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    Nikki Haley gana las primarias de Washington y corta la racha de Trump

    La candidata obtuvo el 63 por ciento frente al 33 por ciento de Donald Trump, convirtiéndose en la primera mujer en ganar unas primarias presidenciales republicanas.El domingo, Nikki Haley ganó las primarias republicanas en Washington, D. C., registrando su primera victoria tras una serie de derrotas ante el expresidente Donald Trump, quien respondió amargamente en las redes sociales, diciendo que había evitado a propósito la contienda “porque es el ‘pantano’”.Haley obtuvo alrededor del 63 por ciento de los votos frente al 33 por ciento de Trump, según The Associated Press, asegurándose los 19 delegados disponibles y convirtiéndose en la primera mujer que gana unas primarias presidenciales republicanas. Sin embargo, Trump sigue bien posicionado para asegurarse la nominación este mes.La contienda en Washington fue pequeña: poco más de 2000 republicanos votaron en la ciudad abrumadoramente demócrata, un gran contraste en comparación con los 110.000 en Iowa, 325.000 en Nuevo Hampshire y 757.000 en Carolina del Sur.Haley pareció reconocer esto en una publicación en la red social X. “¡Gracias, D. C.!”, escribió. “Luchamos por cada centímetro”.Pero Trump no podía dejar pasar ese centímetro. En su sitio de redes sociales, afirmó falsamente que Haley había “gastado todo su tiempo, dinero y esfuerzo allí”. Nunca utilizó su nombre, y se refirió a ella repetidamente con su despectivo apodo de “cabeza de chorlito”.Haley trató de jugar con el simbolismo de Washington —que no es precisamente el lugar favorito de los republicanos— a su favor, escribiendo: “Los republicanos más cercanos a la disfunción de Washington saben que Donald Trump no ha traído más que caos y división en los últimos ocho años”.Karoline Leavitt, portavoz de Trump, dijo en un comunicado que Haley “acaba de ser coronada ‘reina del pantano’ por los grupos de presión y los expertos de D. C. que buscan proteger el fracasado statu quo”.La contienda se centrará ahora en los 15 estados que celebrarán elecciones republicanas el Supermartes, el 5 de marzo. Aunque no es matemáticamente posible que Trump consiga la nominación todavía, podría acercarse mucho con una buena actuación en el Supermartes y posicionarse para lograrlo en las próximas dos semanas.Maggie Astor cubre política para The New York Times, enfocándose en noticias de última hora, legislaciones, campañas y cómo los grupos subrepresentados o marginados se ven afectados por los sistemas políticos. Más de Maggie Astor More

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    These Democrats Love Biden and Think the Rest of America Has Lost Its Mind

    Andrea Russell is a fixture on Earp Street, the quiet strip of rowhouses in South Philadelphia where she has lived for 45 years. In the afternoons, neighbors come and go from her living room as her 16-year-old cat, George, sits perched above a television that is usually tuned to cable news.Ms. Russell, a 77-year-old retired legal secretary, thinks President Biden would fit right in. “He’d come on by Earp Street,” she said. “I could picture going up to him and saying, ‘Hi, Joe.’ I can see him here.” She identifies with him, she said, and admires his integrity and his record. She also loves his eyes.Her friend, Kathy Staller, also 77, said she was as eager to vote for Mr. Biden as she was for Barack Obama in 2008. “I am excited,” she said. “I hope more people feel the way I do.”Ms. Russell and Ms. Staller are ardent, unreserved supporters of Mr. Biden — part of a small but dedicated group of Democratic voters who think that he is not merely the party’s only option against Donald J. Trump but, in fact, a great, transformative president who clearly deserves another four years in office.They occupy a lonely position in American politics.Andrea Russell, 77, and her sixteen-year-old cat George, are fixtures of a quiet neighborhood in South Philadelphia. Ms. Russell is a committed supporter of President Biden. Mr. Biden, 81, has never inspired the kind of excitement that Mr. Obama did, and he is not a movement candidate, in contrast to his likely 2024 rival, Mr. Trump, who is 77. Historically, he has been far more skilled at connecting one to one on the campaign trail than energizing crowds with soaring oratory.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    ‘Fix the Damn Roads’: How Democrats in Purple and Red States Win

    When Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania got an emergency call about I-95 last June, his first thought turned to semantics. “When you say ‘collapse,’ do you really mean collapse?” he recalled wondering. Highways don’t typically do that, but then tractor-trailers don’t typically flip over and catch fire, which had happened on an elevated section of the road in Philadelphia.Shapiro’s second, third and fourth thoughts were that he and other government officials needed to do the fastest repair imaginable.“My job was: Every time someone said, ‘Give me a few days, and I’ll get back to you,’ to say, ‘OK, you’ve got 30 minutes,’” he told me recently. He knew how disruptive and costly the road’s closure would be and how frustrated Pennsylvanians would get.But he knew something else, too: that if you’re trying to impress a broad range of voters, including those who aren’t predisposed to like you, you’re best served not by joining the culture wars or indulging in political gamesmanship but by addressing tangible, measurable problems.In less than two weeks, the road reopened.Today, Shapiro enjoys approval ratings markedly higher than other Pennsylvania Democrats’ and President Biden’s. He belongs to an intriguing breed of enterprising Democratic governors who’ve had success where it’s by no means guaranteed, assembled a diverse coalition of supporters and are models of a winning approach for Democrats everywhere. Just look at the fact that when Shapiro was elected in 2022, it was with a much higher percentage of votes than Biden received from Pennsylvanians two years earlier. Shapiro won with support among rural voters that significantly exceeded other Democrats’ and with the backing of 14 percent of Donald Trump’s voters, according to a CNN exit poll that November.Biden’s fate this November, Democratic control of Congress and the party’s future beyond 2024 could turn, in part, on heeding Shapiro’s and like-minded Democratic leaders’ lessons about reclaiming the sorts of voters the party has lost.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Makes Baseless Claims About Immigration and Voter Fraud

    Fresh off his trip to the southern border earlier this week, former President Donald J. Trump on Saturday baselessly suggested that President Biden had “smuggled” violent anti-American forces across the border.At a pair of rallies in North Carolina and Virginia, Mr. Trump — who has been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States as part of the 91 felony counts he currently faces in four separate criminal trials — broadly and without evidence asserted that Mr. Biden’s border policy amounted to a “conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America.”Mr. Trump has previously suggested without evidence that Democrats were encouraging migrants to cross the border illegally in order to register them to vote. On Saturday, he told crowds in Greensboro, N.C., and Richmond, Va., that he believed Mr. Biden was “giving aid and comfort” to America’s foreign enemies.He went on to frame this year’s election as a question of “whether the foreign armies Joe Biden has smuggled across our border will be allowed to stay or whether they will be told to get the hell out of here and go back home.”Mr. Trump has frequently blamed the surge of migrants at the border on Mr. Biden and Democrats, who he claims are too lenient on those who cross illegally. But there is no evidence to support the claim that Mr. Biden has trafficked migrants across the border.Nor is there evidence to suggest that Democrats have been encouraging the surge of migrants at the border in order to register them illegally to vote, one of many claims that Mr. Trump has made as he has promoted widespread and frequently debunked assertions of voter fraud in the 2020 election.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Trump Dominates Michigan G.O.P. Convention Amid Party Turmoil

    The former president won all 39 delegates against Nikki Haley during the caucus-style event in Grand Rapids.Former President Donald J. Trump capped off a clean sweep of Republican delegates in Michigan on Saturday during a raucous convention, which further exposed a deep fissure in the state party that threatens to fester in one of the most important battleground states.Mr. Trump, the Republican front-runner, amassed at least 90 percent of the vote in all but one of the state’s 13 congressional districts against former Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina, who was ambassador to the United Nations under Mr. Trump.A simple majority was needed in each district to win its share of delegates at the caucus-style event, giving Mr. Trump 39, to go along with the 12 that he won in Michigan’s primary, which was held on Tuesday. Ms. Haley emerged from that contest with four delegates.Mr. Trump’s dominance earlier in the week left little doubt about the outcome of the convention on Saturday at the Amway Grand Plaza in Grand Rapids, Mich.A check-in table at the convention in Grand Rapids. An estimated 200 Republican stalwarts were denied credentials during the convention.Brittany Greeson for The New York TimesBut a protracted fight over the state party’s rightful leader spilled over into the proceedings, where an estimated 200 Republican stalwarts from about 20 of Michigan’s 83 counties were denied credentials. Two other groups boycotted the event and held breakaway conventions, one more than 100 miles to the north in Houghton Lake, Mich., and another more than 50 miles southeast in Battle Creek, Mich.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    For Democrats Pining for an Alternative, Biden Team Has a Message: Get Over It

    When it comes down to it, a lot of Democrats wish President Biden were not running this fall. Only 28 percent of Democrats in a new survey by The New York Times and Siena College expressed enthusiasm about his candidacy and 38 percent said flatly that Mr. Biden should not be their nominee.But even as many Democrats both in Washington and around the country quietly pine for someone else to take on former President Donald J. Trump, who leads nationwide in the poll by 5 percentage points, no one who matters seems willing to tell that to Mr. Biden himself. Or if they are, he does not appear to be listening.Surrounded by a loyal and devoted inner circle, Mr. Biden has given no indication that he would consider stepping aside to let someone else lead the party. Indeed, he and the people close to him bristle at the notion. For all the hand-wringing, the president’s advisers note, no serious challenge has emerged and Mr. Biden has dominated the early Democratic primaries even more decisively than Mr. Trump has won his own party’s nominating contests.The Biden team views the very question as absurd. The president in their view has an impressive record of accomplishment to run on. There is no obvious alternative. It is far too late in the cycle to bow out without considerable disruption. If he were ever to have opted against a second term, it would have been a year ago when there would have been time for a successor to emerge. And other than someone with Biden in their name, it is hard to imagine who would have enough influence to even broach the idea with him, much less sway him.“There is no council of elders and I’m not sure if there was that an incumbent president, no matter who it was, would listen to them,” said David Plouffe, the architect of President Barack Obama’s campaigns and one of the strategists who helped him pick Mr. Biden as his vice-presidential running mate in 2008. “He thinks, ‘Hey, I won and I beat the guy who’s going to run against me and I can do it again.’”Members of Mr. Biden’s team insist they feel little sense of concern. The president’s closest aides push back in exasperation against those questioning his decision to run again and dismiss polls as meaningless this far before the vote. They argue that doubters constantly underestimate Mr. Biden and that Democrats have won or outperformed expectations in 2018, 2020, 2022, 2023 and even a special House election this year.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    My Joe Biden Fantasy

    I slipped away from this nightmarish election campaign into a delicious dream the other evening. I dreamed that, when Joe Biden gets up to reset his beleaguered presidency at the State of the Union address, he gives this astonishing speech:Mr. Speaker. Man, Mike Johnson was a nobody just weeks ago — now he’s Neville Chamberlain. Madam Vice President. Oy.Our first lady — you hottie! And our second gentleman. Members of Congress, leaders of our military, justices of the Supreme Court. And you, my fellow Americans.My report is this: The state of my mental competency is strong. And the union’s OK, too.You think I’m forgetful? Take a look at the other guy — he can’t even remember who Nancy Pelosi is, and that gal is the best speaker in United States history! You know what I remember? I remember how to lift people up, not tear them down and pit them against one another. I remember how to tell the truth when my lips move.I may be 81, but it’s not about your chronological age. It’s about how old your ideas are. Donald Trump wants to yank us back on women’s rights, the environment, mail-in voting — actually, all voting. He’s undermining NATO, the strongest alliance ever. I’m trying to build a high-speed train from Vegas to L.A., baby!I remember very well that, three years ago, our economy was reeling. Our administration has created nearly 15 million jobs and helped fund 46,000 infrastructure projects. Unemployment has been under 4 percent, and the inflation rate has gone down.My boy Hunter made mincemeat out of the House Republicans. His Irish was up, and he told those clowns there was no corruption on my part. I see you down there, Matt Gaetz, you lying, dog-faced pony soldier! When you tried to quiz Hunter about his drug use, he made quick work of you. Pot calling kettle! How could you give Hunter a hard time when you’re under investigation by the House Ethics Committee for sexual misconduct and using illicit drugs? Lots of luck with that, man!We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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    Adam Schiff Is Suddenly a Democratic Front Runner in California

    “I have to go get a photo of Adam!”A young woman in dark glasses, a tan trench coat and a lavender bucket hat darts into the street and runs after the white Porsche convertible in which Representative Adam Schiff and his wife are slowly being driven through Chinatown as part of the Lunar New Year’s parade in Los Angeles. Planting herself several feet in front of the car, the woman snaps some pics and then calls out to the passing House member, “Thank you for all that you do!”As she heads back toward her friends, I try to stop her, asking why she is a fan of Mr. Schiff, who is running for the Senate to succeed Dianne Feinstein, who died in office last September at age 90. The woman keeps moving but gushes, with a hint of perplexity suggesting I’m an idiot for having to ask: “Everybody loves him! My mother-in-law in Madison, Wisconsin, loves him! He’s done so much!”Jake Michaels for The New York TimesAnd with that, she melts back into the crowd, not bothering to elaborate on what it is that Mr. Schiff has done. Not that she needs to. Around his home state — and beyond — the 12-term Democrat has achieved bona fide celebrity status thanks to his emergence as a prime antagonist of Donald Trump.As the House member who spearheaded Mr. Trump’s first impeachment, who played a key role in the Jan. 6 select committee and who has served as a top Trump critic on cable news, Mr. Schiff has been vilified across the MAGAverse. He has earned no fewer than three puerile nicknames from the former president: Pencil Neck, Liddle’ Adam Schiff and, my favorite, Shifty Schiff. More seriously, House Republicans booted him from the intelligence committee early last year and later censured him for his role in the Russia investigation, claiming he advanced politically motivated lies about Mr. Trump that endangered national security. All this, in turn, has made Mr. Schiff a hero to the anti-Trump masses.At multiple points along the parade route, in fact, people yell their gratitude and encouragement. “Keep it up!” urges Chris (first name only!), a tour guide visiting from Tampa, raising a fist in salute.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More