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      Ignore Trump? Democrats Now Want Him Plastered All Over the News.

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      The former president has been relatively quiet, out of the headlines and off mainstream social media. Democrats are hoping that more attention on him can help turn around President Biden’s fortunes.When Donald J. Trump left the White House, Democrats didn’t want to hear another word from him. President Biden dismissed him as “the former guy.” A party-wide consensus held that he was best left ignored.Three years later, Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign and Democratic officials across the party’s spectrum have landed on a new solution to his political slump:More Trump.Criticizing the news media for giving Mr. Trump a platform is out. Quietly pining for major networks to again broadcast live coverage of Trump campaign rallies is in.Behind the improbable longing for the former president to gobble up political oxygen again is Democrats’ yearslong dependence on the Trump outrage machine. Since his ascent, Mr. Trump has been a one-man Democratic turnout operation, uniting an otherwise fractured opposition and fueling victories in three straight election cycles.Now, Democrats worry that the fever of Trump fatigue has passed, and that some voters are softening toward a man they once loathed. Many others may simply be paying little attention, as Mr. Trump’s share of the daily national conversation has diminished, despite the occasional interruption of campaign-trail pronouncements like his recent vow to “root out” political opponents like “vermin.”Mr. Trump, who has never been called a shrinking violet, has nevertheless skipped the three Republican presidential debates and stayed away from the major social media platforms. He is expected to spend large parts of next year in criminal trials that, except for one in Georgia, will not be televised.Cynthia Wallace, a co-founder of the New Rural Project, a progressive group in North Carolina, said she didn’t hear much about Mr. Trump these days from the rural Black and Hispanic voters her organization focuses on.“I think it’s like a relationship,” she said. “There were a lot of bad things that happened, but the longer distance you get away from the bad things, you’re like, maybe the bad things weren’t that bad.”Cynthia Wallace, a co-founder of the New Rural Project, a progressive group in North Carolina that focuses on rural Black and Hispanic voters, said that these days, she didn’t hear as much from them about Mr. Trump. Travis Dove for The New York TimesMr. Biden’s campaign, which has been slow to ramp up its operations, is betting that once voters view the election as a choice between Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, who remains highly polarizing, they will set aside their reservations about the president and fall in line behind him.But while Mr. Trump is likely to rise in the public consciousness as November 2024 approaches, it is far from certain that he will sabotage himself politically. And it remains unclear whether his criminal trials will make him more toxic among moderate and swing voters, or whether weeks of courtroom appearances will keep his presence more muted than normal.Other Biden efforts are meeting limited success. His campaign has little to show for a $40 million advertising push promoting his economic record. And approval of the president, according to polls released this month by The New York Times and Siena College, has fallen sharply among Black and Hispanic voters — demographics that strategists say are more likely to disregard Mr. Trump when he is not front and center in the news.“Not having the day-to-day chaos of Donald Trump in people’s faces certainly has an impact on how people are measuring the urgency of the danger of another Trump administration,” said Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an African American political organizing group. “It is important to remind people of what a total and absolute disaster Trump was.”Mr. Biden and Democrats, of course, cannot control decisions that news organizations make or the topics that absorb voters in person and on social media. But the Biden campaign, which is aiming to make the 2024 election a referendum on whether Mr. Trump should return to the White House, can try to push the national discussion in his direction with its messaging.One big challenge, however, is that many Americans who tuned out the former president when he left office show little interest in hearing more about him.Several voters who backed Mr. Biden in 2020 and are now leaning toward Mr. Trump said they had not followed the ins and outs of the former president’s post-White House activities and tended to discount and brush aside his past scandals.“I know a lot of people get mad about what he said years ago about ‘grab them by whatever,’” said Treena Fortney, 51, a wholesaler from Covington, Ga., who voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but now regrets it and is supporting Mr. Trump. “That was kind of aggravating. But, you know, that was years ago. And that’s how guys talk in a locker room. I don’t think he really would do that. I think he was just saying that.”Treena Fortney, 51, a wholesaler from Covington, Ga., voted for Mr. Biden in 2020 but now regrets it and is supporting Mr. Trump. Nicole Craine for The New York TimesArthur Taylor, a business owner from Mesa, Ariz., described himself as a Democrat who voted for Hillary Clinton and Mr. Biden and now says he will back Mr. Trump in 2024. He said that the business climate was better when Mr. Trump was president and that the 91 criminal charges against him might not be so bad.“There’s so many things that President Trump does that’s just not ethical,” Mr. Taylor said. But he added that with the former president, “there’s a level of honesty and almost transparency, even in a way that we might cringe at it.”Those sorts of sentiments have left the Biden campaign this past week to engage in its own media criticism, publicly urging news shows on network television to follow New York Times articles about Mr. Trump’s plans for immigration and deportation policies if he wins the election.“The more the American people are confronted with who Donald Trump is — a dangerous, extreme and erratic man who only cares about using the power of the government to help himself and his friends — the more they reject him,” said Ammar Moussa, a Biden campaign spokesman. “We will continue to highlight for voters what’s at stake if Trump and his cronies are allowed anywhere near the Oval Office.”Mr. Biden and most of his Democratic allies have adopted a collective vow of silence on what portends to be the biggest Trump-related story line over the next year — the four criminal trials he faces in Florida, Georgia, New York and Washington, D.C.In August, 38 House Democrats wrote to the federal courts administrator asking that Mr. Trump’s federal trials be broadcast live on television. Mr. Trump himself last week asked that cameras be allowed in the courtroom for his trial in Washington — a request that federal prosecutors swiftly opposed.“You see one of the court-artist sketches, and you look at that and you’re like, I’m not really sure which trial he’s on,” Senator John Fetterman, a Pennsylvania Democrat, said in an interview. “Is anyone paying attention to them?”Donna Brazile, a veteran Democratic strategist, said Mr. Biden’s decision to stay quiet had allowed Mr. Trump to frame the cases against him as “a one-sided conversation.”“We have not engaged on perhaps Donald Trump’s No. 1 Achilles’ heel, which is the 91 indictments,” she said. “We’ll see what happens when we do.”Aside from the trials, Democrats are longing for the days when cable networks carried Mr. Trump’s rallies live. To watch a Trump rally live now, viewers need to find an online stream or a fringy far-right cable station like Newsmax.On this, Mr. Trump and Democrats tend to be in agreement.“The more people see and hear from Donald Trump and what he has planned for the country if he regains power, the better off Democrats will be up and down the ballot,” said Ben Wikler, the chairman of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin. “Trump’s voracious need for attention works to Democrats’ advantage.”Google search interest in Mr. Trump remains well below the level it was at when he was in office and running for re-election four years ago. The television ratings for Mr. Trump’s CNN town-hall event in May were strong, but well below what similar events in 2016 and 2020 drew.Jessica Floyd, the executive director of the Hub Project, a progressive group, urged mainstream cable TV networks to “remind people exactly how bad these rallies are and how corrosive they are for our democracy.”She added, “They should also show President Biden selling an absolutely historic level of investment in our economy.”Jon Soltz, a co-founder and chairman of VoteVets, a liberal veterans group, cautioned Democrats to be patient.“There’s a huge amount of the population right now that doesn’t realize that Trump is going to be the Republican nominee for president,” he said. “When that happens, you will see a different response.”Camille Baker More

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      The Trump Threat Is Growing. Lawyers Must Rise to Meet This Moment.

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      American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law are the righteous causes of our times, and the nation’s legal profession is obligated to support them. But with the acquiescence of the larger conservative legal movement, these pillars of our system of governance are increasingly in peril. The dangers will only grow should Donald Trump be returned to the White House next November.Recent reporting about plans for a second Trump presidency are frightening. He would stock his administration with partisan loyalists committed to fast-tracking his agenda and sidestepping — if not circumventing altogether — existing laws and long-established legal norms. This would include appointing to high public office political appointees to rubber-stamp his plans to investigate and exact retribution against his political opponents; make federal public servants removable at will by the president himself; and invoke special powers to take unilateral action on First Amendment-protected activities, criminal justice, elections, immigration and more.We have seen him try this before, though fortunately he was thwarted — he would say “betrayed”— by executive branch lawyers and by judges who refused to go along with his more draconian and often unlawful policies and his effort to remain in office after being cast out by voters. But should Mr. Trump return to the White House, he will arrive with a coterie of lawyers and advisers who, like him, are determined not to be thwarted again.The Federalist Society, long the standard-bearer for the conservative legal movement, has failed to respond in this period of crisis.That is why we need an organization of conservative lawyers committed to the foundational constitutional principles we once all agreed upon: the primacy of American democracy, the sanctity of the Constitution and the rule of law, the independence of the courts, the inviolability of elections and mutual support among those tasked with the solemn responsibility of enforcing the laws of the United States. This new organization must step up, speak out and defend these ideals.Leaders of the legal profession should be asking themselves, “What role did we play in creating this ongoing legal emergency?” But so far, there has been no such post-mortem reflection, and none appears on the horizon. Many lawyers who served in the last administration — and many on the outside who occupy positions of influence within the conservative legal community — have instead stood largely silent, assenting to the recent assaults on America’s fragile democracy.We were members of the Federalist Society or followed the organization early in our careers. Created in response to left-liberal domination of the courts, it served a principled role, connecting young lawyers with one another and with career opportunities, promoting constitutional scholarship and ultimately providing candidates for the federal bench and Supreme Court.But the Federalist Society has conspicuously declined to speak out against the constitutional and other legal excesses of Mr. Trump and his administration. Most notably, it has failed to reckon with his effort to overturn the last presidential election and his continued denial that he lost that election. When White House lawyers are inventing cockamamie theories to stop the peaceful transition of power and copping pleas to avoid jail time, it’s clear we in the legal profession have come to a crisis point.We are thankful that there were lawyers in the Trump administration who opted to resign or be fired rather than advance his flagrantly unconstitutional schemes. They should be lauded.But these exceptions were notably few and far between. More alarming is the growing crowd of grifters, frauds and con men willing to subvert the Constitution and long-established constitutional principles for the whims of political expediency. The actions of these conservative Republican lawyers are increasingly becoming the new normal. For a group of lawyers sworn to uphold the Constitution, this is an indictment of the nation’s legal profession. Any legal movement that could foment such a constitutional abdication and attract a sufficient number of lawyers willing to advocate its unlawful causes is ripe for a major reckoning.We must rebuild a conservative legal movement that supports and defends American democracy, the Constitution and the rule of law and that incentivizes and promotes those lawyers who are prepared to do the same. To that end, we have formed a nonprofit organization, the Society for the Rule of Law Institute, to bring sanity back to conservative lawyering and jurisprudence.There is a need and demand for this new legal movement that the legal profession can readily meet. Pro-democracy, pro-rule-of-law lawyers who populate our law school campuses, law firms and the courts decry what is happening in our profession. They deserve an outlet to productively channel these sentiments.Originally formed in 2018 as Checks & Balances during what we took to be the height of Mr. Trump’s threat to the rule of law, the organization spoke out against his transgressions. Since then, the legal landscape has deteriorated to a degree we failed to imagine, with Mr. Trump and his allies explicitly threatening to upend fundamental tenets of the American constitutional system if returned to power.We believe it is necessary to build a legal movement with the capability to recruit and engage dues-paying members, file legal briefs, provide mentorship and career opportunities, convene supporters and speak out as vocally and forthrightly as is necessary to meet the urgency that this moment requires.First and foremost, this movement will work to inspire young legal talent and connect them with professional opportunities that will enable them to fulfill their vast potential without having to compromise their convictions.Second, the movement will focus on building a large body of scholarship to counteract the new orthodoxy of anti-constitutional and anti-democratic law being churned out by the fever swamps. The Constitution cannot defend itself; lawyers and legal scholars must. Conservative scholars like the former federal appellate judges Michael McConnell and Thomas Griffith and the law professor Keith Whittington, who joins Yale from Princeton next year, are models for a new and more responsible conservative legal movement.Third and most important, we will marshal principled voices to speak out against the endless stream of falsehoods and authoritarian legal theories that are being propagated almost daily. To do otherwise would be to cede the field to lawyers of bad faith. We have seen in recent years what the unchecked spread of wildly untrue and anti-democratic lies gets us. We lawyers have a gift for advocacy and persuasion; we must use it.While those in the pro-democracy legal community — many of them progressives — might disagree with our overall legal philosophy, we welcome them with open arms. We are at a point when commitment to fundamental classical liberal tenets of our republican form of government is far more important than partisan politics and political party — and even philosophical questions about the law. Our country comes first, and our country is in a constitutional emergency, if not a constitutional crisis. We all must act accordingly, especially us lawyers.The writers are lawyers. George Conway was in private practice. J. Michael Luttig was a judge on the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 1991 to 2006. Barbara Comstock represented Virginia’s 10th District in Congress from 2015 to 2019. They serve on the board of the newly formed Society for the Rule of Law Institute, formerly called Checks & Balances.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      Biden and the Democratic Party’s Future: 12 Voters Discuss

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      Pick an animal that best describes the Democratic Party. Pick an animal that bestdescribes the Democratic Party. “A moose.” Christopher, 31, white, Calif. “A bison.” Mary-Beth, 72, white, Mo. “A kangaroo.” Emil, 71, Black, N.Y. The party of the people. The Democracy. The New Dealers. The Democrats have gone by many names over the years, […] More

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      The Senate Is Getting Less Democratic by the Minute

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      Democrats and the independents who caucus with them will be playing defense in 23 of the 34 Senate seats on the ballot in the 2024 congressional elections. Four of the 23 are in swing states that President Biden won narrowly in 2020. Three are in states that Donald Trump won in both 2016 and 2020.If Democrats were to lose all seven, a catastrophic defeat, they would start the next session in Congress with a weak minority of senators — its smallest number since the days of President Herbert Hoover — who would nonetheless represent nearly half the population of the United States.Depending on where you stand in relation to partisan politics in this country, you may not find this disparity all that compelling. But consider the numbers when you take political affiliation out of the picture: roughly half of all Americans, some 169 million people, live in the nine most populous states. Together, those states get 18 of the 100 seats in the United States Senate.To pass anything under simple majority rules, assuming support from the sitting vice president, those 18 senators would have to attract another 32 votes: the equivalent, in electoral terms, of a supermajority. On the flip side, it is possible to pass an item out of the Senate with a coalition of members who represent a small fraction of the total population — around 18 percent — but hold an absolute majority of the seats. And this is before we get to the filibuster, which imposes a more explicit supermajority requirement on top of this implicit one.Last week, The Washington Post published a detailed look at the vast disparities of power that mark the Senate, which was structured on the principle of equal state representation: Regardless of population, every state gets two members. A carry-over from the Articles of Confederation, the principle of equal state representation was so controversial that it nearly derailed the Philadelphia Convention, where James Madison and others were trying to build a national government with near total independence from the states.It is not for nothing that in the Federalist Papers, neither Madison nor John Jay nor Alexander Hamilton attempts to defend the structure of the Senate from first principles. Instead, Madison wrote in Federalist No. 62, you should consider it a concession to the political realities of the moment:A government founded on principles more consonant to the wishes of the larger States, is not likely to be obtained from the smaller States. The only option, then, for the former, lies between the proposed government and a government still more objectionable. Under this alternative, the advice of prudence must be to embrace the lesser evil; and, instead of indulging a fruitless anticipation of the possible mischiefs which may ensue, to contemplate rather the advantageous consequences which may qualify the sacrifice.Today, the Senate is a distinctly undemocratic institution that has worked, over the past decade, to block policies favored by a large majority of Americans and even a solid majority of senators. And while there’s no immediate hope of changing it, a cleareyed analysis of the chamber’s structural faults can help answer one of the key questions of American democracy: Who, or what, is this system supposed to represent?As the Post piece notes, equal state representation has never been equitable: “In 1790, Virginia, the most populous state, had roughly 13 times the population of Delaware, the least populous, with a difference of about 700,000 people.” But as the country has grown larger and more diverse, the disparities have grown greater and more perverse. The population difference between the states is so large now that a resident of the least populous state, Wyoming, as many observers have pointed out, has 68 times the representation in the Senate than does a resident of California, the largest state by population. In fact, a state gets less actual representation in the chamber the more it attracts new residents.There is not just a disparity of representation; there is a disparity in who is represented as well. The most populous states — including not only California, but New York, Illinois, Florida and Texas — tend to be the most diverse states, with a large proportion of nonwhite residents. The smallest states by population — like Maine, Vermont and New Hampshire — tend to be the least diverse. And the structure of the Senate tends to amplify the power of residents in smaller states and weaken the power of those in larger states. When coupled with the potential for — and what is in truth the reality of — minority rule in the chamber, you have a system that gives an almost absolute veto on most federal legislation to a pretty narrow slice of white Americans.One response to these disparities of power and influence is to say that they represent the intent of the framers. There are at least two problems with this view. The first is that the modern Senate reproduces some of the key problems — among them the possibility of a minority veto that grinds governance to a halt — that the framers were trying to overcome when they scrapped the Articles of Confederation. The second and more important problem is that the modern Senate isn’t the one the framers designed in 1787.In 1913, the United States adopted the 17th Amendment to the Constitution, providing for the direct election of senators at the ballot box rather than their selection by state legislatures. This change disrupted the logic of the Senate. Before, each senator was a kind of ambassador from his state government. After the amendment went into effect, each senator was a direct representative of the people of that state.If each member was a kind of ambassador, then you could justify unequal voting power by pointing to the equal sovereignty of each state under the Constitution. But if each member is a direct representative, then it becomes all the more difficult to say that some Americans deserve more representation than others on account of arbitrary state borders.This brings us back to our question: Who, or what, is the American system supposed to represent? If it is supposed to represent the states — if the states are the primary unit of American democracy — then there’s nothing about the structure of the Senate to object to.It’s plain as day that the states are not the primary unit of American democracy. As James Wilson of Pennsylvania observed during the Philadelphia Convention, the new national government was being formed for the sake of individuals rather than “the imaginary beings called states.” And as we’ve expanded the scope of democratic participation, we have affirmed — again and again — that it is the people who deserve representation on an equal basis, not the states.There is no realistic way, at this moment, to make the Senate more democratic. But if we can identify the Senate as one of the key sources of an unacceptable democratic deficit, then we can look for other ways to enhance democracy in the American system.I know that, given the scale and scope of the problem, that does not sound very inspiring. But we have to start somewhere.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, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

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      We Did an Experiment to See How Much Democracy and Abortion Matter to Voters

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      Yes, the economy is important, but we found that election subversion attempts appear to matter more to voters than polling suggests.Voters usually penalize those supporting electoral subversion.Ashley Gilbertson for The New York TimesDo abortion and democracy matter to voters?If you look at the results of New York Times/Siena College polling, the answer often seems to be “not really.”Around 40 percent of voters agreed that Donald J. Trump was “bad” for democracy in our latest poll. Only around a quarter said that issues like democracy and abortion were more important to their vote than the economy.But in election after election, the final vote tallies seem to tell a very different story. Last fall, Democrats excelled when abortion and democracy were at stake, even though our pre-election polls offered little indication that these issues were driving voters. It raises the possibility that the usual poll questions simply failed to reveal the importance of abortion, democracy and perhaps other issues as well.With that in mind, we tried an experiment in our latest Times/Siena poll. We looked at the persuadable voters — those who were undecided or who said they were open to supporting the other candidate — and split them into two groups. We gave each group a set of two hypothetical Republican candidates based on views on abortion and democracy.While only an experiment, the findings suggest that democracy has the potential to be an extremely important factor in people’s voting — even among voters who say it’s not important to them at all.Here’s the democracy matchup:Hypothetical A: Would you be more likely to support a Democratic candidate who says Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy, or a Republican candidate who tried to overturn the 2020 election?Hypothetical B: Would you be more likely to support a Democratic candidate who says Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy, or a Republican candidate who says we should move on from the 2020 election?If democracy didn’t matter to voters, these two hypotheticals might not yield very different results.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.We are confirming your access to this article, this will take just a moment. However, if you are using Reader mode please log in, subscribe, or exit Reader mode since we are unable to verify access in that state.Confirming article access.If you are a subscriber, please  More

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      Trump Health Report Claims ‘Weight Reduction’ but Skimps on Specifics

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      The former president’s doctors have often offered hyperbolic or unverifiable claims in reports about his health.Former President Donald J. Trump posted a fawning but vague health report from his doctor on Monday that declares that Mr. Trump’s health is “excellent” and that he has recently lost weight through an “improved diet” and “daily physical activity.”Mr. Trump’s physician, Dr. Bruce Aronwald, wrote the single-page report over two months after Mr. Trump, 77, underwent a “comprehensive” health examination in September, the document says.In August, Mr. Trump reported to the Fulton County Jail, during an intake process for one of four criminal cases he is facing, that he weighed 215 pounds. That was nearly 30 pounds less than the White House doctor reported in 2020.But the report on Monday did not include even basic details such as Mr. Trump’s weight, his blood pressure, his cholesterol levels, any prescriptions or even how much weight he had lost. Dr. Aronwald instead wrote that Mr. Trump’s “physical exams were well within the normal range and his cognitive exams were exceptional.”The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to questions about specific details regarding Mr. Trump’s health.The timing of the report appeared to be taking a jab at President Biden on his 81st birthday. While Mr. Trump has repeatedly mocked Mr. Biden’s age, he has had his own verbal stumbles on the campaign trail.Mr. Trump’s doctors — an eclectic group of personal and White House physicians — have previously released memos and reports that have offered few details about his health and included hyperbolic claims and descriptions of his condition as “excellent.”Dr. Harold Bornstein, Mr. Trump’s longtime personal physician, declared in late 2015 that Mr. Trump would be “the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.” He then later told The New York Times that Mr. Trump was taking medication for various ailments, including a prostate-related drug to promote hair growth. Dr. Bornstein later said that Mr. Trump sent his bodyguard among others to seize his medical records from Dr. Bornstein’s office after the physician fell from Mr. Trump’s orbit.Dr. Ronny L. Jackson, a White House physician for Mr. Trump, asserted in 2018 that with a better diet, Mr. Trump could have lived to be 200 years old. Another White House physician, Dr. Sean P. Conley, repeatedly misled the public about the severity of Mr. Trump’s illness after he contracted Covid in 2020.Mr. Biden, as president, has undergone annual physical exams and releases significantly more detailed health reports. His latest report, in February, was five pages long, noting specific ailments, like arthritis, and the regimen of tests taken — to detect neurological disorders, for example.But tests and reports have done little to reassure voters that Mr. Biden has not slowed in his senior years, and any slip of the tongue or stumble on a stairway draws further public attention. During remarks at the White House on Monday, he confused Taylor Swift with Britney Spears.Concerns about age and health have been a sore subject for both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump, who would each be well past 80 by the end of a term in 2029. They have repeatedly dismissed such concerns, and each asserts that he is more than capable of serving another four years in the Oval Office.In one notable episode, Mr. Trump repeatedly bragged in television appearances about acing a cognitive test that looks for signs of conditions like dementia and Alzheimer’s disease, wielding it as proof that he was sharper than Mr. Biden — who at the time was his opponent in the 2020 election.Mr. Trump was particularly boastful of completing a memory test that involved reciting the words “person, woman, man, camera, TV” in the correct order.Recent polls have found that roughly two of every three voters say Mr. Biden is too old to serve another four-year term. About half say the same about Mr. Trump. More

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      Is Biden vs. Trump the ‘Election We Need’?

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      More from our inbox:Rosalynn Carter’s ‘Incredible Life’Protests at ColumbiaBidenomics Isn’t Helping Me Damon Winter/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “A Trump-Biden Rematch Is the Election We Need,” by Carlos Lozada (column, Nov. 12):When I first saw the headline on Mr. Lozada’s column, I thought, “No way!” After reading the piece and thinking about it, I have decided that this is the one election we truly need to have.There is no greater comparison than Biden vs. Trump. It is the classic confrontation of good versus evil, and the American people need to decide whether we choose to maintain a constitutional republic, or support an authoritarian, belligerent, vindictive form of government.The twice impeached, quadruple indicted former president is a clear and present danger, while Joe Biden is a staunch defender of democracy, fairness and decency. We need this election to once and for all defeat MAGA and Trumpism, and send Donald Trump packing, if he is not in prison.There is no greater threat to the American way of life than Donald Trump, and even if Joe Biden is simply a place holder for the president who is elected in 2028, that would be far more palatable than a Trump presidency.Henry A. LowensteinNew YorkTo the Editor:Carlos Lozada argues that “we have no choice but to choose” between Donald Trump and President Biden and their dueling visions for America at the ballot box in 2024. This is, for now, a false choice.In light of the alarming polling trend regarding Mr. Biden’s re-electability, the wisest course of action for the Democrats is to urgently organize, with Mr. Biden’s blessing (he would have to be persuaded), a robust Democratic presidential primary in order to discover whom Democratic voters would turn out for in the largest numbers on Election Day.But the longer that Democratic elites delay, the Trump-Biden choice will, in short order, become one that we indeed cannot escape. If this occurs, as seems likely, it will be a choice that Mr. Biden and the Democratic establishment impose on the electorate.And if Mr. Biden comes up short at the ballot box in 2024, as the recent New York Times/Siena poll suggests he will, he and the Democratic Party’s other so-called leaders will have nobody but themselves to blame.Nicholas BuxtonNew YorkTo the Editor:Carlos Lozada writes: “Joe Biden versus Donald Trump is not the choice America wants. But it is the choice we need to face.”Yes, it is the choice we need to face, but what a risk!With Mr. Trump’s high polling numbers, it certainly seems that a significant number of people support his candidacy unequivocally. What he says and does — illegal or not — makes no difference. He evokes deep emotions and the feeling that he will settle their scores and protect them from the “woke” mob. They like Mr. Trump’s moxie and flouting of authority, but don’t listen to his actual plan of governance.He plainly wants to create an authoritarian government — put his cronies in the Justice Department and jail his political “enemies,” pack the courts and rule as his whims dictate.Yes, the best way to end Mr. Trump’s reign of influence would be to decisively defeat him in this election. But we are taking the huge risk that he could win — and end our democracy as we know it.I would rather risk losing to a Nikki Haley than take the chance on beating Mr. Trump. Unfortunately, we may not have a choice.It is the job of the Democratic candidates and the media to clearly present the facts about the likely choices in this election. And keep our fingers crossed!Carol KrainesDeerfield, Ill.To the Editor:Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, the 54-year-old Democrat running a long-shot presidential campaign, took direct aim at President Biden and his message in a recent CNN interview.Mr. Phillips said: “I think in 2020, he was probably the only Democrat who could have beaten Donald Trump. I think in 2024, he may be among the only ones that will lose to him.”Let’s think about that, because if you do, his argument is very persuasive. Mr. Phillips is a relatively young, moderate Democrat. Millions of people are yearning for an alternative to an octogenarian Joe Biden and to an existentially dangerous to our democracy Donald Trump.In a recent poll, a “generic” Democrat matched against Mr. Trump outperformed Joe Biden by more than 10 points. We Democrats want an alternative. Just maybe we’ve found one, and his name is Dean Phillips.Ken DerowSwarthmore, Pa.Rosalynn Carter’s ‘Incredible Life’At their home in Plains, Ga., in the same place they’ve always sat.” After the presidency, Mrs. Carter joined her husband in doing work for Habitat for Humanity, co-founded a vaccine advocacy organization and continued to campaign to reduce the stigma of mental illness. Dustin Chambers for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Rosalynn Carter, 1927-2023: First Lady and Influential Partner to a President” (obituary, front page, Nov. 20):Rosalynn Carter walked her own path, inspiring a nation and the world along the way.Throughout her incredible life as first lady of Georgia and the first lady of the United States, Mrs. Carter did so much to address many of society’s greatest needs.She was a champion for equal rights and opportunities for women and girls; an advocate for mental health and wellness for every person; and a supporter of the often unseen and uncompensated caregivers of our children, aging loved ones and people with disabilities.Above all, the deep love shared between Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter is the definition of partnership, and their humble leadership is the definition of patriotism. She lived life by her faith.I send my love to Mr. Carter, the entire Carter family, and the countless people across our nation and the world whose lives are better, fuller and brighter because of the life and legacy of Rosalynn Carter.Paul BaconHallandale Beach, Fla.Protests at Columbia Bing Guan for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Columbia Students and Faculty Protest War and the University’s Reaction to It” (news article, Nov. 16):Columbia administrators cite “unauthorized” events and the necessary continuation of “core university activities” as primary reasons for silencing pro-Palestinian groups on campus.I don’t always agree with the politics of these groups, and I agree with the university’s finding that “threatening rhetoric and intimidation” exist at their protests. Still, the university’s actions raise these questions:What is a university if not a space for the free exchange of ideas? Is protest not a core university activity at an institution celebrated for its amplification of student voices?As long as they don’t incite violence or endanger members of our community, Columbia’s pro-Palestinian groups should be allowed to offend, frighten and protest whenever and wherever they’d like.Benjamin RubinNew YorkThe writer is a member of the Columbia University class of 2027.Bidenomics Isn’t Helping Me John ProvencherTo the Editor:Re “Bidenomics Has a Mortal Enemy, and It Isn’t Trump,” by Karen Petrou (Opinion guest essay, Nov. 19):Ms. Petrou is absolutely accurate. I am self-employed, work full time and cannot make ends meet.I’m constantly trying to determine whether to pay the bills or rent on my business; luckily, I have kind landlords. I pay a mortgage as well. I’m college educated. The last couple of weeks of every month I am generally broke and couldn’t pay anything if I had to. And this situation has gone on for years now.I really like President Biden, but I do agree that on this particular issue the administration is getting it wrong.Shannon TrimbleSan Francisco More

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      Appeals Court Hears Arguments on Trump Election Case Gag Order

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      A three-judge panel is considering how to balance the former president’s free-speech rights against the need to insulate prosecutors, court personnel and potential witnesses from intimidation.Prosecutors and lawyers for former President Donald J. Trump squared off on Monday in a federal appeals court in Washington to debate the validity of the gag order placed on Mr. Trump in the criminal case accusing him of plotting to overturn the 2020 election.The hearing in front of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit followed more than a month of back-and-forth arguments about the order. It was put in place by the trial judge in October to stop Mr. Trump from maligning or threatening prosecutors, potential witnesses or court employees involved in the case.From the start, the gag order has led to a momentous clash over how to protect people taking part in the election interference case from Mr. Trump’s barrage while preserving his rights as he campaigns for president and claims that the prosecution is political persecution.When Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, an appointee of President Barack Obama, first imposed the order, she tried to thread that needle by barring Mr. Trump from lashing out at any people connected to the case — herself excepted — while still allowing him to say what he wants about what he asserts is the partisan and retaliatory nature of the case.Mr. Trump’s lawyers appealed the order almost as soon as it was imposed, deriding it as “the essence of censorship.”Each of the three judges on the appellate panel assigned to the case was nominated by a Democratic president: Judges Patricia Millett and Cornelia Pillard were both Obama appointees, and Judge Brad Garcia was appointed by President Biden.In court papers, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have told the appeals court that the order should be repealed since it violates the First Amendment. They also said it represented an effort by Judge Chutkan to “micromanage” Mr. Trump’s “core political speech” before and during a trial that is scheduled to begin in March in the midst of the Republican primary season.Prosecutors working for Jack Smith, the special counsel overseeing the federal prosecutions of Mr. Trump, have fired back that courts have wide discretion to limit the statements made by criminal defendants. They say that this gag order in particular was needed because of Mr. Trump’s “near daily” attacks against Mr. Smith, Judge Chutkan and potential witnesses in the case, including former Vice President Mike Pence and Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.The prosecutors have tried to position themselves as protectors of both the integrity of the judicial process and the people who take part in it, telling the appeals court that Mr. Trump’s threats on social media have sometimes had damaging effects in the real world.It is not clear how quickly the three-judge panel of the appeals court will decide on whether to rescind the gag order or keep it in place as the case moves toward its trial date. The gag order has been in abeyance for about two weeks as the court has gotten filings from the defense and the prosecution.If the order is upheld and goes back into effect, Judge Chutkan may confront an even tougher issue: how to enforce the decree if Mr. Trump violates it. A violation of a gag order is treated as a matter of contempt of court, which could result in a reprimand, a fine or imprisonment. But how that would play out is complicated.There are two types of contempt: civil, which is typically used to coerce future compliance with an order like making a recalcitrant witness testify; and criminal, which is focused on punishing past defiance of an order. Typically — though not always — judges have treated violations of gag orders as the latter type.In federal court, judges cannot unilaterally impose a fine or order someone imprisoned for criminal contempt. Rather, such an accusation is treated as a new offense that requires the appointment of a prosecutor and another trial — including a right to a decision by a jury.The battle over the federal gag order comes as a state appeals court in New York is considering the merits of two related gag orders imposed on Mr. Trump by Justice Arthur F. Engoron, who is overseeing his civil fraud trial in Manhattan.Those orders — which are also currently paused — would bar Mr. Trump or any of his lawyers from targeting Justice Engoron’s law clerk. The clerk has suffered repeated attacks by the former president and his allies, who have accused her of being a Democratic partisan. More