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      Trump Kicks Off Swing in Iowa, Trying to Lock In Caucus Support

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      A Trump campaign event on Sunday was part of an effort by the former president to increase his presence in Iowa and to shut out his rivals in January’s caucuses.By the time the doors opened Sunday morning, the line to enter former President Donald J. Trump’s caucus organizing event in Ottumwa, Iowa, snaked down the sidewalk and around the parking lot.The hundreds of people who stood outside an event center in this small city, sweating through their “Make America Great Again” hats and their mug shot T-shirts, were happy to be here — the wait and the weather, near 90 degrees, be damned.“Hey, I’ve got Newsmax,” a volunteer in a Trump 2024 shirt called out, pointing to a camera apparently from the conservative cable network. “How about we start a ‘Let’s Go Brandon’?” he suggested, referring to a chant understood to be code for an insult to President Biden.From their perches on the sidewalk or nearby grassy knolls, Mr. Trump’s supporters obliged.Onstage later, Mr. Trump characterized his political opponents as “very bad people” and said that Republicans were generally nicer.“But please don’t be nice,” Mr. Trump told a crowd of well over 1,000 people who filled every available seat and packed a hall at the Bridge View Center. “Don’t be nice, because if we don’t win this election, we’re not going to have a country anymore.”Sunday’s “commit to caucus” event was part of the Trump campaign’s push that began last month to ensure that the former president’s foothold on the Republican Party translates to a strong showing at the Iowa caucuses in January. Such a victory could more definitively shut out his rivals and clear a path to the nomination.This pocket of southeastern Iowa, Wapello County, is of particular significance to his campaign. Democrats had won it in 10 straight presidential elections until Mr. Trump flipped the county in 2016 and held onto his advantage four years later.Even after his loss in 2020 — or maybe because of it — Mr. Trump has retained his appeal here. In remarks from the stage, Jeff Kaufmann, chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa, celebrated Ottumwa as “a place that used to be blue, and now you’re dark red, like the rest of Iowa.”Robert LaPoint, 61, said that he was among those swayed to reconsider past support for the Democratic Party. Though he had long identified as a Democrat, he said, he began to feel that the party had drifted too far left on issues like abortion. As of four years ago, he said, he had no party affiliation at all.It was not just the party that had changed, he added. In 2012, when Mr. LaPoint was still a Democrat, he met Mr. Biden, who visited Ottumwa while campaigning as former President Barack Obama’s running mate.“The Joe Biden we have now is not the Joe Biden we had then,” he said, pointing to Mr. Biden’s values and alluding to some verbal and physical stumbles that Republicans have suggested made Mr. Biden unfit for office.Mr. Trump criticized Mr. Biden extensively in his remarks, which lasted about an hour and 15 minutes. But he also reserved some time to criticize his Republican rivals, even as he holds a commanding lead over them in national and Iowa polls.As he often does, Mr. Trump railed against Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who generally polls behind Mr. Trump and has been viewed as the former president’s chief rival.Mr. Trump also attacked Nikki Haley, whom he once appointed ambassador to the United Nations, and who has built momentum after breakout performances at the two Republican debates. “I call her birdbrain,” Mr. Trump said.Mr. DeSantis, Ms. Haley and other challengers are banking on the state’s tradition of retail politicking, with smaller gatherings across the state. Mr. Trump’s schedule in the state has been lighter. But he draws sizably larger — and significantly more devoted — audiences.When he appears in Iowa, Mr. Trump is quick to tailor his national messaging to the state’s concerns and to frame a victory in the caucuses — and eventually the general election — as a dire necessity for a state in which he is hugely popular.Iowa is a major producer of ethanol, and Mr. Trump told the crowd that if Mr. Biden were to win again in 2024, “gas-powered cars will be gone, Iowa ethanol will be totally destroyed, and the economy of this state will be devastated.”Mr. Trump also cast himself as a defender of Iowa’s farmers, later meeting with a group of them.Though Mr. Trump again denounced the criminal indictments against him, he did not explicitly mention the civil trial set to begin on Monday in the New York attorney general’s case accusing the former president and his family business of fraud. Mr. Trump’s campaign sent out fund-raising appeals this weekend referring to the trial. More

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      The Climate Fight Will Be Won in the Appliance Aisle

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      More than a year after its passage, much about President Biden’s climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, is working.America is putting in more solar panels than ever before, with installations expected to be up 52 percent compared with last year. The law has helped lock in America’s transition to electric vehicles. Companies have announced more than $60 billion in E.V. manufacturing investments since the I.R.A. passed, and Hyundai is rushing to finish its new E.V. factory in Georgia because the law’s incentives are so good. Across the country, investment in all forms of clean-energy manufacturing has ramped up, with spending this spring five times the level of two years ago, according to a new tracker from M.I.T. and the Rhodium Group, a research firm.The law is supposed to do more than transform the economy, though. It’s also supposed to change how and even where Americans live. The I.R.A. contains nearly $9 billion in rebates meant to help people upgrade and decarbonize their homes — for example, install an induction stove, a heat pump or a new electrical or insulation system. Since the climate law passed last year, Mr. Biden and Democrats in Congress have hyped the savings on energy that these policies will bring to consumers; that is, after all, the inflation that the law is meant to be reducing.But I have grown worried about these efforts — and about the next phase of the I.R.A.’s implementation more broadly. The building sector accounts for about 13 percent of America’s climate pollution, so the success of these programs is essential to the country’s decarbonization efforts. Yet more important, the execution of these programs poses a political risk for the Biden administration. These rebate and tax credit programs are some of the law’s most visible provisions. Other than the law’s electric vehicle subsidies, these home-focused policies will be most Americans’ best opportunity to get I.R.A. money in their pockets.If the programs fail, they could seriously mar the I.R.A.’s public image. And right now, they are faltering.Perhaps the biggest problem is inherent to their design. The most successful federal programs are simple, straightforward and easy to use. Think of the U.S. Postal Service sending free at-home Covid tests to all Americans or the relative ease of signing up for and receiving Social Security benefits. These new home-upgrade programs, meanwhile, seem likely to be especially persnickety, complicated and onerous for many Americans.That’s because, first, there are a lot of programs in play. Although the I.R.A. streamlined some of the most important existing climate tax credits (for example, for greening the grid), it included four home-focused programs. Two of these programs are tax credits meant to give Americans a tax discount when they install a new rooftop solar system, a geothermal-powered heater, a heat pump or another technology that reduces demand for carbon-emitting fossil fuels. Unlike other tax credits in the law, these programs have no income cap, so they can be used by wealthy Americans who can presumably afford to pay upfront to install residential equipment like a water heater. But like other new tax credits in the law, they require Americans to have some federal tax liability in the first place. If you owe nothing on your taxes, then you can’t get a discount.These credits are likely to be generous in aggregate, but in some cases they will be too small to spur a serious change of behavior. Installing a whole-home heat-pump system, for instance, can cost tens of thousands of dollars, but the I.R.A.’s new tax credit will cover only $2,000 of that in one calendar year.That’s when another set of programs is supposed to come in. The I.R.A. introduced a pair of rebate programs meant to help working- and middle-class Americans afford to upgrade appliances and other features of their homes. These two programs, known as HOMES and HEEHRA, are important. When it’s finally put in place, HEEHRA will lower the cost of heat pumps and other climate-friendly appliances at the point of sale, making them more affordable to consumers, including those who are not even aware of the policy. More than perhaps any other programs in the law, these rebates are meant to allow low-income Americans to reduce their monthly energy costs. And because they involve direct cash grants, using the rebates will not require oweing any taxes to the federal government. That is huge for retirees and Social Security recipients, many of whom have no earned income and little to no federal tax liability.Regardless of how consumers are reimbursed, the programs are exceedingly — perhaps even fatally — complicated. The reason they have yet to take effect is that although these programs will be overseen by the Department of Energy, they will be administered separately by each state’s energy office. The department is still finalizing the last few rules that will govern how these programs work. When it finishes that process, then states will apply for their share of the money. Only then — after states receive their funding and set up their programs — will they be able to start disbursing it to their residents.So far, very few state offices have received any funds from the programs — not even the preliminary funds meant to help them hire more staff members and manage administration costs. This could directly hurt the programs’ chances of success in the next year. State energy offices employ anywhere from a handful of people to more than 100, and they have now been tasked with overseeing complicated, high-stakes federal programs.The experts and business leaders I’ve talked to think that these problems will push any serious efforts to carry out the programs well into next year. Montana has said that it doesn’t expect to make rebates available until the first half of 2024. Georgia’s energy office recently estimated that rebates would become available by Sept. 30, 2024, at the latest — barely a month before the presidential election.Even then, major questions remain about how the programs will work. Democratic lawmakers have called on the Energy Department to consider allowing the rebates to be used retroactively — meaning that someone who bought, say, a heat pump in late 2022 could get free money for it under the law. But that would sharply increase the program’s complexity, and it would more quickly deplete the limited funds allocated to the rebates. The programs draw from fixed pools of funding — about $250 million per state — and when that money runs out at the state level, the rebates will lapse in most cases.This is not the only place where the I.R.A.’s implementation is mired in confusion. The initial rules of the home energy rebates have left state officials unsure of whether they can use someone’s eligibility for other social welfare programs, such as food stamps, to gauge whether they qualify for a rebate. (The Energy Department has published guidelines about this, but they are not comprehensive.) That may force states to set up expensive processes that will duplicate work that’s already been done and make it even more burdensome for people to use these programs. It’s also unclear whether households can use several Energy Department programs at once — such as the new HOMES rebates and the longstanding weatherization-assistance program — to reduce the cost of a major project.Unless the Biden administration acts now, these consumer-facing programs could be a big mess by next fall. They will have confusing criteria, work differently in each state and may require applicants to go through time-sucking paperwork before receiving any funds. They will not showcase the nimble, modern government, fighting for working people, that Mr. Biden hopes to sell to voters.The I.R.A. is going to change people’s lives — I have little doubt of that. But only eventually. And for the next year, many of the law’s benefits for average Americans will remain largely theoretical. The M.I.T. and Rhodium tracker says that of the $137 billion in announced clean-energy investment, only $37 billion — just 27 percent — has started to flow. There is a growing risk that as the presidential election arrives, the law’s most world-changing programs to stimulate clean electricity and E.V.s will have yet to show their impact, and its smaller programs will be mired in public operation headaches.There is recent precedent for such a failure. Although most Americans now approve of the Affordable Care Act, the law was blamed for Democrats’ losses in the 2010 midterms, and it remained desperately unpopular for much of the following decade. Even when Donald Trump was elected, most independents still disapproved of the law and wanted to see it rolled back. Only in 2017, when Republicans repeatedly tried to repeal the law, did popular opinion swing in its favor. It has remained popular ever since.The I.R.A., like the Affordable Care Act, aims for a higher purpose than being politically popular. But the law’s survival depends on its — and Mr. Biden’s — ability to win a literal popularity contest next year. Mr. Trump and other Republicans are already cultivating a hatred of the clean-energy transition among voters; failing consumer-facing rebate programs would be a gift to them. And if Mr. Trump wins next year, his team will have plenty of opportunities to undermine the I.R.A.’s emission-cutting policies, even without repealing the whole law.The aspirations of 30 years of climate policies ride on the I.R.A. If this one law is successful, it will open up other ways of making policy for the environment and economy; if it fails, then lawmakers will shy away from tackling climate change for years. The law’s home-rebate programs will not be large enough to fully decarbonize America’s millions of buildings. But if they are successful, then they will allow the creation of future policy that is.The I.R.A., I believe, is still on track to be a success. But voters won’t see the new E.V. factories that it’s building or the sparkling new manufacturing hubs. They will see what’s at Home Depot or in the back of their contractor’s pickup truck. And if people have to fill out 20 pages of paperwork just to save less money on a heat pump than they initially hoped for, that’s what they’ll always remember about the I.R.A.The climate fight might be waged in the streets. But it will be won in the appliance aisle.Robinson Meyer is a contributing Opinion writer and the founding executive editor of Heatmap, a media company focused on climate change.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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      One Reason the Trump Fever Won’t Break

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      The more I consider the challenge posed by Christian nationalism, the more I think most observers and critics are paying too much attention to the wrong group of Christian nationalists. We mainly think of Christian nationalism as a theology or at least as a philosophy. In reality, the Christian nationalist movement that actually matters is rooted in emotion and ostensibly divine revelation, and it’s that emotional and spiritual movement that so stubbornly clings to Donald Trump.Three related stories illustrate the challenge.First, Katherine Stewart wrote a disturbing report for The New Republic about the latest iteration of the ReAwaken America Tour, a radical right-wing road show sponsored by Charisma News, a Pentecostal Christian publication. The tour has attracted national attention, including in The Times, and features a collection of the far right’s most notorious conspiracy theorists and Christian populists.The rhetoric at these events, which often attract crowds of thousands, is unhinged. There, as Stewart reported, you’ll hear a pastor named Mark Burns declare, “This is a God nation, this is a Jesus nation, and you will never take my God and my gun out of this nation.” You’ll also hear him say, “I have come ready to declare war on Satan and every race-baiting Democrat that tries to destroy our way of life here in the United States of America.” You’ll hear the right-wing radio host Stew Peters call for “Nuremberg Trials 2.0” and death for Anthony Fauci and Hunter Biden. The same speaker taunted the Fulton County, Ga., prosecutor Fani Willis by shouting: “Big Fani. Big fat Fani. Big fat Black Fani Willis.”Then there’s Thursday’s report in The Times describing how an anti-Trump conservative group with close ties to the Club for Growth is finding that virtually nothing is shaking Trump voters’ confidence in Trump. As the group wrote in a memo to donors, “Every traditional postproduction ad attacking President Trump either backfired or produced no impact on his ballot support and favorability.” Even video evidence of Trump making “liberal” or “stupid” comments failed to shake supporters’ faith in him.And finally, we cannot forget the astounding finding of a HarrisX poll for The Deseret News, showing that more Republicans see Donald Trump as a “person of faith” than see openly religious figures like Mitt Romney, Tim Scott and Mike Pence, Trump’s own (very evangelical) vice president, that way. It’s an utterly inexplicable result, until you understand the nature of the connection between so many Christian voters and Donald Trump.In the immediate aftermath of the Jan. 6 insurrection, there was a tremendous surge of interest in Christian nationalism. Christian displays were common in the crowd at the Capitol. Rioters and protesters carried Christian flags, Christian banners and Bibles. They prayed openly, and a Dispatch reporter in the crowd told me that in the late afternoon Christian worship music was blaring from loudspeakers. I started to hear questions I’d never heard before: What is Christian nationalism and how is it different from patriotism?I’ve long thought that the best single answer to that question comes from a church history professor at Baylor named Thomas Kidd. In the days before Jan. 6, when apocalyptic Christian rhetoric about the 2020 election was building to a fever pitch, Kidd distinguished between intellectual or theological Christian nationalism and emotional Christian nationalism.The intellectual definition is contentious. There are differences, for example, among Catholic integralism, which specifically seeks to “integrate” Catholic religious authority with the state; Protestant theonomy, which “believes that civil law should follow the example of Israel’s civil and judicial laws under the Mosaic covenant”; and Pentecostalism’s Seven Mountain Mandate, which seeks to place every key political and cultural institution in the United States under Christian control.But walk into Christian MAGA America and mention any one of those terms, and you’re likely to be greeted with a blank look. “Actual Christian nationalism,” Kidd argues, “is more a visceral reaction than a rationally chosen stance.” He’s right. Essays and books about philosophy and theology are important for determining the ultimate health of the church, but on the ground or in the pews? They’re much less important than emotion, prophecy and spiritualism.Arguments about the proper role of virtue in the public square, for example, or arguments over the proper balance between order and liberty, are helpless in the face of prophecies, like the declarations from Christian “apostles” that Donald Trump is God’s appointed leader, destined to save the nation from destruction. Sometimes there’s no need for a prophet to deliver the message. Instead, Christians will claim that the Holy Spirit spoke to them directly. As one longtime friend told me, “David, I was with you on opposing Trump until the Holy Spirit told me that God had appointed him to lead.”Several weeks ago, I wrote about the “rage and joy” of MAGA America. Outsiders see the rage and hatred directed at them and miss that a key part of Trump’s appeal is the joy and fellowship that Trump supporters feel with each other. But there’s one last element that cements that bond with Trump: faith, including a burning sense of certainty that by supporting him, they are instruments of God’s divine plan.For this reason, I’ve started answering questions about Christian nationalism by saying it’s not serious, but it’s very dangerous. It’s not a serious position to argue that this diverse, secularizing country will shed liberal democracy for Catholic or Protestant religious rule. But it’s exceedingly dangerous and destabilizing when millions of citizens believe that the fate of the church is bound up in the person they believe is the once and future president of the United States.That’s why the Trump fever won’t break. That’s why even the most biblically based arguments against Trump fall on deaf ears. That’s why the very act of Christian opposition to Trump is often seen as a grave betrayal of Christ himself. In 2024, this nation will wrestle with Christian nationalism once again, but it won’t be the nationalism of ideas. It will be a nationalism rooted more in emotion and mysticism than theology. The fever may not break until the “prophecies” change, and that is a factor that is entirely out of our control.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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      Republicans’ Promises to Combat Fentanyl Fall Flat With Some Voters

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      The official toxicology report states that Andrea Cahill’s son died at 19 years old from an accidental fentanyl overdose. But more than three years after Tyler Cahill’s death in his childhood bedroom, she doesn’t believe that. It was a poisoning, she says, and there is no question about whom to blame: “the cartels.”Ms. Cahill believes the governments of Mexico and China should be punished for the drug’s flow into the United States. A political independent who nearly always votes for Republicans, she wants a president with relentless focus on the issue.“It does feel like maybe nobody cares,” she said.These days, Republican presidential candidates are working to convince people like Ms. Cahill that they share her urgency.Ron DeSantis talks about fentanyl in every stump speech, vowing to send the military into Mexico to target cartels. Nikki Haley has promised to send special operations forces across the border. Chris Christie has called for better access to treatment. Former President Donald J. Trump has offered few specific solutions but has tapped into victims’ families’ hunger to be seen: He likens deaths from the drug to wartime casualties.At Wednesday night’s debate, the candidates linked the crisis to immigration and foreign policy, and hammered home the toll.“We have had more fentanyl that have killed Americans than the Iraq, Vietnam and Afghanistan wars combined,” Ms. Haley noted.The promises are required of any politician wanting to appear in touch with New Hampshire, a state that can make or break presidential campaigns. As fentanyl has become one of the most urgent health crises in the country — it is now a leading cause of death for people under 45 — it has ravaged the small state. Last year, opioid overdose deaths hit a four-year high, though down slightly from their peak in 2017, according to state data. Most were from fentanyl.But truly connecting with voters — persuading them that help could be on the way — is proving difficult. In dozens of interviews with people on the front lines of the fight against fentanyl, a sense of abandonment is pervasive. Many said they believed the federal government did too little to stop the epidemic from happening and that it continues to do too little to try to bring it under control.The candidates’ talk of blockades and military intervention is met with cynicism and a deep distrust that their government can find solutions.“I don’t see it getting better if it’s Trump or Biden or whoever is going to step in,” said Shayne Bernier, 30, who fought opioid addiction years ago and is now helping to open a sober-living home in downtown Manchester, N.H. For more than a year, Mr. Bernier has patrolled parks and streets routinely, giving information about a city-funded detox program.Shayne Bernier fought opioid addiction years ago and now patrols the streets and parks of Manchester, N.H. He thinks politicians’ attention to the issue will be fleeting: “They’ll talk about it for an election, and then we’ll never hear from them again.”Mr. Bernier grew up in the city and has “Live Free or Die,” the official state motto, tattooed on his left bicep. He considers himself a conservative. He neither loves nor loathes Mr. Trump, though he understands how the former president appeals to the anger and frustration that courses through his friends.“They’ll talk about it for an election, and then we’ll never hear from them again,” he said of politicians’ promises to address the crisis.Five years ago, Mr. Trump traveled to New Hampshire and remarked how “unbelievable” it was that the state had a death rate from drugs double the national average. When he promised to secure the border “to keep the damn drugs out” the audience responded by chanting: “Build that wall!”The drugs never stopped coming in. The supply only increased, with heroin entirely eclipsed by fentanyl, its cheaper and deadlier synthetic cousin. The state is less of an outlier than it once was: In one recent public opinion poll, more than a quarter of American adults ranked opioids and fentanyl as the greatest threat to public health.To some extent, Mr. DeSantis has picked up where Mr. Trump left off. He promises to shoot drug traffickers “stone cold dead,” a vow consistently met with applause. He largely casts the problem as a symptom of a porous border, giving conservatives another reason to rail against illegal immigration.Tough talk about the Southern border brings some comfort to parents like Ms. Cahill. It’s unclear how her son got the drug that killed him. A video Tyler recorded and shared with a friend that night suggests he took what he believed to be Percocet to relieve pain from a recent tattoo, she says. His father found him dead the next morning.“I had no idea how deadly it could be, how immediate — you can’t call for help,” she said. She keeps fliers in her car that warn “there is no safe experience” using street drugs.But placing the blame on illegal border crossings is misleading. A vast majority of fentanyl in the United States enters through legal ports of entry, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration. Typically, U.S. citizens driving across the border smuggle in the drugs, stuffing them into trailers, trunks or vehicle linings. Keith Howard, who runs Hope for New Hampshire Recovery, a peer-support community group in Manchester, grimaces when he hears candidates talk about a border crackdown as a viable solution. Mental health support, well-paying jobs and long-term treatment programs are even more important, he said.“There is a need to escape from life for a lot of people right now,” Mr. Howard said. “The sense of alienation people have is much, much deeper than it was 10 or even five years ago.”Nikki Haley has promised to do more to target China’s funneling of chemicals used to create fentanyl.Chris Christie says politicians haven’t been honest with voters about solutions.When Mr. Christie, a former governor of New Jersey, visited Hope for New Hampshire Recovery earlier this year, he notably did not mention the border. He served as the chair for Mr. Trump’s special commission to combat the opioid crisis, but many of the recommendations in the 138-page report that the commission issued in 2017 went nowhere. Mr. Christie blamed the pandemic, but he also said the Trump administration did not focus enough on crafting specific policies and programs.Since then, he said, the crisis has worsened, and politicians haven’t been straight with voters about solutions.“It’s dishonest to lead people to believe that you can enforce your way out of this problem,” he said in an interview, adding that he would support sending National Guard troops to legal ports of entry to help Border Patrol agents intercept drugs. At the same time, he added: “I don’t want to fool the American people into thinking that if I send National Guard to the Southern border, that will solve the problem.” President Biden has focused on both expanding enforcement and improving treatment. In March, the Food and Drug Administration approved over-the-counter sales of Narcan, a nasal spray that reverses opioid overdoses. Mr. Biden has called for closer inspection of cargo and stronger penalties for those caught trafficking drugs. Recently, he criticized the Republican-controlled Congress for risking a federal shutdown, which would prevent billions allocated to the D.E.A., Department of Homeland Security and Border Patrol to address the crisis.Victoria Sullivan considers Mr. Biden’s approach a failure. A former Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire and political talk show host, Ms. Sullivan this year helped open a sober-living home for men in recovery.Ms. Sullivan calls her role “government cleanup,” as she tries to fill gaps left by local agencies. She is convinced the city’s drug policies are too permissive and drawing people from around the region to Manchester’s streets. (Roughly a quarter of people who are homeless in Manchester report that they are from the city.)Some advocates argue that Manchester’s permissive policies have drawn people from around the region to the city’s streets.Ms. Sullivan says the problem requires more aggressive interventions, accessible medical treatment, strong families and religious institutions. Her solutions hit at a contradiction in many Republicans’ views about the drug crisis: She is unabashed about her conservative, small government views, but she argues that agencies need to spend more money on rehabilitation programs.“The government has just failed at every level,” Ms. Sullivan said. “They encourage dependence but don’t do anything near enough to get anyone on their feet on their own.”Ms. Sullivan has voted for Mr. Trump in the past and still supports him. But she also been impressed by Ms. Haley, a former ambassador to the United Nations, who earlier this year hosted a discussion at Freedom House, the sober-living home Ms. Sullivan helped create. There, Ms. Haley promised to do more to target China’s funneling of chemicals used to create fentanyl brought into the United States.Victoria Sullivan, a former Republican state lawmaker in New Hampshire and political talk show host, said she wanted the government to spend more money on rehabilitation programs.Patrick Burns, 35, grew up in rural Maine, where he began pilfering his mother prescription opioids as a teenager. At 17, he enlisted in the Army and served for several years in Afghanistan.When he returned in 2013, nearly everyone he grew up with was battling an addiction of some kind. He moved to Manchester partly to be closer to a larger Veterans Affairs Medical Center, thinking he could get more help there. Instead, he ran into one bureaucratic hurdle after another and said he found fentanyl all around him.“We’re just a bunch of people who have been discarded,” said Patrick Burns, an Army veteran who struggled to get help with his addiction.Mr. Burns voted for Mr. Trump once before and could imagine doing so again. What he finds harder to imagine, he said, is that the government that sent him to war can find a way out of the morass he sees in Manchester.“People just don’t have a clue — it’s become such a problem,” Mr. Burns said. “Now rather than address it, they just kind of ignore it. They try to mitigate the effects, but there are not pre-emptive strikes at all. We’re just a bunch of people who have been discarded.”Ms. Cahill has tried to ensure that Tyler is remembered. She allowed his photograph to be displayed in the Washington headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration, and attended a rally at the state capitol earlier this year to raise awareness.That day, she stood with another mother in Concord, N.H., to pass out Narcan to anyone who walked by. When she offered it to two teenage boys, their father stepped in to intervene. “No thanks; they’re good kids,” she remembered him telling her, before shuffling them away.Ms. Cahill was taken aback.“That’s not the point,” she said, recalling the incident. “Tyler was a good kid. This stuff is out there whether we want to acknowledge it or not.”Nicholas Nehamas More

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      Robert Kennedy Jr. Hints Strongly at Third-Party Presidential Bid

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      The political scion, whose long-shot Democratic primary challenge has faltered, released a video teasing a third-party candidacy that would put Democrats on high alert.Robert F. Kennedy Jr. hinted strongly on Friday that he would run for president on a third-party ticket instead of continuing his long-shot Democratic primary challenge to President Biden, a move that would set off alarms among Democrats worried about its potential to cause chaos in November 2024.Mr. Kennedy, in a video released by his campaign, teased a “major announcement” in Philadelphia on Oct. 9, promising to speak about “a sea change in American politics” and dropping clues that he would be continuing his presidential campaign outside the Democratic Party.“How are we going to win against the established Washington interests?” Mr. Kennedy says in the video. “It’s not through playing the game by the corrupt rules that the corrupt powers and the vested interests have rigged to keep us all in their thrall. Instead, we’re going to have to rewrite the assumptions and change the habits of American politics.”“What I’ve come to understand after six months of campaigning: There is a path to victory,” he declares at another point, saying that the more he sees the inherent goodness of the American people, “the more the path to victory becomes visible.”Mr. Kennedy’s top aides declined to elaborate about his intentions. But his supporters have expressed frustration with the Democratic National Committee’s primary process, which has been geared toward backing Mr. Biden’s re-election bid.“It’s kind of obvious,” said Lincoln Chafee, the former Rhode Island governor and senator, who is backing Mr. Kennedy. “The primaries are so rigged, there’s no debates.”Mr. Kennedy, he added, “has to look at his options.”Democrats have watched Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy nervously since it began in April. They fear that any third-party candidacy could siphon off crucial votes from Mr. Biden, ultimately helping former President Donald J. Trump, the current favorite to be the Republican nominee.Mr. Kennedy, 69, an environmental lawyer and prominent purveyor of conspiracy theories whose family has symbolized Democratic politics for decades, has built a following among Silicon Valley tech executives, disaffected voters in both parties and skeptics of the medical and scientific establishments.After some polls in the late spring showed him with up to 20 percent of Democratic support, Mr. Kennedy’s fortunes fell as more attention was paid to his panoply of views on the coronavirus pandemic, immigration and vaccines that are well outside the party’s mainstream.By late summer, surveys showed Mr. Kennedy polling in the low single digits. With his campaign roiled by news coverage of recordings of bigoted remarks he made at a New York dinner, he no longer appeared to be a threat to Mr. Biden.In recent months, Mr. Kennedy has dropped hints about continuing his campaign as a third-party candidate. He met in July with the Libertarian Party chairwoman and suggested on a podcast that he could leave the Democratic Party.As the reality set in for Mr. Kennedy that Mr. Biden would not debate him, he began using his platform to become more critical of the party and its presidential election process.This month, he published an open letter to Jaime Harrison, the D.N.C. chairman, and party members pleading for accommodations.“The D.N.C. is not supposed to favor one candidate over another,” Mr. Kennedy wrote.The Biden campaign and its allies at the D.N.C. have summarily dismissed Mr. Kennedy’s candidacy. .The fact that some Republicans believe it would be advantageous to Mr. Trump if Mr. Kennedy embarks on a third-party run has raised questions about whether anyone in the former president’s world has encouraged it.But Mr. Kennedy has in recent months become far more popular with Republicans than he is with Democrats. His campaign in the Democratic primary has been supported by Republicans: David Sacks, a donor for Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, hosted a fund-raiser for him in June.While Democrats are nervous that any third-party options would hurt Mr. Biden, it’s not clear from whom Mr. Kennedy would draw more votes if he qualified for the ballot in key battleground states.Over the years, third-party candidacies have been a focus of Roger J. Stone Jr., Mr. Trump’s longest-serving political adviser.“I predict #RFK abandons the rigged Democrat nominating process and runs as an Independent,” Mr. Stone wrote on Sept. 24 on X, the website formerly known as Twitter.In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Stone said he had no involvement in Mr. Kennedy’s effort. “I’m supporting Donald Trump,” he said.Corey Lewandowski, an ally of Mr. Trump who served as his campaign manager during the 2016 election, wrote on X in response to an article about Mr. Kennedy’s possible move, “If true the race is over for @JoeBiden⁩!”Despite Mr. Kennedy’s earlier flirtation with the Libertarian Party, Brian McWilliams, a spokesman for the party, said there had been no recent conversations between Mr. Kennedy and its leadership.Placing himself on the ballot as a candidate of a newly established third party would be an onerous and expensive proposition for Mr. Kennedy, who would have to navigate ballot access laws in enough states to be a serious presidential candidate.Maggie Haberman More

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      Who Will Replace Dianne Feinstein in Her California Senate Seat?

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      The death of Senator Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat, immediately turns the spotlight to an intense, ongoing three-way battle to replace her, fraught with racial, political and generational tensions over one of the most coveted positions in California and national politics.It also puts new pressure on Gov. Gavin Newsom, who will chose someone to fill her term through the end of 2024. Mr. Newsom, whose profile has risen in national Democratic politics in recent weeks as he has traveled the country on behalf of President Biden’s re-election campaign, had come under fire for announcing he would not pick any of the declared candidates in filling any vacancy, so as not to elevate them and give them an advantage in the Democratic primary race.Mr. Newsom had originally promised to pick a Black woman to fill the position if it opened up, and many Democrats thought he would turn to Representative Barbara Lee, a progressive. But Mr. Newsom said he would pick a caretaker senator instead. “I don’t want to get involved in the primary,” he said on NBC’s “Meet the Press.”Ms. Lee denounced Mr. Newsom for that decision, calling it insulting.The other leading Democratic candidates in the primary race for Ms. Feinstein’s seat are Representative Adam Schiff, a high-profile member of the congressional committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol; Representative Katie Porter, a third-term California member of the House; and Ms. Lee.It remains to be seen if, after Ms. Feinstein’s death, any other candidates will jump into the race. However, Mr. Schiff, Ms. Lee and Ms. Porter are well-known figures in Democratic politics, and have for months been raising money and building support.It is unclear whom Mr. Newsom might pick to fill Ms. Feinstein’s seat for the remainder of her term. The names that have been discussed, since Ms. Feinstein said earlier this year that she would not run again, include Shirley Weber, the California secretary of state; Holly Mitchell, a Los Angeles county supervisor; and Angela Glover Blackwell, a civil rights lawyer in Oakland and the founder of PolicyLink, a research and advocacy nonprofit group.Mr. Newsom had originally made the pledge about a Black woman in response to the fact that there are no Black women serving in the Senate. The last one was Kamala Harris, a California Democrat who left the Senate to become Mr. Biden’s vice president.At that time, in January 2021, Mr. Newsom picked Alex Padilla, the California secretary of state, to replace her. Mr. Padilla became the first Latino from the state to serve in the Senate; he was elected last year to a full term. More

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      Meet the Republican Voters at the Heart of the G.O.P. Identity Crisis

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      Republican voters are looking to the presidential debate stage as they decide who should win the party primaries. And even though Donald Trump lost the 2020 election, his return to the top of the ticket feels all but inevitable. But at least one-third of Republican voters are left wondering why their party can’t quit this guy.The Opinion deputy editor Patrick Healy guides us through a recent focus group discussion with 13 longtime Republican voters who are desperate for their party to get over the Trump appeal, lest the G.O.P. risk losing their support in the 2024 election.Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Burazin/Getty ImagesThe 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.This Opinion Short was produced by Phoebe Lett. It was edited by Kaari Pitkin. Mixing by Carole Sabouraud. Original music by Efim Shapiro, Pat McCusker and Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Mary Marge Locker. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Special thanks to Alison Bruzek and Jillian Weinberger. More

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      Latino Republicans Call Debate a Missed Opportunity to Reach Voters

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      Republicans have sought to make inroads with the fast-growing slice of the electorate. But voters saw a swing and a miss on debate night.The Republican Party has been on a quest to make inroads with Hispanic voters, and the second presidential debate was tailored to delivering that message: The setting was California, where Latinos now make up the largest racial or ethnic demographic. The Spanish-language network Univision broadcast the event in Spanish, and Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a weekday prime-time newscast on a major network in the United States, was a moderator.But questions directly on Latino and immigrant communities tended to be overtaken by bickering and candidates taking swipes at one another on unrelated subjects. Only three candidates — former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey, former Vice President Mike Pence and Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina — referred directly to Latinos or Hispanics at all. And only Mr. Pence pitched his economic message specifically toward Hispanic voters.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, whose state has the third-largest Latino population, appeared to suggest there was no need for specific overtures to Hispanics or independents when he had won by such large margins in his home state, including in Miami-Dade County, a former Democratic stronghold.“I’m the only one up here who’s gotten in the big fights and has delivered big victories for the people of Florida,” Mr. DeSantis said. “And that’s what it’s all about.”In interviews, Latino voters and strategists called the debate a missed opportunity for Republicans: Few of the candidates spoke directly to or about Latinos or claimed any cultural affiliation or familiarity with them. The Republican field offered little in the way of economic plans to help workers or solutions to improve legal channels to immigration. The candidates doubled down on depictions of the nation’s southern border as chaotic and lawless.Mike Madrid, a longtime Latino Republican consultant in California, said the tough talk could draw in the support of blue-collar Latino Republicans who did not hold a college degree and in recent years have tended to vote more in line with white voters. But the debate was only further evidence that the party had abandoned attempts to broaden its reach beyond Latino Republicans already in its fold. Republicans are “getting more Latino voters not because of their best efforts, but in spite of them,” he said.Latinos are now projected to number about 34.5 million eligible voters, or an estimated 14.3 percent of the American electorate, according to a 2022 analysis by the Pew Research Center.Although Latino voters still overall lean Democratic, former President Donald J. Trump improved his performance with the demographic in 2020 nationwide, and in some areas like South Florida and South Texas even made sizable gains. Debate over what exactly drove his appeal continues.Some post-mortem analyses have found his opposition to city-led Covid pandemic restrictions that shut down workplaces and his administration’s promotion of low Latino unemployment rates and support for Latino businesses helped persuade Latino voters to his side, even when they disagreed with his violent and divisive approach to immigration.Historically, about a third of Latino voters have tended to vote for Republican presidential candidates. But Latino Republicans differ from non-Hispanic Republicans on guns and immigration: Fewer Hispanic Republicans believe protecting the right to own guns is more important than regulating who can own guns, and Hispanic Republicans are less likely to clamor for more border security measures, according to the Pew Research Center.At the debate on Wednesday, Ms. Calderón, who is Colombian and has gained prominence in Latin America for her incisive reporting on race and immigration, and the other moderators often turned to issues central to Latinos in the United States, including income inequality, gun violence and Black and Latino students’ low scores in math and reading.But on the stage, the candidates’ attention quickly turned elsewhere. Mr. DeSantis — the only candidate to provide a Spanish translation of his website — accused Washington of “shutting down the American dream,” an idea popular with Latino workers, but mostly pitched himself as a culture warrior.Ilia Calderón, the first Afro-Latina to anchor a major national news desk in the United States, was a moderator.Etienne Laurent/EPA, via ShutterstockIn response to a question on whether he would support a pathway to citizenship for 11 million undocumented people in the United States, Mr. Christie talked of the need for immigrant workers to fill vacant jobs. But in his central point, he pledged to increase the presence of troops and agents at the border with Mexico, calling for the issue to be treated as “the law enforcement problem it is.”Mr. Pence dodged Ms. Calderón when she pressed him on whether he would work with Congress to preserve the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, or DACA. The initiative, which remains in limbo in the courts, is temporarily protecting from deportation roughly 580,000 undocumented immigrants who have been able to show they were brought into the country as children, have no serious criminal history and work or go to school, among other criteria. About 91 percent of Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents and 54 percent of Republicans and Republican leaners favor a law that would provide DACA recipients permanent legal status. Although Mr. Pence described himself as the only candidate onstage who had tackled congressional reform before, he did not directly answer the question on DACA. Mostly, he used his responses to attack Vivek Ramaswamy and Mr. DeSantis before launching into a lengthy accounting of his track record on hard-line Trump policies.“The truth is, we need to fix a broken immigration system, and I will do that as well,” Mr. Pence said. “But first and foremost, a nation without borders is not a nation.”When asked how he would reach out to Latino voters, Mr. Scott highlighted his chief of staff, who he said was the only Hispanic female chief of staff in the Senate and someone he had hired “because she was the best, highest-qualified person we have.” But he, too, quickly turned to attacking his home-state rival, former Gov. Nikki Haley.The exchanges were a marked difference from the 2016 presidential debate when Senator Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush, the former Florida governor, defended speaking Spanish and personalized their experiences with immigration and the Latino community.Chuck Rocha, a Democratic strategist who helped run Senator Bernie Sanders’s presidential campaign last election cycle, said they also were different — and less effective — from those of Mr. Trump. Missing were the pledges “to bring jobs back to America, buy American and drain the swamp,” he added, messages that he said tended to resonate with Latinos and Latino men in particular.“Their campaigns have become such grievance politics that there is not a positive message that is radiating from anyone,” Mr. Rocha said. The shift could also hurt Republicans with a Latino community that skews young and tends to be aspirational, he argued.In South Texas, Sergio Sanchez, the former chairman of the Hidalgo County Republican Party, said he listened to the debate with dismay. He wanted to hear the candidates talk about pocketbook issues and energy policies. And he wanted them to stay on message and connect the dots for voters on why their economic policies were better than those under the Biden administration. Instead, he said, they spent more time swinging at one another.That was not good for Latinos or anyone else, he said. “They swung and missed,” he added. More