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      3 Senate Hopefuls Denounce Big Tech. They Also Have Deep Ties to It.

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      For Republicans running for the Senate this year, “Big Tech” has become a catchall target, a phrase used to condemn the censorship of conservative voices on social media, invasions of privacy and the corruption of America’s youth — or all of the above.But for three candidates in some of the hottest races of 2022 — Blake Masters, J.D. Vance and Mehmet Oz — the denunciations come with a complication: They have deep ties to the industry, either as investors, promoters or employees. What’s more, their work involved some of the questionable uses of consumer data that they now criticize.Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance have embraced the contradictions with the zeal of the converted.“Fundamentally, it is my expertise from having worked in Silicon Valley and worked with these companies that has given me this perspective,” Mr. Masters, who enters the Republican primary election for Senate in Arizona on Tuesday with the wind at his back, said on Wednesday. “As they have grown, they have become too pervasive and too powerful.”Mr. Vance, on the website of his campaign for Ohio’s open Senate seat, calls for the breakup of large technology firms, declaring: “I know the technology industry well. I’ve worked in it and invested in it, and I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it. The tech industry promised all of us better lives and faster communication; instead, it steals our private information, sells it to the Chinese, and then censors conservatives and others.”But some technology activists simply aren’t buying it, especially not from two political newcomers whose Senate runs have been bankrolled by Peter Thiel, the first outside investor in Facebook and a longtime board member of the tech giant. Mr. Thiel’s own company, Palantir, works closely with federal military, intelligence and law enforcement agencies eager for access to its secretive data analysis technology.“There’s a massive, hugely profitable industry in tracking what you do online,” said Sacha Haworth, the executive director of the Tech Oversight Project, a new liberal interest group pressing for stricter regulations of technology companies. “Regardless of these candidates’ prospects in the Senate, I would imagine if Peter Thiel is investing in them, he is investing in his future.”Mr. Masters, a protégé of Mr. Thiel’s and the former chief operating officer of Mr. Thiel’s venture capital firm, oversaw investments in Palantir and pressed to spread its technology, which analyzes mountains of raw data to detect patterns that can be used by customers.Palantir’s initial seed money came from the C.I.A., but its technology was adopted widely by the military and even the Los Angeles Police Department. Mr. Masters and Mr. Thiel personally pressed the director of the National Institutes of Health to buy into it.Sharecare, a website whose consortium of investors included Mehmet Oz, answered consumer questions about health issues.Dr. Oz, the Republican nominee for an open Senate seat in Pennsylvania, was part of a consortium of investors that founded Sharecare, a website that offered users the chance to ask questions about health and wellness — and allowed marketers from the health care industry the chance to answer them.A feature of Sharecare, RealAge Test, quizzed tens of millions of users on their health attributes, ostensibly to help shave years off their age, then released the test results to paying customers in the pharmaceutical industry.Mr. Vance, the Republican nominee in Ohio and another Thiel pupil, used Mr. Thiel’s money to form his venture capital firm, Narya Capital, which helped fund Hallow, a Catholic prayer and meditation app whose privacy policies allow it to share some user data for targeted advertising.The Vance campaign said the candidate’s stake in Hallow did not give him or his firm decision-making powers, and Alex Jones, Hallow’s chief executive, said private, sensitive data like journal entries or reflections were encrypted and not sold, rented or otherwise shared with data brokers. He said that “private sensitive personal data” was not shared “with any advertising partners.”Peter Thiel has bankrolled Mr. Masters and J.D. Vance in their Senate campaigns.Marco Bello/Getty ImagesAll three Senate candidates have targeted the technology industry in their campaigns, railing against the harvesting of data from unsuspecting users and invasions of privacy by greedy firms.“These companies take this data and sell precisely targeted ads so effective they verge on predatory,” Mr. Masters wrote in an opinion article last year in The Wall Street Journal. “They then optimize their platforms to keep you online to receive ever more ads.”In a gauzy video posted in July 2021, Mr. Masters says, “The internet, which was supposed to give us an awesome future, is instead being used to shut us up.”Mr. Vance, in a campaign Facebook video, suggested that Congress make data collection illegal — or at least mandate disclosure — before technology companies “harvest our data and then sell it back to us in the form of targeted advertising.”In a December video appearance soon after he announced his campaign, Dr. Oz proclaimed, “I’ve taken on Big Pharma, I’ve gone to battle with Big Tech, I’ve gone up against agrochem companies, big ones, and I’ve got scars to prove it.”It is not surprising that more candidates for high office have deep connections to the technology industry, said Michael Rosen, an adjunct fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute who has written extensively about the industry. That’s where the money is these days, he said, and technology’s reach extends through industries including health care, social media, hardware and software and consumer electronics.“What is novel in this cycle is to have candidates ostensibly on the right who are arguing for the government to step in and regulate these companies because, in their view, they cannot be trusted to regulate themselves,” Mr. Rosen said.He expressed surprise that “a free-market, conservative-type candidate thinks that the government will do a fairer and more reliable job of regulating and moderating speech than the private sector would.”Technology experts on the left say candidates like Mr. Masters and Mr. Vance are Trojan horses, taking popular stances to win federal office with no intention of pursuing those positions in the Senate.On his website, Mr. Vance says, “I’m sick of politicians who talk big about Big Tech but do nothing about it.”Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMs. Haworth, whose group has taken aim at platforms like Facebook and Amazon, said states like California were already moving forward with regulations to prevent online marketers from steering consumers to certain products or unduly influencing behavior.She said she believed that Republicans, if they took control of Congress, would impose weak federal rules that superseded state regulations.“Democrats should be calling out the hypocrisy here,” she said.Mr. Masters said he was sympathetic to concerns that empowering government to regulate technology would only lead to another kind of abuse, but, he added, “The answer in this age of networked monopolies is not to throw your hands up and shout ‘laissez-faire.’”Multinational technology firms like Google and Facebook, Mr. Masters said, have exceeded national governments in power.As for the “Trojan horse” assertion, he said, “When I am in the U.S. Senate, I am going to deliver on everything I’m saying.”It is not clear that such complex matters will have an impact in the fall campaigns. Jim Lamon, a Republican Senate rival of Mr. Masters’s in Arizona, has aired advertisements tarring him as a “fake” stalking horse for the California technology industry — but with limited effectiveness. At a debate this month, Mr. Lamon said Mr. Masters was “owned” by his paymasters in Big Tech.But Mr. Masters, who has the endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, appears to be the clear favorite for the nomination.Representative Tim Ryan, Mr. Vance’s Democratic opponent in Ohio, has made glancing references to the “Big Tech billionaires who sip wine in Silicon Valley” and bankroll the Republican’s campaign.John Fetterman, the Democratic opponent of Dr. Oz in Pennsylvania, has not raised the issue.Taylor Van Kirk, a spokeswoman for Mr. Vance, said he was very serious about his promises to limit the influence of technology companies.“J.D. has long been outspoken about his desire to break up Big Tech and hold them accountable for their overreach,” she said. “He strongly believes that their power over our politics and economy needs to be reduced, to protect the constitutional rights of Americans.”Representatives of the Oz campaign did not respond to requests for comment. More

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      Big Tech and the Fed

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      Some tech companies’ earnings are flagging, in what could be a positive sign for the Federal Reserve.Still big.Noah Berger/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesWhat tech earnings say about the economy The long-booming bottom lines of major tech companies are all of a sudden smaller than expected. That might be a good thing. Big Tech sailed through the pandemic with its profits mostly intact. The fact that some firms’ results are now flagging could be a positive sign for the Federal Reserve, which is trying to engineer a slowdown as it fights the nation’s worst bout of inflation in four decades.The big question for investors, and perhaps the Fed, is whether the profits of Apple, Alphabet, Amazon and the other tech giants, along with corporate America in general, have fallen enough.Microsoft and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, kicked off what appears to be a disappointing round of quarterly reports for the U.S.’s largest tech companies yesterday. Meta will release its results this afternoon, with Apple and Amazon rounding out Big Tech’s earnings announcements tomorrow.Microsoft’s profits, while below expectations, were still up. Sales of its signature software products, like Office, rose 13 percent. Its cloud services were up 40 percent. And LinkedIn, the professional social network Microsoft bought in 2016, grew 26 percent from a year ago, continuing to benefit from the tightest job market in decades.Alphabet’s sales rose 13 percent. In another good sign for the economy, the jump was driven by better-than-expected sales in its core Google search engine business, while results were mixed elsewhere. A jump in expenses and an exit from its Russian-related businesses caused profits to slump 14 percent.The results were positive enough for investors. Alphabet’s shares rose nearly 5 percent on the earnings news to $110. Microsoft’s shares jumped $10, or nearly 4 percent, to $262. Executives at both companies said they saw evidence of a weaker economy. “We are not immune to what is happening in the macro broadly,” Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s chief executive, said on a call with analysts. Alphabet’s chief financial officer, Ruth Porat, told analysts that a pullback in spending by some advertisers reflected “uncertainty about a number of factors.”Few are betting that the earnings reports will change the Fed’s approach. Its policymakers are meeting this week, and they are widely expected to continue raising benchmark interest rates. While central bankers “will likely acknowledge a recent weakening in economic momentum, the Fed will likely feel the need to appear resolute in battling inflation until there are clear signs that it is abating,” wrote David Kelly, the chief global strategist of J.P. Morgan Asset Management, in a note to clients earlier this week.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Kraken, the crypto exchange, is under investigation for possible sanctions violations. The Treasury Department is looking into whether Kraken illegally allowed users in Iran and elsewhere to buy and sell digital tokens. Shares of Coinbase, a larger crypto exchange, plunged yesterday after reports that the S.E.C. was investigating whether it allowed trading in unregistered securities. Cathie Wood’s Ark funds reportedly dumped Coinbase shares yesterday for the first time this year.Antitrust legislation aimed at Big Tech may be off the table for now. Chuck Schumer, the Senate majority leader, told donors at a Capitol Hill fund-raiser yesterday that the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, which he had promised to bring to a vote this summer, lacks the support needed to get it to the Senate floor, Bloomberg reported. The bill’s bipartisan backers have been pressuring Schumer to act fast, before midterm elections that could change the balance of power in Congress.One America News, once a dependable Trump promoter, is struggling to survive. The network is being dropped by major carriers and faces a wave of defamation lawsuits for its outlandish stories about the 2020 election. OAN’s most recent blow is from Verizon, which will stop carrying the network on its Fios television service this week. It is now available to only a few thousand people who subscribe to regional cable providers.Teva Pharmaceuticals reaches a tentative $4.25 billion settlement over opioids. The proposed settlement, which is with some 2,500 local governments, states and tribes, would end thousands of lawsuits against one of the largest producers of the painkillers during the height of the opioid epidemic.Florida’s largest utility secretly funded a website that attacked its critics. Florida Power & Light bankrolled and controlled The Capitolist, a news site aimed at Florida lawmakers, through intermediaries from an Alabama consulting firm, an investigation by The Miami Herald found. The site claimed to be independent, but it advocated rate hikes and legislative favors in efforts that were directed by top executives at the utility.BlackRock downshifts on E.S.G. BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, slashed its support for shareholder proposals on environmental and social issues this year, backing only 24 percent of such resolutions in the proxy season that ended in June, down from 43 percent in the previous period. The firm, which has long led the conscious investing movement, said this year’s proposals were “less supportable” and cited new regulatory guidance that opened the door to a broader range of policy-related proposals.The firm has criticized overly “prescriptive” resolutions. In a May memo, BlackRock signaled that Russia’s war in Ukraine was straining global energy supplies and shifting its calculations. “Many climate-related shareholder proposals sought to dictate the pace of companies’ energy transition plans despite continued consumer demand,” wrote the firm’s global head of investment stewardship, Sandy Boss. She noted that shareholders generally supported fewer environmental and social proposals this year as well, voting for 27 percent of resolutions, down from 36 percent in the previous proxy period.Opposition to E.S.G. is mounting. The environmental, social and governance investment push has been labeled “woke capitalism” by critics and is under fire from executives like Tesla’s Elon Musk, major investors like Bill Ackman and Republican politicians. In a speech yesterday, former Vice President Mike Pence, a possible 2024 hopeful, said that big government and big business were together advancing a “pernicious woke agenda.”E.S.G. supporters say critics may have a point. Andrew Behar, C.E.O. of the shareholder advocacy group As You Sow, agrees that many supposed E.S.G. investments don’t reflect true sustainability — with ever more capital directed toward the idea and many funds failing to live up to their promises. Behar argued that more corporate disclosures — which anti-E.S.G. groups oppose — would help to ensure that green investing actually works. He argues that critics also ignore a key financial incentive driving investor interest: knowing and lowering the costs of environmental issues throughout company operations, including risks from changing weather and the transition to more sustainable models. “We don’t have an E.S.G. problem,” Behar told DealBook. “We have a naming problem.”“I quit Starbucks. I had to. I just didn’t feel like that was justifiable. It’s like a small car payment.” — Fontaine Weyman, a 43-year-old songwriter from Charleston, S.C., on changing her coffee habits. Many Americans are dealing with the fastest inflation of their adult lives across a broad range of goods and services.Instagram tries to explain itself Instagram responded yesterday to criticism from some of its most popular users, including Kylie Jenner, about new features that made it more like its top rival, TikTok, the fast-growing video app owned by the Chinese company ByteDance.Adam Mosseri, Instagram’s head, said that it was experimenting with several changes, and that he knew users were unhappy. “It’s not yet good,” he said of some of the tweaks in a video post. He stressed Instagram’s commitment to photos, the app’s original focus, but said, “I’m going to be honest, I do believe that more and more of Instagram is going to become video over time.”Reels, a short-video product, is one of the six main investment priorities at Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram, according to an internal memo last month from Chris Cox, the company’s chief product officer. Cox said that users had doubled the amount of time they spent on Reels year over year, and that Meta would prioritize boosting ads in Reels “as quickly as possible.” Last week, Instagram announced that almost all videos in the app would be posted as Reels.The changes come as Meta heads into a new phase. Mark Zuckerberg, its founder and chief executive, has cut costs, reshuffled his leadership team and made clear that low-performing employees will be let go, writes The Times’s Mike Isaac. “Realistically, there are probably a bunch of people at the company who shouldn’t be here,” Zuckerberg said on a call late last month. In recent months, profit at Meta has fallen and revenue has slowed as the company has spent lavishly on augmented and virtual reality projects, and as the economic slowdown has hurt its advertising business.The high-profile complaints about Instagram’s revamp started in recent days, when Kylie Jenner, the beauty mogul with 361 million Instagram followers, shared an image on the site that read: “Make Instagram Instagram again. (stop trying to be tiktok i just want to see cute photos of my friends.) Sincerely, everyone.”“PRETTY PLEASE,” Kim Kardashian, Jenner’s half sister and the seventh-most-followed Instagram user, echoed in a later post. Yesterday, Chrissy Teigen, a model and author with 39 million followers, responded to Mosseri in a tweet, saying, “we don’t wanna make videos Adam lol.”Companies have reason to listen when social media stars speak up, writes The Times’s Kalley Huang. In 2018, after Snapchat overhauled its interface, Jenner tweeted: “sooo does anyone else not open Snapchat anymore? Or is it just me….” Within a week, Snap, the app’s parent company, had lost $1.3 billion in market value.THE SPEED READ DealsThe activist investor Elliott Management reportedly has a stake in Paypal and is pushing it to cut costs faster. (WSJ, Bloomberg)Twitter shareholders will be asked to vote on Elon Musk’s potential acquisition in September. (Bloomberg)PolicyThe Senate advanced an industrial policy bill that includes more than $52 billion in subsidies for chip makers building U.S. plants. (NYT)The short seller Carson Block is being sued over a $14 million award from the S.E.C. that raised questions about the agency’s whistle-blower program. (Bloomberg)After Apple launched a “buy now, pay later” service, the top U.S. consumer finance regulator warned Big Tech about undermining competition in the sector. (FT)A federal judge ruled that Uber doesn’t have to offer wheelchair-accessible cars in every city. (The Verge)Best of the restCredit Suisse, which reported larger second-quarter losses than expected, replaced its C.E.O. (FT)Customers are paying billions of dollars in fees for “free” checking. (Bloomberg)The default settings in Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft products that you should turn off right away. (NYT)This man sells mud to Major League Baseball. (NYT)“The Case of the $5,000 Springsteen Tickets” (NYT)R.I.P., Choco Taco. (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Twitter Takes Round 1

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      Judge Kathaleen McCormick granted the social media giant’s request for an expedited hearing. Now, the two sides are gearing up for a trial in October.Twitter: 1, Musk: 0.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesTwitter suit takes the fast laneTwitter won its effort to expedite its trial with Elon Musk yesterday, in its lawsuit to force Musk to close his $44 billion acquisition of the company. So many people tried to listen to the proceedings that the dial-in hit capacity — and we hear advisers across Wall Street were huddled around speakerphones.It’s a big win for Twitter. In granting an expedited hearing, Judge Kathaleen McCormick effectively repudiated the notion that the court needed to allow time for a deep dive into whether Twitter had accurately counted the number of bots on its platform. She cited the “cloud of uncertainty” that was hanging over the company the longer the case went undecided as the reason for her decision to fast-track the trial. And in what may be another good sign for Twitter, Judge McCormick said she was unsure that damages would be a sufficient remedy for the social media company, which wants Musk to buy it, not pay damages to walk away.Please see Page 5. A centerpiece of Musk’s claims is that Twitter’s disclosures about the percentage of active users on its platform that are bots are misleading, which would have a “material adverse effect” on the company’s value. But Musk has yet to tell the court what, exactly, in Twitter’s disclosures might be false. This became an issue when Musk’s lawyer at Quinn Emanuel, Andy Rossman, took aim at Page 5 of Twitter’s annual report, which explains its bot count. But Twitter’s lawyer at Wachtell, Bill Savitt, in his rebuttal, noted that Twitter fills that page with hedges and warnings that numbers might be off. (It reads, in part: “Our estimation of false or spam accounts may not accurately represent the actual number of such accounts, and the actual number of false or spam accounts could be higher than we have estimated.”) Of Twitter’s disclosure, Savitt said: “This does not require a recreation of all things known to humanity.” Judge McCormick seemingly agreed.The two sides are gearing up for a trial in October. Over the next weeks, they have to agree on schedules for depositions and discovery. And Musk will have time to prepare for another hearing before Judge McCormick that month: a defense of his whopping Tesla pay package — money that could come in handy if she forces him to buy Twitter.HERE’S WHAT’S HAPPENING Netflix loses fewer subscribers than expected. The streaming service reported yesterday that it lost nearly 1 million subscribers in the second quarter, far fewer than it had forecast. What’s more, Netflix said some of its strategies to stem losses, like an ad-supported option for consumers and a crackdown on password sharing, would boost revenue as soon as next year.A heroic act in an Indiana mall shooting renews the debate over gun access. In the days since a 22-year-old armed bystander killed a gunman two minutes into a shooting spree, the U.S. is again debating the wisdom of easier access to guns. But an analysis of 433 active shooter attacks in the U.S. between 2000 and 2021 found just 22 had ended with a bystander shooting the attacker, according to the Advanced Law Enforcement Rapid Response Training Center at Texas State University.The CHIPS Act passes a procedural hurdle in the Senate with more than 60 votes. The legislation, stalled for more than a year, gives chip manufacturers what they say is help they need to build factories in the U.S. The Senate is expected today to officially vote to pass the bill, which has been slimmed down and still needs to return to the House before it can go to the president.Intelligence agencies say Russia remains a threat in elections. Top F.B.I. and National Security Agency officials warned yesterday that Russia could still seek to meddle or promote disinformation during the 2022 midterm races, even as it wages war in Ukraine. Iran and China also remained potent threats, the officials said.The House moves to protect same-sex marriage from Supreme Court reversal. New legislation, which garnered some Republican support, would recognize same-sex marriages at the federal level, but it faces an uncertain path in the Senate. The move was a direct answer to Justice Clarence Thomas’s concurring opinion in the ruling last month that overturned federal abortion rights.The loans that may haunt Silicon ValleyTech workers have taken out loans in recent years based on the value of their start-up stock. But as the start-up economy has deflated, that may come back to haunt them, writes The Times’s Erin Griffith.Start-up loans stem from the way workers are typically paid. As part of their compensation, most employees at privately held tech companies receive stock options. That’s where loans and other financing options come in. Start-up stock is used as a form of collateral for cash advances. The loans vary in structure, but most providers charge interest and take a percentage of the worker’s stock when the company sells or goes public. Some are structured as contracts or investments.This lending industry has boomed in recent years. Many of the providers were created in the mid-2010s as hot start-ups like Uber and Airbnb put off initial public offerings of stock as long as they could, hitting private market valuations in the tens of billions of dollars.Debate has ignited in Silicon Valley over the proliferation of loans backed by stakes in still-private start-ups. Proponents say the loans are necessary for employees to participate in tech’s wealth-creation engine. But critics say the loans create needless risk in an already-risky industry and are reminiscent of the dot-com era in the early 2000s, when many tech workers were badly burned by similar loans.As the start-up economy deflates, these loans can be risky. While most are structured to be forgiven if a start-up fails, employees could still face a tax bill because the loan forgiveness is treated as taxable income.“No one’s been thinking about what happens when things go down,” said Rick Heitzmann, an investor at FirstMark Capital. “Everyone’s only thinking about the upside.”“The thing I’ve always been taught by my parents is to be the first one in and last one out. But there’s no one else there.”— Alex Hyman, who pictured his internship at a Los Angeles entertainment agency this summer as being one part “Entourage” and one part “The Office,” but found it more like “Home Alone.” It’s a common experience in an age of remote-working bosses.Mooch’s crypto problemAnthony Scaramucci, who is famous for his 11-day stint as former President Donald Trump’s communications director, is facing a mass exodus of investors from his funds.Earlier this week, Bloomberg reported that Scaramucci’s firm SkyBridge Capital had halted withdrawals from one of its smaller funds, Legion Strategies, which contains just over $200 million. But Scaramucci is also struggling to hold onto investors in SkyBridge’s flagship fund, the SkyBridge Multi-Adviser Hedge Fund Portfolios, which managed as much as $2 billion at the end of March. Its investments lost nearly a quarter of their value in the second quarter.Investors in SkyBridge’s flagship fund are seeking to withdraw as much as $890 million, or about half of the money that it held as of the end of last month, Scaramucci told DealBook. But many of those investors will be stuck in the fund for a while. Under its rules, investors in the Multi-Adviser fund are only allowed to withdraw money during certain windows. Those used to occur four times a year, but SkyBridge cut them to twice a year in 2020, after big losses at the beginning of the pandemic. Earlier this month, SkyBridge told investors they would only collectively receive about 16 percent of the money they requested. The letter said it was issuing investors’ notes that would be paid no later than October.Scaramucci’s losses come just over a year after SkyBridge’s pivot into crypto. SkyBridge’s flagship fund, which Scaramucci bought from Citigroup, has long specialized in buying and selling stakes of other hedge funds. For a time, that, along with strong performance in the years after the 2008 financial crisis, made Scaramucci one of the most powerful players in the hedge fund industry.Scaramucci says he is still a long-term believer in crypto. The fund manager says that about 22 percent of his flagship fund remained in crypto and related investments as of the end of last month. “I am not smart enough to time the market,” he told DealBook. “But we’ve done a tremendous amount of research and we think anyone who has will see that blockchain technology is good and is the future.”THE SPEED READ DealsPimco bought $1 billion worth of debt backing Apollo’s acquisition of a payments company at a steep discount. (Bloomberg)Start-ups are racing for share of the market for home chargers of electric vehicles, and several have already been acquired. (Reuters)“Sam Bankman-Fried Turns $2 Trillion Crypto Rout Into Buying Opportunity” (Bloomberg Businessweek)PolicyDan Cox, a Trump loyalist, won the primary to be the Republican candidate for governor of Maryland. (NYT)Novavax’s Covid vaccine was cleared for use in the U.S. (NYT)The Secret Service said texts requested by the Jan. 6 commission were probably lost for good. (NYT)U.K. inflation has exceeded economists’ forecasts, hitting 9.4 percent (FT)President Vladimir Putin signaled that Russia would resume gas deliveries through a key pipeline but at a reduced level. (NYT)Best of the restLeaked salary data at Twitter showed a pay gap of as much as 225 percent for the same role in different countries. (Input)Soaring overdose rates in the pandemic reflect widening racial disparities. (NYT)How the pain of past economic crises is haunting Italy. (NYT)“Fighting a Brutal Regime With the Help of a Video Game” (NYT)We’d like your feedback! Please email thoughts and suggestions to dealbook@nytimes.com. More

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      Sometimes the Earth Makes the Rest of the Universe Look Very Good

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      Gail Collins: Bret, we should talk a bit about the passing of Donald Trump’s first wife, Ivana. Any first thoughts?Bret Stephens: A sad moment. She represented immigrant striving, something her former husband should have learned to appreciate — but didn’t. Did you know her?Gail: No, my interactions with The Donald, as Ivana called him, didn’t begin until around the time of their divorce, when I was covering city government and he was trying to squeeze some deals out of the Council.However, I was working then for New York tabloids and I have very vivid memories of the huge headlines on the front page — we called it “the wood” — when he was wrecking their marriage by cavorting with Marla Maples.Bret: Ah, yes: “‘Best Sex I’ve Ever Had,’” if I recall the New York Post headline correctly. If Edith Wharton were alive today she’d write a novel about the period called “The Age of Relative Innocence.”Gail: I know I don’t need to tell you this, but nobody was encouraging all that over-the-top coverage of his sexual adventures more than the man himself. Legend had it that when he finally got Ivana to step away, he asked his press people whether he could get back on the wood if he dumped Marla, too.Bret: Do you think John Bolton ever says to himself, “I’m the Marla Maples of Donald Trump’s national security advisers”? No wonder the coups Bolton suggests he planned didn’t come off.But speaking of getting back on the wood, does some Machiavellian part of you sorta hope Trump runs for president again?Gail: Well, the totally self-regarding part is certainly rooting for it. If anyone else gets the nomination it’s possible we’d have a modestly normal campaign, which would be good for the country but very bad for my career of making fun of politicians.Bret: If anyone other than Trump wins the G.O.P. nomination, that person will likely be the next president.Gail: That’s certainly an underlying Democratic concern but we have to rise above it. Otherwise it’s like those jerks who try to help their candidate by underwriting the campaigns of the most terrible, hate-mongering person on the other side just to improve their chances.Can’t think of a possible Republican nominee that’d actually be worse, but that’s really your department. Any way we’d look back with nostalgia on the Trump era?Bret: Just imagine how nostalgic we’ll be under President Josh Hawley. Even now, there are plenty of middle-of-the-road voters who are looking back on the Trump years and saying to themselves, “Sure, it was crazy-town in the White House, but inflation was low, the stock market kept rising, gas was affordable, and Russia wasn’t invading its neighbors.” If Joe Biden doesn’t turn his administration’s fortunes around, Democrats are going to be facing a tsunami of voter fury.My advice to the president is to triangulate, triangulate, triangulate. What’s yours?Gail: I dunno — kidnap Joe Manchin, lock him in a tower and make it clear he’ll be forced to watch reruns of “My Mother the Car,” until he comes around on Biden’s priorities?Bret: I think we need an alternative plan, Gail ….Gail: Manchin is really sitting on the Democratic agenda, particularly when it comes to global warming. I know he’s in a very tight political situation in West Virginia, but he’s going to go down in history as the guy who helped make the planet a much worse place for future generations.Bret: As the great Tip O’Neill famously said, “All politics is local.” That sentence pretty much sums up everything Democrats got wrong in Congress over the last 18 months.Gail: As it stands, it looks like Biden’s best hope is to get passage of what some are now calling Build Back Manchin — which so far seems to be some modest reforms on drug pricing.Breaks my heart, but am I right in suspecting it makes you do a happy dance?Bret: Well, I’m glad Manchin stood his ground on spending, because inflation would be even worse today if he hadn’t. Now it’s time for Biden to tack right on policy issues like fracking, border security and crime; go hard on Republicans on guns and abortion; then come up with a plan to help Ukraine defeat the Russian army quickly, before Moscow can use energy to blackmail Western Europe in the dead of winter.Maybe Biden can start by having Bill Clinton stop by the White House to offer some pointers on regaining the trust of the moderate center. Or is there someone else he should be talking to?Gail: Well, um, he should talk with someone who disagrees with you about fracking.One critical problem for the economy is the shortage of workers, and that’s in part because many mothers can’t find any safe or affordable place to leave their kids while they’re working. If Biden wants to change the subject, he should get back to high-quality, affordable early childhood education.I know that’s not the direction you were hoping to travel, but couldn’t resist.Bret: If Biden proposed something modest but attainable in that vein he might score a legislative victory, just as he did with the bipartisan gun bill that Senators Chris Murphy and John Cornyn hashed out last month. We also need more immigrants to make up for the labor shortfalls. How about raising the annual refugee cap to 750,000 from the current 125,000 while doing more to curb illegal immigration? That would combine humanity and good economic sense with political savvy.Gail: Sounds good in theory but I’d want to know a lot more about how that curbing of illegal immigration was going to work. No question that we need an efficient border operation, a goal that has eluded every recent president. But nothing good is accomplished by spreading terror in immigrant communities around the country.Bret: Agree. And by opening the door much wider to legal migration, we also reduce incentives for illegal and sometimes fatal border crossings, which in turn eases the pressure on border security.Gail: Speaking of immigration … there’s an upcoming Republican Senate primary in Arizona where that seems to be a big issue. One of the leading Republican candidates, Blake Masters, once called for “unrestricted immigration” — back when he was a youthful libertarian.Bret: He should have stopped there.Gail: And also a guy who in his youth derided American entry into World War I.Bret: Or even there.Gail: And II.Bret: Oh dear.Gail: He’s certainly a walking reminder of how important it is to remind young people on a daily basis that anything you put on the web can come back to haunt you. But here in 2022 he’s the candidate who said the problem of gun violence was all about “Black people, frankly.” And I hardly need mention he’s been endorsed by Donald Trump.This is for the seat that currently belongs to a Democrat, Mark Kelly. So my two questions are: How would you want Arizona to go if it’s a Masters-Kelly contest, and any other nightmare party primaries you see on the horizon?Bret: I wish Arizona still produced intelligent and independent-minded Republicans in the mold of Barry Goldwater, Jon Kyl, John McCain and Jeff Flake. Now it’s just a freak show. I’ll root for Kelly, but it’s a shame that as a senator the formerly cool astronaut has been such a space cadet.Gail: I love the begrudging way you think.Bret: The other race I’m looking at is the one in Wyoming, where Liz Cheney is hoping enough Democrats and independents will vote in the Republican primary to help her defeat her primary rival. I hope she does. She represents my idea of what political courage looks like.Gail: Agreed, yet also very interested to see how her more liberal Democratic constituents work out this problem: Do you reward an elected official for showing extreme courage while voting against practically everything you’d want Congress to do?Bret: Before we go, Gail, I neglected to mention the one government agency whose budget I would immediately double: NASA. I spent some of last week geeking out over the images that the Webb telescope has been beaming back to earth from its cosmic perch. It’s a good reminder that this country is still capable of doing good and mighty things.Gail: Such a jaw-dropping reminder that as self-obsessed as we tend to get, we’re hardly the center of the universe.Bret: Very true. And you’ve reminded me of a few lines of verse from my all-time favorite poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins, the only writer who has ever tempted me to truly believe in God:Look at the stars! look, look up at the skies!O look at all the fire-folk sitting in the air!The bright boroughs, the circle-citadels there!Down in dim woods the diamond delves! the elves’-eyes!The grey lawns cold where gold, where quickgold lies!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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      Democrats Face Deepening Peril as Republicans Seize on Inflation Fears

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      Economists warn that a blitz of midterm election campaign ads could push consumer prices even higher.WASHINGTON — Triple-digit gasoline bills. Bulging hamburger prices. A Fourth of July holiday that broke the bank.Prices are rising at the fastest rate in four decades, a painful development that has given Republicans a powerful talking point just months ahead of the midterm elections. With control of Congress very much in play, Republicans are investing heavily in a blitz of campaign advertisements that portray a dark sense of economic disarray as they seek to make inflation a political albatross for President Biden and Democrats.According to Kantar’s Campaign Media Analysis Group, candidates running in House, Senate and governor races around the country have spent nearly $22 million airing about 130,000 local and national television ads that mention inflation from early April through the beginning of July. Inflation was the 10th most common issue mentioned by Democrats and 11th most common for Republicans, according to the data, underscoring how critical the issue is to both parties this election cycle.The data released Wednesday showing that prices in June climbed 9.1 percent over the past year gave Republicans fresh ammunition against Mr. Biden and his party, ammunition that includes faulting Democrats for passing a $1.9 trillion stimulus package last year and efforts to push through additional spending in a sweeping climate and economic package known as “Build Back Better.”The intensifying focus on inflation is already weighing on Mr. Biden’s poll numbers. A New York Times/Siena College poll this week showed his approval at a meager 33 percent, with 20 percent of voters viewing jobs and the economy as the most important problem facing the country. Inflation and the cost of living followed closely behind. The poll also showed that the race for control of Congress is surprisingly tight.While gas prices have fallen from their $5 a gallon peak and there are signs that inflation might be slowing, consumers are unlikely to feel better off anytime soon. Gas prices are still much higher than they were a year ago, with the average national price for a gallon at $4.60 versus $3.15 in 2021, according to AAA.Voters view jobs and the economy as among the most important issues facing the country.Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times“It’s a very negative thing politically for the Democrats,” said Jason Furman, an economist at Harvard University and former Obama administration economic adviser. “My guess is that the negative views about inflation are so deeply baked in that nothing can change in the next few months to change them.”The White House, while acknowledging the pain that inflation is causing, has tried to deflect responsibility, saying that it is a global problem and attributing it to shortages of food and oil stemming from Russian President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.On Wednesday, Mr. Biden called the latest Consumer Price Index “out-of-date” given the recent fall in gas prices and said the data “is a reminder that all major economies are battling this Covid-related challenge, made worse by Putin’s unconscionable aggression.”8 Signs That the Economy Is Losing SteamCard 1 of 9Worrying outlook. More

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      A Surprisingly Tight Race

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      Despite Biden’s low approval ratings, Democrats are roughly tied with Republicans in the midterm polls. We explain why.My colleague Nate Cohn, The Times’s chief political analyst, has spent a lot of time thinking about the changing politics of economic class in the U.S. College graduates used to favor Republicans, while blue-collar voters favored Democrats. Increasingly, though, the opposite is true.The social liberalism of Democrats — on immigration, marijuana, L.G.B.T. rights, affirmative action, abortion and more — has simultaneously attracted progressive college graduates and repelled more culturally conservative working-class voters. If you’re trying to figure out why Latino voters have shifted right in the past few years, even during the Trump presidency, this dynamic offers an explanation.In this year’s midterm elections, the changing politics of class may get supercharged, Nate notes. Why? Look at the stories in the news. Many working-class voters are frustrated over inflation and other economic disruptions, making them unhappy with the Biden administration and Democrats. Many college graduates are angry about the recent decisions from a Supreme Court dominated by Republican appointees.These attitudes are evident in the first New York Times/Siena College poll of the midterm cycle: Among registered voters who never attended college, Republicans lead by almost 20 percentage points. Among college graduates, Democrats lead by almost 30 points. One startling comparison is that Democrats lead by almost as much among white college graduates as among all voters of color.To give you a clearer sense for what these patterns mean for the likely outcome of the November midterms — and which party will control the House and the Senate for the next two years — I’m turning over the rest of today’s lead item to Nate.With President Biden’s approval rating sagging into the low 30s and nearly 80 percent of voters saying the country is headed in the wrong direction, the ingredients would seem to be in place for a Republican landslide in this year’s midterm elections.But the first Times/Siena survey of the cycle shows something else: a close, competitive race for Congress.Overall, voters prefer Democrats to control Congress over Republicans by one point among registered voters, 41 to 40 percent. Once we exclude those people who are unlikely to vote, Republicans lead by one point, 44 to 43 percent.It’s a pretty surprising result, given the circumstances. Analysts have all but written off the Democrats in the race for House control, not only because Biden’s ratings are so poor but also because there’s a long history of the president’s party getting pummeled in midterm elections. These factors help explain why FiveThirtyEight’s statistical forecast gives the Republicans an 88 percent chance of winning House control.But the Times/Siena poll is not alone in showing a competitive race at this stage. Since the court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, most polls have shown a tight race on the so-called “generic ballot,” which asks whether voters would prefer Democrats or Republicans to control Congress. The race has shifted about three points in the Democrats’ direction, compared with surveys by the same pollsters before the court’s ruling.At least for the moment, conservative policy victories — on abortion, climate policy, religious rights and gun laws — and a spate of mass shootings seem to have insulated Democrats. State polls have also looked good for Democrats. The party has led just about every poll of a hotly contested Senate race over the last few months, including polls of Republican-held states like Pennsylvania and Ohio.If all this good polling for the Democrats reminds you of a story you’ve heard before, there is a reason. The polls have overestimated Democratic support for much of the last decade, partly because polls have a harder time reaching working-class voters, who have been trending Republican. It’s hard not to wonder whether the good news for Democrats might simply be a harbinger of yet another high-profile misfire.It could also mean that the Democrats are at a high-water mark that will not last. Republicans will try to make the races a referendum on the president, and only 23 percent of undecided voters in the Times/Siena poll approve of Joe Biden’s performance. If inflation remains high this year, as many economists expect, undecided voters might have further reason to break against the Democrats.Americans are paying more for groceries.Alisha Jucevic for The New York TimesThe general election campaign might be especially helpful to the Republican Senate candidates coming out of bruising primary elections. It’s understandable why Republican voters who just voted against damaged or flawed candidates — like J.D. Vance in Ohio and Dr. Mehmet Oz in Pennsylvania — may be reluctant to embrace these candidates immediately. Yet that could change when the race focuses on partisan issues and the stakes of congressional control, reminding these voters why they are Republicans.For the moment, the Democrats are benefiting from a favorable news environment. The recent Supreme Court rulings, the mass shootings and even the Jan. 6 hearings have focused national attention on a relatively favorable set of issues for Democrats. For them to stay competitive, they might need to keep those issues in the limelight until November.RelatedAnother poll detail: We asked respondents to tell us what they thought was the most important problem facing the country — in an open-ended question, without any suggested answers. About 35 percent named inflation or the economy. Less than 1 percent named the pandemic.Nate Cohn explains the poll on today’s episode of “The Daily.”THE LATEST NEWSJames Webb TelescopeThe edge of a star-forming region in the Carina Nebula, a vast cloud of dust and gases.NASA, ESA, CSA and STScIScientists revealed images of stars and galaxies that had been too far away or too dim to see.Here’s how the Webb telescope, the most powerful ever, looks into the universe’s origins.Experts spent weeks picking out which images to share. See their choices here.In Times Opinion, Shannon Stirone writes that the images remind us how small — and connected — we are.Jan 6.Donald Trump mobilized supporters, some prepared for violence, to travel to Washington to disrupt Congress’ election certification, new evidence at a Jan. 6 committee hearing showed.“We basically were just following what he said,” testified Stephen Ayres, an Ohio man who entered the Capitol that day.Trump planned for him and his supporters to go to the Capitol but he wanted it to seem spontaneous.During a profane, hourslong White House meeting weeks earlier, Trump advisers including Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn proposed that the military seize voting machines.Trump has tried to contact a committee witness, which suggests he was trying to influence testimony.BusinessHow many dollars one euro buys

      As of 8:42 a.m. Eastern time WednesdaySource: FactSetBy The New York TimesOne U.S. dollar is worth almost as much as a euro for the first time in nearly 20 years.Twitter sued Elon Musk to force him to go through with buying the company.Other Big StoriesSri Lanka’s president fled to the Maldives, days after protesters stormed his residence.On his trip to the Middle East, Biden will try to speed up oil flow to the U.S., among other things.A sixth Covid wave is hitting New York City. Many people are shrugging it off.Republicans are pressing Florida’s governor, Ron DeSantis, to curb abortions. He has stayed quiet about his plans.The South Carolina lawyer Alex Murdaugh will probably be charged with murdering his wife and son, one of his lawyers said.OpinionsLaughing can be a valuable coping mechanism, even for abortion, Alison Leiby writes.To navigate growing up poor, Joshua Hunt learned to lie.One redrawn Texas congressional district shows how partisan gerrymandering drives our politics toward the extremes, Jesse Wegman explains.MORNING READSResearch says most of us underestimate the power of the casual check-in.Moritz WeinertChecking in: Text your friends.Dial 988: What to know about a new mental health crisis hotline.Ask Well: Is chocolate good for you?A Times classic: Why one man kayaked alone across the Atlantic at 70.Lives Lived: In 1975, the singer and actor Adam Wade became the first Black host of a network television game show. He died at 87.SPORTS NEWS FROM THE ATHLETICHow M.L.B. could eliminate the infield shift: Jayson Stark reports that some change is now “inevitable” and it’s only a matter of when. Minor-league teams are already acting.Another N.B.A. star could be traded: Donovan Mitchell of the Utah Jazz is the name to watch. The New York Knicks would have interest. They aren’t alone.Jimmy Garoppolo’s next stop: The San Francisco 49ers quarterback could be the next one dealt after Baker Mayfield was traded last week.The Boston Red Sox get their ace back: Chris Sale returned last night, striking out five batters while not allowing a run in five innings. A healthy and effective Sale makes the Red Sox far more formidable.ARTS AND IDEAS Brian Cox of “Succession.”Macall Polay/HBO, via Associated PressThe Emmy nominations“Succession” dominated the Emmy nominations, which were announced yesterday, earning 25. In the best drama category, it will square off against the South Korean thriller “Squid Game,” which secured 14 nominations, the most ever for a foreign-language show. Other highlights:Repeat nominees: Last year’s best actor and actress in a comedy, Jason Sudeikis (for “Ted Lasso”) and Jean Smart (for “Hacks”), received nominations. Sudeikis will be up against Steve Martin, for his role in “Only Murders in the Building.” The last time Martin won an Emmy was 1969.Breakout star: Quinta Brunson, from the rookie hit “Abbott Elementary,” got her first nominations.Hulu: The streaming service could score its biggest Emmys haul with nominations for the limited series “Dopesick,” “The Dropout” and “Pam & Tommy.”Snubs: Neither Sterling K. Brown nor Mandy Moore were recognized for the final season of “This Is Us.”Full list: Here are all the nominees.PLAY, WATCH, EATWhat to CookRyan Liebe for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Barrett Washburne.Savory Thai noodles and seared brussels sprouts make for a delicious vegan dinner.What to Read“Carnality,” by Lina Wolff, starts as a conventional novel. That doesn’t last.What to WatchThe director of “Persuasion” argues that the movie is faithful to Jane Austen.Now Time to PlayThe pangram from yesterday’s Spelling Bee was alchemy. Here is today’s puzzle.Here’s today’s Mini Crossword, and a clue: Wild guesses (five letters).And here’s today’s Wordle. After, use our bot to get better.Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — DavidP.S. Two Times correspondents are swapping roles: Norimitsu Onishi will cover Canada, and Catherine Porter will replace him in Paris.Here’s today’s front page.“The Daily” is about The Times’s new political poll.Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick and Ashley Wu contributed to The Morning. You can reach the team at themorning@nytimes.com.Sign up here to get this newsletter in your inbox. More

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      Joe Biden es muy viejo para ser presidente de nuevo

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      No puedo evitar sentir pena por Joe Biden. Durante la mayor parte de su vida ha querido ser presidente, y se postuló por primera vez hace 34 años. Si su hijo Beau no hubiera muerto en 2015, Biden podría haber entrado a las primarias demócratas: como vicepresidente, habría sido un favorito y quizás habría vencido a Donald Trump.Cuando finalmente llegó al cargo que anhelaba, su mejor momento ya había pasado. Trump había dejado Estados Unidos en ruinas, sus instituciones colapsadas, gran parte de la población presa de ideas delirantes iracundas y millones de personas traumatizadas por la pandemia. Biden fue elegido para devolver una normalidad que ahora parece haberse ido para siempre.Muchas de las crisis que están afectando los índices de aprobación de Biden no son su culpa. Si una tasa de inflación del 8,6 por ciento fuera consecuencia de sus políticas, entonces es difícil entender por qué la tasa en el Reino Unido es aún más alta, del 9,1 por ciento, o por qué es del 7,9 por ciento en Alemania. El compromiso terco con el obstruccionismo de los senadores Joe Manchin y Kyrsten Sinema hace que la mayoría de las leyes sean imposibles de aprobar. Incluso si Biden tuviera una mayor propensión al activismo, no hay mucho que él pueda hacer sobre la revocación cruel de la Corte Suprema a Roe contra Wade o el ritmo cada vez mayor de las masacres que marcan el paso de la vida estadounidense.Sin embargo, espero que no vuelva a contender, porque es demasiado viejo.Ahora bien, yo no quería que Biden fuera el candidato demócrata en 2020, en parte por razones ideológicas, pero aún más porque lucía demasiado agotado y desenfocado. Pero, en retrospectiva, por la forma en la que los republicanos superaron las expectativas, es posible que Biden haya sido el único de los principales candidatos que podría haber vencido a Trump; los votantes no mostraron interés por un cambio progresista radical.Así que reconozco que podría estar equivocada ahora, cuando hago un argumento similar. Pero el cargo presidencial envejece incluso a los jóvenes, y Biden está lejos de ser joven, y un país con tantos problemas como el nuestro necesita un líder lo suficientemente vigoroso para inspirar confianza.El 64 por ciento de los demócratas quiere un candidato presidencial diferente en 2024, descubrió una encuesta reciente de The New York Times/Siena College. Esos demócratas citan la edad de Biden más que cualquier otro factor, aunque el desempeño laboral les sigue de cerca. No es una preocupación que sorprenda. Biden siempre ha sido propenso a las meteduras de pata y los malapropismos, pero al escucharlo hablar ahora hay una incertidumbre dolorosa, es como ver a alguien que se tambalea en la cuerda floja. (Algunos de sus errores pueden explicarse por el tartamudeo que superó cuando era niño, pero no todos). Su equipo a menudo parece mantenerlo fuera del ojo público. El Times informó que ha participado “en menos de la mitad de las conferencias de prensa o entrevistas que sus predecesores recientes”.Sin duda hay algo bueno en un presidente que no atormenta al país con una sed vampírica de atención. Y, según la mayoría de los reportes, Biden sigue siendo agudo y está comprometido con las labores fuera de los reflectores de su oficina. Pero al desvanecerse tanto en el fondo, ha perdido la posibilidad de fijar la agenda pública.No puede darle un giro a una mala economía, pero sí puede resaltar sus puntos más luminosos, como una tasa de desempleo del 3,6 por ciento. Los estadounidenses simpatizan de manera abrumadora con Ucrania, y con un mensaje lo suficientemente conmovedor, algunos podrían estar dispuestos a considerar el malestar que producen los altos precios de la gasolina como el costo de enfrentarse a Vladimir Putin. Pero para motivarlos no es suficiente que su gobierno repita la frase “el aumento de precios de Putin”. Como todos, la Casa Blanca sabía por anticipado de la intención de la Corte Suprema de anular Roe contra Wade, pero, por alguna razón, cuando sucedió finalmente, no estaba lista con una orden ejecutiva y un bombardeo de relaciones públicas.Aquí hay un problema que va más allá de la escasez de discursos presidenciales y apariciones en los medios, o incluso del propio Biden. Nos gobierna una gerontocracia. Biden tiene 79 años. La presidenta de la Cámara de Representantes, Nancy Pelosi, tiene 82. El líder de la mayoría de la Cámara de Representantes, Steny Hoyer, tiene 83. El líder de la mayoría del Senado, Chuck Schumer, tiene 71. A menudo no está claro si entienden lo roto que está Estados Unidos.Hicieron sus carreras en instituciones que, más o menos, funcionaban, y parecen creer que volverán a funcionar. Dan la impresión de considerar que este momento —en el que los engranajes del gobierno se han estancado y un partido trama contra la democracia abiertamente— es como un interregno en lugar de como un punto de inflexión. Los críticos demócratas de Biden provienen de diferentes espacios del espectro político: algunos están enfurecidos por su centrismo, otros preocupados por su falta de energía. Lo que une a la mayoría de ellos es una necesidad desesperada por líderes que muestren sentido de urgencia e ingenio.La edad de Biden presenta una oportunidad: puede hacerse a un lado sin tener que considerarlo un fracaso. No hay vergüenza en no postularse a la presidencia a los 80 años. Salió del semiretiro para salvar a Estados Unidos de un segundo mandato de Trump, y solo por eso todos tenemos una gran deuda con él. Pero ahora necesitamos a alguien que pueda enfrentarse a las fuerzas aún en movimiento del trumpismo.Hay muchas posibilidades: si los índices de aprobación de la vicepresidenta Kamala Harris siguen bajas, los demócratas tienen varios gobernadores y senadores carismáticos a los que pueden recurrir. Durante la campaña de 2020, Biden dijo que quería ser un “puente” para una nueva generación de demócratas. Pronto llegará el momento de cruzarlo.Michelle Goldberg es columnista de Opinión desde 2017. Es autora de varios libros sobre política, religión y derechos de las mujeres, y formó parte de un equipo que ganó un Pulitzer al servicio público en 2018 por informar sobre acoso sexual en el trabajo. @michelleinbklyn More

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      Joe Biden Is Too Old to Be President Again

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      I can’t help feeling very sorry for Joe Biden. He’s wanted to be president for most of his life, first running 34 years ago. Had his son Beau not died in 2015, Biden might have entered the Democratic primary then; as vice president he would have been a favorite and likely would have beaten Donald Trump.By the time he finally achieved the office he longed for, he was far past his prime. Trump had left the country in ruins, its institutions collapsing, much of the population gripped by furious delusions, and millions traumatized by the pandemic. Biden was elected to bring back a normality that now appears to be gone for good.Many of the crises driving down Biden’s approval numbers are not his fault. If an 8.6 percent inflation rate were due to his policies, then it’s hard to see why the rate is even higher in Britain, at 9.1 percent, or why it’s 7.9 percent in Germany. The mulish attachment to the filibuster by Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema makes most legislation impossible. Even if Biden had more activist inclinations, there’s not much he could do about the Supreme Court’s cruel reversal of Roe v. Wade or the increasing tempo of massacres that punctuate American life.Nevertheless, I hope he doesn’t run again, because he’s too old.Now, I didn’t want Biden to be the Democratic nominee in 2020, partly for ideological reasons but even more because he seemed too worn-out and unfocused. In retrospect, however, given the way Republicans outperformed expectations, Biden may have been the only one of the major candidates who could have beaten Trump; voters showed no appetite for sweeping progressive change.So I recognize that I could be wrong when I make a similar argument today. But the presidency ages even young men, and Biden is far from young; a country in as much trouble as ours needs a leader vigorous enough to inspire confidence.As a recent New York Times/Siena College poll found, 64 percent of Democrats want a different presidential nominee in 2024. Those Democrats cite Biden’s age more than any other factor, though job performance is close behind. Their concern isn’t surprising. Biden has always been given to gaffes and malapropisms, but there is a painful suspense in watching him speak now, like seeing someone wobble on a tightrope. (Some of his misspeaking can be explained by the stutter he overcame as a child, but not all.) His staff often seems to be keeping him out of view; as The Times reported, he’s participated “in fewer than half as many news conferences or interviews as recent predecessors.”Certainly, there’s something nice about a president who doesn’t torment the country with his vampiric thirst for attention. And by most accounts, Biden is still sharp and engaged in performing the behind-the-scenes duties of his office. But by receding so far into the background, he forfeits the ability to set the public agenda.You can’t spin away a bad economy, but you can draw attention to its bright spots, like a 3.6 percent unemployment rate. Americans overwhelmingly sympathize with Ukraine, and with a rousing enough message, some might be willing to accept the pain of high gas prices as the cost of standing up to Vladimir Putin. To rally them, however, it’s not enough for the administration to repeat the phrase “Putin’s price hike.” Like the rest of us, the White House had ample notice of the Supreme Court’s intention to overturn Roe v. Wade, but it somehow wasn’t ready with an immediate executive order and public relations blitz.There’s a problem here that goes beyond a shortage of presidential speeches and media appearances, or even Biden himself. We are ruled by a gerontocracy. Biden is 79. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi is 82. The House majority leader, Steny Hoyer, is 83. The Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, is 71. Often, it’s not clear if they grasp how broken this country is.They built their careers in institutions that worked, more or less, and they seem to expect them to start working again. They give every impression of seeing this moment, when the gears of government have seized and one party openly schemes against democracy, as an interregnum rather than a tipping point. Biden’s Democratic critics come from different places on the political spectrum — some are infuriated by his centrism, others worried by his listlessness. What links most of them is desperation for leaders who show urgency and ingenuity.If there’s one consolation in Biden’s age, it’s that he can step aside without conceding failure. There’s no shame in not running for president in your 80s. He emerged from semiretirement to save the country from a second Trump term, and for that we all owe him a great debt. But now we need someone who can stand up to the still-roiling forces of Trumpism.There are plenty of possibilities: If Vice President Kamala Harris’s approval ratings remain underwater, Democrats have a number of charismatic governors and senators they can turn to. Biden said, during the 2020 campaign, that he wanted to be a “bridge” to a new generation of Democrats. Soon it will be time to cross it.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