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      Biden Allies Try to Squash Third-Party Candidates

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      With Democrats worried that a third-party bid could throw a tight race to Donald Trump, President Biden’s top aides have blessed a broad offensive to starve such efforts of cash and ballot access.Powerful allies of President Biden are aggressively working to stop third-party and independent presidential candidacies, fearing that an outside bid could cost Democrats an election that many believe will again come down to a few percentage points in key battleground states.As attempts to mount outside campaigns multiply, a broad coalition has accelerated a multipronged assault to starve such efforts of financial and political support and warn fellow Democrats that supporting outsider candidacies, including the centrist organization No Labels, could throw the election to former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. Biden’s top aides have blessed the multimillion-dollar offensive, which cuts across the party, tapping the resources of the Democratic National Committee, labor unions, abortion rights groups, top donors and advocacy groups backing moderate and liberal Democrats. Even the president has helped spread the word: Mr. Biden, in an interview with ProPublica, said a No Labels candidacy would “help the other guy.”The endeavor is far-reaching. In Washington, Democratic allies are working alongside top party strategists to spread negative information about possible outsider candidates. Across the country, lawyers have begun researching moves to limit ballot access — or at least make it more costly to qualify.At expensive resorts and closed-door conferences, Democratic donors are urging their friends not to fund potential spoiler candidates. And in key swing states, lone-wolf operators, including a librarian from Arizona, are trying their own tactics to make life difficult for third-party contenders.The anxiety over candidates and parties traditionally consigned to the fringes of American politics reflects voters’ deep dissatisfaction with both men who are likely to become the major parties’ nominees. No third-party candidate has risen out of the single digits in three decades, since Ross Perot captured nearly a fifth of the vote in 1992. Given the devotion of Mr. Trump’s most ardent supporters, Democrats fear that most of the attrition would come from Mr. Biden’s fragile coalition.“They’ve got to understand the risk that they are exposing the country to by doing this,” said Richard A. Gephardt, a former House majority leader and a Democratic Party graybeard who has formed a super PAC to attack outsider campaigns. “This is too dangerous of an idea to put in play in this context, in this year. These are not normal times.”Mr. Gephardt warned that third-party candidates threatened not only Mr. Biden’s chances of victory but also the stability of American democracy. Internal polling conducted by his group found that an independent centrist candidate could attract more than 20 percent of the vote in competitive states, helping Mr. Trump in all but one of them.Richard A. Gephardt, a Democratic former House majority leader, has warned that third-party candidates threaten not only President Biden’s chances of victory but also the stability of American democracy.Steve Jennings/Getty Images for Square RootsIn recent days, two candidates have taken steps toward mounting independent bids. Cornel West, the left-wing Harvard professor, announced on Thursday that he would run as an independent candidate. And Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has hinted that he may announce on Monday that he is leaving the Democratic presidential primary race to run as an independent. Already, a super PAC backing his bid has raised $17 million, according to Tony Lyons, the group’s treasurer.Still, most of the Biden allies’ attention is directed at No Labels, the best-funded outsider organization, which after years of sponsoring bipartisan congressional caucuses is working to gain ballot access for a presidential candidate for the first time.The group’s chief executive, Nancy Jacobson, has told potential donors and allies that the No Labels candidate will be a moderate Republican, according to three people familiar with the conversations. That decision would rule out Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, a Democrat whose flirtation with the idea has prompted a wave of angst within his party.No Labels has already raised $60 million, Ms. Jacobson said in an interview, and has qualified for the ballot in 11 states, including the presidential battlegrounds of Arizona, Nevada and North Carolina. The group plans to spend about half of the money on securing ballot access across all 50 states.Ms. Jacobson said her organization was devoted to presenting voters with an option beyond Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump. No Labels is in the process of vetting potential candidates now and will announce its delegate selection process in the coming weeks, she said. The plan is to hold a nominating convention in April in Dallas and anoint a presidential ticket if it is clear the country is heading toward a 2020 rematch.Ms. Jacobson and her chief strategist, Ryan Clancy, insist that their effort is in good faith and is not a secret plot to help Mr. Trump win.“We’re never going to be a party to something that would spoil it for Trump,” Mr. Clancy said.No Labels has focused its recent polling on eight states that are expected to be competitive in a Biden-Trump contest, though Mr. Clancy said he believed a No Labels ticket would be viable in 25 states. If a third-party or independent candidate were to gain serious traction, it could reshuffle the entire presidential map, potentially turning states like New York or Texas into true battlegrounds.Mr. Kennedy has also been a source of concern for Democrats, who worry that his anti-corporate politics and famous last name could pull some of their voters away from Mr. Biden. But some of Mr. Biden’s top allies also believe that Mr. Kennedy, who has increasingly pushed right-wing ideas, would hurt Mr. Trump.The broad Democratic unease is rooted in a core belief that Mr. Trump has both a low ceiling and a high floor of general-election support — meaning that his voters are less likely to be swayed by a third-party or independent candidate. Mr. Biden has wider appeal, but his supporters are not as loyal, and polling has suggested that they could be persuaded to back someone else if given more options.Cornel West, the left-wing Harvard professor, announced on Thursday that he would run as an independent candidate.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has hinted that he may leave the Democratic presidential primary race to run for the White House as an independent.Public and private surveys point to increased interest in alternatives this election. In polling released this week by Monmouth University, majorities of voters said that they were not enthusiastic about Mr. Trump or Mr. Biden being at the top of their party’s ticket and that they would not back either man if the race became a rematch.Matt Bennett, a co-founder of the center-left group Third Way who is serving as a clearinghouse for Democrats’ effort to block third-party and independent candidates, is working with the progressive organization MoveOn and a host of like-minded Biden allies to dissuade anyone from having any association with No Labels. Those efforts are bankrolled by more than $1 million from Reid Hoffman, the billionaire Democratic megadonor.Mr. Bennett is using Third Way’s connections with centrist donors to try to block No Labels’ access to money, while Rahna Epting, the executive director of MoveOn, has been briefing other progressive groups and labor unions about the dangers of their members’ supporting third-party candidates instead of Mr. Biden.“Anything that divides the anti-Trump coalition is bad,” Mr. Bennett said.Marc Elias, one of the party’s most dogged and litigious election lawyers, has been retained by American Bridge, the Democratic Party’s primary opposition research organization, to vet ballot-qualification efforts by No Labels and other third-party efforts.And the Democratic National Committee has instructed state and county party leaders to say nothing in public about No Labels, according to an email the Utah Democratic Party sent to county leaders in the state.“We need to do everything we can to stop this effort NOW, and not wait until they name a ticket and this becomes a runaway train,” Thom DeSirant, the executive director of the Utah Democratic Party, wrote in a missive that included links to Third Way’s talking points about how to speak about No Labels.The efforts resemble hand-to-hand political combat in both public and private. The abortion rights group Reproductive Freedom for All wrote on social media that Jon M. Huntsman Jr., a Republican former governor of Utah who has been linked to the No Labels bid, is an “abortion extremist,” based on anti-abortion views he articulated during his 2012 presidential campaign.And Michael Steele, who served as a lieutenant governor of Maryland and as Republican National Committee chairman, has assumed the portfolio of persuading former Gov. Larry Hogan of Maryland, a moderate Republican who has publicly toyed with accepting the No Labels nomination, to end his association with the group.“I’ve told the governor what I think he should do,” Mr. Steele said.Perhaps nowhere has No Labels run into as many real-world roadblocks as in Arizona.After the group successfully qualified for the presidential ballot, the Arizona Democratic Party sued to remove it. That legal effort failed, but the attention led two people to submit candidate statements to run for down-ballot offices on the No Labels ticket — something the group had tried to block so as to avoid being categorized as a political party, which could trigger requirements to disclose No Labels donors, who have so far been kept secret.For different reasons, the Arizona candidates who are seeking the No Labels line could prove awkward for the movement.One of them, Tyson Draper, a high school coach from Thatcher, Ariz., is seeking the group’s line to run for the Senate. In an interview last week, he called himself a centrist political newcomer who had never sought public office before. A day later, he filed papers to begin a movement to recall Gov. Katie Hobbs, a Democrat.The other would-be No Labeler is Richard Grayson, an assistant librarian at a community college south of Phoenix.Richard Grayson, a librarian from Arizona, is trying his own tactics to make life difficult for No Labels.Caitlin O’Hara for The New York TimesMr. Grayson, 72, is seeking the No Labels nomination for the state’s Corporation Commission, which regulates public utilities. He has appeared as a candidate for office dozens of times since 1982, and said he was a Biden supporter.“I’m a perennial candidate whose goal is to torture No Labels,” he said. “I’m enjoying it immensely. I’m tormenting them.”Rebecca Davis O’Brien More

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      Trump and Other GOP Candidates Use Israel-Gaza to Criticize Biden

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      Republicans renewed their opposition to President Biden’s decision to unfreeze $6 billion for humanitarian purposes as part of recent hostage release negotiations.Republican presidential candidates seized on the Hamas attack on Israel Saturday to try to lay blame on President Biden, drawing a connection between the surprise assault and a recent hostage release deal between the United States and Iran, a longtime backer of the group.Former President Donald J. Trump, who has frequently presented himself as a unflinching ally of Israel and who moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv in 2018, blamed Mr. Biden for the conflict.While campaigning on Saturday in Waterloo, Iowa, he said the attacks had occurred because “we are perceived as being weak and ineffective, with a really weak leader.”On several occasions, Mr. Trump went further, saying that the hostage deal was a catalyst of the attacks. “The war happened for two reasons,” he said. “The United States is giving — and gave to Iran — $6 billion over hostages.”In exchange for the release of five Americans held in Tehran, the Biden administration agreed in August to free up $6 billion in frozen Iranian oil revenue funds for humanitarian purposes. The administration has emphasized that the money could be used only for “food, medicine, medical equipment that would not have a dual military use.”A senior Biden administration official responded to the comments by Mr. Trump — as well as to criticism by other Republican candidates — by calling them “total lies” and accusing the politicians of having either a “complete misunderstanding” of the facts or of participating willingly in a “complete mischaracterization and disinformation of facts.”Another Biden administration official, Adrienne Watson, a spokesperson for the National Security Council, said in a statement, “These funds have absolutely nothing to do with the horrific attacks today, and this is not the time to spread disinformation.”Mr. Trump, the G.O.P. front-runner, was not alone in assailing Mr. Biden, as the entire Republican field weighed in on the attacks on Saturday.In a video posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida faulted the Biden administration for its foreign policy decisions in the Middle East.“Iran has helped fund this war against Israel, and Joe Biden’s policies that have gone easy on Iran has helped to fill their coffers,” he said. “Israel is now paying the price for those policies.”In a statement issued through the White House, Mr. Biden pledged solidarity with Israel and said that he had spoken with Benjamin Netanyahu, the country’s prime minister.“The United States unequivocally condemns this appalling assault against Israel by Hamas terrorists from Gaza, and I made clear to Prime Minister Netanyahu that we stand ready to offer all appropriate means of support to the Government and people of Israel,” Mr. Biden said.Yet while the G.O.P. candidates rallied around Israel on Saturday, there is a divide in the party between foreign policy hawks and those who favor a more isolationist approach.In addition to criticizing Mr. Biden on Saturday, former Vice President Mike Pence had harsh words for fellow Republicans who prefer a more hands-off approach to conflicts abroad.“This is what happens when @POTUS projects weakness on the world stage, kowtows to the mullahs in Iran with a $6 Billion ransom, and leaders in the Republican Party signal American retreat as Leader of the Free World,” Mr. Pence wrote on X. “Weakness arouses evil.”Other Republican candidates, including Nikki Haley, who was an ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina denounced the attacks as acts of terrorism.“Make no mistake: Hamas is a bloodthirsty terrorist organization backed by Iran and determined to kill as many innocent lives as possible,” Ms. Haley said in a statement.Former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey echoed the criticism of his Republican rivals in a social media post, calling the release of $6 billion by the Biden administration to Iran “idiotic.” Gov. Doug Burgum of North Dakota and Mr. Hutchinson similarly sought to connect the attack with the release of humanitarian funds for Iran.Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech entrepreneur, called the attacks “barbaric and medieval” in a post on X.“Shooting civilians and kidnapping children are war crimes,” he wrote. “Israel’s right to exist & defend itself should never be doubted and Iran-backed Hamas & Hezbollah cannot be allowed to prevail.”Michael Gold More

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      I Wish ____ Would Run

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      We asked readers which other candidates they would like to see in the presidential race.To the Editor:Re “More Hats in the Ring?” (Letters, Sept. 29):The two candidates I would like to see in the 2024 race for the presidency are John Kasich, two-term Republican governor of Ohio from 2011 to 2019, and Gretchen Whitmer, who is serving her second term as Democratic governor of Michigan.Both Mr. Kasich and Ms. Whitmer are likable, accomplished politicians with extensive political executive experience.They are from the Midwest, not from either coast, and would likely appeal to moderates in their respective parties, as well as to middle-of-the-road unaffiliated voters throughout the United States.Their greatest strength as candidates in the 2024 presidential election would be if they ran on a fusion ticket. Such an arrangement, if they won twice, would give the country eight years of steady leadership, encouraging legislative collaboration in Congress between the two major political parties and projecting to the world that the United States is a strong, united country.Bruce E. NewlingNew Brunswick, N.J.To the Editor:I fear that President Biden’s bid for a second term will not succeed even though I believe he would be an excellent president again.I believe a better ticket would be Gov. Andy Beshear of Kentucky for president with Keisha Lance Bottoms as the vice-presidential candidate.Governor Beshear handled disasters in Kentucky efficiently and communicated well with the population. Ms. Bottoms has had experience as mayor of Atlanta. She has a wonderful personality and years of management experience.Also replacing Vice President Kamala Harris with another Black woman would minimize objections from Black voters. Ms. Bottoms is an inspirational speaker, a quality that is needed in the office.Marshall WeingardenEaston, Md.To the Editor:I suggest we give serious thought to Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona and Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota as a balanced and intelligent ticket for the Democrats in the 2024 election. Either person is well qualified to be at the top of the ticket.Senator Kelly is highly educated, has an impressive work history, has shown empathy and understanding as a caregiver, and has a rational, middle-of-the-road view of the issues facing our country.Senator Klobuchar is whip smart, and one of the hardest-working, get-it-done persons anywhere on the Hill. The pair would return integrity and intelligence to the United States in short order.Connie MomenthyHopkins, Minn.To the Editor:As president we need a brilliant, articulate, patriotic individual who is experienced in national-level politics and who is inspiringly charismatic. Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, is courageous and unflinching in his devotion to our Constitution. He is a natural leader.John GoldenbergSanta Clarita, Calif.To the Editor:Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio should run for president. His rise from Appalachian poverty to the U.S. Senate is an inspiring example of the American dream. He has proved his focus is on helping Main Street, not K Street.He is a conservative working for average Americans. A devout Catholic, he is pro-life/pro-family, supporting a 15-week federal abortion ban and a reimagined child tax credit. He is pro-worker, siding with union members over corporate leaders, promoting gas-powered car production in America and increasing taxes on companies shipping jobs overseas.Senator Vance wants to limit Big Tech’s power over our economy and government, and stop its stealing of personal data. He is committed to an America First foreign policy, opposing distant foreign wars where America has no vital interest, especially the war in Ukraine.He also works across the aisle with Senator Elizabeth Warren to place financial responsibility for large banks collapsing on their executives, not just taxpayers, and with Senator Sherrod Brown to improve train safety.Senator Vance has the vision and proven ability to work toward an America that promotes conservative values, puts Americans first and advances the common good.Jason DelgadoVirginia BeachTo the Editor:In my rich fantasy life, Pete Buttigieg or Michelle Obama would run for president in 2024. They both possess the ideal qualities of thoughtfulness, intelligence, integrity and kindness that a leader of our country needs in these times of divisiveness and anger embroiling our country.Joe Biden is not getting the credit he is due for all he has accomplished, possibly partly owing to all the noise about his age, and maybe partly because he is not a compelling enough speaker.I believe that both Ms. Obama and Mr. Buttigieg are capable of delivering a cogent message in an engaging speaking style that could energize the party and give people something to vote for rather than just voting against another candidate.Deborah BersHarrison, N.Y.To the Editor:The “hat in the ring” I would like to see is that of Condoleezza Rice.She has far more experience in the executive branch than any of the Republican candidates. Her credentials, demeanor, high moral character, intelligence and dedication to this country are already well known by the American people and beyond dispute. Her age, gender and race are a plus.She needs to be persuaded that at this point in time her country needs her to accept this difficult, demanding, thankless position.Roy J. EvansDenville, N.J.To the Editor:Pramila Jayapal, a member of Congress from Washington State, is whom I’d like to see in the presidential race. Before entering politics, she was a Seattle-based civil rights activist and, after the Sept. 11 attacks, founded the immigrant advocacy group Hate Free Zone (now OneAmerica).She is now a senior whip of the Democratic Caucus, a key member of the House Judiciary Committee and chair of Congressional Progressive Caucus. She has also held key positions on the United for Climate and Environmental Justice Task Force and the Immigration Task Force for the Asian Pacific American Caucus.The 67 percent of Democrats who prefer that President Biden not be renominated are right. America needs an advocate for progressive change with a can-do pragmatic attitude: Pramila Jayapal.Liz AmsdenLos AngelesTo the Editor:There are so many people I know in ordinary life whom I would vote for president sooner than any of the declared candidates. Yet any sane person wouldn’t run. Why subject themselves to extremist primary voters and to 24-hour news networks that will excoriate you nonstop if you don’t pander to their agenda?Until we face up to the fact that we are getting the candidates we deserve, we will continue to be the laughingstock of the world. Is a Biden-Trump rematch the best America can do?We need to find a way out of the two-party duopoly and get out from a primary system that rewards extremist candidates. Fox News needs to become a responsible news source and not just peddle falsehoods and divide the country for profit.Let’s reward candidates who deal with real issues and take risks in advancing positions that involve educating the public instead of just pandering to them. This will yield better candidates and real choices in elections.Ivan CimentNew York More

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      From the Fringe to the Center of the G.O.P., Jordan Remains a Hard-Liner

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      Once a tormentor of the Republican Party’s speakers, the Ohio congressman and unapologetic right-wing pugilist has become a potential speaker himself.As a co-founder of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, once antagonized his party’s leadership so mercilessly that former Speaker John A. Boehner, whom he helped chase from his position, branded him a “legislative terrorist.”Less than a decade later, Mr. Jordan — a fast-talking Republican often seen sans jacket, known for his hard-line stances and aggressive tactics — is now one of two leading candidates to claim the very speakership whose occupants he once tormented.Mr. Jordan’s journey from the fringe of Republican politics to its epicenter on Capitol Hill is a testament to how sharply his party has veered to the right in recent years, and how thoroughly it has adopted his pugilistic style.Those forces played a pivotal role in the downfall of former Speaker Kevin McCarthy last week, though Mr. Jordan, once a thorn in his side, had since allied himself with Mr. McCarthy, a California Republican. Now, the same dynamics have placed Mr. Jordan in contention for the post that is second in line to the presidency, a notion that is mind-blowing to many establishment Republicans who have tracked his career.“That notion that he could go from ‘legislative terrorist’ to speaker of the House is just insane,” said Mike Ricci, a former aide to both Mr. Boehner and Speaker Paul D. Ryan, Republican of Wisconsin. “Jordan is an outsider, but he’s very much done the work of an insider to get to this moment. Keeping that balance is what will determine whether he will win, and what kind of speaker he will be.”The race between Mr. Jordan, a populist who questions federal law enforcement and America’s funding of overseas wars, and Representative Steve Scalise, a staunch conservative and the No. 2 House Republican from Louisiana, continued to heat up on Friday. Both men worked the phones relentlessly seeking support, including making calls with freshman lawmakers, the Congressional Western Caucus and the Main Street Caucus, a group of business-oriented Republicans.On Friday, as they were vying for support, a bloc of Republicans were quietly requesting a change to party rules that would raise the vote threshold for nominating a candidate for speaker, which would make it more difficult for Mr. Scalise to prevail.While Mr. Scalise is amassing dozens of commitments of support, so is Mr. Jordan, which could lead to a bitter and potentially prolonged battle when Republicans meet behind closed doors next week to choose their nominee — or spill into public disarray on the House floor.Mr. Jordan’s rise in Congress to a position where he can credibly challenge Mr. Scalise, who has served in leadership for years, stems from a number of important alliances he has formed over the years. His strongest base of power is his colleagues in the House Freedom Caucus, many of whom consider him a mentor. He has built a solid relationship with Mr. McCarthy, for whom Mr. Jordan proved a reliable supporter and important validator on the right. And he has forged close ties with former President Donald J. Trump, perhaps his most important ally.In a Republican House that has defined itself in large part by its determination to protect Mr. Trump and attack President Biden, Mr. Jordan has been a leader of both efforts. He leads a special subcommittee on the “weaponization of government” against conservatives. He has started investigations into federal and state prosecutors who indicted Mr. Trump, and he is a co-leader of the impeachment inquiry into Mr. Biden that Mr. McCarthy formally announced last month as he worked to appease the right and cling to his post.Mr. Trump endorsed Mr. Jordan for the top House job early on Friday, ending speculation, however unrealistic, that the former president might seek the job himself. (A speaker is not required to be an elected lawmaker.)“Congressman Jim Jordan has been a STAR long before making his very successful journey to Washington, D.C.,” Mr. Trump wrote in a post on his social media platform, Truth Social. “He will be a GREAT Speaker of the House, & has my Complete & Total Endorsement!”Mr. Trump’s endorsement could help Mr. Jordan garner support from his other fellow House Republicans, among whom Mr. Trump is popular. But it is not expected to seal a victory.Representative Warren Davidson, an Ohio Republican who is the whip of the House Freedom Caucus and a supporter of Mr. Jordan, said Mr. Trump’s endorsement was a “positive” for Mr. Jordan because “Trump is widely viewed as the leader of our party.”But, he said, some more mainstream Republicans aren’t thrilled about aligning themselves with Mr. Trump.“There are some folks in moderate districts that are like, ‘Well, that might actually complicate things for me,’” Mr. Davidson said.Mr. Jordan helped undermine faith in the 2020 presidential election results as Mr. Trump spread the lie that the election had been stolen through widespread fraud. Mr. Jordan strategized with Mr. Trump about how to use Congress’s official count of electoral votes on Jan. 6, 2021, to reject the results, voting to object even after a mob of Mr. Trump’s supporters attacked the Capitol. His candidacy for speaker has drawn a stark warning from former Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, who was the No. 3 Republican and vice chair of the Jan. 6 committee, who said that if he prevailed, “there would no longer be any possible way to argue that a group of elected Republicans could be counted on to defend the Constitution.”In a speech at the University of Minnesota this week, Ms. Cheney told the audience that “Jim Jordan was involved, was part of the conspiracy in which Donald Trump was engaged as he attempted to overturn the election.”Mr. Jordan has defended his actions in challenging the results of the 2020 election, saying he had a “duty” to object given the way some states changed voting procedures during the coronavirus pandemic.His quick rise in the Republican ranks was nearly derailed in 2018, when a sexual abuse scandal in Ohio State University’s athletics program came to light, leading to accusations that Mr. Jordan, who had been an assistant wrestling coach at the time, knew about the abuse and did nothing. Mr. Jordan has said that he was not aware of any wrongdoing.On Capitol Hill, Mr. Jordan initially worked to build some relationships with Democrats early in his career. He and Representative Jamie Raskin, Democrat of Maryland, once teamed up on bipartisan legislation to protect press freedom. He counts former Representative Dennis Kucinich, a Democrat from Ohio who is now running Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s presidential campaign, as a friend. Even as Mr. Jordan and Representative Elijah Cummings, the Maryland Democrat who died in 2019, sparred over investigations of Mr. Trump, the two men occasionally found common ground on other Oversight Committee issues.But as Mr. Jordan formed an alliance with Mr. Trump and then became one of his most vocal defenders on Capitol Hill, his relationships with Democrats disintegrated. When Mr. Raskin introduced his press freedom bill this year, Mr. Jordan was no longer listed as a sponsor.Representative Jim Banks, Republican of Indiana, said that Mr. Jordan’s true power lay in the love he commands from base voters, built up through years of defending Mr. Trump and advocating conservative policies on Fox News and in combative congressional hearings. Mr. Jordan is known to fly to districts around the country to help raise money for candidates who are aligned with the House Freedom Caucus — and even for Republicans who are not.Mr. Banks suggested that Mr. Jordan’s credibility with the right would make it easier for the party to unify behind any spending deal he were to cut with Democrats and the White House should he become speaker. Such a deal would be a tall order. Mr. Jordan voted last week against a measure to avoid a government shutdown — an agreement with Democrats that ultimately drove Mr. McCarthy from the speakership.“Jim Jordan is a trusted conservative; he’s well-respected by the base of the Republican Party,” Mr. Banks said. “So when we get to some of these tough spending fights and Speaker Jim Jordan is negotiating with the White House and the Senate, that’s going to help Republicans rally behind him and get to a place where they can vote for those deals.”“This is a different Republican Party today than what it was a decade ago,” he added. “And the Republican Party today is a lot more like Jim Jordan. It’s more of a fighting Republican Party.” More

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      How Biden’s Promises to Reverse Trump’s Immigration Policies Crumbled

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      President Biden has tried to contain a surge of migration by embracing, or at least tolerating, some of his predecessor’s approaches.Immigration was dead simple when Joseph R. Biden Jr. was campaigning for president: It was an easy way to attack Donald J. Trump as a racist, and it helped to rally Democrats with the promise of a more humane border policy.Nothing worked better than Mr. Trump’s “big, beautiful wall” that he was building along the southern border. Its existence was as much a metaphor for the polarization inside America as it was a largely ineffective barrier against foreigners fleeing to the United States from Central America.“There will not be,” Mr. Biden proclaimed as he campaigned against Mr. Trump in the summer of 2020, “another foot of wall constructed.”But a massive surge of migration in the Western Hemisphere has scrambled the dynamics of an issue that has vexed presidents for decades, and radically reshaped the political pressures on Mr. Biden and his administration. Instead of becoming the president who quickly reversed his predecessor’s policies, Mr. Biden has repeatedly tried to curtail the migration of a record number of people — and the political fallout that has created — by embracing, or at least tolerating, some of Mr. Trump’s anti-immigrant approaches.Even, it turns out, the wall.On Thursday, Biden administration officials formally sought to waive environmental regulations to allow construction of up to 20 additional miles of border wall in a part of Texas that is inundated by illegal migration. The move was a stunning reversal on a political and moral issue that had once galvanized Mr. Biden and Democrats like no other.The funds for the wall had been approved by Congress during Mr. Trump’s tenure, and on Friday, the president said he had no power to block their use.Hundreds of those seeking asylum in the United States wait to be processed near the border wall in El Paso, Texas.Justin Hamel for The New York Times“The wall thing?” Mr. Biden asked reporters on Friday. “Yeah. Well, I was told that I had no choice — that I, you know, Congress passes legislation to build something, whether it’s an aircraft carrier wall or provide for a tax cut. I can’t say, ‘I don’t like it. I’m not going to do it.’”White House officials said that they tried for years, without success, to get Congress to redirect the wall money to other border priorities. And they said Mr. Biden’s lawyers had advised that the only way to get around the Impoundment Control Act, which requires the president to spend money as Congress directs, was to file a lawsuit. The administration chose not to do so. The money had to be spent by the end of December, the officials said.Asked on Thursday whether he thought a border wall works, Mr. Biden — who has long said a wall would not be effective — said simply: “No.”Still, human rights groups are furious, accusing the president of abandoning the principles on which he campaigned. They praise him for opening new, legal opportunities for some migrants, including thousands from Venezuela, but question his recent reversals on enforcement policy.“It doesn’t help this administration politically, to continue policies that they were very clear they were against,” said Vanessa Cárdenas, the executive director of America’s Voice, an immigrant rights organization. “That muddles the message and undermines the contrast that they’re trying to make when it comes to Republicans.”“This president came into office with a lot of moral clarity about where the lines were,” she added, noting that he and his aides “need to sort of decide who they are on this issue.”Mr. Biden had previously adopted some of his predecessor’s policies, including the pandemic-era Title 42 restrictions that blocked most migrants at the border until they were lifted earlier this year. Those have still failed to slow illegal immigration, and the issue has become incendiary inside his own party, driving wedges between Mr. Biden and some of the country’s most prominent Democratic governors and mayors, whose communities are being taxed by the cost of providing for the new arrivals.Eric Adams, the Democratic mayor of New York, has blamed the administration for a situation that he says could destroy his city. J.B. Pritzker, the Democratic governor of Illinois and an ally of Mr. Biden, wrote this week in a letter to the president that a “lack of intervention and coordination” by Mr. Biden’s government at the border “has created an untenable situation for Illinois.”Bedding for asylum seekers temporarily housed at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago.Jamie Kelter Davis for The New York TimesIn comments to reporters at an event opposing book banning, Mr. Pritzker said that he had recently “spoken with the White House” on the matter “to make sure that they heard us.”The moment underscores the new reality for the president as he prepares to campaign for a second term. His handling of immigration has become one of his biggest potential liabilities, with polls showing deep dissatisfaction among voters about how he deals with the new arrivals. With record numbers of migrants streaming across the border, he can no longer portray it in the simple terms he did a few years ago.Since taking office, Mr. Biden has tried to balance his stated desire for a more humane approach with strict enforcement that aides believe is critical to ensure that migrants do not believe the border is open to anyone.This spring, the president announced new legal options for some migrants from several countries — Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua and Haiti. He also has expanded protections for hundreds of thousands of migrants already in the United States, allowing more of them to work while they are in the country temporarily.But the more welcoming policies have been balanced by tougher ones.Earlier this year, Mr. Biden approved a new policy that had the effect of denying most immigrants the ability to seek asylum in the United States, a move that human rights groups noted was very similar to an approach that Mr. Trump hailed as a way to “close the border” to immigrants he wanted to keep out.The president and his aides have responded to the increased number of migrants by calling for more border patrol agents. Karine Jean-Pierre, the White House press secretary, bragged on Wednesday about the surge in border enforcement that Mr. Biden has pushed for.“Let’s not forget,” she said. “The president got 25,000 Border Patrol, additional Border Patrol law enforcement, at the border.”In a budget request to Congress, the Biden administration has asked for an additional $4 billion for border enforcement, including 4,000 more troops, 1,500 more border patrol agents, overtime pay for federal border personnel and new technology to detect drug trafficking.And on Thursday, the administration announced that it would resume deporting Venezuelans who arrive illegally, essentially conceding that the policy of creating legal immigration options from that country had failed to stem the tide of new arrivals like they had expected.Ben LaBolt, the White House communications director, said Mr. Biden proposed an immigration overhaul on his first day in office that he noted has been blocked by Republican lawmakers.“He has used every available lever — enforcement, deterrence and diplomacy — to address historic migration across the Western Hemisphere,” Mr. LaBolt said, adding that the administration is “legally compelled” to spend the wall money. “President Biden has consistently made clear that this is not the most effective approach to securing our border.”Despite early reports that the number of migrants had dropped this summer, crossings have soared again this fall. Border Patrol agents arrested about 200,000 migrants in September, the highest number this year, according to an administration official who spoke anonymously to confirm the preliminary data.Still, the administration’s announcement about new construction of a wall was a surprise to many of the president’s allies, who had repeatedly heard Mr. Biden join them in condemning Mr. Trump for trying to seal the country off from immigrants.On Friday, the president, who has long insisted a wall would be ineffective, said he has no power to block the use of funds already approved during Mr. Trump’s tenure.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesIn a notice published in the Federal Register on Thursday, Alejandro N. Mayorkas, the homeland security secretary, said that easing environmental and other laws was necessary to expedite construction of sections of a border wall in South Texas, where thousands of migrants have been crossing the Rio Grande daily to reach U.S. soil.“There is presently an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States,” Mr. Mayorkas said.In a statement later, Mr. Mayorkas made clear the administration would prefer to spend the money on other areas, “including state-of the-art border surveillance technology and modernized ports of entry.”There have always been barriers at the border, and Democrats have voted for funding to construct them. But before Mr. Trump arrived on the scene, they were placed in high-traffic locations and were often short fences or barriers designed to prevent cars from crossing.Mr. Trump changed that. He pushed for construction of a wall across the entire 2,000-mile border with Mexico, eventually building or reinforcing barriers along roughly 450 miles. And he insisted on a 30-foot tall wall made of steel bollards, painted black to be more intimidating. At various points, Mr. Trump said he wanted to install sharp, pointed spikes at the top of the wall to skewer migrants who tried to climb over it.The walls being constructed by Mr. Biden’s administration will be different, border officials said. They will be 18 feet tall, not 30. And they will be movable, not permanent, to allow more flexibility and less environmental damage.But the image of an ominous and even dangerous barrier — designed to send a message of “keep out” to anyone who approached — underscored the yearslong opposition from Democrats, including Mr. Biden, to its construction. At the end of 2018, the federal government shut down for 35 days — the longest in its history — over Democratic refusal to meet Mr. Trump’s demands for $5.7 billion to build the wall.For Mr. Biden, the politics of immigration have changed significantly since then.Gov. Kathy Hochul of New York put it bluntly in a letter to the president at the end of August, as New York City struggled to deal with tens of thousands of new migrants.“The challenges we face demand a much more vigorous federal response,” she wrote. “It is the federal government’s direct responsibility to manage and control the nation’s borders. Without any capacity or responsibility to address the cause of the migrant influx, New Yorkers cannot then shoulder these costs.” More

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      Chaos in Washington Feeds Americans’ Dismal View of Politics

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      Whitney Smith’s phone buzzed with a text from her mother, alerting her to the latest can-you-believe-it mess in Washington: “Far right ousted the House speaker. Total chaos now.”Ms. Smith, 35, a bookkeeper and registered independent in suburban Phoenix, wanted no part of it. She tries to stay engaged in civic life by voting, volunteering in local campaigns and going to city meetings. But over the past week, the pandemonium of a narrowly averted government shutdown and leadership coup in the Republican-controlled House confirmed many Americans’ most cynical feelings about the federal government.“It was just like, Oh God, what now?” she said. Griping about politics is a time-honored American pastime but lately the country’s political mood has plunged to some of the worst levels on record.After weathering the tumult of the Trump presidency, a pandemic, the Capitol insurrection, inflation, multiple presidential impeachments and far-right Republicans’ pervasive lies about fraud in the 2020 election, voters say they feel tired and angry. In dozens of recent interviews across the country, voters young and old expressed a broad pessimism about the next presidential election that transcends party lines, and a teetering faith in political institutions.The White House and Congress have pumped out billions of dollars to fix and improve the nation’s roads, ports, pipelines and internet. They have approved hundreds of billions to combat climate change and lower the cost of prescription drugs. President Biden has canceled billions more in student debt. Yet those accomplishments have not fully registered with voters.A small group of hard-right Republicans drove the country to the brink of a government shutdown, then plunged Congress into chaos when they instigated the vote that, with Democratic support, removed Mr. McCarthy. Democrats are betting that voters will blame Republicans for the trouble. Many voters interviewed this week said they viewed the whole episode as evidence of broad dysfunction in Washington, and blamed political leaders for being consumed by workplace drama at the expense of the people they are meant to serve.Rep. Kevin McCarthy leaving the House floor after being ousted as Speaker of the House.Maansi Srivastava/The New York Times“They seem so disconnected from us,” said Kevin Bass, 57, a bank executive who lives in New Home, a rural West Texas town. He serves on the local school board and has two children in public school, and another in college. He describes himself as conservative who voted for former President Donald J. Trump both times. “I don’t really look at either party as benefiting our country,” he said.Voters said that Washington infighting and the Republicans’ flirtation with debt default and government shutdowns recklessly put people’s paychecks, health care and benefits at risk at a moment when they are preoccupied with how to pay rising health care and grocery bills, or to cope with a fast-warming climate unleashing natural disasters in nearly every corner of the nation.“Disgust isn’t a strong enough word,” said Bianca Vara, a Democrat and grandmother of five in the Atlanta area who runs a stall at a flea market that crackles with discussions of politics.She said she wanted leaders in Washington to address gun violence, or maybe just meaningfully crack down on the robocalls she gets. Instead, she watched with dismay as the Republican-controlled House was convulsed with an internecine melee.“It’s worse than in elementary school,” she said, “Like a playground, like dodge ball: ‘You’re out! You’re not the speaker anymore! Hit him in the head with a red ball!’”Several people said they purposely tune out political news, focusing instead on details like the price of cream cheese ($6.99), or matters wholly unconnected to politics — the Chicago Bears are 1 and 4, and Taylor Swift is showing up at Kansas City Chiefs games.When Ms. Smith’s mother texted the news of Kevin McCarthy’s ouster as House speaker to the family text message chain, nobody responded. Eventually, Ms. Smith replied with a photo of new shelves she had just put up at home.“Who’s McCarthy? I don’t even know,” said Rosemary Watson, 38, a registered independent in Mesa, Ariz., a battleground state that has narrowly elected Democrats over Trump-style Republicans in the past two elections. “I’ve purposely made that choice for my own health and well-being.”Ms. Watson, a member of the Cherokee Nation, voted for Mr. Trump in 2020 and said she did not feel politically moved by actions President Biden has taken to conserve land sacred to Native Americans or to provide billions of dollars in new tribal funding. She said she would support Robert F. Kennedy Jr. in the 2024 presidential race as a jolt to the two-party system.Whitney Smith, a bookkeeper in Gilbert, Ariz., said she did not want any part of the political turmoil in Washington. Adriana Zehbrauskas for The New York TimesCynthia Taylor, 58, a Republican paralegal in the Houston area whose husband works for a rifle manufacturer, was aghast at the ouster of Mr. McCarthy and the latest near-shutdown, calling the brinkmanship a symptom of growing lawlessness in American society.“We seem to be starting to go down the line of, if I don’t agree with you, I’m going to kick you out,” she said. “Everybody is out for themselves. Everybody is out for their 15 minutes of fame.”A survey that the Pew Research Center conducted in July found a country united by a discontent with their political leaders that crosses race, age and partisan divides. Sixty-five percent of Americans polled said they felt exhausted when they thought about politics.Only 16 percent of American adults said they trusted the federal government, close to the lowest levels in seven decades of polling. Nearly 30 percent of people said they disliked both the Democratic and Republican parties, a record high. Yet in recent years, Americans have turned out to vote in record numbers — mostly to re-elect incumbents.House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries speaking at a news conference before Congress narrowly averted a shutdown.Kenny Holston/The New York Times“I never thought I’d live in times like this,” said Cindy Swasey, a 66-year-old widow in Dover, N.H. Ms. Swasey, who voted twice for President Trump but thinks of herself as an independent, said she used to like Representative Matt Gaetz and the infusion of newer, younger energy he had brought to Congress — before he played a central role in the turmoil this week.She has recently decided to skip watching future presidential debates.Working-class and middle-class Americans have seen their wages rise lately, but many say the gains pale in comparison with the rising cost of living. Thousands of union workers, from the automotive industry to health care to Hollywood, have voted with their feet by striking for better contracts.“Right now, it’s just been about getting back to work — figuring out how to put food on my plate and keep a roof over my head and put gas in my car,” said McKinley Bundick, a writer’s assistant for the CBS program “SEAL Team” who was out of work for five months while the Writers Guild of America was on strike.Several Democratic voters said their revulsion with the state of American politics was rooted in Mr. Trump’s brand of angry grievance and the election lies that stoked the Jan. 6 rioters. At the same time, several said they were dreading the prospect of another contest between Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden, and would rather fast-forward through the next presidential cycle and find someone — anyone — new.“This is the best you can give us from both parties? Are you kidding me?” said Joseph Albanese, a 49-year-old technology product specialist in Chicago who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020, but is considering skipping next year’s election altogether.For people living on an entirely different coast from the Capitol — especially younger voters — Washington’s dysfunction can seem like sensational infighting in a distant world.“It’s overwhelming, it’s a lot going on,” said Dionna Beamon, 28, who lives in the Watts neighborhood of South Los Angeles. “So really, ignorance is bliss.”Ms. Beamon, a hair stylist, said she and her friends were more concerned about issues like mental health. Her mother died of a heart attack less than two years ago and she has grappled with how to address her grief.“I feel like a lot of people are depressed now,” she said. “That’s a huge topic for my age group. The world hasn’t been the same after Covid, and when it started, we were in our early 20s. ”Howard University senior Vivian Santos-Smith wants to be a political scientist, but is dismayed by political infighting. “It seems as if ‘House of Cards’ is reality now,” she said.Jason Andrew for The New York TimesVivian Santos-Smith, 21, a senior at Howard University, said her biggest concern was the $10,000 of student debt she would have to start repaying after graduation. President Biden canceled $9 billion in student loan debt this week, but his wider efforts to cancel some $400 billion more were scuttled by the Supreme Court.She wants to be a political scientist, and one of her first challenges is trying to make sense of this moment.“It seems as if ‘House of Cards’ is reality now,” she said. “The outlook is just bleak.”Corina Knoll More

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      House Speaker, Ukraine War, Border Wall: Trump’s Influence Reaches a Post-Presidency Peak

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      A Republican leadership vacuum has allowed the former president to exert power over his party — and in the country — in a way that lacks much historical precedent.From a House leadership contest to the southwestern border and a foreign war, Donald J. Trump’s influence this week seemed to pervade the nation’s politics more than it has since the first weeks after his exit from the White House.Not since Jan. 27, 2021, when Representative Kevin McCarthy flew to Mar-a-Lago to mend the rift with Mr. Trump, has the former president’s sway been as widespread or as palpable.Mr. Trump’s successor, President Biden, resumed construction of a border wall that will always be stamped with Mr. Trump’s name and restarted deporting Venezuelan migrants, following a hiatus when the Biden administration extended protective status for those fleeing that devastated nation.The House Republican Conference launched its search for a new speaker following the historic vanquishing of the last one, Mr. McCarthy, and again, Mr. Trump was calling the shots. Some House Republicans even suggested handing the gavel to their unofficial leader, Mr. Trump, before he stepped in to try to anoint Representative Jim Jordan, Republican of Ohio, with an effusive endorsement that dwelt heavily on the congressman’s high school and college wrestling records.Lurking next is mid-November, when funding for the federal government expires and Mr. Trump’s policy demands will overtake the debate in Congress: halting U.S. military assistance to Ukraine, stiffening border controls and neutering the Justice Department as it pursues felony prosecutions that threaten Mr. Trump’s grip on the reins of his party — and also his freedom.U.S. Border Patrol agents patrolling for migrants in La Grulla, Texas, in 2017. Starr County, where La Grulla is located, is where 20 miles of wall are to be built.Todd Heisler/The New York TimesThat a twice-impeached, quadruply indicted former president is exercising this much influence is baffling to historians far more used to defeated or disgraced politicians fading into obscurity. David Blight, a professor at Yale University who specializes in the dissolution of American unity before the Civil War, struggled for a precedent.“Let’s think of Nixon: What influence did he really have in Washington? He got on TV, did the Frost interviews, but real influence on the Republican Party? No. They tried to become something other than the Nixon Party,” Mr. Blight said.“I don’t know of another analogy except in authoritarian regimes elsewhere,” he concluded, pointing to on-again, off-again dictatorships in Africa and South America and to the attempted returns of Oliver Cromwell and Napoleon Bonaparte.But an extraordinary vacuum of leadership has given the former president an in, and he has taken it with zeal. The Republican speaker’s chair is vacant, swept clean by internecine conflict. The Senate Republican leader, Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, is diminished by age, health issues and a Senate Republican Conference increasingly willing to challenge his authority.And the Democrats, led by an aging and soft-spoken president who is temperamentally Mr. Trump’s opposite, are facing issues they cannot solve on their own but without partners across the aisle to help address, including a broken immigration system, the stalled war in Ukraine, crime, labor unrest and economic uncertainty.The White House has struggled to control the narrative on recent events — Mr. Biden insisted, for instance, that his administration’s decision to waive more than 20 federal laws and regulations and resume construction of a border wall was merely the fulfillment of a legally binding appropriation signed into law in 2019 — even as his secretary of Homeland Security, Alejandro Mayorkas, attested in writing to “an acute and immediate need to construct physical barriers and roads in the vicinity of the border of the United States in order to prevent unlawful entries into the United States.”President Joe Biden resumed construction of a border wall that will always be stamped with Mr. Trump’s name and restarted deporting Venezuelan migrants, leading to a struggle to control the narrative on recent events.Doug Mills/The New York TimesBut Mr. Trump’s presence looms undeniably large. A chorus on the right embraced the border decision, claiming “Trump was right” as it still sank in among Democrats. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, a leading voice on the Democratic left, dismissed the excuse that the administration was somehow “required to expand construction of the border wall.”“The president needs to take responsibility for this decision and reverse course,” she wrote Thursday evening.Immigrant rights groups are beginning to speak out, using the same accusations of cruelty and callousness toward Mr. Biden that they routinely used against Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Jordan may have given the combative Ohio Republican an edge over the House majority leader, Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, in his quest for the speakership, but Mr. Jordan still found himself on Fox News praising Mr. Trump as the best president of his lifetime and the likely next president, to head off suggestions from colleagues that the former president would be a better leader for the House.All of this was extraordinary for a man who is, at this very moment, on civil trial in New York for business fraud, whose co-defendants go on trial in Fulton County, Ga., within weeks on charges that they conspired with him to overturn a presidential election, and whose lawyers are maneuvering to delay or dismiss three felony trials, any of which could put him behind bars.His own former lawyer, Ty Cobb, told a panel at the University of Chicago’s Institute of Politics this week that Mr. Trump has no legal defense in the federal cases he faces. And, Mr. Cobb added, given federal sentencing guidelines, “a judge is going to have to depart pretty aggressively, under difficult circumstances, if Trump’s convicted, to keep him out of jail.”Yet turmoil has always been an asset to Mr. Trump, a cauldron into which he has always been more than willing to plunge.He did nothing to save Mr. McCarthy, showing no appreciation for the man he once called “my Kevin,” and who rescued him at perhaps his darkest political moment, when even Mr. McConnell was suggesting Mr. Trump face criminal charges for a Capitol riot he was “practically and morally responsible for provoking.” The former president basked briefly in the accolades of his House Republican acolytes who floated his name for speaker before ending such talk with his endorsement of Mr. Jordan.Kevin McCarthy addressed reporters after being ousted as speaker on Tuesday.Tom Brenner for The New York TimesFor now, much of this is only theater. But when a stopgap spending bill expires in mid-November, fealty to Mr. Trump will have real consequences. The next speaker will still be facing a Democratic Senate and president, but will also face the impossible demands dictated by Mr. Trump to his loyal troops in the House.As the migrant crisis worsens in Democratic cities, Mr. Biden could well be pushed further in Mr. Trump’s direction on new border controls. New York Mayor Eric Adams traveled to Mexico this week with a message to deter migrants from coming to the United States. Chicago’s young and liberal mayor, Brandon Johnson, said Wednesday he would also travel to see the porous frontier with Mexico “firsthand,” as migrant buses reach his city by the dozen each day.Mr. Trump’s influence could also imperil Ukraine in its defensive war against Russia.The 45-day measure to keep the government open dropped additional military aid to Ukraine, and supporters of such aid will be hard-pressed to resume the flow through the next spending measures. Mr. Trump’s “America First” mantra was long dismissed by critics as an isolationism that leaned the country toward Vladimir V. Putin’s Russia.Ending American assistance to a Ukraine battling an invading army from Moscow would be the apotheosis of Trumpist foreign policy — and could be brought about even without Mr. Trump in the White House.But for all those possible Republican victories, Mr. Trump’s most pressing personal demand — defunding the prosecutions of him — almost certainly cannot be met, raising once again the prospect of a pointless government shutdown.At some point, Republicans in Washington may have to choose between Mr. Trump and governance. More

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      What RNC Members Say About Trump’s Calls to Cancel Debates

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      After refusing to participate in the first two Republican debates, former President Donald J. Trump and aides to his campaign have spent the past week arguing that there should be no more. The Republican National Committee, they say, should treat the race for the party’s nomination as over, given Mr. Trump’s large lead in the polls.But in interviews on Thursday, more than a dozen members of the R.N.C. suggested that they were giving little weight to the Trump campaign’s appeal.Two members of the party’s debate committee said the notion of canceling debates had not even risen to the level of discussion on the committee. The members — Juliana Bergeron, the national committeewoman from New Hampshire, and Gordon Kinne, the national committeeman from Missouri — also said they were undecided on which candidate to support themselves.Mr. Trump, they said, was not entitled to the deference that the party would give an incumbent.“This is what we’re doing. He’s known that all along,” Mr. Kinne said. “We understand that he’s got a substantial lead and that may stay that way, but these other people are entitled to have their day too, and we’re trying to make it fair. So you just can’t go change the rules in the middle of the game.”The New York Times spoke with 16 members of the R.N.C., including Ms. Bergeron and Mr. Kinne. Only one of the members supported Mr. Trump’s suggestion — and reluctantly.That member, Louis Gurvich, the state chairman of the Republican Party of Louisiana, said that he considered debates “an essential part of the political process,” but that he did not realistically expect productive ones in the current race. “Quite frankly, I think the debates have demeaned every candidate who participated in them,” he said of the first two, expressing frustration at the candidates’ shouting over one another as they fought for airtime.The other R.N.C. members who spoke with The Times dismissed the idea, with varying degrees of frustration.“It’s nuts. I mean, it’s crazy,” said Henry Barbour, national committeeman for Mississippi, adding that he had not decided which candidate to support. “Why would — we’re just going to cancel the primary?”Paul Dame, the chairman of the Vermont Republican Party, who had urged Republicans to move on from Mr. Trump, said the suggestion was “a slap in the face of voters.”“Trump would have been screaming if Jeb Bush had tried to pull something like that back in 2016,” Mr. Dame said. “Trump was the outsider in the 2016 race, and now he’s trying to use his position as the insider to shut other people out, which is the exact kind of thing he used to be against.”Gordon Ackley, the party chairman in the Virgin Islands; Oscar Brock, the national committeeman for Tennessee; José Cunningham, the national committeeman for Washington, D.C.; Shane Goettle, the national committeeman for North Dakota; Drew McKissick, the chairman of the South Carolina Republican Party; Bill Palatucci, the national committeeman for New Jersey; Andy Reilly, the national committeeman for Pennsylvania; Steve Scheffler, the national committeeman for Iowa; J.L. Spray, the national committeeman for Nebraska; and Michael Whatley, the chairman of the North Carolina Republican Party and general counsel for the R.N.C., all rejected the idea as well.“If the R.N.C. is not going to handle a Republican presidential debate, then who will?” said Mr. Reilly, who is not yet committed to supporting a particular candidate. He disagreed with the assertion by Chris LaCivita, a Trump campaign adviser, that the most recent debate on Sept. 27 was “boring and inconsequential.”“I think it’s very constructive,” Mr. Reilly said of the process. “It hones the candidates. Whoever will be the ultimate nominee will be more seasoned.”The Times contacted nearly all of the R.N.C.’s 168 members, but most of those publicly aligned with Mr. Trump did not respond. A few members, including Tyler Bowyer of Arizona, Patti Lyman of Virginia and Roger Villere of Louisiana, told Politico that they saw the debates as useless or were ambivalent about them, but these members did not respond to Times inquiries.“To cancel a debate is ludicrous,” Mr. Spray said. “The debates will go forward, and I don’t think anyone on the committee has the intention of canceling the debates on the behalf of any candidate.”The R.N.C. does not pay for the debates. It sponsors them, and the costs are borne by the media companies that host them.In a statement earlier this week calling for the debates to be canceled, Mr. LaCivita and another Trump adviser, Susie Wiles, suggested that the R.N.C. needed to devote its money to fighting election fraud instead. Returning to Mr. Trump’s lies that the 2020 election was stolen from him, they claimed with no evidence that the 2024 election would be stolen.Neil Vigdor More