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      Biden Turns to an Unlikely Ally to Help Protect His Legacy: Republicans

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      President Biden wants to make it more difficult for President-elect Donald J. Trump to repeal his signature legislation, which sent money flowing to Republican districts nationwide.President-elect Donald J. Trump has promised to unravel President Biden’s major legislation when he takes office next month, but Mr. Biden is hoping to salvage his most prized policies with help from an unlikely source: Republicans.With just weeks left in office, Mr. Biden and his aides have emphasized that his signature economic legislation, the Inflation Reduction Act, overwhelmingly benefits Republican districts, in the hopes that Mr. Trump would face blowback from his own party if he repealed it.The administration is also racing to award hundreds of millions of dollars in grants and finalize environmental regulations to lock in Mr. Biden’s economic agenda, including ramping up domestic manufacturing of clean energy products and semiconductors.“They are not going to want to undermine those jobs and those businesses that we know for the first time are really strong in so many districts around the country that have been left behind under trickle-down policies,” Lael Brainard, Mr. Biden’s national economic adviser, said in an interview.Roughly 80 percent of new clean energy manufacturing investments announced since the Inflation Reduction Act passed in 2022 have flowed to Republican congressional districts, according to data from Atlas Public Policy, a research firm.Mr. Trump and his allies have attacked the legislation, which provides at least $390 billion over 10 years in tax breaks, grants and subsidies for wind and solar power, electric vehicle battery production and other clean energy projects. More

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      Barstool Conservatism, Revisited

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      Despite Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, his political coalition was already expanding in consequential ways. Not only did he make notable gains among Hispanic and African-American voters — gains that only increased this year — but he also attracted the support of a loose grouping of mostly young, male voters whom I described around that time as “Barstool conservatives.” This year, as I had predicted, they appeared to swing hard for Mr. Trump.“Barstool conservatism” was a reference to the media company Barstool Sports and its founder, Dave Portnoy, who became a folk hero of sorts in 2020 after raising millions of dollars on behalf of bars and restaurants whose existence had been threatened by Covid lockdowns. Apart from Mr. Portnoy, Barstool conservatism’s most representative figures today are the podcast host Joe Rogan, the retired N.F.L. punter turned ESPN personality Pat McAfee and various mixed martial arts fighters.Barstool conservatism is libertarian in the sense that it values autonomy and ambition but not doctrinaire about it in a way that would be recognizable to, say, the editors of Reason magazine. It is a world of fantasy football podcasts, betting apps, diet trends (keto, paleo, carnivore) and more nebulous “lifestyle” questions about the nuances of alcohol and cannabis use. The outlook is culturally rather than socially conservative, skeptical of racial and gender politics for reasons that have more to do with the stridency of their proponents than with any deep-seated convictions about the issues themselves.As a social conservative with an antipathy to libertarianism in all its forms, I viewed the rise of Barstool conservatism in 2020 with foreboding. And rightly so. This year Mr. Trump ran what was, in effect, a pro-choice campaign. He signaled support for legalized cannabis but not for a traditional conception of marriage. He may have selected JD Vance as his running mate, but otherwise he took social conservatives for granted. Barstool conservatives had the upper hand throughout the campaign, as underscored by the emphasis Mr. Trump’s team placed on Mr. Rogan’s endorsement.I have long been inclined to make certain hard and fast distinctions between Barstool conservatism and Trumpism of the sort that Mr. Vance represents, which I associate with opposition to abortion, pornography and cannabis, and support for traditional families, shoring up the power of organized labor and protecting religious freedom. In theory these two conservative tendencies are diametrically opposed. Until recently I would have suggested that only Mr. Trump could possibly unite them, by sheer force of personality.But since this year’s election I have been on an informal listening tour of young men in the part of rural Michigan where I live, which is a nice way of saying that I have spent a lot of time talking to people in bars. What I heard from mechanics, waiters, high school teachers and others often surprised me. The future of American conservatism now strikes me as more complex and less ideologically predictable — and less dependent on Mr. Trump — than I had thought.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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      Republicans Would Regret Letting Elon Musk Ax Weather Forecasting

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      One way Donald Trump may try to differentiate his second term from his first is by slashing the federal work force and budget and consolidating and restructuring a host of government agencies.For people who care about weather and climate, one of the most concerning proposals on the table is to dismantle the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The authors of Project 2025, a blueprint for the administration crafted by conservative organizations, claim erroneously that NOAA is “one of the main drivers of the climate change alarm industry” and should be “broken down and downsized.” An arm of Mr. Trump’s team, the Department of Government Efficiency, to be led by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, wants to eliminate $500 billion in spending by cutting programs whose funding has expired. That could include NOAA.With the rising costs of and vulnerability to extreme weather in a changing climate for the United States, dismantling or defunding NOAA would be a catastrophic error. Rather, there is a golden opportunity to modernize the agency by expanding its capacity for research and innovation. This would not only help Americans better prepare for and survive extreme weather but also keep NOAA from falling further behind similar agencies in Europe. While the incoming administration may want to take a sledgehammer to the federal government, there is broad, bipartisan support for NOAA in Congress. It is the job of the incoming Republican-controlled Congress to invest in its future.NOAA was established via executive order in 1970 by President Richard Nixon as an agency within the Department of Commerce. Currently its mission is to understand and predict changes in the climate, weather, ocean and coasts. It conducts basic research; provides authoritative services like weather forecasts, climate monitoring and marine resource management; and supports industries like energy, agriculture, fishing, tourism and transportation.The best-known part of NOAA, touching all of our daily lives, is the National Weather Service. This is where daily forecasts and timely warning of severe storms, hurricanes and blizzards come from. Using satellites, balloon launches, ships, aircraft and weather stations, NOAA and its offices around the country provide vital services like clockwork, free of charge — services that cannot be adequately replaced by the private sector in part because they wouldn’t necessarily be profitable.For most of its history, NOAA has largely avoided politicization especially because weather forecasting has been seen as nonpartisan. Members of Congress from both parties are highly engaged in its work. Unfortunately, legislation introduced by Representative Frank Lucas, Republican of Oklahoma — a state with a lot of tornadoes — that would have helped NOAA to update its weather research and forecasting programs passed the House but languished in the Senate and is unlikely to move forward in this session of Congress. However, in 2025 there is another opportunity to improve the agency and its services to taxpayers and businesses.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 Inverted Morality of MAGA

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      I admire Mitt Romney. He is, by all accounts, an outstanding husband and father. He built a successful investment firm by supporting successful young businesses like Staples. He served the public as head of the 2002 Winter Olympics and as a governor. As a senator, he had the courage to vote to convict Donald Trump twice, in the two separate impeachment trials, when few other Republicans did.But as Noah Millman writes on Substack, people in the MAGA movement take a different view of Romney. In private life, Romney compliantly conformed to the bourgeois norms of those around him. In business he contributed to the bloating of the finance and consulting sector. As a politician he bent himself to the needs of the moment, moving from moderate Republican to “extreme conservative.” As a senator, he sought the approval of the Washington establishment.Millman’s underlying point is it’s not sufficient to say that Trump is leading a band of morally challenged people to power. It’s that Trumpism represents an alternative value system. The people I regard as upright and admirable MAGA regards as morally disgraceful, and the people I regard as corrupt and selfish MAGA regards as heroic.The crucial distinction is that some of us have an institutional mind-set while the MAGA mind-set is anti-institutional.In the former view, we are born into a world of institutions — families, schools, professions, the structures of our government. We are formed by these institutions. People develop good character as they live up to the standards of excellence passed down in their institutions — by displaying the civic virtues required by our Constitution, by living up to what it means to be a good teacher or nurse or, if they are Christians, by imitating the self-emptying love of Christ. Over the course of our lives, we inherit institutions, steward them and try to pass them along in better shape to the next generation. We know our institutions have flaws and need reform, but we regard them as fundamentally legitimate.MAGA morality is likely to regard people like me as lemmings. We climbed our way up through the meritocracy by shape shifting ourselves into whatever teachers, bosses and the system wanted us to be. Worse, we serve and preserve systems that are fundamentally corrupt and illegitimate — the financial institutions that created the financial crisis, the health authorities who closed schools during Covid, the mainstream media and federal bureaucracy that has led the nation to ruin.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’s Tariff Threat Pits Canada Against Mexico

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      If President-elect Donald J. Trump’s threat of hefty tariffs on Canada and Mexico was intended as a divide-and-conquer strategy, early signs show that it might be working.After his missive on Monday, in which he said he planned to impose a 25 percent tariff on all imports from both of the United States’ neighbors, Ottawa and Mexico City followed starkly different approaches.Mexico took a tough stance, threatening to retaliate with its own tariffs on U.S. goods. Canada, instead, emphasized that it was much closer aligned to the United States than Mexico.The trade agreement between the three North American nations has been carefully maintained over the past three decades through a delicate balance between the United States and its two key allies.As Mr. Trump prepares to take office, his willingness to tear that up to pressure the two countries on migration could open the door to the United States-Mexico-Canada agreement being replaced by separate bilateral deals with the United States.Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s finance minister, has tried to show that Canada is aligned with Mr. Trump’s hawkish attitude toward China.Blair Gable/ReutersWe 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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      Candidatos anteriores se vieron perjudicados por menos de lo que rodea a los elegidos de Donald Trump

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      Impuestos atrasados, consumo de marihuana y niñeras indocumentadas descalificaron a anteriores elecciones presidenciales para altos cargos. Algunos de los candidatos del presidente electo enfrentan mayores cuestionamientos.Un aspirante a la Corte Suprema se retiró tras revelarse que había fumado marihuana en su juventud. Dos candidatos a fiscal general fueron eliminados cuando salió a la luz que habían empleado a inmigrantes indocumentadas como niñeras. Un tercer candidato al gabinete —nada menos que un exlíder del Senado— fue rechazado por no pagar impuestos sobre un automóvil y un chofer que le había prestado un socio. Incluso unos tuits malintencionados bastaron para hundir a un candidato.Los problemas legales y éticos que rodean a algunas de las personas seleccionadas por el presidente electo Donald Trump para ocupar altos cargos en el gobierno, por no hablar de su historial de declaraciones públicas que levantan cejas, son mucho más profundos que el tipo de revelaciones que han acabado con candidaturas en el Senado en el pasado.Lo que antes se consideraba descalificante para un candidato presidencial parece francamente benigno en comparación con las acusaciones de conducta sexual inapropiada y consumo de drogas ilícitas por parte de su candidato a fiscal general, detalladas en un informe secreto del Congreso, una acusación de agresión sexual seguida de un acuerdo pagado por su elección para dirigir el Pentágono y una antigua adicción a la heroína reconocida por el futuro secretario de salud.No hace tanto tiempo que los candidatos a puestos de alto nivel, e incluso algunos de los menos conocidos, tenían que ser irreprochables, hasta el punto de que una cuestión fiscal relativamente menor podía hacerlos fracasar. Pero es evidente que los tiempos están cambiando en lo que respecta a los nombramientos en los albores del segundo gobierno de Trump.“Los estándares aparentemente están evolucionando”, dijo el senador John Cornyn, republicano por Texas y miembro principal del Comité Judicial. El panel consideraría la nominación del exrepresentante Matt Gaetz, republicano de Florida, para fiscal general si se presenta formalmente.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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      Begich Defeats Peltola in Alaska, Flipping House Seat for Republicans

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      Nick Begich III, the Republican son of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska, has defeated Representative Mary Peltola to win the state’s sole House seat, according to The Associated Press, ousting one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democrats and adding to Republicans’ slim House majority.The victory, announced on Wednesday, more than two weeks after Election Day, was a comeback of sorts for Mr. Begich, an Anchorage native and businessman who was endorsed by the right-wing House Freedom Caucus and who had challenged Ms. Peltola in 2022 but fell short. Back then, Republicans split their votes between him and former Gov. Sarah Palin, allowing the Democrat to prevail in Alaska’s unusual ranked-choice voting system. This time, Mr. Begich benefited from a G.O.P. that united behind him.Ms. Peltola, the first Alaska Native elected to Congress, staked her campaign on her working-class appeal and presented herself as a solutions-focused pragmatist fighting for the state’s future. She first won the seat in a special election after the death in 2022 of Representative Don Young, the longest-serving Republican in the House. Before Ms. Peltola, the last Democrat to represent Alaska in the House was Nick Begich Sr., Mr. Begich’s grandfather.During his first run for Congress, the younger Mr. Begich, who once worked for Mr. Young, drew a backlash from Republicans for challenging the congressman in a primary shortly before Mr. Young’s death at the age of 88. Former Young aides called Mr. Begich deceitful and disloyal to their boss and chose to back Ms. Peltola instead.That was not the case this year. The party united behind Mr. Begich after his top Republican rival, Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, withdrew from the race after placing behind him in the late-August primary. Ms. Dahlstrom had the backing of both former President Donald J. Trump and Speaker Mike Johnson.Mr. Begich has said he wants to decrease federal spending, a touchy subject in Alaska, where the U.S. government employs more than 16,000 people and federal spending pays for almost half the state’s budget. More

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      Trump Chooses Linda McMahon, a Longtime Ally, for Education Secretary

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      President-elect Donald J. Trump on Tuesday tapped Linda McMahon, a former professional wrestling executive who ran the Small Business Administration for much of his first term, to lead the Education Department, an agency he has routinely singled out for elimination in his upcoming term.A close friend of Mr. Trump’s and a longtime booster of his political career, Ms. McMahon had been among his early donors leading up to his electoral victory in 2016 and has been one of the leaders of his transition team, vetting other potential appointees and drafting potential executive orders since August.In Ms. McMahon, 76, Mr. Trump has elevated someone far outside the mold of traditional candidates for the role, an executive with no teaching background or professional experience steering education policy, other than an appointment in 2009 to the Connecticut State Board of Education, where she served for just over a year.But Ms. McMahon is likely to be assigned the fraught task of carrying out what is widely expected to be a thorough and determined dismantling of the department’s core functions. And she would assume the role at a time when school districts across the country are facing budget shortfalls, many students are not making up ground lost during the pandemic in reading and math, and many colleges and universities are shrinking and closing amid a larger loss of faith in the value of higher education.“We will send Education BACK TO THE STATES, and Linda will spearhead that effort,” Mr. Trump said in a statement announcing the decision on Tuesday.Ms. McMahon led the Small Business Administration during Mr. Trump’s first term and resigned in 2019 without a public fallout or rift with Mr. Trump, who praised her at her departure as “one of our all-time favorites” and a “superstar.” She stepped down from that role to help with Mr. Trump’s re-election campaign and became the chairwoman of the pro-Trump super PAC America First Action.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