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      The Axe Is Sharp

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      David Axelrod is not a prick.Truly.I’ve known him since 2007 and if I had to pick a noun to describe him, it would be mensch.So when President Biden privately employs that epithet for Axelrod, according to Politico’s Jonathan Martin, it’s bad for a few reasons.The ordinarily gracious president is punching down at the strategist who helped elevate him onto the ticket with Barack Obama in 2008 and who thinks he was “a great vice president” and has done a lot of wonderful things as president.When some in the Obama camp chattered in 2011 about switching Biden out for Hillary Clinton, Axelrod said, he protested: “That would be an incredible act of disloyalty to a guy who has done a great job for us.”Surely, Mr. Biden does not want to lower himself to the vulgarity of the growling, brawling, thieving Republicans in the Hieronymus Bosch hellscape of our Congress.(As Seth Meyers noted, George Santos — who spent campaign money on Hermès, Ferragamo, Botox, Sephora and OnlyFans — had “the shopping list of a 98-year-old oil tycoon’s 20-year-old wife.”)Axelrod drew Biden’s ire because he urged the president to consider stopping at one term, throwing open the race to younger Democrats while there’s still time, and leaving as a hero. He said that, despite Biden’s insult, he got a slew of messages agreeing with him.“I don’t care about them thinking I’m a prick — that’s fine,” the strategist told me. “I hope they don’t think the polls are wrong because they’re not.”According to a New York Times/Siena College poll, Donald Trump is ahead in five battleground states and, as some other surveys have found, is even making inroads among Black voters and young voters. There’s a generational fracture in the Democratic Party over the Israeli-Hamas horror and Biden’s age. Third-party spoilers are circling.The president turns 81 on Monday; the Oval hollows out its occupants quickly, and Biden is dealing with two world-shattering wars, chaos at the border, a riven party and a roiling country.“I think he has a 50-50 shot here, but no better than that, maybe a little worse,” Axelrod said. “He thinks he can cheat nature here and it’s really risky. They’ve got a real problem if they’re counting on Trump to win it for them. I remember Hillary doing that, too.”The president’s flash of anger indicates that he may be in denial, surrounded by enablers who are sugarcoating a grim political forecast.Like other pols, Biden has a healthy ego and like all presidents, he’s truculent about not getting the credit he thinks he deserves for his accomplishments. And it must be infuriating that most of the age qualms are about him, when Trump is only a few years younger.No doubt the president is having a hard time wrapping his mind around the idea that the 77-year-old Mar-a-Lago Dracula has risen from his gilded coffin even though he’s albatrossed with legal woes and seems more deranged than ever, referring to Democrats with the fascist-favored term “vermin” and plotting a second-term revengefest. Trump’s campaign slogan should be, “There will be blood.”For Biden, this is about his identity. It’s what he has fought all his life for, even battling his way through “friendly fire,” as Hunter Biden told me, in the Obama White House, when some Obama aides undermined him. It must have been awful when Obama took his vice president to lunch and nudged him aside for Hillary to run in 2016. Biden craves the affirmation of being re-elected. He doesn’t want to look like a guy who’s been driven from office.But he should not indulge the Irish chip on his shoulder. He needs to gather the sharpest minds in his party and hear what they have to say, not engage in petty feuds.If Trump manages to escape conviction in Jack Smith’s Washington case, which may be the only criminal trial that ends before the election, that’s going to turbocharge his campaign. Of course, if he’s convicted, that could turbocharge his campaign even more.It’s a perfect playing field for the maleficent Trump: He learned in the 2016 race that physical and rhetorical violence could rev up his base. He told me at the time it helped get him to No. 1 and he said he found violence at his rallies exciting.He has no idea why making fun of Paul Pelosi’s injuries at the hands of one of his acolytes is subhuman, any more than he understood how repellent it was in 2015 when he mocked a disabled Times reporter. He gets barbaric laughs somehow, and that’s all he cares about. In an interview with Jonathan Karl, Trump gloated about how his audience on Jan. 6 was “the biggest crowd I’ve ever spoken in front of by far.”Never mind that it was one of the most dangerous, shameful days in our history. To Trump, it was glorious.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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      Can Nikki Haley Beat Trump?

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      It’s time to admit that I underestimated Nikki Haley.When she began her presidential campaign, she seemed caught betwixt and between: too much of a throwback to pre-Trump conservatism to challenge Ron DeSantis for the leadership of a Trumpified party, but also too entangled with Trump after her service in his administration to offer the fresh start that anti-Trump Republicans would be seeking.If you wanted someone to attack Trump head-on with relish, Chris Christie was probably your guy. If you wanted someone with pre-Trump Republican politics but without much Trump-era baggage, Tim Scott seemed like the fresher face.But now Scott is gone, Christie has a modest New Hampshire constituency and not much else, and Haley is having her moment. She’s in second place in New Hampshire, tied with DeSantis in the most recent Des Moines Register-led poll in Iowa, and leading Joe Biden by more than either DeSantis or Trump in national polls. Big donors are fluttering her way, and there’s an emerging media narrative about how she’s proving the DeSantis campaign theory wrong and showing that you can thrive as a Republican without surrendering to Trumpism.To be clear, I do not think Haley has proved the DeSantis theory wrong. She is not polling anywhere close to the highs DeSantis hit during his stint as the Trump-slayer, and if you use the Register-led poll to game out a future winnowing, you see that her own voters would mostly go to DeSantis if she were to drop out — but if DeSantis drops out, a lot of his voters would go to Trump.As long as that’s the case, Haley might be able to consolidate 30 or 35 percent of the party, but the path to actually winning would be closed. Which could make her ascent at DeSantis’s expense another study in the political futility of anti-Trump conservatism, its inability to wrestle successfully with the populism that might make Trump the nominee and the president again.But credit where it’s due: Haley has knocked out Scott, passed Christie and challenged DeSantis by succeeding at a core aspect of presidential politics — presenting yourself as an appealing and charismatic leader who can pick public fights and come out the winner (at least when Vivek Ramaswamy is your foil).So in the spirit of not underestimating her, let’s try to imagine a scenario where Haley actually wins the nomination.First, assume that ideological analysis of party politics is overrated, and that a candidate’s contingent success can yield irresistible momentum, stampeding voters in a way that polls alone cannot anticipate.For Haley, the stampede scenario requires winning outright in New Hampshire. The difficulty is that even on the upswing, she still trails Trump 46-19 in the current RealClearPolitics Average. But assume that Christie drops out and his support swings her way, assume that the current polling underestimates how many independents vote in the G.O.P. primary, assume a slight sag for Trump and a little last-moment Nikkimentum, and you can imagine your way to a screaming upset — Haley 42, Trump 40.Then assume that defeat forces Trump to actually debate in the long February lull (broken only by the Nevada caucus) between New Hampshire and the primary in Haley’s own South Carolina. Assume that the front-runner comes across as some combination of rusty and insane, Haley handles him coolly and then wins her home state primary. Assume that polls still show her beating Biden, Fox News has rallied to her fully, endorsements flood in — and finally, finally, enough voters who like Trump because he’s a winner swing her way to clear a path to the nomination.You’ll notice, though, that this story skips over Iowa. That’s because I’m not sure what Haley needs there. Victory seems implausible, but does she want to surge so impressively that it knocks DeSantis out of the race? Or, as the Dispatch’s Nick Catoggio has suggested, does the fact that DeSantis’s voters mostly have Trump as a second choice mean that Haley actually needs DeSantis to stay in the race through the early states, so that Trump can’t consolidate his own potential support? In which case maybe Haley needs an Iowa result where both she and DeSantis overperform their current polling, setting her up for New Hampshire but also giving the Florida governor a reason to hang around.This dilemma connects to my earlier argument that beating Trump requires a joining of the Haley and DeSantis factions, an alliance of the kind contemplated by Trump’s opponents in 2016 but never operationalized. But I doubt Haley is interested in such an alliance at the moment; after all, people are talking about her path to victory — and here I am, doing it myself!Fundamentally, though, I still believe that Haley’s destiny is anticipated by the biting, “congrats, Nikki,” quote from a DeSantis ally in New York Magazine: “You won the Never Trump primary. Your prize is nothing.”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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      When It Comes to Disdain for Democracy, Trump Has Company

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      It makes perfect sense to treat Donald Trump as the most immediate threat to the future of American democracy. He has an ambitious plan to turn the office of the presidency into an instrument of “revenge” against his political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups.But while we keep our eyes on Trump and his allies and enablers, it is also important not to lose sight of the fact that anti-democratic attitudes run deep within the Republican Party. In particular, there appears to be a view among many Republicans that the only vote worth respecting is a vote for the party and its interests. A vote against them is a vote that doesn’t count.This is not a new phenomenon. We saw a version of it on at least two occasions in 2018. In Florida, a nearly two-thirds majority of voters backed a state constitutional amendment to effectively end felon disenfranchisement. The voters of Florida were as clear as voters could possibly be: If you’ve served your time, you deserve your ballot.Rather than heed the voice of the people, Florida Republicans immediately set out to render it moot. They passed, and Gov. Ron DeSantis signed, a bill that more or less nullified the amendment by imposing an almost impossible set of requirements for former felons to meet. Specifically, eligible voters had to pay any outstanding fees or fines that were on the books before their rights could be restored. Except there was no central record of those fees or fines, and the state did not have to tell former felons what they owed, if anything. You could try to vote, but you risked arrest, conviction and even jail time.In Wisconsin, that same year, voters put Tony Evers, a Democrat, into the governor’s mansion, breaking eight years of Republican control. The Republican-led Legislature did not have the power to overturn the election results, but the impenetrable, ultra-gerrymandered majority could use its authority to strip as much power from the governor as possible, blocking, among other things, his ability to withdraw from a state lawsuit against the Affordable Care Act — one of the things he campaigned on. Wisconsin voters would have their new governor, but he’d be as weak as Republicans could possibly make him.It almost goes without saying that we should include the former president’s effort to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election as another example of the willingness of the Republican Party to reject any electoral outcome that doesn’t fall in its favor. And although we’ve only had a few elections this year, it doesn’t take much effort to find more of the same.I’ve already written about the attempt among Wisconsin Republicans to nullify the results of a heated race for a seat on the state Supreme Court. Voters overwhelmingly backed the more liberal candidate for the seat, Janet Protasiewicz, giving the court the votes needed to overturn the gerrymander that keeps Wisconsin Republicans in power in the Legislature even after they lose a majority of votes statewide.In response, Wisconsin Republicans floated an effort to impeach the new justice on a trumped-up charge of bias. The party eventually backed down in the face of national outrage — and the danger that any attempt to remove Protasiewicz might backfire electorally in the future. But the party’s reflexive move to attempt to cancel the will of the electorate says everything you need to know about the relationship of the Wisconsin Republican Party to democracy.Ohio Republicans seem to share the same attitude toward voters who choose not to back Republican priorities. As in Wisconsin, the Ohio Legislature is so gerrymandered in favor of the Republican Party that it would take a once-in-a-century supermajority of Democratic votes to dislodge it from power. Most lawmakers in the state have nothing to fear from voters who might disagree with their actions.It was in part because of this gerrymander that abortion rights proponents in the state focused their efforts on a ballot initiative. The Ohio Legislature may have been dead set on ending abortion access in the state — in 2019, the Republican majority passed a so-called heartbeat bill banning abortion after six weeks — but Ohio voters were not.Aware that most of the voters in their state supported abortion rights, and unwilling to try to persuade them that an abortion ban was the best policy for the state, Ohio Republicans first tried to rig the game. In August, the Legislature asked voters to weigh in on a new supermajority requirement for ballot initiatives to amend the State Constitution. If approved, this requirement would have stopped the abortion rights amendment in its tracks.It failed. And last week, Ohioans voted overwhelmingly to write reproductive rights into their State Constitution, repudiating their gerrymandered, anti-choice Legislature. Or so they thought.Not one full day after the vote, four Republican state representatives announced that they intended to do everything in their power to nullify the amendment and give lawmakers total discretion to ban abortion as they see fit. “This initiative failed to mention a single, specific law,” their statement reads. “We will do everything in our power to prevent our laws from being removed upon perception of intent. We were elected to protect the most vulnerable in our state, and we will continue that work.”Notice the language: “our power” and “our laws.” There is no awareness here that the people of Ohio are sovereign and that their vote to amend the State Constitution holds greater authority than the judgment of a small group of legislators. This group may not like the fact that Ohioans have declared the Republican abortion ban null and void, but that is democracy. If these lawmakers want to advance their efforts to restrict abortion, they first need to persuade the people.To many Republicans, unfortunately, persuasion is anathema. There is no use making an argument since you might lose. Instead, the game is to create a system in which, heads or tails, you always win.That’s why Republican legislatures across the country have embraced partisan gerrymanders so powerful that they undermine the claim to democratic government in the states in question. That’s why Republicans in places like North Carolina have adopted novel and dubious legal arguments about state power, the upshot of which is that they concentrate power in the hands of these gerrymandered state legislatures, giving them total authority over elections and electoral outcomes. And that’s why, months before voting begins in the Republican presidential contest, much of the party has already embraced a presidential candidate who promises to prosecute and persecute his political opponents.One of the basic ideas of democracy is that nothing is final. Defeats can become victories and victories can become defeats. Governments change, laws change, and, most important, the people change. No majority is the majority, and there’s always the chance that new configurations of groups and interests will produce new outcomes.For this to work, however, we — as citizens — have to believe it can work. Cultivating this faith is no easy task. We have to have confidence in our ability to talk to one another, to work with one another, to persuade one another. We have to see one another, in some sense, as equals, each of us entitled to our place in this society.It seems to me that too many Republicans have lost that faith.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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      Haley Tussles With DeSantis, Aiming to Prove Herself in Iowa

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      Nikki Haley is vying for a matchup with Donald Trump in her home state. The calculus is similar for Ron DeSantis, who has stepped up his attacks on his rival for second place.For most of the 2024 presidential cycle, Nikki Haley has ceded ground in Iowa to Donald J. Trump, who dominates its polls, and to Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who has made the state central to his hopes of besting the Republican front-runner.But Ms. Haley, who has focused more energy on the primaries in New Hampshire and her home state of South Carolina where she served as governor, is sending strong signals that she still intends to make it a fight.With just two months to go before the critical first-in-the-nation caucuses, Ms. Haley, the former ambassador to the United Nations, is starting a series of campaign events Thursday as her battle with Mr. DeSantis to become Mr. Trump’s nearest rival reaches a fever pitch. She will arrive armed with more than 70 new endorsements in the state and plans for a $10 million advertising blitz across Iowa and New Hampshire, seeking to capitalize on the narrowing field and the polls that show her steady rise.“She is peaking at the right time,” said Chris Cournoyer, a state senator and Ms. Haley’s Iowa state chairwoman. “Right now.”Yet Mr. DeSantis has had a strong head start in Iowa. He has pursued an all-in strategy in the state for months, building what appears to be a formidable ground game and moving much of his staff to the state in a last-ditch attempt to win the Jan. 15 caucuses. Before the third presidential debate last week in Miami, he landed a major victory when he drew the endorsement of Gov. Kim Reynolds, who said there was “too much at stake” to remain neutral in the primary nomination, as Iowa governors typically do.And then there is Mr. Trump himself. Ms. Haley’s turn toward the state appears to be confirmation of what Mr. DeSantis and others have been signaling from the onset: For another candidate to have a shot, Mr. Trump must be stopped in Iowa first.As their competition for second place heats up, Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis have been clashing on the debate stage and in mailers, online posts and media appearances. The two have lobbed misleading claims at each other in recent weeks on dealings with Chinese companies and energy. Mr. DeSantis in particular has ramped up the attacks, seeking to use Ms. Haley’s own appeal to a broader coalition of voters against her by casting her as too liberal. The tone of the attacks has also escalated.He has falsely characterized Ms. Haley’s position on Gazan refugees, and criticized her for saying that social media users should be forbidden from posting anonymously. (On Wednesday, after some online backlash from right-wing media commentators, Ms. Haley clarified on CNBC that she had been referring solely to foreign-based actors.)In a radio interview on Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis dug up a three-year-old post in which Ms. Haley said that the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police should be “personal and painful for everyone.” Mr. DeSantis, who at the time said he was “appalled” by Mr. Floyd’s death, questioned her sentiments, saying “Why does that need to be personal and painful for you or me? We had nothing to do with it.”Ms. Haley has not humored such strikes with a response, and when asked about criticism from her rivals, she has sought to project strength. “When I’m attacked, I kick back,” she has warned.They are not the only ones competing for better positioning. Vivek Ramaswamy, the entrepreneur and political newcomer who has mostly self-funded his campaign, has made 150 Iowa stops, 34 more than Mr. DeSantis and more than double those by Ms. Haley. He has attempted to make inroads with Indian American voters in the state. And his campaign officials on Wednesday said they would be spending more on advertising and expanding their staff there soon. He released a list of more than 20 Iowa events through next week.Iowa is a difficult state to survey partly because turnout is difficult to predict and the number of swing voters who show up to caucus can be higher than expected. But a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom Iowa poll released at the end of last month captured Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis tied for second place at 16 percent, far behind Mr. Trump, who pulled in 43 percent support among likely Republican caucusgoers. It has been consistent with her steady rise in other surveys of the early voting states.Gloria Mazza, the chairwoman of the Republican Party of Polk County, which is the largest in the state and includes Des Moines, said Ms. Haley still had plenty of opportunity to catch up to other candidates who have spent more time in the state.“There are a lot of people undecided,” said Ms. Mazza, who is staying neutral. “There are still people who they won’t even disclose to polls who they are going for.”Through the early days of the election cycle, Republican voters and elected officials in Iowa said they saw little of Ms. Haley. She was polling in the single digits and lagging behind her rivals on fund-raising, making it difficult to campaign in a rural state that requires more time and money to cover ground. But her campaign has been gradually adding staff and building out her Iowa footprint since the summer. Last month, her Iowa team added two new members: Hooff Cooksey, Governor Reynolds’s campaign manager during her 2018 run, and Troy Bishop, the 2022 field director for Senator Chuck Grassley.Before the most recent Republican debate in Miami, a group of Iowa farmers and agricultural leaders announced their support for Ms. Haley’s bid, citing her tough talk on China, stances on renewable energy and pledges to repeal government regulations. On Tuesday, she released a slate of more than 70 endorsements from elected officials and community and business leaders.In interviews, Ms. Cournoyer and some Haley endorsers argued that though much of Mr. Trump’s support in Iowa is unmovable, Ms. Haley had the chance to make up ground with independents and moderates. Bob Brunkhorst, a former state senator and former mayor of Waverly on that list, said her team had been astute about not spending too much early in the cycle and waiting to expand in the state.“They know how the game is run,” he said, “and when to peak.”On Monday, Ms. Haley’s campaign announced it would be spending $10 million in television, radio and digital advertising in Iowa and New Hampshire starting in the first week of December — its first investment in advertising of the cycle and an amount so far outpacing the DeSantis campaign in the coming months.In a press call the next day, Mark Harris, the lead strategist for Stand for America, the super PAC backing Ms. Haley, said the PAC had been helping level the playing field for her in Iowa. (Mr. DeSantis’s allied super PAC, Never Back Down, has invested roughly $17.7 million in the state covering this year and into January, and Stand for America has committed $13.6 million, according to AdImpact, a media-tracking firm.) He projected further growth and contended the DeSantis campaign had backed itself into a corner.“We have our eggs in multiple baskets,” Mr. Harris said.But Andrew Romeo, the DeSantis campaign’s communications director, countered that Ms. Haley’s ad buy amounted to “lighting money on fire,” and paled in comparison to having a network of staff members and volunteers who can mobilize voters on caucus day. “History shows the Iowa caucus cannot be bought on TV ads alone and that a strong ground game is what ultimately matters,” Mr. Romeo said in a statement.Mr. DeSantis’s campaign and an allied super PAC have been pouring resources into building just that. The campaign has shifted roughly 20 employees to the state from its headquarters in Tallahassee, Fla., including three top aides. The candidate himself has made pit stops at gas stations, diners and county fairs across Iowa, so far visiting all but seven of its 99 counties, with plans to hit the rest soon. More than 40 state legislators have endorsed Mr. DeSantis, who has secured at least one local chair in each Iowa county. This week, Ms. Reynolds cut an ad promoting her endorsement of her fellow governor.And Never Back Down says it has secured commitments from nearly 30,000 Iowans to caucus for Mr. DeSantis, signed up almost 20,000 volunteers and knocked on more than 633,000 doors. In a Nov. 6 memo sent to donors, Mr. DeSantis’s team said it soon expects to have nearly 50 paid staffers across “more than six offices” statewide between the campaign and super PAC. More

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      Nancy Dahlstrom, Alaska’s Lieutenant Governor, Is Running for Its Sole House Seat

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      Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom is challenging Mary Peltola, who scored upset wins last year against Sarah Palin to flip Alaska’s sole seat in the House to the Democrats for the first time in 50 years.A second Republican has joined the race in Alaska to challenge Representative Mary S. Peltola, a popular Democrat who holds the state’s sole House seat.Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, who was elected last year, is taking on Ms. Peltola, who became the first Alaska Native woman ever elected to Congress after she defeated former Gov. Sarah Palin in two 2022 elections. Ms. Peltola’s first victory against Ms. Palin, in a special election after the death of Alaska’s longtime congressman, Don Young, flipped the seat to the Democrats for the first time in 50 years.Her second victory, in the November midterms, dealt a political blow for Ms. Palin, once considered a standard-bearer in the national Republican Party.Ms. Dahlstrom, a former state representative and the former commissioner of the state’s Department of Corrections, is the second Republican to enter the House race, following Nick Begich III. A scion of a prominent liberal political family in Alaska, Mr. Begich finished in third place in previous races against Ms. Peltola.“Alaska needs a proven tough fighter,” Ms. Dahlstrom said in a statement announcing her candidacy and criticizing President Biden. She vowed that if elected to the House she would “stop Biden and the extreme liberals ruining our future.”The House Republican campaign arm has made this seat a priority target in 2024. Will Reinert, a spokesman for the group, said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter, that Ms. Dahlstrom “is a top-tier recruit who will win this Trump won state.”Ms. Peltola’s election to a full term with 55 percent of the vote last November — after playing up her bipartisan credentials and local issues on the campaign trail — demonstrated her ability to hold on to the seat despite political headwinds. Alaska has long been a red state, and former President Donald J. Trump handily won Alaska in the 2020 election. Mr. Young, a Republican who was one of the longest-serving members in the House, won re-election that year with 54 percent of the vote.But Ms. Peltola’s popularity will still pose a significant obstacle for Republicans, despite their advantages. The race was competitive but leaning toward Ms. Peltola, according to an analysis by the Cook Political Report earlier this year.Activists and former Republican candidates in the state, including Ms. Palin, are also trying to repeal the state’s recently adopted ranked-choice voting system. They argue that the system can allow a Democrat to win even when a majority of voters pick a Republican on the first ballot. Ms. Peltola was the most popular choice on the first ballot in both of her previous races, but she did not secure outright majorities until the second round.Proponents of the system say that when voters have more choices, they’re less likely to follow strict party lines, and that it reduces polarization and gives more moderate candidates a better shot. More

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      Trump Can Stay on GOP Primary Ballot in Michigan, Judge Rules

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      The ruling notches a preliminary victory for Donald Trump in a nationwide battle over his eligibility to run for president again, even as he faces a wave of legal scrutiny in other cases.A state judge in Michigan partly rejected an effort to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from running for president in the state, ruling that Mr. Trump will remain on the ballot in the Republican primary, and that the state’s top elections official does not have the authority alone to exclude him from the ballot.But the judge appeared to leave the door open for a future battle over Mr. Trump’s eligibility as a candidate in the general election, saying that the issue “is not ripe for adjudication at this time.”The ruling notches a preliminary victory for Mr. Trump in a nationwide battle over his eligibility to run for president again, even as he faces a wave of legal scrutiny in other cases — including 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions.Plaintiffs across the country have argued that Mr. Trump is ineligible to hold office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it, citing his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.These efforts have played out as Mr. Trump engages in ever-darker rhetoric that critics say echoes that of fascist dictators, vowing to root out his political opponents like “vermin.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, said in a statement that the campaign welcomed the ruling and “anticipates the future dismissals of the other 14th Amendment cases.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      George Santos’s Campaign Aide Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud

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      Samuel Miele is the second person who worked on Representative George Santos’s House election campaigns to plead guilty to federal charges.A second person connected to the campaign of Representative George Santos of New York has pleaded guilty to federal charges, an ominous sign as the embattled congressman’s own case moves closer to trial.Appearing before a federal judge in Central Islip, N.Y., on Tuesday, Samuel Miele pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in connection with a fund-raising scheme in which he impersonated a House staffer for his and Mr. Santos’s benefit.But the most intriguing details to emerge from court were related to incidents that Mr. Miele was not charged with, but admitted to as part of his guilty plea.Between November 2020 and January 2023, Mr. Miele used his position with the Santos campaign to charge donors’ credit cards without their permission and to apply contributions to things they had not been intended for.Prosecutors have accused Mr. Santos, 35, of similar schemes. They said he repeatedly debited donors’ credit cards without their authorization and raised money for a fictitious super PAC, distributing the money to his and other candidates’ campaigns as well as his own bank account.Mr. Miele admitted in one instance to having solicited $470,000 from an older man that was used in ways that the donor had not intended. Judge Joanna Seybert, who is also overseeing Mr. Santos’s case, said that Mr. Miele was being required to return the money to the man.It is not clear if Mr. Santos was aware of or involved in Mr. Miele’s fraudulent use of donors’ credit cards, or the $470,000 solicitation. No explanation was given for why Mr. Miele was not charged in the matter; his lawyer declined to say whether his plea included an agreement with federal prosecutors to testify against Mr. Santos.In court on Tuesday, Mr. Miele did not name Mr. Santos, nor did he implicate him in his actions. Nonetheless, his guilty plea, which comes just over a month after that of Mr. Santos’s campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, is an inauspicious sign for the congressman.Like Ms. Marks, Mr. Miele was a member of Mr. Santos’s inner circle, involved not only in his congressional campaign but also his personal business ventures.Prosecutors accused Mr. Miele, 27, of carrying out the fund-raising scheme in the fall of 2021 to aid Mr. Santos’s ultimately successful election campaign for the House, charging him with four counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Of those, he pleaded guilty to a single count, for which he could nonetheless serve more than two years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for April 30.The indictment, filed this August, did not identify the staffer that Mr. Miele was said to have impersonated, though The New York Times and others have reported that it was Dan Meyer, who was then chief of staff to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.Dressed in a too-large navy suit coat, with black hair slicked back, Mr. Miele stood to read from a prepared statement.“Between August and December 2021, I pretended I was chief of staff to the then leader of the House of Representatives,” he said. “I did that to help raise funds for the campaign I was working on.”Mr. Santos, a Republican representing parts of Long Island and Queens, has not been charged in connection with Mr. Miele’s impersonation. The congressman has said that he was unaware of the ruse, and fired Mr. Miele shortly after learning of it from Republican leadership. Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Mr. Santos who attended Tuesday’s hearing, declined to comment.Mr. Santos faces a 23-count indictment that includes wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Santos used multiple methods to steal tens of thousands of dollars from campaign donors.They have charged him with falsifying campaign filings, including listing a $500,000 loan that had not been made when it was reported. And they have accused him of collecting unemployment funds when he was, in fact, employed. Mr. Santos has pleaded not guilty to all counts.Earlier this month, he survived a second effort to expel him from Congress, this one led by members of his own party. That resolution, introduced by Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a first-term Republican representing a neighboring district on Long Island, cited Mr. Santos’s now well-known history of duplicity as well as the ongoing criminal case against him. It was resoundingly defeated, with both Republicans and Democrats agreeing that such an action would be premature without a conviction.Mr. Santos has insisted that such a conviction will never come, calling the proceedings a “witch hunt” and rebuffing calls for his resignation.The congressman is also facing scrutiny from the House Ethics Committee, which signaled that it was drawing close to the conclusion of its monthslong investigation. That panel, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans, is expected to issue a report and recommendations later this week. More

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      in Elections

      Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025

      by

      Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of proposals meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same to day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status. Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some American citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This too would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state. As Damon Linker noted in his essay on these figures for the Opinion section, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know 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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More