhynhart said. “But we can’t have the current chaos.” More

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      Why the Anti-Trump Republican Primary Has Yet to Emerge

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      The former president’s current and potential rivals have failed to gain traction as the party seems to rally around him in the face of criticism.Just a few months ago, the Republican presidential primary seemed as if it might include a frank and vigorous debate about the leadership and limitations of Donald J. Trump.But any appetite for criticism of Mr. Trump among Republicans has nearly evaporated in a very short time. Voters rallied around him after his criminal indictment in March on charges related to hush money for a porn star, and potential rivals have faltered, with few willing to take direct aim at the former president and front-runner for the nomination.In a live town hall on CNN on Wednesday, the cheers for every falsehood and insult that Mr. Trump uttered under tough questioning by a moderator showed there was little to no daylight between Mr. Trump and the Republican base. A quirky effort to disrupt the love-in by Chris Christie — a potential rival who bought Facebook ads to supply audience members with skeptical questions such as “Why are you afraid of debating?” — went nowhere.In surveys and focus groups, a fair share of Republican voters say that they would prefer a less polarizing, more electable nominee. But a near taboo against criticizing Mr. Trump has made it hard for rivals, apart from Mr. Christie and one or two others near the bottom of polls, to stand out.In what looks like a rerun of the 2016 Republican primary, almost none of Mr. Trump’s competitors have openly gone after him, despite his glaring vulnerabilities. Instead, they are hoping — now as then — that he will somehow self-destruct, leaving them to inherit his voters.After a jury found Mr. Trump liable for sexual abuse and defamation of the writer E. Jean Carroll on Tuesday, Mike Pence, the former vice president, who is weighing a 2024 campaign, declined to criticize Mr. Trump. In an interview with NBC News, Mr. Pence said it was “just one more story focusing on my former running mate that I know is a great fascination to members of the national media, but I just don’t think it’s where the American people are focused.”Other 2024 candidates either defended Mr. Trump, such as the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, or played down the verdict, including Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor. Ms. Haley, who announced her candidacy in February, even defended Mr. Trump this week for threatening to skip Republican primary debates. “With the numbers he has now, why would he go get on a debate stage and risk that?” she said.Only two 2024 hopefuls found the verdict in the Carroll case to be disqualifying for a would-be president: Mr. Christie and Asa Hutchinson, the former Arkansas governor. Mr. Hutchinson criticized Mr. Trump’s “contempt for the rule of law.”Several months ago, polling had suggested Mr. Trump could be a potentially weak candidate, with only 25 to 35 percent support from Republican voters in high-quality surveys. The Republican National Committee promised an autopsy of the 2022 midterms that was expected to address Mr. Trump’s role in the party’s surprising losses.But today, the lane in the Republican primary for a candidate who is openly critical of Mr. Trump seems to be closing.Mr. Hutchinson’s long-shot campaign has failed to gain notice. Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, who has promised a decision this month on whether he will run, also has yet to generate much interest. Even the occasionally critical Mr. Pence, who mildly suggested Mr. Trump would be “accountable” to history for the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, is struggling for affirmation from the Republican base.And the R.N.C. autopsy of the midterms? A draft reportedly did not mention Mr. Trump at all.Mr. Trump in Waco, Texas, in March.Christopher Lee for The New York TimesDavid Kochel, a Republican strategist who advised Jeb Bush when he ran against Mr. Trump in 2016, said there was no opportunity for a candidate openly critical of Mr. Trump in the 2024 primary.“Voters have seen Trump as the most attacked president of their lifetimes, and they have an allergic reaction to one of their own doing it,” Mr. Kochel said. “He’s built up these incredible antibodies, in part stemming from how the base perceives he has been treated.”A CBS News poll released this month found that among likely Republican primary voters, only an insignificant handful, 7 percent, wanted a candidate who “criticizes Trump.”The three candidates whom voters are the least open to considering, the survey found, are those who have criticized Mr. Trump to varying degrees: Mr. Christie, Mr. Hutchinson and Mr. Pence.David Carney, a Republican strategist in New Hampshire, said he had expected the race to be more competitive by now, but a turning point occurred in March with Mr. Trump’s indictment in New York.“It fell into the president’s narrative of the past five years,” Mr. Carney said, referring to Mr. Trump’s portrayal of himself as a victim of a criminal justice system out to get him. Mr. Carney described what he called a “boomerang” effect on Republican primary polls. “They’re beating up your guy — there’s a rallying around the flag.”Mr. Trump’s rivals could still see a surge in support between now and next year’s first primary contests, but for the time being he is dominating all challengers. A polling average shows him with a 30-point lead over his closest rival, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has yet to formally announce his run. All other candidates, declared and potential, are distant afterthoughts in the race, for now.The former president is insulated from criticism, strategists said, because of the intense and dug-in partisanship of the Republican base, and because many of those voters get information only from right-wing sources, which have minimized the Jan. 6 attack and obscured Mr. Trump’s 2020 loss.“They barely have access to the truth,” said Sarah Longwell, an anti-Trump Republican strategist. Ms. Longwell, who hosts a podcast about Republican voters called “The Focus Group,” said a sizable share of primary voters wanted to move on from Mr. Trump.Supporters in Mar-a-Lago showed support for Mr. Trump when he returned to Florida after turning himself over to Manhattan Criminal Court.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesBut according to polling, a majority of Republican voters don’t believe Mr. Trump really lost in 2020. “Every politician on their team, everyone they know and all the media they consume — all tells them that the election was stolen,” Ms. Longwell said.Mr. Christie, the most sharply critical 2024 hopeful of Mr. Trump, recently attacked the former president, calling him “a child” for denying the 2020 election results and cowardly for suggesting he might duck Republican debates.But when Mr. Christie tested the electoral waters during visits to New Hampshire the past two months, including at the same college where Mr. Trump’s town hall took place on Wednesday, his crowds seemed tilted toward independents and even Democrats, including those who knew him as the house conservative on ABC News.One element that may factor in Mr. Christie’s calculus: The New Hampshire primary next year could favor an anti-Trump Republican because of an influx of independent voters. Because Democrats chose South Carolina as their first nominating state — and because President Biden may not appear on the New Hampshire ballot or campaign in the state — up to 100,000 independents are expected to cast ballots in the Republican race, where they could tilt the results.“Independents are open to voting for a Republican candidate,” said Matt Mowers, who served as Mr. Christie’s New Hampshire state director in 2016, “but they aren’t open to voting for a crazy Republican.” More

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      Trump Town Hall Shows His Second-Term Plan: Shattering Even More Norms

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      In little over an hour, Donald J. Trump suggested the United States should default on its debts for the first time in history, injected doubt over the country’s commitment to defending Ukraine from Russia’s invasion, dangled pardons for most of the Capitol rioters convicted of crimes, and refused to say he would abide by the results of the next presidential election.The second-term vision Mr. Trump sketched out at a CNN town-hall event on Wednesday would represent a sharp departure from core American values that have been at the bedrock of the nation for decades: its creditworthiness, its credibility with international allies and its adherence to the rule of law at home.Mr. Trump’s provocations were hardly shocking. His time in office was often defined by a the-rules-don’t-apply-to-me approach to governance and a lack of interest in upholding the post-World War II national security order, and at 76 he is not bound to change much.But his performance nonetheless signaled an escalation of his bid to bend the government to his wishes as he runs again for the White House, only this time with a greater command of the Republican Party’s pressure points and a plan to demolish the federal bureaucracy.The televised event crystallized that the version of Mr. Trump who could return to office in 2025 — vowing to be a vehicle of “retribution” — is likely to govern as he did in 2020. In that final year of his presidency, Mr. Trump cleared out people perceived as disloyal and promoted those who would fully indulge his instincts — things he did not always do during the first three years of his administration, when his establishmentarian advisers often talked him out of drastic policy changes.“From my perspective, there was an evolution of Donald Trump over his four years, with 2020 I think being the most dramatic example of him — the real him,” said Mark T. Esper, who served as Mr. Trump’s defense secretary. “And I suspect that would be his starting point if he were to win office in 2024.”Mr. Trump’s CNN performance reinforced concerns “that a return of Trump to the White House would be a return to the chaos,” said Senator Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware. CNNIn a statement, Jason Miller, a senior adviser to Mr. Trump, dismissed criticisms of the former president, who he said “spoke directly to Americans suffering from the Biden decline and President Trump’s desire to bring about security and economic prosperity on Day 1.” He added, “Understandably, this vision is not shared by the failed warmongers, political losers and career bureaucratic hacks — many of whom he fired or defeated — who have created all of America’s problems.”At the town-hall event, Mr. Trump almost cavalierly floated ideas that would reshape the nation’s standing in the world, vowing to end the Ukraine war within 24 hours and declining to commit to supporting the country, an American ally that has relied on billions of dollars in aid to hold off the Russian onslaught.“Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” CNN’s Kaitlan Collins pressed.Mr. Trump evaded.“I don’t think in terms of winning and losing,” he replied, adding that he was focused on winding down the conflict. “I think in terms of getting it settled so we stop killing all these people.” He did not mention that the majority of the killing has been committed by Russia.Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a Democrat who sits on the Foreign Relations Committee and is close to President Biden, said there were fears internationally of Mr. Trump’s return.“His performance last night just reinforced what so many of our allies and partners have told me concerns them over the past two years — that a return of Trump to the White House would be a return to the chaos,” he said.Some Republican elected officials who are skeptical of U.S. aid to Ukraine praised Mr. Trump’s performance. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio called his Ukraine answer “real statesmanship.”Mr. Miller argued that Mr. Trump had an “entire term with no new wars, and he’s ready to do it again.”In New Hampshire, the audience of Republicans lapped up Mr. Trump’s one-liners and slew of insults — to Ms. Collins (a “nasty person,” he jeered, echoing his old attack on Hillary Clinton), to former Speaker Nancy Pelosi, to E. Jean Carroll, the woman whom a jury this week found Mr. Trump liable of sexually abusing and defaming. And the crowd expressed no dissent as he again tried to rewrite the history of Jan. 6, 2021, when his supporters stormed the Capitol in an attempt to overturn his election loss.“It was a beautiful day,” Mr. Trump said.If he becomes president again, he said, he would “most likely” pardon “a large portion” of his supporters who were convicted over their actions on Jan. 6. “They were there with love in their heart,” he said of the crowd, which he beamed had been the “largest” of his career.“You see what you’re going to get, which is a presidency untethered to the truth and untethered to the constitutional order,” said Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, the Republican Party’s most prominent Trump critic remaining on Capitol Hill. “The idea that people who’ve been convicted of crimes are all going to be pardoned, or for the most part pardoned, is quite a departure from the principles of the Constitution and of our party.”Mr. Trump also embraced the possibility of defaulting in the debt-ceiling standoff between President Biden and congressional Republicans, an act that economists say could spell catastrophe for the global economy.“You might as well do it now because you’ll do it later, because we have to save this country,” Mr. Trump said. “Our country is dying.”Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a Republican who is running a long-shot campaign for president in 2024, said Mr. Trump’s potential return to the White House posed an “enormous” risk for the nation.“He has shown such a disrespect for our institutions of government that are critical to our democracy,” Mr. Hutchinson said, adding that he had been particularly unnerved by the talk of defaulting. “He talked like it was OK for the United States to default on the debt. And that’s like putting his past business practices of using bankruptcy as a tool and applying that to the government.”Despite such warnings from old-guard Republicans, the cheers from the conservative crowd in New Hampshire during the CNN event were an audible reminder of Mr. Trump’s sizable lead in Republican primary polls.Ukrainian troops firing on Russian positions. Mr. Trump claimed he could end the war in 24 hours.Tyler Hicks/The New York TimesKarl Rove, the architect of George W. Bush’s two presidential victories, said in an interview that “for true believers and ardent supporters, it was a boffo performance” by Mr. Trump. But he said that other Republicans would now be forced to answer for “a big pile of noxious material on their doorsteps.”“Do other Republicans believe that rioters who attacked police, broke into the Capitol on Jan. 6 and, in some cases, attempted to overthrow the government should be pardoned?” Mr. Rove asked. “Do other Republicans agree that it doesn’t matter if the United States government defaults on its debt? Do other Republicans not care who wins in Ukraine?”One of the most controversial policies of Mr. Trump’s presidency was the forced separation of migrant parents from their children at the southern border, which Mr. Trump reversed himself on in June 2018 after a huge backlash.But during the town hall on Wednesday, Mr. Trump suggested he would revive it. “Well, when you have that policy, people don’t come,” he said. “If a family hears they’re going to be separated, they love their family, they don’t come.”Casual observers might be inclined, as some did in 2016, to take Mr. Trump’s most extreme statements, such as his casual embrace of allowing the nation to default, seriously but not literally.But underneath Mr. Trump’s loose talk are detailed plans to bulldoze the federal civil service. These proposals have been incubating for more than two years within a network of well-funded and Trump-connected outside groups.A reunion at the southern border. Mr. Trump suggested he might reinstate his family separation policy for migrants.Victor J. Blue for The New York TimesIn the final, chaotic weeks of the 2020 election, Mr. Trump’s lawyers, having crafted a novel legal theory in strict secrecy, released an executive order known as Schedule F that aimed to wipe out most employment protections against firing for tens of thousands of federal workers.Mr. Trump ran out of time to carry out that plan. But a constellation of conservative groups has been preparing to revive the effort if he regains the presidency in 2025.Pressed by Ms. Collins, Mr. Trump would not say he was willing to accept the 2024 results.Former Representative Liz Cheney, who lost her Republican primary bid for re-election after helping lead the House’s investigation into Jan. 6, said of the Trump town hall, “Virtually everything Donald Trump says enhances the case against him.”“Donald Trump made clear yet again that he fully intended to corruptly obstruct Congress’s official proceeding to count electoral votes in order to overturn the 2020 election,” said Ms. Cheney, who has made opposing Mr. Trump’s return to power her top political priority since her defeat last year. “He says what happened on Jan. 6 was justified, and he celebrates those who attacked our Capitol.”On Wednesday, Mr. Trump also denounced his former vice president, Mike Pence, for upholding the 2020 election results and waved off the suggestion that Mr. Pence had been at risk on Jan. 6, even though the Secret Service tried to evacuate him from the Capitol.“I don’t think he was in any danger,” Mr. Trump said.Marc Short, who was with Mr. Pence that day as his chief of staff, called out Mr. Trump’s double standard in defending violence by his supporters while claiming to broadly stand for law and order.“Many of us called for the prosecution of B.L.M. rioters when they destroyed private businesses,” Mr. Short said, referring to Black Lives Matter supporters. “It’s hard to see how there’s a different threshold when rioters injure law enforcement, threaten public officials and loot the Capitol.” More

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      Trump Camp Sees CNN Town Hall as Calculated Risk

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      Follow for live updates on the Trump CNN town hall meeting.No questions will be off-limits on Wednesday night at the CNN town hall with Donald J. Trump. He can put 15 people of his choice in the audience but none are allowed to ask questions. And his team has not had a hand in guiding how the event will go, according to two people briefed on the discussions.All of this adds up to no small amount of risk for the former president during the prime-time event, his advisers say — a risk they see as worth taking.They expect tough questions from the CNN anchor and moderator, Kaitlan Collins — and have been anticipating questions about abortion, investigations into Mr. Trump and a civil jury’s finding him liable for defamation and sexual abuse in the lawsuit brought by E. Jean Carroll in Manhattan, a verdict handed down a day before the town hall.But they also know he will mostly be facing questions from an audience of Republicans and Republican-leaning independent voters in New Hampshire, the state hosting the first primary of the 2024 Republican presidential contest. It was the first state Mr. Trump won in 2016 and a place where he still enjoys popularity among Republicans.Mr. Trump’s advisers say he needs to seek a broader audience as he campaigns for the Republican nomination.Doug Mills/The New York TimesSince the end of his presidency, Mr. Trump has largely been relegated to appearing on right-wing networks and podcasts. He has taken reporters aboard his plane now that he’s a candidate, but his team recognizes that he needs to start venturing beyond the fringe to gain access to a broader audience, particularly as a contrast to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who avoids the mainstream media. And CNN was willing to provide him that opportunity, several advisers said. The town hall will be Mr. Trump’s first appearance on CNN since the 2016 campaign.“You can’t just stay on certain channels all the time,” said a person close to Mr. Trump who was not authorized to speak publicly about the town hall planning. “You’ve got to start venturing out. And that’s a clear contrast to what other candidates may or may not do.”The town hall has been months in the making.Earlier this year, Mr. Trump’s team had wanted to participate in a Fox News town hall with Sean Hannity, a popular pro-Trump anchor. But Mr. Hannity ultimately did an interview with Mr. Trump instead, and the town hall never materialized. Through a Fox News press officer, Mr. Hannity denied there was any obstacle to a Fox town hall, insisting Mr. Trump “preferred to do an interview on this occasion and said he would do a town hall as his campaign progressed.”Several weeks after Mr. Trump declared his candidacy in November, CNN was in touch with the former president’s team about a possible interview, as the network has held with other presidential candidates, said two people familiar with the discussions who requested anonymity to describe the talks. As the conversations about a Fox News town hall fizzled, the Trump team began negotiating with CNN in earnest.“There is no change to our format because of the unique nature of Donald Trump’s candidacy,” said David Chalian, CNN’s political director. “CNN’s role of bringing a candidate into direct touch with voters in this town hall format has been and continues to be a staple of our presidential campaign coverage.”Mr. Trump is not prone to practice sessions. His debate preparations during his two previous presidential campaigns often devolved into him telling old war stories or yelling at aides. For this occasion, Mr. Trump held an informal session with a handful of aides, including his speechwriter, Vince Haley, on Monday in his office at Mar-a-Lago, according to multiple people briefed on the gathering. No one was assigned to play Ms. Collins. Aides have instead discussed questions that might arise.The Trump team has spent considerable time discussing the politics of abortion. Mr. Trump is more responsible than anyone — with the possible exception of the Republican Senate leader, Mitch McConnell — for the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade.Yet Mr. Trump himself has at times been privately ambivalent about the consequences of the decision, and has blamed abortion politics for Republicans’ dismal performance in the 2022 midterm elections. He discussed the subject as if he were a pundit or bystander rather than the architect of Roe v. Wade’s demise. And he has troubled some prominent anti-abortion activists in the way he has handled questions about abortion policy since the midterms. Mr. Trump has refused to say he would support a national abortion ban, instead saying abortion policy should be left to the states.On Monday, Mr. Trump met at Mar-a-Lago with leaders of the anti-abortion movement who were worried about his recent comments, including Marjorie Dannenfelser, the president of Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America. In the meeting, Mr. Trump said his position on abortion was the same as it was when he first ran for president and the same as what he endorsed in office, according to a person with direct knowledge of the conversation. Back then, Mr. Trump supported a national ban on most abortions after 20 weeks of pregnancy. As a result of Mr. Trump’s comments in the meeting, Ms. Dannenfelser released a statement praising him.But in the CNN town hall, Mr. Trump might not stipulate a number of weeks at which abortion should be illegal, according to two people familiar with Mr. Trump’s thinking. Instead, he is expected to take credit for keeping his anti-abortion promises in office and mention that he supports “the three exceptions”: when necessary to save the life of the mother or when the cases involve rape or incest. He may then turn to attacking Democrats by describing horrific images of late-term abortions, similar to what he did in a 2016 debate with his Democratic rival, Hillary Clinton. More

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      Why Joe Biden Needs a Primary Challenger in the 2024 Race

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      To understand why progressives should challenge Joe Biden in the upcoming Democratic presidential primary, remember what happened during the last one.When Bernie Sanders exited the 2020 race — after winning more than 1,000 delegates — he cashed in his votes for public policy clout. Mr. Sanders’s supporters joined Mr. Biden’s allies in working groups that crafted a common agenda on the economy, education, health care, criminal justice, immigration and climate change. From those task forces came what Barack Obama called “the most progressive platform of any major-party nominee in history.” And that progressivism continued into Mr. Biden’s presidency. One hundred days after he took office, The New York Times concluded that he had “moved leftward with his party, and early in his tenure is driving the biggest expansion of American government in decades.”By challenging him from the left, Mr. Sanders didn’t only change Mr. Biden’s candidacy. He also made him a better president. But only on domestic policy. There was no joint working group specifically devoted to foreign affairs — and it shows. With rare exceptions, Mr. Biden hasn’t challenged the hawkish conventional wisdom that permeates Washington; he’s embodied it. He’s largely ignored progressives, who, polls suggest, want a fundamentally different approach to the world. And he’ll keep ignoring them until a challenger turns progressive discontent into votes.Take China. America’s new cold war against Beijing may enjoy bipartisan support in Washington, but it doesn’t enjoy bipartisan support in the United States. According to an April Pew Research Center poll, only 27 percent of Democrats see China as an enemy — roughly half the figure among Republicans. In a December 2021 Chicago Council survey, two-thirds of Republicans — but less than four in 10 Democrats — described limiting China’s global influence as a very important foreign policy goal.Grass-roots Democratic voters dislike the government in Beijing. But they oppose a new cold war for two key reasons. First, their top foreign policy priorities — according to an April Morning Consult poll — are combating climate change and preventing another pandemic. Treating China as an enemy undermines both. Second, they oppose higher military spending, which a new cold war makes all but inevitable.But the Biden administration isn’t listening. When Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined the administration’s China policy in a speech last May, it took him 38 minutes to even mention climate or public health. As the Brookings Institution detailed last November, the growing animosity between the United States and China “pushes solutions to global challenges such as climate change, pandemic crises and nuclear proliferation farther out of reach.”Mr. Biden isn’t listening to ordinary Democrats on military spending, either. In March, he proposed lavishing more on defense, adjusted for inflation, than the United States did at the height of the last Cold War.China is not the only place where Mr. Biden’s policies more closely resemble Donald Trump’s than those desired by his party’s base. Despite polls early in Mr. Biden’s presidency showing that almost three-quarters of Democrats wanted him to rejoin the Iran nuclear deal that Mr. Trump exited, Mr. Biden refused to sign an executive order doing that. He instead made additional demands on Tehran, which prompted negotiations that squandered the final months of President Hassan Rouhani’s relatively moderate government. By the summer of 2021, Iran had a hard-line president, which made reviving the deal nearly impossible. Now Tehran is on the verge of being able to build a nuclear bomb.A similar pattern characterizes Mr. Biden’s policy toward Cuba. When President Obama opened relations with the island, ordinary Democrats applauded. Then Mr. Trump reimposed sanctions, many of which Mr. Biden has kept. In so doing, according to Ben Rhodes, Mr. Obama’s former deputy national security adviser, Mr. Biden has chosen to “legitimize what Trump did by continuing it.”Mr. Biden has mimicked his predecessor on Israel, too. Mr. Trump closed America’s consulate in East Jerusalem, which served the largely Palestinian half of the city. It remains closed. Mr. Trump shuttered the Palestine Liberation Organization’s office in Washington, the closest thing that Palestinians had to an embassy. It’s still shut. And despite polls showing that more Democrats now sympathize with the Palestinians than with Israel, the Biden administration will not even investigate whether Israel’s use of American weapons to abuse Palestinian human rights violates U.S. law.There are exceptions to this pattern. Grass-roots Democrats generally support the administration’s Ukraine policy, which has twinned support for Kyiv with efforts to avoid direct confrontation with Moscow. And Mr. Biden fulfilled a progressive demand by withdrawing troops from Afghanistan — although that commendable decision now looks less like an effort to restrain American militarism than to redirect it toward China.Overall, however, Mr. Biden’s foreign policy has been more hawkish than Mr. Obama’s, even as his domestic policy has been more progressive. Only a 2024 primary challenge offers any hope of changing that.Long before Bernie Sanders ran for president, progressives had a long history of using primary challenges to convey their frustration with Democratic Party elites. By winning 42 percent of the vote in the 1968 New Hampshire primary, Eugene McCarthy exposed dissatisfaction with Lyndon Johnson’s war in Vietnam. In 2004, Howard Dean did something similar when he almost upset a Democratic field composed largely of legislators who had voted to invade Iraq. And although they both lost, Mr. McCarthy and Mr. Dean each laid the groundwork for antiwar candidates — George McGovern in 1972 and Barack Obama in 2008 — who won the Democratic nomination four years later.Foreign policy doesn’t motivate voters today in the way it did when American troops were dying in Vietnam and Iraq. But an outsider candidate need not do as well as Mr. McCarthy or Mr. Dean to show the Biden foreign policy team that it’s out of step with the party’s base.And that challenger would enjoy other advantages. Close to half of Democratic voters think Mr. Biden should not run again, which makes him vulnerable to a challenger who mobilizes ideological discontent. That doesn’t mean a challenger would undermine Mr. Biden’s chances in the general election. Democrats — including supporters of Mr. Sanders’s insurgency — turned out for him in November 2020 because they were terrified of a Republican in the White House. They remain terrified today. Given the disillusionment with American military intervention coursing through the Trump-era G.O.P., a less confrontational foreign policy might even attract some on the political right.A primary opponent would risk the Democratic establishment’s wrath. But he or she could put into circulation ideas that won’t otherwise get a hearing in official Washington: a joint U.S.-China initiative to support green energy in the developing world, a ban on U.S. policymakers cashing in with weapons makers and foreign governments once they leave office, the repeal of sanctions that immiserate ordinary people while entrenching rather than dislodging repressive regimes.Mr. Biden’s presidency has a split personality. On domestic policy, he’s been the most progressive president since Lyndon Johnson. But on Israel, Cuba and Iran, he’s continued some of Mr. Trump’s dumbest and cruelest policies. On China, he’s leading the United States into a cold war that imperils public health, ecological survival and global peace. Next year’s election offers the best chance to make him change course. But only if some enterprising progressive puts foreign policy on the ballot.Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      It’s Beginning to Feel a Lot Like 2016 Again

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      Around the time that Donald Trump announced his presidential campaign, there was a lot of chatter about how anti-Trump Republicans were poised to repeat the failures of 2016, by declining to take on Trump directly and letting him walk unscathed to the nomination.This take seemed wrong in two ways. First, unlike in 2016, anti-Trump Republicans had a singular, popular alternative in Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose polling was competitive with Trump’s and way ahead of any other rival. Second, unlike in 2016, most Republican primary voters have now supported Trump in two national elections, making them poor targets for sweeping broadsides against his unfitness for the presidency.Combine those two realities, and the anti-Trump path seemed clear enough: Unite behind DeSantis early, run on Trump fatigue, and hope for the slow fade rather than the dramatic knockout.But I will admit, watching DeSantis sag in the primary polls — and watching the Republican and media reaction to that sag — has triggered flashbacks to the 2016 race. Seven years later, it’s clear that many of the underlying dynamics that made Trump the nominee are still in play.Let’s count off a few of them. First, there’s the limits of ideological box-checking in a campaign against Trump. This is my colleague Nate Cohn’s main point in his assessment of DeSantis’s recent struggles, and it’s a good one: DeSantis has spent the year to date accumulating legislative victories that match up with official right-wing orthodoxy, but we already saw in Ted Cruz’s 2016 campaign the limits of ideological correctness. There are Republican primary voters who cast ballots with a matrix of conservative positions in their heads, but not enough to overcome the appeal of the Trump persona, and a campaign against him won’t prosper if its main selling point is just True Conservatism 2.0.Second, there’s the mismatch between cultural conservatism and the anti-Trump donor class. Part of DeSantis’s advantage now, compared with Cruz’s situation in 2016, is that he has seemed more congenial to the party’s bigger-money donors. But many of those donors don’t really like the culture war; they’ll go along with a generic anti-wokeness, but they hate the Disney battles and they’re usually pro-choice. So socially conservative moves that DeSantis can’t refuse, like signing Florida’s six-week abortion ban, yield instant stories about how his potential donors are thinking about closing up their checkbooks, with a palpable undercurrent of: “Why can’t we have Nikki Haley or even Glenn Youngkin instead?”This leads to the third dynamic that could repeat itself: The G.O.P coordination problem, a.k.a. the South Carolina pileup. Remember how smoothly all of Joe Biden’s rivals suddenly exited the presidential race when it was time to stop Bernie Sanders? Remember how nothing remotely like that happened among Republicans in 2016? Well, if you have an anti-Trump donor base dissatisfied with DeSantis and willing to sustain long-shot rivals, and if two of those rivals, Haley and Senator Tim Scott, hail from the early primary state of South Carolina, it’s easy enough to see how they talk themselves into hanging around long enough to hand Trump exactly the sort of narrow wins that eventually gave him unstoppable momentum in 2016.But then again, a certain cast of mind has declared Trump to have unstoppable momentum already. This reflects another tendency that helped elect him the first time, the weird fatalism of professional Republicans. In 2016 many of them passed from “he can’t win” to “he can’t be stopped” with barely a way station in between. A rough month for DeSantis has already surfaced the same spirit — as in a piece by Politico’s Jonathan Martin, which quoted one strategist saying resignedly, “We’re just going to have to go into the basement, ride out the tornado and come back up when it’s over to rebuild the neighborhood.”Influencing this perspective, again as in 2016, is the assumption that Trump can’t win the general election, so if the G.O.P. just lets him lose it will finally be rid of him. Of course that assumption was completely wrong before, it could be wrong again; and even if it’s not, how do you know he won’t be back in 2028?Then, the final returning dynamic: The media still wants Trump. This is not offered as an excuse for G.O.P. primary voters choosing him; if the former president is renominated in spite of all his sins, it’s ultimately on them and them alone.But I still feel a certain vibe, in the eager coverage of DeSantis’s sag, suggesting that at some half-conscious level the mainstream press really wants the Trump return. They want to enjoy the Trump Show’s ratings, they want the G.O.P. defined by Trumpism while they define themselves as democracy’s defenders.And so Trump’s rivals will have to struggle, not only against the wattage of the man himself, but also against an impulse already apparent — to call the race for Trump before a single vote is cast.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram. More