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      J.D. Vance Is Not Your Usual Political Opportunist

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      J.D. Vance was trying to find his groove. I had just shown up at his office last week to interview the Ohio Republican about his first nine months in the Senate, where he has proved curiously hard to pigeonhole. As we sat down, Mr. Vance — at 39, one of the chamber’s youngest members — squirmed in his ornate leather arm chair, complaining that it was uncomfortable. Whoever used it previously, he explained, had created a “giant ass print” that made it a poor fit for him.Then the senator kicked a foot up on the low coffee table in front of him. This gave me a glorious view of his custom socks: a dark-red background covered with pictures of his 6-year-old son’s face. On the far end of the table was a Lego set of the U.S. Capitol that his wife had bought him on eBay for Father’s Day. With his crisp dark suit, casual manner and personal touches, Mr. Vance suddenly looked right at home. I suspected there was some grand metaphor in all this about the young conservative working to carve out his spot in this world of old leather and hidebound traditions.I asked what had been his most pleasant discovery about life in the Senate. “I’ve been surprised by how little people hate each other in private,” he offered, positing that much of the acrimony you see from lawmakers was “posturing” for TV. “There’s sort of an inherent falseness to the way that people present on American media,” he said.This may strike many people as rich coming from Mr. Vance, who is one of the Republican Party’s new breed of in-your-face, culture-warring, Trump-defending MAGA agitators. And indeed, Mr. Vance knows how to throw a partisan punch. Yet in these early days on the job, he has also adopted a somewhat more complicated political model, frequently championing legislation with Democrats, including progressives such as Elizabeth Warren and Tammy Baldwin.Pragmatic bipartisan MAGA troll feels like a dizzying paradoxical line to toe. And it risks feeding into the larger critique of Mr. Vance as a political opportunist. This is, after all, the guy who won attention in the 2016 election cycle as a harsh conservative critic of Mr. Trump, only to undergo a stark MAGA makeover and spend much of his 2022 Senate race sucking up to the former president. “I don’t know that I can disrespect someone more than J.D. Vance,” Mitt Romney, the Utah senator and former Republican presidential nominee, told his biographer about the party’s 2022 midterm contenders. “It’s like, really? You sell yourself so cheap?”Mr. Vance is not one to ignore such swipes. “Mitt Romney is one to talk about changing his mind publicly. He’s been on every side of 35 different issues,” he clapped back to Breitbart News.But there seems to be something going on with Mr. Vance beyond the usual shape-shifting flip-floppery. He contends that his approach is the more honest, hopeful path to getting things done for the conservative grass roots. In his telling, he’s not the cynical operator; his critics are.In some respects — especially with his defense of Mr. Trump — the freshman senator is transparently full of bull. But when it comes to how to navigate and possibly even make progress in today’s fractious G.O.P., not to mention this dysfunctional Congress, he may well be onto something.Mr. Vance and I sat down on a morning when Congress was all a dither over a possible government shutdown being driven by a spending fight among House Republicans. While sympathetic to his colleagues’ concerns, Mr. Vance saw the battle as unfocused, unproductive and bad for the party.“My sense is this shutdown fight will go very poorly for us unless we’re very clear about what we’re asking for,” he told me. With different blocs of Republicans demanding different things, “that’s just going to get confused, and the American people are going to punish us for it.”He argued that if the conservatives would hunker down and focus, they could get one major concession. “And we should be fighting for that one thing,” he said. What did he think they should prioritize? “If we could get something real on border security, then that would be a deal worth taking.”Mr. Vance described himself less an ideological revolutionary than a principled pragmatist. He did not come to Washington to blow up the system or overhaul how the Senate operates. He said his outlook was, “There are things I need to get done, and I will do whatever I need to do to do them.”If this means making common cause with the political enemy now and again, so be it. “I am a populist in a lot of my economic convictions, and so that will lead to opportunities to working with Democrats,” he reasoned.Mr. Vance’s cross aisle endeavors include teaming up with Ms. Warren to push legislation that would claw back compensation from bank executives who were richly paid even as they were “crashing their banks into a mountain,” as Mr. Vance put it. He has joined forces with Ms. Baldwin on a bill that would ensure that technologies developed with taxpayer money are manufactured in the United States. He is working with Senators Amy Klobuchar and Ron Wyden on a bill to reduce thefts of catalytic converters. And in the coming weeks, his focus will be on pushing through railway safety reform that he and Ohio’s senior senator, Sherrod Brown, introduced in the wake of the derailment disaster in East Palestine. That is the bill about which he was most optimistic. “We have 60 votes in private,” he said.Even if nothing makes it through this year, Mr. Vance is playing the long game. “Those productive personal relationships are quite valuable because they may not lead to an actual legislative package tomorrow, but they could two years from now,” he said.Squishy “relationship” talk can be dangerous in today’s G.O.P., even for members of the relatively genteel Senate. Being labeled a RINO — that is, a Republican in Name Only — generally earns one the sort of opprobrium normally reserved for child sex traffickers.But here’s where his MAGA antics may provide a bit of cover. In his brief time in Washington, the senator has proved himself an eager and a prolific culture warrior. The first bill he introduced — an important moment in any senator’s career — aimed to make English the nation’s official language. In July, after the Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action in university admissions, he fired off a letter to the eight Ivy League schools, plus a couple of private colleges in Ohio, warning them to retain any records that might be needed for a Senate investigation of their practices. That same month, he introduced a bill to ban gender-affirming care for minors. He even waded into the hysteria last winter over the health risks of gas stoves. This month, he’s out hawking a bill that would ban federal mask mandates for domestic air travel, public transit systems and schools, and bar those institutions from denying service to the maskless.Perhaps most vitally, Mr. Vance remains steadfast in his support of Mr. Trump. In June, he announced he was putting a hold on all Justice Department nominees in protest of “the unprecedented political prosecution” of Mr. Trump. And he plans to work hard as a surrogate to return the MAGA king to the White House. “I’m thinking about trying to be as active a participant as possible.”J.D. Vance during a Trump campaign rally last year.Megan Jelinger/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesHis critique of Mr. Trump’s critics can be brutal.“Trump is extraordinarily clarifying on the right and extra confusing on the left,” he said. The hatred for Trump among progressives is so strong that people cannot see past it to acknowledge the former president’s “good parts,” he contended. While among conservatives, “Trump has this incredible capacity to identify really, who the good people are on the right and who the bad people are on the right.”Elaborating on the “bad” category, he points to former Representative Liz Cheney and the neoconservative writer Bill Kristol. “They say, ‘Donald Trump is an authoritarian’ — which I think is absurd. ‘Donald Trump is anti-democratic’ — which, again, in my view is absurd. I think they’re hiding their real ideological disagreements,” he argued.Mr. Vance is entitled to his view, of course. But glibly rejecting stated concerns about Mr. Trump’s anti-democratic inclinations — and characterizing his critics’ reactions as “obsessive” — would strike many as the real absurdity.Asked specifically about Mr. Trump’s election fraud lies, which Mr. Vance has at times promoted, the senator again shifted into slippery explainer mode. “I think it’s very easy for folks in the press to latch onto the zaniest election fraud or stolen election theories and say, ‘Oh this is totally debunked,’” he said. “But they ignore that there is this very clear set of institutional biases built into the election in 2020 that — from big tech censorship to the way in which financial interests really lined up behind Joe Biden.”“People aren’t stupid. They see what’s out there,” he said. “Most Republican grass roots voters are not sympathetic to the dumbest version of the election conspiracy. They are sympathetic to the version that is actually largely true.”Except that, as evidence of what is “actually largely true,” Mr. Vance pointed to a 2021 Time article detailing a bipartisan effort not to advance a particular candidate but to safeguard the electoral system. More important, the “dumbest” version of the stolen election conspiracy is precisely what Mr. Trump and his enablers have been aggressively spreading for years. It is what drove the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol, landed many rioters in prison, led to Fox News paying a $787.5 million defamation settlement and prompted grand juries to indict Mr. Trump in federal and state courts. Mr. Vance may want to believe that most Republicans are too smart to buy such lunacy, but he is too smart not to recognize the damage to American democracy being wrought by that lunacy.As for those who criticize his approach, Mr. Vance saw them as out of sync with voters. The conservative grass roots are “extremely frustrated with Washington not doing anything,” he said. “I think if you are a critic of them — if you are a critic of the way they see the world — you see people who want to blow up the system. Who are just pissed off. And they want fighters.” And not necessarily fighters who are “directed” or strategic in their efforts, he said, so much as just anyone who channels that rage.By contrast, “if you’re sympathetic to them and you like them,” he continued, you understand that “the problem is not that people don’t bitch enough or complain enough on television.” Rather, it’s that voters are fed up that “nothing changes” even when they “elect successive waves of different people. So I actually think being a bridge builder and getting things done is totally consistent with this idea that people are pissed off at the government as do-nothing.”When I asked how Mr. Vance defined his political positioning, he abruptly popped out of his chair and hurried over to his desk. He returned with a yellow sticky note on which he drew a large grid. Along the bottom of the paper he scrawled “culture” and on the left side, “commerce.” He started drawing dots as he explained: “I think the Republican Party has tended to be here” — top right quadrant, indicating a mix of strong cultural and pro-business conservatism. He added, “I think the Democratic Party has tended to be here,” pointing to the bottom left quadrant, which in his telling represents a strong liberal take on both. “And I think the majority, certainly the plurality of American voters — and maybe I’m biased because this is my actual view — is somewhere around here,” he said, placing them on the grid to suggest that people are “more conservative on cultural issues but they are not instinctively pro-business.”Michelle CottleMr. Vance reminded me that he has always been critical of his party’s pro-business bias. And it is primarily in this space that he is playing nice with Democrats.Bridge builder. Deal Maker. MAGA maniac. Trump apologist. Call Mr. Vance whatever you want. And if you find it all confused or confusing, don’t fret. That may be part of the point. Mr. Trump’s Republican Party is something of a chaotic mess. Until it figures out where it is headed, a shape-shifting MAGA brawler who quietly works across the aisle on particular issues may be the best this party has to offer.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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      7 Candidates Qualify for Second Republican Debate; Trump Won’t Attend

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      The Republican National Committee announced the lineup Monday night: Doug Burgum, Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Mike Pence, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott.Seven candidates qualified for the second Republican presidential debate, the Republican National Committee announced Monday night, just one fewer than participated in the first debate last month.The event, scheduled for Wednesday from 9 to 11 p.m. Eastern time, will include:Gov. Doug Burgum of North DakotaFormer Gov. Chris Christie of New JerseyGov. Ron DeSantis of FloridaNikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassadorFormer Vice President Mike PenceThe entrepreneur Vivek RamaswamySenator Tim Scott of South CarolinaWhere the Republican Presidential Candidates Stand on the IssuesAs the Republican presidential candidates campaign under the shadow of a front-runner facing dozens of felony charges, The New York Times examined their stances on 11 key issues.While former President Donald J. Trump, the runaway front-runner in polls, easily exceeded the donor and polling requirements for participation, he is planning to skip the debate. He also skipped the first debate, which still managed to draw nearly 13 million viewers and was also the most-watched cable telecast of the year outside of sports.For his rivals, time is running short to gain ground on the leader. Mr. Trump’s closest rival, Mr. DeSantis, has fallen in recent polling, and the other candidates have been unable to make substantial breakthroughs. They will need to seize on moments like debates, with national audiences, to make noise in early contests in Iowa and New Hampshire.Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, who qualified for the first debate, failed to meet the tougher requirements for the second. He needed 50,000 donors (up from 40,000 last month) and 3 percent (up from 1 percent) in at least two national polls accepted by the R.N.C., or in one national poll plus two polls from early-voting states.It is unclear whether he missed both requirements or just one. He did not meet the new polling threshold, according to a New York Times analysis, but his campaign did not respond to requests to confirm whether he had met the donor threshold.The Lineup for the Second Republican Presidential DebateSeven candidates have made the cut for the next debate. Donald J. Trump will not participate.No one who missed the first debate qualified for the second. Most of the lesser-known candidates — including former Representative Will Hurd of Texas, the talk-show host Larry Elder, the businessman and pastor Ryan Binkley and the businessman Perry Johnson — reported having met the increased donor requirement, but 3 percent in multiple polls was a bridge too far.Like last month, when Mr. Trump recorded an interview with the former Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be released while his rivals were on the debate stage, Mr. Trump has his own counterprogramming plan. He will be in Detroit to give a prime-time speech to current and former union workers as members of the United Automobile Workers near the two-week mark on their strike.Mr. Trump has also refused to sign a pledge to support the Republican nominee regardless of who it is, which is a requirement for debate participation. More

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      Trump Tells Gun Store He’d Like to Buy a Glock, Raising Legal Questions

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      Officials have increasingly voiced concerns about threats of violence related to the former president’s trials, as he faces charges that would make it illegal for a store to sell him a firearm.A spokesman for former President Donald J. Trump posted a video on Monday showing him at a gun shop in South Carolina, declaring that he had just bought a Glock pistol.The post on X, formerly known as Twitter, included video of Mr. Trump, the front-runner for the Republican Party’s nomination for president who is facing four criminal indictments. He looked over the dullish gold firearm, a special Trump edition Glock that depicts his likeness and says “Trump 45th,” as he visited the Palmetto State Armory outlet in Summerville, S.C. “I want to buy one,” he said twice in the video.“President Trump buys a @GLOCKInc in South Carolina!” his spokesman, Steven Cheung, wrote in his post. The video showed Mr. Trump among a small crowd of people and posing with a man holding the gun. A voice can be heard saying, “That’s a big seller.”The gun was decorated with Mr. Trump’s name and likeness.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThe statement immediately set off an uproar and prompted questions about whether such a purchase would be legal. Mr. Trump is under indictment on dozens of felony counts in two different cases related to his efforts to reverse the results of the 2020 election and to his possession of reams of classified documents after he left office.There were also questions about whether the store could sell a firearm to Mr. Trump if people there knew that he was under indictment.Federal prosecutors are asking a federal judge in the case that accuses Mr. Trump of breaking several laws in his efforts to stay in office to impose a limited gag order after he made repeated threats against prosecutors and witnesses in various cases against him. Mr. Trump’s lawyers were under a late-Monday-night deadline to respond to the government’s request for the order.But within two hours of the initial post on social media, Mr. Cheung deleted his post, and issued a statement saying, “President Trump did not purchase or take possession of the firearm. He simply indicated that he wanted one.”A man who answered a phone registered to the shop’s owner hung up when a reporter called. A salesperson at the Summerville location, who declined to give her name or answer additional questions, said Mr. Trump had not bought a gun.Mr. Trump has increasingly been faulted by prosecutors, security experts and others for his language on his social media site, Truth Social, in relation to his trials.At the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for instance, officials have increasingly voiced concerns about threats of violence, as Mr. Trump and his allies have targeted the agency.Under the main federal gun law, 18 U.S.C. 922, it is illegal for merchants to sell firearms to people who are under indictment for crimes carrying sentences of more than a year. Indicted defendants are also barred from shipping or receiving any weapons that have crossed state lines.But the statute does not appear to prohibit people under indictment from simply buying or possessing weapons. More

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      Do Voters Actually Care That Tim Scott Isn’t Married?

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      A spouse brings advantages to the campaign trail, as a built-in surrogate and cheerleader. But interviews with voters show they have bigger concerns than a candidate’s love life.During a private meeting with evangelical faith leaders in Iowa this summer, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina was asked about an issue he would prefer not to discuss: his love life.Mr. Scott, 57, has put his faith and commitment to conservative family values at the center of his campaign for president, which at that point was in its earliest weeks. None of the pastors in attendance questioned his faith. But at least one was curious about his lack of a wife and children.“You’re unmarried, and you want to lead the country. But we can’t even see how you’ve led a family. Help me out with that,” Michael Demastus, a pastor in Iowa who has met with the senator multiple times, recalled asking during the meeting. He meant the question, he added, “not in a condemning way — just genuinely want to know a little bit more.”Mr. Scott told the group that he was in a relationship with a woman whom he was serious about but not yet ready to introduce to the public, according to two accounts of the meeting.Mr. Demastus said that Mr. Scott’s response satisfied him in the moment, and that his congregation hasn’t seemed to care much one way or the other. It’s not a topic voters have clamored to ask the candidate about during town halls. And yet, as Mr. Scott joked at an evangelical conference in Des Moines, queries about the woman in his life have been “one of the more asked questions recently.”And Mr. Scott is answering, however reluctantly.“I am dating a lovely Christian girl,” he told Iowa’s attorney general, Brenna Bird, who asked him what she called the “personal” question right off the bat. “One of the things I love about the Gospel of Jesus Christ is that it points us always in the right direction. Proverbs 18:22 says, ‘He who finds a wife finds a good thing and obtains favor from the Lord.’ So can we just pray together for me?”A longtime bachelor, Mr. Scott is hardly a rarity in America, where more people than ever report being single. But a presidential candidate’s marital status is nearly impossible to avoid on the campaign trail. Some of Mr. Scott’s rivals, like Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Vivek Ramaswamy, have given their spouses and young children starring roles as they work to win over those evangelical voters for whom traditional family values are top of mind. The frequent domestic scenes offer a stark contrast with the race’s front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump, who is twice-divorced and facing four criminal indictments, one involving hush-money payments to a porn star. His wife, Melania Trump, has been largely absent.Mr. Scott has attributed the attention his personal relationships have received to opposition research he said had been circulated by his opponents.Mel Musto for The New York TimesMr. Scott, who is polling in the lower single digits, is sometimes joined by his mother and his nephew, whom he speaks of as a son. And he talks so much about his life story and his Christian faith that many prospective voters in Iowa and New Hampshire said that after meeting him for the first time, they felt like they were learning much about him and his character, even without a spouse at his side.Interviews with more than a dozen conservative voters and grass-roots organizers across early states suggest that they have bigger concerns than whom or whether Mr. Scott is dating.Nearly all, most of whom had only begun paying attention to Mr. Scott this year, said they did not mind that he was unmarried or childless. Several said they weren’t aware of his marital status. And many said they cared far more about his views on meaty issues like immigration and the economy — and about what they saw as his lack of any personal scandal whatsoever.“Is he? OK,” Anne Hoeing, 78, a New Hampshire voter and retired teacher, said after being informed that Mr. Scott was single. “Who cares? I mean, I don’t care. I would say I’d be very hesitant about a president who was married several times and there was all kinds of baggage — you know what I mean? I’d be more hesitant about that.”After Axios reported this month that a small number of prospective Scott donors had expressed concerns about his marital status and his reluctance to discuss his personal life, Mr. Scott suggested that his opponents were behind it. “What we’ve seen is that poll after poll after poll says that the voters don’t care. But it seems like opponents do care, and so media covers what opponents plant,” he said in New Hampshire. “The good news is, I just keep fighting the good fight. Make sure that America is better off today than yesterday.”In a more recent interview with The Washington Post, Mr. Scott offered a few additional details about his relationship: Mr. Scott and his girlfriend met through a friend from church, he said; they got to know each other by talking about God and doing Bible study together. They also played pickleball. Mr. Scott declined to be interviewed for this article, and his campaign declined to identify his girlfriend or make her available to be interviewed.He has suggested that rival campaigns planted stories about his being single because attacking him for his race would be a bridge too far. “You can’t say I’m Black, because that would be terrible, so find something else that you can attack,” Mr. Scott told The Post.Addressing unfounded speculation about Mr. Scott’s sexual orientation that has bounced around the political chattering class, his campaign manager, Jennifer DeCasper, told The Post that he was not gay.Many voters have expressed interest in Mr. Scott’s policy positions on issues like immigration and the economy rather than his bachelorhood.John Tully for The New York TimesThose closest to Mr. Scott and his family say that the answer to the perennial question most single or unmarried people face — why? — is more reflective of his busy schedule than a lack of interest in dating.“I don’t remember ever hearing that question until the presidential run,” said Chad Connelly, a former chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party and founder of the faith-based political advocacy group Faith Wins.Andy Sabin, a Republican megadonor who supports Mr. Scott’s campaign, said he had not spoken with Mr. Scott about his marital status or heard of concerns about it from prospective donors he has tried to court. He added that “not one person” had come to him with questions about Mr. Scott’s personal relationships.“Nobody says you have to be married to be president,” Mr. Sabin said. “It’s kind of sad — you get presidents that are unhappily married. That’s worse.”Mr. Scott would join a small group of bachelor presidents if elected. Only two have entered the White House unmarried: Grover Cleveland, who in 1886 was married at the White House, and James Buchanan, who left office in 1861 and never wed.He is also not the first presidential candidate to face questions about his bachelorhood. Senator Cory Booker, Democrat of New Jersey, who is also unmarried, saw his marital status quickly become a subject of interest during his run for president in 2020. He made public his relationship with the actress Rosario Dawson roughly a month into his campaign.During the 2016 presidential primary, Senator Lindsey Graham, also from South Carolina, faced a barrage of questions about his personal life. “I don’t think there’s anything in the Constitution that says single people need not apply for president,” Mr. Graham said at one point. “And if it bothers some people, then they won’t vote for me. I offer what I offer.”Mr. Scott rose to prominence in South Carolina politics preaching — and practicing, according to him — abstinence before marriage. He was elected to the House of Representatives in 2010. But in 2012, the year he was appointed to the Senate, he told an interviewer that he was not adhering to that practice quite as well as he had in the past. He remained, however, reticent on the topic of his relationships.His single status came up just days after he announced his 2024 presidential campaign. In a May appearance at an Axios event, Mr. Scott was asked about being a bachelor. At first he challenged the question: “The fact that half of America’s adult population is single for the first time, to suggest that somehow being married or not married is going to be the determining factor of whether you’re a good president or not, it sounds like we’re living in 1963 and not 2023,” he said.Then he suggested that being single as president might be a benefit — before letting it slip that he was dating someone. “I probably have more time, more energy and more latitude to do the job,” Mr. Scott said, adding: “My girlfriend wants to see me when I come home.”The disclosure spurred a flurry of interest.Queries about the woman in his life have been “one of the more asked questions recently,” Mr. Scott joked Saturday at the Faith and Freedom Coalition banquet in Des Moines.KC McGinnis for The New York TimesMaurice Washington, a former chairman of the Charleston County Republican Party and a longtime Scott ally, faulted Mr. Scott’s presidential campaign for not proactively addressing questions about his personal life.“I think the people he’s paying the big bucks to need to do a better job in preparing him in how he handles or responds to it,” Mr. Washington said.Some voters said they saw Mr. Scott’s personal life as unexceptional.“I didn’t get married until I was 37,” said Dave Laugerman, a 73-year-old architect from Des Moines who said he was considering supporting Mr. Scott and several other candidates as alternatives to Mr. Trump. “It doesn’t bother me at all.” More

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      If Politicians Are Either Stainless or Shameless, Guess Which One Senator Menendez Is

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, you know how much I hate stereotypes, but — New Jersey! What is it about the state that seems to produce ethically challenged pols? I’m thinking about Harrison Williams and Bob Torricelli and Jim McGreevey and innumerable mayors and assemblymen and now Senator Robert Menendez, indicted — once again — for various corrupt practices, including taking bribes in the form of gold bars.Is it the mercury in the Hackensack River? The effects of Taylor Pork Roll? Lingering trauma over the Snooki pouf?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, the case has of course yet to be tried, but right now, whenever I see a picture of Bob Menendez, I imagine a little golden rectangle sticking out of his pocket.His career is over. However, let’s be fair. We can’t get all high and mighty about New Jersey when we live in a state where George Pataki, whose three terms ended in 2007, was the last elected governor to finish his political career without having to resign in disgrace.Bret: Maybe the eastbound sign on the George Washington Bridge should read, “Welcome to the Empire State, not quite as crooked as the state you’re leaving. But. …”Gail: I can think of some more states that could use similar signs, but I’ll be charitable today and refrain from making lists. Do you have a remedy? One thing that worries me is how uncool politics has become. You don’t see promising college students talking about their dream of going back home and running for City Council. Or even someday becoming president.I blame Donald Trump for that, of course. But I have to admit Joe Biden doesn’t exactly make politics look like an exciting career.Bret: My pet theory about modern American politics is that only two types of people go into it: the stainless and the shameless. Either you have lived a life of such unimpeachable virtue that you can survive endless investigations into your personal history, or you’re the type of person who lacks the shame gene, so you don’t care what kind of dirt the media digs up about you. In other words, you’re either Mitt Romney or Donald Trump, Chuck Schumer or Anthony Weiner.Gail: Wow, first time I’ve thought about Anthony Weiner in quite a while. But go on.Bret: Point being, most normal people fall somewhere in the middle, and they don’t want to spend their lives under a media microscope. That’s why so many otherwise well-qualified and otherwise public-spirited people steer clear of political careers. Which brings us without stopping to the complete breakdown in the Republican House caucus.Gail: So glad you brought that up. I was of course going to ask — how much of this is Kevin McCarthy’s fault, how much the fault of Republican conservatives in general?Bret: Can’t it be both? McCarthy got his speakership by putting himself at the mercy of the lunatic fringe on his right, and now that fringe is behaving like … lunatics. In theory, what the Republican caucus is arguing about is government spending and whether a government shutdown can send a message about excess spending. In reality, this is about power — about people like Matt Gaetz showing that, with a handful of votes, he can bring the entire Congress to heel. It’s the tyranny of a small minority leveraging its will over a bare majority to hold everyone else hostage.Including, I should add, the Defense Department. If you had told me 10 years ago that the G.O.P. would purposefully sow chaos at the Pentagon to score points about government spending or abortion, I would have thought you were tripping. But here we are.Gail: Non-fan of the House Republicans that I am, I did not expect anything good when they won the majority last year. But I did expect them to be semi-competent in their attempts to do bad.Bret: Hehe.Gail: Instead, we have government by Matt Gaetz, or Tommy Tuberville, the Alabama senator who’s been holding up military promotions as a protest against … abortion rights?All this is good for the Democrats, who would have had to block any House budget that decimated critical services like health care. As things stand now, if we go into October without a national budget in place, all the ensuing crises will be blamed on the Republicans.Not saying I want that to happen, but if it does, glad the shame will go in the right direction.Bret: House Republicans have become a circular firing squad and I really have to wonder whether McCarthy will last another month as speaker, let alone to the end of this Congress. Although, whenever I think the Republicans are harming themselves, I turn to the Democrats. Granting almost 500,000 Venezuelans temporary protected status is the right thing to do, but the administration’s failure to get control of the border means it’s only a matter of time before grants at this scale happen as a matter of course. I just don’t understand how this is good policy or wise politics. Please explain it to me.Gail: Don’t think anybody feels the current border policies are anything close to perfect, but it’s a question of what else to do. Eager to hear any suggestions that don’t involve a stupid, embarrassing wall.Bret: Which I continue to favor — along with wide and welcoming gates — but OK. There’s also something called a “smart fence” that has excellent sensors to detect border crossings, but is less ugly, less expensive and more environmentally sensitive than a wall. But it would have to be manned continuously by armed patrols. We can also immediately return people arriving here illegally rather than let them stay in the United States while awaiting a court hearing, unless they are from countries where they are at mortal risk from their own governments. President Obama did that pretty robustly, and I don’t remember any of my liberal friends claiming it was an assault on human rights. And we need to enormously expand consular facilities throughout Latin America so people’s immigration claims can be processed abroad, not once they’ve crossed the border.Gail: Voting with you on greatly expanded consular services.Bret: It would be a start. And I’m saying all this as someone who believes deeply in the overall benefits of immigration. But a de facto open border doesn’t advance the cause of a liberal immigration policy. It undermines it. And it could take down a lot of the Democratic Party in the process.Gail: Arguing about the fence is sort of comforting, in a way. Takes me back to the old days when we could fight about politics without having to wring our hands over the likes of Kevin McCarthy.Bret: So true. Politics used to be debating ideas. Now it’s about diagnosing psychosis.Gail: Don’t know how depressed to feel about the deeply unenthusiastic, borderline terrifying polling numbers that Biden has been getting. On the one hand, it’s understandable that people are cranky about not having a younger, fresher, more exciting alternative to Trump. On the other hand — jeepers, the man has achieved a heck of a lot. And when you look at the inevitable alternative. …Bret: Liberals might see a lot of liberal policy achievements, but what conservatives and swing voters see is higher food and gas prices, higher mortgage rates, urban decay, an immigration crisis that only seems to get worse and a visibly feebler president. I really doubt we’d be having these anxieties over a potential second term for Trump if Biden simply stepped aside.Gail: But to get back to the House Republicans — an impeachment inquiry, starring Hunter Biden, yet again? This one, as you know well, is allegedly supposed to investigate whether the president did anything in 2015 to protect his son’s business dealings in Ukraine. Are you indifferent, bored or embarrassed?Bret: Angered. It’s outrageous to open an impeachment inquiry when there is absolutely no available evidence that the president committed impeachable offenses. By that preposterous standard, the police should open investigations into every parent in America whose children are louts.Gail: Speaking of louts — or at least uncouth dressers — how do you feel about Chuck Schumer’s decision to drop the Senate dress code? Clearly a bow to John Fetterman, who has been known to show up in a hoodie and shorts.Bret: Schumer is one of the nicest men I know in political life, a real mensch whether you agree with him or not. But this is a case of him being too nice. The Senate is held in low enough repute already; we don’t need it looking like an Arby’s. I hope he rethinks this. What’s your view?Gail: Agree about Schumer and kinda think you’re also right on the dress code. He lost me at the shorts.Hey, one last question — any predictions for the Republican debate this week?Bret: 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.Otherwise, I’d rather spend the time watching people ice fish.Gail: Come on, there’s always something weird or ridiculous to reward you for watching. And some suspense — will Ron DeSantis say something truly stupid that will make him drop out? Will Tim Scott have any good I-wanna-be-veep moments? And it’s always fun to listen to Chris Christie slam into Trump.Bret: True. And let’s see what conspiracy theory Ramaswamy will endorse next, like: Did Joe Biden get his Corvette at a discount from George Soros?Gail: We can talk it over next week. Along with God-knows-what new political crisis. Looking forward already.Bret: Same here. And before we go, I hope our readers didn’t miss Ian Johnson’s extraordinary essay about the Chinese journalists and historians fighting to preserve the knowledge of China’s tragedies and atrocities in the face of the regime’s attempts to suppress it. It made me think of how badly our own sense of history, including events like Jan. 6, has eroded, and reminded me of my favorite Milan Kundera lines: “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting.”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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      As Haley and Ramaswamy Rise, Some Indian Americans Have Mixed Feelings

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      Democrats and Republicans have been courting the small but fast-growing and vital demographic in purple suburbs and swing states.Suresh Reddy, a centrist Democrat and city councilman, is watching the Republican presidential primary with a mix of pride and disappointment.When Mr. Reddy and his wife, Chandra Gangareddy, immigrants from southern India, settled in the Des Moines suburbs in September 2004, they could count the number of Indian American families on one hand. Only one Indian American had ever served in Congress at the time, and none had dared to mount a bid for the White House.Now, for the first time in the nation’s history, two Indian Americans — Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy — are serious presidential contenders who regularly invoke their parents’ immigrant roots. But their deeply conservative views, on display as they seek the Republican nomination, make it difficult for Mr. Reddy to fully celebrate the moment, he said.“I’m really proud,” he said. “I just wish they had a better message.”That disconnect, reflected in interviews with two dozen Indian American voters, donors and elected officials from across the political spectrum — in the early voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina and across the country — may complicate the G.O.P.’s efforts to appeal to the small but influential Indian American electorate.Indian Americans now make up about 2.1 million, or roughly 16 percent, of the estimated 13.4 million Asian Americans who are eligible to vote, the third largest population of Asian origin behind Chinese and Filipino Americans, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of the 2021 American Community Survey. Indian Americans also have tended to lean more Democratic than any other Asian American subgroups, according to Pew.Though a small slice of the overall electorate, the demographic has become one of the fastest-growing constituencies, and is large enough to make a difference at the margins in swing states and in purple suburbs, including in Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Nevada.Debate over the prominence of Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy is playing out in Indian American homes and places of worship in Des Moines and beyond. In interviews, many described their rise as a political triumph at a time when Indian Americans have become more visible in fields beyond medicine, tech and engineering.Venu Rao, a Democrat and retired engineer and program manager in Hollis, N.H., said Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy captured the ideological diversity among South Asian Americans, even if he doesn’t agree with their positions.“I am glad that we have a choice,” Mr. Rao said.But many of those interviewed also expressed frustration and dismay over the candidates’ hard-line positions on issues like race, identity and immigration. Some worried Mr. Ramaswamy’s pledges to dismantle agencies like the Education Department would destroy the same institutions that had been crucial to Indian American success and upward mobility.Others said they appreciated Ms. Haley’s attempts to strike a more center-right tone on some topics like abortion and climate change but indicated concern about what they described as her tepid pushback against former President Donald J. Trump and his 2020 election lies.“It can be really easy to see this as a win and be like, ‘Oh my god — look there, those are two brown faces on national TV. That’s amazing,’” said Nikhil Vootkur, 20, a student at Tufts University in Boston. But, “the diaspora, it has matured, and when a diaspora matures, you have a lot of ideological cleavages.”Over the past decade, Indian Americans have been rapidly climbing the political ranks. Vice President Kamala Harris, a Democrat and the daughter of an Indian mother and Jamaican father, is the first woman, first Black person and the first Asian American to hold her office.Khimanand Upreti, the priest at a Hindu temple in Madrid, Iowa, described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without former President Donald Trump’s controversies.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn 2015, Gov. Bobby Jindal of Louisiana, a onetime rising Republican star, became the first Indian American to run for president. But Mr. Jindal, who changed his name, Piyush, to Bobby and converted to Christianity when he was young, made a push for assimilation that turned off many Indian American voters. Ms. Haley and Mr. Ramaswamy have toggled between proud embraces of their roots and scorching criticism of the “identity politics” that has been known to alienate the Republican Party’s largely white and evangelical Christian base.Mr. Ramaswamy, 38, a political newcomer and millionaire entrepreneur from Cincinnati, Ohio, uses his Hindu faith to connect with Christian voters and expresses gratitude that his parents immigrated from the southwestern coast of India to the “greatest nation on Earth.”Ms. Haley, 51, a former South Carolina governor and United Nations ambassador from Bamberg, S.C., has written and spoken extensively about her experience as the daughter of Sikh immigrants from northern India, including the pain of watching her father, who wears a turban, endure racism and discrimination.Mr. Ramaswamy, who is running in the mold of Mr. Trump, has made a concerted effort to appeal to Indian Americans in the primary. He has made several appearances at the Hindu Temple and Cultural Center of Iowa, where many patrons have met his parents, and he has drawn the independent support of its Hindu priest, Khimanand Upreti, who in an interview described Mr. Ramaswamy as “very fresh and clean” and without Mr. Trump’s controversies.On the trail, Ms. Haley has talked less about her identity and often describes her immigrant family in general terms. But in a response to a voter question at a town hall in Hampton, N.H., on Thursday night, she explained how her father’s experience with prejudice helped her connect with a hurting community and persuade state lawmakers to take down the Confederate battle flag at the South Carolina State House, after a white supremacist shot and killed nine Black parishioners in Charleston. She also used her parents’ immigrant background to tear into President Biden’s decision to provide temporary protected status and work permits for Venezuelan migrants.“My mom would always say if you don’t follow the laws to get into this country, you won’t follow the laws when you are in this country,” she said.At their home in Waukee, west of Des Moines, Nishant Kumar and Smita Nishant, who immigrated from New Delhi and Mumbai some two decades ago, and their daughter, Anika Yadav, 17, said the 2024 Iowa caucuses would be the first election they would all be able to participate in. The Nishants have only recently obtained citizenship, and Ms. Yadav will be old enough to vote in the next presidential election.The Nishant family in Waukee, Iowa: Smita Nishant and her husband, Nishant Kumar, with Anika Yadav and Atiksh Yadava. They are looking forward to voting next year.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesThe family first became politically engaged when Barack Obama ran for president in 2008 — and would have backed Democrats in the past few elections if they could have voted. But as they weigh the 2024 presidential contenders, they have found Mr. Ramaswamy smart and refreshing, they said.They have seen less of Ms. Haley, but Ms. Yadav says she likes Ms. Haley’s experience on foreign policy and the way she holds herself on the national stage, even if she has not made her Indian American identity central to her campaign.“I think a lot of women, specifically young women, are leaning toward Nikki Haley — even young women who are Democrats,” she said.Still, some Indian American Democratic-leaning voters and prominent Indian American Democrats expressed concern or sadness over Mr. Ramaswamy’s and Ms. Haley’s approaches to issues of race and identity, saying they fed into “model minority” stereotypes and carried dog whistles that minimized or diminished the specific systematic racism faced by Black Americans.Both, when discussing their life story, tend to emphasize their successes as evidence of racial and ethnic progress in the United States. Both promote hard-line immigration measures and denounce race-conscious policies such as affirmative action in school admissions.Mr. Ramaswamy in particular has generated criticism for suggesting white supremacy was an exaggerated “boogeyman” and for pledging to end birthright citizenship for the children of undocumented immigrants. Ms. Haley has said she opposes birthright citizenship for people who have illegally entered the country.Representative Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, criticized their approach on immigration and faulted them for ignoring the history of Asian exclusion in the nation’s immigration laws. The work of Indian and Black leaders during the civil rights movement helped open the pathways to migration and citizenship for Indian families to enter the United States, he said.“Their story about the Indian American experience will not fully connect because it has so many omissions,” Mr. Khanna said.But Bhavna Vasudeva, a longtime friend of Ms. Haley’s in Columbia, S.C., argued that Ms. Haley’s Republican values held real appeal for second-generation Indian Americans, adding that her approach to her family’s racial struggles exhibited a strong sense of “Chardi Kala,” an expression that for Punjabi and Sikh Indians and Indian Americans has become synonymous with “resilience” and a “positive attitude” in the face of fear or pain.“You can’t tell anyone who is a brown woman about racism and discrimination,” Ms. Vasudeva, a donor to Ms. Haley’s campaign, said. “We have faced it all with our heads high and crown straight.” More

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      Republican Fashion Watch: The Hottest Trend for 2024 Candidates

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      Ron DeSantis wears a “Ron DeSantis” shirt. Tim Scott sports a “Tim Scott” hat. Self-branding is all the rage for presidential candidates. To find out why, we asked Vanessa Friedman.Some politicians need no introduction. The rest are running for the Republican nomination for president.Ron DeSantis has the words “Ron DeSantis” plastered across the breast of his fishing-style shirts. On sunny days, Tim Scott wears a white baseball cap that says “Tim Scott.” Vivek Ramaswamy’s polo shirts read “Vivek,” and Doug Burgum and Asa Hutchinson wear hats and shirts with their names on them.Even Donald J. Trump — so recognizable that he didn’t need a mug shot after his first three indictments — wears the famous red hat emblazoned with his name, along with his Make America Great Again slogan.On the 2024 trail, nearly all of the Republican presidential candidates have turned themselves into human billboards for their campaigns. It’s a fashion choice that would be more typical for a state legislator, and it hasn’t been seen before on such a broad scale during a national campaign.Why are the candidates doing this? For the relative unknowns, it may be a necessity. For others, it may be yet another reflection of the trickle-down influence of Mr. Trump, the branding impresario leading the polls by a mile.To be sure, this batch of presidential candidates is hardly the first to don easily identifiable uniforms. Four years ago, Democratic primary candidates wore the same clothes all the time. You might vaguely remember Pete Buttigieg’s white shirt and blue tie, Elizabeth Warren’s black pants and cardigan or blazer, or Beto O’Rourke’s jeans and sweat-stained button-up shirt.To get a sense of what these Republican candidates are telling us with their stump-speech outfits, I checked in with Vanessa Friedman, the chief fashion critic at The New York Times. Our sartorial chat has been lightly edited.Pete Buttigieg, Elizabeth Warren and Beto O’Rourke each developed a signature look during the 2020 Democratic primary race — but that did not include garb emblazoned with their names.New York Times photographs by Tamir Kalifa, Ruth Fremson and Allison V. SmithReid Epstein: Hi, Vanessa. Why do you think these candidates feel it is necessary to wear shirts and hats with their names on them? If people come to see you when you’re running for president, shouldn’t you expect them to know who you are?Vanessa Friedman: They all understand that what they are selling at this point, more than any specific policy platform, is the brand that is them. Four years ago, the branding was slightly more abstract. Now, in our social-media-everything moment, it’s totally literal.They are using their clothes to frame themselves as relatable: You like a slogan tee? Me too! Especially when it is my slogan on the tee.Nikki Haley, along with Mr. Christie, has tended to shy from the trend. But like other Republicans, she sells branded merchandise.John Tully for The New York TimesReid: When Donald Trump ran for the first time, he made the red MAGA hats a ubiquitous best seller. Now his 2024 competitors are taking the self-branding a step further. Ron DeSantis hardly goes anywhere without a fishing shirt or vest that says “DeSantis for president.” At an ice cream shop in Iowa, even his 3-year-old daughter wore a T-shirt that said “DeSantis for president.” Don’t we know who DeSantis is by now?Mr. DeSantis often wears fishing shirts and vests with his name on them. His family has sometimes followed suit.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesVanessa: Everyone has to emoji-fy themselves. That is one of the legacies of Trump. He was doing it even before the hat — with the hair, the tan, the too-long ties — but at this point, the hat causes an almost Pavlovian reaction in anyone seeing it. It’s instant semiology, and that is worth its weight in votes. The rest of the Republicans have to distinguish themselves from the pack any way they can.I was struck by the fact that at the first Republican debate, every candidate except for Nikki Haley was in the Trump uniform of red tie, white shirt, blue suit — which made them all look like Mini-Me versions of the guy who wasn’t there. The DeSantis gear is probably an attempt to stand out. I don’t think it’s an accident that he has stuck his name on fishing shirts and fleece vests. Those are uniforms of two very specific constituencies.Whether it was telepathy or that they all called one another to coordinate beforehand, the male Republican candidates matched their wardrobes at the first debate.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesReid: Right, there are plenty of Republican men who spend a lot of time fishing and doing whatever people do in fleece vests. I must admit here that I do not own any fleece vests.It must make it harder for DeSantis to stand out by wearing his name on his shirt when everyone else is doing it, too. That may be a metaphor for his larger problem in taking on Trump in a crowded Republican field.Vanessa: You know who famously wears fleece vests? The Sun Valley crowd. Many of whom fled to … Florida during Covid. Many of whom DeSantis wants to woo for their deep pockets and connections. All of these clothes are attempts at camouflage, ways to communicate subconsciously to specific groups that you share their values because you share their outfits. It sounds silly, but it’s true.The risk in doing so, I think, is that you look inauthentic — that you are literally trying something on. John Fetterman is fine in his Carhartt and Dickies because they are clearly his clothes. But imagine Mike Pence? It would be ridiculous.Reid: OK, let’s talk about Mike Pence.Vanessa: And the leather biker vest?Reid: At the Iowa State Fair, he wore a blue-and-white striped shirt. No name! But on an earlier trip to Iowa for Senator Joni Ernst’s motorcycle-ride fund-raiser, he wore a leather vest with too many patches to count. Including one with his name on it.Mike Pence showed off his biker bona fides at a fund-raiser hosted by Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesVanessa: It was the most incongruous garment-person combination I have seen in this campaign — though a photograph of Mike Pence riding with the Hell’s Angels might do interesting things for his image. To me, the Pence signature is the perfect head of immovable white hair. Also, if we don’t know his name by now, he has a bigger problem.Which brings me to … Vivek! What do you think of his branding?Reid: Nobody in this campaign has tried to copy the Trump model more than Vivek. He’s got signature hats — they say TRUTH, rather than MAGA — and wears shirts that say “VIVEK 2024.” It fits with his broader attempt to cast himself as a millennial Trump.His branding uses his first name, Vivek, which is easier for people to spell (if not to pronounce — it rhymes with “cake”) than his last name, Ramaswamy.Mr. Ramaswamy has often pitched himself as a millennial version of Mr. Trump. Sophie Park for The New York TimesVanessa: Definitely. Also, he has made good use of the “V” in terms of design, which is pretty catchy (even if I am partisan when it comes to Vs). It reminds me a bit of Andrew Yang’s “Yang Gang,” the same way Vivek’s “TRUTH” reminds me of Yang’s “MATH.” And it’s effective. Whatever happens to him in this primary, people are going to remember the symbols.Interestingly, the one candidate who refuses to play this game, as far as I can tell, is Chris Christie.Reid: I’m not sure that Christie has changed his wardrobe much over the years. He still wears shirts with his initials — C.J.C. — monogrammed over the chest pocket and on his cuffs. In my conversations with Christie before he entered the race, he was very proud of the idea that he was better known than anyone in the field except Trump.Vanessa: Christie is indeed recognizable because of his reputation, and his slightly rumpled self (“I’m a real person, not a media-trained bot!”). Also, his campaign website doesn’t sell any merch, which is interesting. He doesn’t have any “Christie 2024” shirts close at hand.Mr. Christie prefers subtly monogrammed shirts. Sophie Park for The New York TimesReid: The lesser-known candidates have a lot more work to do in introducing themselves to voters. Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas have been doubling up — wearing both a hat and a polo shirt with their names on them. Outside the Iowa State Fair, Burgum, who is very rich, had his campaign handing out free T-shirts that said “Who is Doug?”Vanessa: Yes, he’s making a joke about his anonymity, which is a good idea. Humor is always a boon in politics, though I am not sure it’s going to be enough, in this case.Reid: Also, Doug is a fun name to say. Doug!Asa Hutchinson has doubled down on his self-branding.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesSo has Doug Burgum, who like Mr. Hutchinson trails far behind in the polls.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesVanessa: Remember … Jeb!?Reid: We should talk about Trump.Vanessa: One of the problems with the name merch is that it all seems a little flimflam. A little cheaply made (even though it is all Made in the U.S.A., according to the candidates’ online stores).Reid: Trump’s look remains enduring and, like so much of his political enterprise, just about impossible for anyone else to pull off. The power ties, the hats that declare him both the 45th president (true) and the 47th president (false … for now). The man who slapped his name on buildings around the world seems to be above putting it on his own shirt.Vanessa: He’s just doubling down on his look. Everyone made fun of it, but he got the last laugh, because, whether we like it or not, no one can forget it.Mr. Trump’s face is everywhere at Republican events, including on merchandise not sold by his campaign.Rachel Mummey for The New York Times More

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      What Republicans Say (and Don’t Say) About the Auto Workers’ Strike

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      It has been interesting to watch the response of Republicans to the United Auto Workers strike against the Big Three American car manufacturers: General Motors, Ford and Stellantis (formerly Chrysler).The most openly anti-worker view comes from Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, who condemned the striking workers as insolent and ungrateful in a stunning display of conservative anti-labor sentiment. “I think Ronald Reagan gave us a great example when federal employees decided they were going to strike,” Scott said at a campaign event in Iowa. “He said, ‘You strike, you’re fired.’ Simple concept to me, to the extent that we can use that once again.” Scott also criticized the union’s demands. “The other things that are really important in that deal is that they want more money working fewer hours. They want more benefits working fewer days.” In America, he continued, “that doesn’t make sense.”Most other Republicans have sidestepped any discussion of the workers themselves in favor of an attack on electric vehicles and the Biden administration’s clean energy policies. “I guarantee you that one of the things that’s driving that strike is that Bidenomics, and their green energy, electric vehicle agenda is good for Beijing and bad for Detroit, and American autoworkers know it,” former Vice President Mike Pence said during a recent interview on CNBC.Donald Trump took a similar swing at the same target. “The all Electric Car is a disaster for both the United Auto Workers and the American Consumer,” Trump wrote last week. “They will all be built in China and, they are too expensive, don’t go far enough, take too long to charge, and pose various dangers under certain atmospheric conditions. If this happens, the United Auto Workers will be wiped out, along with all other auto workers in the United States. The all Electric Car policy is about as dumb as Open Borders and No Voter I.D. IT IS A COMPLETE AND TOTAL DISASTER!”That much was expected. But beyond the presidential contenders, there were also the ostensibly populist Republicans who have placed workers at the center of their case.“Autoworkers deserve a raise — and they deserve to have their jobs protected from Joe Biden’s stupid climate mandates that are destroying the U.S. auto industry and making China rich,” Senator Josh Hawley of Missouri said. Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio wrote that he was “rooting for the autoworkers across our country demanding higher wages and an end to political leadership’s green war on their industry.” Likewise, Senator Marco Rubio of Florida pinned the strike on “a radical climate agenda that seeks the end of gas-powered cars even if it means destroying American jobs,” adding: “Instead of supporting either union bosses or C.E.O.s we need to support American workers who want policies that protect their jobs.”You’ll notice that for all the talk about workers, not one of these more populist Republicans has actually said their demands should be met. They haven’t affirmed the right of labor to strike. They haven’t even blamed management for the strike, despite the fact that the U.A.W. is taking aim at rising corporate profits, which it believes could support higher wages, cost-of-living protections and stronger benefits — and the two-tier system that pays new workers less than veteran workers for the same work.And they haven’t voiced support for the largest, most ambitious organizing goal of the U.A.W. — the unionization of new electric vehicle and battery factories, either as part of a new contract or pursued through new organizing. If anything, Republican attacks on electric vehicles work to obscure the nature of the conflict, which is less about a new product category than about the balance of power between labor and management in the American auto industry.As (my former editor and colleague) Harold Meyerson notes in a piece for The American Prospect:The long-term future of the U.A.W. truly hinges on its ability to unionize the Big Three’s non-union competitors and their own non-union E.V. factories springing up in the right-to-work South. As today’s Wall Street Journal points out, the S.E.C. reports that total compensation (wages and benefits) for the median-paid worker at Tesla’s factories is a bare $34,084, while for the median worker at GM, it’s $80,034; at Ford, $74,691; and at Stellantis, $68,683. Total compensation at the Big Three and non-Big Three new E.V. and battery factories, as well as at the non-E.V. foreign-owned auto factories that are spread across the South, also falls well short of the levels that U.A.W. members make at the Big Three.“In short,” he concludes, “the union won’t long be able to realize the kind of gains its members need unless it can level up the standards at Tesla et al., lest it be compelled to face a long-term leveling down to Elon Musk’s idea of what a proper division of revenue should be.”Or as the U.A.W.’s first-ever directly member-elected president, Shawn Fain, wrote last week in a Guardian opinion essay co-authored with Representative Ro Khanna of California:The electric vehicle transition must be as much about workers’ rights as it is about fighting the climate crisis. We will not let the E.V. industry be built on the backs of workers making poverty wages while C.E.O.s line their pockets with government subsidies. There is no good reason E.V. manufacturing can’t be the gateway to the middle class. But the early signs of this industry are worrying. We will not let corporate greed manipulate the transition to a green economy into a roll back of economic justice.The extent to which Republicans are indifferent to these questions of power is key, because it puts the lie to the idea that the party has become pro-worker in any sense other than a few words and the occasional nod to blue-collar cultural identity. Josh Hawley, for example, opposed a 2018 effort to repeal Missouri’s anti-union “right to work” law. Marco Rubio, according to the AFL-CIO’s scorecard of members of Congress, is among the most anti-labor Republicans in the Senate. J.D. Vance railed against “union bosses” in his 2022 campaign, and Donald Trump (along with Mike Pence) ran one of the most anti-union presidential administrations in recent memory.In other words, Republican support for workers remains little more than rhetoric, signifying nothing. They have no apparent problem with management granting workers a modest increase in wages, but remain hostile to workers who seek to organize themselves as a countervailing force to corporate and financial power.What I WroteMy Tuesday column was on the basic analytical problem with the constant calls for Joe Biden to step away from the 2024 Democratic nomination.Absent an extraordinary turn of events, Biden will be on the ballot next year. He wants it, much of the institutional Democratic Party wants it, and there’s no appetite among the men and women who might want to be the next Democratic president to try to take it away from him. Democrats are committed to Biden and there’s no other option, for them, but to see that choice to its conclusion.My Friday column, building somewhat on the Tuesday one, was on Donald Trump, abortion and the political burdens of presidential leadership.Trump is no longer the singular figure of 2016. He is enmeshed within the Republican Party. He has real commitments to allies and coalition partners within the conservative movement. He is the undisputed leader of the Republican Party, yes, but he can’t simply jettison the abortion issue, which remains a central concern for much of the Republican base.And in the most recent episode of my podcast with John Ganz, we discussed the film “The American President” with Linda Holmes of NPR’s “Pop Culture Happy Hour.”Now ReadingSamuel Clowes Huneke on “wokeness” for The Los Angeles Review of Books.Michael Szalay on the politics of prestige television for Public Books.Dinah Birch on anonymous letters for The London Review of Books.Lola Seaton on “political capitalism” for The New Left Review.Amy C. Offner on neoliberalism for Dissent.Photo of the WeekA photo from the archive! This is the Art Deco Model Tobacco building in Richmond, Va., built around 1940. I took this photo in 2018 with a camera I have long since sold. The building itself has been converted into apartments.Now Eating: Greek-Style White BeansThis is a very simple recipe for Greek-style white beans from The Rancho Gordo Vegetarian Kitchen series, Volume 1. The book calls for lima beans, but any large white bean will do. You’ll want to use dried beans. Other than that, however, the recipe is yours to play with. I cook anchovies along with the vegetables and tomatoes for some additional umami, and I tend to let the beans cook in the oven for longer than 30 minutes — I like them a little on the drier side. I also go a little easy on the olive oil.Be sure to garnish with additional feta and a lot of herbs — dill, parsley and mint all work well here. You would also do well to buy, or make, some pita bread to have on the side.Ingredients½ cup olive oil (divided use)1 large carrot, peeled and finely chopped1 celery stalk, finely chopped½ onion, finely chopped2 tablespoons tomato paste½ pound large white beans, cooked and drained1 large, ripe tomato, chopped3 tablespoons minced fresh dillsalt and freshly ground pepperfeta cheeseDirectionsPreheat the oven to 350 degrees.In a large skillet, warm 2 tablespoons of the olive oil over medium heat. Add the carrot, celery, and onion; sauté until the vegetables are soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the tomato paste.In a large baking dish, combine the sautéed vegetables, beans, tomato and remaining olive oil. Sprinkle with salt, pepper and dill. Add feta, if desired.Bake until the beans are soft and creamy, about 30 minutes. More