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      Biden Makes Focused Appeal to Black Voters in South Carolina

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      The president’s campaign is putting money and staff into South Carolina ahead of its primary in an effort to energize Black voters, who are critical to his re-election effort.President Biden’s campaign and affiliated groups are amping up their efforts in South Carolina, pouring in money and staff ahead of the first Democratic primary in February in an effort to generate excitement for his campaign in the state.It seems, at first glance, to be a curious political strategy. Few incumbent presidents have invested so much in an early primary state — particularly one like South Carolina, where Mr. Biden faces no serious primary challenger, and where no Democratic presidential candidate has won in a general election since Jimmy Carter in 1976.But the Biden campaign sees the effort as more than just notching a big win in the state that helped revive his struggling campaign in 2020, putting him on the path to winning the nomination. It hopes to energize Black voters, who are crucial to Mr. Biden’s re-election bid nationally, at a moment when his standing with Black Americans is particularly fraught.“One of the things that we have not done a good job of doing is showing the successes of this administration,” said Marvin Pendarvis, a state representative from North Charleston. He added that the campaign will need to curate a message “so that Black voters understand that this administration has done some of the most transformational things as it relates to Black communities, to minority communities.”Four years after Mr. Biden vowed to have the backs of the voters he said helped deliver him the White House, Black Americans in polls and focus groups are expressing frustration with Democrats for what they perceive as a failure to deliver on campaign promises. They also say that they have seen few improvements to their well-being under Mr. Biden’s presidency. Some are unsure whether they will vote at all.To counter that pessimism and boost Black turnout, Democrats are hitting the Palmetto State with a six-figure cash infusion from the Democratic National Committee, a slew of campaign events and an army of staffers and surrogates.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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      Barring Trump From the Ballot Would Be a Mistake

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      When Donald Trump appeals the Colorado decision disqualifying him from the ballot in that state’s Republican primary, the Supreme Court should overturn the ruling unanimously.Like many of my fellow liberals, I would love to live in a country where Americans had never elected Mr. Trump — let alone sided with him by the millions in his claims that he won an election he lost, and that he did nothing wrong afterward. But nobody lives in that America. For all the power the institution has arrogated, the Supreme Court cannot bring that fantasy into being. To bar Mr. Trump from the ballot now would be the wrong way to show him to the exits of the political system, after all these years of strife.Some aspects of American election law are perfectly clear — like the rule that prohibits candidates from becoming president before they turn 35 — but many others are invitations to judges to resolve uncertainty as they see fit, based in part on their own politics. Take Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which blocks insurrectionists from running for office, a provision originally aimed at former Confederates in the wake of the Civil War. There may well be some instances in which the very survival of a democratic regime is at stake if noxious candidates or parties are not banned, as in West Germany after World War II. But in this case, what Section 3 requires is far from straightforward. Keeping Mr. Trump off the ballot could put democracy at more risk rather than less.Part of the danger lies in the fact that what actually happened on Jan. 6 — and especially Mr. Trump’s exact role beyond months of election denial and entreaties to government officials to side with him — is still too broadly contested. The Colorado court deferred to a lower court on the facts, but it was a bench trial, meaning that no jury ever assessed what happened, and that many Americans still believe Mr. Trump did nothing wrong. A Supreme Court that affirms the Colorado ruling would have to succeed in constructing a consensual narrative where others — including armies of journalists, the Jan. 6 commission and recent indictments — have failed.The Supreme Court has been asked to weigh in on the fate of presidencies before, and its finer moments in this regard have been when it was a force for stability and reflected the will and interests of voters. Almost 50 years ago, the court faced a choice to end a presidency as it deliberated on Richard Nixon’s high crimes and misdemeanors. But by the time the Supreme Court acted in 1974, a special prosecutor, Leon Jaworski, had already won indictments of Nixon’s henchmen and named the president himself before a grand jury as an unindicted co-conspirator. Public opinion was with Jaworski; the American people agreed that the tapes Nixon was trying to shield from prosecutors were material evidence, and elites in both political parties had reached the same conclusion. In deciding against Nixon, the Supreme Court was only reaffirming the political consensus.As the constitutional law professor Josh Chafetz has observed, even United States v. Nixon was suffused with a rhetoric of judicial aggrandizement. But if the Supreme Court were to exclude Mr. Trump from the ballot, seconding the Colorado court on each legal nicety, when so many people still disagree on the facts, it would have disastrous consequences.For one thing, it would strengthen the hand of a Supreme Court that liberals have rightly complained grabs too much power too routinely. Joe Biden came into office calling for a re-examination of whether the Supreme Court needs reform, and there would be considerable irony if he were re-elected after that very body was seen by millions to pre-empt a democratic choice.Worse, it is not obvious how many would accept a Supreme Court decision that erased Mr. Trump’s name from every ballot in the land. Liberals with bad memories of Bush v. Gore, which threw an election to one candidate rather than counting votes, have often regretted accepting that ruling as supinely as they did. And rejecting Mr. Trump’s candidacy could well invite a repeat of the kind of violence that led to the prohibition on insurrectionists in public life in the first place. The purpose of Section 3 was to stabilize the country after a civil war, not to cause another one.As it unfolds, the effort to disqualify Mr. Trump could make him more popular than ever. As harsh experience since 2016 has taught, legalistic maneuvers haven’t hurt him in the polls. And Democrats do nothing to increase their popularity by setting out to “save democracy” when it looks — if their legal basis for proceeding is too flimsy — as if they are afraid of practicing it. That the approval ratings of the Democratic standard-bearer, Mr. Biden, have cratered as prosecutions of Mr. Trump and now this Colorado ruling have accumulated indicates that trying again is a mistake, both of principle and of strategy.Perhaps the worst outcome of all would be for the Supreme Court to split on ideological lines, as it did in Bush v. Gore, hardly its finest hour. Justices have fretted about the damage to their “legitimacy” when their decisions look like political choices. They often are, as so many recent cases have revealed, but when the stakes are this high, the best political choice for the justices is to avoid final judgment on contested matters of fact and law and to let the people decide.In the Nixon era, the justices were shrewd enough to stand together in delivering their decision: It was handed down 8-0, with one recusal. In our moment, the Supreme Court must do the same.This will require considerable diplomacy from Chief Justice John Roberts, and it will define his stewardship as profoundly as cases such as Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which his effort to herd his colleagues into consensus failed. In this situation, unlike that one, it will require him to convince his liberal colleagues who might otherwise dissent. For their part, they ought to be able to anticipate the high and unpredictable costs of presuming that judges can save a nation on the brink of breakdown.The truth is that this country has to be allowed to save itself. The Supreme Court must act, but only to place the burden on Mr. Trump’s political opponents to make their case in the political arena. Not just to criticize him for his turpitude, but to argue that their own policies benefit the disaffected voters who side with a charlatan again and again.Samuel Moyn teaches law and history at Yale.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

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      How DeSantis’s Ambitious, Costly Ground Game Has Sputtered

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      The Florida governor’s field operation, one of the most expensive in modern political history, has met challenges from the outset, interviews with a range of voters and political officials revealed.Ron DeSantis’s battle plan against Donald J. Trump was always ambitious.This spring, the main super PAC backing Mr. DeSantis laid out a costly organizing operation, including an enormous voter-outreach push with an army of trained, paid door-knockers, that would try to reach every potential DeSantis voter multiple times in early-nominating states.Seven months later, after tens of millions of dollars spent and hundreds of thousands of doors knocked, one of the most expensive ground games in modern political history shows little sign of creating the momentum it had hoped to achieve.Mr. DeSantis’s poll numbers have barely budged. His super PAC, Never Back Down, is unraveling. And Mr. Trump’s hold on Republican primary voters seems as unshakable as ever. With time running out before the Iowa caucuses on Jan. 15, Mr. DeSantis, the governor of Florida, appears in danger of losing the extraordinary bet he made in outsourcing his field operation to a super PAC — a gamble that is testing both the limits of campaign finance law and the power of money to move voter sentiment.Never Back Down has spent at least $30 million on its push to reach voters in person through door-knocking and canvassing in early-primary states, according to a person with knowledge of its efforts — a figure that does not include additional tens of millions in television advertising. The organization has more than 100 full-time, paid canvassers in Iowa, South Carolina and New Hampshire, along with 37,000 volunteers.That ground game has increasingly centered on a do-or-die push in Iowa, where a long-shot victory could redeem the effort. Never Back Down has knocked on doors more than 801,000 times — including repeated visits — in Iowa, according to another person familiar with its work, a staggering number in a state of just 3.2 million people. The group has knocked on the doors of some potential DeSantis voters four times, with a fifth attempt planned before the caucuses, the person said.“I know they are doing the right things,” said Will Rogers, a Republican political organizer in Iowa who said Never Back Down had been to his door several times. But, he added, “it just doesn’t seem to be moving the needle at all.”Interviews with more than three dozen voters, local officials and political strategists across Iowa and beyond revealed that — even setting aside the internal disruptions at Never Back Down — the immense, coordinated effort to identify and mobilize voters for Mr. DeSantis has struggled from the outset.Mr. DeSantis’s decision to outsource his field operation to a super PAC was unusual, and tested the limits of campaign finance law.Christopher Smith for The New York TimesSome voters have been swayed by contact from the super PAC, but many remain unconvinced. Some said the door knockers were indifferent or rude, while others said the full-court press from Never Back Down felt inauthentic. And, in a particularly brutal twist, some of the door knockers openly told Iowans that they themselves were in fact Trump supporters.“From my point of view, it hasn’t been working,” said Cris Christenson, a businessman who lives in Johnston, a Des Moines suburb. Never Back Down has been all over his neighborhood, he said, and has knocked on his door three times.Mr. Christenson said he was “not anti-DeSantis,” describing him as “very bright.” But he is a firm supporter of Mr. Trump.“It really comes down to this — Trump is so wildly popular in the state that DeSantis doesn’t stand a chance,” he said.Spreading the wordJess Szymanski, a spokeswoman for Never Back Down, said the group had built “the largest, most advanced grass-roots and political operation in the history of presidential politics.”“With every voter we interact with on the ground, we constantly find strong support and new voters committing to caucus for Governor DeSantis,” she added. Door knocking is considered a particularly useful way not just to persuade and identify supporters, but above all to mobilize them to get to the caucuses or polls.The field operation is highly organized: Never Back Down has trained hundreds of people at an in-house boot camp in Des Moines that operatives call “Fort Benning.” There, recruits learn about the biography of Mr. DeSantis and his family, study his policies and record as Florida governor, and practice door-knocking techniques.Then, in groups — toting iPads with special software that contains details about likely voters — they spread out across Iowa and other early-nominating states.In Iowa, these paid door knockers have been joined by volunteer “precinct captains” — Never Back Down aims to have at least one captain in each of Iowa’s more than 1,600 caucus precincts by Jan. 15.Attendees at an Iowa Republican Party event in May were given information on Mr. DeSantis.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesNever Back Down is trying to reach Republicans in rural, heavily conservative areas like northwest Iowa, hoping that evangelical voters will embrace an alternative to the profane Mr. Trump.Quality control problemsSome of the challenges on the ground appear to stem from the operation’s size. The fact that it has been run by a super PAC rather than a campaign, and has relied largely on hired hands rather than volunteers, can make the outreach feel inauthentic, interviews with some caucusgoers showed.They described being put off or bemused by DeSantis campaigners who hailed from as far away as California. Douglas Jensen, a 38-year-old potential caucusgoer in rural northwestern Iowa who hasn’t decided which candidate to support, recalled being surprised to have a “very enthusiastic” man from Georgia pitch him on Mr. DeSantis at his house.Loren and Tina DeVries said they’d had door knockers from different campaigns stop by their house in Bettendorf. Some were locals — Ms. DeVries, 54, even knew the young woman who came to her door to stump for Vivek Ramaswamy personally.But the couple didn’t recognize the DeSantis door knockers, and recalled that they had been less than enthusiastic in their pitch.“The people that have come, I’m not sure if they’re there just to check a box or actually have a persuasive conversation,” Mr. DeVries, 53, said. “They’re not really doing a sell.”He still liked Mr. DeSantis, but Ms. DeVries remained undecided.Never Back Down, the super PAC supporting Mr. DeSantis, put out sign-up sheets to endorse him at an Iowa Republican Party event in Cedar Rapids.Haiyun Jiang/The New York TimesDeSantis campaign materials at a restaurant in Tipton, Iowa.Jordan Gale for The New York TimesNumerous other voters have also reported lackadaisical efforts, fruitless repeat knocking and bad attitudes from door knockers. Over the summer, a paid Never Back Down canvasser in South Carolina was dismissed after he was caught making lewd remarks about a homeowner, The Washington Post reported.The super PAC has dismissed employees and volunteers who failed to meet targets for door knocking and other measures of engagement, according to people who worked with the group.Fierce competition, and a looming favoriteOther campaigns are trying to capitalize. The political network founded by the Koch brothers, Americans for Prosperity Action, which endorsed Nikki Haley last month, is aiming to knock on 100,000 doors in Iowa before the caucuses. The group is hoping that a more finely honed message, spread by the small group of well-trained volunteers and paid staff, will be enough to overcome the flood of outreach from Never Back Down.Tyler Raygor, A.F.P.’s state director, said the fact that Mr. DeSantis had been stagnant in state polls despite the huge canvassing effort cast doubt on how effective his messengers were.“It just begs the question of: ‘Who are you having out on the doors? How well are you training them?’” Mr. Raygor said.The Trump campaign has also put down roots in Iowa, though its efforts have focused more on training its 1,800 caucus captains and pushing them to persuade their friends and neighbors to caucus for Mr. Trump. Still, the campaign has reached several hundred thousand voters in Iowa through mail advertisements and door knocking, according to a person familiar with the efforts.Indeed, it seems possible that no amount of door knocking could surmount Mr. DeSantis’s biggest challenge: He is not Donald Trump.Former President Donald J. Trump still leads in polls of Iowa caucusgoers by double digits. Jordan Gale for The New York TimesJeanette Hudson, 82, of Pella, Iowa, said she and her husband, both loyal Trump supporters, had been visited at home by a “pleasant young woman” who asked if they were going to caucus for Mr. DeSantis. Ms. Hudson said they were not.The woman smiled, thanked them and left.Persuading the unconvincedDavid Polyansky, the DeSantis deputy campaign manager, said door knocking was meant to drive turnout on caucus night, not to juice poll numbers.“It gives you the chance to not only identify who might be a DeSantis supporter, but also to bring them into the fold and make sure they are going to turn out on the 15th,” he said, arguing that it was too soon to judge the effectiveness of Never Back Down’s door-knocking operation.Mr. DeSantis’s allies say that many Iowans remain undecided, and that a major part of the ground game, in the weeks ahead, is to tip them to their side.Rachel Mummey for The New York TimesIn New Hampshire, the way that Mr. DeSantis won the support of Hilary Kilcullen, 76, a physician assistant in Concord, is a model that Never Back Down hopes to emulate.Ms. Kilcullen, a Republican, said a young man had knocked on her door to tell her about Mr. DeSantis. The canvasser, who had flown up from Miami, told Ms. Kilcullen that she could rely on Mr. DeSantis in the event of a terrorist attack or other disaster.The conversation didn’t flip Ms. Kilcullen, who had grown tired of Mr. Trump, into a DeSantis supporter. But she valued the personal touch.“In this day and age, when everything has gone digital and virtual, I was impressed,” Ms. Kilcullen said. “If DeSantis could capture this passionate, young person’s attention, that means something.”Then, after hearing Mr. DeSantis speak in person this month at a town-hall event — and being impressed by his command of policy — she decided he had earned her vote.But others have yet to be convinced.One undecided caucusgoer in Iowa, Edith Hull, a 73-year-old retired farmer from Ottumwa, said she had a positive experience with a DeSantis door knocker recently.“He was a real nice young man,” she said. “And he didn’t pressure me or anything.” When he left, he gave her a large placard to hang on her doorknob, and reminded her to caucus.Asked if she felt any differently about Mr. DeSantis afterward, she said, “About the same.”Reporting was contributed by More

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      Nikki Haley Wants to Run on Her Record, Not Her Gender

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      The Republican presidential candidate would be the first woman to enter the White House, but she has so far tried to avoid the identity politics that could repel some voters.Inside the warehouse for an upscale department store chain in eastern Iowa, Michele Barton, wearing a white T-shirt emblazoned with “Women for Nikki” in bright pink letters, mused excitedly about the prospect of sending the first woman to the White House.But Ms. Barton, 52, a mother of four and a lifelong Republican, was quick to insist that she was not supporting Nikki Haley because she is a woman.“I think she is the right candidate,” she said on Wednesday as she waited for Ms. Haley to appear at a town-hall event in Davenport. “It just so happens that she is a woman.”It’s a familiar refrain from some of Ms. Haley’s most enthusiastic female supporters, who, like the candidate herself, downplay the importance of her gender in the 2024 presidential race, even as they celebrate the potentially historic nature of her bid.Ms. Haley is performing this balancing act at a striking moment in U.S. politics. Her climb in the polls and the struggles of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida mean that the Republican candidate with the best hope of pushing the party beyond former President Donald J. Trump — who has a long history of misogynist remarks and sexual misconduct allegations — might well be a woman.Throughout her campaign, Ms. Haley has sought to tread a fine line in talking about her gender. She emphasizes elements of her life and career that inherently set her apart in an otherwise all-male field, but avoids leaning into identity politics in ways that might repel the largely white and graying base of conservative voters she needs to court in order to win the nomination.“I don’t want to just be a woman,” she told Charlamagne Tha God on “The Daily Show” last month. “I don’t want to just be Indian. I don’t want to just be a mom. I don’t want to just be a Republican. I don’t want to just be all of those things. I’m more than that. And I think every person is more than that.”Her stump speech includes nods to her experiences as a mother and a military spouse. Her pithy rejoinders to her rivals invoke her five-inch heels. Her list of close-out songs at town-hall events includes Sheryl Crow’s “Woman in the White House.”A Haley campaign event in Iowa last month. When Ms. Haley mentions that she was the first woman and first person of color to serve as governor of South Carolina, it’s largely to argue that the United States is not “rotten” or “racist.”Jordan Gale for The New York TimesBut Ms. Haley, the daughter of Indian immigrants, seldom, if ever, mentions directly that she is vying to shatter the highest glass ceiling in American politics. (In her campaign announcement video, she said she did not believe in the idea of such ceilings.)On the campaign trail in the early voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, she rarely brings up her gender, which her allies believe could be a potent asset to win over college-educated voters and suburban women in a general election, if she were to beat Mr. Trump in the primary.Chris Cournoyer, an Iowa state senator and Ms. Haley’s state chairwoman there, said these demographics could also help Ms. Haley become more competitive in the state, where she has trailed Mr. Trump in polls by a wide margin and until recently also lagged behind Mr. DeSantis.“I’ve heard from a lot of women who are independents, a lot of women who are Democrats, that they are going to switch parties to caucus for her on Jan. 15,” Ms. Cournoyer said.Although she often mentions her barrier-breaking victory to become the first woman and first person of color to serve as governor of South Carolina, Ms. Haley does so mainly to argue that the United States is not “rotten” or “racist.”Her event on Wednesday at the Von Maur warehouse in Davenport may have been billed as a Women for Nikki event, but aside from three coalition T-shirts on display near the entrance, the venue carried few signs of the all-female, grass-roots groups that have helped spread her message.Both Republican strategists and gender studies scholars say that Ms. Haley’s relatively muted approach to gender on the trail makes sense: The path to higher office for women is often paved with double standards and gender biases, regardless of a candidate’s party or ideology. But it can be particularly difficult for Republican women. Conservative voters tend to harbor traditional views about femininity while expecting candidates to seem “tough.”A recent study from the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University found that Republicans were less likely than Democrats to see distinct barriers to women’s political representation, support targeted efforts to increase diversity in politics and pressure party leaders to embrace strategies to expand the ranks of women in power.Kelly Dittmar, who as the center’s research director worked on the report and has analyzed Ms. Haley’s political bids, said she saw parallels between Ms. Haley’s campaigns for governor and president. In both, Ms. Haley’s ads have talked about being “new” and “different,” offering cues to voters about her race and gender but, Ms. Dittmar said, allowing them to interpret the words as they wished.“It is both strategic and in line with her own conservative identity,” Ms. Dittmar said, adding that as a candidate for governor Ms. Haley rejected calls from her constituents to promise that she would appoint an even number of men and women to her administration.No woman has ever won the Republican Party’s presidential nomination, or even a state Republican presidential primary, and Ms. Haley is only the fifth prominent Republican woman to run for her party’s nomination. Carly Fiorina, the former chief executive of Hewlett-Packard, last made the attempt in 2016, and she made gender central to her campaign.With her own calibrated approach, Ms. Haley has sought to lean into her foreign policy and executive experience, challenge misconceptions about women and electability and position herself as one of her party’s most effective messengers on abortion, despite having signed some of the nation’s toughest anti-abortion restrictions as governor of South Carolina. She recently said that as governor she would have signed a six-week ban on the procedure.The path to higher office for women is often paved with double standards and gender biases, regardless of party or ideology. Conservative voters, in particular, tend to harbor traditional views about femininity.Sophie Park/Getty ImagesThe approach has won her some of her most devoted supporters and often unpaid volunteers — women willing to drive for hours to set up chairs, collect contact information and hype up her bid. Campaign officials say that Women for Nikki chapters have now emerged in all 50 states. At recent town halls in Iowa, at least two women asked her to reiterate her stance on abortion, though they had already heard it, so that others in the room could hear it, too.“I don’t think the fellas know how to talk about it properly,” she said both times.And yet, the issue of gender has remained inescapable. In the fourth Republican presidential debate, the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy lobbed gendered attacks, accusing her of benefiting from “identity politics,” as former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey went the other direction, defending her in what some of her supporters saw as playing the white knight. Then, there is Mr. Trump, who calls her a “Birdbrain” and remains popular among Republican women.A poll from The New York Times and Siena College released this month found that 63 percent of female Republican primary voters supported Mr. Trump. Ms. Haley had 12 percent support from that group. Other surveys show her garnering more support from men than women. But in hypothetical matchups, Ms. Haley has beaten President Biden by the widest margin of any Republican challenger, roughly splitting female votes with him.“Nikki has potent electability against Biden, but she needs to find potent electability against Trump,” said Sarah Longwell, a Republican strategist who has been working to defeat Mr. Trump. “Right now, voters just don’t believe she can do it, and so she has to change that perception.”Perhaps Ms. Haley best captured her approach in response to a question from a prospective voter while campaigning this week in Agency, Iowa. Listening to Ms. Haley on the warehouse floor of a corn seed company, Sarah Keith, 28, a chemical engineer, wanted to know how the candidate would draw more women into the party, particularly those dissatisfied with the liberal agenda.“They talk about women’s issues,” Ms. Haley said, referring to the Democrats and defining those concerns as the same ones that worry most voters, including the economy and national security. “I think women are tired. I think everybody is tired of the noise, and what they want is just to see results.” More

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      Americans Are Signing Up for Obamacare in Record Numbers

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      The NewsMore than 15 million people have signed up for health insurance plans offered on the Affordable Care Act’s federal marketplace, a 33 percent increase compared to the same time last year, according to preliminary data released by the Biden administration on Wednesday.Federal health officials project that more than 19 million people will enroll in 2024 coverage by the end of the current enrollment period next month. That total would include those who gain coverage through state marketplaces, continuing the record-setting pace.“It means more Americans have the peace of mind of knowing that going to the doctor won’t empty their bank account,” Xavier Becerra, the health and human services secretary, said in a statement.An Affordable Care Act sign-up kiosk in a mall in Miami this month.Rebecca Blackwell/Associated PressWhy It Matters: The Affordable Care Act is expanding its reach.Despite a recent warning from former President Donald J. Trump, the front-runner in the race for the 2024 Republican presidential nomination, that he was “seriously looking at alternatives” to the Affordable Care Act, the latest surge in marketplace enrollment is a testament to the law’s enduring power.Legislation passed earlier in the Covid-19 pandemic increased federal subsidies for people buying plans, lowering the costs for many Americans. The Biden administration also lengthened the sign-up period and increased advertising for the program and funding for so-called navigators who help people enroll.“More and more people are realizing they can come onto the marketplace,” said Cynthia Cox, the director of the Program on the Affordable Care Act at KFF, a nonprofit health policy research group.She added: “Just because the A.C.A. has been around for a while doesn’t mean people who need to sign up for it know how to do that.”One Eye-Popping Statistic: 750,000 sign-ups in a single day.On Dec. 15 — the deadline to sign up for coverage that begins on Jan. 1 — nearly 750,000 people opted for a marketplace plan on HealthCare.gov. It was the largest single-day total yet.Dr. Benjamin Sommers, a health economist at Harvard who served in the Biden administration, said that improved outreach helped explain the record sign-ups. “I’m pleasantly surprised,” he said.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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      DeSantis Says Trump’s Indictments ‘Sucked Out All the Oxygen’ From Primary

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      Ron DeSantis seemed to acknowledge that the former president’s legal woes were making it harder for his rivals to break through in the Republican primary.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida said that the indictments of former President Donald J. Trump had “distorted” the Republican presidential primary, tacitly admitting that the former president’s legal problems have helped him.“If I could have one thing change, I wish Trump hadn’t been indicted on any of this stuff,” Mr. DeSantis told David Brody of the Christian Broadcasting Network in an interview that aired on Thursday. He added that the indictments had “just crowded out, I think, so much other stuff and it’s sucked out all the oxygen.”With just weeks until Iowans cast the first votes in the race, Mr. DeSantis’s campaign has struggled to gain ground on Mr. Trump and has had to focus more on battling former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina for second place.When Mr. DeSantis entered the race in May, he was widely regarded as the most viable challenger to Mr. Trump. That reputation frayed as his campaign struggled to articulate an effective message, organize in key early primary states and guard against internal turmoil. Last week, the top strategist for Mr. DeSantis’s super PAC, Jeff Roe, stepped down from his post.Mr. DeSantis did not elaborate on his comments during a campaign appearance at a Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Coralville, Iowa, on Thursday morning, and he barely mentioned Mr. Trump. He did not take questions from reporters after the event.But Mr. DeSantis has previously expressed frustration over how much attention Mr. Trump’s various legal troubles have attracted. “That is not what we want from this election,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters during a campaign stop outside Des Moines on Wednesday. “What we want is a referendum on the failures of the Biden administration.”Mr. Trump’s allies and supporters have maintained that the charges against him have only fueled his rise and fortified his strength as a candidate.In August, days before Mr. Trump was charged in Georgia over his efforts to overturn his defeat in the 2020 presidential election, he boasted to a crowd of supporters in Alabama that he needed “one more indictment” to solidify his win in the race.Now facing four indictments and 91 felony counts, Mr. Trump has maintained a significant lead. A new poll from The New York Times and Siena College found that even as a growing number of Republican voters believe he has committed serious federal crimes, they still support his return to office.And Mr. Trump’s legal problems continue to grow. On Tuesday, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled that he was ineligible to hold office again because of his actions related to the attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The decision could strike him from the state’s primary ballot, but Mr. Trump’s campaign has pledged to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.In the CBN interview, Mr. DeSantis also singled out the Manhattan district attorney, Alvin Bragg, who has brought one of the cases against Mr. Trump, and accused him of “distorting justice” and abusing his power.He also railed against Democratic prosecutors more broadly — and, as governor, he has taken a particularly hard line against them. He has removed two Democratic prosecutors from their posts over the last two years, citing their stances on abortion and lenience on violent crime.Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Democrats Keep Hoping It’s Curtains for Trump. He’s Still Center Stage.

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      As Donald Trump faces a new threat to his political future, this time over the question of ballot eligibility, Democrats again find themselves looking toward American institutions to stop him.For as long as Donald J. Trump has dominated Republican politics, many Democrats have pined for a magical cure-all to rid them of his presence.There was the Mueller investigation into Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and its ties to Russia, which began four months into his presidency. Then came the first impeachment. Then, after Mr. Trump lost the 2020 election and his supporters stormed the Capitol, the second impeachment.Each time, Democrats entertained visions of Mr. Trump meeting his political downfall. Each time, they were disappointed.This year, liberal hopes have sprung anew, with federal and state prosecutors bringing 91 felony charges against Mr. Trump in four criminal cases.Then, on Tuesday, came what appeared to be an out-of-the-blue act of deliverance from Denver. Colorado’s top court ruled that Mr. Trump should be disqualified from holding office on the grounds that he incited an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, a decision that is likely to end up at the U.S. Supreme Court.Once again, Democrats find themselves looking toward American institutions to stop Mr. Trump, whom they view as a mortal threat to democracy. For many, it may be more pleasant to think about a judicial endgame that stops Mr. Trump than envisioning the slog of next year’s likely rematch against President Biden.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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      in Elections

      Biden Says It’s ‘Self-Evident’ That Trump Supported an Insurrection

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      But President Biden said the courts must decide if former President Donald J. Trump should be on the ballot in 2024.President Biden said on Wednesday that it was “self-evident” that former President Donald J. Trump had supported an insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, but that the courts would decide whether he should be on the ballot in 2024.The president was responding to a reporter’s question about the Colorado Supreme Court decision on Tuesday that said that Mr. Trump was disqualified from being on the 2024 ballot in the state’s Republican primary because he was part of an insurrection.“Not going to comment on it,” Mr. Biden said after landing in Milwaukee for a speech to the Wisconsin Black Chamber of Commerce.And then he did.“It’s self-evident. You saw it all,” Mr. Biden said, adding that it would be up to the court to decide whether Mr. Trump was in violation of the 14th Amendment, which says that acts of insurrection can disqualify someone from office.“But he certainly supported an insurrection,” Mr. Biden said. “No question about it. None. Zero.”Mr. Biden typically steers clear of talking about Mr. Trump’s legal culpability or any of the federal charges pending against him.Mr. Trump has denied that he incited the Jan. 6 riot. His campaign said it would appeal Tuesday’s decision, which applies only to Colorado, to the U.S. Supreme Court. But the court could end up answering the question for all 50 states.Mr. Trump has been the Republican front-runner for the nomination for months, despite the long list of criminal charges he faces in multiple investigations.On Wednesday, Mr. Trump called the indictments against him “political” and “fake.”The Supreme Court recently agreed to hear a case that could complicate and delay the election interference case against him in Washington. More