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      The Moment When Donald Trump Started to Lose May Have Begun

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      What’s the right form of justice for the problem of Donald Trump?There’s already been one indictment. There’s expected to be another in Georgia, possibly a sprawling one, about the effort to overturn the 2020 election. Although there’s a literal point to an investigation (find out what went wrong) followed by a prosecution (hold people accountable), investigations and prosecutions can also take on cultural or symbolic meaning.The Fox News settlement last week offered a microcosm of what’s happening now with Mr. Trump: The Dominion Voting Systems lawsuit was about one thing (the claim of defamation against a business), but it took on a broader meaning (the public learned more about how Republican politics really works right now). And, notably, few agree what the settlement means, whether the $787.5 million paid by Fox to Dominion reflects accountability or inconsequence, whether an apology was required or whether a trial was, even as the case risked a ruling with unpredictable repercussions.Different people have different views of what the real problem and the right form of justice look like for Mr. Trump. Maybe the only certainty right now is the answer will be unsatisfying.He, meanwhile, has never let up. Last month, Mr. Trump stood with his hand over his heart in Waco, Texas, as scenes from the Jan. 6 riot played on a big screen and a recording by the J6 Prison Choir blasted through speakers at a rally for his presidential campaign.So what’s the point? Mr. Trump is surrounded by disparate legal actions of varying importance by disconnected individuals. But if we step back and think about the meaning of this period, are we trying to move on from the Trump era, to put it behind us, or to understand what went wrong? “Justice for the problems of the Trump era” or “preventing another Trump presidency”?If you think hard about the Jan. 6 select House committee, its exact point might seem a little opaque. The committee couldn’t arrest anybody; its criminal referrals depended on a different branch of government to pursue them. The point couldn’t be justice, and while people may have mistaken the committee for a legal entity, it was a political one.But the committee served some purpose in American life: Millions of people watched its hearings, millions learned new details about this major event. Maybe the committee’s chief purpose, then, was about the documents and the interview transcripts and video — a truth project.Former Representative Stephanie Murphy, who served on the committee, told me in November this was its meaning: “for history,” to “document what happened.” To her, a former national security specialist at the Pentagon, the riot revealed the Capitol to the world as a “soft target,” and that “if we don’t walk away from perilous moments like that and take a moment to reflect and figure out how to improve, then I think we will have failed.” In an interview this month, Representative Zoe Lofgren isolated the main question — “We were there for the riot and the mob. How did it happen?” — and took it one further: to make the details “accessible to people,” filming depositions (even if only iPhone video or screen capture was available) and releasing the maximum amount of supporting material with the final report.The effect of the committee’s presentation, a kind of effort at building consensus about recent history, was less tangible: to reorient the country’s attention, through the hearings, to how bad Jan. 6 really was. Attention is hard to maintain and focus, especially when, with Mr. Trump, it’s as if we’re always trying to hold water in our hands.And this can have political consequences. In December, Sean Trende of RealClearPolitics wrote on Twitter that he had come to believe the Dobbs abortion ruling had more of a regional effect on the 2022 midterm results, but it was the hearings that shaped the national choice: “By re-centering Trump in the narrative,” the Trump-backed candidates became “less palatable to independents at a time when impressions were formed.”With hindsight, that committee had a pretty contained purpose — a public examination and narrative about a catastrophic event in American life, a kind of truth project.But it’s hard to assign a neat goal like that to every piece of the avalanche of litigation, investigation and prosecution that has converged in the last few months, between prosecutions or investigations for things that are or aren’t the problem with Mr. Trump (the Stormy Daniels payments, the efforts to overturn the election in Georgia, the handling of classified documents); the lawsuits about Mr. Trump’s business dealings in New York; the lawsuits about actors who responded to Mr. Trump’s election claims (like the Fox-Dominion lawsuit). We probably wouldn’t be here if, after the riot, Republicans had actually barred Mr. Trump from holding office, as my colleagues Ezra Klein and David French recently discussed. Impeachment was another political, civic process, rather than a criminal one. But it didn’t work, and now we have this.Without obvious shared goals, arguably all these different prosecutors, officials and individuals are undertaking an inadvertent deterrence project, keeping alive the bad parts of the recent past and applying pressure on the central players. We talk about a “chilling” effect with abortion laws, regulatory action against corporations and certain speech policies; these “work” by exerting pressure, making people skittish and worried about getting caught up in legal trouble.The endless hearings and legal heartburn might be working in a similar manner. As a friend put it to me, post-Jan. 6 prosecutions and the prospect of an indictment in Georgia may be causing people to be less rowdy.In advance of Mr. Trump’s New York indictment, his former adviser Roger Stone reminded people to keep their protests “civil” and “legal.” Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene said she would “be pointing at people to be arrested if they’re being violent.” Many (but not all) of the Trump-backed candidates who lost in November conceded their elections within a normal time frame. This was good for the country, but also a bit of a puzzle: Many of these people claimed a major election was stolen, why wouldn’t they do the same for their own? The drag and scrutiny in the aftermath of Jan. 6 might be an answer.Deterrence is an uneasy goal, however — hard to measure, impossible to predict, and at danger of becoming retribution in the wrong hands, or even hardening reactionary and illiberal elements by accident.Deterrence would also suggest an established kind of consensus: that a specific crime was, in fact, committed and the goal moving forward is to keep other crimes like it from being perpetrated. With many entry points to the problem, and without a shared consensus about what the real problem with the Trump era was, satisfaction here might be difficult to achieve. There’s also a kind of dark-night-of-the-soul, “The Godfather Part II” concern, which surfaced in early polling after the New York indictment, that at least some segment of the country likely finds that prosecution to be political, and doesn’t seem to mind. And Mr. Trump is raising a lot of money and consolidating his polling advantage in the wake of the first indictment.Consensus and order are unusual, though. Ms. Lofgren noted that the Jan. 6 committee was different from any experience she’d had, beginning with its unique presentation structure. “You had to have a unified view of what was the mission, and the mission was to find all the facts that we could, and then tell them,” she said. “There wasn’t a political divide on that. But that doesn’t mean we saw everything exactly the same way, exactly at the same time.” The committee, she explained, used closed-door discussions to reach public unity: “There were times when I thought one thing and by the time we’d spent a couple of hours thinking through it, I became convinced of someone else’s point of view. And the same thing happened with other members. That’s also rare.”Reaching one shared idea of what happened and why things went wrong, even within a smaller group behind closed doors, has real appeal, even if it’s not how we would want a country run. Instead, it’s like the best society can do is to keep applying a kind of societal weight to Mr. Trump — attention on the accurate memory of the events, the creation of legal hurdles and public scrutiny, possibly doomed prosecutions of varying quality — adding a little more weight, a little more weight, a little more weight in an effort to contain him. It’s like some mixed-up version of deterrence and truth, with a society trying something, anything, with possibly volatile precedents for the future.Even in all this chaos of information and opaque goals, a story can still stick out as representative of the frustrating parts of this time. In part of the materials released at Christmas by the select committee, in an episode you may have missed, a former White House deputy press secretary, Sarah Matthews, described an argument some of the press staff got into about who would benefit if Mr. Trump called the insurrection off, and whether he should condemn the violence at all.Ms. Matthews wanted him to do that:tell everyone to go home. According to her account of the day from her closed-door testimony, someone suggested that maybe people from the antifa movement were behind the riot; that was, Ms. Matthews said, all the more reason to condemn the violence. According to Ms. Matthews, someone kept arguing that to condemn the riot would allow the media to “win,” because Democrats had not been asked to condemn violence during the protests after George Floyd’s death in 2020.“I pointed at the TV,” Ms. Matthews testified last year, “and said — I guess yelled — ‘Do you think we’re winning right now?’” She became emotional, left the room and, later that day, resigned.This is, on the one hand, sort of a pointless thing to know — a vivid but peripheral episode, from overlooked supporting materials to a report from a committee that no longer exists. On the other hand, it speaks to the lasting change in American politics since 2016: When Ms. Matthews was working for House Republicans and testified publicly last summer, the House Republican Conference called her a “liar” and “pawn” on Twitter, before deleting the post.There’s something emblematic of this frustrating and confused era in a woman hopelessly shouting, “Do you think we’re winning right now?”Katherine Miller is a staff writer and editor in Opinion.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Covering Dominion’s Defamation Lawsuit Against Fox

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      Katie Robertson, a media reporter for The New York Times, was in court in Wilmington, Del., when Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems agreed to settle for a staggering $787.5 million.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.The first sign that things were amiss came Sunday evening, the day before what was supposed to be the most high-profile media defamation trial in decades was set to begin.I was eating dinner with a few New York Times colleagues at a hotel restaurant close to the courthouse in Wilmington, Del., where Fox News was facing a defamation lawsuit filed by Dominion Voting Systems. We, along with journalists from what seemed like every media outlet in the country, and more than a few from overseas, had expected to spend the next six weeks writing articles on the trial.But around 8 p.m., we received an email from the Delaware Superior Court. It said Judge Eric M. Davis had decided to delay the trial’s start by a day, though it offered no reasons for the move.While one of my Times colleagues fielded calls from our editors, the rest of us tried to riddle out the cause of the delay. Was Fox about to settle, or was a commonplace court issue at play? At the restaurant, we spotted a couple of lawyers for Dominion. They were casually drinking by the hotel bar, seemingly unbothered by the turn of events.Fox News was on trial for defaming Dominion by linking its voting technology to a vast conspiracy of fraud in the 2020 presidential election. But the trial was about more than that.Some saw it as a chance for accountability for the lies about a stolen election, pushed by former President Donald J. Trump. The trial touched on questions about a divided country and the role the media plays in those divisions, about echo chambers and the distortion of facts, about how a country operates as a democracy in an age of misinformation.It was also a test of First Amendment protections for the press, placing some libel experts in a curious position: cheering on a case against a media company when they were typically the first to warn of the dangers of such a thing.Media reporters at The Times had covered the lead-up to the trial since the lawsuit was filed in March 2021. Since January, I had pored over hundreds of pages of exhibits and attended numerous pretrial hearings. I’d gone back and forth from Wilmington enough times to warn my colleagues which hotels to avoid.Since the judge would not allow filming or recording inside the court, the Media team at The Times had planned to provide readers with real-time updates of the trial with a daily newsletter and a live blog.We were expecting to see some high-profile witnesses testify, too — including Rupert Murdoch, the 92-year-old head of the Murdoch media empire that owns Fox News, and a few of the network’s top-rated hosts. A tent had been erected at the back of the courthouse to shield some of the witnesses when they entered and exited. (A source told me the tent had been set up by the Delaware Capitol Police after Fox told the court that some of its witnesses had received threats.)Two days after the judge’s announcement, on Tuesday morning, we watched the jury selection. My colleagues Jeremy Peters and Jim Rutenberg were in the main courtroom, where reporters were allowed to have laptops only for taking notes; they weren’t allowed to use the internet. I watched the proceedings from an overflow room next door, where I was able to connect to the internet and report live updates on the proceedings.After a lunch break, lawyers for Dominion and Fox were ready to give their opening statements. The minutes, though, ticked by — no judge or jury had entered the courtroom. After about two hours of waiting, we saw the lawyers speaking quietly on their cellphones and occasionally ducking into the judge’s chambers for brief, private meetings.Then Judge Davis came out and addressed the court: “The parties have resolved the case.” It was all over before it began.Journalists scrambled to try to catch the lawyers as they were leaving. Fox’s legal team didn’t make any comments, but Dominion’s lead lawyers set up an impromptu news conference in front of the courthouse and told us the details of the settlement.Fox had agreed to pay a staggering $787.5 million and acknowledged the court’s ruling that certain claims it had made about Dominion were false. Defamation cases are almost always settled before they get to trial. That we had gotten this far was a wonder in itself, but the settlement still caught me somewhat by surprise — and upended our carefully laid coverage plans.Still, Dominion’s case provided a rare glimpse into the inner workings of a news empire that I had reported on for years. I started my career in journalism as a reporter for an Australian tabloid newspaper owned by Mr. Murdoch. The way the Murdochs, and especially Rupert, run their hugely influential media operations across the world has long interested me, from my inside view in Perth, Australia, to my current role years later covering the media industry from The Times’s Manhattan headquarters.The Dominion case revealed hundreds of emails, texts and internal messages between Fox hosts and executives that showed they hadn’t believed what they were telling their viewers. Those filings presented a challenge, too. Many pages of depositions and messages were heavily redacted, and The Times, along with NPR and The Associated Press, hired a lawyer to challenge the legality of those redactions. The settlement was also not the end of the story: On Monday, Fox News dropped the bombshell that it was parting ways with Tucker Carlson, its most popular prime time host, a signal that the Murdochs were making changes in the wake of the lawsuit and a move I had not expected.We are still calling, emailing and talking with sources to figure out which shoe will drop next, and when. One of the most difficult aspects of my job as a reporter who covers the news media is sifting through volumes of gossipy chatter (from sources, in my inbox and on social media) to find the truth. But experience on the beat and an understanding of Murdoch Kremlinology go a long way in discerning who is credible and who is not. More

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      Trump Can’t Stop Pence From Testifying to Jan. 6 Grand Jury, Court Rules

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      The ruling by an appeals court paved the way for the former vice president to appear before a federal grand jury as early as this week.A federal appeals court rejected on Wednesday night an emergency attempt by former President Donald J. Trump to stop former Vice President Mike Pence from testifying in front of a grand jury investigating Mr. Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 election.The 11th-hour ruling by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia paved the way for Mr. Pence to appear before the federal grand jury as early as this week.Mr. Pence has always been a potentially important witness in the inquiry because of conversations he took part in at the White House in the weeks leading up to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. During that time, Mr. Trump repeatedly pressed Mr. Pence to use his ceremonial role overseeing the congressional count of Electoral College votes to block or delay certification of his defeat.Prosecutors have been trying to get Mr. Pence to talk about Mr. Trump’s demands for several months — first in requests by the Justice Department for an interview and then through a grand jury subpoena issued by the special counsel Jack Smith, who inherited the inquiry into Mr. Trump’s attempts to stay in power.Last month, in a pair of sealed rulings, Judge James E. Boasberg, the chief judge of Federal District Court in Washington, ordered Mr. Pence to appear before the grand jury, striking down two separate challenges that would have kept him from answering certain questions.In one of those challenges, Mr. Pence sought on his own to limit his testimony by arguing that his role as the president of the Senate on Jan. 6, when Mr. Trump’s defeat was certified by Congress, meant he was protected from legal scrutiny by the executive branch — including the Justice Department. That argument was based on the “speech or debate” clause of the Constitution, which is intended to protect the separation of powers.Judge Boasberg ruled that while Mr. Pence could claim some protections against testimony under the clause, he would have to answer questions about any potentially illegal acts committed by Mr. Trump. This month, Mr. Pence announced that he did not intend to appeal the decision.Two weeks ago, Mr. Trump’s lawyers took the opposite path, asking the appeals court to reverse Judge Boasberg’s ruling on their own attempts to narrow the scope of the questions Mr. Pence would have to answer. Mr. Trump’s legal team based its arguments on the concept of executive privilege, which protects certain communications between the president and some members of his administration.The appeals court’s sealed ruling on Wednesday night came in response to an emergency request — it was also sealed — to temporarily stop Mr. Pence from answering questions in front of the grand jury as the broader appeal is being considered.When Mr. Pence ends up testifying, it will mark a significant turning point in the monthslong behind-the-scenes battle waged by Mr. Trump and several witnesses close to him to block the disclosure of details about plans to overturn the election. More

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      Biden Says He Has a ‘Job to Finish,’ Downplaying Concerns Over His Age

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      The president also said that he was not the only Democrat who could beat Donald J. Trump, but that “I know the danger he presents to our democracy.”WASHINGTON — President Biden on Wednesday dismissed polling that suggests Americans are not interested in seeing a rematch between him and former President Donald J. Trump, saying he has a “job to finish” in bolstering the economy and reasserting U.S. leadership abroad.Mr. Biden, who is hosting President Yoon Suk Yeol of South Korea in Washington this week, was asked by a reporter during a Rose Garden news conference whether he believed he was the only Democrat who could defeat Mr. Trump.“I may not be the only one, but I know him well and I know the danger he presents to our democracy,” Mr. Biden said of his predecessor. He added that he probably would have decided to run again even if Mr. Trump had not entered the race.Recent polls show that Democrats are deeply ambivalent about Mr. Biden running again. They are broadly pleased with his job performance, but in addition to concerns about the president’s age, they want to see him clear the way for a younger generation of Democratic leaders to step up.Mr. Biden also was asked how he would respond to people who have reservations about his age. (Mr. Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term.)Mr. Biden said that he respected their concerns — “I can’t even say, the number doesn’t register with me,” he remarked at one point — but he said he was optimistic about his re-election message.“I respect them taking a hard look at it,” Mr. Biden said. “I take a hard look at as well. I took a hard look at it before I decided to run. And I feel good. I feel excited about the prospects.”In the Rose Garden, Mr. Biden made a case for extending his role as a “bridge” to a younger generation, as he has portrayed himself. He said that Mr. Trump had frayed America’s most meaningful global relationships, and that the national debt had ballooned under Mr. Trump’s leadership.Mr. Trump, who is 76, announced his candidacy late last year. He has spent the past 24 hours trying to rouse his donors and supporters by attacking Mr. Biden. (“Joe Biden couldn’t even deliver a REAL SPEECH to announce his presidential campaign,” read an email signed by Mr. Trump and sent to supporters on Wednesday morning.)Mr. Trump is under criminal indictment by the Manhattan district attorney, a Democrat, on charges of covering up hush money paid to a porn actress. He also is being investigated by the Justice Department for instigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and illegally refusing to turn over classified documents.As Mr. Biden spoke on Wednesday, House Republicans were preparing to vote on a bill that would pass legislation to raise the debt ceiling while cutting domestic spending — a measure that would be dead on arrival in the Democrat-controlled Senate. As part of his re-election message, the president has tried to make the case to Americans that his experience (which has come with, yes, age) could be beneficial to navigating the collision course that lies ahead with congressional Republicans over debt spending.Mr. Biden also said his experience would be helpful on the world stage.“There’s still a contest between autocracies and democracies. And we’re the leading democracy in the world,” Mr. Biden said. “And it’s something I know a fair amount about, something I care about.” More

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      How Much Do Voters Really Care About Biden’s Age?

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      The evidence suggests it may end up mattering less to voters than their responses to polls indicate.Many Americans say they do not want President Biden to run for re-election, and his age is a big reason. In an NBC News poll released last weekend, 70 percent of adults said Mr. Biden, who is 80, should not run again. Asked if age was a factor, 69 percent of them said yes. Other recent surveys detect a similar lack of enthusiasm, with many voters — including around half of Democrats — calling him too old to seek the White House again.Taken at face value, it’s easy to imagine that his age could undermine the re-election campaign he formally announced on Tuesday. Mr. Biden, already the oldest president in U.S. history, would be 86 at the end of his second term. Republicans have amplified video of his verbal miscues — he also has a stutter — and suggested they reflect cognitive decline. Mr. Biden’s age is a frequent punchline on late-night television.But a review of the polling and academic research paints a surprisingly mixed picture. With the obvious caveat that a serious age-related gaffe or health crisis could change things, there are good reasons to think that Biden’s age may matter less than some polls suggest.1. Theory vs. practiceAmericans often express concern about aging leaders, but that hasn’t stopped them from voting for older candidates.In a recent USA Today/Suffolk University survey, half of Americans said that the ideal age for a president was between 51 and 65. Another quarter said they preferred candidates to be 50 or younger. But five of the last eight presidential nominees, including Mr. Biden in 2020 and Donald J. Trump (twice), have been well over 65. In several cases, voters chose them over much younger primary opponents. And dozens of senators or representatives over 80 have been elected in the past century.Concerns over age are also more nuanced than they may first appear. While most voters favor age limits for politicians, they disagree over what that limit should be. Many voters also say older lawmakers bring valuable experience and shouldn’t be barred from serving if they remain in good health.That doesn’t mean Americans who say they’re concerned about age are lying. Their voting choices may reflect the available options. “There’s nothing inconsistent about people saying no one in their 80s should be president and then voting for someone in their 80s if that’s the only choice they’re given,” said Whit Ayres, a Republican pollster.It’s also not clear that age is a disadvantage for older candidates. Older leaders tend to have lower approval ratings than younger ones, according to a 2022 study co-authored by Damon Roberts, a doctoral candidate in political science at the University of Colorado Boulder. But in his research, voters expressed relatively equal openness to supporting hypothetical candidates who were 23, 50 or 77.There are also just a lot of old politicians in office these days. “I don’t think that Biden in particular looks super out of place in the political scene right now,” Mr. Roberts said.Still, no one Mr. Biden’s age has ever sought re-election to the presidency, and other experts doubt he will blend in so easily. “The presidency is fundamentally different,” Mr. Ayres said. “The visibility is so much greater.”2. Party above allPolls do suggest that voters discern bigger issues for Mr. Biden than past older candidates (although pollsters seem to have asked about past candidates’ ages less often). But in a polarized era, party loyalty is far likelier to determine voters’ choice.“In the final analysis, we’re going to vote for the ‘D’ or the ‘R,’ ” said Karlyn Bowman, an emeritus fellow at the American Enterprise Institute who studies public opinion polling. “Partisan loyalty is so strong at this point that that will trump the other concerns.”Perceptions of Mr. Biden’s fitness also track with partisanship. Republicans — who are unlikely to back any Democratic candidate, no matter how spry — are the most apt to say that Mr. Biden is too old to run. His age also hasn’t stopped the vast majority of Democrats from deeming his presidency a success (though younger Democrats have expressed less eagerness to see Mr. Biden run again).“People are thinking about the election through the lens of other things,” said Margie Omero, a principal at GBAO, a Democratic polling firm. “Biden’s record, Trump’s record, what they see as the future of the country, legislative accomplishments, the fight for abortion rights.”Mr. Biden’s age may ultimately matter most to swing voters who are open to backing either party, giving them outsize clout to pick the winner. “It’s a very small slice of the population now, but still, it’s a very consequential one,” Ms. Bowman said.3. Just a numberThat brings us to whether Mr. Biden will be able to influence voters’ views about his fitness for office. In February, Ms. Omero and her colleagues at Navigator Research, a Democratic polling firm, recruited a small group of swing voters to watch Mr. Biden’s State of the Union address. Before the speech, just 35 percent of them described him as “up for the job of president.” After the address — which featured an impromptu back-and-forth with congressional Republicans over Social Security and Medicare — 55 percent rated him that way.Mr. Biden could also try to dodge the issue by continuing to limit his public appearances. Mr. Ayres worked on the 1996 Senate re-election campaign for Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, then 93, at a time when he was reportedly experiencing cognitive decline. “We tried to keep him as invisible as possible,” Mr. Ayres said.Past presidents, including Dwight Eisenhower and Mr. Reagan, have overcome questions about their age to win re-election decisively.But Mr. Biden is older than they were during their re-election campaigns. “The issue is not so much what he is like today,” Mr. Ayres said. “The issue is what he would be like in 2028.” The president may have to bank on voters overlooking any longer-term concerns about his age.4. The Trump factorMr. Trump, who will be 78 on Election Day, appears best positioned to win the 2024 Republican primary. He leads his closest potential competitor — Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, 44 — in national polls and endorsements from other Republicans.Though the similar ages of Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump could make the issue a wash, for now voters say they’re more concerned about Mr. Biden’s age. And if Mr. Trump aggressively attacks Mr. Biden’s fitness, he may draw more scrutiny to it than a younger but more restrained challenger could.But it’s also a message Mr. Trump has used before (see: 2020’s “Sleepy Joe”) in a matchup he didn’t win. At some point, all the talk about Mr. Biden’s age may start to feel to voters like old hat. More

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      Biden’s Bid for Re-election, and His Age

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      More from our inbox:Mr. Lloyd Webber, Don’t Blame Labor UnionsChina and the Population Ponzi Scheme Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Biden Declares 2024 Bid; Possible Rematch in Sight” (front page, April 26):When Joe Biden became the Democratic nominee for president in 2020, I reluctantly gave him my vote. If he is the party’s nominee again in 2024, he will have it again.However, I encourage the president to remember that many who will be voting for him see him not as their preferred choice, but rather the drastically lesser of two evils — and that he should use that knowledge as motivation for action.The uncomfortable truth is that our country is broken and politics as usual will simply no longer suffice.In what will hopefully be his second term, Mr. Biden must use the power of his office to address issues that actually affect everyday Americans: income inequality; food insecurity; reproductive, gender and civil rights; gerrymandering and voter restrictions; gun violence; health care; bloated defense spending; predatory business practices; a radicalized Supreme Court. The list is unfortunately long, and requires that the American people deliver him a Democratic majority in Congress.His first term has shown glimpses that Mr. Biden can be a transformative leader. Now, if given the opportunity of four more years, he must truly commit to his promise of saving the soul of America, for it is battered, bruised and long awaiting its champion.Gabe DowneySouthfield, Mich.To the Editor:President Biden may correctly frame the issue in the 2024 elec­tion as “whether in the years ahead we have more free­dom or less free­dom, more rights or fewer.” But while his as yet unknown opponent cannot be measured against these criteria, we do know that the hallmarks of this administration have been extraordinary exercises in presidential power (often reined in by the courts), an increasingly muscular administrative state and a vast expansion in the size and scope of government.Some may agree with the goals underlying these actions, but they plainly represent the antithesis of “more freedom.”Kenneth A. MargolisChappaqua, N.Y.To the Editor:Re “Biden Should Take Voters’ Concerns About Age Seriously” (editorial, April 23):So what if “Mr. Biden’s overall energy level has declined, and he continues to stumble over words in his public appearances”? He is not running any marathons or competing on “Jeopardy!” The most important trait for a president is sound judgment, and there is no evidence that his judgment is impaired.The main reason that people are concerned about his age is that the media keeps talking about it.Ira D. CohenNorth Bergen, N.J.To the Editor:I am a Democrat who voted for Joe Biden in 2020 and would vote for him again in 2024. Yes, I am concerned about his age and ability, but I, and I think most of the populace, would be a lot less concerned if he had a different running mate.Judith PetrizzoSan Jose, Calif.To the Editor:As one approaching 80 years, but who still actively practices law and carries his own bag on the golf course, I would like to see President Biden as a one-term president. That’s not because I do not like what he has done to date, but because I view him as too old for a second term.Some octogenarians have been luckier than others vis-à-vis their cognitive and physical skills, and should appreciate that luck.While I must concede that I was impressed by Mr. Biden’s recent trip to Ireland and his eloquence before the Irish Parliament, my overall sense is that he’s ebbing. Being president is a taxing, pressure-cooker job that requires a sharp intellect, unless you’re Donald Trump, and great stamina, which I believe neither Mr. Biden nor Mr. Trump possesses.A Biden-Trump rematch would make us a laughingstock. Is this the best we can do?Louis J. MaioneNew YorkTo the Editor:Shame on you, New York Times! Joe Biden at 80 has navigated one of the most divisive and difficult times in our history with dignity and political acumen. To suggest that we throw that away simply because he is older is a capitulation to the current bias against older people.Lisa SerradillaNew YorkMr. Lloyd Webber, Don’t Blame Labor Unions Andrew Kelly/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Andrew Lloyd Webber: The Closing of ‘Phantom,’ the Loss of My Son and the Future of Broadway” (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, April 17):The musicians of New York City join the Broadway theater community in extending heartfelt condolences to Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber following the death of his son. As he stated, there is nothing more tragic for a parent than the death of their child.Mr. Lloyd Webber then turns to the subject of his megahit, “Phantom of the Opera,” which closed on April 16, noting that this past season was the show’s “best ever.”But he then inexplicably pulls out the long disproved cliché about labor unions driving up ticket prices: “The way multiple union contracts drive up the costs of Broadway shows is unsustainable.”This attack on unions is nonsensical. Individual theatrical failures are determined by a variety of factors. Few, if any, of them are attributable to unions.Mr. Lloyd Webber’s theatrical hits helped create the current focus on expensive blockbusters aimed at tourists. Producers mitigate their “risk” by offering safer, already branded projects that might hopefully recoup any Broadway losses when they perform on the road. This is very dissimilar to the Stephen Sondheim/Hal Prince classics he praises.“Phantom of the Opera” generated 35 years of financial security for Mr. Lloyd Webber, his investors and thousands of union workers who were fortunate enough to bring it to life. More important, the show brought pleasure to audiences all over the world. That kind of success cannot be replicated by simply cutting wages.Tino GagliardiNew YorkThe writer is president of the New York City musicians’ union (American Federation of Musicians Local 802).China and the Population Ponzi SchemeA family cradling their child at a park in Beijing. China’s death rate surpassed its birth rate for the first time in decades this year.Gilles Sabrie for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Shrinking Population in China Affects All” (news article, April 20):No doubt, China’s shrinking population will create economic challenges that will require creative solutions. But aren’t economic challenges preferable to the environmental ones China would face if its population continued growing well past its current 1.4 billion?To declare it a crisis that China will have fewer people to manufacture the products (including the useless junk) that we in the Western world consume at unsustainable levels is to ignore the fact that we live on a planet that is being smothered to death by our plastic trash.To fret over diminishing demand for ugly high-rise apartment buildings is to imply that we should keep sprawling, replacing nature with buildings, roads and utilities, wildlife habitats be damned.Financial security at the individual level doesn’t necessarily require a growing G.D.P. or a growing population. When women have fewer children, they spend more time in the paid work force; they also tend to have healthier, better educated children who grow up to be more productive adults. We should enthusiastically embrace ending the population Ponzi scheme.Marian StarkeyFalmouth, MaineThe writer is vice president for communications at Population Connection. More

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      How Joe Biden Can Win in 2024

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      In 2024, the fate of the Democratic Party will rest in the hands of an 81-year-old incumbent president whom a majority of the country disapproves of and even many Democratic voters think should step aside rather than run for re-election.In the past, the conventional wisdom would be that President Biden faces an uphill battle to win a second term. But in today’s volatile, polarized political environment — in which Mr. Biden’s predecessor and potential general election opponent, Donald Trump, became the first ex-president to be criminally indicted and Democrats posted a history-defying midterm performance — he opens his re-election campaign in a stronger position than many would expect.He can make a compelling case for his first-term accomplishments, his steady leadership and a vision of the country fundamentally different from what is on offer from Republicans — of freedom of opportunity and opportunity of freedom for all Americans.A number of factors have worked in his favor. Because of his age, Mr. Biden has been dogged by speculation about his re-election plans. But no major candidate has stepped up to challenge him in the Democratic primary, which will allow him and his campaign team to focus their time, efforts and resources on the general election.For months, Democrats have been frustrated with the gap between Mr. Biden’s accomplishments and the public’s awareness of them. Despite a flurry of big-ticket legislation that the president signed into law in 2021 and 2022, a February poll showed that 62 percent of Americans — including 66 percent of independents — believed that the Biden administration has accomplished either “not very much” or “little or nothing.” The administration has already begun chipping away at this perception deficit, with the president, vice president and cabinet officials fanning out to battleground states and other parts of the country to spotlight these accomplishments.The timing is right, because these programs are starting to have a big impact on the lives of many Americans. In March, Eli Lilly became the first major drug company to announce that it would cap out-of-pocket insulin costs at $35 a month, matching the Inflation Reduction Act’s cap on insulin costs for seniors. The administration says it has financed over 4,600 bridge repair and replacement projects across the country. And the private sector has committed over $200 billion in manufacturing investments since the passage of the Chips and Science Act, including $40 billion to build new semiconductor factories in Arizona and $300 million to manufacture semiconductor parts in Bay County, Mich.Mr. Biden has even made gains in mitigating voters’ concerns about his age. First, there was his lively, 73-minute State of the Union address, where he sparred ably with heckling Republicans, baiting them into backing his positions on Social Security and Medicare. And his surprise trip to Ukraine, which was the first time in modern history that a president visited an active war zone outside of the control of the U.S. military, received expansive coverage.But Mr. Biden’s biggest advantage might not come from anything he has done. Instead, it might come from the chaos among Republicans. This is welcome news for the president, who is fond of telling voters, “Don’t compare me to the almighty; compare me to the alternative.”There has been talk among many Republican leaders and donors about moving on from Mr. Trump — most recently, in the weeks after the 2022 midterms — but the base isn’t following their lead. Since his indictment by a Manhattan grand jury, his grip on the party, at least based on recent polling evidence, has grown tighter. That may be good news for his campaign, but he has significant vulnerabilities in a general election.And Mr. Trump is just the beginning of the G.O.P.’s problems. In recent years, the electorate has become more supportive of abortion rights. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, election after election has provided evidence of that. Yet Republicans have not come up with an answer — and in some ways, they seem to be making the problem worse. This month, Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida signed into law a six-week abortion ban, which would prohibit the procedure before many women even know they are pregnant. Candidates and likely contenders including former Vice President Mike Pence, Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina and former Gov. Asa Hutchinson of Arkansas have endorsed extreme anti-abortion measures that would be effected nationally — upending years of Republican claims that abortion should be “left to the states.”There are no signs that abortion is letting up as a top issue for voters. This month, liberals won control of the Wisconsin Supreme Court for the first time in over a decade after Judge Janet Protasiewicz ran a campaign focused on abortion rights and extremism on the right and secured an 11-point victory.A key part of Mr. Biden’s appeal for Democrats is that he doesn’t provoke the sort of divisiveness that Mr. Trump does. Despite Mr. Biden’s sagging approval ratings, in the 2022 midterms, we saw that voting against the president was not a big motivator for many Americans (compared with 2018, when casting a vote against Mr. Trump was a substantial motivator).If these trends continue, Democratic voters will continue to be motivated to vote against an extremist Republican Party — and Democrats will stand a good chance of winning the critical independent bloc.President Biden and his team still have work to do to firm up his support before the election. First up is navigating a debt-ceiling showdown with Speaker Kevin McCarthy in the House, where Republican gamesmanship threatens the nation’s credit rating and could spike Americans’ mortgage, student loan and car payment rates. The issue is tailor-made to play to Mr. Biden’s core strength — that he is a competent, steady hand in an otherwise chaotic political system.The Biden team will also need to increase their messaging to voters about what he has been able to achieve in his first term and what’s at stake over the next four years. That effort will focus in particular on swing-state voters in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, and will highlight progress in critical areas like infrastructure, manufacturing and job creation.Mr. Biden’s announcement video provides a preview of what we’ll be hearing from him over the next 18 months, and the subsequent four years if he’s re-elected: He is a defender of democracy and a protector of Americans’ personal freedoms and rights, including the rights of Americans to make their own decisions about reproductive health, to vote and to marry the person they love. The video juxtaposes chaotic images of Jan. 6, abortion protests outside the Supreme Court and Republican firebrands like Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene with wholesome videos of Mr. Biden hugging and holding hands with Americans from every walk of life.The message is as subtle as sledgehammer: Do you really want to hand the country over to the Republicans and relive the chaos of the Trump years?Ultimately, if Joe Biden emerges victorious in November 2024, it will be because voters preferred him to the alternative — not to the almighty.Lis Smith (@Lis_Smith), a Democratic communications strategist, was a senior adviser to Pete Buttigieg’s presidential campaign and is the author of the memoir “Any Given Tuesday: A Political Love Story.”The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Why Kamala Harris Matters So Much in 2024

      by

      A few weeks ago, one of France’s most famous public intellectuals, Bernard-Henri Lévy, gave an interview to The Times on his new documentary, “Slava Ukraini,” and he said something that helped me understand why, as I approach my 70th birthday, I still want to be a journalist.Asked why, at age 74, he dodged rockets in Ukraine to bring home the savagery of the Russian invasion, Lévy said, “In Ukraine, I had the feeling for the first time that the world I knew, the world in which I grew up, the world that I want to leave to my children and grandchildren, might collapse.”I have that exact same fear.Which is why the focus of my columns these days has been very tight. There are three things that absolutely cannot be allowed to happen: Israel cannot be allowed to turn into an autocracy like Viktor Orban’s Hungary; Ukraine cannot be allowed to fall to Vladimir Putin; and Donald Trump cannot be allowed to occupy the White House ever again.If all three were to happen, the world that I want to leave my children and grandchildren could completely collapse.Israel, the only functioning pluralistic democracy in the Middle East, tempered by the rule of law, albeit imperfect, would be lost.The European Union — the United States of Europe, the world’s other great multiethnic center of free markets, free people and human rights — would be at Putin’s mercy.And the United States of America, with a vengeful Trump back in the White House, effectively pardoned for his many attacks on our democratic institutions and his assault on the integrity of our elections, would never be the same. Trump would be unchained — an utterly chilling thought.It’s through this lens that I want to talk about Joe Biden’s announcement on Tuesday that he is running for re-election, joined again by Kamala Harris. Biden’s ability to finish his current term and successfully navigate another one is critical to all three scenarios mentioned above. Which is why, now that Biden has declared that he is running, he absolutely has to win.But while you may think the 2024 election is very likely going to be a rerun of 2020, that is not the case for the Democrats. This time, Biden’s running mate will really matter.We are always told that, in the end, people vote for the candidate for president, not for vice president. But because Biden would be 86 at the end of a second term — and therefore the chance of his health failing is not small — people will be asked to vote as much for his vice president as for him, maybe more than in any other election in American history.The most recent FiveThirtyEight average of all the Biden-Harris approval polls found that 51.9 percent of Americans disapprove of Harris’s job performance and 40 percent approve, about the same numbers as Biden’s.Let me be clear: I voted for Joe Biden, and I do not want my money back. He is a good man, and he has been a good president, better than the polls give him credit for. The Western alliance that he put together, and has held together, to counter the Russian invasion of Ukraine has been a master class in alliance management and defending the democratic order in Europe. Ask Putin.The way Biden has told Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu that he is not fooled by — and will not be indifferent to — Netanyahu’s judicial coup d’état masquerading as a “judicial reform” has been a tremendous source of encouragement for the hundreds of thousands of Israelis who have taken to the streets to defend their democracy.And on the domestic issues I care about most — rebuilding America’s infrastructure, ensuring American leadership in the manufacture of the most advanced microchips that will power the age of artificial intelligence, and incentivizing market forces to deliver the huge scale of clean energy we need to mitigate the worst impacts of climate change — Biden has delivered beyond my highest hopes.Joe Biden would be my candidate, no matter what his age, as long he was physically and mentally able, because I see no other Democrat with his blend of political skills, his core belief in the necessity and possibility of national unity, his foreign policy savvy and his ability to disagree with Trump’s supporters without trying to humiliating them. He authentically wants to get the poison out of our political system.But … I am keenly aware that plenty of Americans don’t share my views. I realize that the roughly 30 percent of Republicans who are Trump devotees are most likely beyond reach — and nothing Biden can say will bring them around. However, they will not decide the next election.As Axios reported on April 17, Gallup polling in March “found that a record 49 percent of Americans see themselves as politically independent — the same as the two major parties put together.”This means that there are many moderate, principled conservatives and independents who will not, or prefer not to, vote for Trump again. Just enough of them demonstrated as much in the 2022 midterms to prevent virtually all of the major Trump election deniers running for state and national office from gaining power. Their votes helped to save our democracy.If the 2024 race comes down to Biden vs. Trump again, we are going to need those independents and moderate Republicans to show up again. But this time around, because of his age and the possibility that he might not be able to finish a second term, Biden’s vice president will be much more consequential in their minds.It’s no secret that Vice President Harris has not elevated her stature in the last two-plus years. I don’t know what the problem is — whether she was dealt an impossible set of issues to deal with, or is in over her head, or is contending with a mix of sexism and racism as the first woman of color to serve as vice president. All I know is that doubts among voters about her abilities to serve as president, which were significant enough for her to quit as a presidential candidate even before the Iowa caucuses in 2020, have not gone away.Given the stakes, Biden needs to make the case to his party — and, more important, to independents and moderate Republicans — why Harris is the best choice to succeed him, should he not be able to complete his term. He cannot ignore this issue, because that question will be on the minds of many voters come election time.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesAt the same time, Harris has to make the case for herself, ideally by showing more forcefully what she can do. One thing Biden might consider is putting Harris in charge of ensuring that America’s transition to the age of artificial intelligence works to strengthen communities and the middle class. It is a big theme that could take her all over the country.I wrote a column more than two years ago suggesting that Biden make Harris “his de facto secretary of rural development, in charge of closing the opportunity gap, the connectivity gap, the learning gap, the start-up gap — and the anger and alienation gap — between rural America and the rest of the country.” It would have been a substantive challenge and would have enabled her and the administration to build bridges to rural Republicans. Never happened.I am terrified of going into this election with a Democratic ticket that gives moderate Republicans and independents — who are desperate for an alternative to Trump — any excuse to gravitate back to him.And beware. Trump is no fool. If he’s the G.O.P. nominee, I can easily see him asking a more moderate Republican woman, like Nikki Haley, to be his running mate, knowing that her presence on the ticket could be an incentive that gives at least some of those Republicans and independents who are down on Trump an excuse to plug their noses and vote for him another time.Make no mistake, the vice presidency is really going to matter in an election that is really going to matter. Because I don’t want Biden to win this election by 50.1 percent. I want it to be a landslide rejection of Trumpism and the politics of division. I want it to send a loud message around the world — to the Putins and the Netanyahus and the Orbans — that there are way more of us Americans on the center-right and the center-left, way more people who are ready to work together for the common good, than there are haters and dividers.That’s an America worth handing over to our children and grandchildren.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