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      Jeff Roe, Top Strategist for Star-Crossed DeSantis Super PAC, Resigns

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      Mr. Roe, who helped lead Never Back Down, the super PAC behind the Florida governor’s presidential campaign, resigned Saturday, the latest shake-up in the group.Jeff Roe, the chief strategist for the leading super PAC supporting Gov. Ron DeSantis’s presidential bid, resigned on Saturday night, the latest and perhaps most significant departure from the group, which has been consumed by turmoil in recent weeks.Since the day before Thanksgiving, the pro-DeSantis super PAC, which is called Never Back Down, has seen the resignation of one chief executive and one board chairman; the firing of a second chief executive, along with two other top officials; and now the late-night quitting of Mr. Roe. All have come after intense infighting and finger-pointing as Mr. DeSantis has slipped in the polls.“I can’t believe it ended this way,” Mr. Roe wrote in a statement he posted on X on Saturday night. The news of Mr. Roe’s resignation was first reported by The Washington Post.His decision to quit followed comments from the new chairman of the super PAC’s board, Scott Wagner, a DeSantis loyalist and appointee in Florida. Mr. Wagner had explained to The Washington Post why the previous chief executive and two others — all of whom had worked for Mr. Roe — had been fired.Mr. Wagner accused them of “mismanagement and conduct issues” as well as “numerous unauthorized leaks.” The Post reported that a lawyer for those employees contacted Mr. Wagner, who then revised his statement to add hedges to those accusations.“I cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down given the statements in The Washington Post,” Mr. Roe wrote in a statement. He said he still hoped Mr. DeSantis would be the next president and praised the Never Back Down team as “political warriors.”Mr. Wagner did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Saturday.From the start, Never Back Down has been something of a Frankenstein’s monster in its composition, with Mr. Roe and some of his top lieutenants forced to coexist with a decision-making board comprised primarily of longtime friends and loyalists of Mr. DeSantis. The arrangement has raised questions about how closely the campaign and the super PAC have adhered to rules barring coordination.Former President Donald J. Trump, who was in Las Vegas for a U.F.C. match and who has routinely mocked Mr. Roe privately, celebrated the departure in a post on his social-media site, Truth Social. “Jeff Roe is out — GAME OVER for DeSanctimonious,” he wrote.The future of internal operations at Never Back Down, which had raised more than $130 million as of July, is unclear. Mr. Roe’s allies hold many of the most important positions in the group, and his company, Axiom, has helped staff early state efforts for the super PAC. Whether they all remain in place is unclear.Word that Mr. Roe was departing the super PAC began to spread shortly before 8 p.m. on Saturday. But Mr. Roe and several people connected to Never Back Down did not respond to multiple messages seeking confirmation. Mr. Roe ultimately delivered his news to The Washington Post and posted it on X.Mr. Roe had long ago aggravated Mr. DeSantis with unwanted headlines, among them a New York Times story about a memo narrating debate strategy for the candidate before the first primary debate that was posted on his company’s website, and then taken down after The Times learned of it. The campaign found the memo’s existence embarrassing.Later, at the end of August, Mr. Roe was secretly recorded at a meeting with donors pitching them for tens of millions of dollars, as well as saying that Mr. DeSantis needed to beat Mr. Trump over the following 60 days.The Trump campaign has seized on the “60 days” comment, referring to it in an often vicious daily email as Mr. Roe’s “kiss of death.” That 60-day period has passed, with Mr. DeSantis still well behind the former president in the polls.Never Back Down has been hobbled by infighting for weeks, as senior staff members quit or were fired. Mr. DeSantis and his team had been unhappy with the group’s operations, particularly its focus on television advertising, and they had signaled that they wanted it to work more substantially on getting out the vote.Tensions reached a breaking point in November when another super PAC, Fight Right, was formed by a trio of DeSantis loyalists. The board of Never Back Down directed $1 million to that group, and, soon after, the initial chief executive, Chris Jankowski, resigned, followed by the resignation of the board chairman, Adam Laxalt.The person named as Mr. Jankowski’s replacement, Kristin Davison, was then fired, along with two other top officials.Mr. DeSantis has since met with prospective donors for Fight Right, and his campaign manager wrote a memo that embraced the group as the preferred entity to do its political advertising. The new super PAC’s first ad attacked Gov. Nikki Haley of South Carolina by invoking past comments she had made about Hillary Clinton — a line of attack that the campaign had just prominently featured in its own anti-Haley materials.Although Mr. DeSantis entered the race as the leading challenger to Mr. Trump, his campaign has sputtered in recent months. Ms. Haley has now equaled or surpassed Mr. DeSantis in many early state polls.The constant drama at the super PAC has infuriated some campaign staff members, who see it as a needless, constant distraction. The campaign itself was once the source of that drama, undergoing mass layoffs and seeing the elevation of a campaign manager who had never worked on a campaign. More

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      Giuliani Ordered to Pay $148 Million to Election Workers in Defamation Trial

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      Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, wrongfully accused by Rudolph W. Giuliani of having tried to steal votes from Donald J. Trump in Georgia, were awarded the damages by a federal court in Washington.A jury on Friday ordered Rudolph W. Giuliani to pay $148 million to two former Georgia election workers who said he had destroyed their reputations with lies that they tried to steal the 2020 election from Donald J. Trump.Judge Beryl A. Howell of the Federal District Court in Washington had already ruled that Mr. Giuliani had defamed the two workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss. The jury had been asked to decide only on the amount of the damages.The jury awarded Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss a combined $75 million in punitive damages. It also ordered Mr. Giuliani to pay compensatory damages of $16.2 million to Ms. Freeman and $16.9 million to Ms. Moss, as well as $20 million to each of them for emotional suffering.“Today’s a good day,” Ms. Freeman told reporters after the jury delivered its determination. But she added that no amount of money would give her and her daughter back what they lost in the abuse they suffered after Mr. Giuliani falsely accused them of manipulating the vote count.Mr. Giuliani, who helped lead Mr. Trump’s effort to remain in office after his defeat in the 2020 election but has endured a string of legal and financial setbacks since then, was defiant after the proceeding.“I don’t regret a damn thing,” he said outside the courthouse, suggesting that he would appeal and that he stood by his assertions about the two women.He said that the torrent of attacks and threats the women received from Trump supporters were “abominable” and “deplorable,” but that he was not responsible for them.His lawyer, Joseph Sibley IV, had also argued that Mr. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and federal prosecutor, should not be held responsible for abuse directed to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss by others.Mr. Sibley had warned that an award of the scale being sought by the women would be the civil equivalent of the death penalty for his client. Outside the courthouse on Friday, Mr. Giuliani called the amount “absurd.”Mr. Giuliani’s net worth is unknown because he refused to comply with the court’s requirement to provide that information. A lawyer familiar with his legal situation said after the verdict that Mr. Giuliani was likely to file for bankruptcy protection. But because the damages he owes Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss are considered an “intentional tort,” bankruptcy would not erase his liability, lawyers said.The case brought against Mr. Giuliani was one of a series of lawsuits in which plaintiffs have sought to use defamation claims to hold people accountable for lying about the 2020 election.Dominion Voting Systems wrested a $787.5 million settlement out of Fox News earlier this year after suing the media giant for promoting lies that its voting machines were used in a conspiracy to flip votes away from Mr. Trump to Joseph R. Biden Jr.In October, a judge in Atlanta ruled that a Georgia man was allowed to continue his defamation claims against the right-wing author and filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza on claims that he had been wrongly accused of voter fraud in Mr. D’Souza’s book and film, “2000 Mules.”Over hours of emotional testimony during the civil trial in Washington, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss described how their lives had been completely upended after Dec. 3, 2020, when Mr. Giuliani first suggested that they had engaged in election fraud to tilt the result against Mr. Trump in Georgia, a critical swing state.The women, who are Black and are mother and daughter, were soon flooded with expletive-laden phone calls and messages, threats, and racist attacks, they testified. People said they should be hanged for treason or lynched; others told them they fantasized about hearing the sound of their necks snapping.They showed up at Ms. Freeman’s home. They tried to execute a citizen’s arrest of Ms. Moss at her grandmother’s house. They called Ms. Moss’s 14-year-old son’s cellphone so much that it interfered with his virtual classes, and he finished his first year of high school with failing grades.“This all started with one tweet,” Ms. Freeman told the jury, referring to a social media post from Mr. Giuliani saying, “WATCH: Video footage from Georgia shows suitcases filled with ballots pulled from under a table AFTER supervisors told poll workers to leave room and 4 people stayed behind to keep counting votes.”Mr. Giuliani did not testify at the trial. He said afterward that was because “if I made any mistake or did anything wrong,” he thought the judge would hold him in contempt or put him in jail. “And I thought, honestly, it wouldn’t do me any good.”Mr. Giuliani is under indictment in Georgia, where a local prosecutor has brought racketeering charges against him, Mr. Trump and others in connection with their efforts to overturn the former president’s election loss there.Lawyers for Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss had asked the jury to send a message when deciding what Mr. Giuliani should pay.“Send it to Mr. Giuliani,” one of the lawyers, Michael J. Gottlieb, said in his closing argument on Thursday. “Send it to any other powerful figure with a platform and an audience who is considering whether they will take the chance to seek profit and fame by assassinating the moral character of ordinary people.”Ms. Moss said she and her mother would continue to fight for justice.“Our greatest wish is that no election worker or voter or school board member or anyone else ever experiences anything like what we went through,” she said.Alan Feuer More

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      High Housing Prices May Pose a Problem for Biden

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      Buying a home is a less attainable goal for many young people, and rents are expensive. Could that dog Democrats in the 2024 election?Cameron Ambrosy spent the first weekend of December going to 10 open houses — purely for research purposes. The 25-year-old in St. Paul, Minn., has a well-paying job and she and her husband are saving diligently, but she knows that it will be years before they can afford to buy.“It is much more of a long-term goal than for my parents or my grandparents, or even my peers who are slightly older,” said Ms. Ambrosy, adding that for many of her friends, homeownership is even farther away. “There’s a lot of nihilism around long-term goals like home buying.”As many people pay more for rent and some struggle to save for starter homes, political and economic analysts are warning that housing affordability may be adding to economic unhappiness — and is likely to be a more salient issue in the 2024 presidential election than in years past.Many Americans view the economy negatively even though unemployment is low and wage growth has been strong. Younger voters cite housing as a particular source of concern: Among respondents 18 to 34 in a recent Morning Consult survey, it placed second only to inflation overall.Wary of the issue and its political implications, President Biden has directed his economic aides to come up with new and expanded efforts for the federal government to help Americans who are struggling with the costs of buying or renting a home, aides say. The administration is using federal grants to prod local authorities to loosen zoning regulations, for instance, and is considering executive actions that focus on affordability. The White House has also dispatched top officials, including Lael Brainard, who leads the National Economic Council, to give speeches about the administration’s efforts to help people afford homes.“The president is very focused on the affordability of housing because it is the single most important monthly expense for so many families,” Ms. Brainard said in an interview.Housing is “the single most important monthly expense for so many families,” noted Lael Brainard, director of the National Economic Council. Erin Schaff/The New York TimesHousing has not traditionally been a big factor motivating voters, in part because key market drivers like zoning policies tend to be local. But some political strategists and economists say the rapid run-up in prices since the pandemic could change that.Rents have climbed about 22 percent since late 2019, and a key index of home prices is up by an even heftier 46 percent. Mortgages now hover around 7 percent as the Federal Reserve has raised rates to the highest level in 22 years in a bid to contain inflation. Those factors have combined to make both monthly rent and the dream of first-time homeownership increasingly unattainable for many young families.“This is the singular economic issue of our time, and they need to figure out how to talk about that with voters in a way that resonates,” said Tara Raghuveer, director of KC Tenants, a tenant union in Kansas City, Mo., referring to the White House. The housing affordability crush comes at a time when many consumers are facing higher prices in general. A bout of rapid inflation that started in 2021 has left households paying more for everyday necessities like milk, bread, gas and many services. Even though costs are no longer increasing so quickly, those higher prices continue to weigh on consumer sentiment, eroding Mr. Biden’s approval ratings.While incomes have recently kept up with price increases, that inflationary period has left many young households devoting a bigger chunk of their budgets to rental costs. That is making it more difficult for many to save toward now-heftier down payments. The situation has spurred a bout of viral social media content about the difficulty of buying a home, which has long been a steppingstone into the middle class and a key component of wealth-building in the United States.That’s why some analysts think that housing concerns could morph into an important political issue, particularly for hard-hit demographics like younger people. While about two-thirds of American adults overall are homeowners, that share drops to less than 40 percent for those under 35.“The housing market has been incredibly volatile over the last four years in a way that has made it very salient,” said Igor Popov, the chief economist at Apartment List. “I think housing is going to be a big topic in the 2024 election.”Yet there are reasons that presidential candidates have rarely emphasized housing as an election issue: It is both a long-term problem and a tough one for the White House to tackle on its own.“Housing is sort of the problem child in economic policy,” said Jim Parrott, a nonresident fellow at the Urban Institute and former Obama administration economic and housing adviser. America has a housing supply shortfall that has been years in the making. Builders pulled back on construction after the 2007 housing market meltdown, and years of insufficient building have left too few properties on the market to meet recent strong demand. The shortage has recently been exacerbated as higher interest rates deter home-owning families who locked in low mortgage rates from moving.Some analysts think concerns about housing affordability could morph into an important political issue, particularly for hard-hit demographics like younger people.Mikayla Whitmore for The New York TimesConditions could ease slightly in 2024. The Federal Reserve is expected to begin cutting borrowing costs next year as inflation eases, which could help to make mortgages slightly cheaper. A new supply of apartments are expected to be finished, which could keep a lid on rents.And even voters who feel bad about housing might still support Democrats for other reasons. Ms. Ambrosy, the would-be buyer in St. Paul, said that she had voted for President Biden in 2020 and she planned to vote for the Democratic nominee in this election purely on the basis of social issues, for instance.But housing affordability is enough of a pain point for young voters and renters — who tend to lean heavily Democrat — that it has left the Biden administration scrambling to emphasize possible solutions.After including emergency rental assistance in his 2021 economic stimulus bill, Mr. Biden has devoted less attention to housing than to other inflation-related issues, like reducing the cost of prescription drugs. His most aggressive housing proposals, like an expansion of federal housing vouchers, were dropped from last year’s Inflation Reduction Act.Still, his administration has pushed several efforts to liberalize local housing laws and expand affordable housing. It released a “Housing Supply Action” plan that aims to step up the pace of development by using federal grants and other funds to encourage state and local governments to liberalize their zoning and land use rules to make housing faster and easier to build. The plan also gives governments more leeway to use transportation and infrastructure funds to more directly produce housing (such as with a new program that supports the conversion of offices to apartments).The administration has also floated a number of ideas to help renters, such as a blueprint for future renters’ legislation and a new Federal Trade Commission proposal to prohibit “junk fees” for things like roommates, applications and utilities that hide the true cost of rent.Some affordable housing advocates say the administration could do more. One possibility they have raised in the past would be to have Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which help create a more robust market for mortgages by buying them from financial institutions, invest directly in moderately priced rental housing developments. Ms. Raghuveer, the tenant organizer, has argued that the Federal Housing Finance Agency, which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, could unilaterally impose a cap on annual rent increases for landlords whose mortgages are backed by the agencies.But several experts said that White House efforts would only help on the margins. “Without Congress, the administration is really limited in what they can do to reduce supply barriers,” said Emily Hamilton, an economist at the Mercatus Center who studies housing.Republicans control the House and have opposed nearly all of Mr. Biden’s plans to increase government spending, including for housing. But aides say Mr. Biden will press the case and seek new executive actions to help with housing costs.While it could be valuable to start talking about solutions, “nothing is going to solve the problem in one year,” said Mark Zandi, chief economist of Moody’s Analytics and a frequent adviser to Democrats.“This problem has been developing for 15 years, since the financial crisis, and it’s going to take another 15 years to get out of it.” More

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      Defeating Trump Is Just a Start

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      The easy and obvious way to understand the various Republican power grabs underway in states across the country is to look at them as attempts to secure as much unaccountable political power as possible and to curtail the expression of identities and beliefs Republicans find objectionable. That’s how we get the “Don’t Say Gay” laws and attacks on gender-affirming care and aggressive efforts to gerrymander entire state legislatures.But there is another angle you can take on the Republican use of state power to limit political representation for their opponents or limit the bodily autonomy of women or impose traditional and hierarchical gender relations on those who would prefer to live free of them. You could say the point is the cultivation of political despair.Now, it is too much to say that this is premeditated, although you do not have to look hard to find Republican officeholders expressing the belief that political participation should be made more onerous.At the same time, it is hard not to miss the degree to which attempts to nullify popular referendums or redistrict opponents into irrelevance can also work to inculcate a sense of hopelessness in those who might otherwise seek political change. Yes, it is true that many people will push back when faced with a sustained challenge to their right to participate in political life or exercise other fundamental rights. But many people will resign themselves to the new status quo, persuading themselves that nothing has fundamentally changed or concluding that it is not worth the time or effort involved to pick up the fight.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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      Republicans Tap Mazi Melesa Pilip to Run for Santos’s Seat

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      Party leaders believe Mazi Melesa Pilip has the potential to be a breakout star. But she has little political experience and her policy views are largely unknown.Republicans battling to hold onto the New York House seat vacated by George Santos chose on Thursday another relatively unknown candidate with a remarkable biography but a thin political résumé to run in a special election next year.After extensive vetting, Republican leaders selected Mazi Melesa Pilip, a local legislator who was born in Ethiopia, served as a paratrooper in the Israel Defense Forces and first ran for office in 2021 vowing to fight antisemitism.It was a bold gamble by Long Island Republicans, a group better known for nominating older, white establishment figures. Republicans believe Ms. Pilip, a 44-year-old mother of seven, has the potential to become a breakout star before the Feb. 13 special election, particularly at a moment when Israel’s war with Hamas is reordering American politics.“She is the American success story,” said Peter King, a former New York Republican congressman involved in the nomination. “Some people have superstar capacity. She walks into the room, people notice her, they listen to her.”Ms. Pilip, however, lacks many of the credentials typically prized in a competitive congressional race. She has almost no experience raising money, lacks relationships with key party figures outside her affluent New York City suburb and has never faced the kind of scrutiny that comes with being a candidate for high office.In fact, beyond fierce advocacy for Israel and support for the police, she has taken no known public positions on major issues that have shaped recent House contests. That includes abortion rights, gun laws and the criminal charges against former President Donald J. Trump.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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      Attention! There’s Life Beyond the Digital.

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      More from our inbox:A Party Pooper’s View of the New Climate DealThe Biden Impeachment Inquiry: ‘Republicans, Have You No Shame?’The 1968 and 2024 ElectionsThe A.I. StakesVeterans’ Suicides by Firearm Harry WrightTo the Editor:Re “Fight the Powerful Forces Stealing Our Attention,” by D. Graham Burnett, Alyssa Loh and Peter Schmidt (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 27):In 2010, frustrated that I had to admonish the students in my large sophomore lecture course to turn off their cellphones at the start of each class, only to see them return to them immediately at the end, I told them a story.When I went to college, I explained, there were no cellphones. After class, we thought about what we had just learned, often discussing it with our friends. Why not try an experiment: for one week, no cellphones for 10 minutes after every class? Only three of the 80 students accepted the challenge, and not surprisingly, they reported back that they were thrilled to find themselves learning more and enjoying it more thoroughly.So, hats off to the authors of this essay who are teaching attentiveness. I fear, though, that they are trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon. Would that they prove me wrong.Richard EtlinNew YorkThe writer is distinguished university professor emeritus at the School of Architecture, Planning & Preservation, University of Maryland, College Park.To the Editor:Of course, we have lost a good deal of our ability to focus and concentrate with the persistence of digital information gnawing at our attention spans. While this is not a new problem, it has been grossly intensified.The answer in the past, and the answer now, is libraries: places of quiet reading, contemplation, study, thinking, even daydreaming.To put away electronic media for a time and enjoy the silence of a library is a gift for personal balance and tranquillity.Bonnie CollierBranford, Conn.The writer is a retired associate director for administration, Yale Law Library.To the Editor:Some years ago I returned to the tiny Greek island my family left in 1910. “There’s nothing there,” everybody said. But the nothing that was there was the absolute antidote to most of the malaise of modern life, or, as my daughter calls it, “the digital hellscape.”The effect was immediate. No credit cards, no taxi apps, no alarm systems, none of it. Just the sounds of the goat bells on the hills and people drinking coffee and staring at the water and talking to each other. And it wasn’t boring at all.Jane WardenMalibu, Calif.A Party Pooper’s View of the New Climate Deal Fadel Dawod/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “In Climate First, Pact Seeks Shift on Fossil Fuels” (front page, Dec. 14):I hate to be a climate summit party pooper, but the bottom line is that the new deal being celebrated is not legally binding and can’t, on its own, force any country to act. History has shown that if a country isn’t forced to act, it usually won’t.How do I know that? We just had the hottest year on record, with global fossil-fuel emissions soaring to record highs. We had agreed not to go there. Here we are.Douglas G. WilliamsMinneapolisThe Biden Impeachment Inquiry: ‘Republicans, Have You No Shame?’Representative James Comer, left, and Representative Jim Jordan have led the Republican impeachment inquiry.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Impeachment Inquiry Approved, Despite No Proof of Biden Crime” (front page, Dec. 14):This is a sad day for our country. Republicans voted to have an impeachment inquiry into President Biden without having any basis on which to proceed. Why did they take this unprecedented step? They were responding to the wishes of Donald Trump.The constitutional power of the House of Representatives to impeach is a solemn duty reserved for instances where a president has committed “high crimes or misdemeanors.” In this case, there is not a shred of evidence of any wrongdoing, only a father’s love for his surviving son.Republicans, have you no shame? You will rue the day you voted in such an unethical manner. To use impeachment as a political tool in the 2024 election is an embarrassment for the whole world to see.I am afraid that we have reached the point where retribution is one party’s focus instead of the myriad needs of the people of this nation.Ellen Silverman PopperQueensThe 1968 and 2024 Elections Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Reading about how President Biden is losing support among young pro-Palestinian college kids takes me back to my youth. I’m a baby boomer, and this reminds me of the 1968 presidential election between Richard Nixon and Hubert Humphrey.So many of my generation were so angry about the Vietnam War and how Vice President Humphrey had backed President Lyndon B. Johnson’s handling of the war that many of us refused to vote for Humphrey. Nixon was elected, and the war continued.As President Biden often says, an election is a choice. However, one can also choose not to vote. Those of us who refused to vote for Humphrey may well have tipped the election to Nixon, and with it all of the consequences that followed.It is a cliché that the perfect is the enemy of the good, but there is a lot of truth to it. I fervently hope we don’t make that mistake in 2024.Stuart MathNew YorkThe A.I. StakesTo the Editor:Re “How Money, Ego and Fear Lit A.I.’s Fuse” (“The A.I. Race” series, front page, Dec. 4):Although the history of artificial intelligence may read like a struggle between those favoring cautious development and those intent on advancing the technology rapidly with fewer restrictions, it was inevitable that the latter would come out on top.Given the resources required to scale the technology, it could be developed only with the support of parties with enormous computing power and very deep pockets (in other words, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Meta).And in return for their investments of billions of dollars, it is hardly surprising that those competing parties would demand rapid advancement with fewer restrictions in the hope of controlling the future of an industry that holds the promise of spectacular profit.In retrospect, the proponents of a cautious approach to the development of A.I. never stood a chance.Michael SilkLaguna Woods, Calif.Veterans’ Suicides by FirearmPhotos of people who died by suicide were displayed during an awareness event in Los Angeles last month.Allen J. Schaben/Los Angeles Times, via Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Rate of Suicide by Firearm Reaches Record Level, Report Says” (news article, Dec. 2):The increasing use of firearms in suicides is particularly concerning among veterans. Suicide rates among veterans are twice as high as among civilians, and veterans are twice as likely as civilians to use a firearm in a suicide attempt. Younger veterans are at especially high risk; those under the age of 55 have the highest rates of suicide by firearm.New data from the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs offers a glimmer of hope: New York State is bucking the trend. It saw a 13 percent decrease in firearm-related suicides by veterans in 2021. That conforms with research findings that states with stricter gun control policies experience fewer firearm-related suicides.Saving lives means reducing access to lethal means.Derek CoyNew YorkThe writer, an Iraq veteran, is senior program officer for veterans’ health at the New York Health Foundation. More

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      Liz Cheney’s Checkered History

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      Deep in her new book, “Oath and Honor,” Liz Cheney points out that the likeness of Clio, the Greek muse of history, is found in the Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. “Clio is depicted riding in the chariot of time, making notes in the book in her hand,” Cheney writes, “as a reminder that what we do in the Capitol Building is written in the pages of history.”Cheney’s book is likewise an attempt to write the history of our time, a history in which Cheney has become a protagonist. Her telling of this history, though vital, is unnecessarily partial. If this book is intended as both “a memoir and a warning,” as its subtitle declares, Cheney delivers on only half of that promise.The warning Cheney issues is clear and persuasive: A second presidential term for Donald Trump would pose great risks to the nation’s democratic practices and identity. A retribution-minded, Constitution-terminating leader buttressed by unscrupulous advisers and ethically impaired lawyers could, she argues, “dismantle our republic.” As both a witness and a target of the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol and as a leader of the House committee that investigated the attack, Cheney recognizes the power of the mob that Trump commands. She also understands the cowardice of his enablers in the Republican Party, the same kind of loyalists who would populate — or at least seek to justify — a second Trump administration.“The assumption that our institutions will protect themselves is purely wishful thinking by people who prefer to look the other way,” Cheney writes. And that was before Trump suggested that he would act dictatorially in his new term, if only on day one.As a memoir, however, Cheney’s book is overly narrow, and at times curiously uncurious. Yes, anyone interested in the author’s recollections from inside the House chamber on Jan. 6 will find plenty of material (when Jim Jordan of Ohio approached her to help “get the ladies” off the aisle, Cheney swatted his hand away, retorting, “Get away from me. You f — ing did this.”), and Cheney is unstinting in her contempt for Kevin McCarthy, then the Speaker of the House, whom she describes as unprincipled and unintelligent in roughly equal doses. (She even finds McCarthy less substantive and capable than Democratic leaders in the House, like Nancy Pelosi — a savage dig in G.O.P. world.)Yet, for all the insider detail Cheney offers, her memoir is truncated, treating the period between the 2020 election and the Jan. 6 attack as the beginning of history, or the only history that matters, as though no prior warnings about Trump had been warranted or even audible. Cheney once believed in the staying power of the country’s constitutional principles, she writes, “but all that had changed on January 6 of 2021.”Did nothing change for Cheney before Jan. 6? Not anything at all?Cheney, who has said elsewhere that she regrets voting for Trump in 2020, seems disinclined to revisit or reconsider in this book why she and so many others made their peace with earlier signs of Trump’s authoritarian, anti-constitutional impulses. Her explanation for voting against Trump’s first impeachment is thin; she wishes the Democrats had moved to subpoena John Bolton, Trump’s former national security adviser, to gather additional evidence. It’s a grudging excuse from Cheney, who, as a former State Department official, no doubt can recognize when diplomacy is being manipulated for domestic political gain.Instead, she merely decries those who failed to pivot away from Trump after the 2020 election and Jan. 6, blaming their social-media silos and their exposure to pro-Trump news outlets like Fox News and Newsmax. A longtime Wyoming donor, for example, had “fallen for all the nonsense” about election fraud, Cheney writes, while a close family friend “fell for the lies, hook, line, and sinker.”I did not expect “Oath and Honor” to double as a mea culpa; in any case, Cheney does not seem the type to dabble much in remorse. Her courage in challenging her party over Trump’s election fantasies is hardly rendered meaningless by her prior support for Trump, and her leadership of the House Jan. 6 committee elevated patriotism over partisanship. But history did not in fact begin with that day of violence at the Capitol nearly three years ago. Trump’s unceasing deceit, his disdain for the norms of his office and his assault on the institutions of government spanned his presidency, not just its closing weeks. And his declarations of supposed electoral fraud against him far predated the 2020 presidential contest; his similar rants ahead of the 2016 election were rendered moot only by his unlikely victory.Whether they are elected officials, media personalities, lawyers, family friends or the mob itself, people don’t just swallow Trump’s lies hook, line and sinker all of a sudden. They are lured in, one speech, one deception, one promise at a time, until a lie becomes a worldview. The most serious Trump enablers may indeed include elected officials like McCarthy and his successor Mike Johnson, both of whom brazenly supported Trump’s attempt to undo the 2020 election, and who come in for serious grief in Cheney’s book. But they are not the only ones who, at key moments throughout the Trump presidency, preferred to look the other way. Even those former supporters turned vocal opponents owe some explanation of why their minds needed changing — if only because their transformation can help illuminate the mindset of those who decline to follow their lead.It is largely correct to write, as Cheney does, that “no amount of evidence would ever convince a certain segment of the Republican Party.” It is also largely unhelpful.The irony of the history Cheney highlights in “Oath and Honor” is that her focus on the final days of Trump’s term in late 2020 and early 2021 proves quite helpful in anticipating what the early days of a second term might bring. Most of those troublesome “adults in the room” from the first Trump administration will be gone, consigned to the green room instead of the Cabinet Room. No one will threaten to resign citing principles for the simple reason that they won’t have any; loyalty will be their chief qualification.Cheney recalls how Ronald Reagan described America’s orderly transfer of power every four years as “nothing less than a miracle,” and she worries of the dangers that loom when that transfer grows disorderly. The transition from an outgoing administration to an incoming one is “a time of heightened potential vulnerability” for the country, Cheney writes, and she notes how, immediately after the 2020 election, Trump subbed out key senior officials — including the defense secretary — in favor of more pliable replacements. “Why was he appointing inexperienced loyalists to the most senior civilian positions in the Pentagon at a moment when stability was key?” Cheney asks. (After her service on the Jan. 6 committee, Cheney is able to answer her own question, concluding that Trump was considering “deploying our military for some election-related purpose.”) The president also tried to replace the attorney general with someone willing to falsely assert in writing that the 2020 vote was corrupt; only when multiple senior Justice Department officials threatened to resign did Trump back down.Now imagine an administration staffed that way from the beginning, starting on Jan. 20, 2025, and buttressed by empowered collaborators in Congress, and you’ll grasp Cheney’s most serious warning. “I am very sad to say,” she acknowledges in her final pages, “that America can no longer count on a body of elected Republicans to protect our republic.” It’s a remarkable statement considering the political lineage of its author, but a defensible one. Just as the history Liz Cheney tells in “Oath and Honor” should go back further than the lies about 2020 and the scandal of Jan. 6, the damage of a second Trump term would extend far beyond whatever measures he might inflict on day one.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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      in Elections

      GOP Support Grows for Majewski, a Trump Ally With a Disputed Military Record

      by

      J.R. Majewski, an ally of former President Donald J. Trump, is seeking to avenge his 13-point loss in the 2022 midterm elections in Ohio.J.R. Majewski, a Trump acolyte from Ohio whom House Republicans abandoned the first time he ran for Congress in the 2022 midterm elections after discrepancies in his military record emerged, is back as a candidate — and with some prominent G.O.P. names behind him.Mr. Majewski, an Air Force veteran, picked up endorsements on Monday from Senator J.D. Vance of Ohio and Frank LaRose, Ohio’s secretary of state, in his Republican primary as he seeks to challenge Representative Marcy Kaptur, a Democrat, for a second time in the Ninth District.The show of support contrasted sharply with the National Republican Congressional Committee’s canceling its ads for Mr. Majewski during the final six weeks of his 2022 race, which he lost by 13 percentage points to Ms. Kaptur, the longest-serving woman in congressional history.The committee pulled the plug after The Associated Press reported that the Air Force had no record of Mr. Majewski, 44, serving in Afghanistan, which he continues to claim that he did, and drew attention to a series of inconsistencies about his military record. Mr. Majewski has vehemently disputed the reporting.The endorsements came just days after the release of a secret recording of Craig Riedel, a rival G.O.P. candidate and a former state legislator, telling a Republican donor that he would not support former President Donald J. Trump and did not want his endorsement. It was obtained by Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point USA, a pro-Trump grass-roots group.Not long after, Mr. Riedel announced that he was endorsing Mr. Trump. But the damage appeared to have been done, with at least one prominent Republican in Ohio (Representative Max Miller, a former Trump adviser) saying that he no longer supported Mr. Riedel, who lost to Mr. Majewski in the 2022 Republican primary.Mr. Riedel accused one of Mr. Majewski’s top MAGA boosters, Representative Matt Gaetz of Florida, of setting him up.“Matt Gaetz and a social media trickster pulled a stunt yesterday to try and convince President Trump to get involved in my congressional primary for proven loser JR Majewski,” Mr. Riedel wrote on X.Mr. Trump, who endorsed Mr. Majewski in 2022, heralded him on Saturday while both attended a New York Young Republican Club gala, blaming the “deep state” for undermining Mr. Majewski during his last run.“We stuck by him,” Mr. Trump said, adding, “They played dirty pool, but you’ll get a second shot, right?”Erica Knight, a spokeswoman for Mr. Majewski, said in a text message that he was expecting to be endorsed by Mr. Trump again. A campaign spokesman for Mr. Trump did not respond to a request for comment.Mr. Riedel has received endorsements from Republicans considered more mainstream, including Representative Kevin McCarthy, before he was deposed as speaker of the House, and Americans for Prosperity Action, a political network founded by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch. The group has spent nearly $250,000 on Mr. Riedel’s behalf this election cycle, according to the Federal Election Commission.Mr. Riedel did not respond to a request for comment.In a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday, Mr. Gaetz denied orchestrating the secret recording.“Craig Riedel trashed Trump when he thought it would help him get a New Yorker to give him money,” he said. “We have enough people willing to say and do anything for campaign cash in Congress already. Craig Riedel exposed himself in his own words. I had nothing to do with it, though I wish I had.”Aidan Johnson, a spokesman for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, in a statement called the Republican primary contest an “ugly and expensive race to the bottom.” Steve Lankenau, a former mayor of Napoleon, Ohio, is also running in the Republican primary.While Mr. Majewski has frequently promoted himself as a combat veteran who served in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Air Force records obtained by The Times show that he deployed for six months in 2002 to Qatar, which is now home to the largest U.S. air base in the Middle East.According to military records, the Air Force demoted Mr. Majewski in September 2001 for driving drunk at Kadena Air Base in Japan, contradicting his earlier account that he could not re-enlist in the Air Force after his initial four years because of a “brawl.”The inconsistencies in Mr. Majewski’s public accounts of his military service brought renewed scrutiny during the last election cycle, when he was already facing questions about his presence at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and sympathies for the QAnon conspiracy movement.In August 2023, more than nine months after Mr. Majewski’s defeat, the military updated his records to reflect that he had received a Global War on Terrorism Expeditionary Medal for his service, an honor created in 2003 for Air Force members who deployed abroad after the Sept. 11 attacks.But Afghanistan is just one of several dozen countries, including Qatar, that count toward eligibility. That has not stopped Mr. Majewski and his allies, including Mr. Trump, from claiming that he was “totally exonerated.” More