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      Gazans Fear Neither Candidate in U.S. Election Will Help Them

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      American politics have not been topmost in the minds of Gazans. “We only need one thing: for this war to come to an end,” one man said.The Biden administration’s support for Israel in the war in Gaza has been divisive for left-leaning voters in the United States, including many Arab Americans, and some say it has soured them on Vice President Kamala Harris’s candidacy.Many in Gaza share that anger over the United States’ willingness to keep shipping weapons to Israel to carry out its campaign against Hamas despite the death and devastation in Gaza. But in interviews across the territory, many said they were skeptical that either Ms. Harris or former President Donald J. Trump would do much to improve their situation.“I am fearful that both candidates are for the same thing, which is no end in sight for the war in Gaza,” said Abdul Kareem al-Kahlout, 35, a math teacher in Deir al Balah.The war began after the militant group Hamas led the Oct. 7 terror attack that Israeli authorities say killed about 1,200 people in Israel. Since then, the Israeli military’s bombardment and ground operations in Gaza have killed more than 43,000 people, according to local authorities, a figure that includes Hamas fighters. The war has pushed the remaining population to the brink of famine and left much of the territory in ruins.Many people interviewed in Gaza said they were more focused on keeping themselves and their loved ones alive after more than a year of war. They have had little access to electricity or the internet, or to adequate food and medicine, so they have not had much time to follow American politics.“I have no preference,” said Mohammed Owaida, 33, who is from Khan Younis in the southern Gaza Strip. “We only need one thing: for this war to come to an end. We are exhausted. Whoever wins and can do that, I support.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      U.S. Farmers Brace for New Trump Trade Wars Amid Tariff Threats

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      Despite their concerns, some farm operators still support the former president and prefer his overall economic plan.To former President Donald J. Trump, “tariff” is the most beautiful word in the dictionary.But to farmers in rural America, the blanket import duties that Mr. Trump wants to enact if elected are a nightmare that they would rather not live through again.As president, Mr. Trump imposed tariffs in 2018 and 2019 on $300 billion of Chinese imports, a punishment he wielded in order to get China to negotiate a trade deal with the United States. His action triggered a trade war between Washington and Beijing, with China slapping retaliatory tariffs on American products. It also shifted more of its soybean purchases to Brazil and Argentina, hurting U.S. soybean farmers who had long relied on the Chinese market.When Mr. Trump finally announced a limited trade deal in 2019, American farmers were frazzled and subsisting on subsidies that the Trump administration had handed out to keep them afloat.Now it could happen all over again.“The prospect of additional tariffs doesn’t sound good,” said Leslie Bowman, a corn and soybean farmer from Chambersburg, Pa. “The idea of tariffs is to protect U.S. industries, but for the agricultural industry, it’s going to hurt.”The support of farmers in swing states such as Pennsylvania could be pivotal in determining the outcome of Tuesday’s election. Mr. Trump remains popular in rural America, and voters such as Mr. Bowman say they are weighing a variety of factors as they consider whom to vote for.Mr. Trump has said that if he wins the election he will put tariffs as high as 50 percent on imports from around the world. Tariffs on Chinese imports could be even higher, and some foreign products would face levies upward of 200 percent. Economists have warned that such tariffs could reignite inflation, slow economic growth and harm the industries that Mr. Trump says he wants to help.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A November Surprise That’s Jostling the Markets

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      The dollar, Treasury yields and crypto currencies have fallen, reversing some elements of the so-called Trump trade after an unexpected poll result. In the race’s final hours, a poll reminds the markets of the power of women voters.Caroline Gutman for The New York TimesDown to the wire Investors on Monday appear to be unwinding bets on the so-called Trump trade. In a major reversal, bonds have rallied and the dollar and crypto currencies have dipped in the race’s final hours.One explanation is a surprising new poll that showed Vice President Kamala Harris, powered in part by support from women and older voters, edging ahead in deep-red Iowa — a finding that’s also led to a tightening of Donald Trump’s lead in political prediction markets.Why the change of heart? The highly regarded Ann Selzer/Des Moines Register/Mediacom Iowa poll that was published on Saturday gave Harris a three-point advantage over Trump in the Hawkeye State, a Republican stronghold. “It’s hard for anybody to say they saw this coming,” Selzer said.Some urged caution about the poll. The Economist questioned whether the small sample size in Selzer’s poll made it a good predictor of what might happen in other states. And the Trump campaign pointed to another Iowa poll out this weekend that showed the former president with a 10-point lead over Harris.But Michael McDonald, a politics professor at the University of Florida who runs a vote-tracking site, pointed to similar dynamics in a recent Kansas poll.The Selzer poll has roiled the political betting markets. Following its publication, Trump’s odds of victory fell on platforms including Polymarket, after they had climbed in recent weeks, in tandem with crypto and other elements of the Trump trade.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      A Vivid Trump-Harris Contrast in the Campaign’s Grueling Final Days

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      As Kamala Harris visited a church in Detroit on the last Sunday of the campaign, Donald J. Trump told supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after the 2020 election.It was the final Sunday of the campaign for president, and Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald J. Trump were continuing to race across battleground states in their search for support. But in message and demeanor, Ms. Harris, the Democrat, and Mr. Trump, the Republican, could not have been more different.Ms. Harris began her day at a Black church in Detroit where she told congregants that the nation was “ready to bend the arc of history toward justice,” invoking the words of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Trump began his at an outdoor rally at an airport in Pennsylvania where, his shoulders slumped and his voice subdued, he threw out his prepared remarks to tell supporters that he “shouldn’t have left” the White House after his loss to President Biden in 2020.The dueling scenes offered a contrast that captured just how differently these two candidates were using the final days of a campaign that a last round of polls suggested remained as tight as it was when their contest began in August.Mr. Trump went to Lititz, Pa., where, after announcing he was discarding his prepared speech so the “truth” could come out, he proceeded to deliver dark, rambling and at times angry remarks in which he attacked polls, assailed Democrats as “demonic,” and suggested he would not mind if reporters were shot.“To get to me, somebody would have to shoot through fake news, and I don’t mind that much, ’cause, I don’t mind. I don’t mind,” he said as he called attention to the bulletproof glass barriers that have surrounded him at outdoor rallies since he was shot in July in an assassination attempt in Butler, Pa.Vice President Kamala Harris stopped at a Black-owned barbershop in Pontiac, Mich., on Sunday.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesWe are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      ¿Por qué a los demócratas les cuesta tanto vencer a Trump?

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      El entorno político nacional no es tan propicio para una victoria de Harris como muchos podrían imaginar.Desde 2008, los demócratas han ocupado la Casa Blanca durante 12 de los 16 años. Vanessa Vick para The New York TimesPase lo que pase el martes, es justo decir que esta campaña no ha ido tan bien como esperaban los demócratas.Tras las elecciones intermedias, Donald Trump parecía estar acabado. Todavía puede perder, por supuesto, pero está claro que no ha quedado “descalificado” —como muchos esperaban— por el 6 de enero, por varias acusaciones penales o por la anulación de Roe contra Wade hecha por sus nombramientos para la Corte Suprema. Si los votantes descalificaron a algún candidato en 2024, fue al presidente en funciones, no al convicto que intentó anular las últimas elecciones.¿Cómo es que Trump sigue siendo tan competitivo? La respuesta más sencilla es que el entorno político nacional no es tan propicio para una victoria demócrata como muchos podrían imaginar.Los demócratas claramente se enfrentan a vientos en contra en estas elecciones. En la última encuesta del New York Times/Siena College, solo el 40 por ciento de los votantes aprobaba el desempeño del presidente Joe Biden, y solo el 28 por ciento decía que el país iba en la dirección correcta. Ningún partido ha conservado el control de la Casa Blanca cuando tantos estadounidenses estaban descontentos con el país o con el presidente.Las encuestas sugieren que el reto para los demócratas es aún más profundo. Por primera vez en décadas, los republicanos han igualado o superado la identificación partidista a nivel nacional. Las encuestas también muestran que los republicanos tienen ventaja en la mayoría de los temas clave, con la democracia y el aborto como excepciones significativas.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Judge Allows Iowa to Challenge Voters It Suspects of Being Noncitizens

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      A federal judge ruled on Sunday that Iowa may continue challenging hundreds of potential ballots cast in the election on the basis that the voters might be noncitizens, a move that critics say could disenfranchise legitimate voters.Iowa’s secretary of state, Paul Pate, a Republican, issued a letter to county commissioners last month challenging the status of 2,176 people on voter rolls, saying that they had previously identified themselves to a state agency as noncitizens. The plaintiffs in the case were four recently naturalized U.S. citizens whose voting status was challenged, despite being eligible to vote. They had asked the court for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction to rescind the letter and restore the status of any voters removed from the rolls.But Judge Stephen H. Locher of the Southern District of Iowa, who was appointed by President Biden, said that a small minority of the 2,176 registered voters — about 12 percent, or about 250 people — “are indeed registered voters who are not United States citizens,” and that granting an injunction “effectively forces local election officials to allow ineligible voters to vote.”It is a felony for a noncitizen to vote in a federal election, potentially resulting in jail time, a fine and deportation.Judge Locher also pointed to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last week that allowed Virginia to purge about 1,600 people from its voter rolls in supporting his decision to allow the challenge to go forward.But he also expressed concern at some of the directives in Mr. Pate’s letter, which he said directed local election officials to challenge the legitimacy of a voter on the list “even when the local officials themselves do not suspect the person is ineligible to vote” and “require voters on the list to file provisional ballots even when they have proven citizenship at the polling place.”In a statement, Mr. Pate said that the ruling was “a win for Iowa’s election integrity,” adding that his role “requires balance — ensuring that on one hand, every eligible voter is able to cast their ballot while ensuring that only eligible voters participate in Iowa elections.” More

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      There Will Always Be a Trump. That’s Only Part of the Problem.

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      Because we forget history, we forget that the American experiment cannot succeed without constant, courageous leadership. Our nation is not inherently good and our high ideals are often eclipsed by our baser nature. This has been true since our founding, and it is true now.We also know that if American ideals depend on a single party for their protection, then that effort is doomed to fail. It’s not that America is one election from extinction. Our nation is not that fragile. But it can regress. It can forsake its ideals. And millions of people can suffer as a result.I’m writing those words in the context of a presidential contest that already represents a national failure. Even if Kamala Harris wins on Tuesday, there should be relief, not lasting joy. The United States will have come within an eyelash of electing a man who tried to overturn an election to cling to power.While Donald Trump’s individual actions were unprecedented, the idea that a critical mass of Americans would embrace a demagogue should not be a surprise.Last week, I helped host a fireside chat with Susan Eisenhower, the founder and expert in residence at the Eisenhower Institute at Gettysburg College. She’s also Dwight D. Eisenhower’s granddaughter. During our conversation, she told a story that I’d forgotten — one with direct relevance to the present moment.In the aftermath of World War II, there was intense interest in General Eisenhower’s potential political career. He’d never voted before he left the Army in 1948. Both parties courted him, but the Republican Party needed him.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More