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      Inside the Heritage Foundation’s Plans for ‘Institutionalizing Trumpism’

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      Since taking over the Heritage Foundation in 2021, Kevin D. Roberts has been making his mark on an institution that came to prominence during the Reagan years and has long been seen as an incubator of conservative policy and thought. Roberts, who was not well known outside policy circles when he took over, has pushed the think tank away from its hawkish roots by arguing against funding the war in Ukraine, a turnabout that prompted some of Heritage’s policy analysts to leave. Now he’s looking ahead, to the 2024 election and beyond. Roberts told me that he views Heritage’s role today as “institutionalizing Trumpism.” This includes leading Project 2025, a transition blueprint that outlines a plan to consolidate power in the executive branch, dismantle federal agencies and recruit and vet government employees to free the next Republican president from a system that Roberts views as stacked against conservative power. The lesson of Trump’s first year in office, Roberts told me, is that “the Trump administration, with the best of intentions, simply got a slow start. And Heritage and our allies in Project 2025 believe that must never be repeated.”You’ve taken the Heritage Foundation, once a bastion of the Reagan doctrine of peace through strength, in a different direction. Under you, Heritage has vocally opposed recent aid packages to Ukraine. It has criticized the Biden administration for what you’ve said is a lack of transparency when it comes to how the money is being spent and how you believe those packages are impacting the administration’s domestic priorities. Can you explain some of your thinking on that pivot?Yeah, sure. But perhaps it would be helpful to start with my perception of those examples you mentioned relative to the Reagan principle of peace through strength. We believe that the manner in which the Ukraine aid packages have been put together, the manner in which they’ve been debated or really not debated in Congress, the manner in which they’ve not been analyzed, the manner in which there’s no transparency, the fact that there’s no strategy actually is a violation of the principle of peace through strength. So while much ink has been spilled about Heritage no longer believing in peace through strength, that’s not true. But I don’t want to dismiss the part of your question about the shift in the conservative movement toward more skepticism, if not restraint, in foreign policy, and I think a lot of that is prudent. Because what the American people are saying, conservatives in particular, but not exclusively conservatives, is why are we prioritizing any other place internationally above the problems we have in the United States?I hear you that there are a lot of problems at home to be solved, and they’re costly problems. But we had Russia invade a sovereign country on the doorstep of a democratic Europe. Does it not seem to you squarely within the U.S. national interest to stop Russian aggression?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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      How Nikki Haley’s Lean Years Led Her Into an Ethical Thicket

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      From her earliest days in South Carolina politics, Ms. Haley’s public service paid personal financial dividends.Nikki Haley had been serving in the South Carolina legislature for less than two years when she applied for a job in late 2006 as an accounting clerk at Wilbur Smith Associates, an engineering and design firm with state contracts.She needed work. Her parents’ clothing business, where she and her husband, Michael Haley, had both worked, was winding down. Ms. Haley was earning a salary of just $22,000 as a part-time state legislator. And her husband’s own enterprise, involving businesses swapping goods and services, was losing money.Wilbur Smith executives regarded Ms. Haley as overqualified for the accounting job. But because of her wide-ranging network, they would later say, they put Ms. Haley on a retainer, asking her to scout out potential new business. She never found any, a top executive later said. Over the next two years, the firm paid her $48,000 for a job the executive described as “a passive position.”That contract, and a subsequent, much more lucrative one as a fund-raiser for a prominent hospital in her home county, allowed Ms. Haley to triple her income in just three years. But they also led her into an ethical gray area that tarnished her first term as South Carolina’s governor.Ms. Haley did not disclose her Wilbur Smith contract until 2010, keeping it secret for more than three years. She also pushed for the hospital’s top priority — a new heart-surgery center — at the same time she was on its payroll. And Ms. Haley raised money for the hospital’s charitable foundation from lobbyists and businesses who may have had reason to curry favor with her.The donations, one lobbyist wrote, were a way of “sucking up” to a rising political player.The blurry line between Ms. Haley’s personal and public interests became the subject of a State House ethics investigation in 2012. The Republican-led committee concluded that Ms. Haley, by then the governor, had not violated any state ethics rules. But ethics experts and even some of her past supporters say the outcome was more an indictment of the lax rules and cozy ties between lawmakers and special interests than a vindication of her actions.“Was Nikki Haley acting unethically? Maybe,” said Scott English, who was chief of staff to former Gov. Mark Sanford, a Republican and Ms. Haley’s predecessor. “Was she acting unethically according to the jungle rules of South Carolina politics at the time? Not at all.”Ms. Haley’s early ethics controversy is a far cry from the legal morass entangling her top rival for the Republican nomination, former President Donald J. Trump, who faces 91 criminal charges, including obstruction of justice and conspiracy to defraud the United States. Mr. Trump is also facing civil penalties for a yearslong fraud scheme involving his real estate business.Yet Ms. Haley’s actions broke ethical norms, according to Kedric Payne, who directs the ethics program for the Campaign Legal Center, a nonpartisan watchdog group. In most states, at least some of her conduct would have been out of bounds, he said, because it created the appearance of a conflict of interest.A core principle of most state ethics laws is that “you cannot have outside employment that could in any way conflict with your official duties,” Mr. Payne said.In South Carolina, the ethics investigation of Ms. Haley undermined her image as a broom-sweeping crusader working to shake up the political establishment — a persona she is still cultivating. Campaigning in New Hampshire on Saturday, Ms. Haley dismissed her lack of endorsements from politicians in her home state and in Washington as a result of her stances on transparency and ethics.“I’ve called elected officials out because accountability matters,” she said.The questions about Ms. Haley’s potential conflicts revealed how her work in politics had produced financial dividends almost from the beginning of her career in public life.In recent years, Ms. Haley has made millions from consulting fees, paid speeches, stock and seats on corporate boards. In the year leading up to her presidential bid, she made around $2.5 million in income on speaking engagements alone, according to her financial disclosures.This account of Ms. Haley’s early ethics troubles is drawn from testimony, filings and exhibits released by the South Carolina House in response to a public information request from The New York Times, as well as other documents, interviews and media accounts.Ms. Haley’s presidential campaign did not respond to questions about the controversy. She said at the time that she had followed the existing rules and cast the episode as an attempt by her political enemies to keep her from fighting South Carolina’s pay-to-play culture.“I don’t think I did anything wrong,” she told the ethics committee in 2012.Yet when she campaigned for a second term as governor, Ms. Haley worked to rehabilitate her image and ran on a promise to reform the state’s ethics rules. Once re-elected, she signed a law that outlawed secret sources of income like her Wilbur Smith contract.The lean yearsIn 2010, prodded by her opponent in her first run for governor, Ms. Haley disclosed six years of her joint tax returns with her husband, Michael Haley. They showed a stretch of modest earnings, thousands of dollars in penalties and interest for late tax payments, and close to $21,000 in business losses from Mr. Haley’s brief business venture, according to published accounts and summaries of the tax returns given to House ethics committee investigators.(Although Ms. Haley has repeatedly said that candidates for president should release their tax returns, she has not released her own, nor have her opponents in the Republican primary race.)Michael and Nikki Haley in New York in 2012. In 2010, she released six years of joint income tax returns showing a stretch of modest earnings.Uli Seit for The New York TimesAs young adults, both Ms. Haley and her husband had worked for her parents’ clothing business, Exotica International, she as the firm’s chief financial officer, he in charge of men’s wear. But the Haleys’ income from the store petered out in 2006, two years before it closed. The couple, who then were both in their mid-30s, had two children. Ms. Haley’s legislative job was only a part-time position. Mr. Haley joined the South Carolina National Guard that fall, but initially earned little.The Wilbur Smith contract helped fill in the financial gaps. The tax documents suggest that the engineering firm’s retainer amounted to nearly half of her family’s income of $64,000 in 2007.A top executive at the firm testified that he could recall only one or two meetings with Ms. Haley and that they never discussed state contracts. Ms. Haley said a House lawyer had advised her that she was not required to report the payments. She recused herself from a vote on one of the firm’s projects out of an abundance of caution, but voted on a second bill that canceled the project. She testified she didn’t see a conflict in that vote.Wilbur Smith ended her retainer in late 2008.Wearing two hatsBy then, Ms. Haley was onto something new. That summer, she asked Michael J. Biediger, then the chief executive of Lexington Medical Center, to hire her.Ms. Haley said her parents were either losing or selling their business, Mr. Biediger testified. Her job application listed her salary at Exotica as $125,000 and requested the same amount. But her tax returns indicated she never earned more than $47,000 a year from the clothing firm.Ms. Haley did not fill out or sign the application, a top aide told reporters, although the application stated that her typed name constituted a signature.Mr. Biediger created a $110,000-a-year position for Ms. Haley as a fund-raiser for the hospital’s foundation, a subsidiary of the hospital. At the time, she was a member of the powerful House Labor, Commerce and Industry committee and was also majority whip.He told the ethics committee he had hired her for her networking skills and personality and relied on a consulting firm’s recommendation to set her salary. A survey by the state’s Association of Nonprofit Organizations found that her salary was two and a half times as high as the average for similar organizations.The job came with inherent ethical dilemmas. Legislators were prohibited from serving as lobbyists, but now Ms. Haley was wearing two hats: as a lawmaker trying to help the hospital win state approval to open the heart-surgery center, and as a paid employee of a hospital subsidiary.Ms. Haley continued to work with other lawmakers on a plan to build support for the heart-surgery center, according to emails. She also spoke with an official on the state board with decision-making authority over the center, and communicated with hospital officials about the proposed project.Asked about her dual roles, Ms. Haley, who disclosed her hospital work on her financial disclosures, told the ethics committee she had kept her jobs separate.“I never had a legislative conversation in any way mixed with a foundation conversation,” she said.Ms. Haley also brushed off concerns that her fund-raising job opened up a potential avenue for special interests that might want to influence her. She solicited donations from various corporate interests, including an association of financial services firms and Blue Cross Blue Shield of South Carolina.To contact Blue Cross executives, Ms. Haley first reached out to a prominent lobbyist, Larry Marchant, she testified. Mr. Marchant told her that if the company contributed, “You are going to owe me,” she said, and she replied, “You know I don’t work like that.”The health insurer’s donations grew from $1,000 in 2007, the year before Ms. Haley joined the foundation, to $20,000 in 2010.In January of that year, as Ms. Haley was running for governor, Mr. Marchant advised the firm not to lower its donation, writing to one company official: “I’m still sucking up to Nikki in the event she comes on strong in the primary.”Blue Cross officials told the ethics committee they had conducted an internal investigation and determined that the donations were not an attempt to influence Ms. Haley, but a typical effort to build good will with the community.‘The people deserved to know’Ms. Haley and Lexington Medical cut ties during her campaign. As governor, she attacked the House ethics inquiry as a distraction engineered by Democrats. A surprise witness in her own defense, Ms. Haley accused the influential Republican lawyer who had filed the initial ethics complaint, John Rainey, of being a “racist, sexist bigot” and of suggesting that her family was related to terrorists. Mr. Rainey later said that Ms. Haley, whose parents are Indian immigrants, had misconstrued the remark.The Republican-led committee dismissed each of the charges with little explanation. Democrats argued that the lawmakers never fully investigated the allegations because they were loath to go up against a sitting governor.In South Carolina, the episode was soon overshadowed by a barrage of other corruption scandals. John Crangle, the former head of South Carolina’s chapter of Common Cause, said that Ms. Haley’s conduct didn’t “smell good,” but that it paled in comparison to the convictions of half a dozen legislators, including the Speaker of the House, of crimes involving misuse of campaign funds and payments from lobbyists.Ms. Haley promoting a plan for ethics reform in 2012, shortly after a state ethics investigation into her work on behalf of a hospital.Steve Jessmore/The Sun News, via Associated PressThe Center for Public Integrity, in a state-by-state survey of ethics rules, gave South Carolina an F rating in 2012, saying the state’s loopholes were “large enough to dock a Confederate submarine.”Soon after the ethics investigation, Ms. Haley went on a whistle-stop tour of the state promoting an ethics overhaul. In 2016, she signed two bills that required lawmakers to disclose the sources, but not the amounts, of private income, and revamped the process for reviewing allegations.Mr. Crangle said the changes did not go far enough.“Special interests want to invest large amounts of money to buy legislation and legislators, and Nikki never really challenged that institutional system of corruption,” he said.In her own retelling of her political rise, Ms. Haley made no mention of her ethics issues. In a 2012 memoir, she wrote that she believed that letting lawmakers hide the sources of their income — as she herself had done — was wrong.“It breeds conflicts of interest,” she wrote. “The people deserved to know who paid us.”Kitty Bennett More

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      As Trump Treats Trials Like Rallies, Judges Study How to Rein Him In

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      One judge was reluctantly permissive. Another came down hard. Their contrasting approaches may inform the jurists overseeing the former president’s criminal trials.Donald J. Trump doesn’t change. Judges do.Two weeks ago, a New York judge, Arthur F. Engoron, permitted Mr. Trump to personally deliver a closing argument in his civil fraud trial as long as he stuck to the facts and avoided a courtroom “campaign speech.” Mr. Trump bulldozed through the restrictions, repeated his familiar claim of a “political witch hunt” and assailed the judge to his face.Then last week, after a lawyer down the street at the E. Jean Carroll defamation trial complained that Mr. Trump was grumbling “con job” and “witch hunt” loud enough for jurors to hear, Judge Lewis A. Kaplan sternly warned him that, although he had the right to be present, “that right can be forfeited — and it can be forfeited if he is disruptive.”Ms. Carroll’s lawyers did not find reason to complain again.The judges’ different approaches to the tempestuous storm that entered their courtrooms — and the different results — could offer lessons beyond the two New York cases. They may provide guidance for the judges set to oversee Mr. Trump’s four potential criminal trials, who will want to keep the 45th president from transforming his legal proceedings into political spectacles.“The thing you’ve got to do primarily is set rules and enforce them,” said John S. Martin Jr., a former U.S. District Court judge in Manhattan. “I think if the judge is tough and doesn’t back down, Trump will back down.”Mr. Trump, 77, often finds himself in courtrooms these days, alternating those appearances with campaign stops — and using both for political purposes as he seeks the Republican presidential nomination. On Tuesday, after attending jury selection in Ms. Carroll’s trial, he flew to New Hampshire to begin campaigning. He then returned to court on Wednesday, when she testified, before heading back to New Hampshire.Judges regularly confront defendants who are powerful public figures, like politicians or chief executives, who are used to dominating a room.But judges, particularly those in federal court who enjoy lifetime tenure, do not easily surrender their authority. Typically, threats of financial sanctions, contempt or even short jail sentences can calm the most unruly of courtroom disrupters.What has made Mr. Trump’s appearances challenging is that he may be making the calculation that disobeying a judge or perhaps even losing a legal argument could be politically advantageous. In Ms. Carroll’s defamation trial, Mr. Trump seemed almost to be goading Judge Kaplan into throwing him out of the courtroom.After his two recent confrontations with the judges, Mr. Trump held news conferences before cheering supporters in the lobby of his building at 40 Wall Street. Standing before a row of American flags, he repeated his themes of personal persecution. He called the state attorney general, Letitia James, who had sued him in the civil fraud case, “deranged” and “a political hack.” A week later, he labeled Judge Kaplan “a Trump-hating guy,” and brushed aside Ms. Carroll’s claims. “I, frankly, am the one that suffered damages,” he said.Donald J. Trump has held news conferences at one of his buildings after his court appearances, at which he claims victimhood.Alexi J. Rosenfeld/Getty ImagesBoth of Mr. Trump’s Manhattan trials are still pending. There is no jury in Ms. James’s civil fraud case in New York State Supreme Court; Justice Engoron’s ruling on whether Mr. Trump and his company are liable for a $370 million penalty being sought by the state is expected toward the end of this month.Ms. Carroll’s defamation trial is being heard by a nine-person jury in Federal District Court, with Judge Kaplan overseeing the proceedings. The only issue is how much money, if any, Mr. Trump must pay Ms. Carroll, 80, for defaming her after she accused him in 2019 of sexually abusing her decades before, and for his persistent attacks in statements and social media.Testimony is expected to continue through at least Monday, when the former president has indicated he might testify.Judge Lewis A. Kaplan has been on the bench since 1994 and runs his court sternly.Jefferson Siegel for The New York TimesJudge Kaplan, 79, was appointed to the federal bench by President Bill Clinton in 1994. He is known for his command of the courtroom and, at times, his impatience with lawyers who seem to be unprepared. He has presided over trials involving such boldface-name defendants as Sam Bankman-Fried, the tousle-haired cryptocurrency mogul convicted in November, and Sulaiman Abu Ghaith, a son-in-law and adviser to Osama bin Laden whom the judge sentenced to life in 2014.The judge also presided last spring in a previous case that Ms. Carroll brought against Mr. Trump. In that trial, a jury awarded her $5 million in damages after finding him liable for sexually abusing her in the 1990s and defaming her in a different statement than those that prompted the current case before Judge Kaplan.“This is not his first rodeo,” said Katherine B. Forrest, a former colleague of Judge Kaplan’s on the Manhattan federal bench. “He is going to be quite careful and thoughtful about how he handles this situation.”“I’m sure he’s thinking about when he draws lines, how he draws lines, what the lines mean and what agenda it plays into,” Ms. Forrest added.Judge Kaplan has already ruled that Mr. Trump and his lawyers may not contest the jury’s finding last May that Mr. Trump sexually abused Ms. Carroll or that his statements about her were defamatory.But if Mr. Trump is again disruptive or even removed from the courtroom, the trial should be able to continue, said Michael B. Mukasey, who served as a Manhattan federal judge for nearly two decades. Mr. Mukasey said Judge Kaplan would have an obligation to ensure the jury is not influenced by any extraneous matter.“He would want to make sure that they understand that neither Trump’s antics, nor whatever results from them, is evidence,” Mr. Mukasey said, “because they take an oath to decide the case based only on the evidence and his instructions on the law.”In the state court, Justice Engoron, 74, also has long experience. A former cabdriver and aspiring musician, he makes frequent jokes from the bench and maintains a cordiality with lawyers and witnesses alike.He is a character outside the courtroom too — he once submitted a story to The New York Times about approaching the singer Art Garfunkel, informing him “My name’s Art, too” — and subsequently being mocked by a friend.But Mr. Trump and his lawyers have appeared to test Justice Engoron’s good humor as the judge seeks to determine whether the former president is liable for violating state laws by inflating his net worth, as Ms. James, the attorney general, has argued.When one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Christopher M. Kise, said that the former president wanted to speak during closing arguments this month, Justice Engoron said he would permit that as long as Mr. Trump agreed to the conditions that bind any lawyer: to stick to the facts and the law.The former president did not agree to do so. In open court, Mr. Kise renewed his request, prompting a sigh from Justice Engoron. “This is not how it should have been done,” he said.Still, he let Mr. Trump speak, and the former president used his five minutes to attack Ms. James and the judge.One condition Justice Engoron set, however, appeared to be effective: He told Mr. Trump that if he attacked the judge’s staff members — violating a gag order — he would be removed from the courtroom and fined at least $50,000.During his diatribe, Mr. Trump refrained from attacking any staff members.Kate Christobek More

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      Dean Phillips Floats a No Labels Bid if 2024 Is Trump vs. Biden

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      Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, a Democrat running a long-shot primary challenge to President Biden, said on Saturday that he would consider running on the ticket of No Labels, a centrist group exploring an independent bid, if it appeared the general election would be a rematch between Mr. Biden and Donald J. Trump.In an interview, Mr. Phillips publicly articulated for the first time the circumstances in which he would accept the No Labels presidential nomination, and said he was in regular communication with Nancy Jacobson, the group’s chief executive. Democratic allies of Mr. Biden have been alarmed by No Labels, worrying that any candidate it runs could siphon votes from him.“People are criticizing them because they believe whomever they offer on their ticket will hurt Joe Biden,” Mr. Phillips said after a town-hall event at a senior center in Nashua, N.H. “That’s false. If they put someone at the top of the ticket who could actually drive votes from Donald Trump, every Democrat in the United States of America should be celebrating it. They haven’t made that determination.”Mr. Phillips has a long relationship with Ms. Jacobson and No Labels from his tenure in the group’s congressional Problem Solvers Caucus, an organization that promotes policies with bipartisan support. He said he had told Ms. Jacobson he would not discuss running as the No Labels candidate “at this time.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber?  More

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      Nikki Haley’s Books: What to Know

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      Her writings provide insights into her upbringing and identity, often glossed over on the stump, as well as her politics and ties with Donald Trump.If you plan to run for president, they say, write a book. Nikki Haley has written three.The first book, “Can’t Is Not an Option” (Sentinel, 2012), captures her upbringing in Bamberg, S.C., as one of four children in the only Indian American family in town. It also traces her ascent into politics, from a little-known state lawmaker to the first woman and first person of color to serve as South Carolina’s governor.She published her second, “With All Due Respect” (St. Martin’s Press), in 2019 after she left her post as ambassador to the United Nations in President Donald J. Trump’s administration. The 272-page memoir, released in a media blitz in which she echoed White House talking points against Mr. Trump’s first impeachment and defended his character, follows her transformation from governor to diplomat. And her 2022 collection of essays, “If You Want Something Done” (St. Martin’s Press), whose title comes from a Margaret Thatcher line she has deployed on the national debate stage, details the lives of pioneering women.Like all memoirs, Ms. Haley’s books tell a carefully curated story, skipping over controversies that would cast her in a less positive light. Here are a few things we learned from them.Her Indian-born parents were reared in comfort.Ms. Haley often says that she was born and raised in a rural town of 2,500 people and two stoplights, but she says little on the campaign trail about her heritage.Her mother and father, Raj and Ajit Randhawa, are from the Punjab region of India and left a life of affluence and comfort to come to the United States.Ms. Randhawa, who lost her own father at a young age, was raised “in a six-story house in the shadow of the Golden Temple, the holiest site of the Sikh religion, to which she belongs,” Ms. Haley writes in “Can’t Is Not an Option.” Ms. Haley’s mother had attendants for her every need, including hauling her books to class, and earned a law degree when many Indian girls did not finish high school.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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      Haley Questions Trump’s Mental Fitness After He Mistakes Her for Pelosi

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      Nikki Haley on Saturday escalated her attacks on Donald J. Trump, directly criticizing his mental acuity for the first time a day after the former president appeared to confuse her for Nancy Pelosi, the former House Speaker, during his Friday night rally in New Hampshire.In a news conference with reporters after her campaign event in Peterborough, N.H., Ms. Haley stopped short of calling Mr. Trump mentally unfit. But she did question whether he would be “on it” enough to lead the nation.“My parents are up in age, and I love them dearly,” she said. “But when you see them hit a certain age, there is a decline. That’s a fact — ask any doctor, there is a decline.”At his rally, the former president accused Ms. Haley of failing to provide proper security during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, and connected her to the House committee that later investigated it. Ms. Haley, who was not holding a government role at the time of the attack, had been at home in South Carolina that day, according to campaign officials.The former governor of South Carolina and a United Nations ambassador under Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley, 52, opened her presidential bid this year with calls for “new generational leadership” and mental competency tests for candidates who are 75 or older. Though she has continued to emphasize those calls throughout her candidacy, she has reserved her most pointed attacks about mental fitness for President Biden and Congress, which she calls “the most privileged nursing home in the country.”The last time she came this close to knocking Mr. Trump directly was in October, after he criticized Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, and referred to Hezbollah, the Iran-backed militant group, as “very smart.” Responding to those remarks, Ms. Haley said: “To go and criticize the head of a country who just saw massive bloodshed — no, that’s not what we need in a president.”Since her election night speech after the Iowa caucuses, Ms. Haley has been sharpening her case against the former president, lumping Mr. Trump with Mr. Biden as backward-looking and barriers to an American revival. At her event in Keene, N.H., she criticized Mr. Trump on his leadership tone and asked the audience if they really wanted two “fellas” in their 80s competing for the presidency.“I wasn’t even in D.C. on Jan. 6 — I wasn’t in office then,” she told the audience on Friday.In a subsequent news conference, she suggested that the country was in too vulnerable of a state to have a leader who is mentally unfit.“It’s a concern, and it’s what Americans should be thinking about,” she said. More

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      To Undercut Haley, Trump Will Surround Himself With SC Leaders

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      Pressing his advantage over Nikki Haley in the homestretch before the New Hampshire primary, Donald J. Trump will surround himself with South Carolina leaders, including Ms. Haley’s successor as governor, at a rally Saturday night to portray her as politically friendless at home, two Trump campaign officials said.The former president plans the show of strength to add to his own momentum before Tuesday’s voting and to highlight Ms. Haley’s lack of support in her home state, the officials said, insisting on anonymity to discuss campaign strategy.Gov. Henry McMaster of South Carolina, who endorsed Mr. Trump in November 2022, shortly after he announced his third presidential bid, will speak to voters in Manchester, N.H. He will be joined by the state’s lieutenant governor, Pamela Evette; Alan Wilson, the attorney general; Curtis Loftis, the treasurer; Murrell Smith, the speaker of the Statehouse; and three congressmen from the state, Joe Wilson, William Timmons and Russell Fry.One campaign adviser said the traveling slate of South Carolinians was meant to help Mr. Trump make the case that he has presented since his landslide victory in Iowa: that overtaking him is so unlikely that his rivals should suspend their campaigns so he and the Republican Party can focus on defeating President Biden in November.The guest appearances could humiliate Ms. Haley and further undermine her case for the nomination by illustrating how isolated she appears to be in her own state, where the Republican primary will be held on Feb. 24. And the South Carolina group backing Mr. Trump on Saturday will follow the state’s junior senator, Tim Scott, who endorsed Mr. Trump in Concord, N.H., on Friday.Ms. Haley is not without support in South Carolina, where she served as governor from 2011 to 2017, when Mr. Trump appointed her as ambassador to the United Nations. She has the backing of Representative Ralph Norman and Katon Dawson, a former state Republican chairman, along with a small number of South Carolina legislators.When asked at a campaign stop in Peterborough, N.H., about Mr. McMaster’s campaigning with Mr. Trump, Ms. Haley fired back: “I’m sorry, is that the person I ran against for governor and beat? Just check it.” Ms. Haley defeated Mr. McMaster in a 2010 primary, and he then promptly endorsed her.She also suggested that her inability to win high-profile supporters both in her home state and in Washington came from her willingness to pressure state lawmakers and veto their pet projects when she was governor, along with her criticism of Congress on the campaign trail.“If Donald Trump wants all his politicians, and they all want to go to him, they can have at it,” Ms. Haley said. “But that’s everything I’m fighting against.”Ms. Haley’s path to the nomination likely hangs on a victory or a close second-place finish in New Hampshire, where independent voters make up 40 percent of the electorate. Though Mr. Trump maintains a large lead in the polls, Ms. Haley has narrowed that lead recently, effectively making the primary a two-person race in the state.But Ms. Haley would need to follow a strong performance in New Hampshire with another one in South Carolina, where Mr. Trump enjoys a large and loyal following. He leads in South Carolina polls by a wide margin and can also count on support there from Senator Lindsey Graham, a close ally.Campaigning on Saturday in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida was asked about South Carolina elected officials’ endorsing Mr. Trump. “Iowa Republican leadership lined up behind me, and we came in second,” Mr. DeSantis told reporters. “So I think there’s a limit to what the leadership can do.”The Trump campaign is eager to force both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis from the race before the South Carolina primary, hoping to avert what could otherwise be an expensive fight for delegates lasting through March.As the New Hampshire primary nears, Mr. Trump has increasingly escalated and sharpened his attacks on Ms. Haley. He now often argues that while she did an adequate job in his administration, she does not have what it takes to lead on her own.“She is not presidential timber,” Mr. Trump said bluntly in Concord on Friday.Mr. Trump has also repeatedly tried to backpedal on his past praise of Ms. Haley, claiming frequently that he appointed her ambassador to the United Nations only to clear the way for Mr. McMaster to become governor.Jazmine Ulloa More

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      Haley’s Policy Pitch Recalls a Bygone Era Before Trump’s Rise

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      Nikki Haley’s calls for muscular international engagement and cuts to future Social Security benefits have elicited withering attacks from Donald J. Trump. They used to be Republican orthodoxy.Nikki Haley is appealing to voters with policies that recall an era when the Republican Party stood for a fiscal conscience and foreign policy leadership, at a time when the most sacred of federal programs and the international alliances that built the post-World War II era are under enormous strain.But the voice of contemporary Republican politics, Donald J. Trump, has been there to attack those appeals virtually ever day. On Tuesday, the voters of New Hampshire may decide whether the party can find a path back from Mr. Trump’s big government domestic policy and his isolationism abroad.Ms. Haley’s proposals to raise the retirement age for young workers and trim benefits for the wealthy while protecting Social Security and Medicare benefits for those at or near retirement age may sound familiar to any but the youngest voters. They’re the essentially same plans put forward by Mitt Romney and his running mate Paul D. Ryan in the losing presidential campaign of 2012, and are of a piece with then-President George W. Bush’s failed efforts to transform Social Security from a federally guaranteed pension system to something more akin to a private 401(k) plan.Mr. Romney’s 2012 proposals were taken from the bipartisan commission assembled to address the budget deficit during Barack Obama’s presidency. The recommendations went nowhere.Ms. Haley’s calls to stand by NATO and support Ukraine echo the foreign policies of every president since the Second World War, but particularly the Republicans, Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush.But Mr. Trump has been relentless in his attacks on all those policies. His suggestions that he could withdraw the United States from NATO prompted President Biden last month to sign legislation barring the president from unilaterally dropping the North Atlantic alliance.At a rally in Concord, N.H., Friday night, he portrayed Ms. Haley as someone who “wants to wipe out your Social Security,” raise the retirement age to 75, “and then you’re dead.”A Trump radio ad placed in New Hampshire on Friday said Ms. Haley’s “devious plan” would “shockingly change the rules” on federal programs for older Americans by raising the retirement age. And a television ad, titled “Threat From Within” and placed the day before, featured retirees looking stricken as they hear that “Haley’s plan cuts Social Security benefits for 82 percent of Americans,” before being reassured, “Trump will never let that happen.”The ads’ claims are false. The 82 percent figure stems from the total number of Americans eligible for Social Security, and Ms. Haley has said repeatedly that she would change nothing for current recipients or those close to eligibility.Republicans are used to coming under fire for the types of ideas that Ms. Haley is pushing. But this time, the fire is coming from the party’s de facto leader.“Whenever you discuss Social Security in a rational way, you’ve immediately gotten skewered, usually by the left,” said Judd Gregg, a retired Republican senator from New Hampshire who made long-term deficit reduction his main cause in Congress. “But in this case it’s by Donald Trump.”Mr. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, portraying an end to aid for Ukraine and domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Former President Donald J. Trump and his Republican allies in Congress have been pushing their own form of fiscal discipline, couching ending aid to Ukraine and other domestic spending cuts as deficit reduction.Doug Mills/The New York TimesIn truth, their target for cuts mathematically could never put a dent in the federal deficit, which is expected to swell to nearly $1.7 trillion in the fiscal year that ends this Sept. 30, up from $1.4 trillion in fiscal 2023.About 85 percent of the federal budget goes to Social Security, Medicare, other entitlement programs like veterans benefits, the military and interest on the national debt — none of which are on Mr. Trump’s target list. That leaves just 15 percent of total spending, for education, law enforcement, transportation, medical and other scientific research, energy, national parks, and foreign assistance.And with interest rates at their current high levels, even liberal economists worry that if Washington doesn’t start addressing the red ink, the rising cost of paying the government’s debts will crowd out other programs, stifle private investment and hurt the nation’s long-term future. Already, interest payments reached $659 billion last year, the fourth largest item in the federal budget.“In 10 years, the government will be spending more on interest on the national debt than on defense,” warned Thomas Kahn, who was the Democrats’ staff director on the House Budget Committee for 20 years. “The reality is the national debt is out of control, and both parties will need to make politically painful decisions.”Ms. Haley has not broached the ultimate painful decision for Republicans, raising taxes, but she has hit Mr. Trump repeatedly for adding $8 trillion to the federal debt while in office, after promising in the 2016 campaign that he would not only balance the budget but would pay off the debt, which surpassed $34 trillion over the holiday season.Those attacks appear to have delivered only glancing blows to Mr. Trump’s dominance. The former president won the Iowa caucuses on Monday in a landslide, with Ms. Haley a distant third. Polls point to a narrower Trump victory in New Hampshire on Tuesday, then a steep uphill climb for Ms. Haley ahead of the South Carolina primary next month in her home state.But like a modern-day Cassandra, Ms. Haley has not flinched from her warnings that the nation must act now to curtail spending rationally in the largest government programs, Social Security and Medicare, or face more painful, chaotic cuts in the future.“I have seen the commercials you’ve seen,” she told voters on Wednesday in Rochester, N.H. “I will always tell you the truth.”The truth is not pretty. The trustees of Social Security say if nothing is done, the main Social Security program, the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance Trust Fund, will deplete its reserves in 2033, which could be the end of a Haley second term. At that point, Social Security would have to rely only on the money coming in from taxes each year. Promised benefits would have to be cut by 23 percent, not for future retirees that Ms. Haley wants to target but for those already drawing benefits.“The only person who wants to cut Social Security is Trump,” said Nachama Soloveichik, the Haley campaign communications director. “Trump’s refusal to save Social Security means 100 percent of Americans will face a 23 percent cut in Social Security benefits in less than 10 years.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, dismissed such criticism as still more evidence of Mr. Trump’s righteousness.“Nikki Haley is spiraling out of control and is now resorting to outright lies because she knows her position of increasing the age for Social Security and slashing retirements is an untenable position,” he said. “She should look deep down inside and really address why she wants to throw hard-working Americans off a financial cliff.” More