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      Chris Christie Drops Out of 2024 Presidential Race

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      Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey suspended his presidential campaign on Wednesday, but he undermined his effort to stop Donald J. Trump when he sweepingly dismissed his Republican rivals during a hot-mic moment.Minutes before his announcement in Windham, N.H., Mr. Christie could be heard on the event’s livestream, saying, “She’s going to get smoked, and you and I both know it,” in a reference to Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor. “She’s not up to this.” He added of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, “DeSantis called me, petrified.”Mr. Trump immediately seized on the remarks, writing on Truth Social that Mr. Christie’s comments about Ms. Haley, who appears to be the most significant obstacle to a Trump victory in New Hampshire, were a “very truthful statement.”In his speech, Mr. Christie did not endorse any of his rivals, nor did he address their prospects against Mr. Trump, dashing the hopes of Republican moderates that his exit would unify remaining members of the party who oppose Mr. Trump.In fact, Mr. Christie denounced his opponents’ long-running public deference to the former president, and offered no positive remarks about their candidacies.“I would rather lose by telling the truth than lie in order to win,” he said. “And I feel no differently today because this is a fight for the soul of our party and the soul of our country.”His departure, which came after mounting pressure from within his party, effectively ends a phase of the Republican presidential contest, removing from the field its most aggressive Trump critic. He was the only prominent contender who declared that Mr. Trump was unfit for office — an argument that all but doomed his candidacy from the start.Nonetheless, Mr. Christie used the final moments of his campaign to unleash one last extended criticism of Mr. Trump, eviscerating his policies, lamenting the direction in which he has taken the country and asserting that he did not have the nation’s best interests at heart.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey was caught on a hot mic saying that a Republican presidential rival was “not up to this,” presumably referring to former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina.“Imagine just for a moment if 9/11 had happened with Donald Trump behind the desk,” Mr. Christie said. “The first thing he would have done was run to the bunker to protect himself. He would have put himself first, before this country.”His speech doubled as a dark warning for a party — and a country — that the former governor portrayed as veering dangerously off course, criticizing “the hate and the division and the selfishness of what our party has become under Donald Trump.”Mr. Christie also acknowledged regret for his actions after Mr. Trump defeated him in the 2016 primary race. Soon afterward, Mr. Christie shocked the political establishment by endorsing Mr. Trump, becoming the first significant former candidate to back him as his march to the nomination picked up pace.“For all the people who have been in this race, who have put their own personal ambition ahead of what’s right, they will ultimately have to answer the same questions that I had to answer after my decision in 2016,” he said. “Those questions don’t ever leave. In fact, they’re really stubborn. They stay.”Despite Mr. Christie’s withering criticisms of his rivals, his decision could turn the primary election in New Hampshire on Jan. 23 into a two-person race between Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley. Her positions on foreign policy, national security and the rule of law broadly overlap with Mr. Christie’s, and she will hope to consolidate never-Trump Republicans and independents behind her.After Mr. Christie’s speech, Ms. Haley praised him as “a friend for many years,” commending him in a statement “on a hard-fought campaign” but making no reference to the hot-mic comments. “I will fight to earn every vote,” she said.On Wednesday, Mr. DeSantis had called Mr. Christie to express his appreciation for his role in the contest, according to two people with knowledge of the call. During their conversation, Mr. Christie mocked Ms. Haley and said she was not up to the task, the people said.Mr. DeSantis wrote on social media on Wednesday, “I agree with Christie that Nikki Haley is ‘going to get smoked.’”Recent polls have shown Ms. Haley narrowing the gap against Mr. Trump in New Hampshire, and her backing combined with Mr. Christie’s support has sometimes equaled or bettered the former president’s. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday found Mr. Trump with 39 percent support, Ms. Haley with 32 percent and Mr. Christie with 12 percent.Mr. Christie, a former United States attorney, built his candidacy around a prosecutorial argument about his domineering rival’s unsuitability for office. He steadfastly refused to water down his denunciations of Mr. Trump, a onetime ally turned bitter antagonist, even as most of his rivals labored to find a middle ground of praise and subtle contrasts.Mr. Christie and wife Mary Pat Christie hugged supporters after his announcement on Wednesday.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThat bold stance, and Republican voters’ lack of tolerance for it, left Mr. Christie trailing far behind in polls and fund-raising, managing to grab a foothold only in independent-minded New Hampshire. Yet the former governor regularly found himself in the shadow of Ms. Haley in the Granite State during the closing months of the campaign, with Gov. Chris Sununu endorsing Ms. Haley in December and later calling on Mr. Christie to withdraw from the race.For weeks, Mr. Christie rebuffed any suggestion that he should drop out, stressing the argument that his role as Mr. Trump’s chief critic in a dwindling Republican field was vital.As recently as Tuesday, he spoke at length about his reasons for forging ahead.“Let’s say I dropped out of the race right now, and I supported Nikki Haley,” he said. “And then three months from now, four months from now, we get ready to go to the convention. She comes out and is his vice president. What would it look like? What will all the people who supported her at my behest look like when she’s up on a stage in Milwaukee with her hands up like this with Donald Trump?”Mr. Christie’s familiarity with the former president gave him endless ammunition for attacks. He mocked Mr. Trump’s taste for well-done hamburgers and his love of cable news. He called attention to Mr. Trump’s criminal indictments, even as other Republican candidates sought to support the former president through his legal woes.But despite this barrage, Mr. Christie’s condemnation of Mr. Trump never took hold. He made a cringeworthy attempt to nickname his rival “Donald Duck” over Mr. Trump’s ducking of the primary debates. He was drowned out with resounding boos during the first debate when he tried to criticize Mr. Trump.In an attempt to show both expertise in foreign policy and a fearlessness to lead, Mr. Christie embarked on trips to conflict zones in Ukraine and Israel. He vividly recounted atrocities he had learned about in each place to buttress his aggressive support of those countries, though neither overseas venture broke through with voters.As he campaigned, Mr. Christie became more moderate than he had been in the past, either admitting to mistakes like endorsing Mr. Trump or evolving on issues such as same-sex marriage. “I was wrong,” Mr. Christie said of his opposition to such marriages at an event in New Hampshire last month. He peppered his stump speeches with references to former President George W. Bush, hardly a popular figure with today’s Republican base.Betting his entire campaign on New Hampshire, Mr. Christie argued in an interview with The New York Times in September that “once Donald Trump loses in one place, that entire rotted building will crumble.” He held dozens of town halls and other events across the small state, building modest traction and rising in polls, though he never came within striking distance of Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie’s allied super PAC dumped all of its advertising budget — $5.1 million as of Wednesday, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm — into the state.Some of Mr. Christie’s supporters expressed disappointment after his event on Wednesday. Toni Pappas, a Hillsborough County commissioner from Manchester, N.H., was one of them, but said, “I think he did something very noble and patriotic.”Tom Barton, a self-described libertarian from Washington, N.H., who planned to vote for Mr. Christie, said he could not see himself supporting another Republican. “They don’t have the courage to tell the truth about Trump,” he said.Still, most Republican voters had remained firmly opposed to Mr. Christie, who trudged on without changing his approach. If anything, his resolve to attack the former president increased.“The future of this country is going to be determined here,” Mr. Christie told a crowd at a New Hampshire brewery in September, clutching an I.P.A. It was a warning he would issue at nearly every campaign stop. “If Donald Trump wins here, he will be our nominee. Everything that happens after that is going to be on our party and on our country. It’s up to you.”Shane Goldmacher More

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      Trump Has Ushered in the Age of the ‘Great Misalignment’

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      The coming election will be held at a time of insoluble cultural and racial conflict; a two-tier economy, one growing, the other stagnant; a time of inequality and economic immobility; a divided electorate based on educational attainment — taken together, a toxic combination pushing the country into two belligerent camps.I wrote to a range of scholars, asking whether the nation has reached a point of no return.The responses varied widely, but the level of shared pessimism was striking.Richard Haass, president emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations and a former director of policy planning at the State Department, responded, “So is the U.S. at a critical juncture? And is this juncture qualitatively different from previous difficult moments in our history?”His answer to his own question: “I lean toward yes, as one of the comparative advantages of this democracy has been its ability to reform itself and correct mistakes, and our ability to do so now is much less certain.”What worries Haass most isthe decline in a common American identity. Americans lead increasingly separate and different lives. From “out of many one” no longer applies. This is truly dangerous as this is a country founded on an idea (rather than class or demographic homogeneity), and that idea is no longer agreed on, much less widely held. I am no longer confident there is the necessary desire and ability to make this country succeed. As a result, I cannot rule out continued paralysis and dysfunction at best and widespread political violence or even dissolution at worst.In an email, Pippa Norris, a political scientist at Harvard’s Kennedy School, described the complex interplay of cultural and economic upheavals and the growing inability of politics to give voice to disparate interests as key factors driving contemporary dysfunction.Some developments, Norris wrote,are widely documented and not in dispute, notably the decades-long erosion of blue collar (primarily masculine) work and pay in agriculture, extractive and manufacturing industries, especially in unionized and skilled sectors which employed high school graduates, and the massive expansion of opportunities in professional and managerial careers in finance, technology and the service sector, in the private as well as in the nonprofit and public sectors, rewarding highly educated and more geographically mobile women and men living in urban and suburban areas.These developments have, in turn,been accompanied with generational shifts in cultural values moving societies, and in a lagged process, in the mainstream policy agenda, gradually in a more liberal direction on a wide range of moral issues, as polls show, such as attitudes toward marriage and the family, sexuality and gender, race and ethnicity, environmentalism, migration, and cosmopolitanism, as well as long-term processes of secularization and the erosion of religiosity.What kinds of political systems, Norris asked, are most vulnerable to democratic backsliding when voters become polarized? Answer: two-party systems like the one operating in the United States.In this country, Norris argued,Backsliding is strengthened as the political system struggles to provide outlets for alternative contenders reflecting the new issue agenda on the liberal-left and conservative-right. The longer this continues, the more the process raises the stakes in plurality elections and reinforces “us-them” intolerance among winners and especially losers, who increasingly come to reject the legitimacy of the rules of the game where they feel that the deck is consistently stacked against them.All of which lays the groundwork for the acceptance of false claims.Norris continued:The most plausible misinformation is based on something which is actually true, hence the “great replacement theory” among evangelicals is not simply “made up” myths; given patterns of secularization, there is indeed a decline in the religious population in America. Similarly for Republicans, deeply held beliefs that, for example, they are silenced since their values are no longer reflected in “mainstream” media or the culture of the Ivy Leagues are, indeed, at least in part, based on well-grounded truths. Hence the MAGA grass roots takeover of the old country club G.O.P. and authoritarian challenges to liberal democratic norms.These destructive forces gain strength in the United States, in Norris’s view,Where there is a two-party system despite an increasingly diverse plural society and culture, where multidimensional ideological polarization has grown within parties and the electorate, and where there are no realistic opportunities for multiparty competition which would serve as a “pressure valve” outlet for cultural diversity, as is common throughout Europe.Jack Goldstone, a professor of public policy at George Mason University, sees other factors driving intensified conflict. In an email, he wrote:If the Democrats manage to win another term and can control the Congress as well as the White House after 2024, they may make an even larger turn in the direction of F.D.R.-style government support for general welfare. But if the G.O.P. wins in 2024, or even wins enough to paralyze government and sow further doubts about the legitimacy of our government and institutions, then we drift steadily toward Argentina-style populism, and neither American democracy nor American prosperity will ever be the same again.Why is the country in this fragile condition? Goldstone argued that one set of data points sums most of it up:From the late 1940s to the mid-1970s, output and wages moved together. But slowly from the mid-1970s, and then rapidly from the 1980s, they diverged. By 2023, we’ve had 40 years in which the output of the economy has grown enormously, with output per worker hour growing by 126 percent, while compensation per worker has grown only 27 percent.In short, Goldstone continued, “a majority of Americans today are more pressured to get life’s necessities, more unsure of their future, and find it far more difficult to find avenues to get ahead. No wonder they are fed up with politics ‘as usual,’ think the system is rigged against them, and just want someone to make things more secure.”Isabel Sawhill, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in an email that pessimism has become endemic in some quarters: “I find that many of my friends, relatives and colleagues are equally concerned about the future of the country. The worst part of this is that we feel quite helpless — unable to find ways to improve matters.”That the leaders of one of our two major political parties “would support a corrupt, self-interested, and deranged former president,” Sawhill continued, “is certainly part of the problem but even more concerning is the fact that a majority of the public currently says they would vote for him in 2024.”The biggest challenge, she wrote, “is what I have called ‘the great misalignment’ between the institutions we have and those we need to deal with most of these problems.”The framers of the Constitution, she wrote:understood human frailties and passions. But they thought they had designed a set of institutions that could weather the storms. They also assumed a nation in which civic virtue had been instilled in people by families, schools or faith-based congregations. Over the coming year, those assumptions will be sorely tested.The difficulties of institutions in prevailing under such concerted duress is becoming increasingly apparent.Greg Conti, a political scientist at Princeton, in an essay published in December in Compact magazine, “The Rise of the Sectarian University,” describes the erosion of national support for the mediating role of key institutions:The real peril to elite higher education, then, isn’t that these places will be financially ruined, nor that they will be effectively interfered with in their internal operations by hostile conservatives. It is, instead, that their position in American society will come to resemble that of The New York Times or of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Which is to say that they will remain rich and powerful, and they will continue to have many bright and competent people working within their ambit. And yet their authority will grow more brittle and their appeal more sectarian.If universities continue to operate as they have been doing, a similar fate will be their destination. From being de facto national institutions, a valued part of our shared patrimony, pursuing one of the essential purposes of a great modern society, they are coming to be seen as the instruments of a sect. Public regard for higher education was falling across the ideological spectrum even before the events of this autumn. Without a course correction, the silent majority of Americans will be as likely to put any stock in the research of an Ivy League professor as they are to get the next booster, even as Ivy League credentials receive great deference within an increasingly inward-looking portion of our privileged classes.Steven Pinker, a professor of psychology at Harvard and the author of “Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress,” is the most optimistic — or, perhaps, the least pessimistic — of those I contacted for this column. He replied by email to my query:One can always think one is in an unprecedented crisis by listing the worst things happening in the country at the time. But this is a non-random sample, and selecting the worst developments in a given year will always make it seem as if a catastrophe is imminent. It’s good to remember the apparently existential crises of decades that you and I lived through, including:the 1960s, with the assassination of three of the country’s most beloved figures, including the president; urban riots in which dozens of people were killed and neighborhoods burned in a single night; an unpopular war that killed 10 times as many Americans as died in Iraq and Afghanistan; fears of annihilation in an all-out nuclear war; a generation that rejected the reigning social and sexual mores, many of whom called for a violent Communist or anarchist revolution; a segregationist third-party candidate who won five states.the 1970s, with five terrorist bombings a day in many years; the resignations of both the vice president and the president; double-digit inflation and unemployment; two energy crises that were thought might end industrial civilization; “America Held Hostage” in Iran; a sitting president almost unseated by his own party; etc.the 1980s, with violent crime and homelessness reaching all-time highs; new fears of nuclear escalation; a crack cocaine crisis.the 2000s, with fears of weekly 9/11-scale attacks, or worse, attacks with chemical, biological and nuclear weapons; plans for the surveillance of the entire American population; widespread ridicule and hatred of a president who led the country into two disastrous wars.Pinker has repeatedly made his case in recent days on the X platform, posting “177 Ways the World Got Better in 2023” on Jan. 2, “From David Byrne’s Reasons to Be Cheerful” on the same day and “No, 2023 Wasn’t All Bad, and Here Are 23 Reasons Why Not” on Jan. 4.Pinker, however, is an outlier.Larry Kramer, who just retired as president of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and is set to serve as president of the London School of Economics, wrote in an email that several major contemporary trends are negative, including:(1) Fragmentation of media, coupled with loss of standards, disappearance of local media, and degradation of journalistic norms; (2) weakening of parties through well-meaning but misguided regulation (e.g., campaign finance) that shifted control from professionals to private, wealthy ideologues; (3) policy regimes that wildly exacerbated wealth inequality and left overwhelming numbers of Americans feeling worse off, reducing life expectancy, and disabling government from addressing people’s needs; (4) a shift in the left and the right to identity politics that reduces people to their race, gender, and political ideology — sharpening the sense of differences by minimizing what we share with each other and so turning a shared political community with disagreements into warring camps of enemies.A number of those I contacted cited inequality and downward mobility as key factors undermining faith in democratic governance.Allen Matusow, a historian at Rice and the author of “The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s,” wrote by email that he belongs “to the school that believes that our democracy has not been in such peril since the Civil War, and the easy explanation is Trump. But the real question is why such a despicable demagogue commands the support of so many.”Matusow specifically cited “income inequality and “the cultural resentments of those left behind.”Trump’s contribution “to the left-behind,” Matusow wrote,is license to focus its resentments on minorities and to make the expressions of prejudice acceptable. Since WW II we have had two other notable populist demagogues. Both exploited a moment to attack elites, though neither was a threat to win the presidency. Joe McCarthy was careful not to stir up prejudices against racial and ethnic minorities, and for all his faults, George Wallace was not a serial liar. Trump is in a class all by himself.Bruce Cain, a political scientist at Stanford, shares Matusow’s concerns over the detrimental impact of inequality. Cain emailed me to say:The recent growing dissatisfaction with democracy is a reminder that people judge the fairness of their political system by how they are doing in it. Downward mobility and the loss of political and social status leads to alienation from democratic norms and distrust in government. We believe that democracy is a better form of government because it will produce better policies by being accountable to the people. But when it does not perform well, democratic legitimacy erodes across the political spectrum.These factors, Cain continued, work in tandem withsocial and political instability due to globalization, automation, and social media. Much has changed in recent decades such as the country’s more diverse racial and ethnic composition, job opportunities more strongly defined along education lines, and expanded gender roles. MAGA anger and anxiety about replacement stems from the simultaneous loss of social status, economic opportunity, and political power due to these significant economic, social and demographic trends.Dissension between Democrats and Republicans, Cain argued, feeds a vicious circle:The progressive left wants changes to happen more quickly, which only feeds right-wing fears and fervor. The cycle of political tension continues to build. Trump stirs the pot, but the tensions have been building for decades.In the short term, Cain is not optimistic:We can’t have effective government until we have sufficient consensus, and we can’t have consensus unless the people in government aim for effective policy rather than notoriety and a media career. Barring one party running the table and winning trifecta control, we will wallow in a polarized, divided government for another term or two. That is the design of the Madisonian system: stay in neutral until we know where we want to go.Perhaps the most trenchant comment I received was from Theda Skocpol, a professor of government and sociology at Harvard, who replied to my inquiry at the height of the controversy over the former Harvard president Claudine Gay:I have thought for some time that America was suffering multiple elite-driven institutional breakdowns across the board, opening the door to a national and global maelstrom. But now I find myself so overwhelmingly distressed by it all, including the collapse of core values at my own university, that I cannot write coherently about it.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Split Screen in Iowa: Haley-DeSantis Debate vs. Trump Town Hall

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      The 2024 campaigns took a snow day on Tuesday in Iowa, with time ticking down on the chance to make a final impression with voters before the Republicans’ caucuses on Monday night.With most events called off for snowstorms, attention turned to former President Donald J. Trump, who appeared in court in Washington to argue that he had total immunity from criminal prosecution for actions he took as president. Three judges at a federal appeals court expressed deep skepticism toward that argument.As Iowans dig out from the snow on Wednesday, the campaigns will head back out on the trail.Former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, after appearing at town-hall events on separate days earlier in the week, will face off directly on Wednesday night in a debate to be broadcast by CNN. The front-runner, Mr. Trump, has declined to participate, as he has for debates throughout the nomination contest.But Mr. Trump is hoping to derail his rivals’ appearance — a tactic he has also repeatedly employed. He will appear at a Fox News town-hall event that will play out simultaneously with the CNN debate — seeking to disrupt one of the last opportunities Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley have to win over voters with just five days until Caucus Day.Mr. Trump’s absences from the campaign trail — he is also scheduled to return to court on Thursday, this time for a civil fraud trial in New York — could give his rivals a window to chip away at his huge polling lead in Iowa.Little has worked so far, and he is 30 points ahead of the competition in polls in Iowa, with Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley virtually tied for a distant second place. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, who did not qualify for the CNN debate, has been campaigning furiously but remains stuck in a distant fourth place. In New Hampshire, where the campaign will move after Monday, new polls show a narrowing race, with Ms. Haley gaining support.In other newsMr. Ramaswamy has recently tried to position himself as more electable than Mr. Trump while still impassionately defending the former president in the face of his criminal prosecutions.Mr. Trump said in an interview on Monday that he believed that the economy would crash soon, adding that he hoped it would happen in the next year so President Biden would be blamed for it.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, who is not campaigning in Iowa and instead is staking his candidacy on New Hampshire, said at a town-hall event in the state that he would not endorse Ms. Haley unless she removed herself from potential consideration as Mr. Trump’s running mate. Mr. Christie is facing pressure to drop out of the race to shore up support for Ms. Haley as a stronger anti-Trump candidate.Reporting was contributed by More

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      Setting the Stage for Iowa: ‘Trump Will Probably be Over 50 Percent’

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      Patrick Healy and The Republican caucuses in Iowa are just five days away, marking the official start of the 2024 presidential election season. To kick-start Opinion Audio’s coverage, Patrick Healy, the deputy editor of Times Opinion, and the Opinion editor Katherine Miller get together to discuss their expectations for Nikki Haley and Ron DeSantis, where they think the G.O.P. is headed and Donald Trump’s continued dominance. Stay tuned for more on-the-ground analysis from “The Opinions” in the coming weeks.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesThe 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, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin, Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Engineering by Issac Jones with mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. More

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      For Anti-Trump Republicans, It All Might Come Down to New Hampshire

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      With the Iowa caucuses likely to be a battle for second place, the next nominating state appears to offer the best chance of an upset defeat of Donald Trump.With his usual bluntness, Chris Christie used a recent event in New Hampshire to lay out why he thought the state’s primary election was more important than the Iowa caucuses — and what he saw as its tremendous stakes.“It’s pretty clear that the caucus system is going to renominate the former president, but that’s not what happens here in New Hampshire,” Mr. Christie, the former governor of New Jersey, said at a diner in Amherst, N.H. “It seems to me that the people from the Live Free or Die State would be the last people who would want to nominate someone who’s going to be a dictator.”As former President Donald J. Trump’s stranglehold on Iowa Republicans shows no sign of lessening, New Hampshire has become the most critical state for Nikki Haley, Mr. Christie and the small, increasingly desperate contingent of the Republican Party that wants to cast aside Mr. Trump.It is the only state where polling shows Ms. Haley within striking distance of the former president, and the only place where Mr. Christie has gained any sort of foothold. While Iowa’s caucuses on Monday are likely to be a slugfest for second place, New Hampshire’s primary on Jan. 23 has an outside chance of serving up an upset victory for Ms. Haley.Such an outcome would be the first sign of vulnerability for Mr. Trump and could serve as electoral rocket fuel for Ms. Haley, the former governor of South Carolina. But a drubbing for her in New Hampshire would probably end her pitch as a viable alternative to Mr. Trump. Mr. Christie, for his part, has already said he will drop out if he does not have a strong showing there.The state has large numbers of independent-minded voters and a penchant for delivering surprises, reinvigorating the flagging bids of presidential candidates including Bill Clinton in 1992 and John McCain in 2008. Not since 1976 has a Republican contender in an open, competitive primary race won Iowa and gone on to carry New Hampshire as well.“The race will tighten in the last few weeks,” said Chris Ager, the chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party. “We’re one week after Iowa, so a lot of people just wait until Iowa happens. And you don’t have to decide early here,” he added, “because the candidates are going to be here.”He noted that Mr. Trump was “essentially the incumbent” in the race, but that Ms. Haley and others had strong support in the state. “You just never know what’s going to happen,” Mr. Ager said.As she tries to make the race a two-person contest, Ms. Haley has started to criticize Mr. Trump more.Joseph Prezioso/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesPolls in New Hampshire have offered little clarity about just how competitive the race might be. A CNN/University of New Hampshire poll released Tuesday found Mr. Trump leading Ms. Haley, 39 percent to 32 percent — but a USA Today/Boston Globe/Suffolk University poll released the same day showed him up 46 percent to 26 percent. Mr. Christie drew 12 percent support in both polls.New Hampshire’s pivotal position has resulted in a windfall of advertising dollars and a blizzard of campaigning. Nearly $55 million worth of ads has blanketed the airwaves in the past six months, according to AdImpact, a media tracking firm. Roughly 40 percent of that has come from Ms. Haley and the super PAC backing her, SFA Fund Inc.Indeed, while Ms. Haley has recently spent most of her time in Iowa, her campaign has poured resources into New Hampshire, successfully courting two powerful new allies in the state: the popular governor, Chris Sununu, and the vast political network run by Americans for Prosperity Action, the conservative group backed by the megadonor Koch family.As she tries to make the race a two-person contest, Ms. Haley has started to criticize Mr. Trump more.“Chaos follows him,” she said last week in the coastal town of Rye. “And we can’t be a country in disarray and a world on fire and go through four more years of chaos, because we won’t survive it. You don’t fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos.”Americans for Prosperity Action, which says it has never before endorsed a candidate in a presidential primary race, has dispatched dozens of canvassers and spent millions on ads and mailers for Ms. Haley in the state. Greg Moore, the group’s New Hampshire state director, said he expected more than 100 staff members to fly into New Hampshire after the Iowa caucuses for an all-out blitz.Mr. Moore said that Ms. Haley’s argument about being the most electable Republican — several polls show her beating President Biden in a general election — resonated particularly in New Hampshire, which Mr. Trump lost in both the 2016 and 2020 general elections.That pitch was evident as the group fanned out across the state this week. On Monday morning, Justin Wilson, one of the organization’s grass-roots engagement directors, plodded through more than a foot of fresh snow in the upscale neighborhoods of north Manchester to knock on doors in support of Ms. Haley.One voter, who would give his name only as Kevin, paused while shoveling his driveway and explained why he was torn between Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump.“It’s about electability when it comes to the general election,” Kevin said, saying he wanted a candidate who could beat Mr. Biden. Mr. Wilson agreed, trying to nudge him toward Ms. Haley by noting that she was “less controversial” than Mr. Trump.Mr. Moore said his group’s internal polling had found that a little more than a third of the people who say they are supporting Mr. Trump are open to considering another candidate.“Particularly as we’re talking about people who are less and less engaged, in some cases they’re supporting President Trump because that’s the guy they know,” Mr. Moore said. “And it’s up to these other campaigns to build that momentum and that name ID that really helps them change voters’ minds.”Internal polling from Americans for Prosperity Action, conducted last month, found Mr. Trump with a lead of 12 percentage points over Ms. Haley and the rest of the field. But in a two-person, head-to-head matchup, the poll showed them statistically tied.Calls for Mr. Christie to drop out of the race began to intensify in December, mostly from Republicans hoping to stop Mr. Trump. On New Year’s Eve, Mr. Sununu said the Christie campaign was “at an absolute dead end” and suggested that he should drop out.Mr. Christie has defiantly rejected that idea, and has begun drawing starker contrasts with Ms. Haley. In Amherst, he criticized her for saying that she would pardon Mr. Trump if he were convicted of a crime and that she would still vote for him if he were the nominee. In Keene, he accused her of changing her stance on issues like abortion to keep her future options open.“She doesn’t want to offend people who are willing to vote for Trump, and not even that she thinks those people will vote for her this time,” Mr. Christie said. “She’s worried about next time.”Mr. Christie has held more than 60 events so far in New Hampshire, with 150 volunteers working on his long-shot effort.Mr. Christie has rejected calls to drop out of the race, and has stepped up his criticisms of Ms. Haley.Sophie Park for The New York TimesThe Trump campaign, believing that landslide victories in both Iowa and New Hampshire would essentially wrap up the nomination, has shifted to almost exclusively attacking Ms. Haley in New Hampshire.This month, the Trump campaign released an ad attacking Ms. Haley for criticizing his 2015 plan to ban immigrants from predominantly Muslim countries. (As a member of the Trump administration, she defended the policy when it was enacted.)MAGA Inc., a super PAC supporting Mr. Trump, has attacked Ms. Haley over her support for raising the gas tax when she was governor of South Carolina in 2015, though she also called for a corresponding income tax cut. The group has spent more than $2.5 million on the ad, running it exclusively in New Hampshire. Another ad from the group focuses on immigration. An official from the super PAC said that, in total, it would spend $1.3 million weekly through Primary Day.The negative advertising appears to be reaching some voters. Pete McGuire, 54, drove about 30 minutes to see Mr. Christie at the diner in Amherst. He said he was actively looking for a Trump alternative and was considering Mr. Christie over Ms. Haley.“You see all these commercials about her vote for the gas tax, saying, We’re never doing the gas tax, never! And then the next one she’s saying, Let’s do the gas tax,” Mr. McGuire said. “So she kind of shot herself in the foot.”From a headquarters in downtown Manchester far larger than the Trump campaign’s 2016 operation, the former president’s team has recruited more than 200 city or town captains and gathered more than 60 endorsements in the state. On Sunday, volunteers traipsed through the snowstorm to knock on doors.At his event in Amherst, Mr. Christie nodded to what seem to be the feelings of many American voters in 2024.“If you’re looking for the perfect candidate, believe me,” he said, “you’re going to be looking forever.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Resistance to Trump Is Not Futile

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      The outcome of the 2016 presidential election was such a shocking event that for people of a certain cast of mind, Donald Trump is less a politician than a force of history.To this class of observer, Trump is something like the world spirit made flesh, where the “world spirit” is a global tide of reactionary populism. He may not have ushered in the furious effort to defend existing hierarchies of status and personhood, but he seems to represent its essential qualities, from the farcical incompetence that often undermines its grand intentions to the unrelenting, sometimes violent intensity that has sustained a forward march through failure back toward power.The upshot of this idea of Trump as a kind of incarnation is that resistance is futile. You can defeat him at the ballot box, you can put him at the mercy of the criminal-legal system, you can even disqualify him under the Constitution, but the spirit endures. Trump or not, goes the argument, we live in an age of grass-roots reaction. Trump is just an avatar. His followers — the forgotten, if not exactly silent, remnant of the nation’s old majority — will find another something.It is hard not to be at least a little persuaded by this assessment of the state of things, even more so if you’re inclined to the fatalism that pervades much of American life at this particular time.But let’s step back for a moment. Before we embrace this almost baroque conception of the former president, let’s take a full picture of the past eight years in American politics. Let’s grab a loupe and look at the details. What do we see? Not inexorable forces at work, but chance events and contingent choices.In other words, it is true that Trump was produced by (and took advantage of) a particular set of social forces within the Republican Party and outside it. It is true that those forces exist with or without Trump. But Trump, himself, was not inevitable.If Republican elites had coalesced around a single candidate in the early days of the 2016 presidential race, they might have derailed Trump before he had a chance to pick up steam. If Republicans had chosen, in the aftermath of the “Access Hollywood” videotape, to fully reject his presence in American politics, he might have flopped and floundered in the November election. If Hillary Clinton had won just a few more votes in a few more states — a combined 77,744 in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin — Trump would have never won the White House.It’s not that the reactionary populism that fueled Trump’s campaign would have completely dissipated. But the character of its politics might have been very different without Trump in the nation’s highest office to lead and give shape to the movement. As it stands, he had that power and stature, and there is now a reason the most MAGA-minded Republican politicians — or those with aspirations to lead Trump’s Republican Party — work tirelessly to mimic and recapitulate the former president’s cruelty, corruption and contempt for constitutional government.We saw this with Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who went so far as to mimic Trump’s movements and posture, and we’re seeing it with Representative Elise Stefanik, an eager and unapologetic demagogue last seen, in a recent interview, defending Jan. 6 insurrectionists and refusing to commit to certifying a Trump election loss.If nothing else, it is difficult to imagine another Republican politician who would have inspired the same cult of personality as the one that has enveloped Trump during his years on the national stage. It’s no accident that to ensure loyalty or force compliance, followers of the former president have resorted to intimidation and death threats.If Trump is in a dynamic relationship with the social forces that produced him — if he is both product and producer — then it stands to reason that his absence from the scene, even now, would have some effect on the way those forces express themselves.Trump still leads the field for the Republican presidential nomination. But imagine if he loses. Imagine that he is, somehow, rejected by a majority of Republican voters. Does the character of American-style reactionary populism remain the same, or does it — along with the politicians who wield it — adjust to fit the new political environment? Will the next crop of Republican politicians have the force of personality to mold their supporters into a weapon to use against the constitutional order, or will they — with Trump’s persistent failure in mind — accept the basics of democratic society?One of the arguments against the effort to disqualify Trump from the presidency under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment is that it won’t save American democracy to remove him from the ballot. That’s true enough — the problems with American democracy run deeper than one man — but it’s also beside the point.If the character of a political movement is forged through contingency — the circumstances of its birth, the context of its growth, the personalities of its leadership — then it matters who sits at the top.The point, then, is that it would be better to face the challenges to American democracy without a constitutional arsonist at the helm of one of our two major political parties. A world in which Trump cannot hold office is not necessarily a normal one, but it is one where the danger is a little less acute.Trump, of course, will not be removed from the ballot. No Supreme Court, and certainly not ours, would allow this effort to get that far. The only way to move past Trump will be, once again, to beat him at the ballot box.Nonetheless, it is still worth the effort to say what is true: that our constitutional system, however flawed, is worth defending; that Trump is a clear and present threat to that system; and that we should use every legitimate tool at our disposal to keep him away from — and out of — power.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      To Win Iowa, Trump Turns to Allies Like Marjorie Taylor Greene

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      With the former president busy defending himself in court from 91 felony charges, his campaign has deployed high-profile conservatives to help fill the gaps in Iowa.Less than a week before Iowans decide whether to slingshot Donald J. Trump toward another presidential nomination, his schedule looks like this: Go to Washington for an appeals court hearing on Tuesday. Pop into Iowa for a Fox News town-hall event on Wednesday — and then make an expected return to court on Thursday, this time in New York.He is not scheduled to hold another rally in Iowa until Saturday, two days before the caucuses.As Mr. Trump flits between the presidential trail and the courtroom, his campaign has deployed a web of high-profile conservative allies to help fill the gaps and make his case across the state, a strategy that the former president may be more likely to turn to this year as his legal issues keep him occupied.Over the last months, Mr. Trump’s campaign has set up smaller rallies with Republican luminaries who, among the president’s right-wing base, have achieved a kind of political celebrity.To start its efforts in January, the campaign last week held events with Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Eric Trump, one of Mr. Trump’s sons. This week, Ben Carson, Mr. Trump’s former secretary of housing and urban development, is scheduled for two appearances in eastern Iowa.Before a winter storm hit Iowa and disrupted travel, the campaign had also planned to hold events on Monday and Tuesday with Roseanne Barr, the actress and outspoken Trump supporter; Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders of Arkansas, Mr. Trump’s former press secretary; and Mike Huckabee, the former Arkansas governor who won the Iowa caucuses in 2008.Mr. Trump’s use of campaign surrogates is a notable example of an old campaign tactic. Political candidates have long leaned on prominent allies to help them, given the logistical challenges of making pitches to voters in early-voting states that hold closely scheduled contests.“It’s a way to draw interest from caucusgoers and give them the opportunity to hear from other people,” said Jimmy Centers, a Republican strategist in Iowa who is unaligned in the race. “And it can be a draw in some cases to maybe get people out.”On Monday, while Gov. Ron DeSantis was in Florida attending to his day job, his wife, Casey, and Representative Chip Roy of Texas, a hard-right lawmaker, were traveling through southeastern Iowa at events held by Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting the DeSantis campaign.Other candidates were bringing well-known figures who have endorsed them to stump at their events. Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, appeared over the weekend with Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire. The biotech entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy is expected to campaign later in the week with the right-wing commentator Candace Owens and the YouTube star and boxer Jake Paul.But as a former president who enjoys broad support, Mr. Trump is able to draw on a far deeper roster of conservative stars. Mr. Centers said Mr. Trump’s slate of surrogates tended to be people who were “more top of mind” for likely Republican caucusgoers.Many of Mr. Trump’s surrogates are eager to align themselves with his supporters or to display their loyalty to Mr. Trump. In some cases, they may be positioning themselves for potential positions in a future Trump cabinet. (Ms. Noem has said she would consider being Mr. Trump’s running mate.)And surrogates like Ms. Noem, Ms. Greene and Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, who held an event in Cedar Rapids last month, are themselves big draws for audiences.Gov. Kristi Noem of South Dakota, whose state borders Iowa, has also been promoting Mr. Trump’s candidacy before the caucuses.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesBrian Duckett, 59, who attended Mr. Gaetz’s event, said he had been moved by the push from the campaign and the Florida congressman for Mr. Trump’s supporters to play a more active role in the caucuses.“I’ve never done that before, and I want to do it this time,” Mr. Duckett said.Last Wednesday, Ms. Noem drew hundreds of people to a 30-minute speech in Sioux City, just across the border from her home state. The same day, Mr. DeSantis himself held events nearby that were attended by just dozens.Mr. Trump’s surrogates are often able to help him appeal to specific segments of voters, speaking more directly to their concerns in a different way from Mr. Trump. The campaign hopes that this can help drive turnout and deliver Mr. Trump a decisive victory in the caucuses.Ms. Noem drew on being a wife, mother and grandmother as she shared personal stories to encourage the audience to caucus for Mr. Trump. And she mentioned her state’s proximity to Iowa to portray herself as someone who understood residents’ concerns about the prices of groceries and gasoline.“It’s dramatic for a state like Iowa,” Ms. Noem said of gas prices. “It’s dramatic for a state like my state of South Dakota, where it’s a long ways to drive anywhere.”Ms. Greene, an ultraconservative congresswoman who rose to power as a firebrand in Mr. Trump’s mold, was well positioned to address their party’s far-right flank.Speaking in Keokuk, a city at Iowa’s southeastern tip, Ms. Greene on Thursday proudly called herself a “MAGA extremist,” then railed against establishment Republicans, saying she had been “pretty let down” by them during Mr. Trump’s first term.“We were, too,” a man called out in response.“A common thing,” she agreed.The same day, Eric Trump worked a crowd of more than 150 people in Ankeny, in suburban Des Moines. He rattled off his father’s accomplishments. Then he, too, drew on his own particular advantages.“Should we call Donald Trump and see if he picks up the phone?” the younger Mr. Trump asked the audience. Moments later, the former president’s voice filled the room as his son held his phone up to the microphone.“I just want to say, I look forward to seeing you on Friday, we love you all, and I hope my son is doing a great job,” the elder Mr. Trump said.Max Anderson, 23, said at the Ankeny event that Mr. Trump’s steady stream of surrogates gave the former president’s pitch more credibility. He added that he thought the phone call reflected well on Mr. Trump’s character.“It shows that he takes care and loves his people — especially his kids,” Mr. Anderson said.Leah McBride Mensching More

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      While Defending Trump, Ramaswamy Insists He’s More Electable in the Fall

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      In northwestern Iowa on Monday, Vivek Ramaswamy addressed, unprompted, a question that has trailed him throughout his presidential bid: Why should voters choose him instead of Donald J. Trump, the former president whom he routinely and staunchly defends?Rather than breaking with Mr. Trump, who leads Mr. Ramaswamy by 50 points or more in national polls, voters who support Mr. Ramaswamy’s proposals have often recognized his alignment with Mr. Trump on numerous issues. Many suggest instead that Mr. Ramaswamy would make a strong vice president or future president.With under a week until the Iowa caucuses, and as he polls in a distant fourth place in the state, Mr. Ramaswamy has addressed those concerns without wavering in his support for Mr. Trump.“If you think they’re going to let this man get anywhere near the White House again, I want you to open your eyes,” Mr. Ramaswamy told around 20 voters in Le Mars, Iowa. (In recent weeks, he has leaned into conspiracy theories on the campaign trail.)On Monday he decried the criminal prosecutions Mr. Trump faces as “unconstitutional and disgusting” but indirectly suggested he would be more electable because the “system” would keep Mr. Trump from reaching the White House.“I’ve respected him more in this race than every other candidate because it’s the right thing to do,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “He was a good president for this country. But our movement cannot end with him.”Mr. Ramaswamy has often praised the former president and promised to pardon him, should he be convicted — earning rare praise from Mr. Trump during his campaign. But in recent months, he has tried to position himself as younger and less embattled than the former president, whom he has described as “wounded,” on the trail, and in a recent interview with NBC News and The Des Moines Register.“You’ve got the future of ‘America First’ standing right here, fresh legs to lead us to victory in this war,” he said, suggesting that he would use his knowledge of the law to go further than Mr. Trump did in enacting popular conservative policies.Elaine Tillman, 68, came into Mr. Ramaswamy’s event at the Pizza Ranch in Le Mars undecided, with plans to attend a Trump rally on Saturday. But after hearing Mr. Ramaswamy speak, she said she planned to caucus for him instead.“I liked everything he did, I just know there’ll be no peace with the Democrats going against him for the next four years,” Ms. Tillman said of Mr. Trump.But convincing everyone who came out would prove a difficult task. Shawn Nissen, a 38-year-old construction worker from Jefferson, Iowa, said he had braved the frigid weather to hear from Mr. Ramaswamy in person because he saw him as aligned with Mr. Trump — whom he plans to caucus for.“I just think he’s got to finish what he started back in 2016,” Mr. Nissen said of Mr. Trump. “But I want to hear what Vivek says because even though I’m voting for Trump this year, we’ve still got another election in four years.”As a snowstorm bore down on Iowa, Mr. Ramaswamy was one of the few candidates out on the trail on Monday afternoon, while others canceled planned events. He had four events scheduled on Monday in northwestern Iowa, where he campaigned alongside Steve King, a former congressman for the region.“If you can’t handle the snow, you’re not ready for Xi Jinping,” he told around 30 people in Sioux City. More