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      The Permanent Migration Crisis

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      On Wednesday the Biden administration announced that it will offer work permits and deportation protections to over 400,000 Venezuelans who have arrived in the United States since 2021. On paper this is a humanitarian gesture, a recognition of the miseries of life under the Maduro dictatorship. In political practice it’s a flailing attempt to respond to a sudden rise in anti-immigration sentiment in blue cities, particularly New York, as the surge of migrants overwhelms social services and shelters.I say flailing because the fundamental problem facing the Biden administration is on the southern border, where every attempt to get ahead of the extraordinary numbers trying to cross or claim asylum has been overwhelmed.In Eagle Pass, Texas, The Wall Street Journal reports that in a week, an estimated 10,000 migrants have entered the city, whose entire population is less than 30,000. The subsequent movement of migrants to places like New York, Chicago and Washington, D.C., has been encouraged by red-state governors, but under any circumstances such crowds in Eagle Pass would eventually mean rising numbers in big cities. And policies that make it easier to work in those cities, like the Biden move, are likely to encourage more migration until the border is more stable and secure.The liberal confusion over this situation, the spectacle of Democratic politicians like Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul sounding like Fox News hosts, is a foretaste of the difficult future facing liberals across the Western world.For decades, liberal jurisdictions have advertised their openness to migrants, while relying on the sheer difficulty of international migration and restrictions supported by conservatives to keep the rate of arrivals manageable, and confine any chaos to the border rather than the metropole.What’s changed, and what will keep changing for decades, are the numbers involved. Civil wars and climate change will play their part, but the most important shifts are, first, the way the internet and smartphones have made it easier to make your way around the world, and second, the population imbalance between a rich, rapidly-aging West and a poorer, younger Global South, a deeply unstable equilibrium drawing economic migrants north.All of this is a bigger problem for Europe than the United States — European aging is more advanced, Africa’s population will boom for decades (in 50 years there may be five Africans for every European) while Latin America’s birthrates have declined. The European equivalent of Eagle Pass is the island of Lampedusa, Italy’s southernmost possession, where the number of recent migrants exceeds the native population. This surge is just the beginning, Christopher Caldwell argues in an essay for The Spectator on the continent’s dilemmas, which quotes a former French president, Nicolas Sarkozy: “The migration crisis has not even started.”America’s challenge is less dramatic but not completely different. The world has shrunk, and there is no clear limit on how many people can reach the Rio Grande. So what’s happening this year will happen even more: The challenges of mass arrivals will spread beyond the border, there will be an increased demand for restrictions even from people generally sympathetic to migrants, but the sheer numbers will make any restrictions less effectual.This combination can yield a pattern like what we’ve seen in Britain after Brexit and Italy under Giorgia Meloni: Politicians are elected promising to take back control of borders, but their policies are ineffective and even right-wing governments preside over high migration rates. The choice then is to go further into punitive and callous territory, as the Trump administration did with its family-separation policy and its deal with Mexico — or else to recoil as many voters did from Trump’s policies, which encouraged the Democrats to move leftward, which left them unprepared to deal with the crisis when they came to power, which now threatens to help elect Trump once again.In a sense you might distill the challenge facing liberals to a choice: Take more responsibility for restricting immigration, or get used to right-wing populists doing it for you.But in fact the problems for both left and right will be messier than this. The populists themselves will not always know how to fulfill their promises. The interests of liberals in immigrant destinations like New York City may diverge from liberals in college towns or suburbs. The scale and diversity of migration will create unexpected alliances (a lot of Venezuelan migrants might vote for Trump if given the chance, after their experience with socialism) and new lines of internal fracture.Most likely there will be neither a punitive end to the crisis nor a successful humanitarian means of managing it. There will be a general rightward evolution, a growing tolerance for punitive measures (“Build the wall” could be a liberal slogan eventually), that has some effect on the flow of migration — but doesn’t prevent it from being dramatic, chaotic and transformative, on the way to whatever new world order may await.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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      Request for Gag Order on Trump Raises Free Speech Dilemma

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      By putting the prospect of political violence at the heart of their argument to limit the former president’s statements about the election case, federal prosecutors raised issues that have little precedent.The request by prosecutors that a judge impose a gag order on former President Donald J. Trump in the federal election-subversion case presents a thorny conflict between the scope of his First Amendment rights and fears that he could — intentionally or not — spur his supporters to violence.There is little precedent for how the judge overseeing the case, Tanya S. Chutkan, should think about how to weigh strong constitutional protections for political speech against ensuring the functioning of the judicial process and the safety of the people participating in it.It is one more example of the challenges of seeking to hold to account a norm-shattering former president who is being prosecuted in two federal cases — and two state cases — as he makes another bid for the White House with a message that his opponents have weaponized the criminal justice system against him.“Everything about these cases is making new law because there are so many gaps in the law,” said Paul F. Rothstein, a law professor at Georgetown University and a criminal procedure specialist. “The system is held together by people doing the right thing according to tradition, and Trump doesn’t — he jumps into every gap.”Citing a spate of threats inspired by the indictment of Mr. Trump in the election case, the special counsel overseeing the prosecutions for the Justice Department, Jack Smith, asked Judge Chutkan this month to order the former president to cease his near-daily habit of making “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating” public statements about witnesses, the District of Columbia jury pool, the judge and prosecutors.A proposed order drafted by Mr. Smith’s team would also bar Mr. Trump and his lawyers from making — or causing surrogates to make — public statements, including on social media, “regarding the identity, testimony or credibility of prospective witnesses.” The motion cited Mr. Trump’s attacks on former Vice President Mike Pence and former Attorney General William P. Barr, who refused to go along with his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The draft order would allow Mr. Trump to say he denies the charges “without further comment.”Jack Smith, the special counsel, asked the judge to order Mr. Trump to cease his habit of making “disparaging and inflammatory or intimidating” public statements about witnesses, the District of Columbia jury pool, the judge and prosecutors.Doug Mills/The New York TimesA version of the motion was unsealed late last week. Judge Chutkan, of the Federal District Court in Washington, has ordered Mr. Trump’s legal team to file any opposition to it by Monday and is likely to hold a hearing on the request next month. A spokesman for Mr. Trump has called the request “blatant election interference” and a corrupt and cynical attempt to deprive the former president of his First Amendment rights.Gag orders limiting what trial participants can say outside of court are not uncommon, especially to limit pretrial publicity in high-profile cases. Courts have held that orders barring participants from certain public comments are constitutional to avoid prejudicing a jury, citing the public interest in the fair and impartial administration of trials.The context of the gag request for Mr. Trump, though, is different in fundamental ways.Mr. Smith’s filing nodded to the potential for Mr. Trump’s statements to complicate the process of seating an unbiased jury in the case, which is scheduled to go to trial in March. But the request for the gag order focused primarily on a different concern: that Mr. Trump’s angry and vengeful statements about the proceedings against him are putting people in danger now.The motion cited “multiple threats” to Mr. Smith. It noted that another prosecutor, Jay I. Bratt, had been subject to “intimidating communications” after the former president targeted him in “inflammatory public posts,” falsely saying Mr. Bratt had tipped off the White House before Mr. Trump’s indictment in the case accusing him of mishandling classified documents.And it cited the case of a Texas woman who has been charged with making death threats to Judge Chutkan last month. She left the judge a voice message using a racist slur, court filings show, and said, “You are in our sights — we want to kill you.”“If Trump doesn’t get elected in 2024, we are coming to kill you, so tread lightly, bitch,” the message said, adding that “you will be targeted personally, publicly, your family, all of it.”Prosecutors connected their request to the threats and harassment that election officials and other people carrying out election-related duties experienced after Mr. Trump attacked them in late 2020 as part of his false claims that the election had been stolen.“The defendant knows that when he publicly attacks individuals and institutions, he inspires others to perpetrate threats and harassment against his targets,” the motion said, adding: “Given the defendant’s history described above and the nature of the threats to the court and to the government, it is clear that the threats are prompted by the defendant’s repeated and relentless posts.”In that sense, the request for the gag order was as much about what is sometimes called stochastic terrorism — the idea that demonizing someone through mass communication increases the chances that a lone wolf will be inspired to attack the target — as it was about more traditional concerns of keeping a jury from being influenced by statements outside of court.The request raises both legal and political issues and carries the risk of playing into Mr. Trump’s hands.The former president and his defense team have made clear that they want people to think the case is about whether he had a First Amendment right to say whatever he wanted about the election. Mr. Smith sought to head off that move by acknowledging in the indictment that Mr. Trump had a right to lie to the public and by not charging him with inciting the Capitol riot.But the gag order request is directly about what Mr. Trump is allowed to say. Moreover, it has given him more fodder to portray the case as intended to undercut his presidential campaign — and, if he is under a gag order and loses again in 2024, to once again tell his supporters that the election was rigged.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan of the Federal District Court in Washington has ordered Mr. Trump’s legal team to file any opposition to the motion by Monday.Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts, via Associated PressWhen the motion became public, Mr. Trump riffed on it with apparent glee.“They want to see if they can silence me. So the media — the fake news — will ask me a question. ‘I’m sorry, I won’t be able to answer’ — how do you think we’ do in that election?” Mr. Trump said at a summit of religious conservatives. “So we are going to have a little bit of a fun with that, I think. That’s a tough one. Can you imagine?”Implicit in the ways he could “have a little bit of a fun” is the question of how Judge Chutkan could enforce any such order if Mr. Trump skirted its edges or even boldly defied its limits. It would be one thing for her to impose a fine, but if he refused to pay or to tone down his statements, a next step for a judge in a normal case would be to order imprisonment.Any such step in this case would be legally and politically explosive.At a hearing last month, Judge Chutkan vowed to “take whatever measures are necessary to protect the integrity of these proceedings” and warned lawyers for Mr. Trump that they and their client should consider their public statements in the case.“I intend to ensure the orderly administration of justice in this case, as I would with any other case,” she said, “and even arguably ambiguous statements from parties or their counsel, if they could reasonably be interpreted to intimidate witnesses or to prejudice potential jurors, can threaten the process.”The judge also suggested that she could speed up the trial date as an alternative penalty. “The more a party makes inflammatory statements about this case, which could taint the jury pool or intimidate potential witnesses,” she said, “the greater the urgency will be that we proceed to trial quickly to ensure a jury pool from which we can select an impartial jury.”Most cases about gag orders affecting criminal defendants have focused on limits imposed on what their lawyers, not the defendants themselves, can say outside of court — in part because defense lawyers typically order their clients to say nothing in public about their cases anyway. That is one of many ways Mr. Trump operates from a different playbook.In a 1991 case, which prosecutors cited in their motion, the Supreme Court upheld local court rules that bar defense lawyers from making comments outside court that are substantially likely to materially prejudice a jury. Such a regulation, it said, “constitutes a constitutionally permissible balance between the First Amendment rights of attorneys in pending cases and the state’s interest in fair trials.”But the Supreme Court also suggested that greater speech restrictions might be permissible on lawyers because they are officers of the court. The justices have never addressed what standard a gag order on a defendant must meet to pass First Amendment muster. A handful of appeals courts have addressed gag orders imposed on trial participants who are not lawyers and set different standards.Margaret C. Tarkington, a law professor at Indiana University, Indianapolis, and a specialist in lawyers’ free-speech rights, predicted that any gag order would be more likely to survive on appeal if Judge Chutkan barred Mr. Trump only from attacking witnesses and jurors. The First Amendment provides particularly strong protections for criticism of government officials, she noted.Still, Professor Tarkington acknowledged that a gag order that still permitted demonizing the judge and prosecutors would not address much of the concern that prosecutors are raising. She also said past gag-order cases offered few guideposts because Mr. Trump is such a unique figure: His megaphone and its potential impact on his more extreme supporters — as demonstrated by the Capitol attack on Jan. 6, 2021 — puts him in a different realm.“It’s a really hard argument in normal circumstances to say the government, who is prosecuting someone, can shut them up from defending themselves in public,” Professor Tarkington said. “What makes this backward from everything else is that normally, in every criminal prosecution I can think of, the power imbalance is that the state has all the power and the defendant has none. But in this case, you have a defendant who has very significant power.”In their motion to Judge Chutkan, prosecutors also cited an appeals court ruling in 2000 that involved a rare example of a defendant who challenged a gag order. A judge had prevented all trial participants from making statements outside the court “intended to influence public opinion” about the case’s merits, and the defendant, an elected insurance commissioner in Louisiana named Jim Brown, wanted to be exempted. But the appeals court upheld it.The motion said the Brown precedent showed that the reasoning of the 1991 Supreme Court case upholding gag orders on defense lawyers “applies equally” to defendants. But prosecutors omitted another seemingly relevant factor: The gag order was lifted for about two months to avoid interfering with Mr. Brown’s re-election campaign and reimposed only after the election was over.“Brown was able to answer, without hindrance, the charges of his opponents regarding his indictment throughout the race,” the appeals court noted, adding, “The urgency of a campaign, which may well require that a candidate, for the benefit of the electorate as well as himself, have absolute freedom to discuss his qualifications, has passed.” More

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      Concerns About Biden’s Re-election Bid

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      More from our inbox:Is Mitch McConnell ‘a Decent Man’?A Comedian’s ‘Lies’Working on Solutions to the Groundwater CrisisIn poll after poll, Democratic voters have expressed apprehension about President Biden’s bid for a second term.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Biden 2024 Has Party Leaders Bullish. But ‘in Poll After Poll,’ Voters Are Wary” (news article, Sept. 17):Have we not learned anything from 2016? The coverage of President Biden’s age has become beyond stale and repetitive. It is Hillary Clinton’s emails all over again, and look at what happened that time.Joe Biden has been a steady leader when we needed it most, with significant legislative accomplishments and a restoration of our image abroad. This kind of dangerous and irresponsible coverage is partly what got Donald Trump elected in 2016.Simply put, I don’t care how old Joe Biden is. I don’t want to hear about it anymore. Focus on his accomplishments and the danger that is Donald Trump running for office again after the damage he did last time.I am a young voter, and I cannot wait to vote for Joe Biden again.Ryan PizarroNew YorkTo the Editor:The Democrats should nominate the person most likely to defeat Donald Trump. It defies reason that a candidate who a large majority of voters, including those of his own party, think is too old and should not run is that person.You write that party officials maintain that having a discussion of an alternative is a “fantasy” because doing so would appear disloyal and almost certainly would fail. Democrats should act in the best interests of the country, rather than out of slavish loyalty to an individual and fear of reprisal, as is the case with the Republicans and Mr. Trump.And based on the polls it is far from certain that a challenge of Mr. Biden would fail. If a new generation of candidates such as Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan compete with Mr. Biden, either Mr. Biden would emerge as the popular choice or a new, more electable leader will emerge through the democratic process.Could it be that the disparity between the party leaders’ bullishness and the voters’ wariness is due to the leaders’ fear of letting the democratic process work?David SchlitzWashingtonTo the Editor:Perhaps if The Times wrote as glowing a report about the accomplishments of President Biden as it did of Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones (both Mick and Joe are 80), voters wouldn’t be as concerned about Mr. Biden’s age.Coverage of the president is consistently ageist, questioning his ability, even as he has addressed climate change, gun violence and income inequality, saved us from an economic crisis and succeeded at rebuilding alliances with the world’s democracies.Where’s the headline, “Are the Stones Too Old to Record and Tour? Fans Worry”?Mindy OshrainDurham, N.C.To the Editor:Re “Go With the Flow, Joe!,” by Maureen Dowd (column, Sept. 17):Ms. Dowd is absolutely, urgently right about the overmanagement of President Biden by his staff. It powerfully (if subliminally) reinforces the impression that he needs careful management.Sure, there’s a risk he will sometimes go off the rails. But on the other side of the ledger, many Americans value authenticity — even as a good portion of our electorate has no shame making up and promulgating outrageous stuff. That, after all, is at least 80 percent of Donald Trump’s appeal to his base.So I hope both the president and his staff take Ms. Dowd’s advice to heart. They could at least give us more glimpses of the genuine Joe Biden. More give-and-take with reporters would be a good first step. What have they got to lose?They stand to lose more if they persist in reinforcing the perception that he has to be carefully “handled.” As the polls show, he’s not getting the credit he deserves.Richard KnoxSandwich, N.H.Is Mitch McConnell ‘a Decent Man’? Samuel Corum for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Romney Has Given Us a Gift,” by David Brooks (column, Sept. 15):I cannot agree with Mr. Brooks’s assessment of Senator Mitch McConnell as “a decent man who is trying to mitigate the worst of Trump’s effect on his party.” I think Mr. McConnell helped pave the way for Donald Trump and has probably done more to undermine democracy than anyone else in my lifetime.After the 2008 election resulted in Democratic control of the House, the Senate and the presidency, Mr. McConnell embarked on a scorched earth effort to filibuster major legislation regardless of the desires of most voters.This cynical and anti-democratic tactic would sour people on government, drive voters to abandon Democrats, and increase his chances of becoming Senate leader. But the paralyzing of government and anti-government animus set the stage for authoritarians like Mr. Trump who claim “I alone can solve it” and promise to blow up the system.Mr. McConnell could have spoken forcefully against Mr. Trump many times if he really wanted to curb Mr. Trump’s influence but, with rare exceptions, chose not to do so. He voted twice to acquit Mr. Trump over his abuses of power.It seems that Mr. McConnell is fine going along with Mr. Trump if it helps his efforts to become Senate majority leader again. I believe that “a decent man” would not be so willing to sacrifice our democracy in the pursuit of power.Daniel A. SimonNew YorkA Comedian’s ‘Lies’Hasan Minhaj in 2018.Bryan Derballa for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Can a Comic Stretch the Truth Too Far?,” by Jason Zinoman (On Comedy, Sept. 21), about the comedian Hasan Minhaj:It was bound to happen. The ever-hungry censor is hungry for the flesh of the comedian.All stand-up comics tell “lies.” This is their bread and butter. Most audiences know the difference between “pure” truth and comedic “lies.”I hope artists like Mr. Minhaj don’t crawl off or moderate their material.If anything, we need more, not fewer, comedians to show us the real truth, even if they need to lie to get at it.Anne BernaysCambridge, Mass.Working on Solutions to the Groundwater Crisis Loren Elliott for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “America Is Using Up Its Groundwater” (“Uncharted Waters” series, Sept. 2):In a lifetime of trying to rouse action on America’s unfolding groundwater crisis, I’ve often longed for a moment of mutual clarity where everyone together sees and understands the scale of the problem. This piece provided one such moment. Seeing the collated data play out in the graphics accompanying the text should leave no one in doubt about the urgency of the crisis. So I hope.What was not conveyed is the labor of thousands working on solutions. Farmers, Indigenous leaders, rural communities, scientists and even some lawmakers are pioneering new efforts that need attention and support.Satellite data is not used just to track the scale of the problem; farmers are increasingly using new satellite-based platforms to track and address water consumption in their fields. California growers are being paid to repurpose once-thirsty farmland in creative ways that encourage groundwater recharge and other public benefits — a model Congress could soon encourage elsewhere (multiple bills have been proposed).Just this summer, Indigenous communities successfully protected a huge section of northern Arizona groundwater from new mining contamination.Yes, all these efforts will need to be significantly scaled up. In the meantime, the labor and sacrifices of farmers and communities on the front lines of the crisis deserve our attention and support.Ann HaydenSan FranciscoThe writer is vice president for climate resilient water systems, Environmental Defense Fund. More

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      Biden Sharpens Focus on Trump as He Tries to Re-Energize Democrats for 2024

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      Months before the first Republican primaries, the president is turning his attention to his old adversary as he tries to re-energize his party’s voters and donors.This spring, as the Republican presidential primary race was just beginning, the Democratic National Committee commissioned polling on how the leading Republicans — Donald J. Trump and Ron DeSantis — fared against President Biden in battleground states.But now, as Mr. Trump’s lead in the primary has grown and hardened, the party has dropped Mr. DeSantis from such hypothetical matchups. And the Biden campaign’s polling on Republican candidates is now directed squarely at Mr. Trump, according to officials familiar with the surveys.The sharpened focus on Mr. Trump isn’t happening only behind the scenes. Facing waves of polls showing soft support for his re-election among Democrats, Mr. Biden and his advisers signaled this week that they were beginning to turn their full attention to his old rival, seeking to re-energize the party’s base and activate donors ahead of what is expected to be a long and grueling sequel.On Sunday, after Mr. Trump sought to muddy the waters on his position on abortion, the Biden operation and its surrogates pushed back with uncommon intensity. On Monday, Mr. Biden told donors at a New York fund-raiser that Mr. Trump was out to “destroy” American democracy, in some of his most forceful language so far about the implications of a second Trump term. And on Wednesday, as the president spoke to donors at a Manhattan hotel, he acknowledged in the most explicit way yet that he now expected to be running against “the same fella.”The mileposts all point to a general election that has, in many ways, already arrived.David Axelrod, the architect of Barack Obama’s presidential campaigns, said engaging now with Mr. Trump would help Mr. Biden in “getting past this hand-wringing period” about whether the president is the strongest Democratic nominee.“The whole predicate of Biden’s campaign is that he would be running against Trump,” Mr. Axelrod said. “Their operative theory is, once this is focused on the race between Biden and Trump, that nervousness will fade away into a shared sense of mission. Their mission is in getting to that place quickly and ending this period of doubt.”Mr. Trump has undertaken a pivot of his own, skipping the Republican debates and seeking to position himself as the inevitable G.O.P. nominee, with allies urging the party to line up behind him even before any primary votes are cast.Mr. Biden, in his remarks to donors on Monday on Broadway, issued a blunt warning about his likely Republican opponent.“Donald Trump and his MAGA Republicans are determined to destroy American democracy,” the president said. “And I will always defend, protect and fight for our democracy. That’s why I’m running.”Mr. Biden is planning to follow up those off-camera remarks with what he has billed as a “major speech” about democracy. The White House said the speech, in the Phoenix area the day after the next Republican debate, would be about “honoring the legacy of Senator John McCain and the work we must do together to strengthen our democracy.”Instead of attending that debate, on Wednesday, Mr. Trump is making a trip to Michigan planned during the autoworker strike — aiming to appeal to the blue-collar workers who helped deliver him the White House in 2016. The Biden campaign has been building out a plan to counter him there, in addition to its planned response to the Republican debate.Mr. Trump has maintained dominance in the Republican primary, both in national polls and in Iowa and New Hampshire.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesMr. Biden is facing a moment of turbulence. His son Hunter was just indicted. The Republican-controlled House is moving toward impeachment. Polls show a lack of Democratic excitement for his re-election. And voters continue to dismiss rosy economic indicators and hold a more dour financial outlook, even as the president has tried to sell a success story under the banner of “Bidenomics.”The focus on democracy and Mr. Trump is not new for Mr. Biden. The opening images of his 2024 campaign kickoff video showed the violence on Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol, and he delivered two major addresses on the stakes for democracy before the 2022 midterm elections.Yet Mr. Biden, White House officials and his campaign have remained studiously silent on the biggest developments surrounding Mr. Trump this year: the 91 felony counts he faces in indictments in four jurisdictions. The president wants to avoid giving credence to the evidence-free idea that he is personally responsible for Mr. Trump’s legal travails.“Trump was his own worst enemy throughout the last year,” said Anna Greenberg, a Democratic pollster and strategist. “While most of the punditry talked about how much the indictments helped with his base, it hurt with everyone else.”Ms. Greenberg said it was almost inevitable that Mr. Trump would energize Democratic voters if he won the Republican nomination again. “For better or worse, Trump has been the driver of the highest turnout we’ve seen in the last 100 years in the last three election cycles,” she said. “I fully believe Trump will be a driver of turnout in 2024 as well.”“Joe Biden is an unmitigated disaster and his policies have hurt Americans and made this country weaker,” said Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump. “President Trump continues to dominate the primary because voters know he’s the only person who will beat Biden and take back the White House.”Mr. Biden also faces a key fund-raising deadline at the end of September. In his 2020 run, he struggled to raise money from small donors online — until he became the nominee against Mr. Trump, when he shattered fund-raising records.Mr. Biden’s fund-raising during the reporting period that ended in June showed that he was again slow to attract vigorous support from small donors online, though people familiar with the campaign’s fund-raising have said the numbers have been better during the current quarter.At the start of this year, Democrats close to the White House had hoped for a long and bloody Republican primary that would consume the party, leaving its eventual nominee undecided until deeper into 2024 and by then weakened.But as Mr. Trump has consolidated his lead — he has consistently drawn more than 50 percent support in national polling averages since late spring — Democrats are resigned to something of a political consolation prize: the chance to draw an early contrast with Mr. Trump.Some of Mr. Biden’s top aides and advisers have believed, despite ample polling earlier in the year that suggested the opposite, that Mr. Trump would be a tougher general-election opponent than Mr. DeSantis or any of the other Republican presidential candidates.This spring, months before the D.N.C.’s pollsters stopped testing matchups between Mr. Biden and Mr. DeSantis, the party’s polls showed the Florida governor faring better than Mr. Trump against the president in battleground states.Now, Democrats in the few states where the 2024 presidential election is likely to be decided have come to the same conclusion as Mr. Biden: It’s going to be Mr. Trump again.“I don’t see any of the other Republicans gaining any traction against Trump,” said Representative Dina Titus of Nevada, a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board. “DeSantis has dropped even further in the polls and nobody else has moved much ahead.”Most of the advertisements Mr. Biden’s campaign has broadcast so far have been positive messages highlighting his record on foreign policy and the economy. But a spot about abortion rights that has run for three weeks shows Mr. Trump boasting that “I’m the one who got rid of Roe v. Wade” and saying, in a quickly recanted 2016 interview, that women should be punished for having abortions. The ad also shows Mr. DeSantis and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina speaking about legislation to restrict abortion.Mr. Biden has spoken, off and on, about Mr. Trump for months. He has also used several right-wing figures, including Senators Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Tommy Tuberville of Alabama and Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, as stand-ins to paint the whole Republican Party as in thrall to Mr. Trump.In a Labor Day speech in Philadelphia that Mr. Biden’s aides described as framing the forthcoming general-election campaign, he made five references to “the last guy” and one to “my predecessor” but never mentioned Mr. Trump by name.The shift toward Mr. Trump was reflected in Mr. Biden’s remarks to donors this week. At his New York fund-raiser, Mr. Biden said Mr. Trump’s name four times in 12 minutes.“I don’t believe America is a dark, negative nation — a nation of carnage driven by anger, fear and revenge,” he said. “Donald Trump does.”Mr. Biden’s Instagram feed, meanwhile, offers a road map of the issues on which his campaign wants to draw a contrast with Mr. Trump in 2024: abortion, guns, infrastructure, jobs and prescription drug prices.“I think,” said Representative Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, “that we are set for a rematch.” More

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      Trump me atacó. Después, Musk lo hizo. No fue casualidad

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      Timo LenzenCuando trabajaba en Twitter, ahora conocida como X, dirigí al equipo que puso por primera vez una etiqueta de verificación de hechos en uno de los tuits de Donald Trump. Tras la violencia del 6 de enero, ayudé a tomar la decisión de suspender su cuenta en Twitter. Nada me preparó para lo que ocurriría después.Respaldado por sus seguidores en las redes sociales, Trump me atacó públicamente. Dos años después, tras su adquisición de Twitter y después de que yo dimití de mi puesto como responsable de confianza y seguridad de la empresa, Elon Musk echó más leña al fuego. He vivido con guardias armados en la puerta de mi casa y he tenido que trastocar la vida de mi familia, así como esconderme durante meses y mudarme una y otra vez.No es una historia que me guste recordar. Pero he aprendido que lo que me ocurrió no fue casualidad. No fue solo una venganza personal o la “cultura de la cancelación”. Se trató de una estrategia que no solo afecta a personas específicas, como en mi caso, sino a todos nosotros, ya que está cambiando a gran velocidad lo que vemos en internet.Los individuos —desde investigadores académicos hasta trabajadores de empresas de tecnología— son cada vez más objeto de demandas, comparecencias ante el Congreso y despiadados ataques en línea. Estos ataques, organizados en gran medida por la derecha, están teniendo el efecto deseado: las universidades están reduciendo sus esfuerzos para cuantificar la información abusiva y engañosa que se difunde en internet. Las empresas de redes sociales están evitando tomar el tipo de decisiones difíciles que mi equipo tomó cuando intervinimos ante las mentiras de Trump sobre las elecciones de 2020. Las plataformas no empezaron a tomarse en serio estos riesgos sino hasta después de las elecciones de 2016. Ahora, ante la posibilidad de ataques desproporcionados contra sus empleados, las empresas parecen cada vez más reacias a tomar decisiones controvertidas, lo cual permite que la desinformación y el abuso se enconen para evitar provocar represalias públicas.Estos ataques a la seguridad en internet se producen en un momento en el que la democracia no podría estar más en riesgo. En 2024, está prevista la celebración de más de 40 elecciones importantes, entre ellas las de Estados Unidos, la Unión Europea, la India, Ghana y México. Lo más probable es que estas democracias se enfrenten a los mismos riesgos de campañas de desinformación respaldadas por los gobiernos y de incitación a la violencia en línea que han plagado las redes sociales durante años. Deberíamos preocuparnos por lo que ocurra.Mi historia comienza con esa verificación de datos. En la primavera de 2020, tras años de debate interno, mi equipo decidió que Twitter debía aplicar una etiqueta a un tuit del entonces presidente Trump que afirmaba que el voto por correo era propenso al fraude y que las próximas elecciones estarían “amañadas”. “Conoce los hechos sobre la votación por correo”, decía la etiqueta.El 27 de mayo, la mañana siguiente a la colocación de la etiqueta, la asesora principal de la Casa Blanca, Kellyanne Conway, me identificó de manera pública como el director del equipo de integridad de Twitter. Al día siguiente, The New York Post publicó en su portada varios tuits en los que me burlaba de Trump y otros republicanos. Los había publicado años antes, cuando era estudiante y tenía pocos seguidores, sobre todo amigos y familiares, en las redes sociales. Ahora, eran noticia de primera plana. Ese mismo día, Trump tuiteó que yo era un “odiador”.Legiones de usuarios de Twitter, la mayoría de quienes días antes no tenían ni idea de quién era yo ni en qué consistía mi trabajo, comenzaron una campaña de acoso en línea que duró meses, en la que exigían que me despidieran, me encarcelaran o me mataran. La cantidad de notificaciones de Twitter arrunió mi teléfono. Amigos de los que no tenía noticias desde hacía años expresaron su preocupación. En Instagram, fotos antiguas de mis vacaciones y de mi perro se inundaron de comentarios amenazantes e insultos (algunos comentaristas, que malinterpretaron el momento de manera atroz, aprovecharon para intentar coquetear conmigo).Me sentí avergonzado y asustado. Hasta ese momento, nadie fuera de unos pocos círculos bastante especializados tenía idea de quién era yo. Los académicos que estudian las redes sociales llaman a esto “colapso de contexto”: las cosas que publicamos en las redes sociales con un público en mente pueden acabar circulando entre un público muy diferente, con resultados inesperados y destructivos. En la práctica, se siente como si todo tu mundo se derrumba.El momento en que se desató la campaña en contra de mi persona y mi supuesta parcialidad sugería que los ataques formaban parte de una estrategia bien planificada. Los estudios académicos han rebatido en más de una ocasión las afirmaciones de que las plataformas de Silicon Valley son tendenciosas contra los conservadores. Pero el éxito de una estrategia encaminada a obligar a las empresas de redes sociales a reconsiderar sus decisiones quizá no requiera la demostración de una verdadera mala conducta. Como describió en una ocasión Rich Bond, expresidente del Partido Republicano, tal vez solo sea necesario “ganarse a los árbitros”: presionar sin cesar a las empresas para que se lo piensen dos veces antes de emprender acciones que podrían provocar una reacción negativa. Lo que me ocurrió fue parte de un esfuerzo calculado para que Twitter se mostrara reacio a moderar a Trump en el futuro y para disuadir a otras empresas de tomar medidas similares.Y funcionó. Mientras se desataba la violencia en el Capitolio el 6 de enero, Jack Dorsey, entonces director general de Twitter, anuló la recomendación del departamento de confianza y seguridad de que se bloqueara la cuenta de Trump debido a varios tuits, incluido uno que atacaba al vicepresidente Mike Pence. En cambio, se le impuso una suspensión temporal de 12 horas (antes de que su cuenta se se suspendiera indefinidamente el 8 de enero). Dentro de los límites de las normas, se animó a los miembros del personal a encontrar soluciones para ayudar a la empresa a evitar el tipo de reacción que da lugar a ciclos de noticias furiosas, audiencias y acoso a empleados. En la práctica, lo que sucedió fue que Twitter dio mayor libertad a los infractores: a la representante Marjorie Taylor Greene se le permitió violar las normas de Twitter al menos cinco veces antes de que una de sus cuentas fuera suspendida de manera definitiva en 2022. Otras figuras prominentes de derecha, como la cuenta de guerra cultural Libs of TikTok, gozaron de una deferencia similar.En todo el mundo, se están desplegando tácticas similares para influir en los esfuerzos de confianza y seguridad de las plataformas. En India, la policía visitó dos de nuestras oficinas en 2021 cuando comprobamos los hechos de las publicaciones de un político del partido gobernante y la policía se presentó en la casa de un empleado después de que el gobierno nos solicitó bloquear cuentas implicadas en una serie de protestas. El acoso volvió a rendir frutos: los ejecutivos de Twitter decidieron que cualquier acción que pudiera ser delicada en la India requeriría la aprobación de los más altos mandos, un nivel único de escalada de decisiones que, de otro modo, serían rutinarias.Y cuando quisimos revelar una campaña de propaganda llevada a cabo por una rama del ejército indio, nuestro equipo jurídico nos advirtió que nuestros empleados en la India podrían ser acusados de sedición y condenados a muerte. Así que Twitter no reveló la campaña sino hasta más de un año después, sin señalar al gobierno indio como autor.En 2021, antes de las elecciones legislativas de Rusia, los funcionarios de un servicio de seguridad estatal fueron a la casa de una alta ejecutiva de Google en Moscú para exigir la retirada de una aplicación que se usaba para protestar en contra de Vladimir Putin. Los agentes la amenazaron con encarcelarla si la empresa no cumplía en 24 horas. Tanto Apple como Google retiraron la aplicación de sus respectivas tiendas y la restablecieron una vez concluidas las elecciones.En cada uno de estos casos, los empleados en cuestión carecían de la capacidad para hacer lo que les pedían los funcionarios de turno, ya que las decisiones subyacentes se tomaban a miles de kilómetros de distancia, en California. Pero como los empleados locales tenían la desgracia de residir dentro de la jurisdicción de las autoridades, fueron objeto de campañas coercitivas, que enfrentaban el sentido del deber de las empresas hacia sus empleados contra los valores, principios o políticas que pudieran hacerles resistirse a las demandas locales. Inspirados por la idea, India y otros países comenzaron a promulgar leyes de “toma de rehenes” para garantizar que las empresas de redes sociales contrataran personal local.En Estados Unidos, hemos visto que estas formas de coerción no las han llevado a cabo jueces y policías, sino organizaciones de base, turbas en las redes sociales, comentaristas de noticias por cable y, en el caso de Twitter, el nuevo propietario de la empresa.Una de las fuerzas más recientes en esta campaña son los “archivos de Twitter”, una gran selección de documentos de la empresa —muchos de los cuales yo mismo envié o recibí durante mis casi ocho años en Twitter— entregados por orden de Musk a un puñado de escritores selectos. Los archivos fueron promocionados por Musk como una forma innovadora de transparencia, que supuestamente exponían por primera vez la forma en que el sesgo liberal de las costas de Estados Unidos de Twitter reprime el contenido conservador.El resultado fue algo muy distinto. Como dijo el periodista de tecnología Mike Masnick, después de toda la fanfarria que rodeó la publicación inicial de los archivos de Twitter, al final “no había absolutamente nada de interés” en los documentos y lo poco que había tenía errores factuales importantes. Hasta Musk acabó por impacientarse con la estrategia. Pero, en el proceso, el esfuerzo marcó una nueva e inquietante escalada en el acoso a los empleados de las empresas tecnológicas.A diferencia de los documentos que por lo general saldrían de las grandes empresas, las primeras versiones de los archivos de Twitter no suprimieron los nombres de los empleados, ni siquiera de los de menor nivel. Un empleado de Twitter que residía en Filipinas fue víctima de doxeo (la revelación de información personal) y de acoso grave. Otros se han convertido en objeto de conspiraciones. Las decisiones tomadas por equipos de decenas de personas de acuerdo con las políticas escritas de Twitter se presentaron como si hubieran sido tomadas por los deseos caprichosos de individuos, cada uno identificado por su nombre y su fotografía. Yo fui, por mucho, el objetivo más frecuente.La primera entrega de los archivos de Twitter se dio tras un mes de mi salida de la empresa y unos cuantos días después de que publiqué un ensayo invitado en The New York Times y hablé sobre mi experiencia como empleado de Musk. No pude evitar sentir que las acciones de la empresa eran, hasta cierto punto, represalias. A la semana siguiente, Musk fue incluso más allá y sacó de contexto un párrafo de mi tesis doctoral para afirmar sin fundamentos que yo aprobaba la pedofilia, un tropo conspirativo que suelen utilizar los extremistas de ultraderecha y los seguidores de QAnon para desprestigiar a personas de la comunidad LGBTQ.La respuesta fue todavía más extrema que la que experimenté tras el tuit que Trump publicó sobre mí. “Deberías colgarte de un viejo roble por la traición que has cometido. Vive con miedo cada uno de tus días”, decía uno de los miles de tuits y correos electrónicos amenazantes. Ese mensaje y cientos de otros similares eran violaciones de las mismas políticas que yo había trabajado para desarrollar y hacer cumplir. Bajo la nueva administración, Twitter se hizo de la vista gorda y los mensajes permanecen en el sitio hasta el día de hoy.El 6 de diciembre, cuatro días después de la primera divulgación de los archivos de Twitter, se me pidió comparecer en una audiencia del Congreso centrada en los archivos y la presunta censura de Twitter. En esa audiencia, algunos miembros del Congreso mostraron carteles de gran tamaño con mis tuits de hace años y me preguntaron bajo juramento si seguía manteniendo esas opiniones (en la medida en que las bromas tuiteadas con descuido pudieran tomarse como mis opiniones reales, no las sostengo). Greene dijo en Fox News que yo tenía “unas posturas muy perturbadoras sobre los menores y la pornografía infantil” y que yo permití “la proliferación de la pornografía infantil en Twitter”, lo que desvirtuó aún más las mentiras de Musk (y además, aumentó su alcance). Llenos de amenazas y sin opciones reales para responder o protegernos, mi marido y yo tuvimos que vender nuestra casa y mudarnos.El ámbito académico se ha convertido en el objetivo más reciente de estas campañas para socavar las medidas de seguridad en línea. Los investigadores que trabajan para entender y resolver la propagación de desinformación en línea reciben ahora más ataques partidistas; las universidades a las que están afiliados han estado envueltas en demandas, onerosas solicitudes de registros públicos y procedimientos ante el Congreso. Ante la posibilidad de facturas de abogados de siete dígitos, hasta los laboratorios de las universidades más grandes y mejor financiadas han dicho que tal vez tengan que abandonar el barco. Otros han optado por cambiar el enfoque de sus investigaciones en función de la magnitud del acoso.Poco a poco, audiencia tras audiencia, estas campañas están erosionando de manera sistemática las mejoras a la seguridad y la integridad de las plataformas en línea que tanto ha costado conseguir y las personas que realizan este trabajo son las que pagan el precio más directo.Las plataformas de tecnología están replegando sus iniciativas para proteger la seguridad de las elecciones y frenar la propagación de la desinformación en línea. En medio de un clima de austeridad más generalizado, las empresas han disminuido muy en especial sus iniciativas relacionadas con la confianza y la seguridad. Ante la creciente presión de un Congreso hostil, estas decisiones son tan racionales como peligrosas.Podemos analizar lo que ha sucedido en otros países para vislumbrar cómo podría terminar esta historia. Donde antes las empresas hacían al menos un esfuerzo por resistir la presión externa; ahora, ceden en gran medida por defecto. A principios de 2023, el gobierno de India le pidió a Twitter que restringiera las publicaciones que criticaran al primer ministro del país, Narendra Modi. En años anteriores, la empresa se había opuesto a tales peticiones; en esta ocasión, Twitter accedió. Cuando un periodista señaló que tal cooperación solo incentiva la proliferación de medidas draconianas, Musk se encogió de hombros: “Si nos dan a elegir entre que nuestra gente vaya a prisión o cumplir con las leyes, cumpliremos con las leyes”.Resulta difícil culpar a Musk por su decisión de no poner en peligro a los empleados de Twitter en India. Pero no deberíamos olvidar de dónde provienen estas tácticas ni cómo se han extendido tanto. Las acciones de Musk (que van desde presionar para abrir los archivos de Twitter hasta tuitear sobre conspiraciones infundadas relacionadas con exempleados) normalizan y popularizan que justicieros exijan la rendición de cuentas y convierten a los empleados de su empresa en objetivos aún mayores. Su reciente ataque a la Liga Antidifamación demuestra que considera que toda crítica contra él o sus intereses empresariales debe tener como consecuencia una represalia personal. Y, en la práctica, ahora que el discurso de odio va en aumento y disminuyen los ingresos de los anunciantes, las estrategias de Musk parecen haber hecho poco para mejorar los resultados de Twitter.¿Qué puede hacerse para revertir esta tendencia?Dejar claras las influencias coercitivas en la toma de decisiones de las plataformas es un primer paso fundamental. También podría ayudar que haya reglamentos que les exijan a las empresas transparentar las decisiones que tomen en estos casos y por qué las toman.En su ausencia, las empresas deben oponerse a los intentos de que se quiera controlar su trabajo. Algunas de estas decisiones son cuestiones fundamentales de estrategia empresarial a largo plazo, como dónde abrir (o no abrir) oficinas corporativas. Pero las empresas también tienen un deber para con su personal: los empleados no deberían tener que buscar la manera de protegerse cuando sus vidas ya se han visto alteradas por estas campañas. Ofrecer acceso a servicios que promuevan la privacidad puede ayudar. Muchas instituciones harían bien en aprender la lección de que pocas esferas de la vida pública son inmunes a la influencia mediante la intimidación.Si las empresas de redes sociales no pueden operar con seguridad en un país sin exponer a sus trabajadores a riesgos personales y a las decisiones de la empresa a influencias indebidas, tal vez no deberían operar allí para empezar. Como a otros, me preocupa que esas retiradas empeoren las opciones que les quedan a las personas que más necesitan expresarse en línea de forma libre y abierta. Pero permanecer en internet teniendo que hacer concesiones podría impedir el necesario ajuste de cuentas con las políticas gubernamentales de censura. Negarse a cumplir exigencias moralmente injustificables y enfrentarse a bloqueos por ello puede provocar a largo plazo la necesaria indignación pública que ayude a impulsar la reforma.El mayor desafío —y quizá el más ineludible— en este caso es el carácter esencialmente humano de las iniciativas de confianza y seguridad en línea. No son modelos de aprendizaje automático ni algoritmos sin rostro los que están detrás de las decisiones clave de moderación de contenidos: son personas. Y las personas pueden ser presionadas, intimidadas, amenazadas y extorsionadas. Enfrentarse a la injusticia, al autoritarismo y a los perjuicios en línea requiere empleados dispuestos a hacer ese trabajo.Pocas personas podrían aceptar un trabajo así, si lo que les cuesta es la vida o la libertad. Todos debemos reconocer esta nueva realidad y planear en consecuencia.Yoel Roth es académico visitante de la Universidad de Pensilvania y la Fundación Carnegie para la Paz Internacional, y fue responsable de confianza y seguridad en Twitter. More

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      David McCormick Is Set to Announce Republican Senate Bid in Pennsylvania

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      Brutal primary fights weakened the party’s nominees in several states last year. Now, as David McCormick runs again for Senate in the battleground state, he appears to have cleared the field.To avoid costly Senate battleground defeats in 2024, Republicans have a plan: run like Democrats.That means trying to replicate Democrats’ success at avoiding the kinds of vicious intraparty battles that have weakened Republican nominees in recent years.It remains to be seen whether the party’s attempt to sidestep fault lines between Trumpian loyalists and traditional conservatives will be effective, but the strategy’s first victory could come in Pennsylvania, where David McCormick appears to have cleared the Republican primary field of any major challengers.Mr. McCormick — a former hedge fund executive who lost one of the party’s nastiest and most expensive Senate primaries to Dr. Mehmet Oz last year — announced his new campaign on Thursday evening in Pittsburgh. He is aiming to unseat Senator Bob Casey, a Democrat who has announced plans to seek a fourth six-year term in office.“The truth is both parties need to be shaken up — what they’re doing just isn’t working” Mr. McCormick said during a 15-minute speech in which he portrayed himself as “the only candidate in this race that can change Washington.”Senate Republicans have begun similar efforts to clear the path for Gov. Jim Justice in West Virginia, where Senator Joe Manchin III, a Democrat, is weighing a re-election bid. Mr. Justice, however, faces a primary fight against Representative Alex Mooney, who has vowed to oppose the “establishment swamp.”In Montana, Senator Steve Daines, who is the chairman of Senate Republicans’ campaign arm, has endorsed Tim Sheehy’s bid to take on Senator Jon Tester, the incumbent Democrat. But Mr. Sheehy, a wealthy businessman and military veteran, could face a primary challenge from Representative Matt Rosendale, who lost to Mr. Tester in 2018 and said last month that Montanans should decide the race, “not Mitch McConnell and the D.C. cartel.”But in Pennsylvania, Mr. McCormick appears to have assuaged concerns from the right. He announced endorsements from all eight Pennsylvania Republicans in Congress. One of his competitors in the Senate primary race last year, Kathy Barnette, is working for Vivek Ramaswamy’s 2024 presidential bid.And crucially, Doug Mastriano, a far-right state senator who was viewed as a potential Senate candidate from the Trumpian wing of the party, has declined to run.Mr. Mastriano appeared on the verge of endorsing Mr. McCormick after meeting with him and his wife, Dina Powell, a former Goldman Sachs executive who served in the Bush and Trump administrations. During their meeting, the two men found common ground over their military service, according to two McCormick allies familiar with the conversation.“It’s time to unify,” Mr. Mastriano, who lost the governor’s race by 15 percentage points last year, said on Monday in an interview with Real America’s Voice, a conservative news outlet. “If he’s our nominee, I’m backing him.”Doug Mastriano, a far-right state senator who was viewed as a potential Senate candidate from the Trumpian wing of the party, has suggested that he would support Mr. McCormick’s candidacy.Hannah Beier for The New York TimesStill, Mr. McCormick’s ability to avoid a primary — at least so far — does not necessarily signal a new willingness by Republicans to put aside their differences.Instead, the lack of a serious contender may stem from Mr. McCormick’s continued politicking in Pennsylvania, and a reluctance from others to take on the enormous challenge of unseating an incumbent.Pennsylvania Democrats argue that President Biden’s unpopularity will not be as much of a problem in their state. Mr. Biden has already traveled to Pennsylvania at least nine times this year, and Mr. Casey has greeted him at several of those stops. Mr. Casey helped John Fetterman and Josh Shapiro campaign in their successful bids for Senate and governor last year, and aides to both men said they were eager to return the favor.The race last year to replace the retiring Senator Patrick J. Toomey ended up costing more than $360 million, according to OpenSecrets, a nonpartisan group. Similar amounts could be spent in 2024, when Pennsylvania — unlike Montana and West Virginia — will double as a top battleground in the presidential race.Mr. McCormick will be able to bring his own financial firepower to the race: He earned a salary of more than $22 million at his most recent job and listed assets worth between $116 million and $290 million on his candidate financial disclosure last year.His deep pockets were on display on Thursday in Pittsburgh, where his announcement on the fifth floor of the Heinz History Center — an event space overlooking the Allegheny River — included passed appetizers of chicken tacos, pierogies and kielbasa and bacon-wrapped sweet potatoes, a buffet of Tuscan antipasto and “farmers crudités,” a cocktail bar and a live band that played Taylor Swift, Van Morrison and other rock covers.Mr. McCormick addressed his audience of about 200 people from a stage framed by giant U.S. flag and behind a lectern adorned with a placard with only his first name: Dave.“America is in decline — economically, militarily, spiritually — you see it, you know it, you feel it,” Mr. McCormick said. “I’m here to tell you tonight it doesn’t have to be that way. With your help, with your support, with your leadership, we can have a much brighter future ahead.”Still, many Republicans contend that Pennsylvania is not among the three states where the party has the best chance to win back a majority that has eluded them since 2021. Republicans’ clearest opportunities to flip seats appear to be in Montana, Ohio and West Virginia, all of which Donald J. Trump easily won in 2020.But Mr. McConnell, the Senate Republican leader, raised eyebrows this year when he added Pennsylvania to his list of top priorities. Some Republicans involved in efforts to recruit Senate candidates have privately wondered whether Mr. McConnell’s statement was meant to help persuade Mr. McCormick to enter the race.“Dave has the guts — and the money — to run,” said Doug McLinko, a county commissioner in Bradford County who describes himself as a “hard-core Republican on ballot security” and a Trump loyalist.Mr. McLinko did not support Mr. McCormick in the 2022 race but said he would next year because he had gotten to know the businessman.Even after losing the primary last year, Mr. McCormick helped Pennsylvania Republicans campaign and raise money for the general election, and he has since continued those efforts.His political committee, Pennsylvania Rising, has contributed more than $100,000 to conservative candidates and causes since last year. Multiple Republicans described Mr. McCormick as a ubiquitous presence at state party events since the 2022 election.Jackie Kulback, the Republican chairwoman in Cambria County, said she was backing Mr. McCormick partly because her choice last year, Jeff Bartos, was not running, but also because she had been impressed by Mr. McCormick when he spoke at a recent event about his private-sector experience in China.“I like to win and try to get behind winners,” Ms. Kulback said. “Not many have Dave McCormick’s résumé, and I just feel like he’s the whole package.”Mr. Trump, who backed Dr. Oz last year, attacked Mr. McCormick over that same experience in China during the primary race and derided him as a globalist, which helped sink Mr. McCormick’s campaign.The former president has not endorsed anyone in the Pennsylvania race this time. A campaign spokesman declined to comment.Mr. McCormick lost the primary by fewer than 1,000 votes. He earned good will among some Pennsylvania Republicans by not pressing for a recount, said Sam DeMarco, the Allegheny County Republican chairman. Mr. DeMarco helped collect signatures from more than half of the state party’s 67 county chairs supporting Mr. McCormick’s candidacy.“I’m tired of losing,” Mr. DeMarco said. “David is someone who can appeal to both sides of the party.”Mr. McCormick was largely unknown in Pennsylvania political circles before last year, partly because he spent much of his adult life outside the state. Democrats are already attacking him over his residency, a strategy that helped torpedo Dr. Oz.Last year, Mr. McCormick lost the Senate primary race to Dr. Mehmet Oz by fewer than 1,000 votes. He earned good will among some Pennsylvania Republicans by not pressing for a recount.Matt Rourke/Associated PressOn Thursday, the Pennsylvania Democratic Party described Mr. McCormick in a news release as a “Wall Street mega-millionaire who is lying about living in Pennsylvania.”Pennsylvania Democrats also criticized Mr. McCormick on Wednesday for deleting from his YouTube page a 2022 interview in which he said the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade was a “huge step forward and a huge victory for the protection of life.”“He does not reside in Pennsylvania and has built his career as a Wall Street executive, advocating for policies that support job outsourcing and tax cuts primarily benefiting himself and his Wall Street associates,” said Sharif Street, a state senator and chairman of the Pennsylvania Democratic Party.But McCormick’s allies insist he is ready to beat back residency questions and to appeal to suburban women — and other voters turned off by Mr. Trump’s brand of politics — by leaning on his private-sector experience and his personal background.“I’m Pennsylvania First,” Mr. McCormick said Thursday, adopting Mr. Trump’s “America First” slogan.Mr. McCormick grew up in Bloomsburg, Pa., about an hour southwest of Scranton, Mr. Biden’s birthplace. He graduated from West Point, served five years in the Army — where he was awarded a Bronze Star for his service in the Persian Gulf war of 1991 — and earned a Ph.D. in international relations at Princeton.He returned to Pennsylvania and joined FreeMarkets, a Pittsburgh-based internet auction company. After the company was sold in 2004, Mr. McCormick held multiple roles in the Bush administration.In 2009, Mr. McCormick moved to the Northeast and joined Bridgewater Associates, a hedge fund in Westport, Conn., that manages $150 billion in assets. After becoming chief executive in 2017, he resigned in 2022 and turned his attention to a Senate campaign.As much as Mr. McCormick may try to focus on issues, he will also have to answer questions about Mr. Trump and seek to satisfy the competing factions inside his own party.“If anyone is drawing the conclusion that a clear path for McCormick is because fractures are gone and we’re all singing ‘Kumbaya,’ they’re sadly mistaken,” said Sam Faddis, who leads a coalition of right-wing activist groups in the state, adding that he liked Mr. McCormick but remained on the fence about his candidacy.Mr. Faddis added, “The division between the grass roots and the establishment is massive in Pennsylvania, and massive nationwide.” More

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      Donald Trump Tests Pro-Life America

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      On Sunday, Donald Trump sent shock waves through the Republican primary when an interview with NBC’s Kristen Welker on “Meet the Press” aired in which he said that Ron DeSantis did a “terrible thing” and made a “terrible mistake” when he signed Florida’s six-week abortion ban. It’s the kind of statement that could end virtually any other Republican presidential campaign. Opposition to abortion rights, after all, is every bit as fundamental to Republican identity as support for abortion rights is to Democratic identity. Breaking with the party on that issue is the kind of heresy that no national politician can survive.Or is it? When it comes to Republican identity, is support for Trump, the person, now more central than any other issue, including abortion?My colleague Michelle Goldberg speaks often of the distinction between movements that seek converts and movements that hunt heretics. It’s an extremely helpful one. Cultural and political projects centered around winning converts tend to be healthier. They’re outward-facing and bridge-building. Heretic hunters, by contrast, tend to be angrier. They turn movements inward. They believe in addition by subtraction.The G.O.P. under Trump hunts heretics. Oddly enough, it has grown more intolerant even as it has become less ideological. The reason is simple: Trump is ideologically erratic but personally relentless. He demands absolute loyalty and support. He relishes driving dissenters out of the party or, ideally, into political retirement.Trump presents the pro-life movement with multiple heresy-hunting problems. First, and most obviously, if support for Trump is the central plank of the new G.O.P. orthodoxy, then the pro-life movement will find its cause subordinated to Trump’s ambitions as long as he reigns. If he believes the pro-life movement helps him, the movement will enjoy the substantial benefits of his largess — for example, the nomination of pro-life judges, including the Supreme Court justices who helped overturn Roe v. Wade. But if he perceives the movement to be hurting his political ambitions — as his comments to Welker suggest he feels now — then its members will be cast as the heretics and will stand outside, in the cold, complaining about their lost influence to a Republican public that will not care.Second, as long as the Trumpian right shapes the pro-life movement more than the other way around, the movement will adopt many of the same tactics. It won’t merely serve Trump, it will also imitate Trump. Every movement adopts the character of its leaders, and if Trump is the leader of the G.O.P. and by extension the pro-life movement, then his manners and methods will dominate the discourse.Finally, and more important, if the backlash to the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization decision teaches us anything, it’s that the pro-life movement cannot be hunting heretics. As a strategy, heretic hunting is far less costly to the side with the more popular position, which can afford its purity, at least for a time. The same impulse can be utterly destructive to those in the minority, as the pro-life movement clearly is now.As I discussed in a Times Opinion Audio short last week, the Guttmacher Institute published new research suggesting that the number of legal abortions has actually increased after Dobbs. Even though abortion is illegal or sharply restricted in 14 states, there were roughly 10 percent more abortions in the remaining 36 states and Washington, D.C., in the first six months of 2023 than there were when abortion was legal across the country in 2020.At the same time that abortion numbers rise, the electoral results for the pro-life movement have been exceedingly grim. When abortion referendums have been placed on statewide ballots, the pro-choice movement has won. Every time. Even in states as red as Kentucky, Kansas and Montana.The general polling numbers, moreover, are disastrous. There has been a marked increase in support for abortion rights positions, and there’s evidence that the pro-life movement began its sharp decline during the Trump administration. After years of stability in abortion polling, support for the pro-life cause is at an extraordinarily low ebb.In this context, heretic hunting is disastrous. The pro-life movement has to seek converts. Its first three priorities should be to persuade, persuade and, yes, persuade. Donald Trump is not the man for that job, not only because he’s a bully and a heretic hunter but also because it is quite clear that he is not convictionally pro-life. He is conveniently pro-life, and the moment it stops being convenient, he stops having a meaningful opinion either way.How would someone who is convictionally pro-life and also eager to persuade have responded to Kristen Welker’s questions? Such a person wouldn’t condemn pro-life laws unless those laws were poorly written or had glaring flaws. Instead, he or she would use a challenging question from Welker as an opportunity to persuade, in terms that even skeptics could understand.For example, when speaking of so-called heartbeat bills that ban abortion after around six weeks of pregnancy, one could connect the concept to one of the happiest moments in parents’ lives — the first moment they heard their child’s heartbeat. Parents feel that joy because it is tangible evidence of life and health. Even for a parent who is anxious, or financially stressed, or caught in a terrible relationship, that heartbeat still signals a life that is precious.If a politician is challenged to describe the kind of pro-life legislation he’d seek in a nation or state that increasingly favors abortion rights, he could emphasize how a holistic pro-life movement can work with pro-choice allies on legislation that would improve the lives of mothers and children. It turns out that our nation can reduce abortions without banning abortions, and it did so for decades before the abortion rate rose under Trump.To take one example, in 2021, Mitt Romney advanced a child allowance proposal that would provide families with $4,200 per year per child for each child up to age 6, and $3,000 per year per child between the ages of 6 and 17. Crucially, benefits would begin before birth, helping financially distressed families to prepare to care for their new children.Not only would the plan cut childhood poverty (while paying for itself through cuts elsewhere), it would almost certainly also reduce the number of abortions. Writing in Public Discourse, the Institute for Family Studies fellow Lyman Stone analyzed the impact of financial support for mothers on abortion rates and found that not only does financial support decrease abortion, that decrease is also most pronounced in jurisdictions with the fewest restrictions on abortion.That’s what persuasion can look like — defending the source of your convictions by explaining and demonstrating love for kids and moms while also looking for areas of agreement and common purpose. But does any of that sound like Donald Trump to you?Despite generating interest from conservatives and progressives, Romney’s proposal went nowhere. An astute analysis by Peter Nicholas in The Atlantic noted that the Biden administration had a competing child tax credit plan and Romney himself was an “isolated figure” in his party. While some Republicans reject direct cash transfers, it’s also true that working with Romney meant crossing Trump, and that, of course, would be heresy.In the days after the Dobbs decision, I wrote a piece arguing that when Roe was reversed, the right wasn’t ready. A Trump movement animated by rage and fear wasn’t prepared to embrace life and love. And now the pro-life movement is forced to ponder: Is Donald Trump more important to the G.O.P. than even the cause of life itself? Is he under any circumstances the best ambassador for a cause that’s already losing ground?For a generation, the pro-life movement was powerful enough to hunt heretics right out of the Republican Party. Now, if it clashes with Trump, it might find itself the heretic. And if the movement is that weak — if it is that beholden to such a corrupt and cruel man — then we might look back at the Dobbs decision not as a great victory for the pro-life cause, but rather as the beginning of a long defeat, one of a movement that forgot how to persuade. More

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      in Elections

      It’s Not a Race, Yet, in the Republican Primary

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      Donald Trump is polling about as well as any candidate in the modern history of contested presidential primaries.Reba Saldanha/ReutersDonald J. Trump’s lead in the Republican primary just keeps growing.He breached 60 percent of the vote in Fox News and Quinnipiac polls last week, including 60-13 and 62-12 leads over his nearest rival, the not-so-near Ron DeSantis.Even more notable: His gains follow what would be considered a disastrous 50-day stretch for any other campaign. Since early August, he has faced new federal and state criminal indictments for attempting to subvert the 2020 election. He skipped the first presidential debate, which was nonetheless watched by over 10 million people. Not only did it not hurt him, but he came out stronger.With these latest gains, Mr. Trump is inching into rarefied territory. The latest surveys show him polling about as well as any candidate in the history of modern contested presidential primaries. He’s approaching the position of George W. Bush, who led John McCain by a similar margin at this stage of the 2000 race. And in the two aforementioned polls, he’s matching Mr. Bush’s position.The 2000 election is a helpful reminder that the race might still become more competitive. Mr. Bush skipped the first two debates, but Mr. McCain ultimately won New Hampshire, cleared the field of significant opponents, and ultimately won six more contests. He didn’t win, of course. He didn’t come close. But it was at least a race. That’s more than can be said right now for Mr. Trump’s competition, which would probably go 0 for 50 if states voted today.On paper, Mr. Trump faces greater risks than Mr. Bush did — including the risk of imprisonment. On the trail, he’s relatively weak in Iowa, where his recent comments about abortion — he called a six-week ban a “terrible thing” — might raise additional skepticism from the state’s religious conservatives. Indeed, Mr. Trump’s lead in Iowa (roughly 45-15) is quite similar to where Mr. Bush stood in New Hampshire at this time 24 years ago.Unlike Mr. Bush, Mr. Trump hasn’t consolidated the support of Republican elites. Unlike Mr. McCain, Mr. DeSantis is not a mere factional candidate. There remains a chance, unlikely though it may seem today, that Mr. Trump’s skeptics could consolidate against him, perhaps fueled by an unprecedented criminal trial in the heart of the primary season.But to this point, the theoretical risks to Mr. Trump haven’t materialized. More than anything, this probably reflects his unique strengths. He’s a former president, not the son of a former president. Perhaps this race is more like a president seeking re-election than a typical open, contested primary. At the very least, his resilience in the face of electoral defeat and criminal indictment is a powerful indication of his unusual standing.And in contrast with Mr. McCain at this stage in the 2000 race, Mr. Trump’s opposition is well known. It’s probably fair to say that Mr. DeSantis has faded more than he has been outright defeated, so there’s room for a resurgence — something like Mr. McCain’s comeback in 2008. But the easiest path to surge in a primary is usually to be discovered by voters for the first time, and that path will not be available to the likes of Mr. DeSantis, Mike Pence and Chris Christie.The winner of the first debate might have been Nikki Haley, but she represents something of a best case for Mr. Trump: moderate and strong enough to peel away anti-Trump votes from Mr. DeSantis; far too moderate to pose a serious threat to Mr. DeSantis or to win the nomination.So while history and today’s circumstances suggest a path toward a tighter race, it’s worth being frank about what we’re watching today. This race currently has many of the features of a noncompetitive contest, like an overwhelming polling lead, a leading candidate who doesn’t need to debate and party leadership that’s unwilling to attack the front-runner, despite major reservations. It’s a lot like what we see in the Democratic race, which is not considered competitive. Indeed, Mr. Trump’s lead in the latest polls is getting about as large as President Biden’s recent leads over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.Of course, there are several ways in which the Republican contest is different from the Democratic one. Unlike Mr. Biden, Mr. Trump has mainstream challengers. The G.O.P. race is closer in the early states, where Mr. Trump is beneath 50 percent. If Mr. DeSantis beat Mr. Trump in Iowa, perhaps Republicans could rapidly coalesce around him, much as moderates did for Mr. Biden against Bernie Sanders in 2020. And there is the extraordinary prospect of a federal trial in March. Together, it’s easy to imagine how this becomes a competitive race again.But while the race might become hotly competitive in the future, it isn’t exactly a competitive one today. More