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    With Shutdown Looming, Biden Points to Republican Infighting

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    The president and his team insist they do not want the government to shut down. But they are also confident that Republicans will receive the blame if it does.President Biden’s shutdown strategy is simple: Avoid one, if possible. But if not, make sure Americans know whom to blame.His aides at the White House and in his re-election campaign have spent the past several days describing the consequences of what they call an “extreme Republican shutdown” of the government: delayed disaster relief; no food stamps for poor women and children; no pay for troops, air traffic controllers, Border Patrol or Transportation Security Administration agents.“They pull the country toward an extreme government shutdown in the name of draconian cuts to education, law enforcement, Meals on Wheels and Head Start,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in describing House Republicans.The president and his team are quick to insist that they do not want a shutdown, especially a lengthy one, because of the harms that would ripple across America. But they are also confident that Republicans will receive the blame, as they have during standoffs that temporarily shuttered government agencies in years past.White House aides also believe that the intraparty fighting in Congress is putting Republican dysfunction on display, to the benefit of Mr. Biden and Democrats. Speaker Kevin McCarthy and a handful of his most conservative colleagues are refusing to keep the government open unless their demands for border security and spending cuts are met. “Extreme House Republicans are playing partisan games with people’s lives and marching our country toward a government shutdown that would have damaging impacts across the country,” the White House said in a statement on Thursday, highlighting nearly 2,000 disaster recovery projects that would be delayed by a shutdown.Mr. McCarthy has tried to draw Mr. Biden into the drama by suggesting that he would be responsible for a work stoppage because of his refusal to support Republican proposals for more restrictions on migrants at the border with Mexico.Speaker Kevin McCarthy has suggested Mr. Biden is responsible for a government shutdown because of his refusal to support Republican proposals on immigration.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“The president, it’s in his hands,” Mr. McCarthy, Republican of California, told reporters on Capitol Hill this week. “He can keep the government open by taking an action on the border.”Mr. Biden has also been under pressure from members of his own party to confront the surge of migrants at the border, thousands of whom are putting enormous stress on social services in big cities like New York and Boston.The president and his aides have pointed to their efforts to provide more migrants with a chance to receive work permits. And they have repeatedly noted that Republicans blocked a comprehensive overhaul of the nation’s immigration system that might have helped the authorities manage migration more easily.Advisers to Mr. Biden, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss White House and campaign strategy, are confident that — with a little nudging — Americans will place the blame squarely on House Republicans if the government shuts down this weekend. That could benefit the president for the remainder of his term, they say, by bolstering his leverage with lawmakers and eroding support for the Republican majority in the House.Campaign aides also say the sense of disgust among Americans with the shenanigans on Capitol Hill will help Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign by sharpening the contrast with his rivals. Former President Donald J. Trump, the leading candidate for the Republican nomination, has urged House conservatives to shut down the government, a move that Mr. Biden’s advisers and supporters are quick to point out.“Except for President Trump, who called for Republicans to shut down the government, no one actually wants this, because it means real people will get hurt,” said Stephanie Cutter, a veteran Democratic strategist who has helped presidents develop messages inside the White House and during campaigns.Those running Mr. Biden’s campaign would be wise to repeatedly draw the public’s attention to the similarities between Mr. Trump and his conservative allies in Washington, Ms. Cutter said.“Republican infighting and dysfunction is the best example of the difference between Bidenomics and MAGAnomics,” she said. “These situations, when you’re thinking about your closing arguments, help you really crystallize the choice voters will have a year from now.”The president’s team has begun to do just that.His campaign issued a statement on Monday blasting Mr. Trump’s call for a shutdown, accusing House Republicans of “gleefully letting Donald Trump function as their chief political strategist at the expense of American families.” Mr. Biden’s most recent campaign ad, titled “The Way,” emphasizes bipartisan legislative achievements even as the current Congress is in stalemate.Inside the West Wing, the president’s closest advisers have been sending out daily talking points for their allies to deliver as a shutdown looms. Stephen Benjamin, the director of public engagement at the White House, and Anita Dunn, one of the president’s top strategists, emphasized those issues on a conference call on Thursday with Democratic surrogates.Aides are encouraging allies to stress several points.First, they are told to repeatedly remind voters that Mr. Biden and Mr. McCarthy shook hands on a spending agreement months ago that was supposed to avert a shutdown. The speaker, under pressure from his conservative members, later reneged on the deal.Second, Biden allies are urged to note how isolated Mr. McCarthy is. Senate Republicans, including Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the minority leader, have urged their House colleagues to accept a short-term agreement to keep the government open.Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky is among the Republicans who have urged their colleagues in the House to accept a short-term agreement to keep the government open.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesFinally, Biden officials are asking their supporters to be specific about the pain that a shutdown is likely to inflict.The White House warned in a statement this week of the impact of a shutdown on the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children, known as WIC, which helps poor families buy food.“During an extreme Republican shutdown, women and children who count on WIC would soon start being turned away at grocery store counters, with a federal contingency fund drying up after just a few days and many states left with limited WIC funds to operate the program,” the statement said.The White House went into further detail with a state-by-state breakdown of exactly how many women, children and infants were enrolled in the program — 421,294 in Florida, 207,728 in Michigan, 139,765 in Arizona and so on — and at risk of losing assistance. 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      Donald Trump’s Campaign of Violence and Lawlessness

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      Though it was lost in the four-year cyclone that was the presidency of Donald Trump, one of his most immoral acts was to pardon soldiers who were accused of committing war crimes by killing unarmed civilians or prisoners. Military leaders, including his own defense secretary and the secretary of the Army objected, saying it would undermine good order and discipline. Lawlessness can easily beget lawlessness.But the American system is ill prepared to deter leaders bent on undermining the rule of law. Checks and balances spread powers across the government, but that isn’t enough to temper or stop bad-faith actors looking to subvert the law. According to a new article in The Atlantic, Gen. Mark Milley, upon becoming the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in 2019, “found himself in a disconcerting situation: trying, and failing, to teach President Trump the difference between appropriate battlefield aggressiveness on the one hand, and war crimes on the other.”Donald Trump, as General Milley discovered and many Americans already knew, is a man unencumbered by any moral compass. He goes the way he wants to go, legalities and niceties be damned. Last week in a post on his social network, Mr. Trump argued that General Milley’s actions would have once been punishable by death.Most Americans probably didn’t notice his screed. Of those who did and were not alarmed, far too many nodded along in agreement. As Josh Barro said in a Times Opinion round table this week about the former president’s recent comments, “Trump is and has been unhinged, and that’s priced in” to the views that many voters have of him.It is no exaggeration to say that Mr. Trump is running for the presidency on a platform of lawlessness, promising to wield the power of the state against his enemies — real or imagined. Today, millions and millions of Americans support him for that reason or despite it.In poll released this week, 51 percent of American adults said they’d vote for Mr. Trump over President Biden, including the vast majority of Republicans. And Wednesday night’s farcical G.O.P. debate may only increase Mr. Trump’s large lead in the primary.That advantage over the Republican field is growing even as prosecutors are finally trying to hold Mr. Trump legally responsible for his misdeeds — from the plot to overturn the 2020 election to fraud allegations concerning his real estate empire.The backlash has been predictable: In the past few months, Mr. Trump has argued that federal laws about classified documents don’t apply to him; floated the idea of pardons for his supporters jailed for attacking the Capitol; said that judges with whom he disagrees are unfit to preside over cases against him; and has been accused of threatening to prejudice the jury pool in one case. A judge decided to shield the identity of jurors in another after Trump supporters posted the names, photos and addresses of grand jurors involved in issuing an indictment in that case. He is also pushing for a government shutdown to halt Justice Department investigations, to force a show of loyalty and try to bend our political system to his will — even when he is out of office.All this has accompanied a sharp uptick in the often incoherent statements from the 77-year-old former president, on social media and at his rallies. And while many Americans long ago tuned him out, his most extreme supporters, like Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona, have not. In his newsletter, Mr. Gosar recently wrote that General Milley should be hanged.As the legal cases against Mr. Trump have picked up, “so too have threats against law enforcement authorities, judges, elected officials and others,” The Times reported this week. “The threats, in turn, are prompting protective measures, a legal effort to curb his angry and sometimes incendiary public statements and renewed concern about the potential for an election campaign in which Mr. Trump has promised ‘retribution’ to produce violence.”Mr. Trump’s targets extend to other Republicans. In a biography out next month, Senator Mitt Romney disclosed that he was spending $5,000 per day on security for himself and his family against threats from Trump supporters.This combustible combination of heated political rhetoric, unhinged conspiracy theories, anti-government sentiment and a militant gun culture have created fertile ground for political violence. The country is not powerless to stop the spread of lawlessness but it requires addressing those precursors to violence.Many of those elements swirled around a visit by Mr. Trump this week to a gun store in South Carolina that this summer, sold an AR-15-style rifle to a man who later carried out a racist mass shooting at a dollar store. During his visit, Mr. Trump hefted a custom Glock handgun with his face etched onto the handle. Though he said he wanted to buy one of the weapons — they’re big sellers! — it is unclear if he could legally do so since he is under indictment.Mr. Trump’s whims and erratic online missives should not be dismissed as “Trump being Trump.” Take his call this month for House Republicans to shut down the government. Mr. Trump egged them on, urging them to settle for nothing less than their full slate of demands, including forcing the Justice Department to end its investigations of him. He called it “the last chance to defund these political prosecutions against me and other Patriots.”While a government shutdown won’t end the prosecutions of Mr. Trump, a Trump presidency could easily do so. After all, there are few moral or legal hurdles left to clear after pardoning war criminals.There are many nations where citizens live in fear of governments that wield unchecked and arbitrary authority against their enemies, real or imagined. That is the America that Mr. Trump is promising his supporters. When Mr. Trump told supporters “I am your retribution,” all Americans should take him at his word.Defeating Mr. Trump at the ballot box is going to require a lot more political courage than it takes to put flashes of honesty in the pages of a memoir. The former White House aide Cassidy Hutchinson is the latest in a long line of memoirists, declaring in an interview on Tuesday for her new book that Mr. Trump is “most grave threat we will face to our democracy in our lifetime, and potentially in American history.”True enough. Which is why Americans can’t wait until January 2025, and another shelf of memoirs, to hear the truth that so many Republicans have long known.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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      DeSantis Says He Would Sign a 15-Week Abortion Ban as President

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      The little-noticed remark came during a chaotic moment in the second G.O.P. debate. Mr. DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida, but had not clearly committed to federal restrictions.In the chaos of Wednesday night’s noisy Republican presidential debate, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina interrupted Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida to pose a question on abortion that Mr. DeSantis had dodged directly answering for months.Would the Florida governor sign a “15-week limit” on abortion as president, Mr. Scott asked, talking over both Mr. DeSantis and Dana Perino, one of the moderators, in a way that made his full remarks difficult to hear.“Yes, I will,” Mr. DeSantis replied.The moment — which largely escaped attention in real time but was noted by The Daily Signal, a news website published by the conservative Heritage Foundation think tank — clarifies Mr. DeSantis’s position on abortion, an issue that has split the Republican primary field. Mr. DeSantis signed a six-week abortion ban in Florida this year, but had not clearly committed to supporting federal legislation restricting the termination of pregnancies.Mr. DeSantis is using abortion to attack former President Donald J. Trump, particularly in socially conservative states like Iowa, where he is making his biggest push to dethrone Mr. Trump as the race’s front-runner.Despite appointing the Supreme Court justices who proved critical in overturning Roe v. Wade, Mr. Trump has ducked questions about whether he would support a 15-week ban, the baseline position of many anti-abortion activists in the Republican Party. And, with a clear eye on the general election — where a hard-line position on abortion could turn off moderate and independent voters and galvanize Democrats — Mr. Trump has criticized Mr. DeSantis for signing the six-week ban, calling it a “terrible mistake.”Mr. DeSantis used those comments to open a line of attack against the former president, telling “pro-lifers” that Mr. Trump was “preparing to sell you out.” Other conservatives, including Kim Reynolds, the popular Republican governor of Iowa who signed a similar abortion ban, have also joined in criticizing Mr. Trump. (Few women know they are pregnant by six weeks.)Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that the former president had “championed the life of the unborn.”Previously, Mr. DeSantis had generally said he would support anti-abortion legislation but had not committed to signing such a federal ban. At the first debate in Milwaukee last month, Mr. DeSantis seemed to hedge when asked if he would support a six-week ban as president. “I’m going to stand on the side of life,” he said, adding that conservative and liberal states would want to handle abortion restrictions differently.On Thursday, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign disputed the idea that his comments were a change from his past position, pointing to an interview he gave to Radio Iowa this month. Asked if he would sign a 15-week ban, Mr. DeSantis said, “You put pro-life legislation on my desk, I’m going to look favorably and support the legislation.”Other candidates running for the Republican nomination have been more clear. Former Vice President Mike Pence has said he supports at least a 15-week ban. Mr. Scott has also suggested he would, at a minimum, sign a 15-week ban. At the same time, former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who calls herself “unapologetically pro-life,” has knocked her rivals for what she has said are empty promises, given that Republicans would find it nearly impossible to force such restrictions through a polarized Congress.“Ron had months to advocate for a federal limit,” said Nathan Brand, Mr. Scott’s communications director, “yet discouraged efforts to protect life. If you’re going to back down on an issue, this is the one to do it on. Glad Ron is now on board.”Abortion barely featured at Wednesday’s matchup, after playing a far more prominent role at the previous debate. Only Mr. DeSantis and former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey were asked to comment. The question that prompted Mr. Scott’s interruption was a challenge to Mr. DeSantis asking how he would win over abortion rights supporters in Arizona, a key swing state.Mr. DeSantis responded that he had won a resounding re-election in Florida last year. And he took the opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump, who skipped the debate.“The former president, you know, he is missing in action tonight,” Mr. DeSantis said. “He’s had a lot to say about that. He should be here explaining his comments to try to say that pro-life protections are somehow a terrible thing.”The next day, Democrats seized on Mr. DeSantis’s pledge to sign a 15-week ban — a reminder of how potent both parties see the issue in November’s election. On Twitter, the Democratic National Committee’s rapid response “War Room” account said that Mr. DeSantis had “an extreme anti-abortion record” and wanted to “rip away reproductive freedoms from women across the country.” More

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      Republican Group Running Anti-Trump Ads Finds Little Is Working

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      With over 40 ads and $6 million spent, a group tied to the Club for Growth is no closer to an answer, a memo to donors says. Some ads even gave Donald Trump a boost.A well-funded group of anti-Trump conservatives has sent its donors a remarkably candid memo that reveals how resilient former President Donald J. Trump has been against millions of dollars of negative ads the group deployed against him in two early-voting states.The political action committee, called Win It Back, has close ties to the influential fiscally conservative group Club for Growth. It has already spent more than $4 million trying to lower Mr. Trump’s support among Republican voters in Iowa and nearly $2 million more trying to damage him in South Carolina.But in the memo — dated Thursday and obtained by The New York Times — the head of Win It Back PAC, David McIntosh, acknowledges to donors that after extensive testing of more than 40 anti-Trump television ads, “all attempts to undermine his conservative credentials on specific issues were ineffective.”The memo will provide little reassurance to the rest of the field of Mr. Trump’s Republican rivals that there is any elusive message out there that can work to deflate his support.“Even when you show video to Republican primary voters — with complete context — of President Trump saying something otherwise objectionable to primary voters, they find a way to rationalize and dismiss it,” Mr. McIntosh states in the “key learnings” section of the memo.“Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability,” Mr. McIntosh adds. “This includes ads that primarily feature video of him saying liberal or stupid comments from his own mouth.”For the polling underpinning its analysis, Win It Back used WPA Intelligence — a firm that also works for the super PAC supporting Mr. Trump’s chief rival in the race for the presidential nomination, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Examples of “failed” ads cited in the memo included attacks on Mr. Trump’s “handling of the pandemic, promotion of vaccines, praise of Dr. Fauci, insane government spending, failure to build the wall, recent attacks on pro-life legislation, refusal to fight woke issues, openness to gun control, and many others.” (Dr. Anthony S. Fauci led the national response to the Covid pandemic.)The list of failed attacks is notable because it includes many of the arguments that Mr. DeSantis has tried against Mr. Trump. The former president leads Mr. DeSantis by more than 40 points in national polls and by around 30 points in Iowa, where Mr. DeSantis’s team believes he has the best shot of defeating Mr. Trump.Mr. McIntosh, a former Indiana congressman who co-founded the Club for Growth and the Federalist Society, makes it clear in the memo that any anti-Trump messages need to be delivered with kid gloves. That might explain why Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Never Back Down, has treated Mr. Trump gingerly, even in ads meant to contrast his character and his record unfavorably against Mr. DeSantis’s accomplishments.“Broadly acceptable messages against President Trump with Republican primary voters that do not produce a meaningful backlash include sharing concerns about his ability to beat President Biden, expressions of Trump fatigue due to the distractions he creates and the polarization of the country, as well as his pattern of attacking conservative leaders for self-interested reasons,” Mr. McIntosh writes in the memo.“It is essential to disarm the viewer at the opening of the ad by establishing that the person being interviewed on camera is a Republican who previously supported President Trump,” he adds, “otherwise, the viewer will automatically put their guard up, assuming the messenger is just another Trump-hater whose opinion should be summarily dismissed.”The polling conducted for Win It Back showed diminishing returns for the anti-Trump messaging and emphasized that Mr. Trump benefited from the fact that his rivals were still dividing up the non-Trump vote.In Iowa, Win It Back observed that in the areas where it ran ads, Mr. Trump’s likely share of the Republican vote fell by four percentage points. In the areas where the group did not advertise, Mr. Trump’s support grew by five points.Mr. DeSantis has made his handling of the pandemic a centerpiece of his campaign. But the analysis suggests that this strategy leads to a dead end.The memo says this of Win It Back’s most promising pandemic-themed ad: “This ad was our best creative on the pandemic and vaccines that we tested in focus group settings, but it still produced a backlash in our online randomized controlled experiment — improving President Trump’s ballot support by four points and net favorability by 11 points.”Win It Back did not bother running ads focused on Mr. Trump as an instigator of political violence or as a threat to democracy. The group tested in a focus group and online panel an ad called “Risk,” narrated by former Representative Liz Cheney, that focused on Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021. But the group found that the Cheney ad helped Mr. Trump with the Republican voters, according to Mr. McIntosh.In a section of the memo titled “next steps,” Mr. McIntosh concludes, “We plan to continue developing and testing ads to deploy when there are signs of consolidation.” More

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      A Chaotic Republican Debate: ‘Turn Off the Mic!’

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      More from our inbox:Members of Congress, Still Paid in a ShutdownTwo Views of JusticeColumbia’s Contributions to New York CityHigh-Quality TV Shows‘I Love Dogs,’ but Biden’s Must GoThe candidates mostly ignored former President Donald J. Trump’s overwhelming lead during the debate last night.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “5 Takeaways From Another Trump-Free Republican Debate” (nytimes.com, Sept. 28):Turn off the mic!Seven people onstage at the same time. Just enough time for the evening’s bloviators to spew out their prefabricated talking points. Not enough time for discussions of substance.And then there’s something called rules. In lieu of decorum, our debates have devolved into two hours of rudeness, interruption and incivility. Year after year, moderators exhibit little control or are completely ignored. Candidates with the least to say won’t shut up, and those with a cogent thought don’t have time to express it.Suggestion: With a clearly displayed clock, give each candidate a prescribed amount of time for talk and rebuttal. If another candidate interrupts, turn off his or her mike. For further interruptions, deduct minutes from that candidate’s talking time.Would candidates be receptive to such an idea? If not, why?Karl AbbottNew YorkTo the Editor:The smartest man on the G.O.P. debate stage was Donald Trump. He was omnipresent without the necessity of actual presence.Why would he debate? He has the nomination wrapped up. The taunts (“Donald Trump is missing in action” — Ron DeSantis; “Voters deserve to hear him defend his record”— The Wall Street Journal) are futile rhetoric. Mr. Trump will not be provoked. He can continue to go about his business unscathed while watching his frenzied rivals with minuscule ratings continue to flail.Meanwhile, Mr. Trump gets to skate into the nomination on his terms thanks to a Republican Party that can’t get enough of him. As Mr. Trump himself used to tweet, “Sad.”William GoldmanLos AngelesTo the Editor:I’m a very proud, lifelong Democrat. But I like to watch the G.O.P. debate because I enjoy seeing the party implode and eat its own. But I stopped after 45 minutes.It was simply a bunch of lies, misleading statements and prepared applause lines. Not one of them has any idea how to solve America’s problems, nor do they even offer a sensible plan, or in many cases any plan, to do so.The party will simply anoint the twice-impeached, criminally indicted former POTUS. This is what the party wants, and, in short, nothing and no one will stop this from happening. We are all watching, in slow motion, the game play out before the final out.Ben MilanoLindenhurst, N.Y.Members of Congress, Still Paid in a Shutdown Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesTo the Editor:How is it that if there is a government shutdown, others suffer and go hungry but members of Congress still get paid? That is obviously wrong and needs to change.Joan PachnerHartsdale, N.Y.Two Views of Justice Dave Sanders for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “More Democrats Calling on Menendez to Resign” (front page, Sept. 27):Senator Robert Menendez is indicted by the Justice Department. Democratic lawmakers across the country call for him to resign.Donald Trump is indicted by the Justice Department. Republican lawmakers across the country call for investigations into the weaponization of the Justice Department.Can there be a clearer indication of which group has a higher regard for ethics, morality and the rule of law?Barry LuriePhiladelphiaColumbia’s Contributions to New York CityColumbia’s science center was built on a new campus in Harlem. As the university expanded its footprint in the city, the number of New Yorkers enrolling declined.Amir Hamja/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Columbia and N.Y.U. Expand, but Pay Little Tax” (front page, Sept. 27):Columbia is honored to call New York home, and we are committed to being a responsible and engaged citizen of this city. While we don’t profess to be perfect, we take pride in the estimated $14.6 billion we contribute in annual economic impact to our community, according to the most recent study by New York’s Commission on Independent Colleges & Universities.But whittling down the university’s local contributions to dollars spent ignores the broad array of commitments, large and small, that we have made to this city as one of its oldest and proudest institutional residents.I could point to the critical role played by the university and our health care providers throughout the pandemic, including providing space and logistical support to house health care workers, or to researchers at our Climate School, who are contributing their time and resources to studying harmful algae blooms in city parks.Most recently, our faculty and students have volunteered to help asylum seekers who are filing applications for the authorization to work.Columbia is expanding our commitments to the city. That includes doing more to recruit, admit and support New York City’s public school students.We know this is an all-hands-on-deck moment for New York City, and we are dedicated to contributing in every way we can to assure a bright future for it.Gerald M. RosbergNew YorkThe writer is senior executive vice president of Columbia University.High-Quality TV Shows Matteo Giuseppe PaniTo the Editor:Re “The Era of Prestige TV Is Ending. We’re Going to Miss It When It’s Gone,” by Roy Price (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Sept. 21):Before Netflix, before Amazon, before HBO, before any of the streamers, was “prestige” content from public broadcasting worldwide. And before that was “Playhouse 90” and other prestige content from the networks of television’s early years.Good content is not just produced by big distributors; look at the range of truly interesting shows that media creators are developing on easily accessible platforms that don’t demand big budgets and fancy pedigrees.Open your eyes beyond your narrow West Coast view, Mr. Price. There’s a lot to like out there.Alice CahnRockland, MaineThe writer is a former head of children’s programming for PBS and vice president at Cartoon Network.‘I Love Dogs,’ but Biden’s Must GoCommander, a 2-year-old German shepherd, has bitten several members of the Secret Service, including biting one officer on the arm and thigh badly enough that the officer was sent to the hospital.Carolyn Kaster/Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Once Again, a Biden Dog Gives a Bite to an Agent” (news article, Sept. 27):I love dogs more than I love most humans. That said, I feel it’s long past time that Commander, President Biden’s German shepherd, is permanently exiled from the White House to a comfortable, safe environment, such as a farm, where he has fewer opportunities to bite people.I doubt that Mr. Biden wants this outcome, but a dog with his record of biting folks should have been sent away long ago.Richard B. EllenbergerNormandy Park, Wash. More

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      ‘Every Time I Hear You, I Feel a Little Bit Dumber’: Who Won and Lost the Second G.O.P. Debate

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      Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the second Republican presidential primary candidate debate, held at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rank the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate probably didn’t belong on the stage and should […] More

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      None of the Republicans on the Debate Stage Are Going to Topple Trump

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      Donald Trump won’t be defeated with sound bites. He won’t be bested with wordplay. Ron DeSantis carped repeatedly that Trump was “missing in action” at the Republican presidential debate on Wednesday night, while Chris Christie called Trump a coward and christened him “Donald Duck.” How very clever.And how totally futile. They were throwing darts at the absent front-runner when missiles are in order.Trump has a mammoth lead over all of them, and there’s no sign that it’s shrinking. He’s skating to the party’s presidential nomination. Along the way, he’s doing quadruple axels of madness, triple toe loops of provocation. He’s fantasizing about executing a respected general, and he’s fetishizing firearms, his words coming close to incitements of violence. He’s not sorry for the Jan. 6 riots. To my ears, he’d like more where that came from.But did any of the seven candidates onstage at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., talk about that? Nope. Mike Pence criticized Trump for wanting to consolidate too much power in Washington, D.C. DeSantis argued that Trump, if elected president again, could serve only one term, while DeSantis, a newcomer to the White House, could serve two.Christie, the bravest of a timid bunch, gave eloquent voice to how profoundly Trump had divided the country, pitting friend against friend and relative against relative, and while that’s sadly true, that’s also beside the point.The point is that Trump has zero respect for democracy and has aspirations for autocracy. The point is that he keeps scaling new pinnacles of unhinged. The point is that he needs to win the presidency so that he doesn’t have to worry about living out his days where he belongs: behind bars.And perhaps the only shot that any of those seven candidates have to stop him and prevent the irreversible damage he’d do to the United States with four more years is to call a tyrant a tyrant, a liar a liar, an arsonist an arsonist. None of them did.They’re too frightened of his and his followers’ wrath. So forgive me if I chortled every time they talked about leadership, which they talked about often on Wednesday night. They’re not leaders. They’re opportunists who are letting an opportunity slip away from them.The hopelessness of their quest for the presidency and their deepening awareness of that were reflected in all the shouting and cross-talk. Dear Lord, what a din — overlapping voices, operatic voices. It was like some misbegotten a cappella competition or the trailer for a movie I hope never to see: “Pitch Imperfect.” My ears will be ringing until the next Republican debate, scheduled for early November in Miami. Those poor Floridians. With DeSantis as their governor, haven’t they suffered enough?Instead of taking Trump sufficiently to task, instead of explaining in full why just about any one of them would be preferable to the madman of Mar-a-Loco, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott quarreled about drapes. Yes, drapes. He said she squandered $50,000 of federal money on them when she was the United Nations ambassador, she said she didn’t, and they both grew very exercised about it. Where was that passion on the subject of Trump?Instead of savaging him, the seven candidates tore into one another, seemingly vying not to catch up to Trump but to be declared the No. 1 alternative, like a beauty pageant runner-up poised to fulfill the winner’s duties and wear the winner’s tiara should the need arise.DeSantis was more aggressive than ever, a contender of faded promise making a last stand. He crammed in his entire biography: working-class upbringing, Ivy League but held his nose, volitional military service, father of three.Haley tussled with him, with Scott and especially with Vivek Ramaswamy, who was yet again the political equivalent of a jack-in-the-box, popping up every time you hoped that he’d finally been squished down. Haley called nonsense on his nonsense, telling him: “Every time I hear you, I feel a little bit dumber.” It wasn’t very kind, but it was wholly relatable.Ramaswamy tried humility on for size (“I’m here to tell you, no, I don’t know it all”), but it didn’t really fit. He’s too frenetic and too splenetic, and he had the wrong hair for it, a kind of cartoon pompadour that puzzled me.But not as much as Pence’s demeanor did. He kept trying for jokes in a voice that wasn’t remotely jokey, and he reached for conviction in a manner that lacked any trace of it. It’s not more support from voters that he most needs. It’s a transfusion.“You hear the fire in all of our voices,” he said at one point, but I couldn’t detect so much as a flickering Bic disposable lighter in his. I suspect that he won’t be in the hunt for much longer. Try hard not to miss him.From the others, there was plenty of heat, and there were even important exchanges that delineated significant fault lines in the Republican Party. DeSantis and Ramaswamy objected to the continued flow of enormous aid to Ukraine; Haley deemed that reckless. DeSantis defended his extreme efforts to restrict abortion; Christie advocated something a tad closer to moderation.But what will that matter if none of them chip away at Trump’s lead? There have now been two Republican presidential debates. Trump has proudly skipped and obnoxiously counterprogrammed both of them. And his punishment from his supposed rivals has been a dainty slap on the wrist.The moderators on Wednesday night were just as gentle on him, never posing a question as pointed as one during the first debate, when the candidates were asked whether they’d support Trump as the party’s nominee even if he became a felon.Instead, one of the moderators, Dana Perino, wondered which of the seven people onstage “should be voted off the island” to winnow the field of Trump alternatives. That was hugely revealing: She was suggesting that one of them had to go, when the candidate who needs exiling is the one who didn’t bother to take the stage.At least Christie recognized and remedied that, saying, “I vote Donald Trump off the island.” It was the right choice, rendered in the wrong words and wrong tone. This isn’t a reality show. It’s no episode of “Survivor.” It’s a matter of our country’s survival. But from the way seven candidates danced around the danger of Trump, you’d never know it.For the Love of SentencesLucinda WilliamsRahav Segev for The New York TimesIn a sublime reflection in The Bitter Southerner about what Lucinda Wiliams’s music means to him, Wyatt Williams (no relation) wrote: “The songs we hear as children end up being a lot like our fathers; we go on hearing them in our heads even when they’re not around.” (Thanks to Eileen Van Schaik of Shoreline, Wash., for flagging this.)In The New Yorker, Rachel Syme pondered the sartorial oddity of a leading fashion designer: “The Thom Browne look has often been compared to Pee-wee Herman’s archly nerdy costume or to Don Draper’s office wear after a few rounds through the dryer, but it calls to my mind, too, some mischievous scamp out of a Roald Dahl book who is always conspiring to put a dead hamster in the headmistress’s bed.” (Joanne Strongin, Port Washington, N.Y.)Also in The New Yorker, Judith Thurman distilled the conflict from which the plot of “The Iliad” proceeds: “And with that puerile quarrel between stubborn warlords over the right to own and to rape a girl, Western literature begins.” (Joyce Erickson, Seattle)And Anthony Lane reflected on the liberties that the director Kenneth Branagh and the screenwriter Michael Green took in adapting Agatha Christie’s “Hallowe’en Party,” set outside London, into the new movie “A Haunting in Venice,” set amid canals. “I’m already looking forward to their next reworking of Christie: ‘The Body in the Library,’ perhaps, relocated to the freezer aisle of a Walmart,” Lane wrote. (Abigail Smith, Downingtown, Pa.)In The Washington Post, Petula Dvorak characterized the brief window in which pawpaws are available and ripe enough to eat: “They are like some of D.C.’s other ephemeral delights — cherry blossoms or the optimism and innocence of freshman members of Congress.” (Joan Tindell, Tucson, Ariz.)In Esquire, Charles P. Pierce explained Attorney General Merrick Garland’s bind during his recent clash with Republicans at a House Judiciary Committee hearing: “Garland rope-a-doped as best he could, but there were too many dopes for him to rope.” (Peter Braverman, Bethesda, Md.)In Vanity Fair, Carl Hiaasen put Trump and DeSantis side by side: “Some claim Trump has a better sense of humor, but it was DeSantis who appointed a Jan. 6 rioter to the state board that oversees massage parlors.” (Sue Jares, Los Angeles)In The Times, Pamela Paul examined the embattled House speaker: “As Kevin McCarthy announced the impeachment inquiry, you could almost see his wispy soul sucked out Dementor-style, joining whatever ghostly remains of Paul Ryan’s abandoned integrity still wander the halls of Congress.” (Jeff Merkel, Fairbanks, Alaska, and Michael Berk, San Diego, among many others)Also in The Times, Bret Stephens previewed the Republican debate in Seussian style: “I expect Ramaswamy to irritate, DeSantis to infuriate, Christie to needle, Pence to remind me of a beetle, Scott to smile and Haley to win by a mile. But I doubt it will move the dial.” (Nancy Breeding, Raleigh, N.C., and Andrew Robinson, Syracuse, N.Y., among others) Bret also noted: “Politics used to be debating ideas. Now it’s about diagnosing psychosis.” (Pierre Mullie, Orléans, Ontario, and Margaret Velarde, Denver, among others)David French analyzed Trump’s recent shadings of his position on abortion, saying: “He is not convictionally pro-life. He is conveniently pro-life.” (Paul Dobbs, Relanges, France)And Tim Kreider, in a lovely essay about aging and vulnerability, inventoried the infirmities (“arthritic hips, ovarian cysts, herniated discs, breast cancer”) that set in as we move from middle to old age: “It’s as if we were all devices made by some big tech company, designed to start falling apart the instant the warranty expires and to be ingeniously difficult to repair, with zero support for older models.” (Mike Rogers, Wilmington, N.C., and Maureen Burke, Sausalito, Calif., among others)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.On a Personal NoteJohn TurturroCole Barash for The New York TimesOur lives are accidents of a sort. We have only so much control over them. We get no say in the genes that we inherit, and while they’re not the whole of our destinies, they’re big parts of them — seeds that are certain to flower, bombs that are sure to detonate. We’re born into circumstances that liberate or limit us. We’re the beneficiaries of good timing, or we’re the victims of the opposite.John Turturro knows that well. The actor, director and writer had a mentally ill brother, Ralph, who spent many of his 70 years at the Creedmoor Psychiatric Center in Queens. John visited him there frequently, got to know the place well and shared those memories in a moving 2015 presentation for the storytelling forum the Moth that you can find here. It’s funny, it’s soulful, and it builds to a poignant metaphor whose elegance takes you by surprise.I had students in a class of mine at Duke watch it in advance of a recent Zoom visit from John, who’d agreed to talk with them about a book they were reading, “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?” by Susan Sheehan. It’s a classic of meticulous journalism, chronicling the odyssey of a woman with schizophrenia and her parents as they struggle, often in vain, to calm her turmoil — to bring nothing more and nothing less than a steady peace and baseline contentment to her days. For several years, John has been working to adapt it into a mini-series.He wants people to understand that mental illness doesn’t have the tidy arc that movies tend to give it. That it’s not a problem reliably solved by extra heaps of love. That it’s sometimes an endless road.And the patients and families traveling it? They could be us. They’re just like us: They’re pushing through hardships that, yes, may be more daunting than other people’s, but they’re pushing nonetheless, with merciful instances of levity and cherished moments of grace. Such instances and moments flicker throughout “Is There No Place on Earth for Me?,” and John’s Moth presentation brims with them.The book and the talk are lessons in the randomness of our lives. They’re also exhortations to meet it with whatever dignity and tenacity we can muster. More

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      Today’s Top News: Key Takeaways From the G.O.P. Debate, and More

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      The New York Times Audio app is home to journalism and storytelling, and provides news, depth and serendipity. If you haven’t already, download it here — available to Times news subscribers on iOS — and sign up for our weekly newsletter.The Headlines brings you the biggest stories of the day from the Times journalists who are covering them, all in about 10 minutes. Hosted by Annie Correal, the new morning show features three top stories from reporters across the newsroom and around the world, so you always have a sense of what’s happening, even if you only have a few minutes to spare.The candidates mostly ignored former President Donald J. Trump’s overwhelming lead during the debate last night.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesOn Today’s Episode:5 Takeaways From Another Trump-Free Republican Debate, with Jonathan SwanMeet the A.I. Jane Austen: Meta Weaves A.I. Throughout Its Apps, with Mike IsaacHow Complete Was Stephen Sondheim’s Final Musical?, with Michael PaulsonEli Cohen More

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      Nikki Haley and Tim Scott Clash at the Second GOP Debate

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      For months, Nikki Haley and Tim Scott have been polite to one another on the campaign trail. That ended in a fiery way on Wednesday night on the debate stage.Nikki Haley and Tim Scott, two Republican presidential candidates with years of political history in South Carolina, had fiery exchanges over a state gas tax and curtains.FOX BusinessNikki Haley, as governor of South Carolina in December 2012, appointed Tim Scott to the Senate. Nearly 11 years later, on Wednesday night, Ms. Haley said he had squandered repeated opportunities to rein in spending. Mr. Scott said Ms. Haley had never seen a federal dollar she didn’t like.“Bring it, Tim,” Ms. Haley said, taunting him from across the Republican presidential debate stage.Nervous laughter erupted from the friendly audience as two South Carolinians seeking the Republican presidential nomination finally shed the shared Southern politesse that had kept them from attacking each other on the campaign trail.Their skirmish began when Ms. Haley dismissed Mr. Scott’s promise to limit spending in Washington by pointing out the increase in the national debt during his time in the Senate.“Where have you been?” Ms. Haley asked. “Where have you been, Tim? Twelve years we’ve waited, and nothing has happened.”A few minutes later, Ms. Haley couldn’t contain her smile as Mr. Scott slowly wound up his counterattack, which fully unleashed their most vigorous exchange toward the end of an otherwise wearisome two-hour Republican debate.She grinned, watching him as he spoke. She stole a glance into the audience, raising her eyebrows as if to acknowledge that the moment was as unavoidable as it was preposterous.In past elections, Mr. Scott and Ms. Haley had campaigned together. Now, the former political allies were pitted against each other — bickering over the cost of gas and the price of drapes in a government office — in the increasingly desperate fight over second place to the race’s front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Scott, whose sunny disposition typically casts him more naturally in the role of a happy warrior on the campaign trail, tried on the persona of a political brawler. It was an imperfect fit, and he stumbled over his words, stammering as the accusations trickled out.As he turned to directly address Ms. Haley, he found her gaze waiting for him.Their eyes met, and they nearly broke character, sharing the briefest of smiles — while trying to level criticisms at each other — and signaling the absurd twist that their longtime political alliance had taken.“You literally put $50,000 on curtains at a $15 million subsidized location,” Mr. Scott said, waving his hand at Ms. Haley. It was a reference to a State Department allocation — made during the Obama administration and not by Ms. Haley — for $52,701 for the installation of customized window curtains in the high-rise apartment for the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations.But it wasn’t immediately clear that Mr. Scott was finished. “Next,” he said quickly but awkwardly, suggesting that she could respond.“You got bad information,” Ms. Haley said, emphasizing her adjective with a long drawl and wagging her left index finger at him first and then following it with a wag from her right.She then defended herself against Mr. Scott’s accusations that she pushed to increase the gas tax, saying, “I fought the gas tax in South Carolina multiple times against the establishment.”“Just go to YouTube,” Mr. Scott interjected. “All you have to do is watch Nikki Haley on YouTube.”She relented a bit, acknowledging having expressed her interest in a gas-tax increase if lawmakers would agree to offset it with an income-tax cut. “So you said, ‘Yes,’” Mr. Scott said.But Ms. Haley — a more natural political debater — was rolling, and she waved her open palm at Mr. Scott as if she could tamp him back from across the stage they shared with five other Republican candidates.“On the curtains — do your homework, Tim, because Obama bought those,” Ms. Haley said.The smiles had vanished, replaced by the corrosiveness of the Republican Party on full display: friends turning on each other to squabble over the cost of window coverings. The exchange underscored the unease inside a party that has shifted over the course of their relationship and now belongs to a man who declined to show up for the debate.“Did you send them back?” Mr. Scott asked Ms. Haley about the drapes. Mr. Scott’s eyes widened, and he extended his arms at his side as he repeatedly asked if she had tried to return them.Ms. Haley tilted her forehead toward him, narrowed her eyes and returned the same accusatory question reminiscent of an I-know-you-are-but-what-am-I schoolyard taunt.“Did you send them back?” Ms. Haley asked. “You’re the one who works in Congress.”“Oh my gosh — you hung them,” Mr. Scott said, holding his arms in the air to simulate the act of hanging drapes on a curtain rod. “They’re your curtains.”“They were there before I even showed up,” Ms. Haley said, adding, “You are scrapping.”“I’m not scrapping,” Mr. Scott said.The split screen they shared as they pointed at each other on television was a long way from the moment just a decade earlier when they stood side by side in South Carolina. Back then, Ms. Haley introduced him as the best pick to represent the state in the Senate.“He knows,” she said at the time, “the value of a dollar.” More