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      James Craig, a Republican, Enters Michigan Senate Race

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      James Craig, a former Detroit police chief, announced on Tuesday that he was running for the Senate seat in Michigan being vacated by Debbie Stabenow, a Democrat who is retiring after more than two decades in the position.Mr. Craig, 67, ran for governor of Michigan last year and was leading early Republican primary polls until he was disqualified because of forged signatures on his nominating petition.He is likely to promote his background in law enforcement as he campaigns on some of the conservative priorities that have helped propel former President Donald J. Trump.But national Republicans have privately expressed concerns about Mr. Craig’s candidacy, worrying that personal issues, including multiple bankruptcies and divorces, could prove detrimental to his campaign.The campaign arm for Senate Republicans, the National Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee, has recruited former Representative Mike Rogers, 60, to run for the seat.The Democratic Party’s best-known candidate so far is Representative Elissa Slotkin, who was elected to Congress in the blue wave of 2018 and has won re-election twice in a swing district. Her primary opponents include Hill Harper, an actor; Nasser Beydoun, a businessman; and Pamela Pugh, the president of the State Board of Education. More

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      Kevin McCarthy Surprised Us All

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      Gail Collins: I didn’t think I’d be saying this, Bret, but we’ve dodged a shutdown. It’s a stupendous moment for Kevin McCarthy. Now if he gets tossed out as House speaker by the right wing, he’ll go down in history as the guy who sacrificed his career for the common good. As opposed to the best-possible previous scenario: the boring career pol who was too scared to keep the government running.What’s your reaction?Bret Stephens: Cutting billions in funding for Ukraine was a shame, but I’m guessing the aid will be restored to Kyiv pretty soon. Otherwise, it’s a vast relief that the government will stay open. And, of course, watching someone like Matt Gaetz get politically humiliated is always pleasing.Gail: And there was Gaetz, on cue, announcing Sunday that he would try to remove McCarthy from the speakership. Lord knows it’s been a long trek, listening to the Republicans’ constant yelping about deficit spending. Is it fair to point out that the national debt rose $7.8 trillion during the Trump administration?Bret Stephens: Not fair at all, Gail. Everything that happened when Trump was president was so perfect, so beautiful.OK, I’m kidding. One of my many laments about Trump is that he spent like a sailor on land and governed like a drunk at sea. I wish this would count against him with G.O.P. primary voters, but the truth is that the average Republican isn’t all that eager to really slash government spending, even if they say they don’t like the government. I think Trump intuitively understood this, which is why attacks from Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley aren’t making a dent in Trump’s poll numbers.Which reminds me: Your thoughts on last week’s Republican presidential debate? Whom did you dislike the least?Gail: I suspect this is a setup to get me to praise your fave, Nikki Haley.Bret: Not a setup. An … invitation.Gail: And hey, I can’t argue that she wasn’t the sanest of the group. Along with Chris Christie, the Republican Republicans love to hate.Haley lightly criticized Trump’s performance as president, and after the debate was over, he called her a “birdbrain.”You know, I have this tiny hope that the New Hampshire Republican voters will exercise a little independence and give her the top primary vote and an early lift. But kinda worried Christie will be in there too, dividing the sanity caucus.Bret: A great point. Christie should get out now and throw his support behind Haley. The only reason he got in the race in the first place was to chuck spears at Trump. It hit the wrong Donald — Duck, not Trump — and now all Christie is doing is dividing the anti-Trump field. I also wish Mike Pence would recognize reality and tuck back into bed with his wife of 38 years. That would give Haley a fighting chance to further destroy Vivek Ramaswamy and replace DeSantis as the most plausible Republican alternative to Trump. But I have to admit, my hopes of Trump not being the nominee are dwindling fast.Gail: OK, New Hampshire Republicans, are you listening? Counting on you for a primary miracle.Bret: Speaking of Trump crushing his opponents, I nearly jumped out of my skin when I saw that Washington Post-ABC News poll last week, giving Trump a 10-point lead over Joe Biden in a head-to-head matchup. I realize it might be an outlier, but I don’t understand why no serious Democrat is willing to challenge Biden for the nomination. Help me out here.Gail: The poll, if accurate, is a cry of crankiness from middle-of-the-roaders who wanted a more exciting candidate. Still, the only reason for a loyal Democrat to oppose Biden’s nomination is that he’s too old. I think he’s been a darned good president. And while I do wish he had stepped aside, I’m certainly not going to have any trouble whatsoever arguing he’s the better option.This is when I get to point out that Trump is 77 and in worse physical condition than Biden. And has been saying some very weird things lately — even for him.Bret: Biden’s main problem isn’t that he’s too old. There are plenty of sharp, fit and healthy 80-year-olds. His problem is that he looks and sounds feeble. Trump may be awful and insane and nearly as old as Biden, but one thing he isn’t is low energy. And even if you think Biden is the best president since F.D.R., or Abe Lincoln for that matter, he’s got a 41.5 percent approval rating, a vice president who’s even more unpopular than he is and major political liabilities on immigration, crime and inflation. Also now Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is hinting that he’ll run as a third-party candidate in the general election, which would be on top of Biden’s Cornel West problem.Gail: Thank you for giving me a chance to howl about third-party candidates, who have no possibility of winning but every possibility of screwing up the majority’s right to choose.Bret: I suppose that, in theory, Kennedy could subtract a lot of votes from Trump, since both of them draw from the same well of looney-tune conspiracy theories. But my guess is that, as a Democrat, Biden would be the bigger loser from an independent Kennedy campaign. And if West persists in running, drawing progressive and Black voters away from Biden, then the chances of a Trump victory grow even larger.Gail: But we were talking about President Joe …Bret: If you see Biden jumping out of the political hole he’s in, please tell me how.Gail: Just being sane, not under multitudinous indictments or facing a stupendous financial collapse is … going to help. This is not going to be one of those sunny remember-when election victories like Barack Obama’s or I guess for Republicans, Ronald Reagan’s. But given the Donald’s multiple upcoming trials, I think it’ll be a wow-what-a-crazy-year episode that ends with the majority rationally rejecting the worst possible option.Bret: If a second Trump administration is the national nightmare you and I think it will be, then Democrats need a better political strategy than getting angry at third-party candidates while hoping that Trump goes to jail before he returns to the White House. The passing of California’s Dianne Feinstein is a sad event, and there’s a lot to celebrate in her long and distinguished career, but it was hubris on her part to run for re-election in 2018, just like it was hubris for Ruth Bader Ginsburg not to step down while Obama was still president. Although, in Feinstein’s defense, at least she could be reasonably sure that a Democratic governor would choose her successor.Gail: Yeah, when you’ve got a great job in the spotlight, it’s hard to just let it go.Bret: Which maybe explains the guy in the White House. Sorry, go on.Gail: I thought Feinstein should have resigned when she became incapacitated. And Ginsburg diminished a great legacy by hanging onto her job when she was sick and close to death, thereby paving the way for Trump to complete his takeover of the Supreme Court.We have to celebrate the people who surrender the spotlight voluntarily, like Nancy Pelosi, who is still serving the country as a member of Congress, but gave up her party’s House leadership to let the next generation be in the center of attention.Hey — a positive thought! Any good news you want to share?Bret: I don’t know if this is good news per se, but I was delighted to hear Mark Milley, the retiring chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, dismiss Trump as a “wannabe dictator” after his former boss suggested the general’s actions with regard to China would have once been punishable by death. Milley emphasized the military’s fidelity to the Constitution, which is yet another reminder that Democrats should put aside their 50 years of misgivings about the Defense Department and embrace its vital role in defending democracy at home and abroad.Hoping for agreement …Gail: Total agreement about the Defense Department having a vital role. Not so much about the Defense Department having an efficient operation. Way too much waste, which mostly comes from members of Congress lobbying to keep job-creating military facilities in their districts, and pressure to pick up wasteful contracts because they’re supported by, um, members of Congress.Bret: I’ll make a modest bet that, in another few years, Democrats will be the strong-on-defense party, just as they were in the days of Jack Kennedy. It’s part of the great ideological switcheroo taking place right now between the parties: Republicans sound a lot like Democrats of yesteryear — working-class values, quasi-isolationist in their foreign policy, indifferent to the moral character of their leaders — while Democrats have become the party of college-educated managerial types who want to stand up to Russia and uphold moral integrity in political leadership.Gail: Well, we’ll see. At least we’re ending on a consensus of sorts: that Trump is going to be doing something awful soon. Granted, that’s not the toughest prediction to make. So before we go, give me one of your great quotes to celebrate the arrival of October.Bret: Not really a celebration, but a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem I love:Márgarét, áre you gríevingOver Goldengrove unleaving?Leáves like the things of man, youWith your fresh thoughts care for, can you?Ah! ás the heart grows olderIt will come to such sights colderBy and by, nor spare a sighThough worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;And yet you wíll weep and know why.Now no matter, child, the name:Sórrow’s spríngs áre the same.Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressedWhat heart heard of, ghost guessed:It ís the blight man was born for,It is Margaret you mourn for.I memorized it many years ago, thanks to my teacher and friend, Dr. Peter Bach. He, better than anyone, knows its meaning.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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      Power of Older Women? Extinct G.O.P. Moderates? It’s Time for the Mailbag.

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      We’re answering reader questions on polling and elections, including the underexplored area of longevity.Women live longer than men on average, meaning they can vote more often on average. Arin Yoon for The New York TimesWatch out: Women outlive menI’m 79, and women my age remember when abortion was illegal. Many of us either had a back-alley abortion, or had friends who had one. We are determined that neither our daughters nor our granddaughters have to experience this. Many of the elderly men I know still vote for Republicans. But watch out: We outlive you! — Mary LeonhardtYou may be partly joking, Mary, but this is probably a minor reason Democrats do a bit better among older voters than people might guess!Why? American women, who tend to support Democrats, live almost six years longer on average than men. Women make up 55 percent of registered voters over age 65 — including 58 percent of those over age 80 — according to data from L2, a political data firm. In comparison, women are 52 percent of registered voters under 65.I know all of this is a little morbid, but longevity strikes me as an underexplored dimension of electoral trends nowadays. We know higher life expectancy is correlated with socioeconomic status and tends to be higher in Democratic-leaning areas. Could this be a factor in why Democrats are performing better among older voters than usually thought? I think so.Are you sure these people exist?“You refer to ‘relatively moderate, highly educated Republicans.’ You could have listed all of them … it wouldn’t have been a long list. — Jeff DavisIt would be a longer list than you might think. More than 20 million people with a college degree voted for Donald J. Trump in 2020. In our last New York Times/Siena College poll, 13 percent of likely Republican primary voters were self-identified moderates or liberals with a college degree.There’s a bigger lesson here: A small percentage of a huge group can still yield a large number of people. To take another example: There are more Republicans in California than in any other state. There are more Republicans in Brooklyn than in Wyoming, the state where Mr. Trump fared best.If not Biden, who?Pundits keep saying people don’t want Biden. Who do they want? — R. GribbonWell, they’re not sure. In an open-ended survey question, no alternative candidate earns any meaningful amount of support from Democratic voters. And I don’t think that’s entirely unreasonable, given there aren’t any mainstream Democrats running against President Biden.To me, the interesting question is whether many of these voters would wind up preferring Mr. Biden if alternatives like Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan or Gov. Gavin Newsom of California actually ran. It seems quite possible.Just forget about national polling?I find national polling to be particularly misleading. Please focus on state-by-state polling. I’ll be watching PA, WI, MN, GA, AZ, VA, and NV. — Tim OliverI’m sympathetic to the general sentiment here, Tim. Over the years, we’ve done many more Times/Siena polls in the battleground states than nationwide.But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that national polling is misleading. The difference between the national vote and the battleground states isn’t that large — and might even be shrinking.There are advantages to national polling as well. There are more historical questions for comparison. It’s much less expensive than battleground polling: It might take six state polls to get a decent picture. And there are plenty of cases — say, a Republican presidential primary or a battle for control of the House — where the national picture is much more relevant than the core battlegrounds.Polling and nonbinary peopleI was wondering about the inclusivity of the demographic charts. I noticed that the gender category was very binary, with someone only being able to select male or female. Were there any nonbinary people interviewed in this poll, or did someone have to select male or female? As a nonbinary person, I would love to advocate for queer folx to be able to fully participate in these polls. Thank you so much. — Melissa DaileyIt’s worth adding some historical context. First, most pollsters typically asked whether someone was male or female — which is to say someone’s “sex,” not gender. That’s what the Census Bureau does as well, and pollsters generally find it advantageous to have their questions align with the census for comparison or even statistical adjustment. And as someone who loves historical data, I’m also always loath to lose a consistent measurement of something over time.Second, you might be surprised to learn that many telephone pollsters haven’t actually been asking about the sex or gender of respondents. Instead, many have relied on the interviewer to record the respondent’s sex or gender based on voice. That might seem strange, but many respondents find it strange or even offensive to be asked if they’re a man or a woman.Nonetheless, this is an area where survey research is evolving. In the last decade or so, many pollsters have started asking about gender. A smaller number of pollsters have offered respondents options beyond “male” or “female” or “man” or “woman,” though this is complicated in its own right. Respondents could identify in any number of ways, whether as transgender, non-cisgender, nonbinary, gender fluid, queer or something else. They could identify as a “man” or a “woman” to reflect a gender that does not align with the sex they were assigned at birth.There’s another issue with adding small categories: measurement error. If one in every 300 respondents is trolling, or if one in 300 interviewers mistakenly clicks the wrong gender button, this mismeasured 0.3 percent of the sample will have no discernible effect on our results among men and women. But it could make up a huge share of the tiny number of transgender respondents.In our most recent Times/Siena poll, “male” and “female” were the only explicitly listed options when we asked about gender. But if respondents said they identified in some other way, the interviewer would record it. In the end, we had three respondents who said they were transgender or nonbinary. This sample was too small for us to report. I’m not sure whether we — or anyone else — is handling this exactly right; I expect the industry to continue to experiment and evolve.Woe WisconsinI am a Wisconsin voter who is a Democrat. However, we do not have to declare a party. How did you fit that into your analysis? — Nancy EschenburgIf you’re looking for a niche explanation for recent polling errors in Wisconsin, this is an interesting place to start.Unlike with most states, pollsters have very little data on the partisanship of Wisconsin respondents, making it much harder to ensure an unbiased sample.The absence of party registration is the best example, but the issue runs deeper. We don’t have data on whether our respondents participated in a partisan primary (like voting in a Republican presidential race). In most of the states without party registration, this primary participation data is a decent alternative.The results by precinct aren’t very helpful, either. Outside of Madison and Milwaukee, very few voters live in overwhelmingly blue or red precincts. Even the most Republican counties in Wisconsin aren’t so Republican that we can be especially confident that an individual respondent will be a Trump supporter.One of our major goals in recently collecting more data in Wisconsin was to improve our ability to estimate whether someone was a Democrat or a Republican, based on the relatively limited data at our disposal. I wouldn’t say we’ve found anything revolutionary: There’s just no substitute for knowing whether someone is registered as a Democrat or a Republican.Don’t forget ArizonaHere in very hot Arizona we will have some very “hot” political races. Of course we are a critical presidential swing state. Biden vs. Trump (or another Republican) will be very close again.And our U.S. Senate race (with Senator Sinema now an independent) will be fascinating. Ruben Gallego & Kari Lake & perhaps Sinema — that will be very entertaining. And the race will be critical regarding Senate control.So I plead with you to increase your polling in Arizona. We are just as important as other swing states like Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia. — Chris HerstamChris, I think we deserve a little bit of credit! In 2020, Arizona was one of our core six battleground states in Times/Siena polling. We surveyed it five times during the cycle, tied for the most of any state. We surveyed it in 2018 and 2022 as well, something that can be said only of Arizona and Nevada.Heading into 2024, Arizona remains in the top tier. We’ll poll it just as much as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Georgia.Six kinds of Democrats?Loved your “Six Kinds of Republicans.” Please do the same with Dems. — Walter B. ShurdenI’d like to see the same article written about Democrats … We all know there is a big difference between a conservative Democrat and someone like A.O.C. — Craig WilsonYou’ll most likely have to wait until 2028! In the meantime, consider reading our breakdown of Democratic voters from 2019. There were five types of Democrats in that analysis, based on data from the Hidden Tribes project: progressive activists, traditional liberals, passive liberals, moderates and the politically disengaged.Another option to get you through until the next Democratic primary: Pew Research’s 2021 typology, which identified four Democratic-leaning groups: progressive left, establishment liberals, Democratic mainstays and the outsider left. More

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      As His Trial Begins, Trump Looks to Capitalize On It

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      The former president is making the case to his supporters that he is being wrongfully prosecuted. And it might bring him more support.Former President Donald J. Trump is expected to attend the opening of the civil trial in the New York attorney general’s fraud case against him on Monday, as his political team seeks to turn it into a rallying cry for supporters.The decision to show up voluntarily in court by Mr. Trump, who has already been compelled to courthouses in four different criminal arraignments this year, underscores how personally aggrieved Mr. Trump feels by the accusations of fraud, as well as his own self-confidence that showing up will help his legal cause.The move also reveals how inverted the norms of politics have become in the Trump-era Republican Party: Being accused of wrongdoing could be politically beneficial despite the very real legal jeopardy.In a political age in which candidates are defined as much by their critics and opponents as by their stances, some of Mr. Trump’s advisers see an opportunity in a case first brought by a Democratic New York attorney general, Letitia James, even if the accusations cut to the heart of his identity.In some ways, the Trump campaign, which has seen his supporters galvanized by the criminal charges he’s faced, is trying to turn the civil case into something akin to a fifth indictment — a moment to motivate his base.“Trump seems to be approaching his legal troubles like a hand of hearts — one or two indictments hurt you politically, but if you collect them all, you might shoot the moon,” Liam Donovan, a Republican operative, said. “The sheer volume and variety obscures the individual cases and their fact patterns, and plays into Trump’s argument that his opponents are trying to take him down by whatever means they can.”For Mr. Trump, his attendance at trial is far more personal than political, according to a person familiar with his thinking. The former president is enraged by the fraud charges and furious with both the judge and the attorney general. And Mr. Trump, who is a control enthusiast, believes that trials have gone poorly for him when he hasn’t been present, and he hopes to affect the outcome this time, according to the person.The former president, for instance, never attended the civil trial earlier this year in which the writer, E. Jean Carroll, accused him of raping her in the 1990s, despite publicly toying with the idea of appearing. Mr. Trump was found liable for sexually abusing Ms. Carroll and defaming her.People close to Mr. Trump cautioned that he could decide against appearing, since he was not required to do so, but they were planning for him to attend at least the first day and possibly the second day as well.Over the weekend, Mr. Trump’s campaign openly sought to take advantage of the attention, sending fund-raising solicitations that teased his possible attendance and accusing Democrats of “trying to keep me off the campaign trail.”“After four sham arrests, indictments, and even a mug shot failed to break me, a Democrat judge is now trying to destroy my Family Business,” Mr. Trump wrote in a fund-raising message on Saturday.The push to highlight the trial comes at a critical juncture for Mr. Trump’s primary challengers, who face a narrowing window to show signs of life in a race that Mr. Trump has threatened to run away with.The specifics of the case can seem almost beside the point. A New York trial judge, Arthur F. Engoron, issued a surprise pretrial ruling last week that found Mr. Trump liable for overvaluing his properties. The ruling left his assets, including Trump Tower itself, vulnerable to seizure. The point of the trial is to determine the scope of damages that Mr. Trump and his company must pay — as much as $250 million. Mr. Trump and his lawyers have argued that the ruling is illegitimate and doesn’t follow the facts of the case.Years ago, a decision like the one that Justice Engoron issued would have been a source of embarrassment for a candidate and might have been considered by that candidate’s supporters as a reason to back someone else.But this is the new post-shame period of politics, in which candidates have observed over time that the mistake is allowing oneself to be thrown out of the ring. That sentiment affects both parties, to a degree: A Democratic senator, Bob Menendez of New Jersey, was indicted on corruption charges, and gold bars were found in his house. He has pleaded not guilty and vowed to stay in the Senate.However, a number of his colleagues have called for him to resign, in stark contrast to how the vast majority of Republican officials have gingerly handled — and continued to support — Mr. Trump, echoing his repeated claim that he’s the victim of political persecution.Mr. Trump’s single previous highest day of fund-raising, according to the campaign, came after his mug shot was released in his Georgia indictment, which accused him of being part of a criminal conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election.Corry Bliss, a veteran Republican political strategist, said all the previous indictments and legal cases have blended together for most Republican primary voters into a single picture of a former president wrongly under attack.“If anything, it’s reinforced a belief among the large segment of the base that Trump is treated unfairly and the Democrats dislike him so much that they’re willing to do whatever it takes to defeat him — whether that’s electorally or in the judicial system,” Mr. Bliss said. “The legal facts that most Republicans are interested in are the Hunter Biden facts. Period. End of discussion.”Any attention on the Trump case is also likely to rob Mr. Trump’s rivals of the political oxygen they need to close the substantial advantage that the former president holds in the polls. None of his opponents, including Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, have yet to figure out a way to turn Mr. Trump’s multitude of legal troubles against him, or to cut through the extensive media coverage.“It starves them,” said Raheem Kassam, editor in chief of The National Pulse, a conservative news site, who interviewed Mr. Trump last week. “It starves them.”For Mr. Trump, Mr. Kassam said, “every step of the way it drags on, it only empowers him” in part because “notoriety at this point” is an advantage itself. And that trend, he noted, is not exclusive to Mr. Trump, citing Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, a Trump ally, who faced an investigation related to sex-trafficking that was eventually dropped.“If you look at what happened to Gaetz, his star rose because of it,” Mr. Kassam said.Mr. Trump’s family has explicitly tried to frame the coming trial as an example of political persecution, deploying the same language as they have in his criminal cases. Mr. Trump has called Judge Engoron “deranged,” the very same term he has sought to apply to the Justice Department’s special counsel, Jack Smith.“I’ve never even seen anything like it,” Donald Trump Jr. said in an interview last week on The Charlie Kirk Show. “This is sort of like the start of the Bolshevik Revolution — we don’t like you, so we’re going to confiscate property.”He added, “Hey, our last name is Trump, so we have to be punished.” More

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      One Reason the Trump Fever Won’t Break

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      The more I consider the challenge posed by Christian nationalism, the more I think most observers and critics are paying too much attention to the wrong group of Christian nationalists. We mainly think of Christian nationalism as a theology or at least as a philosophy. In reality, the Christian nationalist movement that actually matters is rooted in emotion and ostensibly divine revelation, and it’s that emotional and spiritual movement that so stubbornly clings to Donald Trump.Three related stories illustrate the challenge.First, Katherine Stewart wrote a disturbing report for The New Republic about the latest iteration of the ReAwaken America Tour, a radical right-wing road show sponsored by Charisma News, a Pentecostal Christian publication. The tour has attracted national attention, including in The Times, and features a collection of the far right’s most notorious conspiracy theorists and Christian populists.The rhetoric at these events, which often attract crowds of thousands, is unhinged. There, as Stewart reported, you’ll hear a pastor named Mark Burns declare, “This is a God nation, this is a Jesus nation, and you will never take my God and my gun out of this nation.” You’ll also hear him say, “I have come ready to declare war on Satan and every race-baiting Democrat that tries to destroy our way of life here in the United States of America.” You’ll hear the right-wing radio host Stew Peters call for “Nuremberg Trials 2.0” and death for Anthony Fauci and Hunter Biden. The same speaker taunted the Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor Fani Willis by shouting: “Big Fani. Big fat Fani. Big fat Black Fani Willis.”Then there’s Thursday’s report in The Times describing how an anti-Trump conservative group with close ties to the Club for Growth is finding that virtually nothing is shaking Trump voters’ confidence in Trump. As the group wrote in a memo to donors, “Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability.” Even video evidence of Trump making “liberal” or “stupid” comments failed to shake supporters’ faith in him.And finally, we cannot forget the astounding finding of a HarrisX poll for The Deseret News, showing that more Republicans see Donald Trump as a “person of faith” than see openly religious figures like Mitt Romney, Tim Scott and Mike Pence, Trump’s own (very evangelical) vice president, that way. It’s an utterly inexplicable result, until you understand the nature of the connection between so many Christian voters and Donald Trump.In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, there was a tremendous surge of interest in Christian nationalism. Christian displays were common in the crowd at the Capitol. Rioters and protesters carried Christian flags, Christian banners and Bibles. They prayed openly, and a Dispatch reporter in the crowd told me that in the late afternoon Christian worship music was blaring from loudspeakers. I started to hear questions I’d never heard before: What is Christian nationalism and how is it different from patriotism?I’ve long thought that the best single answer to that question comes from a church history professor at Baylor named Thomas Kidd. In the days before Jan. 6, when apocalyptic Christian rhetoric about the 2020 election was building to a fever pitch, Kidd distinguished between intellectual or theological Christian nationalism and emotional Christian nationalism.The intellectual definition is contentious. There are differences, for example, among Catholic integralism, which specifically seeks to “integrate” Catholic religious authority with the state; Protestant theonomy, which “believes that civil law should follow the example of Israel’s civil and judicial laws under the Mosaic covenant”; and Pentecostalism’s Seven Mountain Mandate, which seeks to place every key political and cultural institution in the United States under Christian control.But walk into Christian MAGA America and mention any one of those terms, and you’re likely to be greeted with a blank look. “Actual Christian nationalism,” Kidd argues, “is more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” He’s right. Essays and books about philosophy and theology are important for determining the ultimate health of the church, but on the ground or in the pews? They’re much less important than emotion, prophecy and spiritualism.Arguments about the proper role of virtue in the public square, for example, or arguments over the proper balance between order and liberty, are helpless in the face of prophecies, like the declarations from Christian “apostles” that Donald Trump is God’s appointed leader, destined to save the nation from destruction. Sometimes there’s no need for a prophet to deliver the message. Instead, Christians will claim that the Holy Spirit spoke to them directly. As one longtime friend told me, “David, I was with you on opposing Trump until the Holy Spirit told me that God had appointed him to lead.”Several weeks ago, I wrote about the “rage and joy” of MAGA America. Outsiders see the rage and hatred directed at them and miss that a key part of Trump’s appeal is the joy and fellowship that Trump supporters feel with each other. But there’s one last element that cements that bond with Trump: faith, including a burning sense of certainty that by supporting him, they are instruments of God’s divine plan.For this reason, I’ve started answering questions about Christian nationalism by saying it’s not serious, but it’s very dangerous. It’s not a serious position to argue that this diverse, secularizing country will shed liberal democracy for Catholic or Protestant religious rule. But it’s exceedingly dangerous and destabilizing when millions of citizens believe that the fate of the church is bound up in the person they believe is the once and future president of the United States.That’s why the Trump fever won’t break. That’s why even the most biblically based arguments against Trump fall on deaf ears. That’s why the very act of Christian opposition to Trump is often seen as a grave betrayal of Christ himself. In 2024, this nation will wrestle with Christian nationalism once again, but it won’t be the nationalism of ideas. It will be a nationalism rooted more in emotion and mysticism than theology. The fever may not break until the “prophecies” change, and that is a factor that is entirely out of our control.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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      Trump and DeSantis Push for Mass Deportations, Escalating Hard-Right Immigration Proposals

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      In dueling speeches in California, the two Republican candidates pushed for mass deportations, a position that is as extreme as it may be unfeasible.As a presidential candidate, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida has said he would authorize the use of deadly force against people crossing the border, seek to end the practice of birthright citizenship and send the military to strike against drug cartels inside Mexico, a key ally of the United States, even without the permission of its government.Those positions put him on the hard right among the Republicans running for president, many of whom are tapping into deep anger among G.O.P. primary voters over immigration.Now, Mr. DeSantis, who often tries to stoke outrage with his border policies, has unveiled another extreme position: deporting all undocumented immigrants who crossed the border during the Biden administration.“Everyone that has come illegally under Biden” should be sent back, Mr. DeSantis said on Friday in response to a reporter’s question at a campaign event in Long Beach, Calif. “That’s probably six or seven million people right there. It’s going to require a lot of effort. It’s going to require us to lean in.”Though Mr. DeSantis greatly overestimated the number of people who have entered the country illegally since Mr. Biden took office, such mass deportations would require enormous investments in the nation’s immigration enforcement system and could do severe economic harm to key American industries.Conducting so many deportations would require Mr. DeSantis to hire more Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers, authorize widespread raids into immigrant communities, significantly expand immigration detention space to meet national standards and substantially grow the fleet of airplanes used for deportations. Billions more dollars would need to be spent on bolstering immigration courts to adjudicate cases within months instead of years. Currently, some migrants who have recently arrived in the United States have been given court dates a decade from now because the immigration court backlog is so large.Still, Mr. DeSantis is not alone in his promises to upend the nation’s immigration system.Speaking to a crowd in Anaheim, Calif., former President Donald J. Trump pledged to enact the largest deportation in the country’s history.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesOn Friday, former President Donald J. Trump, who is leading the Florida governor by roughly 40 points in national polls, pledged to enact “the largest deportation operation in the history of our country” if re-elected. Mr. Trump was speaking at the same time as Mr. DeSantis, roughly 20 miles away at a convention of Republican activists in Anaheim, Calif.The dueling speeches highlighted how crucial an issue border security has become in the Republican presidential primary. At his campaign event, Mr. DeSantis took the opportunity to criticize Mr. Trump, saying that his rival had failed to “get the job done” on the border during his first term. Though the two men are largely aligned on immigration policy, Mr. DeSantis is making the argument that he would be more effective in carrying out a hard-line vision.“I would note that the former president is campaigning on the same promise he made in ’16 that he didn’t deliver on,” Mr. DeSantis said.With his “six or seven” million figure, Mr. DeSantis was probably referring to the roughly six million people who have been caught crossing the border since 2021. That is about double the number of unauthorized immigrants who actually entered the country under Mr. Biden and are still here.Of those six million, at least 1.6 million have been allowed to stay in the country temporarily and face charges in immigration court. Officials estimate about 1.5 million others have entered the country illegally without being detained.The government estimates about 11 million undocumented people live in the country overall.Mass deportations are not as simple as the Republican contenders make them sound.Many of the people they call illegal immigrants are eligible for legal status in the United States or are already here on a legal status. An example of a legal status is Temporary Protected Status, the humanitarian benefit Mr. Biden just extended to nearly 500,000 Venezuelans who have come to the country since the spring of 2021. People who are in the country and eligible for legal status are entitled to a hearing before an immigration judge, said Greg Chen, the senior director of government relations for the American Immigration Lawyers Association.The time it would take to remove millions of people is substantial. In the past, the greatest number of deportations has been around 400,000 a year. The year with the highest number in recent history is 2013, during the Obama administration, when there were more than 432,000. During the Trump administration, the year that saw the most deportations was 2019, with more than 359,000.Deporting such a large amount of people poses “logistical, practical and legal challenges,” said Ron Vitiello, a former acting director of Immigration and Customs Enforcement during the Trump administration.Justin Hamel for The New York Times“DeSantis’s statement demonstrates his utter lack of any understanding of immigration enforcement operations,” Mr. Chen said. “At a practical level, deporting that many people would be impossible in even a single term.”Mr. Chen also pointed out the serious economic costs of deporting many of the workers who take on the United States’ most dangerous and low-paying jobs, particularly in agriculture.Immigration laws signed by Mr. DeSantis in Florida this year have already led to worker shortages in the agricultural sector, as well as in construction and hospitality, some employers have said. In addition, undocumented workers play a key role in hurricane cleanup in the state, but many have said they would no longer risk traveling to Florida because of the threat of deportation.There is also a significant diplomatic component to deportations — countries must be willing to take back their citizens, and the United States must have relations with those countries to coordinate those return trips. This stipulation would pose a huge challenge in returning the hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans who have fled to the United States in the past few years. A DeSantis or Trump administration would most likely need to reestablish diplomatic relations with Venezuela and recognize the government of Nicolás Maduro — something Mr. Trump did not do as president — to carry out their plans.“Mass deportations are really, really, really hard to do,” said Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, the policy director at the American Immigration Council, a pro-immigrant organization. “The political backlash would be enormous.”Ron Vitiello, a former acting director of ICE during the Trump administration, acknowledged that there were “logistical, practical and legal challenges” to deporting so many people. But he said that immigrants would continue to cross the border illegally if they believed that they would be able to stay long-term.“If the rest of the world believes they’ll never be deported, that is an incentive for lots of people,” Mr. Vitiello said. “You have to end the incentives to change the traffic patterns at the border.”When Republicans tried to enact comprehensive immigration reform under President George W. Bush, the idea of deporting large numbers of undocumented people was not considered realistic or desirable, reflecting how deeply the political mood in the G.O.P. has shifted in the years since.“Mass deportation is not a workable solution,” the Bush administration argued in a 2007 fact sheet, at a time when the population of unauthorized immigrants was even higher than it is today. “Deporting the millions of illegal immigrants who are already in the country would be impractical, harmful to our economy, and potentially devastating to families with deep roots in their communities.”Jonathan Swan More

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      Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Here to Pump You Up (Emotionally)

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      Arnold Schwarzenegger has been a part of the American landscape for so long that the improbability of his story is all too easy to take for granted: An immigrant bodybuilder from Austria with a long and unwieldy name, a heavy accent and a physical appearance unlike that of any other major movie star became one […] More

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      Nikki Haley Won the Debate Stage. Now, She’s Trying to Win Over Iowa.

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      The former governor of South Carolina, who was ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump, now needs to appeal to early state voters.About 15 minutes after Nikki Haley took the stage at a town hall in a Des Moines suburb on Saturday, the former governor of South Carolina and ambassador to the United Nations, was heckled — twice — by men demanding to know her views on Taylor Swift.Members of the crowd booed, and both questioners were escorted out. Ms. Haley — who often tells audiences in Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina that she is no stranger to dealing with hostile actors — took a beat.Then, she smiled.“Remember how blessed we are that we have freedom of this speech in this country,” she said, scanning the crowd. Then, after a smattering of applause, Ms. Haley went back to her message about slashing federal spending.Ms. Haley’s mastery of moments like these, in front of crowds and in the first two Republican debates — during which she successfully fended off interruptions and delivered pithy, memorable one-liners — has delivered buzz, attention and money. But her successes, while notable, are qualified: She and the rest of the pack are polling significantly behind former President Donald J. Trump. And both nationally and in first-in-the-nation Iowa, she lags behind Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.To boost her chances, Ms. Haley is banking on events like Saturday’s town hall, an intimate gathering of around 150 people in a nondescript ballroom festooned with campaign posters.Ms. Haley staged a kind of political theater in the round, standing on a platform surrounded by audience members on all sides. Dressed casually, Ms. Haley played more to the crowd than to the cameras. She emphasized her small-town origins and nodded to her alma mater’s football team, Clemson. Though one-liners have challenged some of her rivals, Ms. Haley’s jokes elicited the desired response.Yet even as she commanded a room filled largely with people leaning toward supporting her, Ms. Haley still had yet to fully win some over.Nancy Vaught, of West Des Moines, said that she had been impressed with Ms. Haley’s performance in the debates and was drawn to her experience, particularly her record on international affairs. “Our world is in really dire straits,” Ms. Vaught said, “and we need somebody to take control who can deal with the international world.”But Ms. Vaught also said that she had not ruled out the other candidate with international experience in the race: Mr. Trump.The former president and his team appear to be considering Ms. Haley a more serious contender. During Wednesday’s debate, the Trump campaign sent a news release assailing her for not being conservative enough.On Friday, Mr. Trump attacked Ms. Haley on Truth Social, his social media platform, referring to her as “birdbrain” and criticizing her for running despite having told Fox News in February that “I’m glad she’s running, I want her to follow her heart.”Ms. Haley appeared to take the broadside in stride, posting a screenshot of it on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, with the caption: “Love this. It means we are in 2nd and moving up fast!” She added: “Bring it!”Haley at a Fair-Side Chat with Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds at the Iowa State Fair in August.Jeff Roberson/Associated PressThough Ms. Haley, 51, did not criticize Mr. Trump by name at her town hall in Clive, she did criticize the $2 trillion coronavirus relief bill he signed in 2020. She also said that Republicans needed “a new generational conservative leader” if they wanted to win the popular vote in 2024. Mr. Trump, 77, did not win it in 2016 or 2020.With Mr. Trump the clear front-runner, Ms. Haley’s campaign has been trying to court Republicans opposed to his renomination or worried about his electability in a general race.Charlie Johnson, 69, who attended the Clive event, said that he initially backed Mr. DeSantis before the governor committed “blunders” that “put me off him.”Mr. Johnson, of Council Bluffs, pointed to a controversy over Florida’s standards for teaching about slavery in schools and Mr. DeSantis’s rhetorical vow to start “slitting throats” if elected, a reference to his plans to pull apart the federal bureaucracy.Ms. Haley’s performance in the debates, Mr. Johnson said, had partially won him over. But her experience helped seal the deal.“I got off the DeSantis train,” Mr. Johnson said. “And I really liked Nikki, so that’s where I’m at now.”Yet many of the same elements of Ms. Haley’s pitch — her age, her political experience and her track record in a governor’s mansion — are shared by Mr. DeSantis.Advisers to Ms. Haley will next month attend a meeting of a network of megadonors, where they and advisers to Mr. DeSantis are expected to make a pitch to those who are considering whether investing in a candidate other than Mr. Trump may be worthwhile.But in Clive, Ms. Haley was mainly focused on winning over the audience in front of her, telling the crowd that she would not shy away from hard truths, and that she would not dodge questions — including from hecklers.“I think we do need to give it to these fellas that happened to show up,” she said, about 20 minutes after her stump speech had been interrupted. “Yes, I do like Taylor Swift.” More