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      Donald Trump and Herschel Walker: The Unholy Alliance

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      WASHINGTON — This will sound quaint.In May 2016, The Washington Post ran the story of how Donald Trump, in his real estate days, would call reporters, pretending to be his own spokesman, to brag and leak nuggets about nonexistent romances with famous women. I thought that would knock him out of the race.The story hit on a Friday, so I scrambled to rewrite my column on the assumption that Trump wouldn’t last the weekend.But the scoop didn’t make a dent.The next day, The Times splashed a piece on the front page reporting that dozens of women had accused Trump of “unwelcome romantic advances” and lewd and “unending commentary on the female form.”Again, he emerged unscathed with his base.I still didn’t learn my lesson, though. That October, when the “Access Hollywood” tape showed Trump yucking it up about kissing, groping and trying to have sex with women, noting that “when you’re a star, they let you do it,” I once more figured he couldn’t survive as leader of the party of “family values” and the religious right.He could.Once, there were limits, things that could disqualify you from office, especially in the party that claimed a special relationship with Jesus.But those limits don’t exist anymore.Conservatives have sacrificed any claim to principle. In an unholy transaction, they stuck with Trump because there was a Supreme Court seat and they were willing to tolerate his moral void in order to hijack the court. They didn’t care how he treated women as long as he gave them the opportunity to rip away rights from women. They wanted to impose their warped morality, a “Handmaid’s Tale” world, on the rest of us.Christian-right leaders made clear that, no matter what Trump said or did to women, he was preferable to Hillary Clinton, who supported abortion rights.As Jerry Falwell Jr. said at the time, “We’re never going to have a perfect candidate unless Jesus Christ is on the ballot,” noting, “We’re all sinners.”Well, Falwell certainly was. Four years later, he was ousted from running Liberty University after a sex scandal of his own.Now, in Georgia, conservatives are turning a blind eye to sordid stories coming out about Herschel Walker, who demonstrates no qualifications for serving in the Senate. His sole credential is that he was once excellent at carrying a football.Story after story has emerged about reprehensible behavior and lies concerning women and children, and about falsifying his personal history.The Daily Beast asserted that while Walker wants to completely ban abortion, even in cases of rape, incest and the life of the mother, comparing it to murder, he paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009. Walker has called the story “a flat-out lie,” but The Beast talked to the unnamed woman and checked her financial records. She said she was just sick of the hypocrisy. Even his conservative influencer son, Christian, disparaged his father’s “lies” on Twitter.On Friday, The Times published a story confirming The Daily Beast’s reporting, and in a startling development added that in 2011, Herschel pressured the same woman to have another abortion. They ended their relationship when she refused; she had their son, now 10.There’s more: His ex-wife claimed he pointed a pistol at her head and told her he was going to blow her brains out; he has four children with four different women, but hadn’t publicly acknowledged three of them. His 10-year-old was one of those hidden.Mitch McConnell and his fellow Republicans should be ashamed to promote this troubled person for their own benefit.Privately, some Republicans are mortified by the Walker spiral, but they’re going to brazen it out for the win.Dana Loesch, the right-wing radio host, was blunt: “I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”Republicans have exposed their willingness to accept anything to get power that they then abuse. As Lindsey Graham said out loud, with his fellow Republicans shushing him, they want a nationwide ban on abortion after 15 weeks. And Herschel Walker is key to that.Trump got to know Walker when he bought the New Jersey Generals in 1983, which Walker had joined after he won the Heisman Trophy and dropped out of the University of Georgia to turn pro.“In a lot of ways, Mr. Trump became a mentor to me,” Walker wrote in his memoir in 2008, “and I modeled myself and my business practices after him.” Trump led the cry “Run, Herschel, run!”Walker takes after his mentor with his lies, hypocrisy and know-nothingness on issues. Still worse, he’s following his mentor by denying his transgressions as a womanizer, even as he tries to smash women’s rights.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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      Five Takeaways From the Wisconsin Senate Debate

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      The first debate between Senator Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, a Republican, and his Democratic challenger, Lt. Gov. Mandela Barnes, was a study in contrasts between an unapologetic, older conservative and a younger liberal who appeared unafraid of his ideological roots. Here are five takeaways.Move to the center? Not in this race.The debate put the two candidates’ ideological differences on full display. Mr. Barnes, a Milwaukee native who rose in politics as a progressive, has taken pains in his general-election campaign videos and advertisements to tour Wisconsin farms and present a bland, if earnest, image of wholesomeness. But in the debate, he did not pivot to the center, embracing marijuana legalization, defending Black Lives Matter protesters, and proposing school funding and job creation as answers to high murder rates.Mr. Johnson, who has a long history of spreading misinformation on topics including the coronavirus and voter fraud, cast doubt on the established science of man-made climate change. He mocked federal efforts to regulate carbon dioxide and saying, “The climate has always changed, always will change.” Mr. Johnson did punt on abortion, saying it was not up to Congress or the Wisconsin Legislature. The state’s residents, he said, should decide in a one-time referendum “at what point does society have a responsibility to protect life in the womb?” He did not say how he would vote.Barnes had some friendly terrain.Mr. Barnes seemed to receive more opportunities from the debate’s moderators, who allowed him to go after Mr. Johnson on some of the central themes of Democratic campaigns nationwide: abortion and the threats to democracy revealed by the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol. The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.He was also able to press his portrayal of the incumbent senator as a wealthy businessman out to feather his nest and look after his well-to-do friends and benefactors.“If you’re a multimillionaire, he’ll look after you,” Mr. Barnes said.Negativity on the airwaves (mostly) continued in the debate.To wrap up the debate, the candidates were asked to clear up any harmful impressions left by the cascade of negative advertising in the state. Mr. Johnson took up the challenge, but as he did, he sounded defensive, saying he had not, in fact, cut his own taxes or the taxes of his friends when he helped pass former President Donald J. Trump’s 2017 tax cuts, which were skewed toward the rich. Mr. Johnson called the assertion that he “got a tax cut only for myself and a few of my supporters” one of the campaign’s “grotesque distortions.”Mr. Barnes took another tack. Political groups supporting Mr. Johnson have showered the state with advertisements on crime that play to white fears and grievances, in the process calling Mr. Barnes, who is Black, “different.”“I embrace that,” Mr. Barnes said, trying to grab the mantle of change.National battles over crime and abortion took center stage.Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, abortion has been a highly emotional issue in Wisconsin, home to a law from 1849 that bans abortion with almost no exceptions. Mr. Barnes sought to put Mr. Johnson on the defensive over the issue, describing the dangerous or heart-wrenching circumstances under which women sometimes seek abortions, and casting the senator’s opposition to abortion rights as “dangerous, out of touch and extreme.” That is a message Democrats are deploying in races across the country, and especially on the airwaves..css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Johnson was pressed for specifics, and he said he supported birth control and in-vitro fertilization, along with calling for a state referendum to determine “at what point does society have the responsibility to protect life,” something Mr. Barnes dismissed as unrealistic. But Mr. Johnson also embraced an issue that is animating Republican ads in major races: crime. He repeatedly questioned Mr. Barnes’s commitment to funding law enforcement, and sought to conjure memories of protests that turned destructive in the summer of 2020, after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Mr. Barnes emphasized his commitment to public safety.‘Defund the police’ and Jan. 6 were cudgels in a fight over support for law enforcement.Many Democratic officials and candidates rejected the “defund the police” slogan long ago. But Mr. Johnson sought to attach it to Mr. Barnes anyway on Friday, even as he conceded that Mr. Barnes does not embrace that language.“He has a record of wanting to defund the police, and I know he doesn’t necessarily say that word,” Mr. Johnson said. “But he has a long history of being supported by people that are leading the effort to defund.”He accused Mr. Barnes of using “code words” like “reallocate over-bloated police budgets.”Mr. Barnes did suggest in a 2020 television interview that some funding be diverted from “over-bloated budgets in police departments” to social services. Since then, he has said explicitly that he doesn’t support “defunding the police,” and has emphasized that law enforcement should have necessary resources.“I’ve spent my entire career working to make communities safer,” Mr. Barnes said, emphasizing that “there’s so much more we need to do to keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals.”He also questioned whether Mr. Johnson’s support for law enforcement extended to the officers who were attacked during the Capitol riot, which Mr. Johnson has minimized. More

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      On the Ballot This Year: The Ballot Itself

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      Republicans are trying to limit the use of citizen-initiated legislation in some states after years of progressive victories.Ballot measures, a tool many states adopted during the Progressive Era to allow voters to pass their own laws, don’t always get much news coverage — but they can often surprise us.This year, there are hotly contested ballot measures on abortion, marijuana legalization and Medicaid expansion, among other topics.But at the same time, there are efforts in many states to make it harder to pass ballot measures.Depending on whom you ask, these proposals are either a frontal attack on democracy or a necessary move to counteract attempts by national liberal groups to hijack state politics.Either way, state legislatures have made hundreds of attempts to limit or restrict the use of ballot measures over the last five years, according to forthcoming research by Emma Olson Sharkey, a lawyer with the Elias Law Group.In some cases, legislatures have tinkered with the rules for how many signatures are required, or the necessary qualifications for those doing the canvassing.But this year, legislatures in several states have put proposals to make passing ballot measures more difficult on the ballot itself.Take Arkansas, where there is a ballot measure this year to restrict ballot measures, called Issue 2. If a simple majority votes yes, in the future it will take 60 percent of voters to adopt constitutional amendments or laws initiated by citizens.The measure was sponsored by two Republican lawmakers, State Representative David Ray and State Senator Bart Hester. Ray, in a television discussion of the proposal, described the higher threshold as necessary “to ensure that there’s a genuine consensus among voters.” The Arkansas Constitution, he said, should not be amended in “willy-nilly fashion” by “big-money, out-of-state interests.”There is some sleight of hand there, opponents say. Issue 2 would effectively grant a veto on ballot measures to 40 percent of the public, while the Republican-led General Assembly could still pass laws by a bare majority.Most states require a simple “50 percent plus one” majority to pass a ballot measure. Only three states have supermajority requirements similar to what’s on the table in Arkansas — Florida, Washington and Oregon, in some circumstances.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.In Arizona, there are three proposed restrictions to ballot measures on this year’s ballot: Proposition 128, which would allow the Legislature to amend or repeal ballot measures even after they are approved if a judge rules that provisions within them are unconstitutional; Proposition 129, which would limit citizen-initiated ballot measures to a single topic; and Proposition 132, which would require any ballot initiative that would raise taxes to pass by 60 percent.As in Arkansas, the supporters of these ballot measures say they are necessary to rein in abuses of the process. Critics say they are intended to lock in the power of a Legislature that was gerrymandered to favor Republicans despite an independent redistricting commission’s best efforts to make the maps fairer.Liberal groups have found ballot measures to be a powerful, if expensive, tool to promote their policies — even in red states. They say their successes in raising the minimum wage and expanding health care coverage via what they call “direct democracy” have caused Republicans to push back by changing the rules. In Maine, Idaho, Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Utah, voters have expanded access to Medicaid via ballot measure, going over the heads of the states’ legislatures.In South Dakota, voters this year decisively defeated Republicans’ push to pass a constitutional amendment requiring most voter-initiated referendums to pass with 60 percent of the vote, rather than by a simple majority. More than two-thirds of voters rejected the measure.Most, but not all, of the legislatures trying to limit the use of ballot measures are Republican-held. Democratic-run Colorado raised the requirement for passing constitutional amendments to 55 percent in 2016, for instance.Kelly Hall, the executive director of the Fairness Project, a progressive group that focuses on winning ballot measures, hailed the results of the recent referendum in Kansas, where voters rejected a proposal to add a ban on abortion to the state’s Constitution.“Many of us had a delightful wake-up call on the power of ballot measures in early August with the vote in Kansas,” Hall said. “But it has also sparked a backlash,” she added, and “a lot of opposition spending.”In Arkansas, reaching a 60 percent threshold might be difficult on highly polarized issues, but it would probably not be insurmountable.From 2000 to 2020, Arkansas voters approved 32 ballot measures out of 44 total. Only 18 of the 32 would have passed under the proposed 60 percent threshold.While progressives in Arkansas have notched some victories, there is no clear pattern.In 2020, voters barred state legislators from serving for more than 12 consecutive years in office. State judges removed two other proposals from the ballot on technicalities: a proposal to create an independent redistricting commission, and the introduction of a ranked-choice voting system similar to Alaska’s. In 2018, Arkansas voters passed a measure to require photo identification to vote; they also increased the state’s minimum wage to $11 per hour. And in a 2016 ballot measure, they legalized medical marijuana.The California modelFor the skeptical, California offers a cautionary tale. Critics of the state’s penchant for direct democracy say it has led to higher taxes and a not-in-my-backyard mind-set, exacerbating a housing crisis and driving away businesses.This year, one of the most expensive races in the country is not for any political office, but a battle over two ballot measures in California regarding gambling on sports.Proposition 26 would allow tribal casinos and the state’s racetracks to host sports betting. Proposition 27 would allow Native American tribes and licensed gambling companies to host sports betting outside tribal lands.An estimated $440 million has been spent on lobbying campaigns and ads so far on the two propositions, with little transparency on who is funding what — exactly the kind of spectacle many states are trying to avoid.“These are hard calls,” Hall said, defending her group’s use of ballot measures as necessary to circumvent gerrymandered and sclerotic legislatures. “These are expensive. And California’s an example of where maybe it’s gone too far.”What to read on democracyRepublicans are keeping tabs on the political affiliations of poll workers in swing states, and claiming unfairness when there are more Democrats than Republicans, The Washington Post reports.Former President Donald Trump called this week for a return to paper ballots.The Center for Public Integrity examined which states make it the most difficult for people to vote, and which ones make it easier.An Iowa man has been arrested on suspicion of making threats toward an elections supervisor in Maricopa County, Ariz.Representative Liz Cheney urged Arizonans to vote against Kari Lake for governor and Mark Finchem for secretary of state, warning that they are threats to democracy.In Green Bay, Wis., conspiracy theories about the 2020 election abound, changing the tenor of municipal races and yielding a robust pool of partisan poll observers.viewfinderSupporters of Mandela Barnes watching him speak at an event on Monday at a brewery in Racine, Wis.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesAn abortion rights pitchOn Politics regularly features work by Times photographers. Here’s what Haiyun Jiang told us about capturing the image above:The lighting was tricky, I realized when I walked into a little brewery where Mandela Barnes, the Democratic nominee for Senate in Wisconsin, was holding a “Ron Against Roe” event targeting his opponent, Senator Ron Johnson, over his opposition to abortion rights.It was the middle of the day, and the sunlight was harsh. I tried to avoid making images that had too much discrepancy in light.As Barnes spoke, I noticed that women made up the majority of the audience. I directed my lens toward them, finding a table for which the lighting worked and waiting for the right moment to convey the audience’s mood.For me, this image shows the significance of abortion rights as an issue in this year’s midterm elections.Thank you for reading On Politics, and for being a subscriber to The New York Times. — BlakeRead past editions of the newsletter here.If you’re enjoying what you’re reading, please consider recommending it to others. They can sign up here. Browse all of our subscriber-only newsletters here.Have feedback? Ideas for coverage? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at onpolitics@nytimes.com. More

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      Biden Warns Inflation Will Worsen if Republicans Retake Congress

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      HAGERSTOWN, Md. — President Biden laced into Republicans on Friday for trying to enact policies that would make “every kitchen table cost” go up while lavishing tax cuts on big corporations, shedding his usual tone of bipartisanship a month ahead of the midterm elections.In a speech before factory workers at a Volvo manufacturing facility, Mr. Biden defended his economic record and accused Republicans of political hypocrisy for seeking to reap the benefit of federal funds made available by legislation that they had opposed. He also laid out the stakes of the upcoming elections, bluntly warning that Republicans will try to scale back Medicare and Social Security benefits if they win control of Congress. And he accused Republicans of rooting against America’s economic success.“This is a choice between two very different ways of looking at the economy,” Mr. Biden said.Mr. Biden’s comments came as Labor Department figures showed that the United States economy added 263,000 jobs in September and that the unemployment rate fell to 3.5 percent, from 3.7 percent a month earlier. The report suggests that the labor market is cooling as the Federal Reserve raises interest rates but that the central bank will likely have to take further steps to slow the economy in order to tame inflation.Mr. Biden said that the numbers were a sign that the economy was transitioning to stable growth.“Our job market continues to show resilience as we navigate through this economic transition,” he said. “The pace of job growth is cooling while still powering our recovery forward.”Despite concerns about an economic slowdown, Mr. Biden’s remarks were the latest attempt by the White House to highlight examples of America’s manufacturing resurgence with a focus on the automobile sector in the run-up to the November midterm elections.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.The Volvo facility in Hagerstown employs more than 1,700 workers and makes parts for Mack Trucks.The visit also came with political calculations, as Representative David Trone, a Maryland Democrat, was locked in a tight re-election race with his Republican challenger, Neil Parrott. Hagerstown is also close to the border with Pennsylvania, where the senate and governor’s races are two of the most consequential political contests in the country.Mr. Biden maintained a more pointed tone with Republicans as he made claims about the benefits of the so-called Inflation Reduction Act that Congress passed in August. He called out Republicans such as Representative Paul Gosar of Arizona and Representative Andy Barr of Kentucky for seeking federal funds for local projects while criticizing his agenda, calling it “socialism.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.“I didn’t know there were that many socialist Republicans,” Mr. Biden joked.Mr. Biden, who on Thursday evening attended a fund-raiser at the Manhattan home of the Democratic donor James Murdoch, said that Republicans have a “Park Avenue” view of the world that stands in stark contrast to his policies that are born out of concern for people in places like Scranton, Pa., where Mr. Biden was born, and Hagerstown.Republicans seized on signs of a cooling job market to assail Mr. Biden for economic mismanagement on Friday.“The economy is shrinking, inflation is raging, and job growth is slowing,” said Representative Kevin Brady of Texas, the top Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee.While the White House has so far sounded very in line with the Fed’s push to fight the quickest inflation in four decades, that tone could shift somewhat as the economy begins to show cracks.The Biden administration has made it clear that it respects the Fed’s independence to set policy free of partisan interference, but it might be challenging for administration officials to embrace the central bank’s actions too loudly when the Fed’s policies are hurting the economy and inflicting pain on workers.Mr. Biden acknowledged that economic headwinds continued to persist, noting that gasoline prices are inching back up “because of what the Russians and the Saudis just did.”“I’m not finished with that just yet,” he added.Despite his sharper tone, Mr. Biden said that he remained hopeful that bipartisan cooperation could be possible after the election.“That’s my hope, that after this election, there will be a little return to sanity,” Mr. Biden said. “That we’ll stop this bitterness that exists between the parties and have people working together.” More

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      Five Takeaways From the Arizona Senate Debate

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      PHOENIX — It was a battle over whether Arizona is still the conservative-leaning state of Barry Goldwater and John McCain.Senator Mark Kelly faced his Republican challenger, Blake Masters, on Thursday in the first and only debate of the race that will help decide whether Democrats maintain control of the Senate, which they hold by the barest of margins. Mr. Kelly repeatedly emphasized his independent image, referring frequently to his disagreements with members of his own party, including President Biden.The two men, who have spent months attacking each other on issues including abortion, border security, inflation and election integrity, were also joined by Marc Victor, the Libertarian candidate, who has not reached double digits in polls.The debate did little to cover new ground on the most contentious issues, but the moderator asked pointed, direct questions in a bid to force the candidates to clarify their sometimes murky positions. Mr. Masters tried to straddle the line between his previous hard-line stances and his more recently adopted softer tone — but continued to largely play to his base, even if it required some winks and a nod or two.Abortion becomes a flash point.Abortion has vaulted to the front of many voters’ minds in Arizona, not just after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade this June, but because a state judge revived a total ban on abortions from 1864 that had sat dormant for decades. Abortions in the state, already on shaky ground, halted abruptly.So on Thursday, each candidate tried to paint the other as an abortion extremist. Mr. Kelly pointed to statements where Mr. Masters had called abortion “demonic,” and said Mr. Masters wanted to punish doctors and ban abortions in cases of rape.Mr. Masters said he was proud to call himself one of the most pro-life candidates running for Senate, and quickly leveled a misleading accusation that Mr. Kelly supported late-term abortions up until the moment of birth. In reality, abortions late in pregnancy are rare and often occur because of a devastating health problem in an otherwise wanted pregnancy.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.It’s always 2020 in Arizona.Faced with a direct question about whether Mr. Masters believed the 2020 vote was stolen, he seemed to blink. He talked of collusion between tech companies, the news media and F.B.I. to suppress negative news about President Biden’s son Hunter.“But not vote-counting, not election results?” asked the moderator, Ted Simons, a host on the Arizona PBS station.“Yeah, I haven’t seen evidence of that,” Mr. Masters replied.During the Republican primary, Mr. Masters won an endorsement from former President Donald J. Trump and earned legions of conservative followers by fanning the falsehoods that the 2020 election was stolen and Mr. Trump was its rightful winner.But some of that language has been scrubbed from his campaign website since Mr. Masters entered the general election, where such conspiracy theories don’t play as well with independent voters, who either trust Arizona’s popular mail-in voting systems or simply want to move on.Mr. Kelly said Mr. Masters’s peddling of “conspiracy theories” was undermining American democracy.“I’m worried about what’s going to happen here in this election and 2024,” he said. “We could wind up in a situation where the wheels come off of our democracy.”Both see a crisis at the southern border.Political veterans in Arizona believe that inflation and the southern border are Republicans’ two strongest issues, and Mr. Masters hammered both early and often. He painted a Dante-esque picture of the border — beset with cartels, overflowing with fentanyl and wide-open for millions of “illegals” to sweep through.“Joe Biden and Mark Kelly, they laid out the welcome mat,” Mr. Masters said. “They surrendered our southern border. They’ve given it up to the Mexican drug cartels.”Crossings at the southern border have surged to their highest levels in decades as migrants flee gangs and political and economic turmoil in Venezuela, Central America and elsewhere. Many of those migrants are turning themselves directly over to American authorities to plead their cases in immigration courts.Mr. Kelly called the border “a mess” of chaos and crisis, but said he had worked to get money for more Border Patrol agents and technology to screen for drugs at ports of entry.Don’t California my Arizona.Like other Republicans in the Southwest, Mr. Masters frequently uses California as a kind of foil, making the state a stand-in for liberalism gone wild. And one reliable way to rile residents in other parts of the West? Bring up the notion that the nation’s most populous state — which is in a near constant drought — is taking too much water from the Colorado River.“I’m tired of Senator Kelly acting like the third senator from California,” Mr. Masters said onstage Thursday, echoing a refrain he has made throughout the campaign. “We need someone in there with sharp elbows who’s going to fight for our water.”“Why is California even putting its straw into the Colorado River?” he added, arguing that the state should instead rely on desalination and the Pacific Ocean.Left unsaid was the more basic implied attack: Mr. Masters is the protector of the state; Mr. Kelly is merely a liberal in disguise.A third-party candidate for a third of voters?The vast majority of voters would have trouble naming Mr. Victor — he has struggled to raise money or capture media attention. But he held his ground Thursday night, insisting that the moderator allow him to answer all the same questions as Mr. Kelly and Mr. Masters.For the most part, Mr. Victor took a predictable Libertarian pox-on-both-their-houses approach, and portrayed himself as the outsider who would not be beholden to either President Biden or Mr. Trump. And there could be a receptive audience for that message: Roughly a third of Arizona’s voters are not registered as Republicans or Democrats, and many view themselves as moderates or describe themselves as leaning libertarian.Mr. Victor could easily attract enough voters to act as a kind of spoiler for Mr. Masters, denying him just enough votes to push Mr. Kelly over the edge. Indeed, at several points during the debate, Mr. Victor attacked Mr. Masters for waffling on his stances and leaped to the defense of Mr. Kelly. More

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      We Had to Force the Constitution to Accommodate Democracy, and It Shows

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      In August, President Biden met with several historians at the White House to discuss the threats facing American democracy.Most of the conversation, according to a report in The Washington Post, was about “the larger context of the contest between democratic values and institutions and the trends toward autocracy globally.” Those present were people who had “been outspoken in recent months about the threat they see to the American democratic project, after the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, the continued denial by some Republicans of the 2020 election results and the efforts of election deniers to seek state office.”Now, I was obviously not at this meeting. But I have been thinking about what I would say to Biden about the threats to American democracy. The most acute threat, it’s true, comes from election deniers and the authoritarian mass movement led by the previous president, Donald Trump. But the long-term threat is less an imposition from bad actors and more a constitutive part of our political system. It is, in fact, the Constitution. Specifically, it is a set of fundamental problems with the structure of our government that flow directly from the Constitution as it currently exists.We tend to equate American democracy with the Constitution as if the two were synonymous with each other. To defend one is to protect the other and vice versa. But our history makes clear that the two are in tension with each other — and always have been. The Constitution, as I’ve written before, was as much a reaction to the populist enthusiasms and democratic experimentation of the 1780s as it was to the failures of the Articles of Confederation.The framers meant to force national majorities through an overlapping system of fractured authority; they meant to mediate, and even stymie, the popular will as much as possible and force the government to act with as much consensus as possible.Unfortunately for the framers, this plan did not work as well as they hoped. With the advent of political parties in the first decade of the new Republic — which the framers failed to anticipate in their design — Americans had essentially circumvented the careful balance of institutions and divided power. Parties could campaign to control each branch of government, and with the advent of the mass party in the 1820s, they could claim to represent “the people” themselves in all their glory.Americans, in short, had forced the Constitution to accommodate their democratic impulses, as would be the case again and again, up to the present. The question, today, is whether there’s any room left to build a truly democratic political system within the present limits of our constitutional order.In his new book “Two Cheers for Politics: Why Democracy is Flawed, Frightening — and Our Best Hope,” the legal scholar Jedediah Purdy says the answer is, essentially, no. “Our mainstream political language still lacks ways of saying, with unapologetic conviction and even patriotically, that the Constitution may be the enemy of the democracy it supposedly sustains,” Purdy writes.This is true in two ways. The first (and obvious) one is that the Constitution has enabled the democratic backsliding of the past six years. Founding-era warnings against demagogues — used often to justify our indirect system of choosing a president — run headfirst into the fact that Donald Trump was selected constitutionally, not elected democratically. (Alexander Hamilton wrote, in Federalist No. 68, “The choice of several to form an intermediate body of electors will be much less apt to convulse the community with any extraordinary or violent movements than the choice of one who was himself to be the final object of the public wishes.” This, it turns out, was wrong.)And consider this: In the 2020 presidential election, a clear majority of Americans voted against Trump in the highest turnout election of the 21st century so far. But with a few tens of thousands of additional votes in a few states, Trump would have won a second term under the Constitution. “A mechanism for selecting a chief executive among propertied elites in the late eighteenth century persists into the twenty-first,” Purdy writes, “now as a key choke point in a mass democracy.”The Constitution subverts democracy in a second, more subtle way. As Purdy notes, the countermajoritarian structure of the American system inhibits lawmaking and slows down politics, “making meaningful initiatives hard to undertake.” One result is that political campaigns have “shifted into a symbolic and defensive mode” where the move is not to promise a better world, but to impress on voters “the urgency of keeping the other candidate and party out of power.”“If enough people believe it is their responsibility to resist and disable any government they did not help to elect, self-rule can become impossible,” Purdy writes. “Donald Trump’s presidency,” he continues, “arose from all of these dysfunctions.”Even if you keep MAGA Republicans out of office (including Trump himself), you’re still left with a system the basic structure of which fuels dysfunction and undermines American democracy, from how it enables minority rule to how it helps inculcate a certain kind of political chauvinism — best captured in the hard-right mantra that the United States is a “Republic, not a democracy” — among some of the voters who benefit from lopsided representation in the Senate and the Electoral College.What makes this all the worse is that it has become virtually impossible to amend the Constitution and revise the basics of the American political system. The preamble to the Constitution may begin with “We the People,” but as Purdy writes, “A constitution like the American one deserves democratic authority only if it is realistically open to amendment.” It is only then that we can “know that what has not changed in the old text still commands consent.” Silence can have meaning, he points out, “but only when it is the silence of those free to speak.”There is much more to say about the ways that our political system has inhibited democratic life and even enabled forms of tyranny. For now, it suffices to say that a constitution that subverts majority rule, fuels authoritarian movements and renders popular sovereignty inert is not a constitution that can be said to protect, secure or even enable American democracy.In a speech in Philadelphia last month, Biden did speak publicly on the threats to American democracy. He focused, as almost any president would, on the Constitution. “This is a nation that honors our Constitution. We do not reject it. This is a nation that believes in the rule of law. We do not repudiate it. This is a nation that respects free and fair elections. We honor the will of the people. We do not deny it.”The problem, and what this country must confront if it ever hopes to turn its deepest democratic aspirations into reality, is that we don’t actually honor the will of the people. We deny it. And it’s this denial that sits at the root of our troubles.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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      Will the Herschel Walker Allegations Actually Matter?

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      The scandal could be decisive even if one in 50 would-be Walker voters change their minds.Why this Herschel Walker episode could be decisive: It’s largely because of the 50-50 nature of Georgia politics. Erik S Lesser/EPA, via ShutterstockWill the Herschel Walker Allegations Actually Matter?I don’t think there’s a question I’m asked more often than: “Will this matter” on Election Day?Usually, the question follows the latest gaffe or breaking news that casts a candidate in a bad light. And usually, my answer is, “No, it will not matter” — or at least a version of “no.” The country is deeply polarized, and voters have a short memory.This week, I’ve been getting that question about the Georgia Senate race. As you’ve probably heard, the Republican nominee Herschel Walker reportedly paid a woman to have an abortion. The woman, who shared her story with The Daily Beast, said she was not only an ex-girlfriend, but also the mother of one of Mr. Walker’s children. Mr. Walker has denied the allegation.It’s too soon to look to polling to judge the political fallout. So far, there has been only one survey fielded entirely since the allegations, covering only one day. That poll, an Insider Advantage survey, showed the Democrat Raphael Warnock up by three points, which does happen to be an improvement for Mr. Warnock compared with its prior poll. Mr. Walker led that one by four points. (State polling is infrequent, so it’s hard to say when we’ll get a better sense from the polls about how or whether the allegations have changed voters’ views.)But regardless of what the next surveys say, I think my short answer to the familiar “will this matter” question is “yes” — or at least a version of “yes.”That’s not because this represents the absolute worst case for Mr. Walker. His success is so vital to his party — in its chances to retake the Senate — that his fellow Republicans are unlikely to throw him overboard.The State of the 2022 Midterm ElectionsWith the primaries over, both parties are shifting their focus to the general election on Nov. 8.Standing by Herschel Walker: After a report that the G.O.P. Senate candidate in Georgia paid for a girlfriend’s abortion in 2009, Republicans rallied behind him, fearing that a break with the former football star could hurt the party’s chances to take the Senate.Wisconsin Senate Race: Mandela Barnes, the Democratic candidate, is wobbling in his contest against Senator Ron Johnson, the Republican incumbent, as an onslaught of G.O.P. attack ads takes a toll.G.O.P. Senate Gains: After signs emerged that Republicans were making gains in the race for the Senate, the polling shift is now clear, writes Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst.Democrats’ Closing Argument: Buoyed by polls that show the end of Roe v. Wade has moved independent voters their way, vulnerable House Democrats have reoriented their campaigns around abortion rights in the final weeks before the election.From the standpoint of the party, this might be more like Donald J. Trump after the “Access Hollywood” tape in 2016 than the Missouri Senate candidate Todd Akin after his “legitimate rape” comments in 2012. Although denying the allegations of paying for an abortion carries its own risks, it does mean that his party has a way to avoid criticizing him directly. That’s something different from the cases of Mr. Akin or Mr. Trump, who each were captured on tape and so Republicans had to respond to shared facts.One factor that cuts in both directions: The news reinforces a pre-existing narrative about Mr. Walker, who has recently acknowledged he was the father of several children he had not previously mentioned publicly. But for that same reason, he may have already incurred most of the potential reputational damage before this allegation.There’s one other thing that’s odd about this scandal: The voters likeliest to find paying for abortion to be deeply repugnant are also likeliest to be solidly Republican. Many lower-turnout, persuadable or swing voters, in contrast, may be relatively likely to support abortion rights, and may not find this as offensive as another scandal. Hypocrisy is not an unusual accusation for a politician, after all.And yet I’m still inclined to say “yes,” this might really matter. And that’s largely because of the circumstances.First, this was the closest state in the country in 2020: President Biden won Georgia by two-tenths of a point. On paper, this was always likely to be a tight contest — a Democratic incumbent was running in a midterm year in a state slightly more Republican than the nation as a whole. Indeed, the polls showed a very close race (with Mr. Warnock ahead) before the allegations.So in this case, even a modest effect — smaller than a point or two — could be important.Second is the possibility of a runoff election. As you may remember from 2020, Georgia holds runoff elections if no candidate receives at least 50 percent of the vote on Election Day. This race has long seemed poised to go to a runoff (there is a Libertarian candidate, and the Libertarian usually receives a couple of points in Georgia).For Mr. Walker, the runoff would carry some risk and reward. The possible upside: It will be further from this week’s allegations. The downside is that there won’t be anyone else to help carry him to victory. The state’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp, is seemingly likely to defeat Stacey Abrams outright, so a hypothetical Walker-Warnock runoff is likely to be the top of the ticket — the major reason to show up and vote. In the Nov. 8 election by contrast, Mr. Walker may benefit from Kemp supporters and other general election regulars who may reluctantly vote for Mr. Walker, but might not have shown up on his account.If Mr. Walker can’t move past these allegations, would he really be able to get the same Republican turnout he would have otherwise? Wouldn’t Democrats be more motivated to stop him from taking office? Here, the analogy that might be most promising for Democrats is Roy Moore, the Alabama Republican who lost a special election for Senate after numerous women, including several teenagers, accused him of sexual misconduct.I don’t want to start a new Olympic event in “political scandals” for judging Mr. Moore and Mr. Walker. What’s relevant is that Democrats enjoyed a very considerable turnout advantage in that Alabama election, the kind of advantage that can really only happen in a low-turnout special election.The possibility that control of the Senate might be on the line would certainly mitigate the risk of a total collapse in Republican turnout in a runoff. But if the race is as close as the polls and recent electoral history suggest, the scandal might be decisive even if one in 50 would-be Walker voters decide they just don’t need to go out of their way to send him to Washington. More

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      Jan. 6 Defendant Coordinated Volunteers to Help Glenn Youngkin

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      In the election last fall that sent Glenn Youngkin to the Virginia governor’s office and propelled him to G.O.P. stardom, the state and local Republican Party tasked Joseph Brody with coordinating volunteers to knock on doors of potential Youngkin voters in the state’s strategically crucial northern suburbs.But eight months earlier, Mr. Brody had been immersed in the Jan. 6 attack at the U.S. Capitol, according to the F.B.I., which said that he assaulted a police officer with a metal barricade and breached several restricted areas, including the Senate floor and the office of Speaker Nancy Pelosi.Now, Mr. Brody, 23, who the F.B.I. said was associated with the white nationalist group America First, is facing felony and misdemeanor charges for his role. The candidate he would go on to help, Mr. Youngkin, tried during his campaign to keep himself at arm’s length from former President Donald J. Trump, and he called the Jan. 6 riot a “blight on our democracy.”Shortly after Mr. Brody’s arrest last month, an image scraped from the internet by online sleuths who call themselves “Sedition Hunters” showed a man in a MAGA hat holding a high-powered rifle in front of a Nazi flag, with a bandanna concealing his face. The group, which has provided information that has helped law enforcement officials make hundreds of arrests related to Jan. 6, said the man in the photo was Mr. Brody.A public defender listed for Mr. Brody did not respond to several requests for comment. Messages sent to an email account for Mr. Brody went unanswered. There was no answer at a phone number listed for him.Mr. Youngkin’s office referred questions about Mr. Brody to Kristin Davison, a political consultant for the governor, who said in an email on Friday that Mr. Brody “did not work for or with the Youngkin campaign.”The Fairfax County Republican Committee twice listed Mr. Brody, who is from Springfield, Va., in Fairfax, as helping to coordinate a volunteer effort to knock on doors for “Team Youngkin.” When asked about those online listings, Ms. Davison said, “Those are not posts from the Youngkin campaign.”.css-1v2n82w{max-width:600px;width:calc(100% – 40px);margin-top:20px;margin-bottom:25px;height:auto;margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;font-family:nyt-franklin;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1v2n82w{margin-left:20px;margin-right:20px;}}@media only screen and (min-width:1024px){.css-1v2n82w{width:600px;}}.css-161d8zr{width:40px;margin-bottom:18px;text-align:left;margin-left:0;color:var(–color-content-primary,#121212);border:1px solid var(–color-content-primary,#121212);}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-161d8zr{width:30px;margin-bottom:15px;}}.css-tjtq43{line-height:25px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-tjtq43{line-height:24px;}}.css-x1k33h{font-family:nyt-cheltenham;font-size:19px;font-weight:700;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs{font-size:17px;font-weight:300;line-height:25px;}.css-ok2gjs a{font-weight:500;color:var(–color-content-secondary,#363636);}.css-1c013uz{margin-top:18px;margin-bottom:22px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz{font-size:14px;margin-top:15px;margin-bottom:20px;}}.css-1c013uz a{color:var(–color-signal-editorial,#326891);-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;font-weight:500;font-size:16px;}@media only screen and (max-width:480px){.css-1c013uz a{font-size:13px;}}.css-1c013uz a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}How Times reporters cover politics. We rely on our journalists to be independent observers. So while Times staff members may vote, they are not allowed to endorse or campaign for candidates or political causes. This includes participating in marches or rallies in support of a movement or giving money to, or raising money for, any political candidate or election cause.Learn more about our process.Mr. Youngkin’s campaign logo appeared on both pages, which included an official email address associated with the Republican Party of Virginia for Mr. Brody.“Mr. Brody was employed by the party as a door-knocker for one month last fall,” Ellie Sorensen, a state G.O.P. spokeswoman, said in an email on Monday. “He has not been employed by the Republican Party of Virginia for over a year.”Ms. Sorensen did not comment further about the charges against Mr. Brody or what had led to the end of his employment with the party.The Fairfax Republicans did not respond to multiple requests for comment.According to a criminal affidavit, Mr. Brody recorded and photographed senators’ desks during the Capitol attack, in which he wore a neck gaiter with an American flag pattern. Later, he “assisted another rioter in using a metal barricade against a Capitol Police officer, knocking the officer back as he attempted to secure the north door,” an F.B.I. agent said in the affidavit.Federal investigators said Mr. Brody had previously met four other men who were recently charged in the attack at an event held by America First, whose followers are known as Groypers. The movement’s leader, Nicholas J. Fuentes, a white supremacist who has been denounced by conservative organizations as a Holocaust denier and a racist, was issued a subpoena by the congressional committee investigating the Jan. 6 attack.In one photograph that a group of Sedition Hunters said it had obtained of Mr. Brody, a young political canvasser holds a campaign sign for Mr. Youngkin. The group contrasted that image with other postings it said were from Mr. Brody’s social media accounts, some of which showed Nazi symbols and diatribes against women.Luke Broadwater More