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      DeSantis Dismisses One Endorsement (for Haley) and Plays Up Another (for Him)

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      At a town hall in Iowa, Ron DeSantis, who has the backing of Iowa’s popular governor, attacked Nikki Haley after she added a key supporter: Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire.As Republicans struggle to coalesce around a single rival to former President Donald J. Trump, the popular governors of Iowa and New Hampshire have also split their ticket.Gov. Kim Reynolds of Iowa, which votes first in the Republican presidential nominating contest, is backing Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida. Gov. Chris Sununu of New Hampshire, which votes second, is supporting Nikki Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and South Carolina governor.On Tuesday, Mr. DeSantis played up the power of Ms. Reynolds’s backing while dismissing the potency of Mr. Sununu and calling Ms. Haley an avatar of “the old failed Republican establishment of yesteryear.”“Even a campaigner as good as Chris is not going to be able to paper over Nikki being an establishment candidate,” Mr. DeSantis said during a town hall for Iowa voters broadcast by CNN on Tuesday, hours after Mr. Sununu announced his endorsement of Ms. Haley at an event in New Hampshire. “I mean, she’s getting funded by liberal Democrats from California like the founder of LinkedIn, people on Wall Street like the head of JPMorgan.”For Mr. DeSantis, the town hall was a chance to make his pitch before a national audience without the name-calling and noisy cross-talk of the Republican presidential debates. He had entered the race as the clear favorite to upend Mr. Trump. But as frequent missteps have marred his campaign, some influential megadonors have thrown their support behind Ms. Haley, whom they see as more moderate.Among them are the two donors name-checked by Mr. DeSantis, Reid Hoffman, the billionaire co-founder of LinkedIn, and Jamie Dimon, the chief executive of JPMorgan Chase. (Ms. Haley also has the backing of traditional Republican donors.)Both Mr. DeSantis and Ms. Haley trail Mr. Trump by wide margins in polls nationally as well in the early-voting states. To close the gap, Mr. DeSantis has jumped at every opportunity to appear before Iowa voters, including the town hall hosted by CNN, a news organization that he has frequently derided as “corporate media.”Many of the questions asked on Tuesday, both by the voters in attendance at Grand View University in Des Moines and the moderator, Jake Tapper, were less than hard-hitting, and Mr. DeSantis was able to have a largely easy and confident stage presence.One voter asked him what food he most enjoyed at the Iowa State Fair. “Pork on a stick,” Mr. DeSantis replied with a smile, “but I did not do it in public because they said if they get a picture of it, you know, it’s a really bad thing.”Mr. Tapper asked Mr. DeSantis, who often talks about “destroying leftism,” to name his favorite Florida Democrat. He responded with two county sheriffs in South Florida.But Mr. DeSantis was also given the opportunity to detail some of his policy positions. On the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Mr. DeSantis said he opposed a two-state solution. On Ukraine, he expressed support for efforts by Republicans in Congress to tie funding for its war against Russia to U.S. border security. On Social Security, he said seniors should keep their benefits and called for a bipartisan effort to ensure the program’s long-term stability.“My grandmother lived till 91,” Mr. DeSantis explained. “Social Security was her sole source of income. So I understand what a lot of people are going through.”Still, he was sometimes light on specifics.Pressed by Mr. Tapper to say when he would release his plan to replace the Affordable Care Act, Mr. DeSantis said, “We’re working on it.”He added: “You kind of campaign in poetry, then you govern in prose.”And although he saved his harshest words for Ms. Haley, Mr. DeSantis also forcefully criticized Mr. Trump, something he has rarely done on national television.In his first answer, Mr. DeSantis said that Mr. Trump had “dramatically” mishandled the economy during the coronavirus pandemic. He also said that Mr. Trump was “flip-flopping” on abortion by criticizing a six-week ban that Mr. DeSantis had signed in Florida. And he noted Mr. Trump’s failure to build a wall on the United States’ southern border and have Mexico pay for it, as he had pledged to do.“It’s a different Donald Trump than ’15 and ’16,” he argued. “Back then he was colorful, but it was really America-first about the policies. Now, a lot of it’s about him.”Mr. DeSantis has said that Mr. Trump must be beaten in Iowa if Republicans want to stop him elsewhere. He has devoted extensive resources to winning the state, visiting each of its 99 counties and moving roughly a third of his campaign staff there.Outside groups are also helping his cause. One allied super PAC has built an extensive ground game to turn out support during the Jan. 15 caucuses. Another is investing heavily in advertisements targeting Ms. Haley.And he has campaigned frequently with Ms. Reynolds, who endorsed him last month. In a radio interview on Tuesday before the town hall, Mr. DeSantis called her “a tremendous help.”Other candidates are also focusing heavily on Iowa. The entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy plans to visit a total of 29 counties this week alone, according to his campaign. On Wednesday, Mr. Ramaswamy will appear in a similar CNN town hall in Des Moines.But none of the efforts have seemed to move the polls. Mr. DeSantis now trails Mr. Trump by more than 30 points among Iowa Republicans, according to a Des Moines Register/NBC News/Mediacom survey released on Monday.And in New Hampshire, where Mr. DeSantis has spent far less time, Ms. Haley has now pulled into second place. Mr. DeSantis has fallen to fourth or fifth. More

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      As Biden Struggles With Black Men, Allies Gather at White House

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      Aides of the president met with influential Black male Democrats to discuss how to shore up his standing with a crucial group of voters before 2024.As President Biden’s allies grow more worried that his standing is slipping among Black men, his aides met on Tuesday at the White House with influential Black male Democrats to discuss how to increase his popularity with a crucial group of voters before the 2024 election.Several attendees said there was general agreement that Mr. Biden, during both his 2020 campaign and his first three years in office, had paid more attention to Black female voters than to Black male ones. These people said they had suggested to Mr. Biden’s aides that the president needed to make a specific argument about how his administration had improved the lives of Black men.“It’s clear that there’s been a focus on Black women and the question becomes, has there been an equal focus on Black men?” said Cedric Richmond, a former Louisiana congressman and Biden administration official who is now a senior adviser at the Democratic National Committee and who was at the meeting.He added: “There’s been a mantra that Black women are the base of the party and, I think, it’s Black families that are the base of the party. That has the potential to separate the family unit by gender, which I think is just unfortunate.”The afternoon meeting included, among others, Representative Steven Horsford of Nevada, the chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus; Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee; Lt. Gov. Austin Davis of Pennsylvania, who has warned publicly that Mr. Biden’s standing with Black voters has fallen; and Antjuan Seawright and Clay Middleton, political operatives from South Carolina who are closely associated with Representative James E. Clyburn, a key Biden ally in the state.The group agreed that Mr. Biden had many accomplishments that had helped Black men. Democrats, he said, are falling short in telling this story.“We left the room acknowledging that we collectively have to do a better job communicating,” said Kwame Raoul, the attorney general of Illinois. “Sometimes being awakened to a challenge is a good thing.”The White House session followed months of nail-biting among Democrats about rising skepticism of Mr. Biden among Black voters, especially Black men. Republicans have aimed to drive a wedge between Black voters and the Democratic Party in recent cycles, arguing that former President Donald J. Trump’s record on the economy and his passage of a criminal justice law were more beneficial for Black communities — arguments that Democrats have dismissed as disinformation.Polling released by The New York Times and Siena College last month found that 22 percent of Black voters in six of the most important presidential battleground states said they would support Mr. Trump against Mr. Biden next year, an alarming figure for Democrats given Black voters’ decades-long loyalty to the party.At the meeting on Tuesday — led by Steve Benjamin, the director of the White House’s public engagement office — the Black male allies of Mr. Biden were encouraged to recount what people in their communities and home districts had been saying about his administration and whether they would support him for a second term.“There have been communication gaps,” said Harold Love, a Tennessee state representative who is the incoming president of the National Black Caucus of State Legislators. He said the administration needed to tell people what Mr. Biden had done “in plain language so they can understand.”The White House declined to comment about the meeting.In interviews and focus groups, Black men who express openness to supporting Mr. Trump have pointed to the former president’s record on the economy and said their businesses and families fared better during his administration. Black Democrats have rebutted this idea, in some cases arguing that Black men have been targeted by disinformation that, if crystallized in enough voters’ minds, could endanger the president’s already shaky standing with them.Mr. Raoul, the Illinois attorney general, said that part of Mr. Biden’s problem was that he had articulated a complex message that often ended up competing with easier-to-digest misinformation.“Sometimes when you do a lot, it’s difficult to convey it to folks who are used to consuming things in sound bites and who have been at times recipients of intentionally targeted misinformation,” Mr. Raoul said on Tuesday.Democrats have emphasized earlier and more frequent outreach to Black communities as important to winning their voters.Vice President Kamala Harris has frequently met with small groups of Black men as she has traveled the country and, last month, hosted a group of 10 Black men in the news media and politics for dinner at her home in Washington. The party has also bought advertisements on Black radio stations and placed digital ads geared toward young Black voters.Mr. Benjamin’s office in the White House has held frequent meetings with a variety of constituency groups.But the meeting on Tuesday followed a particularly bad stretch of polling for Mr. Biden. CNN polls released Monday found Mr. Biden trailing Mr. Trump by 10 percentage points in Michigan and five points in Georgia — both battleground states with large numbers of Black voters.Even though Mr. Biden has no serious Democratic presidential challengers, the party’s primary election in South Carolina on Feb. 3 will be an early test of Black voters’ enthusiasm. Black voters made up nearly 60 percent of the Democratic electorate in the state in 2020, when Mr. Biden’s victory there set him on the path to the White House.No other Democrats have made a significant investment in the state’s primary this year, but the South Carolina Democratic Party on Monday nevertheless began a statewide voter outreach program, complete with a 50-person staff and a six-figure investment.Mr. Middleton, a senior adviser to Mr. Biden’s South Carolina campaign, said the meeting was ultimately meant to help determine how best to relay the president’s accomplishments and his plans for a second term to Black men across the country, with a focus on battleground states.“If we ignore what Black men are saying, then we would have some problems,” Mr. Middleton said. “This is to say, ‘We will not ignore.’” More

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      Why Jack Smith Is Taking Trump’s Immunity Claim Straight to the Supreme Court

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      The special counsel has substantive and procedural reasons for wanting a quick ruling on whether Donald Trump can be prosecuted for his actions as president.Jack Smith, the special counsel who has brought two cases against former President Donald J. Trump, made a bold move this week designed to undercut one of Mr. Trump’s chief defenses against accusations of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to rule on Mr. Trump’s attempts to have the election subversion charges dismissed on a sweeping claim of executive immunity before a lower appeals court even has the chance to consider the issue.Mr. Smith also asked the justices to make their decision quickly.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” he told the Supreme Court in a petition filed on Monday.But there was a reason it was needed.“This is an extraordinary case,” he wrote.Here is a look at the intersecting legal and political issues surrounding the special counsel’s move.What does Mr. Smith want the Supreme Court to do?He made two separate requests.First, he asked the justices to consider a legal issue they have never looked at before: whether the Constitution confers absolute immunity on a former president against a federal prosecution for crimes he committed while in office.Mr. Trump put that argument at the center of his initial motion to dismiss the election case, which he filed in October in Federal District Court in Washington. He contended that because the charges were based on official actions he took while in the White House, the indictment in its entirety had to be thrown out.Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is handling the case, disagreed and rejected the motion two weeks ago. Mr. Trump’s lawyers challenged her decision in the normal way in front of a federal appeals court in Washington and also asked her to freeze the case while the appeal was being heard.Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to step in front of an appeals court to rule on former President Donald J. Trump’s claims of immunity.Haiyun Jiang for The New York TimesWhile the lawyers obviously hoped to win the appeal, they also had another goal: to drag out the process for as long as possible and postpone a trial on the election interference charges.It was that delay strategy that appeared to underlie Mr. Smith’s second request to the Supreme Court. He asked the justices not only to rule on the immunity issue before the lower appeals court did, but also to do so on an expedited basis.Mr. Smith told the justices that an ordinary, even a relatively fast, appeal could take too much time. And he expressed concern in particular about keeping the trial, now set to go before a jury on March 4, more or less on schedule.What could happen if the trial is delayed?It depends on whom you ask and how long the trial is postponed.A significant delay could push the trial into summer or fall — the heart of the 2024 campaign season. That could cause problems for Mr. Trump because he would be obliged to attend the trial in Washington every weekday for two or three months when he could be holding rallies or meeting voters.Mr. Trump would likely respond to such a situation by bringing his campaign to the steps of the federal courthouse. He would almost certainly hold daily news conferences in front of the television cameras that would await his exit from the courtroom and use them to deliver his political talking points and attack the legal proceeding. He has employed a similar strategy during the civil fraud trial in New York in which he is accused of inflating his company’s net worth.There could also be serious consequences, however, if the trial is pushed off until after the election.If that happens and Mr. Trump wins the race, he would suddenly have the power to order the charges to be dropped. Moreover, millions of voters would never get to hear the evidence that Mr. Smith’s team collected about Mr. Trump’s efforts to subvert the last election before making a decision about whether to elect him again.What do we know about whether the Supreme Court will take the case on an expedited basis?It would require only four of the nine justices to come together for Mr. Smith’s request to be granted. Shortly after Mr. Smith filed his petition, the court issued an order telling Mr. Trump’s legal team to respond with their opinions on the issue by Dec. 20. While the schedule the justices set gave no indication of whether they might ultimately take the case, it did seem to suggest that the court was not inclined to drag its feet in reaching a decision.A significant delay in the case could plunge the trial into the heart of Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesHistorically speaking, the Supreme Court has only rarely stepped in front of lower appeals courts by using the procedure known as “certiorari before judgment.” Before 2019, the court had not used the provision for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas. But as of late last year, the court had used it 19 times since.The procedure has been used in cases involving national crises, like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor during a criminal investigation.Mr. Smith urged the court to use it in Mr. Trump’s criminal case as well, saying that the proceeding involved “issues of exceptional national importance.”How sympathetic has this Supreme Court been to Trump in such cases?While the court’s current majority has voted in favor of a number of staunchly conservative policies, from striking down abortion rights to reversing affirmative action, it has shown less of an appetite for supporting Mr. Trump’s attempts to monkey with the democratic process.Just months before Mr. Trump appointed his third Supreme Court justice, the court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote in 2020 that he had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records from investigators in a criminal inquiry.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.That same year, in a brief unsigned order, the court rejected a lawsuit filed by the state of Texas seeking to throw out the election results in four battleground states that Mr. Trump had lost. It also declined requests to review suits filed by pro-Trump lawyers claiming that voting machines across the country had been hacked by a cabal of foreign actors to flip votes away from Mr. Trump.Last year, the Supreme Court refused a request from Mr. Trump to block the release of White House records concerning the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, effectively rejecting his claims of executive privilege.The court’s unsigned order upheld the original decision made in the case by none other than Judge Chutkan. And she had scathing words for Mr. Trump in her initial decision rejecting his claims of executive privilege.“Presidents are not kings,” she wrote, “and plaintiff is not president.”What could happen next?If the Supreme Court takes the case and agrees with Mr. Trump’s immunity claims, then the indictment would be tossed out and there would be no trial on the election interference charges. But if the court hears the case and quickly sides with Mr. Smith, a trial would be held, likely before the election.On the other hand, if the justices decline to hear the case at this stage, then it would go back to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. But the Supreme Court could eventually come back into the picture and consider challenges to the decision of the appeals court. More

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      What Is the Real Meaning of ‘Pro-Life’?

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      More from our inbox:The Texas Abortion RulingThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and AntisemitismThe Undemocratic Electoral CollegeTrump and NATO Illustration by Alicia Tatone; Photographs by Yiming Chen, SDI Productions, Joshua Roberts/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “Republicans Are Finding Out That ‘Pro-Life’ Has Too Many Meanings,” by Liz Mair (Opinion guest essay, Dec. 6):Ms. Mair, a G.O.P. campaign strategist, writes about all the desperate ways Republican politicians are trying to explain their stance on abortion now that their decades-long fight to make it illegal has taken a step forward.It seems her clients are scrambling, surprised to find that “rank-and-file G.O.P. voters are not as pro-life as we might have thought.”The medical community is not surprised. You see, there are no party affiliation requirements for unplanned or medically doomed pregnancies. Doctors have seen staunch Republicans obtain safe and legal abortions for decades. I’m sure that every single white male Republican legislator who signs “heartbeat” laws, piously claims he is pro-life and rails against Planned Parenthood knows a woman who has had an abortion. And he may have caused one himself.Instead of spinning the message on their terrible policies, her advice to her G.O.P. clients should be to stop blocking funding for reliable contraception, stop interfering with medical decisions between women and their doctors and start writing laws that support women who can’t afford another pregnancy because of poverty, a lack of postpartum job security or abusive partners.You know, “pro-life” stuff.Cheryl BaileySt. Paul, Minn.The writer is a retired gynecologic oncologist.To the Editor:In recommending that Republicans finesse the abortion issue, Liz Mair doesn’t mention one point. Pro-choice advocates are not anti-life, but we disagree with those who call themselves pro-life in two fundamental ways. We do not believe that humans can claim to know what God — who certainly allows miscarriages — wants, and we do not believe that humans claiming to have this knowledge have a right to impose their religious beliefs on others.Republicans may continue to succeed politically by demagoguing the abortion issue, but most Americans, religious or not, do not believe that the law should forbid women from obtaining a safe abortion.Jamie BaldwinRedding, Conn.To the Editor:Liz Mair is absolutely correct that “pro-life” has many meanings, but she mistakenly focuses only on abortion.Being “pro-life” also means things like good pre- and post-natal care for all mothers; good health care for everyone, including babies born to the poorest among us; accessible and affordable child care and preschool for all; gun safety laws to ensure that bullets are no longer the biggest cause of accidental death among U.S. children, and, not least, more commitment to combating climate change.Republicans need to consider these matters when they (or if they) decide to come up with a better, more marketable definition of “pro-life.”Nadine GodwinNew YorkThe Texas Abortion Ruling Kate Cox, via Associated PressTo the Editor:Re “Texas Supreme Court Rules Against Woman Who Sought Abortion” (news article, Dec. 12):I hope the women of Texas go on strike and march to the state capital. Women, especially mothers, all over the country will stand with them.Eve Rumpf-SternbergSeattleTo the Editor:Is there no end to these people’s cruelty?Linda GrunbaumNew YorkThe Campus Clash of Free Speech and Antisemitism Adam Glanzman for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Censorship Can’t Help University Presidents,” by David French (column, Dec. 11):Mr. French argues that what American campuses need is more viewpoint diversity and true freedom of speech — not the current hypocrisy of some speech being favored and other speech censored.But what Mr. French does not mention at all is the need for morality and truth to be part of the curriculum. President John F. Kennedy, a Harvard alumnus, said “the goal of education is the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth.”The university presidents’ failure before Congress to unambiguously repudiate calls for “the genocide of Jews” reflected how far these schools have strayed from that purpose. Allowing more speech on campus without a moral compass will yield only more noise and little else.Nathan J. DiamentWashingtonThe writer is the executive director for public policy of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.The Undemocratic Electoral College Christopher Lee for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “‘The Exploding Cigar of American Politics,’” by Gail Collins (column, Nov. 30):Ms. Collins’s excellent column about the Electoral College should have commented more on the U.S. Senate, which is even more unrepresentative and undemocratic.Two out of three of our elected national arms of government are unrepresentative. (The third “arm,” the House, is roughly representative, but tainted by gerrymandering, “dark” money and increasing voter suppression.)The Electoral College has overturned the national popular vote five times in America’s nearly 250-year history, but twice already in this still young century. It’s likely to happen again, probably soon (’24?).One reason the founding fathers decided not to have direct elections to the presidency was a fear of a mostly uneducated and ill-informed electorate voting in either a fraudster or a populist demagogue as president. Some would say we got two for the price of one in 2016.We should abolish the Electoral College and directly vote for the president (as we do for the Senate and the House). Failing that, embrace the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact, by which states agree to award their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote.I dread the day when many more Americans despair of the ballot box and instead choose far more dangerous ways of expressing their will — i.e., more Capitol insurrections, but successful ones.The founding fathers must be spinning in their graves at our inability to modernize our now dangerously outdated Constitution.Michael NorthmoreStaten IslandTrump and NATOFormer President Donald J. Trump has made it clear that he primarily sees NATO as a drain on American resources.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s Stance Toward NATO Alarms Europe” (front page, Dec. 10):I’m 73 years old and frightened. So many things I have taken for granted my entire life are threatened. My dad fought overseas in World War II. He, and I, always assumed that the things he fought for would remain protected.I never contemplated that the coalitions we established with our allies after the war would be threatened. I came to believe that the isolationism thriving before the war had been essentially put to rest.But now Donald Trump and his disciples have awakened the blind nationalism that raises the specter of totalitarianism. That menace should strike terror in all who treasure our democracy.And we can’t allow a feeling of helplessness or a belief that such things could never happen here prevent us from protecting what we can no longer take for granted.Stephen F. GladstoneShaker Heights, Ohio More

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      Las inquietudes sobre el autoritarismo de Trump abren un debate en EE. UU.

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      El expresidente y sus aliados hacen poco para tranquilizar a quienes están preocupados por una posible dictadura. Incluso, con sus declaraciones y acciones parecen estar reafirmando esas alarmas.El otro día, cuando un historiador escribió un ensayo en el que advertía que elegir al expresidente Donald Trump el próximo año podría conducir a una dictadura, un aliado de Trump no tardó en responder con un llamado para que dicho historiador fuera enviado a prisión.Suena casi como una parodia: la respuesta a las inquietudes de un autor sobre una dictadura es procesarlo. Pero Trump y sus aliados no se están tomando la molestia de rechazar con firmeza la acusación de una dictadura para tranquilizar a quienes les preocupa lo que podría significar un nuevo mandato. En todo caso, parece que la están alentando.Si Trump regresara a la presidencia, sus allegados han prometido “perseguir” a los medios de comunicación, iniciar investigaciones penales contra excolaboradores que se distanciaron del expresidente y expulsar del gobierno a los funcionarios públicos que consideran desleales. Cuando los críticos señalaron que el lenguaje de Trump sobre eliminar a todos los “parásitos” de Washington evocaba al de Adolf Hitler, un portavoz del expresidente dijo sobre los críticos que su “triste y miserable existencia será destruida” bajo el gobierno de Trump.El propio Trump hizo poco para calmar a los estadounidenses cuando su amigo Sean Hannity intentó ayudarlo en Fox News la semana pasada. Durante una reunión de foro abierto, Hannity le planteó a Trump lo que parecía ser una pregunta sencilla al pedirle que reafirmara que, por supuesto, no tenía la intención de abusar de su poder y usar el gobierno para castigar a sus enemigos. En lugar de tan solo concordar con esa afirmación, Trump aseguró que solo sería un dictador en el “Día 1” de un nuevo periodo.“Trump ha dejado bien claro, mediante todas sus acciones y retórica, que admira a los líderes que despliegan tipos de poder autoritario, desde Putin hasta Orbán pasando por Xi, y que quiere ejercer ese tipo de poder en casa”, comentó Ruth Ben-Ghiat, autora de Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present, en referencia a Vladimir Putin de Rusia, Viktor Orbán de Hungría y Xi Jinping de China. “La historia nos demuestra que los autócratas siempre manifiestan quiénes son y qué van a hacer”, agregó. “Solo que nosotros no escuchamos hasta que es demasiado tarde”.A pesar de su enfrentamiento público con la dirigencia china, el presidente Trump ha elogiado al presidente Xi Jinping por sus políticas de hombre fuerte.Erin Schaff/The New York TimesEn los últimos días, las conversaciones sobre el posible carácter autoritario de una nueva presidencia de Trump han impregnado el debate político en la capital de Estados Unidos. Una serie de informes en The New York Times esbozaron varios planes desarrollados por aliados de Trump para imponer un enorme poder en un nuevo mandato y detallaron cómo el exmandatario tendría menos restricciones constitucionales. The Atlantic publicó una edición especial en la que 24 colaboradores pronosticaron cómo sería un segundo periodo presidencial de Trump, y muchos predijeron un régimen autocrático.Liz Cheney, quien fue legisladora republicana por Wyoming en el Congreso y vicepresidenta del comité de la Cámara de Representantes encargado de investigar el asalto del 6 de enero de 2021 al Capitolio, publicó un nuevo libro en el que advierte que Trump es un peligro claro y presente para la democracia estadounidense. Y, por supuesto, se publicó el ensayo del historiador Robert Kagan en The Washington Post que motivó a J. D. Vance, senador republicano por Ohio y aliado de Trump, a presionar al Departamento de Justicia para que lo investigara.Seamos claros, los presidentes estadounidenses han excedido los límites de su poder y han sido llamados dictadores desde los primeros días de la república. John Adams, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Woodrow Wilson y Franklin Roosevelt, entre otros, fueron acusados de ser déspotas. Se decía que Richard Nixon consolidó su poder en la “presidencia imperial”. Tanto a George W. Bush como a Barack Obama se les comparó con Hitler.Pero hay algo distinto en el debate actual, más allá de la retórica subida de tono o los desacuerdos legítimos sobre los límites del poder ejecutivo, algo que sugiere que este es un momento fundamental de decisión en el experimento estadounidense. Tal vez es una manifestación del desencanto popular con las instituciones del país: solo el 10 por ciento de los estadounidenses piensa que la democracia funciona muy bien, según una encuesta realizada en junio por The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.Tal vez es un reflejo del extremismo y la demagogia que se han vuelto tan comunes en la política de muchos lugares en el mundo. Y tal vez proviene de un expresidente que reclama su antiguo puesto y evidencia una afinidad tan desconcertante hacia los autócratas.En una ocasión, Trump expresó que no sentía ni un atisbo de remordimiento al compartir en redes sociales una cita de Mussolini y adoptó el lenguaje de Stalin al llamar a los periodistas los “enemigos del pueblo”. Le dijo a su jefe de gabinete que “Hitler hizo muchas cosas buenas” y luego expresó que deseaba que los generales estadounidenses fueran como los generales de Hitler.En diciembre del año pasado, poco después de iniciar su campaña de reaparición, Trump hizo un llamado a “poner fin” a la Constitución para retirar de inmediato al presidente Joe Biden del cargo y reinstaurarlo a él en la Casa Blanca sin tener que esperar a otras elecciones.Los defensores de Trump desestiman los temores sobre sus instintos autocráticos como quejas de los liberales que no lo apoyan ni a él ni a sus políticas y que intentan asustar a los votantes de maneras engañosas. Argumentan que Biden es el verdadero dictador, ya que su Departamento de Justicia llevará a juicio a su rival más contundente el próximo año por varios presuntos delitos, aunque no hay evidencia de que Biden haya participado personalmente en esas decisiones, y a pesar de que algunos exasesores de Trump afirman que las acusaciones son legítimas.“Los comentarios relacionados con una dictadura que realizan Kagan y sus colegas escritores liberales es un intento de asustar a los estadounidenses no solo para distraerse a sí mismos de los errores y la debilidad del gobierno de Biden, sino porque hay algo que ellos temen aún más: que un segundo gobierno de Trump tenga mucho más éxito a la hora de implementar su agenda y deshacer políticas y programas progresistas que el primero”, escribió Fred Fleitz, quien trabajó brevemente en la Casa Blanca de Trump, en el sitio web American Greatness el viernes.Kagan, un académico muy respetado de la Institución Brookings y autor de numerosos libros de historia, tiene muchos antecedentes de apoyar una política exterior firme que, en opinión de la izquierda, dista mucho de ser liberal. Pero desde hace años ha sido un crítico firme y declarado de Trump. En mayo de 2016, cuando otros republicanos se hacían a la idea de la primera nominación de Trump a la presidencia, Kagan advirtió: “así es como el fascismo llega a Estados Unidos”.Su ensayo del 30 de noviembre sonó como una nueva advertencia. Puede que los intentos de Trump para poner en marcha sus ideas más radicales en su primer mandato hayan sido obstaculizados por asesores republicanos y oficiales militares más moderados, argumentó Kagan, pero no se va a volver a rodear de esas figuras y encontrará menos de los controles y contrapesos que lo limitaron la última vez.Los defensores del expresidente califican los temores sobre los instintos autocráticos de Trump como quejas de liberales que intentan asustar a los votantes.Jordan Gale para The New York TimesEntre otros ejemplos, Kagan citó el intento de Trump por anular una elección que había perdido, sin tomar en cuenta la voluntad de los votantes. También señaló los comentarios francos de Trump sobre llevar a juicio a sus adversarios y desplegar al ejército en las calles para reprimir las manifestaciones. “En unos pocos años, hemos pasado de tener una democracia relativamente segura a estar a unos pasos cortos, y a escasos meses, de la posibilidad de vivir una dictadura”, escribió Kagan.Vance, senador recién llegado que buscó el apoyo de Trump y la semana pasada fue mencionado por Axios como un posible compañero de fórmula a la vicepresidencia en 2024, se ofendió en nombre del expresidente. Envió una carta al fiscal general Merrick Garland en la que sugería que Kagan debía ser llevado a juicio por incitar una “rebelión abierta”, y basó su argumento en una parte del ensayo de Kagan que señalaba que los estados dirigidos por demócratas podrían desafiar la presidencia de Trump.Vance escribió que “según Robert Kagan, la perspectiva de una segunda presidencia de Donald Trump es tan terrible como para justificar una rebelión abierta contra Estados Unidos, junto con la violencia política que invariablemente le seguiría”.El artículo de Kagan no abogaba realmente por la rebelión, sino que pronosticaba la posibilidad de que los gobernadores demócratas se opusieran a Trump “mediante una forma de anulación” de la autoridad federal. De hecho, llegó a insinuar que los gobernadores republicanos podrían hacer lo mismo con Biden, algo que tampoco defendía.Vance intentaba establecer un paralelo entre el ensayo de Kagan y los esfuerzos de Trump para revertir las elecciones de 2020. El senador escribió que, según la lógica del Departamento de Justicia al investigar a Trump, el artículo de Kagan podría ser interpretado como una “invitación a la ‘insurrección’, una expresión de ‘conspiración’ delictiva o un intento de ocasionar una guerra civil”. Para enfatizar su idea, insistió en que hubiera respuestas para el 6 de enero.Kagan, quien publicó otro ensayo el jueves sobre cómo detener la trayectoria hacia la dictadura que él vislumbra, comentó que la intervención del senador validaba sus argumentos. “Es revelador que su primer instinto tras ser atacado por un periodista es sugerir que lo encierren”, señaló Kagan en una entrevista.Los ayudantes de Trump y Vance no respondieron a las solicitudes de comentarios. David Shipley, editor de opinión de The Washington Post, defendió el trabajo de Kagan. “Estamos orgullosos de publicar los reflexivos ensayos de Robert Kagan y animamos al público a leer sus artículos del 30 de noviembre y del 7 de diciembre juntos, y a sacar sus propias conclusiones”, dijo. “Estos ensayos forman parte de una larga tradición de Kagan de iniciar conversaciones importantes”.Es una conversación que tiene meses por delante y un final incierto. Mientras tanto, nadie espera que Garland tome en serio a Vance, incluido casi con toda seguridad el propio Vance. Su carta era una declaración política. Pero dice algo de este momento que su propuesta de procesar a un crítico se pueda ver como un triunfo político.Peter Baker es el corresponsal jefe del Times en la Casa Blanca. Ha cubierto a los cinco últimos presidentes estadounidenses y a veces escribe artículos analíticos que sitúan a los mandatarios y sus gobierno en un contexto y un marco histórico más amplios. Más de Peter Baker More

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      Special Counsel Asks Supreme Court to Decide if Trump Is Immune From Prosecution

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      The special counsel, Jack Smith, urged the justices to move with exceptional speed, and they quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.Jack Smith, the special counsel prosecuting former President Donald J. Trump on charges of plotting to overturn the 2020 election, asked the Supreme Court on Monday to rule on Mr. Trump’s argument that he is immune from prosecution. The justices quickly agreed to fast-track the first phase of the case.Mr. Smith’s request was unusual in two ways: He asked the justices to rule before an appeals court acted, and he urged them to move with exceptional speed.“This case presents a fundamental question at the heart of our democracy: whether a former president is absolutely immune from federal prosecution for crimes committed while in office or is constitutionally protected from federal prosecution when he has been impeached but not convicted before the criminal proceedings begin,” Mr. Smith wrote.On Monday evening, just hours after Mr. Smith filed papers in the Supreme Court, the justices granted his initial request: to put their consideration of whether to hear the case on a fast track. The court ordered Mr. Trump’s lawyers to file their response to the petition seeking review on an abbreviated schedule, by Dec. 20.Mr. Smith’s filings represented a vigorous plea to keep the trial on track by cutting off an avenue by which Mr. Trump could cause delays.A speedy decision by the justices is of the essence, Mr. Smith wrote, because Mr. Trump’s appeal of a trial judge’s ruling rejecting his claim of immunity suspends the criminal trial. The proceeding is scheduled to begin on March 4 in Federal District Court in Washington.Any significant delays could plunge the trial into the heart of the 2024 campaign season or push it past the election, when Mr. Trump could order the charges be dropped if he wins the presidency.“The United States recognizes that this is an extraordinary request,” Mr. Smith wrote. “This is an extraordinary case.”The trial judge, Tanya S. Chutkan, rejected Mr. Trump’s sweeping claims that he enjoyed “absolute immunity” from the election interference indictment because it was based on actions he took while in office.In her ruling two weeks ago, she condemned his attempts to “usurp the reins of government” and said there was nothing in the Constitution or American history supporting the proposition that a former president should not be bound by the federal criminal law.Mr. Trump appealed the decision to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. He also asked Judge Chutkan to freeze the election interference case in its entirety until the appeal was resolved.In his Supreme Court brief, Mr. Smith conceded that the election case could not be decided until after the appeal of the immunity issue was resolved. On Sunday, his team filed papers to Judge Chutkan asking her to keep the March 4 trial date and saying she could still work on certain aspects of the case even as the appeal was being heard.In what appeared to be an attempt to cover all bases, Mr. Smith’s team also filed a request to the appeals court in Washington on Monday to decide the immunity question quickly. Winning the appeal of the immunity decision was only one of Mr. Trump’s goals in challenging Judge Chutkan’s ruling. All along, he and his lawyers have had an alterative strategy: to delay the trial for as long as possible.If the trial were put off until after the election and Mr. Trump were to win, he could have his attorney general simply dismiss the charges. Holding a trial after the presidential race was over would also mean that voters would not get to hear any of the evidence that prosecutors have collected about Mr. Trump’s expansive efforts to reverse the results of the last election before weighing in on whether to elect him again in 2024.Even if Mr. Trump’s lawyers are unable to postpone the trial until after the presidential race was decided, they are hoping to push it off until the heart of the campaign season in August or September.That would present Judge Chutkan with a difficult decision: Should she hold the trial at a time Mr. Trump could be out holding rallies and meeting voters and suffer what are sure to be his vociferous complaints or make the decision herself to delay the trial after the race is over?Mr. Smith urged the justices to move fast.He asked the court to use an unusual procedure to leapfrog the appeals court, “certiorari before judgment.” It has been used in cases involving national crises, like President Richard M. Nixon’s refusal to turn over tape recordings to a special prosecutor or President Harry S. Truman’s seizure of the steel industry.The procedure used to be rare. Before 2019, the court had not used it for 15 years, according to statistics compiled by Stephen Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. As of late last year, he found, the court has used it 19 times since.Among recent examples in which the court bypassed appeals courts were cases on abortion, affirmative action and student debt forgiveness.A statement from Mr. Trump’s campaign called the request by Mr. Smith a “Hail Mary” attempt to get to the Supreme Court and “bypass the appellate process.”Derek Muller, a law professor at Notre Dame, said the procedure remained unusual.“It’s always a long-shot bid for the Supreme Court to hear a case like this, without waiting for the process to play out in the lower courts,” he said. “That said, Smith is rightly concerned about a slow appeals process that may interfere with a trial date and run even closer to Election Day. It seems unlikely it will persuade the Supreme Court to intervene, but it is worth asking given the risks of delay.”Mr. Smith’s request was based on an argument that prosecutors have used several times in the election interference case: that the public itself, not just the defendant, Mr. Trump, has a fundamental right to a speedy trial.As in the Nixon tapes case, Mr. Smith wrote, “the circumstances warrant expedited proceedings,” adding: “The public importance of the issues, the imminence of the scheduled trial date and the need for a prompt and final resolution of respondent’s immunity claims counsel in favor of this court’s expedited review at this time.”Mr. Smith asked the Supreme Court to consider a question it has never addressed before: whether the Constitution confers presidential immunity from criminal prosecution.Mr. Smith acknowledged that the Supreme Court said in 1982 that former presidents enjoy some special protections, at least in civil suits — ones from private litigants seeking money — and that the Justice Department has long taken the view that sitting presidents cannot be indicted.“But those principles cannot be extended to provide the absolute shield from criminal liability that respondent, a former president, asserts,” Mr. Smith wrote. “Neither the separation of powers nor respondent’s acquittal in impeachment proceedings lifts him above the reach of federal criminal law. Like other citizens, he is accountable for criminal conduct.”Mr. Trump’s lawyers rely heavily on the 1982 decision, also involving Nixon, Nixon v. Fitzgerald. It was brought by an Air Force analyst who said he was fired in 1970 in retaliation for his criticism of cost overruns. By the time the Supreme Court acted, Nixon had been out of office for several years.By a 5-to-4 vote, the justices ruled for Nixon. “In view of the special nature of the president’s constitutional office and functions,” Justice Lewis F. Powell Jr. wrote for the majority, “we think it appropriate to recognize absolute presidential immunity from damages liability for acts within the ‘outer perimeter’ of his official responsibility.”Other Supreme Court precedents seem to be of no help to Mr. Trump.In Clinton v. Jones in 1997, the court unanimously allowed a sexual harassment suit against President Bill Clinton to proceed while he was in office, discounting concerns that it would distract him from his official responsibilities. That was also a civil case.And more recently, the Supreme Court ruled by a 7-to-2 vote in Trump v. Vance in 2020 that Mr. Trump had no absolute right to block the release of his financial records in a criminal investigation.“No citizen, not even the president, is categorically above the common duty to produce evidence when called upon in a criminal proceeding,” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority.In separate court papers filed on Monday, prosecutors working for Mr. Smith told Judge Chutkan that they intend to call expert witnesses during the election interference trial who will testify about the movement on Jan. 6 of Mr. Trump’s supporters from his incendiary speech near the White House — during which he urged them to “fight like hell” — to the Capitol.Prosecutors said they also planned to call a witness who could talk about the specific times that day when Mr. Trump’s Twitter account was in use.That could mean that the government will seek to provide the jury with the connections between Mr. Trump’s speech and his Twitter messages on Jan. 6 and the movement of the mob toward the Capitol. More

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      DeSantis Bashes Trump for Bragging About Debating Hillary Clinton

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      Gov. Ron DeSantis escalated his attacks on the former president after Mr. Trump bragged about debating Hillary Clinton in 2016.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida accused former President Donald J. Trump of “cowardice” for refusing to participate in the Republican presidential primary debates after Mr. Trump boasted about facing Hillary Clinton in 2016 following the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape.“Trump denigrates military service by claiming it is ‘braver’ that he debated Hillary Clinton than what soldiers endure on the battlefield,” Mr. DeSantis, a former Navy lawyer, wrote on the social media platform X on Sunday. “Debating isn’t ‘brave’; it’s the bare minimum any candidate should do. Hiding from debates, on the other hand, is an example of cowardice.”The Florida governor was responding to comments that Mr. Trump — who has said he is too far ahead of his rivals in the polls to debate them — had made during a speech to New York Republicans on Saturday. In his remarks, Mr. Trump recounted how a general had praised him for taking the debate stage against Mrs. Clinton in 2016 even though a damaging recording of him making vulgar statements about women had recently been made public.Mr. Trump claimed the general had told him: “Sir, I’ve been on the battlefield. Men have gone down on my left and on my right. I stood on hills where soldiers were killed. But I believe the bravest thing I’ve ever seen was the night you went onto that stage with Hillary Clinton after what happened.”Mr. DeSantis has often been hesitant to directly attack Mr. Trump, who remains popular with Republican voters, limiting his criticisms to certain topics such as his inability to serve two terms and his failure to achieve policy objectives like building a border wall and “draining the swamp” during his first administration. One of Mr. DeSantis’s other go-to attacks has been on Mr. Trump’s decision not to take part in the four Republican debates held so far. But calling the former president a coward represents something of an escalation for Mr. DeSantis as his campaign continues to underperform expectations.The former president, who has a history of manufacturing anecdotes, did not name the general. Steven Cheung, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, said that Mr. DeSantis was having “a meltdown of epic proportions by regurgitating Democrat talking points.”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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      Annoyed at Biden, New Hampshire Democrats Aim to Help His Presidential Campaign

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      Despite being bumped down the presidential calendar, Democrats in the state are planning a write-in campaign for the president, who won’t be on New Hampshire primary ballots.New Hampshire Democrats were furious at President Biden when he shook up the party’s nominating calendar last year, diminishing their state’s political importance by pushing its primary election behind South Carolina’s.Kicking and screaming, they defied the Democratic National Committee and refused to move back their primary. This year, they warned that the upheaval could come back to haunt Mr. Biden and cause him an embarrassing loss in the state’s primary.In turn, the national party stripped the state of its delegates. Mr. Biden declined to campaign in New Hampshire or even place his name on the ballot.Now a range of the state’s influential Democrats, including Senator Jeanne Shaheen, are coming around to the idea that they need to swallow their pride and help Mr. Biden win their primary despite his snub of their state.“It’s up to us in New Hampshire to fix a problem that his advisers and the D.N.C. made for the president,” said Kathleen Sullivan, a former New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman who is leading a write-in Biden super PAC.Ms. Sullivan’s super PAC is one of two groups of Democrats in the state organizing campaigns to promote Mr. Biden as a write-in candidate in the Jan. 23 primary election.For the Biden-backing Granite Staters, the write-in efforts amount to a bit of a tail-between-their-legs moment after months of howling objections about the president’s decision. Like Ms. Sullivan, they find themselves blaming the D.N.C. or Mr. Biden’s aides rather than a president whom they still support.Their goal is a substantial Biden victory over the two Democrats running protest campaigns against the president, Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota and the self-help author Marianne Williamson. Both of them, unlike Mr. Biden, will appear on Democratic ballots in the state.“People here, quite frankly, don’t care about the D.N.C. or their rules,” said Terie Norelli, a former speaker of the New Hampshire State House and a leader of Granite State Write-In, a grass-roots group supporting Mr. Biden. “The vast majority of Democrats and independents in New Hampshire do support President Biden.”The group hopes to use its modest budget — $50,000 to $70,000 — to inform New Hampshire Democrats and independents, who are allowed to cast ballots in the state’s primary elections, about how to vote for the president in a contest in which he is not participating.Beyond obvious details, like making sure voters know that his name is spelled B-i-d-e-n and that they have to check a write-in box on the ballot, the group is recruiting a team of volunteers. They will partake in the small-town New Hampshire experience of standing outside voting sites and holding signs urging voters to write in Mr. Biden’s name.The group also plans to have its members write letters and place opinion essays in New Hampshire newspapers and appear at town Democratic club meetings before the primary.Ms. Norelli said she was not worried that Mr. Biden would lose to Mr. Phillips or Ms. Williamson. The aim, she said, is to give his campaign — with which her group is not coordinating — momentum to defeat former President Donald J. Trump in the general election, assuming he is the Republican nominee.“It’s not like it’s a big, contested race,” she said.This month, the group distributed stickers at a New Hampshire Democratic Party fund-raising dinner where, in a public-relations triumph for the effort, Ms. Shaheen, the state’s senior senator, expressed her support.“Let’s kick off 2024 by writing in Biden and making our first-in-the-nation primary the very first victory for the Biden-Harris re-election team,” Ms. Shaheen said at the dinner.Representative Ro Khanna of California, who is widely seen as having presidential ambitions of his own and has publicly lamented Democrats’ decision to place New Hampshire after South Carolina on the nominating calendar, dialed into one of the group’s video conferences, which Ms. Norelli said were held every two weeks and usually attracted about 85 people.A Biden campaign spokesman declined to comment.Florida’s Democratic Party has already canceled its presidential primary. Democratic officials in other states have moved to list only Mr. Biden on their ballot, which has led to complaints from Mr. Phillips and Ms. Williamson.Ms. Sullivan said that by all but ignoring the New Hampshire primary, Mr. Biden ran the danger of allowing the challenges from Mr. Phillips and Ms. Williamson to become competitive. She pointed to 1976, 1980 and 1992, when incumbent presidents lost re-election, and to 1968, when President Lyndon B. Johnson was driven out of the race. In all of those years, the presidents faced tough primary opponents in New Hampshire.“I don’t think it would be good for him if he does poorly in New Hampshire,” Ms. Sullivan said of Mr. Biden.Ray Buckley, the chairman of the New Hampshire Democratic Party since 2007, said Mr. Biden retained support from a vast majority of the state’s Democrats, but cautioned that a significant percentage would be likely to vote against him.“About one-third of New Hampshire Democratic primary voters are cranky people who always want to be contrary,” said Mr. Buckley, who added that he had not communicated with the write-in groups. “Anyone who is not the main person starts off with a third of the vote.”Mr. Buckley himself plans to stay neutral — sort of.“Ever since I became state party chair, I have consistently written in Jimmy Carter,” Mr. Buckley said. “Maybe this time I’ll write in Rosalynn to honor her. That’s really the choice for me.”Lou D’Allesandro, a New Hampshire state senator who has known Mr. Biden for decades, said he would reluctantly write the president’s name on the ballot despite lingering anger about how the Granite State had been treated.“People felt slighted,” he said. “But what he’s done for the country overrides that decision.”Mr. D’Allesandro said he saw Mr. Biden last week at a Boston fund-raiser where the musician James Taylor played a concert. Mr. D’Allesandro said that he had embraced Mr. Biden, and that the president had invited him to the White House.But Mr. D’Allesandro didn’t bring up his grievances about New Hampshire’s primary.“It wasn’t the time or the place to do that,” he said. More