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      Trump Weighs Skipping Primary Debates

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      He took swipes at President Biden, Ron DeSantis and the Reagan presidential library during an event in New Hampshire.Former President Donald J. Trump used a campaign rally on Thursday in New Hampshire to add to his arguments that it was not worth his time to debate his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, casting himself as the party’s undeclared nominee.Standing in front of several hundred supporters in a New England state that was a springboard for his election in 2016, Mr. Trump said that he held a commanding polling advantage in the 2024 Republican primary, months before any voting would begin. He has been posting similar themes on his social media site, Truth Social.He said that giving his G.O.P. rivals, like Gov. Ron DeSantis, an opening on a debate stage made no sense.“Why would you do that?” he told the crowd at a DoubleTree hotel in Manchester. In 2019, then as president, he considered skipping any presidential debates for the 2020 race before ultimately debating the Democrats’ nominee, Joseph R. Biden Jr.And on Thursday he jumped straight to the general election, saying, “I do look forward to the debate with Joe.”Mr. Biden declared on Tuesday that he would seek a second term. His predecessor claimed at his rally, without evidence, that the video Mr. Biden released to announce his re-election campaign “took supposedly seven takes to get it right.” The video features a montage of scenes from Mr. Biden’s presidency and only a few short clips where he spoke to the camera.Citing a recent Emerson College poll, Mr. Trump noted that 62 percent of G.O.P. primary voters indicated that they would support him, compared with 16 percent for Mr. DeSantis, who has not yet declared his candidacy. No other Republican was in double digits.“He’s crashing and burning,” Mr. Trump said of Mr. DeSantis, suggesting that he had benefited in the past from his association with Mr. Trump but that he was now struggling to get a foothold on his own.Mr. Trump has never shied away from broadsides against other Republicans, something Ronald Reagan famously frowned upon in what became known as the 11th Commandment. And in New Hampshire, Reagan’s presidential library was a target for Mr. Trump, who questioned its selection as the venue for the second G.O.P. primary debate. He pointed out that Frederick J. Ryan Jr., the publisher and chief executive of The Washington Post, another frequent Trump target, was chairman of the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation & Institute.Representatives for the institute did not immediately respond to requests for comment, and The Post declined to comment.Separately on Thursday in Manhattan, lawyers for Mr. Trump appeared in a federal courtroom to defend him in a case brought by E. Jean Carroll, a former magazine columnist, who has accused Mr. Trump of raping her nearly three decades ago.Mr. Trump, who has denied the accusation, avoided mentioning the trial during the rally. However, he bemoaned his various other legal entanglements and alluded to his indictment this month by a New York grand jury on charges that he had concealed hush-money payments to a former porn star.He faces further legal peril. A federal investigation, in the hands of a special counsel, is investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to reverse his defeat at the polls in 2020 and also his role in the events that led to the storming of the Capitol by his supporters on Jan. 6, 2021. And a Georgia prosecutor is in the final stages of an investigation into Mr. Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results in that state.While Mr. Trump has opened up a polling lead, the Republican field is fluid and appears likely to expand. It includes Nikki Haley, a former South Carolina governor and a United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration; Asa Hutchinson, the former governor of Arkansas; and the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.Another Republican who is entertaining a run is New Hampshire’s governor, Chris Sununu, who recently said that Mr. Trump’s losing streak could continue in 2024. He has cited Mr. Trump’s defeat in 2020 and Republican midterm losses in 2018 and 2022.Mr. Trump bristled at G.O.P. skeptics, singling out Mr. Sununu, whose name elicited boos from the crowd.“Isn’t he a nasty guy?” Mr. Trump said, criticizing Mr. Sununu’s decision to run for re-election as governor instead of for Senate during last year’s midterm elections.Mr. Sununu’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. More

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      House G.O.P., Divided Over Immigration, Advances Border Crackdown Plan

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      Republicans are eyeing a vote next month on legislation that would reinstate Trump-era policies, after feuding that led leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.WASHINGTON — House Republicans on Thursday pushed ahead with a sweeping immigration crackdown that would codify several stringent border policies imposed by the Trump administration, after months of internal feuding that led G.O.P. leaders to drop some of the plan’s most extreme provisions.The House Judiciary and Homeland Security Committees in recent days approved their pieces of the plan, which has little chance of being considered in the Democratic-led Senate but sets up a pivotal test of whether Republican leaders can deliver on their campaign promise to clamp down on record migrant inflows.For Republicans, who have repeatedly attacked President Biden on his immigration policies and embarked on an effort to impeach his homeland security secretary, the measure is a chance to lay out an alternative vision on an issue that galvanizes its right-wing base.The legislation, now expected on the floor next month, would direct the Biden administration to resume constructing the border wall that was former President Donald J. Trump’s signature project. It would also mandate that employers check workers’ legal status through an electronic system known as E-Verify and reinstate the “Remain in Mexico” policy, forcing asylum applicants to wait in detention facilities or outside the United States before their claims are heard.The plan “will force the administration to enforce the law, secure the border, and reduce illegal immigration once again,” Representative Mark E. Green, Republican of Tennessee and the Homeland Security Committee’s chairman, said during the panel’s debate on Wednesday.Democrats have derided the package as misguided and draconian, accusing Republicans of seeking to invigorate their core supporters in advance of the 2024 election by reviving some of Mr. Trump’s most severe border policies. They made vocal objections to provisions that would ban the use of the phone-based app known as “C.B.P. One” to streamline processing migrants at ports of entry, expedite the deportation of unaccompanied minors, and criminalize visa overstays of more than 10 days.Republicans “want to appeal to their extreme MAGA friends more than they want progress,” Representative Bennie Thompson of Mississippi, the top Democrat on the Homeland Security Committee, said Wednesday, calling the Republican legislation a “profoundly immoral” piece of legislation that would “sow chaos at the border.”Still, the package represents a compromise of sorts between hard-right Republicans and more mainstream G.O.P. lawmakers, including a mostly Latino group from border states that balked at proposals that threatened to gut the nation’s asylum system.The party’s immigration plan — which top Republicans had hoped to pass as one of their first bills of their new House majority — has been stalled for months. A faction led by Representative Tony Gonzales, Republican of Texas, has raised concerns about the asylum changes, threatening to withhold votes that Speaker Kevin McCarthy, Republican of California, cannot afford to lose given his slim majority.Over the last week, G.O.P. leaders have quietly made a series of concessions to win over the skeptics. Republicans on the Judiciary Committee agreed to drop a provision that would have effectively stopped the intake of asylum seekers if the government failed to detain or deport all migrants seeking to enter the country without permission. But the measure still contains a number of new asylum restrictions.“It’s in a good spot,” Mr. Gonzales said of the legislation on Thursday, saying that the changes made to the asylum provision had satisfied his concerns. “As long as nobody does any funny business — you’ve got to watch it till the very end.”G.O.P. leaders predicted on Thursday that they would be able to draw a majority for the legislation when it comes to the House in mid-May, a timeline selected to coincide with the expected expiration of a Covid-era policy allowing officials to swiftly expel migrants at the border. The termination of the program, known as Title 42, is expected to inspire a new surge of attempted border crossings and supercharge the already bitter partisan debate over immigration policy.But it was unclear whether Republicans who had objected to the E-Verify requirement would be on board.Representative Thomas Massie, Republican of Kentucky withheld his support for the Judiciary Committee’s bill because of the work authorization mandate, arguing that people “shouldn’t have to go through an E-Verify database to exercise your basic human right to trade labor for sustenance.”Such databases “always get turned against us, and they’re never used for the purpose they were intended for,” added Mr. Massie, a conservative libertarian.Representative Dan Newhouse, a Republican farmer in Washington State, has expressed concern that the E-Verify mandate could create labor shocks in the agricultural sector, which relies heavily on undocumented immigrant labor. Though the legislation delays the requirement for farmers for three years, Mr. Newhouse has argued that any such change should be paired with legislation creating more legal pathways for people to work in the United States.With the expected floor vote just weeks away, G.O.P. leaders have been treading carefully, even making last-minute concessions to Democrats in hopes of bolstering support for the legislation.During the wee hours on Thursday morning, as the Homeland Security Committee debated its bill, Republicans pared back language barring nongovernmental organizations that assist undocumented migrants from receiving funding from the Department of Homeland Security. They did so after Democrats pointed out the broadly phrased prohibition could deprive legal migrants and U.S. citizens of critical services as well.Their changes did not go far enough to satisfy Democrats, who unanimously opposed the package on the Judiciary and the Homeland Security panels — and are expected to oppose the combined border security package en masse on the House floor.They have also argued that any measure to enhance border security or enforcement must be paired with expanded legal pathways for immigrants to enter the United States. More

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      Daines Endorsement Reflects Uneasy Senate G.O.P. Alliance With Trump

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      Senate Republicans, even those who have broken with the former president, say their campaign chief’s decision to back him could boost their push for the majority.WASHINGTON — When Senator Steve Daines, the leader of the Senate Republican campaign arm, quietly informed Senator Mitch McConnell, the minority leader, that he intended to endorse former President Donald J. Trump, Mr. McConnell was fine with the idea.Mr. McConnell, the Kentucky Republican, is not on speaking terms with the former president, having abruptly turned against him after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. Mr. Trump has publicly savaged the senator and repeatedly demeaned his wife with racist statements.But the minority leader, according to a person familiar with his thinking, believed that somebody in the Senate G.O.P. leadership ranks should have a working relationship with the party’s leading presidential contender — and it might as well be the man charged with winning back the Senate majority.Mr. Daines’s endorsement of Mr. Trump this week — and Mr. McConnell’s private blessing of it — highlighted how top Senate Republicans have quietly decided to join forces with their party’s leading presidential candidate, putting aside the toxic relationship that some of them have with him to focus on what they hope will be a mutually advantageous political union.Mr. Daines of Montana, the chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, is the first and so far only member of the Senate G.O.P. leadership team to endorse Mr. Trump. Mr. McConnell, who enabled Mr. Trump and his agenda during much of his presidency before the Capitol riot, has not spoken to the former president since December 2020. His No. 2, Senator John Thune of South Dakota, also has been mercilessly attacked by Mr. Trump.Mr. Thune portrayed Mr. Daines’s embrace of the former president as the cost of doing business — what’s necessary to win.“He’s got a tough job to do,” Mr. Thune told reporters at the Capitol. “He’s got a lot of races around the country that we need to win. And I think he wants as many allies as possible.”Asked about the fact that Mr. Daines has endorsed someone who has attacked both him and Mr. McConnell, the senator was temporarily at a loss for words.“Well,” Mr. Thune said with a pause, “what can I tell you?”Many Senate Republicans, in contrast to their counterparts in the House, view Mr. Trump as a political anchor who cost them the majority in 2020 with baseless claims of voter fraud in Georgia that damaged their runoff chances. Many believe Mr. Trump cost them again in 2022 by endorsing Senate contenders who struggled in the general election. Mr. McConnell has attributed his party’s inability to win the Senate to “candidate quality” problems spurred by Mr. Trump’s primary endorsements.Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump, said that there was “tremendous support nationally and statewide” for the former president, when asked about Senate Republican leaders’ reluctant acceptance of Mr. Daines’s endorsement.“By contrast, DeSantis has embarrassingly tiny support,” Mr. Cheung said.Some Republicans are determined to steer clear of Mr. Trump. Senator Mitt Romney of Utah, a vocal critic of Mr. Trump’s who voted to convict the former president in both of his impeachment trials, insisted that Mr. Daines’s backing for Mr. Trump should not be regarded as an embrace of the former president by the Senate G.O.P.“Montana is a big Trump-supporting state,” Mr. Romney said on Wednesday. “I don’t think he did that as the leader of the Republican team. Mitch McConnell is our leader, and I doubt he’ll endorse anybody.”A spokesman for Mr. Daines declined to comment on Mr. Romney’s characterization of the endorsement.Some wondered whether Mr. Daines was deliberately defying Mr. McConnell like the last chairman of the party campaign arm, Senator Rick Scott of Florida, did during last year’s midterm elections.“I was surprised,” Senator Joni Ernst of Iowa, another member of the party leadership, said this week when asked what she thought of the Daines endorsement. “But all of the senators have the opportunity to endorse who they want to endorse.”In fact, Mr. Daines and Mr. McConnell are on the same page.Mr. Trump’s endorsement highlighted how Senate Republicans shows an uneasy alliance among estranged political players.Dave Sanders for The New York TimesMr. Daines gave Mr. McConnell a heads up that he would be endorsing Mr. Trump ahead of a Monday night appearance on the podcast of Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son, according to the person familiar with his thinking.Mr. McConnell views Montana, West Virginia and Ohio — which Mr. Trump won by big margins — as among the most important Senate battlegrounds in 2024, and it will fall to Mr. Daines to keep the former president on friendly terms with the party’s favored candidates, especially in the states where he remains wildly popular.While the rest of Mr. McConnell’s team keeps their distance from the former president, Mr. Daines speaks frequently with Mr. Trump, including as recently as Wednesday night, said a person with direct knowledge of the call who was not authorized to discuss it publicly.So even after Mr. Trump has denigrated Mr. McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, the Senate minority leader has engaged in a familiar game with the former president, with whom he worked closely to cut taxes and stack the federal judiciary with ardent conservatives.Mr. McConnell has said as little as possible about the former president since cutting off all contact with him. He has ignored Mr. Trump’s attacks against him and his wife, and he has refused to follow the approach of former Representative Liz Cheney, Republican of Wyoming, who has said she plans to do whatever she can to stop Mr. Trump from becoming president again.Instead, Mr. McConnell has said he is focused on winning back the Senate, and in service of that goal he is already making accommodations for the former president. He has said he will support Mr. Trump if he wins the 2024 Republican nomination.Like many of his colleagues, Senator John Cornyn of Texas, a former chairman of the Republican campaign arm himself, is staying out of Mr. Trump’s way. He said he did not plan to endorse in the primary, but “will support the nominee” in the general election.Mr. Daines, he said, was “entitled to some latitude given the complexity of the political environment that we’re entering into.”Republicans’ goal, Mr. Cornyn added, was to win back the majority.“And I don’t really care what the tactics are,” he said. More

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      In Israel, Ron DeSantis Promotes His Foreign Policy Credentials

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      The Florida governor, a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, stressed his strong interest in the country’s affairs, an issue that Donald J. Trump once made his own.Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor and a likely contender for the Republican presidential nomination, expressed strong support for Israel during a brief visit to Jerusalem on Thursday, as he promoted his diplomatic credentials in a country considered crucial to any U.S. president’s foreign policy portfolio.Mr. DeSantis declined once again to confirm his candidacy for the presidential race in 2024, but he used a speech and subsequent news briefing to showcase his experience and interest in Israeli affairs, an issue that his chief rival, Donald J. Trump, once made his own.The governor, a foreign policy novice, stressed his track record of support for Israel and for Floridian Jews, highlighting his efforts to combat antisemitism in Florida and build business ties between his state and Israel.“Maintaining a strong U.S.-Israel relationship has been a priority for me during my time in elective office,” Mr. DeSantis said in speech at a conference hosted by The Jerusalem Post, a right-leaning English-language newspaper. The event was attended by leading right-wing figures, including David M. Friedman, who was Mr. Trump’s ambassador to Israel; and Miriam Adelson, a longtime Israeli American supporter of Mr. Trump.“Our alliance with Israel rests on unique cultural and religious affinities and Judeo-Christian values that trace back thousands of years to the Holy Land and which have been essential to the American experiment,” Mr. DeSantis said.Mr. DeSantis also met Thursday morning with Isaac Herzog, Israel’s figurehead president, and later with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mr. Trump had an initially strong relationship with Mr. Netanyahu, but that ebbed after Mr. Trump left office.While never mentioning Mr. Trump by name, Mr. DeSantis on Thursday tried to differentiate himself from his rival by noting how he had pushed the Trump administration to move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, months before Mr. Trump decided to do so.“I was an outspoken proponent and advocate of relocating our embassy,” Mr. DeSantis said to loud cheers from the audience. “We were trying to cajole the previous administration to do it,” he added.As president, Mr. Trump broke with decades of American policy by moving the embassy, recognizing Israeli sovereignty in the Golan Heights, cutting funding for Palestinians and backing the legality of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank.President Donald J. Trump, at the White House, signing a proclamation in 2017 recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.Doug Mills/The New York TimesAny U.S. president is seen in Israel as a crucial partner: Israel relies on American support to ward off censure from the United Nations and receives more than $3 billion in annual funding from Washington. But Mr. Trump made support for Israel a signature foreign policy, helping to broker several landmark diplomatic deals between Israel and three Arab countries.In his appearances on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis underlined how he also had a legacy of unwavering support for Israel and American Jews, recalling how he led a trade delegation there in 2019 and promoted Holocaust education in Florida. He also hailed the deals brokered by Mr. Trump, known as the Abraham Accords, and saying that he supported efforts to secure a new one between Israel and Saudi Arabia.Mr. DeSantis also took a swipe at the Biden administration, criticizing the deterioration under President Biden in relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, and suggesting that Washington should avoid taking sides in Israel’s domestic debate about the future of its judiciary. Mr. Biden has taken an increasingly vocal stance against efforts by the far-right Israeli government to assert greater control over the Supreme Court.“We must also in America respect Israel’s right to make its own decisions about its own governance,” Mr. DeSantis said. “You’re a smart country; you figure it out, it shouldn’t be for us to butt into these important issues.”Mr. DeSantis arrived in Israel on Wednesday night and was scheduled to leave on Thursday afternoon. His visit was the third stop of a rapid tour in which he has already passed through Japan and South Korea and which he is set to end in Britain, where Mr. DeSantis is scheduled to land on Thursday night.The tour is nominally a chance to build trade ties between Florida and key global economies such as Israel; Mr. DeSantis is accompanied by several Florida investors and entrepreneurs, who were set to meet with Israeli businesspeople on Thursday. At his news briefing, Mr. DeSantis announced several new business initiatives between Floridian firms and Israeli counterparts, including medical researchers and airline companies.But Mr. DeSantis has also used the trip to showcase his stance on foreign affairs and to be photographed with world leaders.Mr. DeSantis has never set out a comprehensive foreign policy vision. But analysis of his comments and interviews with former colleagues suggest that he supports decisive international action by the United States to protect its own interests, but is less interested in U.S. efforts to shore up the liberal international order.Mr. DeSantis was recently criticized by fellow Republicans for describing Russia’s invasion of Ukraine as a “territorial dispute” that was not of crucial interest to the United States, before later walking back those comments.In Japan, he met with Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and announced his support for the U.S.-Japan alliance — in what appeared to be a departure from Mr. Trump’s more lukewarm position when he was president. And on Thursday in Jerusalem, Mr. DeSantis used part of his news briefing to sign a proclamation hailing the 75th anniversary of Israel’s establishment, which falls this year.He then signed into a law a bill that he said would fight antisemitism in Florida.During a news conference in Jerusalem on Thursday, Mr. DeSantis signed a Florida bill that he said would fight antisemitism in the state.Amir Levy/Getty ImagesHe also flagged his efforts as governor in targeting Airbnb, after the holiday listings company briefly removed from its website properties in the Israeli-occupied West Bank a few years ago. He repeated his long-held position on the West Bank, which Mr. DeSantis says is disputed territory and which he referred to as “Judea and Samaria,” using the biblical name for the territory used by right-wing Israelis.His stance is at odds with that held by most countries, who consider the West Bank occupied territory because it was captured by Israel from Jordan during the Arab-Israeli War of 1967.At his news briefing, Mr. DeSantis mainly took questions from reporters for right-wing outlets including the American outlet Newsmax; Israel Hayom, a right-wing free sheet published by Ms. Adelson; and Channel 14, a private pro-Netanyahu television channel in Israel.But some journalists fired in questions without being called on, including one reporter who asked Mr. DeSantis about his time as an officer at the American base at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, where the United States held people suspected of terrorism.The reporter, who did not give his name, said he had spoken to former detainees who accused Mr. DeSantis of having attended the force-feeding of prisoners at the base. Mr. DeSantis replied: “Do you honestly believe that’s credible? So this is 2006, I’m a junior officer. Do you honestly think that they would have remembered me from Adam? Of course not.” More

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      The Pillow Guy and the R.N.C. Chair

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      Listen and follow ‘The Run-Up’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Stitcher | Amazon MusicThroughout our reporting inside the Republican Party over the past few months, one person kept showing up: Mike Lindell, MyPillow chief executive and election denier.At the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting, he ran to unseat the party chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel. At the Conservative Political Action Committee in Maryland, he couldn’t walk 10 feet without being cornered for a selfie. And more recently, he was a part of news coverage about the Dominion lawsuit and Tucker Carlson’s ouster from Fox News.While plenty of people don’t take him seriously, Lindell represents, maybe better than anyone else, the challenge facing the Republican Party in this moment: an establishment trying desperately to satisfy its base, despite evidence that their extreme beliefs are costing the party elections.After months of reporting on that dynamic, we talk to Mr. Lindell and Ms. McDaniel, two people who sit at opposite poles of the party.Photo Illustration by The New York Times. Photograph by Jordan Vonderhaar for The New York Times; Jae C. Hong/Associated PressAbout ‘The Run-Up’First launched in August 2016, three months before the election of Donald Trump, “The Run-Up” is The New York Times’s flagship political podcast. The host, Astead W. Herndon, grapples with the big ideas already animating the 2024 presidential election. Because it’s always about more than who wins and loses. And the next election has already started.Last season, “The Run-Up” focused on grass-roots voters and shifting attitudes among the bases of both political parties. This season, we go inside the party establishment.New episodes on Thursdays.Credits“The Run-Up” is hosted by More

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      Gov. Jim Justice Is Expected to Announce Senate Run for Joe Manchin’s Seat

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      Mr. Manchin is viewed as one of the most vulnerable Democrats in next year’s elections, in a state, West Virginia, that has overwhelmingly trended red.Gov. Jim Justice of West Virginia is set to announce a Senate campaign on Thursday, giving Republicans a strong recruit against Senator Joe Manchin III, one of the most vulnerable Democrats up for re-election in 2024.The West Virginia race is one of the most essential pickup opportunities for Republicans if they are to retake control of the Senate, which Democrats hold by a narrow 51-49 seat margin.Mr. Manchin, who represents by far the most Republican state held by any Democratic senator, has yet to announce whether he will seek re-election, but Republicans are hoping that Mr. Justice’s entry might spur him toward retirement.Mr. Manchin in recent years has been one of the few Democrats who can compete in the overwhelmingly Republican state.Mr. Justice’s team teased a “special announcement” at 5 p.m. Eastern time on Thursday at the Greenbrier Resort in White Sulphur Springs, W.Va. It made a point to note that his English bulldog — Babydog, known for a memorable appearance last year at Mr. Justice’s State of the State speech — would be present for the announcement.The advisory did not specify the nature of the announcement, though it offered a livestream link to a YouTube page with the description “The official YouTube channel for Jim Justice for U.S. Senate, Inc.” Two people with knowledge of Mr. Justice’s plans confirmed he would be entering the Senate race.Before facing Mr. Manchin, Mr. Justice would need to make it through a Republican primary. He will have at least one major opponent, Representative Alex Mooney, who has been closely allied with former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Mooney has already attacked Mr. Justice as a “RINO,” or “Republican in name only,” one of Mr. Trump’s and his allies’ favorite insults.Mr. Mooney has the backing of the Club for Growth, the influential conservative group that has spent heavily in recent Republican primaries, and Senator Ted Cruz, Republican of Texas, endorsed him last week.Mr. Justice, a billionaire businessman, was first elected governor in 2016 and re-elected in 2020, making him term-limited next year. He initially ran and won as a Democrat, but switched his party affiliation to Republican in 2017, less than a year into his first term.He made that announcement at a rally alongside Mr. Trump, saying, “Today I will tell you as West Virginians that I can’t help you anymore being a Democrat governor.” As is traditional for politicians who switch allegiances, he said his former party had moved away from him, not the other way around.Top Senate Republicans have been eager to lure Mr. Justice into the race. One Nation, a nonprofit group aligned with Senator Mitch McConnell, the Republican leader, recently began a $1 million ad campaign against Mr. Manchin for his support of President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act.Mr. Manchin appeared on Fox News this week, in an interview with Sean Hannity, and attacked the Biden administration for the way it had implemented the legislation. He even threatened to vote to repeal it over its climate provisions.Mr. Hannity asked why Mr. Manchin had remained with the Democratic Party.“Well, they don’t always get my vote, you know that — if I can’t go home and explain, I don’t vote for it,” Mr. Manchin said. “I think about that every day: Why am I a Democrat?”Shane Goldmacher More

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      How Joe Biden Can Win in 2024

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      In 2024, the fate of the Democratic Party will rest in the hands of an 81-year-old incumbent president whom a majority of the country disapproves of and even many Democratic voters think should step aside rather than run for re-election.In the past, the conventional wisdom would be that President Biden faces an uphill battle to win a second term. But in today’s volatile, polarized political environment — in which Mr. Biden’s predecessor and potential general election opponent, Donald Trump, became the first ex-president to be criminally indicted and Democrats posted a history-defying midterm performance — he opens his re-election campaign in a stronger position than many would expect.He can make a compelling case for his first-term accomplishments, his steady leadership and a vision of the country fundamentally different from what is on offer from Republicans — of freedom of opportunity and opportunity of freedom for all Americans.A number of factors have worked in his favor. Because of his age, Mr. Biden has been dogged by speculation about his re-election plans. But no major candidate has stepped up to challenge him in the Democratic primary, which will allow him and his campaign team to focus their time, efforts and resources on the general election.For months, Democrats have been frustrated with the gap between Mr. Biden’s accomplishments and the public’s awareness of them. Despite a flurry of big-ticket legislation that the president signed into law in 2021 and 2022, a February poll showed that 62 percent of Americans — including 66 percent of independents — believed that the Biden administration has accomplished either “not very much” or “little or nothing.” The administration has already begun chipping away at this perception deficit, with the president, vice president and cabinet officials fanning out to battleground states and other parts of the country to spotlight these accomplishments.The timing is right, because these programs are starting to have a big impact on the lives of many Americans. In March, Eli Lilly became the first major drug company to announce that it would cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month, matching the Inflation Reduction Act’s cap on insulin costs for seniors. The administration says it has financed over 4,600 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country. And the private sector has committed over $200 billion in manufacturing investments since the passage of the Chips and Science Act, including $40 billion to build new semiconductor factories in Arizona and $300 million to manufacture semiconductor parts in Bay County, Mich.Mr. Biden has even made gains in mitigating voters’ concerns about his age. First, there was his lively, 73-minute State of the Union address, where he sparred ably with heckling Republicans, baiting them into backing his positions on Social Security and Medicare. And his surprise trip to Ukraine, which was the first time in modern history that a president visited an active war zone outside of the control of the U.S. military, received expansive coverage.But Mr. Biden’s biggest advantage might not come from anything he has done. Instead, it might come from the chaos among Republicans. This is welcome news for the president, who is fond of telling voters, “Don’t compare me to the almighty; compare me to the alternative.”There has been talk among many Republican leaders and donors about moving on from Mr. Trump — most recently, in the weeks after the 2022 midterms — but the base isn’t following their lead. Since his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, his grip on the party, at least based on recent polling evidence, has grown tighter. That may be good news for his campaign, but he has significant vulnerabilities in a general election.And Mr. Trump is just the beginning of the G.O.P.’s problems. In recent years, the electorate has become more supportive of abortion rights. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, election after election has provided evidence of that. Yet Republicans have not come up with an answer — and in some ways, they seem to be making the problem worse. This month, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law a six-week abortion ban, which would prohibit the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant. Candidates and likely contenders including former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas have endorsed extreme anti-abortion measures that would be effected nationally — upending years of Republican claims that abortion should be “left to the states.”There are no signs that abortion is letting up as a top issue for voters. This month, liberals won control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in over a decade after Judge Janet Protasiewicz ran a campaign focused on abortion rights and extremism on the right and secured an 11-point victory.A key part of Mr. Biden’s appeal for Democrats is that he doesn’t provoke the sort of divisiveness that Mr. Trump does. Despite Mr. Biden’s sagging approval ratings, in the 2022 midterms, we saw that voting against the president was not a big motivator for many Americans (compared with 2018, when casting a vote against Mr. Trump was a substantial motivator).If these trends continue, Democratic voters will continue to be motivated to vote against an extremist Republican Party — and Democrats will stand a good chance of winning the critical independent bloc.President Biden and his team still have work to do to firm up his support before the election. First up is navigating a debt-ceiling showdown with Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the House, where Republican gamesmanship threatens the nation’s credit rating and could spike Americans’ mortgage, student loan and car payment rates. The issue is tailor-made to play to Mr. Biden’s core strength — that he is a competent, steady hand in an otherwise chaotic political system.The Biden team will also need to increase their messaging to voters about what he has been able to achieve in his first term and what’s at stake over the next four years. That effort will focus in particular on swing-state voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, and will highlight progress in critical areas like infrastructure, manufacturing and job creation.Mr. Biden’s announcement video provides a preview of what we’ll be hearing from him over the next 18 months, and the subsequent four years if he’s re-elected: He is a defender of democracy and a protector of Americans’ personal freedoms and rights, including the rights of Americans to make their own decisions about reproductive health, to vote and to marry the person they love. The video juxtaposes chaotic images of Jan. 6, abortion protests outside the Supreme Court and Republican firebrands like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene with wholesome videos of Mr. Biden hugging and holding hands with Americans from every walk of life.The message is as subtle as sledgehammer: Do you really want to hand the country over to the Republicans and relive the chaos of the Trump years?Ultimately, if Joe Biden emerges victorious in November 2024, it will be because voters preferred him to the alternative — not to the almighty.Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”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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      Biden’s 2024 Re-Election Campaign Begins. You Might Miss It at First.

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      The president has no immediate plans to barnstorm key states with large rallies. He will instead try to burnish his record, and hope Republican infighting continues.President Biden has formally moved from a campaign-in-waiting to a campaign of waiting.Despite his heavily anticipated re-election announcement on Tuesday, Mr. Biden has no immediate plans to barnstorm the key battlegrounds. Decorative bunting is nowhere to be found, and large rallies will come later.Instead, Mr. Biden’s next steps look much like his recent ones: leveraging the White House to burnish his record with ribbon-cuttings, and willingly ceding the stage to a Republican presidential primary that is already descending into a dogfight between Donald J. Trump and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, even before he has entered the race.The first 24 hours, a heavily scripted period in any campaign, serve as a Biden road map for the months to come: a video announcement and an array of text messages to spur online donations; the behind-the-scenes hiring of his campaign team; an official White House event that doubled as a campaign opportunity; and a rally focused on abortion rights, headlined by the vice president, at a historically Black university.“This is not a time to be complacent,” Mr. Biden says in the video, which spends more time warning of threats posed by Republicans — to abortion rights, entitlement programs and democracy — than articulating a policy vision for a second term.Celinda Lake, a Democratic pollster who worked on Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign, said the two public appearances on Tuesday by the president and vice president — at a labor union conference talking about his economic agenda for the middle class and at the abortion-rights rally — captured “two pillars of the campaign” to come.At the same time, she predicted little public campaigning anytime soon for the 80-year-old president.“It’s about getting staff, it’s about raising money, it’s about stopping the ridiculous questions of if he’s running,” Ms. Lake said. “That is the antidote to whether he has the energy to run, to questions about his age.”Biden advisers say his entry was driven more by the internal demands of constructing a presidential campaign rather than the external need to communicate with voters, which he can do from the White House, though his team has begun producing potential advertisements. The Democratic National Committee has bought advertising time beginning Wednesday on MSNBC and on local stations in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, according to AdImpact, a media tracking service.On Tuesday, Mr. Biden announced a campaign manager and her principal deputy, along with seven national co-chairs. It is no accident that instead of immediately traveling to a battleground state, Mr. Biden will huddle with some of his biggest donors on Friday in the capital.At moments, the campaign rollout had the feel of a nostalgia tour, like an old band trying to recapture the magic of the past. The announcement was timed to the exact day of Mr. Biden’s kickoff four years earlier. His first speech, then and now, was to a labor union. And then as now, Jill Biden, the first lady, snapped a photo in front of the same building at the Northern Virginia Community College where she teaches English.The 2024 presidential race is expected to revolve around about half a dozen highly competitive states.The epicenter will be the two Sun Belt states, Georgia and Arizona, that Mr. Biden in 2020 put into the Democratic column for the first time since the 1990s, as well as the three industrial states touching the Great Lakes that are perennial battlegrounds: Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Nevada and North Carolina, which has been just out of Democrats’ grasp in recent years, are expected to have heavy spending, as well.Mr. Biden held a video call on Tuesday with roughly a dozen Democratic governors to discuss messaging in battleground states and carrying out the administration’s agenda, according to a person with direct knowledge of the call. The call included, among others, the governors of Michigan, Pennsylvania and North Carolina.In Mr. Biden’s labor conference speech, he delivered a lengthy recitation of the policy achievements of his first two years in office, and was briefly interrupted with the “four more years” chant familiar to every presidential re-election campaign. He spoke of signing trillions in stimulus and infrastructure spending and, as in his announcement video, warned of “MAGA” Republicans who he said threatened to destroy the fabric of the country.“The speaker, the former president, the MAGA extremists, they’re cut from a different cloth,” Mr. Biden said. “The threat that MAGA Republicans pose is to take us to a place we’ve never been.”Mr. Biden speaking in Wilmington, Del., in October 2020, when coronavirus restrictions and precautions greatly reduced in-person campaigning. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesFor a re-election bid, Mr. Biden’s campaign introduction presented a curiously dark vision of the country.In his video, he said his fight in 2020 to restore the “soul of the nation” was still incomplete, and at risk. At his speech, the biggest applause lines were his vows to defend the country from various perils, not any remarks presenting an uplifting vision for the future.“It’s been one crisis after another,” said Cristóbal Alex, who worked on Mr. Biden’s 2020 run and in his White House. “The country remains on the cliff. And the election of Donald Trump or a similar MAGA type would push the country over the brink.”Some elements of the campaign were not completed until last weekend, and the re-election staff is still being built out. Representative Veronica Escobar, a Texas Democrat, said she had received a call from Mr. Biden on Sunday asking her to be a campaign co-chair.“I don’t quite know exactly what’s ahead,” she said. “I’ve never done this before.”Mr. Biden’s team is sensitive to questions about his age and the rigor of his schedule, especially after he won in 2020 while campaigning most of the year from his Delaware home because of the pandemic. The White House has compiled a chart tracking his travel so far in 2023, and it shows that his number of trips outpaced former President Barack Obama’s in the same time period in 2011.With the widespread end of coronavirus precautions, Democrats are predicting a return to normalcy on the campaign trail. The 2020 race “will have turned out to be, I think, an atypical election,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, the chairman of the Democratic Governors Association.But Mr. Biden’s campaign is hardly seeking to have him dominate the headlines. As he has traveled the country recently to promote his legislative accomplishments, the nation’s attention has often focused elsewhere, especially on the never-ending legal and political drama encircling his predecessor.In January, when Mr. Biden stood beside Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the G.O.P. leader, for a ribbon-cutting on a major bridge project over the Ohio River, Republicans in Washington were engaged in a weeklong spectacle over the next House speaker.“Frankly, the best way to run for re-election as president is to be president,” said Senator Chris Coons of Delaware, a longtime Biden ally who was announced as a national campaign co-chairman.Mr. Biden’s video and Tuesday speech seemed to goad more Republican infighting, featuring a short clip of Mr. Trump and Mr. DeSantis shaking hands.“Let the other side continue to self-destruct,” said Alan Kessler, a Democratic bundler who has raised money for Mr. Biden.As Mr. Biden has traveled the country in recent months to promote his legislative accomplishments, the nation’s political attention has often focused elsewhere.Doug Mills/The New York TimesThen there is the issue of abortion rights, on which Mr. Biden has his own long and complicated political history that he sought to avoid discussing in 2020. Since last summer’s Supreme Court decision overturning Roe v. Wade, the issue has become a top Democratic motivator, powering some unexpected midterm victories and a sweeping triumph this month in a contest for the Wisconsin Supreme Court.“We all know abortion is going to be — if not the top issue — one of the top issues for 2024,” said Mini Timmaraju, the president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which sponsored the abortion rights rally at Howard University on Tuesday night where Ms. Harris was set to be the headline speaker.Ron Klain, Mr. Biden’s former chief of staff, said the president, like other Democrats, was aware of how the Supreme Court’s abortion decision had galvanized voters in his party’s favor.“He’s going to talk about protecting reproductive freedom, reproductive rights,” Mr. Klain said Tuesday.Mr. Biden did not say the word “abortion” in his kickoff video, though just four seconds in, there is an image of a woman standing outside the Supreme Court holding a sign that reads, “Abortion is health care.”The only images preceding that shot were of the Capitol riot on Jan. 6, 2021.The first word uttered by Mr. Biden captures both scenes, and is one that Democrats hope will frame the 2024 campaign: “Freedom.”“The question we are facing,” he says in the video, “is whether in the years ahead we have more freedom or less freedom.”Katie Glueck More