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      Trump Makes Baseless Claims About Immigration and Voter Fraud

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      Fresh off his trip to the southern border earlier this week, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday baselessly suggested that President Biden had “smuggled” violent anti-American forces across the border.At a pair of rallies in North Carolina and Virginia, Mr. Trump — who has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as part of the 91 felony counts he currently faces in four separate criminal trials — broadly and without evidence asserted that Mr. Biden’s border policy amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”Mr. Trump has previously suggested without evidence that Democrats were encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally in order to register them to vote. On Saturday, he told crowds in Greensboro, N.C., and Richmond, Va., that he believed Mr. Biden was “giving aid and comfort” to America’s foreign enemies.He went on to frame this year’s election as a question of “whether the foreign armies Joe Biden has smuggled across our border will be allowed to stay or whether they will be told to get the hell out of here and go back home.”Mr. Trump has frequently blamed the surge of migrants at the border on Mr. Biden and Democrats, who he claims are too lenient on those who cross illegally. But there is no evidence to support the claim that Mr. Biden has trafficked migrants across the border.Nor is there evidence to suggest that Democrats have been encouraging the surge of migrants at the border in order to register them illegally to vote, one of many claims that Mr. Trump has made as he has promoted widespread and frequently debunked assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump Dominates Michigan G.O.P. Convention Amid Party Turmoil

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      The former president won all 39 delegates against Nikki Haley during the caucus-style event in Grand Rapids.Former President Donald J. Trump capped off a clean sweep of Republican delegates in Michigan on Saturday during a raucous convention, which further exposed a deep fissure in the state party that threatens to fester in one of the most important battleground states.Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, amassed at least 90 percent of the vote in all but one of the state’s 13 congressional districts against former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who was ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump.A simple majority was needed in each district to win its share of delegates at the caucus-style event, giving Mr. Trump 39, to go along with the 12 that he won in Michigan’s primary, which was held on Tuesday. Ms. Haley emerged from that contest with four delegates.Mr. Trump’s dominance earlier in the week left little doubt about the outcome of the convention on Saturday at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids, Mich.A check-in table at the convention in Grand Rapids. An estimated 200 Republican stalwarts were denied credentials during the convention.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBut a protracted fight over the state party’s rightful leader spilled over into the proceedings, where an estimated 200 Republican stalwarts from about 20 of Michigan’s 83 counties were denied credentials. Two other groups boycotted the event and held breakaway conventions, one more than 100 miles to the north in Houghton Lake, Mich., and another more than 50 miles southeast in Battle Creek, Mich.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Michigan Judge Orders Kristina Karamo to Stand Down in G.O.P. Leadership Fight

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      A circuit court judge on Tuesday ordered Kristina Karamo, the deposed leader of the Michigan Republicans, to abandon her efforts to cling to power. But what that means for Saturday, when Ms. Karamo had pledged to hold a dueling presidential nominating convention, remains unclear.“I have to comply with the judge’s orders,” she told reporters after the court hearing, according to The Detroit Free Press.She also called the ruling “egregious,” and said “I’m not going to jail.” But she did not say when asked if she would abandon her plans for the convention on Saturday in Detroit.In a two-page order, Judge J. Joseph Rossi of the 17th Circuit Court in Grand Rapids, Mich., granted a preliminary injunction to the group of Republicans that voted in January to oust her. He barred Ms. Karamo from presenting herself as the party’s leader and conducting business in its name, including organizing meetings.The judge determined that a group of state G.O.P. leaders, disillusioned over transparency issues and money problems in the party, had followed the party’s bylaws when they voted on Jan. 6 to remove Ms. Karamo as chairwoman and later elected Pete Hoekstra, whom the Republican National Committee recognized as the rightful chairman earlier this month.Mr. Hoekstra, whom Ms. Karamo had denied access to the party’s bank and email accounts, said in an interview that he was “thrilled” by the ruling.“When Michigan opens for business tomorrow, we will be going to the banks,” said Mr. Hoekstra. He had a warning for Ms. Karamo’s holdouts: “If there’s individuals that are not cooperative, as we’ve done so far, we will seek compliance through the courts.”Ms. Karamo did not immediately respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.The judge also forbade her from accessing the party’s bank accounts and postal boxes, and from engaging in communication on social media on behalf of the party. In recent days, she had used the party’s social media accounts to promote her “convention” in Detroit on Saturday.The gathering had been scheduled for 10 a.m. Eastern time, the same time that the convention organized by Mr. Hoekstra is scheduled to take place across the state in Grand Rapids.Both sides are loyal to former President Donald J. Trump, who weighed in on the leadership fight, backing Mr. Hoekstra, his former ambassador to the Netherlands and a former House member.Mr. Hoekstra said that he was not ruling out a situation where Ms. Karamo goes ahead with her competing gathering on Saturday.“They have shown themselves to be unpredictable,” he said. More

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      Spending Impasse Persists Amid G.O.P. Resistance as Partial Shutdown Looms

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      With Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy measures to spending bills, lawmakers are running out of time to strike a deal to avert a partial government shutdown before a deadline of Friday at midnight.Congressional leaders have failed to reach a deal on legislation to keep federal funding going past Friday, with Republicans insisting on adding right-wing policy dictates to the spending bills, pushing the government to the brink of a partial shutdown within days.Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, said on Sunday that despite “intense discussions” that were continuing among top lawmakers to break the impasse, Republican recalcitrance was raising the prospect of a “disruptive shutdown” at midnight on Friday.“While we had hoped to have legislation ready this weekend that would give ample time for members to review the text, it is clear now that House Republicans need more time to sort themselves out,” Mr. Schumer said in a letter to Democratic senators. “With the uncertainty of how the House will pass the appropriations bills and avoid a shutdown this week, I ask all senators to keep their schedules flexible, so we can work to ensure a pointless and harmful lapse in funding doesn’t occur.”With no sign of a breakthrough, President Biden summoned congressional leaders to the White House on Tuesday to discuss the spending legislation, as well as the $95 billion foreign aid package for Ukraine and Israel that the Senate passed earlier this month, which Speaker Mike Johnson has refused to take up.But the more immediate task was to keep government spending from lapsing this week.Three consecutive times over the last six months, Congress has relied on short-term, stopgap spending bills passed by a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers to keep government spending flowing, essentially punting on a longer-term agreement for several weeks at a time. Each time, the Republican speaker — first Kevin McCarthy, then Mr. Johnson — has promised hard-right lawmakers that they would try to win more spending cuts and conservative policy conditions on how federal money could be spent during the next round of negotiations.Now, with patience wearing thin among ultraconservatives, pressure is mounting on Mr. Johnson, whose members want him to secure major cuts and policy changes that have no chance of enactment with Democrats in control of the Senate and White House. Lawmakers in the House, which has been out of session for the past week, are set to return to Washington on Wednesday, just two days before a deadline on Friday to fund military construction, agriculture, transportation and housing programs.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      The 2024 Election May Be Decided By Nonvoters. If They Vote.

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      “I wish God gave green noses to undecided voters, because between now and election eve, I’d work only the green noses,” Matt Reese, one of America’s first full-time political consultants, liked to say.Listen to this article, read by Natalia CastellanosOpen this article in the New York Times Audio app on iOS.Decades after Reese helped John F. Kennedy win the 1960 Democratic primary, consultants no longer need to wish for divine intervention. Microtargeting — the kind of selective persuasion efforts that Reese dreamed of — has become a fixture of 21st-century campaigns. Field operatives now target swing voters house by house, carrying computer tablets loaded with polling, registration and market-research data. And everyone understands that in close presidential elections, a few thousand votes in one state or another may decide the winner.But as Americans grow more polarized in their political identities, the number of swing voters diminishes. So a different kind of inconsistent voter grows more important: one who vacillates not so much between parties or candidates but between voting and not voting. Let’s call them the “ambivalent voters.” They’re the ones who often believe that showing up at the polls just isn’t worth the hassle.Elections, historically, are decided not only by those who cast votes but also by those who don’t. President George W. Bush edged out Al Gore in the 2000 election by 537 ballots in Florida. Yet there’s a case to be made that the five million Floridians who were eligible to vote in that election but did not were the ones who really tipped the balance. And nearly half of Americans regularly join the opt-out club. According to the University of Florida Election Lab, 44 percent of citizens who were eligible to vote in 2020 did not. The political scientists Lyn Ragsdale and Jerrold G. Rusk of Rice University have calculated that from 1920 to 2012, the slice of voters who sat out presidential contests averaged 42 percent. But in any given election, those who stay home or tune out may change: Fully 25 percent of the ballots in 2020 were cast by people who didn’t vote in 2016. A “nonvoter” can transform into a voter at any time — and if most of them break in the same direction, their decision to participate can be decisive.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      After South Carolina, Trump’s March to the Nomination Quickens

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      The reality has been clear for weeks, since former President Donald J. Trump trounced his opponents across the frozen fields and icy highways of Iowa. But his overwhelming victory on Saturday in South Carolina, where he defeated Nikki Haley in her home state, makes it all but official.The Republican nominating contest isn’t a competition. It’s a coronation.The party primaries this winter represented the best chance for Republicans who were opposed to the former president to oust him from his dominant position in the G.O.P. The stakes were extraordinarily high: Many of his Republican opponents see Mr. Trump as, at best, unelectable and, at worst, a threat to the foundations of American democracy.And yet, as the campaign has moved through the first nominating contests, the race has not revealed Mr. Trump’s weaknesses, but instead the enduring nature of his ironclad grip on the Republican Party. From the backrooms of Capitol Hill to the town hall meetings of New Hampshire to the courtrooms of New York City, Mr. Trump shows no sign of being shaken from his controlling position in the party — not in 2024, and not in the foreseeable future.“I think the party will be done with Trump when Trump is done with the party,” said David Kochel, a longtime Republican strategist who is opposed to Mr. Trump. “That’s the long and short of it.”All of Mr. Trump’s primary rivals, except Ms. Haley, have folded and endorsed his candidacy. He has conquered state parties and the Republican National Committee, installing loyalists in key posts, and collected the backing of vast numbers of Republican elected officials. And what once appeared to be extraordinary political liabilities — the 91 felony counts against him, his increasingly extreme rhetoric, his role in the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol — have only served to bolster his support among the Republican faithful.With his victory on Saturday, Mr. Trump has swept all the early nominating contests — Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, the U.S. Virgin Islands, South Carolina — an unprecedented achievement in a contested primary race. He heads into Super Tuesday on March 5, when a third of all delegates to the G.O.P. convention will be awarded, with “maximum velocity,” said the Republican governor of South Carolina, Henry McMaster, who endorsed Mr. Trump over his predecessor, Ms. Haley.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Haley’s Loss to Trump in South Carolina Fuels More Doubts About Her Viability

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      Read five takeaways from Donald Trump’s big win over Nikki Haley in South Carolina.Former President Donald J. Trump easily defeated Nikki Haley in South Carolina’s Republican primary on Saturday, delivering a crushing blow in her home state and casting grave doubt on her long-term viability.Mr. Trump’s victory, called by The Associated Press, was widely expected, and offers fresh fodder for his contention that the race is effectively over. Ms. Haley pledged to continue her campaign, but the former president has swept the early states and is barreling toward the nomination even as a majority of delegates have yet to be awarded.“This was a little sooner than we anticipated,” he said in Columbia, S.C., minutes after the race was called, adding that he had “never seen the Republican Party so unified as it is right now.”Throughout his victory speech, Mr. Trump made it clear that he was eager to turn his attention to the general election, at one point telling the crowd: “I just wish we could do it quicker. Nine months is a long time.”He also did not mention Ms. Haley by name, alluding to her only twice: once to knock her for a disappointing finish in a Nevada primary contest with no practical value, and once for supporting an opponent of his in 2016.In her election-night speech in Charleston, S.C., Ms. Haley congratulated Mr. Trump on his victory. But she said the results — he was beating her by 60 percent to 39 percent as of late Saturday — demonstrated that “huge numbers of voters” were “saying they want an alternative.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      5 Takeaways From Trump’s Big Win Over Nikki Haley in South Carolina

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      Donald J. Trump lapped Nikki Haley in the Midwest. He beat her in the Northeast. He dominated in the West. And now he has trounced the former two-term governor in her home state of South Carolina.After nearly six weeks of primary contests in geographically, demographically and ideologically diverse states, even Ms. Haley’s most ardent supporters must squint to see the faintest path to the presidential nomination for her in 2024.The race was called the moment the polls closed, and within minutes an ebullient Mr. Trump took the stage, avoiding a mistake he made in New Hampshire when Ms. Haley spoke first and, even in defeat, gave a rousing speech that had irked him.“It’s an early evening,” Mr. Trump beamed.But Ms. Haley, the former United Nations ambassador, is still vowing to plow on, warning her party that sticking with Mr. Trump and the distractions of his four criminal indictments is a pathway to defeat in November.“Today is not the end of our story,” she declared.Here are five takeaways from the South Carolina primary and what comes next:Ms. Haley cast her ballot on Kiawah Island, S.C., with her mother and children.Ruth Fremson/The New York TimesIt was a home-state failure for Haley.She campaigned more aggressively. She spent more on television advertisements. She debuted a shiny new bus to traverse the state, and kept raking in donations.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More