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      John Fetterman Endorses Andy Kim in High-Stakes New Jersey Senate Primary

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      The Pennsylvania senator, the first among his colleagues to weigh in on the primary battle to oust the indicted Senator Robert Menendez, said he had concerns about Tammy Murphy’s G.O.P. history.Senator John Fetterman of Pennsylvania is endorsing Representative Andy Kim of New Jersey in the primary to unseat Senator Bob Menendez, the embattled veteran Democrat who is under indictment in a federal corruption case, taking the rare step of wading into a high-stakes intraparty fight to oust a colleague.Mr. Fetterman, the harshest Democratic critic of Mr. Menendez in Congress, who has repeatedly called on him to resign, is the first sitting senator to endorse any candidate in the race. In an interview, he explained his decision to intervene in a primary to take out a fellow sitting senator, stating bluntly that “anything would be an upgrade over Menendez.”Mr. Kim, a three-term congressman representing a southern New Jersey district that former President Donald J. Trump won twice, is running for the seat against Tammy Murphy, the first lady of New Jersey and a first-time candidate who is a former registered Republican. Ms. Murphy has locked up much of the institutional support in a state where county leaders hold enormous power in primary campaigns, but has struggled to gain grass-roots traction.Mr. Kim is leading by double digits in some recent polls.In an interview, Mr. Fetterman said that he was “enthusiastic” about Mr. Kim and that Ms. Murphy’s political background — she changed her party affiliation from Republican to Democrat only in 2014 — gave him pause.“One of the most important things is that we have a reliable Democratic vote,” Mr. Fetterman said. “We have to run this table in ’24 in order to maintain the majority. But we need to count on every Democratic vote. Andy Kim is the kind of guy we can count on.”Mr. Fetterman said Ms. Murphy was likely “a lovely woman, but the last time I had to deal with a Republican from New Jersey, that was my own race.” Mr. Fetterman in 2022 defeated Dr. Mehmet Oz, the Republican nominee for Senate whom he trolled relentlessly as a celebrity carpetbagger from the Garden State.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?  More

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      The Snickers Bar Is the Economic Indicator We Need

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      The United States has just experienced one of the biggest collapses in consumer inflation in modern history. In June 2022 consumer prices had risen 9.1 percent over the previous year. By December 2023 the rate of increase had slowed to 3.4 percent. And yet, in survey after survey, voters still declare inflation to be at or near the top of their list of concerns.Why aren’t voters recognizing the decline in the inflation rate? Because voters are humans, and humans don’t think about inflation rationally. To understand why, let’s look at a Snickers bar.More than 12 Snickers bars are sold every second in the United States. That makes Snickers bars a very important part of consumer purchases, and so the price of a Snickers bar should be included in the inflation calculation. Yet Snickers bars do not consume a big portion of most families’ annual budget (at least they usually don’t).Most of us will spend far more of our budget on something like a television. With $1,500 a consumer could buy a high-end 55-inch television, or almost four Snickers bars a day for a year. Because items in the consumer price basket are weighted, roughly, by how much money consumers spend on that item in a year, television prices are more important than Snickers bars in the calculation of inflation.However, we probably buy a Snickers bar much more frequently, perhaps even daily. So we’re much more likely to remember the price of the Snickers bar and forget the price of the television we bought last year. Consumers tend to think only about the prices of high-frequency purchases — food for the family and fuel for the S.U.V.The different inflation rates for infrequent and frequent purchases is a big part of why consumers mistakenly believe inflation is higher than it actually is. The prices of more expensive goods like furniture and consumer electronics are actually falling — and have been falling for over a year. Once the post-pandemic surge in demand for electronics, furniture and similar items faded, manufacturers were unable to maintain higher prices, pulling the reported inflation numbers lower.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?  More

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      EE. UU. prohíbe la entrada a Giammattei, expresidente de Guatemala

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      El anuncio sugiere que Estados Unidos respalda la campaña contra la corrupción dirigida por el nuevo presidente de Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo.El Departamento de Estado estadounidense informó el miércoles que Alejandro Giammattei, quien fue presidente de Guatemala hasta el tumultuoso traspaso de poder efectuado esta semana, tenía prohibida la entrada en Estados Unidos debido a información que, según las autoridades, indicaba que había aceptado sobornos.El anuncio sugiere que Estados Unidos respalda la campaña contra la corrupción dirigida por el nuevo presidente de Guatemala, Bernardo Arévalo. Hace poco, Guatemala se vio envuelta en protestas por los intentos de impedir que Arévalo tomara posesión de su cargo, y Giammattei se negó a participar en la juramentación de su sucesor celebrada el lunes.“Nadie, especialmente un funcionario público, está por encima de la ley”, declaró Brian Nichols, alto funcionario del Departamento de Estado para el Hemisferio Occidental.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?  More

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      Nikki Haley Ramps Up Her Case Against Trump in New Hampshire

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      The former South Carolina governor has been careful about how and when she criticizes the former president. New Hampshire will test her approach.Nikki Haley might have come in third in the Iowa caucuses, but as she campaigns in New Hampshire for its first-in-the-nation primary next week, her attention is squarely focused on only one rival: Donald J. Trump.Ms. Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump, has begun fine-tuning her argument against her former boss, trying out new jabs and unleashing a new attack ad right out of the gate. She has also stepped up her efforts to frame herself as Mr. Trump’s top rival, announcing that she would no longer participate in primary debates that don’t include him.In recent remarks and in a new television ad, Ms. Haley paints Mr. Trump and President Biden as two sides of the same coin: politicians past their prime who are unable to put forth a vision for the country’s future because they are “consumed by the past, by investigations, by grievances.”At a campaign rally on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H., she fended off Mr. Trump’s attacks on her immigration record, warned voters not to believe his ads against her and reminded them that it was Mr. Trump who had wanted to raise the age for Social Security eligibility and had once proposed increasing the gas tax.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?  More

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      U.S. Moves to Bar Alejandro Giammattei, Ex-Guatemalan Leader

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      The decision against Alejandro Giammattei, who is accused of accepting bribes, signaled U.S. support for a new anticorruption drive in Guatemala.The State Department said on Wednesday that Alejandro Giammattei, Guatemala’s president until a tumultuous transfer of power this week, was barred from entering the United States because of what officials said was information indicating that he had accepted bribes.The announcement signaled that the United States was moving quickly to support the anticorruption drive led by Guatemala’s new president, Bernardo Arévalo. Guatemala was recently engulfed in protests over attempts to prevent Mr. Arévalo from taking office, and Mr. Giammattei refused to appear at his successor’s inauguration on Monday.“No one, especially a public official, is above the law,” said Brian Nichols, the top State Department official for the Western Hemisphere.The Treasury Department also announced sanctions on Wednesday against Alberto Pimentel Mata, a former energy minister in Mr. Giammattei’s government, in connection to Mr. Pimentel Mata’s taking bribes and his involvement in numerous corruption schemes related to government contracts and licenses, officials said.Last weekend, U.S. Customs and Border Protection denied entry in Miami to one of Mr. Giammattei’s sons, and expelled him on Monday, according to Senator Mike Lee, Republican of Utah and a supporter of Mr. Giammattei.Taken together, the moves reflect how the United States government is trying to stem corruption and impunity in Guatemala, Central America’s most populous country.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?  More

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      Dean Phillips Drops DEI From Campaign Website After Bill Ackman Donation

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      The campaign website for Representative Dean Phillips, the Minnesota Democrat mounting a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, has a policy platform that signals liberal bona fides tempered by a Midwestern businessman’s practicality. It includes headers like “Climate Action,” “Women’s Health and Economic Security” and “Immigration Reform.”Sometime on Tuesday, one header was changed. Gone was “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.” In its place: “Equity and Restorative Justice.”The text beneath the header — including acknowledgments of racial disparities and vague promises to ensure equal opportunity — was untouched. But the tweak was nonetheless significant. Even more so was its timing: On Saturday, Mr. Phillips had received the endorsement of William A. Ackman, the billionaire investor who in recent months has become an outspoken critic of so-called D.E.I. programs in higher education.Mr. Ackman did not merely endorse Mr. Phillips; in a lengthy post on X on Saturday, where Mr. Ackman has a considerable following, he said that he had already given the maximum $3,300 donation allowed to Mr. Phillips’s campaign, and he announced that on Tuesday, after the federal holiday for Martin Luther King’s Birthday, he planned to wire $1 million to We Deserve Better, a super PAC formed late last year that is supporting Mr. Phillips’s candidacy.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?  More

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      Maine Judge Suspends Decision to Exclude Trump From Primary Ballot

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      The judge sent the matter back to Maine’s secretary of state, ordering her to modify, withdraw or confirm her ruling after the Supreme Court rules on a similar case out of Colorado.A Maine judge ordered the state’s top election official on Wednesday to wait for a U.S. Supreme Court ruling before putting into effect her decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s Republican primary ballot. Justice Michaela Murphy of Maine Superior Court said in the ruling that the official, Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, had been forced under Maine law to issue her decision quickly, without the benefit of the high court’s input.The Supreme Court has agreed to review, at Mr. Trump’s request, an earlier decision by a Colorado court to exclude him from the ballot, and is expected to hear arguments in the case on Feb. 8. Ms. Bellows had cited the Colorado court’s reasoning in her decision.“The secretary confronted an uncertain legal landscape when she issued her ruling,” Justice Murphy wrote in a 17-page decision, and “should be afforded the opportunity to assess the effect and application” to her ruling of whatever the high court decides.Read the Maine Judge’s Ruling on Trump’s Ballot EligibilityThe judge ordered the state’s top election official to wait until the Supreme Court weighs in on the eligibility issue in a Colorado case, and then to confirm, modify or reverse her Dec. 28 decision to exclude former President Donald J. Trump from Maine’s primary ballot.Read DocumentWe 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?  More

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      Take That, America

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      Well, people, Iowa has spoken. Peeped, anyhow.Every time the nation gets to select its next president, all eyes turn to Iowa, which traditionally has the first word on what the public wants.This is a state with approximately 1 percent of the national population. How could we not pay attention?Next week, we’ll be obsessed with the voting in New Hampshire, which has less than half as many people as Iowa.So goes the current caucus-and-primary system — on the Republican side, at least. The Democrats changed theirs after 2020, when the Iowa count crashed and burned. It took days to get the final results, which gave Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders the lead, followed by Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden, who came in at a pathetic 15.8 percent.Pop quiz: The Iowa Democrats struggled to produce a vote count because of:A. A deep reluctance to let other states start getting all the attentionB. A bad appC. Threats to public safety from a 12-foot-tall snow bearDon’t go for the self-absorption option. Be nice. The answer, of course, is a bad app. Truly, in this day and age, virtually anything terrible that occurs is either because of a bad app or Donald Trump.You’ve got to admire the dedicated citizens who keep the Iowa caucuses going. But it’s hard not to get tired of hearing candidates deliver effusive tributes to the state’s special interests, like the glories of ethanol subsidies. (“I stood up for ethanol like nobody has ever stood up for it,” Trump claimed on caucus night. Really suspect that before he began running for president, he thought ethanol was a hair product.)This year, the Democrats are casting their ballots by mail, and Iowa leaders will let us know the results in early March. The party, under orders from President Biden, has rearranged its schedule so the primaries will officially start in South Carolina next month, then move on to Nevada. The idea is to get a population of voters that’s a tad more diverse than Iowa, which is about as ethnically homogeneous as Finland.Sneering at the idea that Iowa is always first is traditionally coupled with an acknowledgment that voters there have a history of high participation even in terrible winter weather.Turns out, however, that not so many showed up this year — 110,000 Republicans voted, which was less than 15 percent of those registered. And hey, probably about a tenth of the population that visited the Butter Cow at last year’s Iowa State Fair.Certainly can’t blame them for choosing to stay home during weather that would have discouraged Nanook of the North. But do you think it was possibly the ballot as well? Everybody knew Trump was going to win. Maybe some people found it too depressing to participate.Our former president managed to get more than half of the votes cast in Iowa. But he failed to win all 99 counties, thanks to a one-vote margin (yes, one) in the county where the University of Iowa is situated. Nikki Haley won there, giving her at least a little bounce for the next stop, in New Hampshire, which has a relatively high percentage of college graduates.Ron DeSantis is moving on, too. He actually came in a tad ahead of Haley statewide, but I’m not sure he should boast about that. Having visited every single one of those 99 counties (as he constantly reminded us), DeSantis apparently won most of the hearts in … none of them.About New Hampshire. If anybody is going to beat Trump anywhere, it’ll be Haley in New Hampshire, where Republicans tend to be moderate and happy to show their independence by doing something different. She’s already taken on the front-runner by announcing that she won’t go to any debates there unless Trump agrees to participate, too.Pause for a brief giggle.On the Democratic side, New Hampshire party leaders are very, very unhappy that Biden has ditched them for South Carolina. And how should we feel about that? On one hand, New Hampshirites have always been super devoted to their role — Chris Christie probably spent the happiest days of his campaign there, attacking Trump before always-available audiences. It’s such a deep-seated tradition, political junkies have to be a little sad to see the state being snubbed.On the other hand, New Hampshire is whiter than Iowa. It’s one of the least diverse states in the Union.It’s very easy to write in a candidate’s name in New Hampshire, and top Democrats say they’re going to do just that for Biden, even though, in the words of the former state party chair Kathy Sullivan, they’re “still pissed.”Gird your loins, citizens. Our political lives are going to be primarily primaries for the next couple of months. (Super Tuesday is March 5.) Candidates will find ways to pick fights, even if they’re silly.Sometimes it’s hard to keep all this in focus. We’ve got lives to live. Joe Biden has to run the country. Donald Trump has to go to nine million trials.But hey, it’s democracy. It’s important. And it’s going to be a very long year.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, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More