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    On the Economy, Biden Struggles to Convince Voters of His Success

    Wages are up, inflation has slowed and the White House has a new slogan. Still, President Biden’s poor marks on the economy are making Democrats worried.When a chant slamming President Biden spread from a NASCAR race to T-shirts and bumper stickers across red America two years ago, the White House pulled off perhaps its savviest messaging feat to date. Biden aides and allies repackaged the “Let’s Go Brandon” insult and morphed it into “Dark Brandon,” a celebratory meme casting Mr. Biden as some sort of omnipotent mastermind.Now, the White House and the Biden campaign is several weeks into another appropriation play — but it isn’t going nearly as well. Aides in July announced that the president would run for re-election on the virtues of “Bidenomics,” proudly reclaiming the right’s derisive term for Mr. Biden’s economic policies.The gambit does not appear to be working yet. Even as Mr. Biden presides over what is by all indicators a strong economy — one on track to dodge the recession many had feared — he is still struggling to convince most of the country of the strength of his economic stewardship. Wages are up, inflation has slowed, but credit to the president remains in short supply.Polling last month from the Democratic organization Navigator found that 25 percent of Americans support Mr. Biden’s major actions, such as the Inflation Reduction Act, but still think the president is doing a poor job handling the economy. It’s a group that tends to be disproportionately younger than 40 and is more likely to be Black or Latino — voters critical to Democratic victories.“This is the thing that’s vexing all Democrats,” said Patrick Gaspard, the president of the Center for American Progress.Democratic economists, pollsters and officials have a variety of explanations for why voters don’t credit Mr. Biden for the economy. Inflation remains elevated, and interest rates have made home buying difficult. There is also evidence that voters’ views on the economy are shaped as much by their political views as by personal experiences.And then there is the regular refrain that people don’t know about Mr. Biden’s successes. Even Mr. Biden’s supporters say that he and his administration have been too reluctant to promote their record and ineffective when they do.“I’ve never seen this big of a disconnect between how the economy is actually doing and key polling results about what people think is going on,” said Heidi Shierholz, president of the Economic Policy Institute, a left-leaning think tank in Washington.Mr. Biden on Friday attempted another victory lap in a White House speech celebrating the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work. He credited the heart of his economic plan, including investment in infrastructure, semiconductor manufacturing and climate-related industries along with caps on the price of insulin medication.Bidenomics, Mr. Biden said, “is about investing in America and investing in Americans.”Mr. Biden said his economic plan was to credit for the latest jobs report, which found no sign of an imminent recession and a slight increase in the unemployment rate as more people sought work.Kent Nishimura for The New York TimesThe term Bidenomics emerged as a pejorative in conservative media and has been widely adopted by Mr. Biden’s rivals. “One of the most important issues of the campaign will be who can rescue our country from the burning wreckage of Bidenomics,” former President Donald J. Trump said in a recent video, “which shall henceforth be defined as inflation, taxation submission and failure.”Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida offered his definition at a recent campaign stop in Rock Rapids, Iowa. “Bidenomics is basically: You have a lower standard of living so he can pursue the left’s ideological agenda,” he said.Behind the rhetoric, there is some debate over whether the economy will be the driving force it has been in past presidential elections. Some Democrats argue that their party’s resilience in last year’s midterm elections showed that the fight over abortion rights and Mr. Trump’s influence over Republicans can trounce more kitchen-table concerns.The White House argues that Democrats’ strong showing last year is a sign the Mr. Biden’s electoral performance isn’t strictly tied to the economy.“By all metrics, his economic record has improved since then,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman.Still, nearly all of Mr. Biden’s campaign advertising this year sells his economic record. The ads — which don’t use the term Bidenomics — cast the president’s policies as a work in progress. “All of the things that Biden fought to get passed helped the middle class,” a cement mason from Milwaukee says in an ad the campaign released last week.“It’s no secret that a lot of Americans are struggling with the cost of living, and that’s a reality that shapes their views about the economy more broadly,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster who conducts surveys for the Democratic National Committee.Explaining why Mr. Biden’s policies will help, Mr. Garin said, “is what campaigns are for.”This summer Mr. Biden has promoted “Bidenomics” at events around the country, often speaking in factories or with labor groups. Even some in friendly audiences of local Democratic leaders and supporters questioned whether his emphasis would resonate with the coalition that elected him in 2020.“Is Bidenomics the right thing to sell?” Mayor Katie Rosenberg of Wausau, Wis., said after seeing Mr. Biden speak in Milwaukee last month. “I just keep thinking, why aren’t they just doing Build Back Better still? That was a really good slogan. Bidenomics is just an effort to capitalize on the negativity around him.”Build Back Better, the mix of economic, climate and social policy that Mr. Biden ran on in 2020, was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of Mr. Biden’s ambitions as president. Significant elements became law, but the branding exercise failed, doomed in part by rising inflation.Mr. Biden’s “Build Back Better” slogan was a bumper-sticker-length encapsulation of his ambitions as president.Hannah Yoon for The New York TimesDemocrats rebranded their climate legislation as the Inflation Reduction Act, even though the bill had little to do with inflation. Even Mr. Biden recently said that he regretted the name, suggesting that it promised something the bill was not devised to deliver.Though the rate of inflation has slowed, it remains the chief drag on Mr. Biden’s economic approval ratings, said Joanne Hsu, the director of Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan.“We track people who have heard negative news about inflation,” Dr. Hsu said. “Over the past year, that number has been much higher than in the 1970s and ’80s, when inflation was so much worse.”One theme of Mr. Biden’s aides, advisers and allies is to plead for time. The economy will get better, more people will hear and understand what Bidenomics means and credit will accrue to the president, they say.“The public more and more is going to be seeing low unemployment and will continue to get more bullish on the economy,” said Representative Robert Garcia of California, a member of the Biden campaign’s national advisory board. “But I also understand it’s very hard for people now. We just can’t expect overnight for people to feel better about the economy.”For most Americans, their views on the economy are directly tied to their partisan leanings — a phenomenon that is particularly acute for Republicans. In 2016, before Mr. Trump took office, just 18 percent of Republicans rated the economy excellent or good, according to a Pew Research survey. By February 2020, just before the pandemic shut down public life in America, 81 percent of Republicans said the economy was excellent or good.An Associated Press/NORC Center for Public Affairs Research poll last month found just 8 percent of Republicans, along with 65 percent of Democrats, approved of Mr. Biden’s handling of the economy.Mr. Biden’s sympathizers say part of his problem on the economy is an unwillingness to promote its bright spots out of fear of seeming insensitive to Americans struggling with higher prices. Mr. Trump had no such restraint, describing the economy as the best in history and the envy of the world. Using “Bidenomics” as a framework lets the president take ownership of the economy, but it doesn’t exactly tell voters that the economy is great.“Trump chose people who were probably less experienced in terms of making policy, but some of them are quite good about talking up the president,” said Ben Harris, a former top Treasury official in the Biden administration who played a leading role in outlining the Build Back Better agenda during the 2020 campaign. “Biden’s taken a more modest and humble approach, and there’s a chance that’s come back to haunt him.”Jason Furman, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in the Obama administration, said there was a regular debate in that White House about how much to sell the public on the idea that the economy was improving even if people didn’t feel in their own lives.Now he said it was difficult for the Biden administration to take victory laps over slowing inflation because wages haven’t kept pace, leaving a typical worker about $2,000 behind compared with before the pandemic.“The way to think about that is people were in an incredibly deep hole because of inflation and we’re still not all the way out of that hole,” Mr. Furman said. “The fact that you protected people in the bad times means the good times don’t feel as good.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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    For Politicians, Vacations Can Be a Lot of Work

    Taking a break from the campaign trail is risky. History is littered with cautionary tales of candidates who got it wrong.Labor Day weekend, once the official kickoff of campaign season, now comes almost a year after most candidates have hit the trail and after the first primary debate.The occasion lays out a basic fact of modern presidential campaigns: Politicians need vacations, too. But while taking a break can create an opportunity for campaigns to show that their candidates are just like the rest of us, it also carries potential peril.The “right” vacation can give a candidate time to rest and recharge, to reconnect with family after weeks on the road, and a chance to look presidential while doing it. A tone-deaf vacation — too elite, too disconnected, too much beach bod — is tabloid catnip and can alienate voters. And the wrong vacation can upend a campaign faster than a wave topples a windsurfer.So it’s no surprise that the presidential candidates this year, by and large, are lying low.Nikki Haley, the former South Carolina governor, will be at home on Kiawah Island, S.C. (“Vacation? LOL,” a spokeswoman said. Ms. Haley, she noted, is heading back to New Hampshire on Tuesday.)Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina has no scheduled public events, but a campaign spokesman said Mr. Scott planned to play pickleball, a game that can make even the deftest of athletes look ridiculous.A spokesman for the campaign of former President Donald J. Trump, an avid golfer who counts two vacation properties as homes, did not respond to requests for comment about where Mr. Trump would spend the weekend.President Biden is scheduled to go to Florida on Saturday, not for a vacation but to see the damage from Hurricane Idalia. He will then head to his house in Rehoboth Beach, Del., with his family, before going to Philadelphia on Monday.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state was badly battered by the storm, will also be working through the weekend. But there will probably be no beach outing for the two potential rivals: Jeremy Redfern, press secretary for Mr. DeSantis, said Friday that there were no plans for the governor to meet with the president.Some of the 2024 candidates already have experience with the awkward vacation moment. In the summer of 2017, when a state government shutdown forced the closure of New Jersey beaches before the July 4 holiday, Chris Christie, then the governor, was infamously photographed lounging on a deserted strip of sand at Island Beach State Park.A spokesman for Mr. Christie’s campaign did not respond to requests for comment about his plans, though he got an early start on the holiday weekend Wednesday by attending a Bruce Springsteen concert, the first of the rocker’s three shows in New Jersey this week.Vivek Ramaswamy will spend the weekend campaigning in New Hampshire. A spokeswoman for his campaign said he had a town hall Friday night, a breakfast and a rally Saturday, a few meet-and-greets and a Labor Day parade on Monday in Milford. The spokeswoman for Mr. Ramaswamy said his most recent vacation was around Christmas, and he had not taken a day off since before launching his campaign.Former Vice President Mike Pence will also be in New Hampshire on Monday, attending a “smoke-off” at a Baptist church, a picnic and a barbecue. (While in office, one of Mr. Pence’s family’s preferred vacation destinations was Sanibel Island in Florida.)While most of the 2024 candidates have chosen to emphasize that they are at work rather than at play, vacations were once seen as an opportunity to burnish a politician’s image. Ronald Reagan chopped wood and rode horses at his California ranch. George W. Bush cleared brush in Texas. John F. Kennedy, perhaps the embodiment of the artful presidential vacation, sailed.John F. Kennedy on a vacation in Rhode Island in 1962.American Photo Archive, via AlamyRonald and Nancy Reagan at their ranch in California in 1982.White House, via Associated PressGeorge W. Bush clearing brush at his Texas ranch in 2007.Charles Ommanney/Getty ImagesThese days, it seems, the risks are not worth the reward.Stories of vacations restoring the candidate but tanking the campaign are many. When Michael S. Dukakis, the Democratic nominee for president, went on vacation in late August 1988, he was seen by some as checking out of the race as George H.W. Bush gathered momentum from the Republican convention. Mr. Dukakis was also once pilloried for reading a book called “Swedish Land Use Planning” on the beach.Vacations can even be perilous after you win. As president, Barack Obama and Bill Clinton were each criticized for palling around with donors on Martha’s Vineyard. In 2015, Hillary Clinton went to the Hamptons for an August vacation, despite concerns about the political optics.Bill Clinton with Hillary Clinton and their daughter, Chelsea, on Martha’s Vineyard in 1993.Marcy Nighswander/Associated PressBarack Obama with Michelle, left, and Malia on Martha’s Vineyard in 2014.Jacquelyn Martin/Associated PressA getaway can also become a fashion meme or a wardrobe minefield. In August 2008, Mr. Obama, then a candidate, was photographed without a shirt on a beach in Honolulu. People swooned. In 1993, Mr. Clinton and Vice President Al Gore were photographed in short shorts. People cringed. Both appearances drew comparisons to Richard Nixon in a suit and wingtips on the beach. More recently, Mr. Biden took the internet by storm when he went shirtless at the beach, with his trademark aviators and baseball cap.And then there are those moments of R & R that can cause real problems for a campaign. During John Kerry’s 2004 presidential run, he spent time at the family house on Nantucket, where he engaged in one of his favorite pastimes: windsurfing. What might, in some circumstances, have created the impression of athleticism, strength and adventure was instead turned against him by the Bush campaign to illustrate, memorably, that his political stances shifted with the wind.John Kerry windsurfing off the coast of Nantucket, Mass., in 2004.Laura Rauch/Associated PressEven parades, a Labor Day staple, seem to have fallen out of favor.No candidates plan to take part in the parade in Chapin, S.C., which is billed as the largest in the state and has been a traditional stop for Republican presidential hopefuls. According to The Post and Courier, this will be the first Chapin Labor Day parade held the year before a contested Republican primary since at least 1996 in which no candidates make an appearance — though several campaigns will have “a presence” there, with walkers, trucks and probably a few flags.Maya King, Michael D. Shear and Nick Corasaniti contributed reporting. More

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    What Happens if Mitch McConnell Resigns Before His Senate Term Ends?

    The longtime Republican leader froze up during a news conference on Wednesday in Kentucky. The second such episode in recent weeks, it stirred speculation about his future in the Senate.For the second time in a little over a month, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the longtime Republican leader, froze up during a news conference on Wednesday, elevating concerns about his health and his ability to complete his term that ends in January 2027.At an event hosted by the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, Mr. McConnell, 81, who was elected to his seventh term in 2020, paused for about 30 seconds while responding to a reporter’s question about his re-election plans.The abrupt spell — like one at the U.S. Capitol in July — happened in front of the cameras. In March, a fall left him with a concussion. He suffered at least two other falls that were not disclosed by his office.Mr. McConnell has brushed off past questions about his health, but speculation is swirling again about what would happen in the unlikely event that he retired in the middle of his term.How would the vacancy be filled?For decades in Kentucky, the power to fill a vacancy in the U.S. Senate was reserved exclusively for the governor, regardless of whether an incumbent stepped down, died in office or was expelled from Congress.But with Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, in the state’s highest office, Republican lawmakers used their legislative supermajorities to change the state law in 2021.Under the new law, a state executive committee consisting of members of the same political party as the departing incumbent senator will name three candidates the governor can choose from to fill the vacancy on a temporary basis. Then a special election would be set, and its timing would depend on when the vacancy occurs.At the time that G.O.P. lawmakers introduced the change, Mr. McConnell supported the measure. Mr. Beshear, who is up for re-election this November, vetoed the bill, but was overridden by the Legislature.Who might follow McConnell in the Senate?Several Republicans could be in the mix to fill the seat in the unlikely scenario that Mr. McConnell, the longest-serving leader in the Senate, stepped down including Daniel Cameron, the state’s attorney general; Ryan Quarles, the agricultural commissioner; Kelly Craft, a former U.N. ambassador under former President Donald Trump and Representative Andy Barr.Photographs by Jon Cherry for The New York Times; Grace Ramey/Daily News, via Associated Press and Alex Brandon/Associated Press.In a state won handily by former President Donald J. Trump, several Republicans could be in the mix should Mr. McConnell, the longest-serving leader in the Senate, step down.But replacing him with a unflagging ally of the former president could rankle Mr. McConnell, who has become a fairly sharp, if cautious, critic of Mr. Trump after the former president’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election and after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol.One name to watch could be Daniel Cameron, the state’s attorney general, who is challenging Mr. Beshear in the governor’s race and has been considered at times an heir apparent to Mr. McConnell.Should he lose his bid for governor — which drew an early endorsement from Mr. Trump — talk of succession could be inevitable despite his connection to the former president.Ryan Quarles, the well-liked agricultural commissioner, might also be a contender. He lost this year’s primary to Mr. Cameron in the governor’s race.Kelly Craft, a former U.N. ambassador under Mr. Trump, who finished third in that primary, has the political connections to seemingly be part of the conversation. She is married to a coal-industry billionaire, who spent millions on advertising for her primary campaign.And then there is Representative Andy Barr, who has drawn comparisons to Mr. McConnell and who described Mr. Trump’s conduct as “regrettable and irresponsible,” but voted against impeachment after the riot at the Capitol.What have McConnell and his aides said about his health?Both times that Mr. McConnell froze up in front of the cameras, his aides have said that he felt lightheaded.But his office has shared few details about what caused the episodes or about his overall health. He missed several weeks from the Senate this year while recovering from the concussion in March, which required his hospitalization.Mr. McConnell, who had polio as a child, has repeatedly played down concerns about his health and at-times frail appearance.“I’m not going anywhere,” he told reporters earlier this year.How is Congress dealing with other lawmakers’ health issues?For the current Congress, the average age in the Senate is 64 years, the second oldest in history, according to the Congressional Research Service.Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat from California who is the chamber’s oldest member at 90, has faced health problems this year that have prompted growing calls for her to step down.In February, she was hospitalized with a severe case of shingles, causing encephalitis and other complications that were not publicly disclosed. She did not return to the Senate until May, when she appeared frailer than ever and disoriented.This month, she was hospitalized after a fall in her San Francisco home.Longtime senators are not the only ones in the chamber grappling with health concerns.John Fetterman, a Democrat who was Pennsylvania’s lieutenant governor, suffered a near-fatal stroke last May and went on to win one of the most competitive Senate seats in November’s midterm elections.Nick Corasaniti More

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    ¿Cómo influirán los juicios a Trump en la confianza hacia los jurados?

    Casi el 60 por ciento de los ciudadanos dice confiar en los jurados. Un nuevo sondeo brinda un vistazo a los pensamientos de cierto tipo de personas, que podrían decidir el destino del expresidente.En un momento en que la confianza en las instituciones está en su punto más bajo, los estadounidenses parecen seguir confiando en sus conciudadanos que conforman los jurados.Según una nueva encuesta, casi el 60 por ciento de los estadounidenses afirma tener por lo menos bastante confianza en los jurados, más que en cualquier otro grupo del sistema judicial.Pero es posible que pronto esa confianza se ponga a prueba porque todo apunta a que el expresidente Donald Trump tendrá que enfrentar varios juicios el año próximo.Cuando se les preguntó en específico sobre los próximos juicios contra Trump, la mayoría de los estadounidenses —demócratas, republicanos e independientes— dijeron que no creían que los tribunales pudieran conformar jurados imparciales.Y, sin duda, esos jurados se enfrentarán a un intenso escrutinio, lo cual para muchos es razón suficiente para no querer prestar este servicio a la nación. De hecho, la mayoría de los estadounidenses dijeron no estar interesados en formar parte de un jurado en un juicio contra Trump.El estudio, realizado en julio por la empresa de encuestas Ipsos y que se centró en los estadounidenses que han formado parte de un jurado en algún momento de los últimos 10 años, proporciona un retrato del tipo de estadounidense que suele formar parte de los jurados y un raro vistazo a los pensamientos del tipo de personas que podrían decidir el destino de Donald Trump.Se reveló que quienes ya habían desempeñado esta actividad eran mucho más propensos que el público en general a confiar en quienes forman parte del sistema de justicia penal, como los jueces federales, estatales y los magistrados de la Corte Suprema, los abogados, los miembros del personal no jurídico y las autoridades policiales.Los datos demográficos de quienes han actuado como jurados también difieren bastante de los del público en general. Es más probable que sean mayores, más ricos y con un nivel educativo más alto. Dos terceras partes de quienes han formado parte de un jurado tienen más de 50 años, en comparación con menos de la mitad del público en general. Además, tienden a ser un poco más demócratas que el resto de los estadounidenses y los hombres son más propensos a formar parte de un jurado que las mujeres.Pero, al parecer, los elevados niveles de confianza en el sistema judicial que mostraron los exmiembros de jurados (la encuesta no preguntaba por grupos e instituciones no jurídicos, como el Congreso) se debían más a su experiencia dentro del sistema que a un reflejo de sus diferentes características demográficas.Quienes formaron parte de algún jurado fueron 20 puntos porcentuales más propensos que los estadounidenses en general a afirmar que confiaban en los abogados defensores y 30 puntos porcentuales más propensos a decir que confiaban en los fiscales, como los de distrito o estatales.También fueron más propensos que el público en general a decir que confiaban en los jueces, aunque surgió una brecha partidista cuando se les preguntó acerca de su confianza en los magistrados de la Corte Suprema: los republicanos expresaron más confianza que los demócratas. Sin embargo, cuando se les consultó por los jueces estatales y federales, no hubo brecha partidista entre quienes habían sido miembros de un jurado ni entre el público en general.“Luego de haber entrevistado a muchos jurados, puedo decir que su servicio les ha aportado una visión más positiva del sistema”, afirmó Stephen Adler, ex redactor jefe de Reuters y periodista jurídico que escribió un libro sobre el sistema de jurados, The Jury: Trial and Error in the American Courtroom, y colaboró con Ipsos en el estudio.“Si uno forma parte de un jurado, aunque solo sea por un día o dos, se adentra en un entorno muy serio y enfocado”, explicó Adler. “Tener ese contacto real hace que la gente, sin importar sus nociones preconcebidas, tenga una mejor opinión de cada actor del proceso, hasta llegar a los jueces”.Aunque el 58 por ciento de los estadounidenses dijo confiar en los jurados, el 71 por ciento, incluida una mayoría de demócratas y republicanos, dijo que no confiaba en que los tribunales pudieran encontrar jurados “dispuestos a dejar de lado sus opiniones previas sobre Donald Trump y decidir el caso basándose en las pruebas presentadas”.Y cuando se les preguntó sobre el trato que reciben los diferentes grupos por parte del sistema judicial, el 71 por ciento de los estadounidenses afirmó que los funcionarios electos actuales o anteriores obtienen beneficios especiales, incluidos porcentajes similares de demócratas y republicanos. Quienes habían formado parte de un jurado fueron incluso más propensos que el público en general a decir que los funcionarios reciben un trato especial.El público general fue más propenso a señalar como beneficiarios de un trato especial a los ricos.Los próximos juicios de Trump convocarán a residentes de los lugares donde se presentaron los casos para que sean parte del jurado y, dependiendo del sitio, su composición podría presentar dificultades para el expresidente. En el caso de Georgia, los posibles jurados procederán del condado de Fulton, que tiende a ser de izquierda. El caso federal sobre los sucesos del 6 de enero de 2021 se celebrará en Washington, una ciudad liberal donde ese día aún genera reacciones viscerales y el caso del pago en el que está implicada Stormy Daniels se celebrará en el distrito de Manhattan, en Nueva York, también conocido por ser muy demócrata en su composición. No obstante, es probable que el caso de los documentos clasificados se celebre en Fort Pierce, Florida, y el jurado podría provenir de los condados circundantes, en los cuales Trump ganó en 2020.Sin duda, los fiscales y los abogados defensores serán muy cuidadosos para seleccionar al jurado. En esos casos, los fiscales necesitarán un veredicto unánime para tener éxito; pero Trump solo necesita una negativa para lograr que se anule un juicio.Adler señaló que las posturas políticas no impiden formar parte de un jurado. “La ley no dice que debes desconocer el caso”, afirmó. “La ley dice que tienes que tener la capacidad de ser justo e imparcial”.Los estadounidenses se mostraron divididos en cuanto a su propio interés en formar parte de alguno de los jurados de Trump. Un poco más del 50 por ciento dijo no estar interesado en formar parte, con escasas diferencias entre los simpatizantes de los dos partidos.Haber sido miembro de un jurado no aumentó las expectativas de los estadounidenses de que Trump pueda conseguir un jurado imparcial, pero quienes ya lo hicieron se mostraron más abiertos a participar: poco más de la mitad dijo que estaría interesado en ser jurado de uno de sus juicios.Ruth Igielnik es editora de encuestas del Times, donde redacta y analiza estudios. Antes fue investigadora principal en el Centro de Investigaciones Pew. Más sobre Ruth Igielnik More

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    Trump, Waiving Arraignment, Pleads Not Guilty in Georgia Case

    The 19 defendants in the election interference case are sparring with prosecutors over when a trial might start, and whether it will be in state or federal court.Former President Donald J. Trump pleaded not guilty on Thursday and waived his arraignment in the Georgia criminal case charging him and 18 of his allies with interfering in the 2020 election.His plea came as Gov. Brian Kemp of Georgia, a fellow Republican, dismissed demands from the former president and some of his supporters to start impeachment proceedings against Fani T. Willis, the prosecutor who brought the case.Without Mr. Kemp’s help, it is all the more unlikely that Mr. Trump will be able to derail the prosecution.“In Georgia, we will not be engaging in political theater that only inflames the emotions of the moment,” Mr. Kemp said in a news conference at the State Capitol, where he also discussed the response to Hurricane Idalia. “We will do what is right, we will uphold our oath as public servants, and it’s my belief that our state will be better off for it.”It remains unclear where or when Mr. Trump will be put on trial in the case, one of four that he has been charged in this year. A number of the 19 defendants are sparring with Ms. Willis, the Fulton County district attorney, over when a trial might start and whether it will be in state or federal court, leaving two judges in courtrooms only a few blocks apart in downtown Atlanta to wrangle with defense lawyers pulling in different directions.“I do hereby waive formal arraignment and enter my plea of not guilty,” Mr. Trump stated in a two-page filing on Thursday morning.He wrote that he had discussed the charges with his lawyer, Steven H. Sadow, adding: “I fully understand the nature of the offenses charged,” and that he waived his right to appear at arraignment, which had been scheduled to take place in Atlanta next Wednesday along with those of Mr. Trump’s co-defendants.Mr. Trump surrendered at the Fulton County jail in Atlanta last week and was booked on 13 felony charges for his efforts to reverse his 2020 election loss in Georgia. On social media, he has assailed and spread falsehoods about Ms. Willis, a Democrat, calling her “crooked, incompetent & highly partisan.” He has also praised State Senator Colton Moore, the most outspoken advocate for impeaching Ms. Willis. But calling a special legislative session to begin the impeachment process lacks enough support among lawmakers to move forward.Mr. Kemp has the power to unilaterally call a special session; his refusal to do so for an impeachment of Ms. Willis echoes his refusal to call a special session after the 2020 election, when Mr. Trump pressured him to make such a move to help overturn his election loss.State legislators may also call a special session. But although Republicans are in the majority of both houses of the Georgia General Assembly, doing so would require the support of three-fifths of the legislature, a threshold that could only be met with votes from some Democrats.Republican lawmakers in the state have wrestled since Mr. Trump’s indictment over whether anything can or should be done to impede Ms. Willis and her criminal case.This week, House Speaker Jon Burns said it would be “reckless” to take steps to defund Ms. Willis’s office, another move that some Republicans are considering, because it could hinder efforts to fight violent crime in Atlanta.But Mr. Moore, a first-year senator from ultraconservative northwest Georgia, has spoken in threatening terms.“I don’t want a civil war,” he said in a recent televised interview. “I don’t want to have to draw my rifle. I want to make this problem go away with my legislative means of doing so.”Mr. Kemp’s relationship with Mr. Trump fractured after the governor stood by the state’s election results in 2020, which gave Joseph R. Biden a narrow victory there.On Wednesday, he warned fellow Republicans that they could suffer politically if they focused on what he called the “distractions” posed by Ms. Willis’s case and Mr. Trump’s 2020 election loss. They should be pursuing tax cuts and teacher raises, he said, “not focusing on the past, or some grifter scam that somebody’s doing to help them raise a few dollars into their campaign account.”Mr. Trump has also been indicted this year in a criminal case in Manhattan, on state charges in a case stemming from hush money paid to a pornographic film actress. And he has been indicted in a pair of federal cases — one in Washington, related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election result nationally, and one in Florida over his handling of sensitive government documents after he left office.Should he be elected president again, he may theoretically be able to pardon himself of any federal convictions. But Mr. Trump would not be able to do so for a state conviction, even if the case was moved to federal court, as some defendants are seeking to do.Complicating the Georgia case, Mr. Trump and his co-defendants have differing legal strategies. Several of the defendants, including Mark Meadows, the former White House chief of staff, have filed to move the case to federal court. Late Thursday afternoon, prosecutors and lawyers for Mr. Meadows filed a new round of briefs in their battle over the removal question.Other defendants, including Kenneth Chesebro and Sidney Powell, have moved for speedy trials in state court, as they are allowed under Georgia law. Mr. Chesebro’s trial has already been scheduled to start on Oct. 23. Ms. Willis’s office is seeking to keep all of the defendants together in a single trial starting then, but Fulton Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee has initially indicated that only Mr. Chesebro will be tried at that time.Mr. Sadow filed a motion on Thursday seeking to sever Mr. Trump’s case from Mr. Chesebro’s and those of any other defendants who invoke their right to a speedy trial. He wrote in his filing that “requiring less than two months preparation time to defend a 98-page indictment, charging 19 defendants, with 41 various charges” would “violate President Trump’s federal and state constitutional rights to a fair trial and due process of law.” More

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    The Articulate Ignorance of Vivek Ramaswamy

    As our nation continues its march to 2024, a year that will feature not only a presidential election but also potentially four criminal trials of the Republican front-runner, I’ve been thinking about the political and cultural power of leadership. How much do leaders matter, really? What role does corrupt political leadership play in degrading not just a government but the culture itself?Let’s talk today about the specific way in which poor leadership transforms civic ignorance from a problem into a crisis — a crisis that can have catastrophic effects on the nation and, ultimately, the world.Civic ignorance is a very old American problem. If you spend five seconds researching what Americans know about their own history and their own government, you’ll uncover an avalanche of troubling research, much of it dating back decades. As Samuel Goldman detailed two years ago, as far back as 1943, 77 percent of Americans knew essentially nothing about the Bill of Rights, and in 1952 only 19 percent could name the three branches of government.That number rose to a still dispiriting 38 percent in 2011, a year in which almost twice as many Americans knew that Randy Jackson was a judge on “American Idol” as knew that John Roberts was the chief justice of the United States. A 2018 survey found that most Americans couldn’t pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. Among other failings, most respondents couldn’t identify which nations the United States fought in World War II and didn’t know how many justices sat on the Supreme Court.Civic ignorance isn’t confined to U.S. history or the Constitution. Voters are also wildly ignorant about one another. A 2015 survey found that Democrats believe Republicans are far older, far wealthier and more Southern than they truly are. Republicans believe Democrats are far more atheist, Black and gay than the numbers indicate.But I don’t share these statistics to write yet another story bemoaning public ignorance. Instead, I’m sharing these statistics to make a different argument: that the combination of civic ignorance, corrupt leadership and partisan animosity means that the chickens are finally coming home to roost. We’re finally truly feeling the consequences of having a public disconnected from political reality.Simply put, civic ignorance was a serious but manageable problem, as long as our leader class and key institutions still broadly, if imperfectly, cared about truth and knowledge — and as long as our citizens cared about the opinions of that leader class and those institutions.Consider, for example, one of the most consequential gaffes in presidential debate history. In October 1976, the Republican Gerald Ford, who was then the president, told a debate audience, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.”The statement wasn’t just wrong, it was wildly wrong. Of course there was Soviet domination of Eastern Europe — a domination that was violently reaffirmed in the 1956 crackdown in Hungary and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. The best defense that Ford’s team could muster was the national security adviser Brent Scowcroft’s argument that “I think what the president was trying to say is that we do not recognize Soviet domination of Europe.”In a close election with Jimmy Carter, the gaffe was a big deal. As the political scientist Larry Sabato later wrote, the press “pounced” and “wrote of little else for days afterward.” As a result, “a public initially convinced that Ford had won the debate soon turned overwhelmingly against him.” Note the process: Ford made a mistake, even his own team recognized the mistake and tried to offer a plausible alternative meaning, and then press coverage of the mistake made an impression on the public.Now let’s fast-forward to the present moment. Instead of offering a plausible explanation for their mistakes — much less apologizing — all too many politicians deny that they’ve made any mistakes at all. They double down. They triple down. They claim that the fact-checking process itself is biased, the press is against them and they are the real truth tellers.I bring this up not just because of the obvious example of Donald Trump and many of his most devoted followers in Congress but also because of the surprising success of his cunning imitator Vivek Ramaswamy. If you watched the first Republican debate last week or if you’ve listened to more than five minutes of Ramaswamy’s commentary, you’ll immediately note that he is exceptionally articulate but also woefully ignorant, or feigning ignorance, about public affairs. Despite his confident delivery, a great deal of what he says makes no sense whatsoever.As The Times has documented in detail, Ramaswamy is prone to denying his own words. But his problem is greater than simple dishonesty. Take his response to the question of whether Mike Pence did the right thing when he certified the presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021. Ramaswamy claims that in exchange for certification, he would have pushed for a new federal law to mandate single-day voting, paper ballots and voter identification. Hang on. Who would write the bill? How would it pass a Democratic House and a practically tied Senate? Who would be president during the intervening weeks or months?It’s a crazy, illegal, unworkable idea on every level. But that kind of fantastical thinking is par for the course for Ramaswamy. This year, for instance, he told Don Lemon on CNN, “Black people secured their freedoms after the Civil War — it is a historical fact, Don, just study it — only after their Second Amendment rights were secured.”Wait. What?While there are certainly Black Americans who used weapons to defend themselves in isolated instances, the movement that finally ended Jim Crow rested on a philosophy of nonviolence, not the exercise of Second Amendment rights. The notion is utterly absurd. If anything, armed Black protesters such as the Black Panthers triggered cries for stronger gun control laws, not looser ones. Indeed, there is such a long record of racist gun laws that it’s far more accurate to say that Black Americans secured greater freedom in spite of a racist Second Amendment consensus, not because of gun rights.Ramaswamy’s rhetoric is littered with these moments. He’s a very smart man, blessed with superior communication skills, yet he constantly exposes his ignorance, his cynicism or both. He says he’ll “freeze” the lines of control in the Ukraine war (permitting Russia to keep the ground it’s captured), refuse to admit Ukraine to NATO and persuade Russia to end its alliance with China. He says he’ll agree to defend Taiwan only until 2028, when there is more domestic chip manufacturing capacity here in the States. He says he’ll likely fire at least half the federal work force and will get away with it because he believes civil service protections are unconstitutional.The questions almost ask themselves. How will he ensure that Russia severs its relationship with China? How will he maintain stability with a weakened Ukraine and a NATO alliance that just watched its most powerful partner capitulate to Russia? How will Taiwan respond during its countdown to inevitable invasion? And putting aside for a moment the constitutional questions, his pledge to terminate half the federal work force carries massive, obvious perils, beginning with the question of what to do with more than a million largely middle- and high-income workers who are now suddenly unemployed. How will they be taken care of? What will this gargantuan job dislocation do to the economy?Ramaswamy’s bizarre solutions angered his debate opponents in Milwaukee, leading Nikki Haley to dismantle him on live television in an exchange that would have ended previous presidential campaigns. But the modern G.O.P. deemed him one of the night’s winners. A Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll found that 26 percent of respondents believed Ramaswamy won, compared with just 15 percent who believed Haley won.The bottom line is this: When a political class still broadly believes in policing dishonesty, the nation can manage the negative effects of widespread civic ignorance. When the political class corrects itself, the people will tend to follow. But when key members of the political class abandon any pretense of knowledge or truth, a poorly informed public is simply unequipped to hold them to account.And when you combine ignorance with unrelenting partisan hostility, the challenge grows all the greater. After all, it’s not as though members of the political class didn’t try to challenge Trump. But since that challenge came mostly from people Trump supporters loathe, such as Democratic politicians, members of the media and a few Trump-skeptical or Never Trump writers and politicians, their minds were closed. Because of the enormous amount of public ignorance, voters often didn’t know that Trump was lying or making fantastically unrealistic promises, and they shut out every voice that could tell them the truth.In hindsight, I should have seen all this coming. I can remember feeling a sense of disquiet during the Tea Party revolution. Republican candidates were pledging to do things they simply could not do, such as repealing Obamacare without holding the presidency and Congress or, alternatively, veto-proof congressional majorities. Then, when they failed to do the thing they could never do in the first place, their voters felt betrayed.There is always a problem of politicians overpromising. Matthew Yglesias recently reminded me of the frustrating way in which the 2020 Democratic primary contest was sidetracked by a series of arguments over phenomenally ambitious and frankly unrealistic policy proposals on taxes and health care. But there is a difference between this kind of routine political overpromising and the systematic mendacity of the Trump years.A democracy needs an informed public and a basically honest political class. It can muddle through without one or the other, but when it loses both, the democratic experiment is in peril. A public that knows little except that it despises its opponents will be vulnerable to even the most bizarre conspiracy theories, as we saw after the 2020 election. And when leaders ruthlessly exploit that ignorance and animosity, the Republic can fracture. How long can we endure the consequences of millions of Americans believing the most fantastical lies?A note on reader mailI want to end this newsletter with a note of thanks. I deeply appreciate your emails. Every week I receive an avalanche of thoughtful responses, some encouraging, some critical. I want you to know that while I can’t respond to them all, I do read every single email. If you care enough to take the time to write, the least I can do is take the time to read. Thank you, truly, for your thoughts. More

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    Trump’s Indictments: Key Players in the 2020 Election Effort

    It can be unsettling to see just how many people got involved in Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 race. The mania spread far and wide to encompass administration officials, party apparatchiks and random MAGA foot soldiers. We’ve broken them down into six main groups. At the dark heart of the […] More

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    Republicans Agree on Foreign Policy — When It Comes to China

    At first glance, last week’s Republican presidential debate revealed a party fractured over America’s role in the world. Ron DeSantis said he wouldn’t support additional aid to Ukraine unless Europe does more. Vivek Ramaswamy said he wouldn’t arm Ukraine no matter what. Chris Christie, Mike Pence and Nikki Haley, all staunch defenders of Kyiv, pounced. Within minutes, the altercations were so intense that the moderators struggled to regain control.But amid the discord, one note of agreement kept rising to the surface: that the true threat to America comes from Beijing. In justifying his reluctance to send more aid to Ukraine, Mr. DeSantis said he’d ensure that the United States does “what we need to do with China.” Mr. Ramaswamy denounced aiding Ukraine because the “real threat we face is communist China.” Ms. Haley defended such aid because “a win for Russia is a win for China.” Mr. Pence said Mr. Ramaswamy’s weakness on Ukraine would tempt Beijing to attack Taiwan.Regardless of their views on Ukraine, Republicans are united in focusing on China. They are returning to the principle that many championed at the beginning of the last Cold War. It’s neither internationalism nor isolationism. It’s Asia First.When Americans remember the early Cold War years, they often think of Europe: NATO, the Marshall Plan, the Truman Doctrine, which justified aiding Greece and Turkey. But for many leading Republicans at the time, those commitments were a distraction: The real menace lay on the other side of the globe.Senator Robert Taft, nicknamed “Mr. Republican” because of his stature in the party, opposed America’s entrance into NATO and declared in 1948 that “the Far East is ultimately even more important to our future peace and safety than is Europe.” The following year, Senator H. Alexander Smith, a Republican on the Foreign Policy and Armed Services Committee, warned that while the Truman administration was “preoccupied with Europe the real threat of World War III may be approaching us from the Asiatic side.” William Knowland, the Senate Republican leader from 1953 to 1958, was so devoted to supporting the Nationalist exiles who left the mainland after losing China’s civil war that he was called the “senator from Formosa,” as Taiwan was known at the time.Understanding why Republicans prioritized China then helps explain why they’re prioritizing it now. In her book “Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism,” the historian Joyce Mao argues that Cold War era Republicans’ focus on China stemmed in part from a “spiritual paternalism that arguably carried over from the previous century.” In the late 19th century, when the United States was carving out a sphere of influence in the Pacific, China, with its vast population, held special allure for Americans interested in winning souls for Christ. The nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his wife, who were Christians themselves, used this religious connection to drum up American support — first for their war against Communist rivals on the Chinese mainland and then, after they fled to the island of Taiwan, for their regime there.Many of America’s most influential Asia Firsters — like the Time magazine publisher Henry Luce — were either the children of American missionaries in China or had served as missionaries there themselves. The John Birch Society, whose fervent and conspiratorial brand of anti-Communism foreshadowed the right-wing populism of today, took its name from an Army captain and former missionary killed by Chinese communists at the end of World War II.Today, of course, Americans don’t need religious reasons to put Asia first. It boasts much of the world’s economic, political and military power, which is why the Biden administration focuses on the region, too. In Washington, getting tough on China is now a bipartisan affair. Still, the conservative tradition that Ms. Mao describes — which views China as a civilizational pupil turned civilizational threat — is critical to grasping why rank-and-file Republicans, far more than Democrats, fixate on the danger from Beijing.In March, a Gallup poll found that while Democrats were 23 points more likely to consider Russia a greater enemy than China, Republicans were a whopping 64 points more likely to say the reverse. There is evidence that this discrepancy stems in part from the fact that while President Vladimir Putin of Russia casts himself as a defender of conservative Christian values, President Xi Jinping leads a nonwhite superpower whose regime has spurned the Christian destiny many Americans once envisioned for it.In a 2021 study, the University of Delaware political scientists David Ebner and Vladimir Medenica found that white Americans who expressed higher degrees of racial resentment were more likely to perceive China as a military threat. And it is white evangelicals today — like the conservative Christians who anchored support for Chiang in the late 1940s and 1950s — who express the greatest animosity toward China’s government. At my request, the Pew Research Center crunched data gathered this spring comparing American views of China by religion and race. It found that white non-Hispanic evangelicals were 25 points more likely to hold a “very unfavorable” view of China than Americans who were religiously unaffiliated, 26 points more likely than Black Protestants and 33 points more likely than Hispanic Catholics.This is the Republican base. And its antipathy to China helps explain why many of the right-wing pundits and politicians often described as isolationists aren’t isolationists at all. They’re Asia Firsters. Tucker Carlson, who said last week that American policymakers hate Russia because it’s a “Christian country,” insisted in 2019 that America’s “main enemy, of course, is China, and the United States ought to be in a relationship with Russia aligned against China.” Mr. Ramaswamy, who is challenging Mr. DeSantis for second place in national polls, wants the United States to team up with Moscow against Beijing, too.And of course, the Republican front-runner for 2024, former President Donald Trump — deeply in tune with conservative voters — has obsessed over China since he exploded onto the national political stage eight years ago. Mr. Trump is often derided as an isolationist because of his hostility to NATO and his disdain for international treaties. But on China his rhetoric has been fierce. In 2016, he even said Beijing had been allowed to “rape our country.”Republicans may disagree on the best way forward in Ukraine. But overwhelmingly, they agree that China is the ultimate danger. And whether it’s Mr. Trump’s reference earlier this year to his former secretary of transportation as “Coco Chow” or House Republicans implying that Asian Americans in the Biden administration and Congress aren’t loyal to the United States, there’s mounting evidence that prominent figures on the American right see that danger in racial terms.That’s the problem with Republicans’ return to Asia First. Many in the party don’t only see China’s rise as a threat to American power. They see it as a threat to white Christian power, too.Peter Beinart (@PeterBeinart) is a professor of journalism and political science at the Newmark School of Journalism at the City University of New York. He is also an editor at large of Jewish Currents and writes The Beinart Notebook, a weekly newsletter.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