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      This Border Deal Is a Political Trap for Democrats

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      For the past two months, a small group of senators from both parties has been negotiating a deal to address the crisis at our southern border. The lawmakers are united in their desire to stop unauthorized migrants from entering the United States — an ambitious objective that has eluded past administrations.But the policies under discussion are likely to drive more unauthorized migration to the border and make President Biden’s immigration challenges even worse.In December border officials processed some 300,000 migrants — the most recorded in a single month. Over the past decade, Republican leaders in Congress have failed to come to the table to negotiate on immigration policies that Americans support, and yet they have created the false perception that Trump-era policies can solve the border crisis. Mr. Trump’s record on immigration shows it’s just not that simple.The negotiations demonstrate how far the immigration debate has shifted away from solutions that once defined bipartisan immigration reform efforts, like a 2013 Senate bill that would have prioritized border security and a path to legal status and eventual citizenship for the estimated 11 million to 12 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States.In 2016, Donald Trump killed broad support in his party for this type of deal by casting immigrants as threats to our nation. As president, he restricted the number of immigrants coming to the United States, separated families, and dismantled our immigration courts, hampering the ability to process asylum seekers at the border. And yet in 2019, under his watch, there was a 90 percent increase in migrant apprehensions along the southern border compared to the year before.Today, as the crisis is being felt not just along the border but also in cities across the nation, voters strongly disapprove of President Biden’s handling of the border. His administration has not taken meaningful action to stop Republican-controlled states from sending buses full of asylum seekers to cities with no advance notice or to step in with a federal solution. As a result, Democrats are now more open to working toward a solution that reduces unauthorized immigration.The proposed deal would simultaneously restrict and expand executive authority. For starters, Mr. Biden could lose key powers that presidents have used for decades to regulate immigration in times of crisis. Worse, if Mr. Trump is re-elected, he will have new tools at his disposal that he could use to terrorize immigrants and make the chaos at the border even more acute.As a former government official who has worked in the executive and legislative branches to identify solutions to mass migration at the southern border, I agree with lawmakers that the status quo is unsustainable and that reforms are needed. But this deal will not alleviate Mr. Biden’s border challenges unless Congress builds legal migration pathways that weaken cartels who have profited the most from new asylum restrictions.Take the reported expulsion authority that Senate negotiators are considering. The policy would allow border officials to expel migrants without asylum screenings. That may appear to be an effective deterrence measure but similar asylum restrictions, including Title 42, have proved otherwise. When I served on the National Security Council, I examined whether expulsions played a role in reducing smuggling activity. The data showed that not only did more people attempt to cross than before, but they also took more dangerous routes, guided by smugglers who profited handsomely.Instead of what is on the table now, Democrats should learn from past mistakes and fight for a plan that would create more legal pathways, incentivize people to seek asylum at our ports of entry, expedite asylum claims so that people who are eligible can work and contribute to our economy, and deport people who do not have valid legal claims to stay in the United States. Congress must grant Mr. Biden’s request for funding to hire agents and asylum officers to process migrants in a humane and orderly fashion — which a majority of voters support.The most nonsensical demand in the current border deal is that Senate Republicans want to restrict the president’s parole authority. In January 2023, Mr. Biden announced a series of measures aimed at stemming unauthorized crossings, including new legal pathways for migrants from Cuba, Haiti and Nicaragua. The president invoked his powers to extend parole to people from these countries who had an American sponsor, giving them permission to work and apply for asylum if they hoped to stay beyond two years. And it worked. The data shows that apprehension of these migrants declined by 92 percent within a year.Democrats may think that it is worth embracing punitive immigration policies for the hope of improving Mr. Biden’s polling numbers. But if these lawmakers really want to stop people from coming here, they must also address the drivers of migration.Deteriorating conditions in Latin America and the Caribbean guarantee that more migrants will be forced to seek refuge in the United States. Democrats should incentivize countries across the region to build capacity to protect asylum seekers, create legal pathways and increase foreign aid and humanitarian assistance to help would-be migrants live safely closer to home.In the short term, the White House can demonstrate leadership by using every tool at its disposal to accelerate the processing of asylum cases, work with regional partners to find protection for migrants before they make their way to the border and develop a federal response to help cities buckling under the strain of absorbing tens of thousands of migrants. An administration capable of welcoming more than 70,000 Afghans and coordinating their arrival in communities around the country is equally capable of coordinating the arrival of asylum seekers and identifying temporary federal housing to relieve communities struggling to provide housing.There is too much at stake for Democrats to accept the terms of this Senate proposal. While it is understandable to want to fix the vulnerabilities at the border, Mr. Trump and his advisers have been clear that terrorizing immigrants is central to their second-term agenda. He has promised to round up immigrants in camps and conduct mass deportations. He has accused immigrants of “poisoning the blood of our country.”Mr. Biden has begun his re-election campaign with a promise to protect our democracy from these harms. Yet by compromising on policies that are likely to increase unauthorized migration at the border, he risks emboldening Mr. Trump and his ilk to step up their attacks on immigrants. On Jan. 5, Gov. Greg Abbott of Texas said in a radio interview that the state isn’t “shooting people” illegally crossing the border because “the Biden administration would charge us with murder.”Mr. Biden must help voters understand that the border won’t change until Congress builds the immigration system our country needs. This political moment demands ambitious solutions that can address the scope of today’s migration challenge, not a set of policies that will keep us stuck in the same failed legal framework of the past decade.Andrea R. Flores is the vice president for immigration policy and campaigns at FWD.us.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      Trump Has Made Claims About Caucus Fraud. What if He Underperforms?

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      The last time Donald J. Trump participated in competitive Iowa caucuses, he lost narrowly, accused Senator Ted Cruz of Texas of stealing the contest, claimed fraud, demanded that Iowa Republicans nullify the results, and called for a rerun.While Iowa has a history of troubles with its caucus results, there’s been no evidence of fraud. The 2016 Republican contest was, in fact, the only one since 2008 that had gone off without a hitch.And yet if Monday night ends with Mr. Trump underperforming expectations, both his history and his rhetoric during this year’s campaign suggest he won’t hesitate to cry foul and refuse to accept the result.Mr. Trump has already accused Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida of “trying to rig” the caucuses. Laura Loomer, a far-right and anti-Muslim activist whom Mr. Trump last year considered hiring for a campaign post, suggested on social media that “the deep state” was engaging in “weather manipulation” to instigate Iowa’s Friday snowstorm and subzero temperatures to depress Trump turnout on Monday. And Donald Trump Jr. suggested in a Telegram video that “we can’t take anything for granted, or assume that everything is going to be on the up and up. We’ve seen this rodeo before.”Those claims are not likely to be met with much support from Iowa Republicans and the party volunteers who will operate the 1,657 caucus sites across the state.“If Trump says it’s fraud, he’s full of crap,” said A.J. Spiker, a former chairman of the Republican Party of Iowa who is backing Mr. DeSantis.Still, Iowa Republicans aim to protect themselves from campaigns claiming foul play at the caucuses.At each site, caucusgoers mark their presidential preferences on paper slips. Those slips are then counted in full view of whoever wants to watch. Typically a representative from each campaign watches the counting, and recording is allowed.“It’s the most transparent straw vote you could possibly do,” Mr. Spiker said.The Trump campaign’s headquarters in Urbandale, Iowa, on Saturday.Jon Cherry for The New York TimesMr. Trump’s pre-emptive Iowa fraud claims last month followed a flub by Mr. DeSantis’s wife, Casey DeSantis. She called on supporters to “descend upon the state of Iowa to be a part of the caucus.”“You do not have to be a resident of Iowa to be able to participate in the caucus,” she said.That earned Ms. DeSantis a rebuke from the state Republican Party.Only Iowans can participate in the caucuses. Republican volunteers are supposed to check for photo identification at the caucus sites. Still, Mr. Trump’s campaign suggested then that the DeSantis campaign had professed a “plot to rig the caucus through fraud.”Another candidate who has trafficked in conspiracies and has been sowing doubt about Iowa’s caucuses is Vivek Ramaswamy, who failed to qualify for recent debates.“The mainstream media is trying to rig the Iowa G.O.P. caucus in favor of the corporate candidates who they can control,” Mr. Ramaswamy said in a campaign video this week. “Don’t fall for their trick. They don’t want you to hear from me about the truth.”Voting rights groups and disinformation experts say the pre-emptive cries about fraud and rigged elections have become something of a new normal.“This follows the general playbook, the election denier playbook of just pre-emptively laying the groundwork for claims of fraud in the event of a loss,” said Emma Steiner, the Information Accountability Project Manager at Common Cause, a left-leaning voting rights organization. “It’s sort of future-proofing.”Indeed, Mr. Trump has long trumpeted baseless claims of fraud or rigging before an election. In 2016, weeks before Election Day, Mr. Trump started questioning the veracity of mail ballots in Colorado, citing little evidence. After he won the 2016 election, Mr. Trump claimed that widespread fraud cost him the popular vote (it did not), and he launched a commission to investigate voter fraud in the country (it folded without any significant findings).The Trump team has called elections rigged even when he is not participating in them. When the 2020 Democratic caucuses melted down because of a faulty app and a disorganized state party, Mr. Trump’s campaign questioned whether the results were “being rigged against Bernie Sanders.” His sons went further.“Mark my words, they are rigging this thing,” Eric Trump wrote on Twitter the night of the 2020 caucuses. “What a mess.” More

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      The Appeal of an All-American Strongman

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      Cheryl Sharp, a 47-year-old sales associate who was among the many Iowans turned away from a filled-to-capacity Trump rally last month, sounded pretty confident she knew why Donald Trump was so appealing to many voters. For her and many others, she said, his most important quality was strength: He had the fortitude to keep the country safe, avoid new wars and ensure the economy hummed along.“You want someone strong, globally, so that it creates mutual respect with other countries, and maybe a little bit of fear,” she told me. “Yes, it’s true, not everyone likes him. It’s good not to be liked. Being strong is better.” Sharp readily conceded that not everything Trump said was great, but she saw that as part of the right personality to be president. “You gotta be a little crazy, maybe, to make sure other countries respect and fear us,” she said. “And he can run the country like a business, and they will leave him alone.”Three days later, inside a Trump rally in New Hampshire, Scott Bobbitt and his wife, Heather, also brought up Trump’s strength. “He commands respect and fear around the world,” Scott Bobbitt told me. “Many people may be driven by fear of him because he’ll do what he says he’s going to do, and he’s not afraid to talk about it. And I think that that’s very powerful. That does protect our country, and he’ll stand up instead of rolling over.”I first began attending Trump rallies eight years ago, to try to better understand a candidate who was then being described as a joke — someone with little to no chance of winning the Republican nomination, let alone the presidency — and came away struck by his mix of charisma and powerful command of audiences.Rather than the bumbling celebrity I expected, I encountered a politician laying the groundwork for a powerful political realignment around subjects too readily brushed aside by the bipartisan establishment in Washington, such as the loss of manufacturing in the United States; those left behind by globalization and trade, especially trade with China; the legacy of the Iraq war and U.S. involvement in foreign wars in general; and, of course, immigration.I recently started going to Trump rallies and following his supporters’ online political conversations once again, to try to better understand something else: his base, and specifically the question of authoritarianism and the American voter.The authoritarian label has been attached to Trump by critics for years, especially after he sought to overturn the 2020 election results, which culminated in the attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. I have studied and written about authoritarianism for years, and I think it’s important to pay attention to the views and motivations of voters who support authoritarian politicians, even when these politicians are seen by many as threats to the democratic order.My curiosity isn’t merely intellectual. Around the world, these politicians are not just getting elected democratically; they are often retaining enough popular support after a term — or two or three — to get re-elected. Polls strongly suggest that Trump has a reasonable chance of winning another term in November. And he has clearly retained his hold on the Republican Party base: His Republican challengers either seem to be angling to be his vice president or are struggling to climb in the polls.What I wanted to understand was, why? Why Trump? Even if these voters were unhappy with President Biden, why not a less polarizing Republican, one without indictments and all that dictator talk? Why does Trump have so much enduring appeal?Barb Rice stands for the pledge of allegiance in Waterloo, Iowa.A Trump supporter at a rally in Waterloo, Iowa.In my talks with more than 100 voters, no one mentioned the word “authoritarian.” But that was no surprise — many everyday people don’t think in those terms. Focusing solely on these labels can miss the point.Authoritarian leaders project qualities that many voters — not just Trump voters — admire: strength, a sense of control, even an ends-justify-the-means leadership style. Our movie-hero presidents, Top Gun pilots and crusading lawyers often take matters into their own hands or break the rules in ways that we cheer. No, they are not classic authoritarians jailing opponents, but they have something in common with Trump: They are seen as having special or singular strengths, an “I alone can fix it” power.What I heard from voters drawn to Trump was that he had a special strength in making the economy work better for them than Biden has, and that he was a tough, “don’t mess with me” absolutist, which they see as helping to prevent new wars. His supporters also see him as an authentic strongman who is not a typical politician, and Trump sells that message very well to his base.In New Hampshire, Jackie Fashjian made the case to me that during Trump’s presidency, “there weren’t any active wars going on except for Afghanistan, which he did not start. He started no new wars. Our economy was great. Our gas prices were under 2 bucks a gallon. It’s just common sense to me. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”At the same rally, Debbie Finch leaped to her feet when Trump walked into the arena, and like many around us, she started filming. Finch defies stereotypes of Trump supporters: She’s Black and is concerned with racism, which she says greatly affects her life and that of her children. She doesn’t deny there are racists among Trump’s supporters, but as far as she’s concerned, that goes for Democrats, too. She told me she supports Trump because the economy was better under him. She doesn’t care about Trump’s indictments; the justice system has been derailing Black men forever, she says, and she predicts more and more minority voters will cast their ballots for him. (Trump does poll higher among minorities than past Republican presidents in the modern era and his current competitors for the nomination.)Debbie Finch.Vanessa Leroy for The New York TimesDebbie Finch shows off a photo of her and Donald Trump.Vanessa Leroy for The New York TimesTrump’s vulgar language, his penchant for insults (“Don’t call him a fat pig,” he said about Chris Christie) and his rhetoric about political opponents (promising to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country”) are seen as signs of authenticity and strength by his supporters. All the politicians say things like that in private, countless Trump supporters asserted to me and argued that it’s just Trump who’s strong and honest enough to say it out loud — for them, a sign that he’s honest.Voter after voter told me that they think Biden is too weak and too old to be president. They talk about him with attack lines frequently used by Trump, saying that he’s senile, falling down stairs, losing his train of thought while talking and so on. Biden, Trump grimly warned the crowd in Iowa, “can’t put two sentences together and he’s responsible for negotiations on nuclear weapons in World War III.”Nationally, polls show that voters are more concerned about Biden’s age than Trump’s. If 2024 comes down to Biden versus Trump, the politicians will be 81 and 78, respectively, the oldest matchup ever.Polls also show that voters believe that Trump would do a better job than Biden on the economy, foreign policy and immigration. It was Trump’s perceived strength, in contrast with Biden’s perceived weakness, that was the common theme that tied it all together for his supporters.Take foreign policy. Many Trump supporters told me that had Trump been president, the war in Ukraine wouldn’t have happened because he would have been strong enough to be feared by Vladimir Putin or smart enough to make a deal with him, if necessary. Neither would Hamas have dared attack Israel, a few added. Their proof was that during Trump’s presidency, these wars indeed did not happen. Of course, the more relevant question is whether these wars would have happened during a second Trump term — a counterfactual that can’t be proved or disproved.Projecting strength and being seen as authentic are common themes among other leaders whom political scientists would call “competitive authoritarians.” In their regimes, many of the basic tenets of liberal democracy are violated, but elections, largely free of widespread fraud, are regularly held. Many political scientists place Narendra Modi of India (his party recently won major victories in state elections, and a third term is possible), Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey (on his third term as president, after three stints as prime minister) and Viktor Orban of Hungary (in his fourth consecutive term) in this category.Like many of these right-wing populists, Trump leans heavily on the message that he alone is strong enough to keep America peaceful and prosperous in a scary world. Right after his recent landslide re-election, Orban said his party had won despite everyone being against them, and now he would ensure that Hungary would be “strong, rich and green.” In Iowa, Trump praised Orban himself before telling a cheering crowd: “For four straight years, I kept America safe. I kept Israel safe. I kept Ukraine safe, and I kept the entire world safe.”As he spoke such words at various rallies, the crowds often interrupted him with applause and cheering. From another politician, such claims might have sounded so implausibly grandiose as to fall flat. But from Trump, these statements often resulted in the crowds leaping to their feet (actually, some rallygoers never sat down) and interrupting him with applause and cheering.That’s charisma. Charisma is an underrated aspect of political success — and it’s not necessarily a function of political viewpoint. Bill Clinton and Barack Obama oozed it, for example, and so does Trump.Charisma is so central to politics that Max Weber, a founder of sociology, included charismatic authority (along with legal authority, as in republics and democracies; and traditional authority, as in feudalism or monarchy) as one of three types of power people see as legitimate. Charismatic leaders, Weber wrote, “have a certain quality of an individual personality, by virtue of which he is set apart from ordinary men,” and is sought as a leader, especially when people feel the times are troubled.So what about democracy, then? I pressed many Trump supporters about the events around Jan. 6, 2021, at the Capitol. I didn’t encounter a single outright supporter of what happened, but many people explained the events away. Increasingly separate information environments and our fractured media ecology shape the way people view that day.Some Trump supporters told me that whatever happened was carried out by a fringe faction that did not represent Trump’s base. Didn’t some Black Lives Matter protesters get carried away and even damage small businesses owned by Black people?, Jackie Fashjian said to me. Debbie Finch asked me whether Kamala Harris should be responsible for everything bad done during Black Lives Matter protests.Many also didn’t trust the government or traditional media’s telling of what happened on Jan. 6. “I’m not concerned with Jan. 6,” Finch said. “I don’t trust our government. I don’t trust anything they’re saying. They’ve been doing this to Black people for so long, railroading them, so they have zero credibility. So I don’t even care about it, and I don’t want to hear about Jan. 6.”Others, like Hunter Larkner, a young man who said he was a great fan of Elon Musk and used Twitter and YouTube for doing his research, said he was shocked when he first heard about the events of Jan. 6. But as he looked into it, he decided it must have been entrapment — that authorities deliberately allowed the rampage in the Capitol to happen.Cheryl Sharp, too, told me that she doesn’t worry about all the talk of Trump being a dictator. For her, biased mainstream media is misrepresenting him. “He was making the point that he’d use executive orders on Day 1, like the others do — executive orders bypass Congress, but that’s how it’s done these days,” she said. “He was being sarcastic, not saying he’d be a real dictator.”It’s easy to see why Trump’s political message can override concerns about the process of democracy for many. What’s a bit of due process overstepped here, a trampled emoluments clause there, when all politicians are believed to be corrupt and fractured information sources pump very different messages about reality?Politicians projecting strength at the expense of the rules of liberal democracy isn’t a new phenomenon in the United States, or the world. Thomas Jefferson worried about it. So did Plato. Perhaps acknowledging that Trump’s appeal isn’t that mysterious can help people grapple with its power.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: letters@nytimes.com.Follow the New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X and Threads. More

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      It’s Dangerously Cold in Iowa. What Does That Mean for Voting?

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      Vishakha Darbha and Iowa is in a deep freeze. Subzero temperatures — and a blizzard — have thrown many of the weekend’s highly choreographed events into question, leaving observers wondering if the weather could alter the election results. In this audio report from the frozen Hawkeye state, Opinion writer Katherine Miller describes what it’s like to cover the historic caucus and considers how the inclement weather might affect voting.(A full transcript of this audio essay will be available within 48 hours on the Times website.)Illustration by Akshita Chandra/The New York Times; Photograph by Maksym Kapliuk/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, X (@NYTOpinion) and Instagram.This episode of “The Opinions” was produced by Vishakha Darbha and Jillian Weinberger. It was edited by Alison Bruzek and Annie-Rose Strasser. Mixing by Efim Shapiro. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. More

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      Republican Presidential Primary: 7 Numbers That Tell the Story

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      There’s $46,499,124.63. There’s 3 percent. Here are five other figures that shed light on the dynamics at play before Monday’s caucuses.The only numbers that will truly matter in the Iowa caucuses on Monday will be the number of votes tallied for Donald J. Trump, Ron DeSantis, Nikki Haley and Vivek Ramaswamy.But there are a number of, well, numbers that help explain the Republican nominating contest. In most polls, Mr. Trump holds a solid lead, while Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis are battling it out far behind in a fight for second place.Here are seven numbers that show how we got here — and what comes next.28 percentage pointsMr. Trump’s lead in the Iowa Poll The bar has been set.In the Iowa Poll released on Saturday evening by The Des Moines Register, NBC News and Mediacom, Mr. Trump was winning 48 percent of likely caucusgoers. It’s a dominant showing that’s more than the total support measured for Ms. Haley (20 percent) and Mr. DeSantis (16 percent) combined.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 College-Educated Republicans Learned to Love Trump Again

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      Blue-collar white voters make up Donald Trump’s base. But his political resurgence has been fueled largely by Republicans from the other end of the socioeconomic scale.Working-class voters delivered the Republican Party to Donald J. Trump. College-educated conservatives may ensure that he keeps it.Often overlooked in an increasingly blue-collar party, voters with a college degree remain at the heart of the lingering Republican cold war over abortion, foreign policy and cultural issues.These voters, who have long been more skeptical of Mr. Trump, have quietly powered his remarkable political recovery inside the party — a turnaround over the past year that has notably coincided with a cascade of 91 felony charges in four criminal cases.Even as Mr. Trump dominates Republican primary polls ahead of the Iowa caucuses on Monday, it was only a year ago that he trailed Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in some surveys — a deficit due largely to the former president’s weakness among college-educated voters. Mr. DeSantis’s advisers viewed the party’s educational divide as a potential launching point to overtake Mr. Trump for the nomination.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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      ‘Would a Call From Tammy Help?’ Pressure Grows in Race to Oust Menendez

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      In a series of calls, a person in contact with the Senate campaign of Gov. Philip Murphy’s wife pressured a student Democratic group not to endorse her chief rival in the New Jersey race.The College Democrats of New Jersey were preparing to make an endorsement in one of the country’s most closely watched U.S. Senate primaries when calls began to come in from someone in touch with the campaign of Tammy Murphy, the presumptive front-runner and the wife of the state’s governor.The caller, a female college student who works as a youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee, wanted to know what Ms. Murphy’s campaign could do to block the group from endorsing Ms. Murphy’s main rival, Representative Andy Kim.“Would a call from Tammy help?” the woman said she asked, while indicating she was relaying a message from the Murphy campaign.Then, in a series of calls over the next two hours, the pressure from the caller, Keely Magee, escalated to warnings — about funding and future job prospects for leaders of the College Democrats, according to several people involved in the discussions and a recording of one call.In an interview, Ms. Magee said the Murphy campaign had not asked her to pressure the group on its behalf. But she acknowledged being aware that members of Ms. Murphy’s campaign staff “wanted to do something to prevent the endorsement,” and said she was receiving text messages from a Murphy campaign consultant, Dave Parano.On the recorded call, Ms. Magee described Mr. Parano as a co-worker who had “talked directly” to the campaign manager and was “very, very close with the Murphys.” Mr. Parano did not respond to messages seeking comment.The effort to stop the endorsement failed. On Wednesday, both the College Democrats of America and the New Jersey chapter issued full-throated endorsements of Mr. Kim, a South Jersey Democrat running against Ms. Murphy for the chance to oust Senator Bob Menendez.The episode offered a rare, behind-the-scenes look at the high-stakes political battle playing out as New Jersey’s first lady, a first-time candidate, struggles to gain grass-roots traction in her bid to unseat Mr. Menendez, who faces federal bribery charges.With support from her husband, Gov. Philip D. Murphy, a second-term Democrat, Ms. Murphy has been endorsed by many of the state’s most powerful Democrats and has raised a record amount of contributions in her campaign’s first six weeks. Yet several polls suggest that she continues to trail Mr. Kim by a wide margin.Ms. Murphy and Representative Andy Kim are the front-runners in the race to unseat Senator Robert Menendez, who is facing criminal charges.Maansi Srivastava/The New York TimesAlex Altman, a spokeswoman for Ms. Murphy’s campaign, said Ms. Magee’s comments were “totally and completely inappropriate, and they in no way represent this campaign or what we stand for.”“They were made by a young person with no connection to our campaign, one who seemed eager to help, albeit in a misguided manner,” Ms. Altman added.Ms. Magee, a 21-year-old Rutgers University junior, has worked part time as a paid youth coordinator for the Democratic State Committee for several years.Ms. Magee said her main objective had been to persuade members of the College Democrats’ executive board to halt an online endorsement vote that was underway and remain neutral instead. She said she believed that statewide Democratic organizations should not pick sides before a primary and was worried that a group she was responsible for guiding might face repercussions for doing so.“It wasn’t coming from a place of threatening at all,” she said.But students on the other end of the calls said they had felt threatened, so much so that they recorded the final call to have proof of the exchange if they were penalized later. The students then gave Mr. Kim’s campaign access to the recording, which was also shared with The New York Times.“I felt a mix of shock and fear,” said Nate Howard, 20, a Princeton University junior who is vice president of the New Jersey chapter of the College Democrats and participated in the call with Ms. Magee that was recorded. “Shock because: Why are these people threatening us? Are we really that important?”According to the recording, Ms. Magee warned the students that an early endorsement of Mr. Kim could harm their future job prospects, deprive their organization of as much as $2,000 in funding and hurt their odds of being selected as delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.“If Tammy Murphy does somehow win being senator, I’d be careful about ever getting a job in that office or anything like that,” Ms. Magee said. “At least for the first few years of her term until her staff turns over.”Mr. Kim won the endorsement of the College Democrats.Bryan Anselm for The New York TimesMr. Howard said Ms. Murphy called him on Friday to apologize. Ms. Magee said Mr. Parano, a political field consultant who also does work for the state committee, had also apologized to her for involving her in the process in the first place.Ms. Murphy’s campaign said that all of the students involved in this “unfortunate situation” should be afforded the “grace, allowance and forgiveness that we all deserve at that age.”In the 2020 election, 67 percent of New Jersey voters between the ages of 18 and 29 cast ballots, the highest rate in the country.A spokeswoman for the Kim campaign said it was excited to receive the college groups’ endorsements, but had no comment about the recording.Mr. Howard said the experience had underscored what he believes is wrong with politics.“For things to get better,” Mr. Howard said, “I believe that it will require courageous people to tell the truth about the inappropriate and frankly gross behaviors of the status quo.” More

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      In Race to Replace George Santos, Financial Questions Re-emerge

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      Mazi Pilip, the Republican candidate running in New York’s Third District, drew scrutiny after her initial financial disclosure was missing required information.The Republican nominee in a special House election to replace George Santos in New York provided a hazy glimpse into her personal finances this week, submitting a sworn financial statement to Congress that prompted questions and led her to amend the filing.The little-known candidate, Mazi Pilip, reported between $1 million and $5.2 million in assets, largely comprising her husband’s medical practice and Bitcoin investments. In an unusual disclosure, she said the couple owed and later repaid as much as $250,000 to the I.R.S. last year.But the initial financial report Ms. Pilip filed with the House Ethics Committee on Wednesday appeared to be missing other important required information, including whether the assets were owned solely by herself or her husband, Dr. Adalbert Pilip, or whether they were owned jointly.And despite making past statements that she stopped working there in 2021 when she ran for the Nassau County Legislature, Ms. Pilip reported receiving a $50,000 salary from the family medical practice in 2022 and 2023.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