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      In Politics, There Are Worse Things Than Wishful Thinking

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      Bret Stephens: Gail, my attention these past few weeks has been devoted almost entirely to outrages and tragedies in the Middle East. But I couldn’t help smiling for a second when Nikki Haley called Vivek Ramaswamy “scum” at last week’s G.O.P. debate, after he raised the subject of her daughter’s use of TikTok.Aside from the deep truth of the remark — I wouldn’t have faulted her if she had thwacked him — it also made me think there’s life in this primary yet. Your thoughts on the G.O.P. race?Gail Collins: So glad to be back conversing every week, Bret. And you must be pleased that Haley, your Republican fave, was generally judged the winner of that debate.Bret: As she was of the first two debates.Gail: Not hard to make Ramaswamy look bad, but she certainly did a great job of it.Bret: Ramaswamy is like the human equivalent of HAL 9000 with an addiction to Red Bull.Gail: But what’s this going to do for her? Can you really imagine a path to the presidential nomination here?Bret: There was a great story last week in The Times by Natasha Frost, about an Australian man who freed himself from the jaws of a saltwater crocodile by biting its eyelid. Which is only believable because, well, it’s Australia. That’s about the situation in which the G.O.P. contenders find themselves with respect to Donald Trump.I know it’s a long shot, but at some point there will be just one person left standing against Trump, and I bet it will be Haley. She’s not just the best debater. She also comes across as the most tough-minded and well-rounded, given her experience both as a governor and a U.N. ambassador. She’s in second place in New Hampshire and in her home state of South Carolina, and her numbers have been moving up. As formidable as Trump’s own numbers look, it won’t be lost on centrist-minded G.O.P. voters that he’ll be campaigning while on bail.Now you’ll tell me that’s wishful thinking ….Gail: Hey, in our current political climate, there are worse things than wishful thinking. And we do have a likely Republican nominee who’s under indictment for virtually every nonviolent crime on the books except double parking.One thing I was wondering, looking at the debaters: Trump is going to have to find a new vice-presidential nominee. I keep thinking Tim Scott is campaigning hard for that job, although now he has suspended his campaign. You’ve got better Republican insight — see anybody on the stage you could imagine on Trump’s ticket?Bret: Good question. Trump will want someone with Mike Pence’s servility, minus the fidelity to the Constitution. Somehow I don’t think Scott fits that bill. I’m thinking of someone with more MAGA appeal, like Arizona’s Kari Lake or Ohio’s J.D. Vance.Gail: Ewww. Well then, I guess Scott’s sudden girlfriend reveal won’t do the trick.Bret: Only if the engagement were to Lauren Boebert.Gail: Last week’s election was a very, very good time for the Democrats. Big wins in Kentucky and Virginia, not to mention Ohio. I know a lot of it was attached to the very strong public support for abortion rights, but I can’t help but feel it was also a general Republican fizzle. You agree?Bret: It was a great antidote to that depressing Times/Siena poll, showing Biden’s political weakness against Trump in crucial swing states, which we talked about last week. My read on the results is this: Democrats win when they run with centrist candidates, like Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky, who ran as a pragmatist, not an ideologue. Also, Republicans remain deeply vulnerable, mainly thanks to their abortion extremism. That second fact should, well, abort Ron DeSantis’s campaign. The first fact suggests Democrats can win and win big — with a younger candidate, from a purple state, with a record of governing from the center.Speaking of which, any feelings about Joe Manchin’s decision not to run for re-election? Are you going to miss him?Gail: Well, I’m gonna miss having a Democratic senator from West Virginia. Never found any of his standing-on-my-own shutting-all-progress-down antics to be all that endearing.Bret: Loved them. Democrats won’t easily hold the Senate without him.Gail: What worries me is the possibility that Manchin’s going to run as a third-party candidate for president. As our readers know, I hate, hate, hate the idea of people who could never win a major-party nomination jumping into the general election on their own lines. It has a terrific potential to mess things up. Speaking also to you, Jill Stein, another new entrant, via the Green Party. And Bret, to your pal Joe Lieberman’s shenanigans with No Labels.Bret: To say nothing of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West. Both of whom, I think, are bigger political threats to Biden than they would be to the Republican nominee. But none of them would be anything but an afterthought if Biden weren’t such a weak candidate.On the other hand, we have Trump and his trials. Do you think any of these many cases against him are going to do any lasting political damage?Gail: Really wondering. On the one hand, good Lord — 91 felony counts and a civil suit in New York that might just wipe out any semblance of proof that he really has the money he always claims to have. Who could possibly win an election with that kind of record?Bret: Well, Trump could.I haven’t delved too deeply into the particulars of the civil suit filed by Letitia James, New York’s attorney general, but I have my doubts about the strength of a case that rests on the theory that it’s unlawful for a real-estate developer to overstate the value of his assets. The market value of any asset is only determined at the point of sale, and real estate is often a classic “Veblen good,” in which demand increases as the price goes up.Gail: None of this can possibly be a surprise to his die-hard supporters, and they’re still with him. They just see it all as persecution. But once the campaign is really underway and voters keep hearing Biden ads reminding them Trump is a crooked underachiever, do you think the swing voters could keep ignoring it?Bret: Hillary Clinton ran on precisely that in 2016. She lost because she came across as the entitled representative of a self-dealing system, and he won because he came across as a disrupter of that system. That’s exactly the scenario Democrats risk repeating now.Would you mind if we switched to a more local topic? Wondering what you think of the mounting legal jeopardy of your mayor, Eric Adams.Gail: Well, Bret, New Yorkers are not unaccustomed to seeing our mayors skating around some corruption pond. But I have to admit this one is pretty mind-boggling. We’re engulfed in a crisis over the enormous influx of migrants, and now we’re engulfed with stories about Adams’s relationships with Turkish leaders … who are, surprise surprise, into Manhattan real estate.Bret: The question that always hovered over Adams’s mayoralty was whether it would send him to greater heights or to jail.Gail: And meanwhile the F.B.I. raided the home of his chief campaign fund-raiser, Brianna Suggs. We will be hearing a lot more about this, I’m sure. But the immediate reaction was, she’s 25 and she’s his chief campaign fund-raiser?Bret: Ageism. Just terrible.Gail: My prediction: More trouble to come. Your thoughts?Bret: Sounds bad for Adams, for which I’m sorry since I still think that he was the best of the lot in the last mayoral election. But it’s also worth remembering that the F.B.I. has a very mixed record of going after prominent political figures. Remember when Matt Gaetz, the Florida congressman, was going to be charged with sex trafficking? Gaetz is an otherwise despicable person, but that case was a travesty and ultimately collapsed. Or the way the F.B.I. went after Ted Stevens, the Alaska senator, destroying his political career shortly before his death? That was another travesty, in which prosecutors hid exculpatory evidence and engaged in “reckless professional misconduct,” according to a Justice Department report. The F.B.I. was just as bad in its investigations of both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton.Which is all to say: Innocent until proven guilty.Gail: Yipes, I’m not going to argue that one. Did you note that one of the City Council winners here in New York is Yusef Salaam, one of the Central Park Five, who spent nearly seven years in jail for a sexual assault that he didn’t commit?Bret: I hadn’t. I need to start paying attention to New York City politics. They’re getting interesting again.Gail: Now looking forward, what’s your bet on Congress achieving its very basic-minimal job of passing a budget before we’re … budget-less? Think the dreaded new House speaker, Mike Johnson, can make the grade?Bret: Burn-it-all-down conservatism is much easier to practice from the bleachers than from the field. Johnson will have to come up with a budget, he’ll have to learn how to compromise, and he’ll have to learn, like Kevin McCarthy before him, that the price of being a political grown-up is bending to realities that don’t bend toward you.Most of us learn that lesson pretty early in life. Speaker Johnson is only 51, so he still has time.Gail: Ah, if only we didn’t have to be stuck in his classes.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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      Tim Scott Suspends Campaign for Republican Presidential Primary

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      He entered the Republican presidential race as a rising star with substantial financial resources, but struggled to break out of the pack of Trump challengers.Senator Tim Scott, who tried carving out a space in the Republican presidential field with a hopeful message built on his life story — the son of a single mother, he rose from poverty to become the only Black Republican in the Senate — announced on Sunday that he was suspending his campaign.“I think the voters, who are the most remarkable people on the planet, have been really clear that they’re telling me, ‘Not now, Tim,’” Mr. Scott said on Sunday evening on Trey Gowdy’s program on Fox News. “I don’t think they’re saying, Trey, ‘No.’ But I do think they’re saying, ‘Not now.’”Mr. Scott said he had no intention of endorsing another candidate in the Republican primary race. “The best way for me to be helpful is to not weigh in,” he said. He also brushed off the idea that he could serve as someone else’s running mate. “Being vice president has never been on my to-do list,” he said.Mr. Scott’s decision was in many ways unsurprising: He has struggled in polls and with fund-raising, and would have had to hit a new threshold of 80,000 donors as well as a higher number in public opinion surveys in order to qualify for the next debate sponsored by the Republican National Committee, which will be held in December.Still, he kept his plan to suspend his campaign close: Three people familiar with the matter said a number of staff members had learned of it from watching television.He had begun Sunday with a cryptic message on X, formerly known as Twitter, that cited Proverbs: “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways submit to Him, and He will make your paths straight.”Mr. Scott entered the race in May, pledging a different kind of message from the often apocalyptic tenor of some in the Republican field, including the front-runner, former President Donald J. Trump.But Mr. Scott’s brand of sunny optimism found no traction in the modern G.O.P., where the impulse among the party’s core voters, encouraged by Mr. Trump, is to be combative.Mr. Scott began his campaign with $22 million in fund-raising, a substantial war chest that put him in a position of financial strength. He spent millions of dollars on television ads bolstering his candidacy, but his poll numbers remained stagnant, and he never produced a breakout moment on the campaign trail.The super PAC supporting him, fueled by $30 million in donations in 2022 from the Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, announced in mid-October that after seeing no progress for Mr. Scott, it was cutting millions of dollars in television ad reservations it had scheduled for the fall months.Mr. Scott’s momentum appeared to take a hit after the first presidential primary debate, when he was criticized for seeming reluctant to enter the fray. Mr. Scott made it to the third debate, which had increased polling and donor thresholds, only by the narrowest of margins and largely stuck to familiar talking points.He was also never particularly interested in attacking Mr. Trump. And Mr. Trump wasn’t interested in attacking Mr. Scott either, telling aides that he liked the South Carolina senator and planned to say only good things about him.This is a developing story and will be updated. More

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      Winners and Losers From the Third Republican Debate

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      Welcome to Opinion’s commentary for the third Republican presidential debate, held in Miami on Wednesday night. In this special feature, Times Opinion writers and contributors rate the candidates on a scale of 0 to 10: 0 means the candidate probably didn’t belong on the stage and should have dropped out before the debate even started; […] More

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      Third Republican Debate: Key Takeaways

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      Nikki Haley staked out a clear, hawkish vision. Ron DeSantis avoided risks. And the night’s glaring absentee, Donald Trump, again emerged untouched.It was the undercard that underwhelmed.The third straight Republican presidential debate that former President Donald J. Trump has skipped — choosing instead to rally with supporters a few miles away — represented a critical and shrinking chance for his rivals to close his chasm of a polling advantage.And with only five candidates on the stage for the first time — Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott — they all had far more time to speak.Yet they had precious little to say about Mr. Trump, even when given the chance just over two months before the Iowa caucuses.They sparred in a substantive debate that dissected disagreements over aid to Ukraine, Social Security, confronting China, banning TikTok and how to approach abortion less than 24 hours after Republicans suffered their latest electoral setbacks driven by the fall of Roe v. Wade.But there was something surreal about such detailed discussions unfolding among candidates who seem so far from the Oval Office — even Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley, who asserted themselves as the leaders of the non-Trump pack.Here are six takeaways from a debate in Miami that may best be remembered for Ms. Haley snapping at Mr. Ramaswamy, “You’re just scum.”Haley came out swinging.Ms. Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said that there would be no Hamas without Iran.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesNikki Haley emerged as a power center on the debate stage, giving a forceful performance that took advantage of the night’s focus on foreign policy to present a clear and hawkish vision of America’s role in the world.Leaning into her experience as the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, she staked out expansive, interventionist positions that cut against Mr. Trump’s “America First” foreign policy vision.She backed Ukraine to the hilt. She said she would support military strikes against Iran. And she said the United States needed to support Israel with “whatever they need and whenever they need it.”Most of the other candidates gave versions of the same responses — but Ms. Haley had the edge of having represented the United States on the world stage.When the candidates were asked what they would urge Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel to do at this moment, Mr. DeSantis said he “would be telling” him to eliminate Hamas. Ms. Haley said she did, in fact, tell Mr. Netanyahu to “finish them.”As Ms. Haley vies with Mr. DeSantis to establish herself as the field’s Trump alternative, some of the party’s biggest donors were closely watching her performance as they weighed whether to spend millions on her behalf in a desperate final effort to beat Mr. Trump.Ms. Haley’s competitors recognized her rising status by taking aim at her.DeSantis is still playing it safe in a game he’s losing.The Florida governor criticized Donald Trump’s absence from the debate stage.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesIt seemed, for a moment, as if this would be a different kind of debate for Mr. DeSantis. His opening answer affirmatively outlined how he would be better than Mr. Trump.“He should explain why he didn’t have Mexico pay for the border wall,” Mr. DeSantis began. “He should explain why he racked up so much debt. He should explain why he didn’t drain the swamp.” He went on to say that Mr. Trump promised “winning” only to have his party endure years of “losing,” including on Tuesday.“In Florida, I showed how it’s done,” Mr. DeSantis declared, trying to take hometown advantage of a debate held in Miami.But then he mostly left Mr. Trump untouched, satisfied to prosecute his own case and push back on rivals like Ms. Haley. It was the same strategy he used in the first two debates, with little traction gained.Mr. DeSantis is plainly more comfortable than in the first debate. Yet he surprisingly left unsaid a development that his campaign has advertised as a game changer: the endorsement this week of Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa.You can’t debate someone who isn’t there.Chris Christie took the sharpest aim at Mr. Trump, but in his absence the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesThe candidates again did little to aggressively contrast themselves with Mr. Trump, who has made himself unavailable for direct sparring by refusing to stand onstage with his rivals or, for the most part, appear with them at multicandidate gatherings on the campaign trail.Without Mr. Trump present, the five contenders were left to tear one another down, with varying levels of nastiness.The first question to the candidates was the fundamental one most of them have struggled to answer to Republican voters: why they, and not Mr. Trump, should be the nominee.Mr. Christie, as expected, was the sharpest in his attack, arguing that someone who faces Mr. Trump’s criminal charges “cannot lead this party or this country.”But Mr. DeSantis took only a brief swipe. Ms. Haley praised Mr. Trump’s presidency, then criticized him, saying that he had gone “weak in the knees” on Ukraine and that his time had passed. Mr. Ramaswamy defended Mr. Trump in passing. And Mr. Scott talked about himself.Nikki Haley said that she doesn’t believe Trump is the “right president now.”NBC NewsThat was almost the extent of efforts to chip away at the runaway front-runner. Nearby, Mr. Trump held a rally in Hialeah, Fla., remarking at one point that his rivals were “not watchable.”For months, the candidates have struggled to find a way to force him into the ring with them, with Mr. Christie threatening to follow him on the campaign trail and Mr. DeSantis, in recent days, lobbing crass responses to Mr. Trump’s brutal taunts. In the third debate, none of them figured out how to make it work.This debate got personal.Vivek Ramaswamy fought with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter three debates, this much is clear: Some of the candidates onstage really don’t like one another.The most loathed appears to be Mr. Ramaswamy, who from the start fought not just with the rivals flanking him but also with the NBC moderators and the head of the Republican National Committee, Ronna McDaniel, whom he urged to resign in his opening statement.At times, Mr. Ramaswamy almost seemed to be doing Mr. Trump’s bidding, attacking NBC’s past coverage of the former president’s scandals.He made acidic attacks on Ms. Haley, mocking her foreign policy and calling her “Dick Cheney in three-inch heels.” He slipped in a crack about Mr. DeSantis’s footwear, suggesting that the Florida governor, too, was wearing lifts. Mr. DeSantis ignored him. Ms. Haley said hers were five inches and “for ammunition.”When Mr. Ramaswamy later invoked her daughter’s use of TikTok, she demanded, “Leave my daughter out of your voice,” and then added in almost disbelief about the exchange, “You’re just scum.”During a confrontation over TikTok, Nikki Haley snapped at Vivek Ramaswamy after he scolded Ms. Haley over her daughter’s use of the app.Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesAbortion remains a Republican quagmire.The crowd at Wednesday’s debate.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAfter Tuesday’s defeats, the Republican candidates knew they would face questions about the way forward on abortion. But they mostly seemed uncertain what to say.“We’re better off when we can promote a culture of life,” said Mr. DeSantis, who signed a six-week ban in his state. He said little at all about what his party should do or what he would do as president. “At the same time, I understand that some of these states are doing it a little bit different.”Ms. Haley described herself as opposed to abortion, but said that passing national restrictions would be virtually impossible, arguing that it’s crucial to be “honest” with the public. At times, Ms. Haley seemed to be trying to appeal to general-election voters. “I don’t judge anyone for being pro-choice,” she said. It was the kind of line that makes Democratic strategists worry about her strength if she were to win the nomination — but also one that the G.O.P. base is unlikely to welcome.It all amounted to a reminder that Republicans, after decades of campaigning against abortion rights, have yet to figure out what to say after finally getting their wish through a Supreme Court that Mr. Trump — who also won’t say where he stands on a national ban — reshaped.Was this Tim Scott’s swan song?Tim Scott said “diplomacy only“ in the Israel-Hamas war was “a weak strategy.“Scott McIntyre for The New York TimesMr. Scott qualified for this debate by the narrowest of margins, with only a single poll — the legitimacy of which some of his rivals have privately disputed — ensuring his spot. But the thresholds will be higher for the next debate in December, and Mr. Scott’s allies acknowledge that he needs to something, anything, just to remain a factor.It’s hard to imagine that he did anything on Wednesday night to change his trajectory. He stuck to the same messages he has been hitting throughout the campaign. He described an America in need of spiritual healing and a return to Judeo-Christian values.He received more attention for what he did after the debate than for anything he said during it. Mr. Scott, 58, has never been married, and entire newspaper stories have been dedicated to a mysterious girlfriend who had never been seen with him in public.Until he brought her onstage.Michael Gold More

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      Tim Scott Appears With Girlfriend Onstage After Republican Debate

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      Senator Tim Scott’s most viral debate moment didn’t actually happen during the debate. It came shortly afterward.Mr. Scott, the affable yet awkward South Carolina lawmaker, has been pressed during his campaign with questions about his unmarried status, as he has focused on his faith and his commitment to conservative family values.He has repeatedly given vague answers about being in a relationship with a woman, but a significant other had not campaigned with him.On Wednesday night when the Republican presidential debate ended — a time when candidates are regularly greeted onstage by spouses and other relatives — Mr. Scott stunned observers when he appeared arm-in-arm with a longhaired blonde woman in a gray pantsuit who smiled widely as they posed for photos.She was later identified by a person close to the campaign as Mindy Noce, Mr. Scott’s girlfriend and a design and renovations manager for a real estate company in the Charleston, S.C., area. In the spin room after the debate, a tight-lipped Mr. Scott confirmed that the mystery woman was his girlfriend and that they had been seeing each other for “about a year or so.”The moment grabbed more attention than anything Mr. Scott said during the debate did, an unfortunate metaphor for his presidential run. Even the pictures taken at his debate lectern with his girlfriend had the feel of being the final souvenirs from a stalled campaign.Mr. Scott entered the race as an underdog, but had proven to be a strong fund-raiser with the party’s base of online, small-dollar donors. His Sunday-school style of conservatism has yet to resonate even with evangelicals in Iowa, home of the party’s first nominating contest. Still, Mr. Scott, who champions himself as a “happy warrior,” remains an optimist. When asked by NBC News if this was his last debate, he referred to the next debate in December in Alabama, saying, “Thirty days from now in Alabama, we’ll be hanging out having a conversation. I’ll be on the stage.”The emergence of Mr. Scott’s companion onstage, like her emergence in the campaign itself, took a while.Immediately after the debate concluded and other candidates were joined by their spouses, Mr. Scott put his arm around his mother, Frances Scott, and posed for a picture behind the lectern he had used during the debate.He walked along the edge of the stage and squatted for selfies with fans in the audience. He chatted with supporters. He stood and stared out into the crowd, seeming to take in the moment.He took more pictures with his nephew, Ben Scott.Finally, after most of his rivals and their families had left the stage, Mr. Scott was joined at his lectern by Ms. Noce.Mr. Scott pointed out a step, taking care that she did not trip. They stood side by side, wrapped their arms around one another’s back and smiled for pictures.Mr. Scott held onto her hand as she turned to walk offstage, as if he did not want to let go.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Here’s Who Qualified for the Third Republican Presidential Debate

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      Chris Christie, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy and Tim Scott will meet again on the stage on Wednesday night, but Doug Burgum missed the cut.Five candidates have qualified for the third Republican presidential debate on Wednesday evening, the Republican National Committee announced on Monday.Former President Donald J. Trump, the dominant front-runner in the Republican primary, is skipping the debate, which will be held in Miami — less than 70 miles from Mr. Trump’s residence at Mar-a-Lago. Mr. Trump also did not participate in the previous two debates.The candidates who made the cut:Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida.Nikki Haley, the former governor of South Carolina and former United Nations ambassador.The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy.Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina.The Lineup for the Third Republican Presidential DebateFive candidates have made the cut for the third Republican debate on Nov. 8. Donald J. Trump will not participate.Each qualifying candidate had two polling paths to a debate podium: The candidates had to either poll at 4 percent or more in two national polls or at 4 percent in one national poll and at 4 percent in two state polls in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada or South Carolina — which hold contests early in the cycle. Each poll needed to survey at least 800 likely Republican voters and meet certain standards meant to reduce bias to qualify, according to the R.N.C.The candidates also had to have a minimum of 70,000 campaign donors, including at least 200 donors from 20 states or territories.Candidates had until Monday evening to meet these requirements. The candidates also had to pledge to support the eventual Republican nominee. Candidates signed this pledge for the previous two debates. Mr. Trump has refused to sign.The debate stage has narrowed considerably from the first event held in August. Former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas, a vocal Trump critic, qualified for the first debate but not the second or third.Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota also failed to qualify for the third debate after struggling to reach the required polling threshold. Mr. Burgum has weathered calls to drop out of the race as he hovers at about 1 percent in national polls.“Skipping the next debate isn’t going to stop us,” Mr. Burgum said in a statement on X, formerly known as Twitter. “I’ve been told ‘it’s impossible’ my entire life and always beat the odds.”Former Vice President Mike Pence appeared at the first two debates but dropped out of the race last week amid signs he would not qualify for this debate. More

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      Republican Jewish Coalition to Gather at a Moment of Peril for Israel

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      The Republican Jewish Coalition gathers in Las Vegas this weekend, drawing G.O.P. leaders and candidates at a moment of unique peril for Israel and American Jewry.For years, the annual meeting of the Republican Jewish Coalition has been a routine stop on the presidential primary trail, an opportunity for would-be presidents to demonstrate their foreign-policy credentials while plying donors with requisite one-liners. But nothing is routine this time.With an escalating conflict in Israel that threatens to spread across the region and a rise in tensions and antisemitism in the United States, the meeting will be like none of the others in the organization’s decades-long history. When Republican officials, lawmakers and candidates gather in Las Vegas this weekend, they will come together at a moment of unique peril for Israel and, many attendees believe, for American Jewry.Security has been tightened and seats added to accommodate a wave of new attendees who decided to come after the Oct. 7 attacks. An empty Shabbat table will sit in the middle of the room, honoring the more than 200 people being held hostage in Gaza. Along with the American national anthem, attendees will sing Hatikvah, the Israeli national anthem, and offer special prayers for those who are missing and wounded.And while the overall tone will be subdued, members of the organization said they expected nothing short of full-throated, unequivocal support for Israel and the protection of Jews in America from the 2024 Republican field.“I would venture half the room, if not more than half, has relatives who are in the I.D.F.,” said Ari Fleischer, a former press secretary under President George W. Bush and a member of the Republican Jewish Coalition’s board, referring to the Israel Defense Forces. “They don’t want to see a single weak knee, elbow or joint. They want to see support for a nation that’s in trauma against the modern-day equivalent of Nazism.”All eight major candidates running for the Republican nomination, including the dominant front-runner, Donald J. Trump, are expected to attend, a reflection of how the attacks have thrust foreign policy into the center of American politics. On Wednesday, the House passed a resolution vowing to give the Israeli government whatever security assistance it needs, the first legislation taken up by the new speaker, Mike Johnson, Republican of Louisiana.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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      Trump and GOP Candidates Call for Campus Crackdowns Against Anti-Israel Speech

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      The G.O.P. field, including former President Trump, has been wading into the emotional debate among students playing out over the deadly war between Hamas and Israel.As tensions mount on U.S. college campuses over the war in Gaza, several Republican presidential candidates are proposing a crackdown on students and schools that express opposition to Israel, appear to express support for the deadly Hamas attacks or fail to address antisemitism.Former President Donald J. Trump, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina have called for the federal government to revoke international students’ visas, while others have suggested that universities should lose public funding.After students at George Washington University projected messages on Tuesday onto the side of a campus building — including “Glory to our martyrs,” “Divestment from Zionist genocide now” and “Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” a phrase that encompasses all of Israel as well as Gaza and the West Bank — two candidates argued almost immediately that the students or the universities, or both, should be punished.“If this was done by a foreign national, deport them,” Mr. Scott wrote on X, formerly known as Twitter, on Wednesday morning. “If the college coddles them, revoke their taxpayer funding. We must stand up against this evil anti-Semitism everywhere we see it — especially on elite college campuses.”Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota wrote: “Antisemitism cannot be tolerated. Period. The students responsible should be held accountable and if the university fails to do so it should lose any federal funding.” He indicated in another post that he would “fully enforce” a Trump-era executive order to use Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to revoke federal funding for any university that “enables” antisemitism.They and other Republicans are wading into an emotional debate on college campuses over Hamas’s attack on Israel, Israel’s bombardment of Gaza, and the broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict — turning the opinions of individual students and student groups, starting at Harvard and New York University, into national flash points. Days of simultaneous pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have exposed painful divisions, including significant and potentially consequential ideological rifts between donors, students and faculty members.The suggestion of punishing anti-Israel views is part of a broader campaign against liberal-leaning campus environments, which many Republicans claim indoctrinate students. But it is also in tension with other parts of that campaign: In many cases, the same candidates have previously condemned what they described as censorship of students who expressed conservative opinions.Mr. Scott was a co-sponsor of a Senate resolution in 2021 that called on colleges and universities to “facilitate and recommit themselves to protecting the free and open exchange of ideas” and argued that “restrictive speech codes are inherently at odds with the freedom of speech guaranteed by the First Amendment.”Mr. Burgum signed legislation in North Dakota, also in 2021, that forbade universities in the state to discriminate against student organizations or speakers based on their viewpoint.When asked where Mr. Scott drew the line between protected and unprotected speech, his campaign did not comment on the record but cited a previous statement in which he called it a “fine line.” Mr. Burgum’s campaign pointed to the Trump executive order as requiring action.Separately, on Tuesday, the chancellor of the State University System of Florida wrote in a letter to university presidents that he had determined — “in consultation with” Mr. DeSantis — that two campus chapters of the group Students for Justice in Palestine “must be deactivated.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization released guidance to campus chapters earlier this month calling for demonstrations “in support of our resistance in Palestine.” The guidance called Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which killed more than 1,400 people, “a surprise operation against the Zionist enemy” and “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance.”It added, “This is what it means to Free Palestine: not just slogans and rallies, but armed confrontation with the oppressors.”The letter from the chancellor, Ray Rodrigues, said the chapters had violated a Florida law against providing “material support” to “a designated foreign terrorist organization.”“The State University System will continue working with the Executive Office of the Governor and S.U.S.’s Board of Governors to ensure we are all using all tools at our disposal to crack down on campus demonstrations that delve beyond protected First Amendment speech into harmful support for terrorist groups,” it said. “These measures could include necessary adverse employment actions and suspensions for school officials.”The national Students for Justice in Palestine organization did not immediately respond to a request for comment.The letter came a few days after Mr. DeSantis declared at a campaign event in Iowa that, if elected president, he would revoke the visas of students who supported Hamas. He did not say how he would determine who fell into that category; some public commentary has applied the label “pro-Hamas” to demonstrators expressing broader support for Palestinians or opposition to Israel’s military actions in Gaza, which have killed more than 6,500 people, according to the Hamas-run Health Ministry in Gaza. (Its figures could not be independently verified.)Mr. Trump made the same proposal at his own recent event in Iowa, also not providing details. “Under the Trump administration, we will revoke the student visas of radical anti-American and antisemitic foreigners at our colleges and universities, and we will send them straight back home,” he said.Nikki Haley, a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, joined Mr. Scott and Mr. Burgum in saying she would cut federal funding to colleges that did not condemn students who supported Hamas.“No more federal money for colleges and universities that allow antisemitism to flourish on campus,” Ms. Haley wrote on X, arguing that the promotion of certain opinions in relation to the Hamas attack constituted “threatening someone’s life” and was “not freedom of speech.”Only one candidate, Vivek Ramaswamy, publicly rejected efforts to punish schools or individual students for anti-Israel or pro-Palestinian statements.“Colleges are spaces for students to experiment with ideas & sometimes kids join clubs that endorse boneheadedly wrong ideas,” he wrote on X this month in response to an uproar over a letter from student groups at Harvard that held “the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.”He added: “It wasn’t great when people wearing Trump hats were fired from work. It wasn’t great when college graduates couldn’t get hired unless they signed oppressive ‘DEI’ pledges. And it’s not great now if companies refuse to hire kids who were part of student groups that once adopted the wrong view on Israel.” More