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      Trump Can Stay on GOP Primary Ballot in Michigan, Judge Rules

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      The ruling notches a preliminary victory for Donald Trump in a nationwide battle over his eligibility to run for president again, even as he faces a wave of legal scrutiny in other cases.A state judge in Michigan partly rejected an effort to disqualify former President Donald J. Trump from running for president in the state, ruling that Mr. Trump will remain on the ballot in the Republican primary, and that the state’s top elections official does not have the authority alone to exclude him from the ballot.But the judge appeared to leave the door open for a future battle over Mr. Trump’s eligibility as a candidate in the general election, saying that the issue “is not ripe for adjudication at this time.”The ruling notches a preliminary victory for Mr. Trump in a nationwide battle over his eligibility to run for president again, even as he faces a wave of legal scrutiny in other cases — including 91 felony charges in four different jurisdictions.Plaintiffs across the country have argued that Mr. Trump is ineligible to hold office again under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which disqualifies anyone who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the Constitution after having taken an oath to support it, citing his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.These efforts have played out as Mr. Trump engages in ever-darker rhetoric that critics say echoes that of fascist dictators, vowing to root out his political opponents like “vermin.”Steven Cheung, a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s 2024 campaign, said in a statement that the campaign welcomed the ruling and “anticipates the future dismissals of the other 14th Amendment cases.”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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      George Santos’s Campaign Aide Pleads Guilty to Wire Fraud

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      Samuel Miele is the second person who worked on Representative George Santos’s House election campaigns to plead guilty to federal charges.A second person connected to the campaign of Representative George Santos of New York has pleaded guilty to federal charges, an ominous sign as the embattled congressman’s own case moves closer to trial.Appearing before a federal judge in Central Islip, N.Y., on Tuesday, Samuel Miele pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud in connection with a fund-raising scheme in which he impersonated a House staffer for his and Mr. Santos’s benefit.But the most intriguing details to emerge from court were related to incidents that Mr. Miele was not charged with, but admitted to as part of his guilty plea.Between November 2020 and January 2023, Mr. Miele used his position with the Santos campaign to charge donors’ credit cards without their permission and to apply contributions to things they had not been intended for.Prosecutors have accused Mr. Santos, 35, of similar schemes. They said he repeatedly debited donors’ credit cards without their authorization and raised money for a fictitious super PAC, distributing the money to his and other candidates’ campaigns as well as his own bank account.Mr. Miele admitted in one instance to having solicited $470,000 from an older man that was used in ways that the donor had not intended. Judge Joanna Seybert, who is also overseeing Mr. Santos’s case, said that Mr. Miele was being required to return the money to the man.It is not clear if Mr. Santos was aware of or involved in Mr. Miele’s fraudulent use of donors’ credit cards, or the $470,000 solicitation. No explanation was given for why Mr. Miele was not charged in the matter; his lawyer declined to say whether his plea included an agreement with federal prosecutors to testify against Mr. Santos.In court on Tuesday, Mr. Miele did not name Mr. Santos, nor did he implicate him in his actions. Nonetheless, his guilty plea, which comes just over a month after that of Mr. Santos’s campaign treasurer, Nancy Marks, is an inauspicious sign for the congressman.Like Ms. Marks, Mr. Miele was a member of Mr. Santos’s inner circle, involved not only in his congressional campaign but also his personal business ventures.Prosecutors accused Mr. Miele, 27, of carrying out the fund-raising scheme in the fall of 2021 to aid Mr. Santos’s ultimately successful election campaign for the House, charging him with four counts of wire fraud and one count of aggravated identity theft. Of those, he pleaded guilty to a single count, for which he could nonetheless serve more than two years in prison. His sentencing is scheduled for April 30.The indictment, filed this August, did not identify the staffer that Mr. Miele was said to have impersonated, though The New York Times and others have reported that it was Dan Meyer, who was then chief of staff to former Speaker Kevin McCarthy.Dressed in a too-large navy suit coat, with black hair slicked back, Mr. Miele stood to read from a prepared statement.“Between August and December 2021, I pretended I was chief of staff to the then leader of the House of Representatives,” he said. “I did that to help raise funds for the campaign I was working on.”Mr. Santos, a Republican representing parts of Long Island and Queens, has not been charged in connection with Mr. Miele’s impersonation. The congressman has said that he was unaware of the ruse, and fired Mr. Miele shortly after learning of it from Republican leadership. Joseph Murray, a lawyer for Mr. Santos who attended Tuesday’s hearing, declined to comment.Mr. Santos faces a 23-count indictment that includes wire fraud, money laundering and aggravated identity theft. Prosecutors have said that Mr. Santos used multiple methods to steal tens of thousands of dollars from campaign donors.They have charged him with falsifying campaign filings, including listing a $500,000 loan that had not been made when it was reported. And they have accused him of collecting unemployment funds when he was, in fact, employed. Mr. Santos has pleaded not guilty to all counts.Earlier this month, he survived a second effort to expel him from Congress, this one led by members of his own party. That resolution, introduced by Representative Anthony D’Esposito, a first-term Republican representing a neighboring district on Long Island, cited Mr. Santos’s now well-known history of duplicity as well as the ongoing criminal case against him. It was resoundingly defeated, with both Republicans and Democrats agreeing that such an action would be premature without a conviction.Mr. Santos has insisted that such a conviction will never come, calling the proceedings a “witch hunt” and rebuffing calls for his resignation.The congressman is also facing scrutiny from the House Ethics Committee, which signaled that it was drawing close to the conclusion of its monthslong investigation. That panel, which is made up of both Democrats and Republicans, is expected to issue a report and recommendations later this week. More

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      Ukraine Indicts Officials Linked to Efforts to Investigate the Bidens

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      Three officials were accused of operating at the behest of Russian intelligence when they aligned with efforts by Rudolph W. Giuliani to tie the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine. Ukrainian police and prosecutors have accused two politicians and a former prosecutor of treason, saying they colluded with a Russian intelligence agency in aiding an effort by Rudolph W. Giuliani several years ago to tie the Biden family to corruption in Ukraine.Those accused include Kostyantyn Kulyk, a former Ukrainian deputy prosecutor general who had drafted a memo in 2019 suggesting Ukraine investigate Hunter Biden, President Biden’s son, for his role serving on the board of a Ukrainian energy company. Also implicated were a current member of Ukraine’s Parliament, Oleksandr Dubinsky, and a former member, Andriy Derkach, who had publicly advocated for an investigation in Ukraine into Hunter Biden. They had also promoted a spurious theory that it was Ukraine, and not Russia, that had meddled in the 2016 presidential election in the United States.The three were indicted on charges of treason and belonging to a criminal organization. The charges refer to “information-subversive activities” and focus on actions in 2019 before the American presidential election. They do not say if or when the activity stopped. In the run-up to the 2020 election in the United States, Mr. Giuliani and later former President Donald J. Trump had encouraged Ukrainian officials to follow up on the allegations against Hunter Biden. The effort included a phone call by Mr. Trump to President Volodymyr Zelensky in July of 2019 urging an investigation into the Bidens, at a time when the Trump administration was withholding military aid for the Ukrainian Army. Andriy Derkach attends a news conference in Kyiv in 2019.Gleb Garanich/ReutersCritics say that pressure to investigate the Bidens was politically motivated, aimed at harming the elder Mr. Biden’s chances against Mr. Trump in the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Trump and Mr. Giuliani denied that there was anything inappropriate about their contact with Ukrainian officials, with Mr. Trump describing his phone call to Mr. Zelensky as “perfect.” The administration said military aid to Ukraine was withheld over concerns about corruption in the Ukrainian government. The events led to Mr. Trump’s first impeachment in the House of Representatives. He was acquitted in the Senate.Ukrainian media on Tuesday suggested the indictments, too, had a political component for Mr. Zelensky: that they were intended to send a signal to Mr. Biden now, as his administration is pressing Congress for military assistance to Ukraine, that Kyiv will root out accused Russian agents, including those who had promoted accusations against his family.In statements released on Monday, Ukrainian police and the country’s domestic intelligence agency said all three men were members of a spy network established inside the Ukrainian government and handled by Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U.The intelligence agency’s statement said the Russians paid members of the group $10 million. An aide to Mr. Derkach, Ihor Kolesnikov, was detained earlier and convicted on treason charges.Two members of the group, Mr. Derkach and Mr. Kulyk, fled Ukraine after Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022, the statement said. Mr. Dubinsky was remanded to pretrial detention in a Ukrainian jail on Tuesday.Mr. Dubinsky, in a statement posted on the social networking site Telegram, said that the prosecutors had “not presented one fact” to support the accusations, and that the charges were retribution for criticizing Mr. Zelensky’s government in his role as a member of Parliament. He said that he testified a year and a half ago as a witness in a treason investigation of Mr. Derkach but at the time had not been accused of any wrongdoing. Mr. Dubinsky was expelled from Mr. Zelensky’s political party, Servant of the People, in 2021 after the United States sanctioned him for meddling in the American political process. The Ukrainian intelligence agency’s statement said that Mr. Kulyk had used his position in the prosecutor general’s office to promote investigations that worked “in favor of the Kremlin,” without specifying any cases.In late 2018, Mr. Kulyk compiled a seven-page dossier asserting that Ukrainian prosecutors had evidence that “may attest to the commission of corrupt actions aimed at personal unlawful enrichment by former Vice President of the United States Joe Biden,” according to a copy leaked by a Ukrainian blogger.The dossier suggested that Mr. Biden, when he had served as vice president, had tried to quash a corruption investigation into the natural gas company, Burisma Holdings, where his son served on the board. Former colleagues of Mr. Kulyk at the prosecutor’s office confirmed he had written the document, which helped set in motion an effort by Mr. Trump’s personal lawyer, Mr. Giuliani, and other supporters to press for an investigation in Ukraine.In a phone call with Mr. Zelensky that became central to the impeachment case, Mr. Trump had asked the Ukrainian president to investigate supposed conflicts of interest by Mr. Biden when he was vice president, according to White House notes of the call. Mr. Trump denied he had linked military aid to Ukraine to the investigation of the Biden family.Allegations of corruption and ties to Russia had trailed Mr. Kulyk for years in the Ukrainian media and among anti-corruption watchdog groups before he compiled the dossier.In 2016, he was indicted in Ukraine on charges of illegal enrichment for owning apartments and cars that seemed beyond the means of his modest official salary. One car, a Toyota Land Cruiser, had been bought by the father of a military commander fighting on the Russian side in the war in eastern Ukraine. More

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      Trump’s Deportation Plans for Immigrants

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      More from our inbox:Shocked by Trump’s Vow to Root Out ‘Vermin’Women in China, Loath to Turn Back the ClockBillionaires, Invest in EarthDonald Trump quiere reimponer una política de la era de la COVID-19 de rechazar las solicitudes de asilo: esta vez basando ese rechazo en afirmaciones de que los migrantes son portadores de otras enfermedades infecciosas, como la tuberculosis.Doug Mills/The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Trump’s ’25 Immigration Plan: Giant Camps, Mass Deportation” (front page, Nov. 12):After choking on my coffee reading this excellent in-depth piece, I contemplated the America we will live in if these ambitious and aggressive ideas bear fruit.Do the architects of this plan really believe we will have a stronger, safer and more prosperous country by setting up giant immigrant camps and carrying out mass deportations?I am descended from “white” privilege and members of the Daughters of the American Revolution. My family has grown stronger in recent years by the blending of ethnic, cultural and religious origins through marriage and adoption — with Indonesian, Malaysian, Algerian, Romanian, Iranian and Danish heritages combined with Scot Irish and English ones.We have family members who are Jewish, Muslim, Sikh, Buddhist, atheist and agnostic as well as Episcopalian, Quaker and Catholic.The reality is that our economy and society thrive because of our diversity. For that reason, my license plate is framed with the slogan “Make America Great, Welcome Immigrants.”Cynthia MackieSilver Spring, Md.To the Editor:Stating that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” Donald Trump has offered a vision for another term that includes immediate mass deportations, ending DACA, an even more restrictive Muslim ban, relegating migrants to huge tent cities in Texas and more.I read this with the same dread I felt when articles were written about the possible overturning of Roe v. Wade. Many people thought, “Oh, that won’t happen here.” But it did. It did happen.Donald Trump and Stephen Miller will wreak havoc on everything our country stands for. It will be a daily dose of outrage and horror. Those who aren’t tuned in to this potential for disaster will realize what they were ignoring only when it is too late.The next election may be the most important in our history as a country. Sitting it out or voting third party is not an option. Our country’s future and our quality of life depend on showing up to vote.People need to understand that these are not offhand remarks. Mr. Trump does what he says he’s going to do. He has clearly shown us what he is and who he is: a wannabe dictator.Kathryn JanusChicagoTo the Editor:Donald Trump’s immigration restriction plans contain much that will be to the liking of the American people. As a lifelong Democrat and the son of immigrants who had to wait years for citizenship, I like it myself because 1) huge amounts of taxpayer dollars are going to the support of undocumented immigrants and 2) America faces a crisis of overpopulation, which is already straining our natural resources.I categorically reject the demonization of immigrants, and I also note that Mr. Trump’s policies generally favor the top 2 percent, not the average American. But if President Biden ignores this issue, or keeps doing what he is doing, it will cost him the election.Alan SalyBrooklynTo the Editor:It is worse than hypocritical that the man behind the dark menace of deportation — Stephen Miller — descends from a family of immigrants who escaped the pogroms in Eastern Europe and found refuge in America.As a Jew and the son of Holocaust survivors, I am frankly appalled by Mr. Miller’s harsh and seemingly uncompromising position.America is nothing if not a nation of immigrants. For Mr. Miller to foment an unrestrained assault against immigrants is, if I may use the term, “beyond the Pale.”Edwin S. RothschildMcLean, Va.Shocked by Trump’s Vow to Root Out ‘Vermin’Former President Donald Trump said his political opposition was the most pressing and pernicious threat facing America during a campaign event in New Hampshire on Saturday.Sophie Park for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “After Calling Foes ‘Vermin,’ Trump Campaign Warns Its Critics Will Be ‘Crushed’” (nytimes.com, Nov. 13):At a campaign event Saturday in New Hampshire, Donald Trump vowed to “root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.”So often I have heard variations on the poem that begins, “First they came for the Communists …”Did the people attending a Veterans Day event not hear the echo from less than 100 years ago when they or their parents or grandparents went to war to protect democracy against fascists from Germany and Italy who voiced these same goals?It is shocking that a vast support network is prepared to put these plans into effect here if the former president is re-elected in 2024.Bob AdlerNew YorkTo the Editor:People are not vermin. Even the person who compares his political opponents to “vermin” is not vermin; he is a human being.Donald Trump’s despicable speech, however, should make every American recoil in horror that he would use such a dehumanizing tactic toward people who disagree with him. The Republican Party should immediately distance itself from Mr. Trump and his dangerous rhetoric.Anyone who believes that people are vermin should not be elected to any office, from local P.T.A. president on up. Certainly, the highest office in the land should never be in the hands of such a person.Justin Stormo GipsonNewman Lake, Wash.Women in China, Loath to Turn Back the Clock Gilles Sabrié for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “China’s Male Leaders Signal to Women That Their Place Is in the Home” (news article, Nov. 3):Although Mao Zedong proclaimed that “women hold up half the sky,” the weight of thousands of years of Chinese culture held back — and continues to hold back — many from attaining their full potential.My mother, born before the 1949 Communist takeover of the government, was prohibited from going to school by her father, but even decades later suffered limited choices, gender discrimination and the societal stigma of having only daughters.Now that Chinese women have tasted power, freedom and independence, they are not going to go back to being merely wives, mothers and caretakers any more than American women, as evidenced by the recent U.S. elections, are going to give up their hard-won reproductive rights to satisfy the wishes of right-wing conservatives.Men on both sides of the globe are going to find that turning back the clock is a lot harder than they thought.Qin Sun StubisBethesda, Md.The writer is a newspaper columnist and author of “Once Our Lives,” a historical saga about four generations of Chinese women.Billionaires, Invest in Earth George WylesolTo the Editor:Re “Space Billionaires Should Spend More Time Thinking About Sex,” by Kelly Weinersmith and Zach Weinersmith (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Nov. 5):Doesn’t it make more sense to address challenges to our future on Earth, a very appealing home for humans, than to try to adapt to hostile, inhospitable planets? We’d likely be better off if Elon Musk and his fellow billionaires would invest their vast sums in things like wind turbines and infrastructure. They might also help advance the human race by promoting development of qualities like compassion, reconciliation and cooperation.Beyond that, the authors make great points about the difficulties of sex and procreation in space. Let’s not forget Earth’s sex appeal!Marjorie LeeWayland, Mass. More

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      Democrats Plan to Spend Millions to Weaken Republican Supermajorities

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      The party is targeting states with Democratic governors but overwhelming Republican legislative control, effectively battling to win back veto power.Democrats are planning to spend millions of dollars next year on just a few state legislative elections in Kansas, North Carolina, Kentucky and Wisconsin — states where they have little to no chance of winning control of a chamber.Yet what might appear to be an aimless move is decidedly strategic: Democrats are pushing to break up Republican supermajorities in states with Democratic governors, effectively battling to win back the veto pen district by district. Such supermajorities result when a single political party has enough votes in both chambers of a legislature to override a governor’s veto, often, though not always, by controlling two-thirds of the chamber.The extraordinary political dissonance of having a governor of one party and a supermajority of an opposing party in the legislature is one of the starkest effects of gerrymandering, revealing how parties cling to evaporating power.As gerrymanders built by both parties for decades have tipped the scales to favor the party of the map-drawers, legislative chambers have proved resistant to shifting political winds at the state level. At times, those gerrymanders have locked in minority rule in legislatures while statewide offices, like the governor’s, adhere to the desires of a simple majority of voters.Though both parties employed aggressive gerrymanders during the last round of redistricting in 2021, Republicans entered the cycle with a distinct advantage: In 2010, G.O.P.-controlled state legislatures across the country drew aggressive gerrymanders in state governments. Democrats were caught off guard.“The bottom fell out,” said Heather Williams, the interim president of the Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee. “And we’ve been building back since then.”As a result, Republicans now control resilient supermajorities in Kansas, North Carolina and Kentucky, even as Democrats hold the executive branch. And in Wisconsin, Republicans control a supermajority of the State Senate, which can act unilaterally on issues like impeachment, and are just two seats shy of a supermajority in the State Assembly, though last year Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, won re-election.The Democratic Legislative Campaign Committee has committed “more than seven figures” of its initial $60 million budget for 2024 to breaking up these four supermajorities, with the caveat that redistricting efforts in North Carolina and Wisconsin could shift resources. “Republicans in these legislatures are not moderate,” Ms. Williams said. “They are governing very extremely, and we need a stopgap, and it is critical that governors have veto power where their legislature and their legislative maps are so gerrymandered.”The only example where the parties are flipped is in Vermont, where a Democratic supermajority in the legislature overrode multiple vetoes by Gov. Phil Scott, a Republican, this year. And in Nevada, Democrats control a supermajority of the State Assembly and are just one vote shy of a supermajority in the State Senate, while Gov. Joe Lombardo, a Republican, was elected in 2022.A spokesman for the Republican State Leadership Committee did not respond to questions about similar strategies for Republicans.Though Democrats have occasionally ventured into conservative-leaning legislative districts, such an extensive foray into fairly hostile territory will be a new challenge, particularly in deeply red states like Kansas where Democratic voters are often ignored during better-funded national campaigns for president. Recruiting candidates to serve in the minority, rather than to play a role in flipping a chamber — a more energizing prospect — can also pose a challenge.But while state legislative elections are often defined by issues as hyperlocal as a traffic intersection or funding for an after-school program, Democrats are also hoping that one critical national issue will help them: abortion.Despite President Biden’s persistent unpopularity, Democrats last week took back the Virginia General Assembly and won the governor’s race in deep-red Kentucky, as well as a majority of this year’s special elections, largely because abortion access was a motivating issue.On the heels of the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade last year, Kansas voters rejected an amendment that would have effectively eliminated abortion in the state. But in the Legislature, dominated by Republicans, “we had 21 different bills come up in committee trying to restrict abortion access,” said Jeanna Repass, the chair of the Kansas Democratic Party. “So what that has taught us is that if we can get the messaging out to people, we can get them interested in the fact that they’re not being represented by their legislators.”“When I’m out, I hit them hard with abortion, our public schools and Medicaid, and in that order,” Ms. Repass added.As Democrats invest in trying to climb out of superminority positions, they will face some deep-pocketed state Republicans. Robert Reives, the Democratic minority leader in the North Carolina General Assembly, pointed to two races in 2022 that featured Republican candidates spending roughly $800,000 each to defeat Democratic incumbents.“They had the benefit of having two billionaires that kind of financed a lot of the top line of the campaign and then just kind of went from there,” Mr. Reives said. “Unfortunately, we don’t have billionaires on our side to do that.”Mr. Reives was confident that even with newly drawn maps favoring Republicans, the Democrats would have a chance of breaking the supermajority in the state in 2024, focusing on urban areas like Wake County, home to Raleigh. And he said that while abortion would inevitably be a factor in coming elections, the hyperlocal issue of authorizing casinos in the state is likely to help Democrats claw back a few seats.“They were literally going against every constituency,” Mr. Reives said, referring to broad opposition to casino expansion. Even some Republicans objected to it.One path for Democrats to win back their veto pens can be found in eastern Wisconsin.In 2022, Democrats stared down gerrymandered maps that raised the possibility of a Republican supermajority even as Mr. Evers, the Democratic governor, cruised to a re-election victory.As returns trickled into the party headquarters in Madison, party officials breathed a sigh of relief when Steve Doyle, a 10-year incumbent from La Crosse, defeated his Republican challenger by 756 votes. His race was won not on the airwaves or even necessarily just on the issues, but on the pavement, as Mr. Doyle undertook an extensive door-knocking campaign to meet all of his voters, according to Greta Neubauer, the Democratic minority leader in the Wisconsin Assembly.“This is a Trump-won district that Democrats at the top of the ticket struggle to win,” Ms. Neubauer said. “But he spends a lot of time on his acquisition of voters, and constantly fending off attempts to take him out.” More

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      Trump Wants Us to Know He Will Stop at Nothing in 2025

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      Over the past few weeks, we’ve gotten a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump would do if given a second chance in the White House. And it is neither exaggeration nor hyperbole to say that it looks an awful lot like a set of proposals meant to give the former president the power and unchecked authority of a strongman.Trump would purge the federal government of as many civil servants as possible. In their place, he would install an army of political and ideological loyalists whose fealty to Trump’s interests would stand far and above their commitment to either the rule of law or the Constitution.With the help of these unscrupulous allies, Trump plans to turn the Department of Justice against his political opponents, prosecuting his critics and rivals. He would use the military to crush protests under the Insurrection Act — which he hoped to do during the summer of 2020 — and turn the power of the federal government against his perceived enemies. “If I happen to be president and I see somebody who’s doing well and beating me very badly, I say, ‘Go down and indict them.’ They’d be out of business. They’d be out of the election,” Trump said in a recent interview on the Spanish-language network Univision.As the former president wrote in a disturbing and authoritarian-minded Veterans Day message to supporters (itself echoing a speech he delivered that same to day to supporters in New Hampshire): “We pledge to you that we will root out the Communists, Marxists, Fascists, and Radical Left Thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country, lie, steal, and cheat on Elections, and will do anything possible, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America, and the American dream.”Trump has other plans as well. As several of my Times colleagues reported last week, he hopes to institute a program of mass detainment and deportation of undocumented immigrants. His aides have already drawn up plans for new detention centers at the U.S.-Mexico border, where anyone suspected of illegal entry would be held until authorities have settled the person’s immigration status. Given the former president’s rhetoric attacking political enemies and other supposedly undesirable groups like the homeless — Trump has said that the government should “remove” homeless Americans and put them in tents on “large parcels of inexpensive land in the outer reaches of the cities” — there’s little doubt that some American citizens would find themselves in these large and sprawling camps.Included in this effort to rid the United States of as many immigrants as possible is a proposal to target people here legally — like green-card holders or people on student visas — who harbor supposedly “jihadist sympathies” or espouse views deemed anti-American. Trump also intends to circumvent the 14th Amendment so that he can end birthright citizenship for the children of unauthorized immigrants.In the past, Trump has gestured at seeking a third term in office after serving a second four-year term in the White House. “We are going to win four more years,” Trump said during his 2020 campaign. “And then after that, we’ll go for another four years because they spied on my campaign. We should get a redo of four years.” This too would violate the Constitution, but then, in a world in which Trump gets his way on his authoritarian agenda, the Constitution — and the rule of law — would already be a dead letter.It might be tempting to dismiss the former president’s rhetoric and plans as either jokes or the ravings of a lunatic who may eventually find himself in jail. But to borrow an overused phrase, it is important to take the words of both presidents and presidential candidates seriously as well as literally.They may fail — in fact, they often do — but presidents try to keep their campaign promises and act on their campaign plans. In a rebuke to those who urged us not to take him literally in 2016, we saw Trump attempt to do what he said he would do during his first term in office. He said he would “build a wall,” and he tried to build a wall. He said he would try to keep Muslims out of the country, and he tried to keep Muslims out of the country. He said he would do as much as he could to restrict immigration from Mexico, and he did as much as he could, and then some, to restrict immigration from Mexico.He even suggested, in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election, that he would reject an election defeat. Four years later, he lost his bid for re-election. We know what happened next.In addition to Trump’s words, which we should treat as a reliable guide to his actions, desires and preoccupations, we have his allies, who are as open in their contempt for democracy as Trump is. Ensconced at institutions like the Heritage Foundation and the Claremont Institute, Trump’s political and ideological allies have made no secret of their desire to install a reactionary Caesar at the head of the American state. As Damon Linker noted in his essay on these figures for the Opinion section, they exist to give “Republican elites permission and encouragement to do things that just a few years ago would have been considered unthinkable.”Americans are obsessed with hidden meanings and secret revelations. This is why many of us are taken with the tell-all memoirs of political operatives or historical materials like the Nixon tapes. We often pay the most attention to those things that have been hidden from view. But the mundane truth of American politics is that much of what we want to know is in plain view. You don’t have to search hard or seek it out; you just have to listen.And Donald Trump is telling us, loud and clear, that he wants to end American democracy as we know it.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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      Are Democrats Whistling Past the Graveyard?

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      A New York Times and Siena College poll released Nov. 5 showed Donald Trump leading Joe Biden in five of the six key swing states, with a notable jump in support among nonwhite and young voters. In response, Democrats freaked out.But then two days later, voters across the country actually went to the polls, and Democrats and Democratic-associated policy did pretty well. In Kentucky, Andy Beshear held the governorship. Democrats took back the House of Delegates in Virginia. And Ohio voted for an amendment protecting abortion rights.[You can listen to this episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, Google or wherever you get your podcasts.]I asked Mike Podhorzer, a longtime poll skeptic, to help to help me understand the apparent gap between the polls and the ballot box. Podhorzer was the longtime political director of the A.F.L.-C.I.O. And as the founder of the Analyst Institute, he was the godfather of the data-driven turn in Democratic campaign strategy. He also writes a newsletter on these topics called “Weekend Reading.”We discuss the underlying assumptions behind polling methodologies and what that says about their results; how to square Biden’s unpopularity with the Democrats’ recent wins; why he thinks an anti-MAGA majority is Biden’s best bet to the White House and how that coalition doesn’t always map cleanly onto demographic data; what a newly energized labor movement might means for Biden; and much more.You can listen to our whole conversation by following “The Ezra Klein Show” on the NYT Audio App, Apple, Spotify, Google or wherever you get your podcasts. View a list of book recommendations from our guests here.(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)This episode of “The Ezra Klein Show” was produced by Rollin Hu. Fact-checking by Michelle Harris and Kate Sinclair. Mixing by Jeff Geld and Efim Shapiro. Our senior editor is Claire Gordon. The show’s production team includes Emefa Agawu and Kristin Lin. Original music by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Kristina Samulewski and Shannon Busta. The executive producer of New York Times Opinion Audio is Annie-Rose Strasser. And special thanks to Carole Sabouraud. More

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      Liberal Super PAC Is Turning Its Focus Entirely Digital

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      No more television ads from Priorities USA: The group is planning a $75 million online effort to help President Biden and Democrats up and down the ballot.Priorities USA, one of the biggest liberal super PACs, will not run a single television advertisement in the 2024 election cycle.Instead, the group announced Tuesday, Priorities USA is reshaping itself as a digital political strategy operation, the culmination of a yearslong transition from its supporting role in presidential campaigns to a full-service communications, research and training behemoth for Democrats up and down the ballot.The move reflects a broad shift in media consumption over the past decade, away from traditional broadcast outlets and toward a fragmented online world. It also shows the growing role played by big-money groups in shaping campaigns and American political life: Priorities USA says it will spend $75 million on digital “communications, research and infrastructure” in the next year.“We have learned that the internet is evolving too quickly for the traditional campaign apparatus to keep up in two-year cycles,” Danielle Butterfield, the group’s executive director, said in an interview. “We have committed to not just closing the gaps, but building infrastructure. We are not just focused on single-candidate investments.”She added, “We are, I think, teaching folks how to fish.”Ms. Butterfield said that more than half of that $75 million would be direct investments supporting President Biden’s re-election efforts and the campaigns of other Democrats on the ballot. Those plans, she said, will also have “embedded experiments” that will provide feedback on how people are responding to their efforts.The organization said it was developing relationships with influencers and other “content creators” to spread campaign messages on platforms like TikTok. The group has also been working on “contextual targeting,” which it defined as presenting ads to voters based on what they were watching on their devices at any given moment.Priorities USA also has a nonprofit arm that focuses on litigation and voter protection work.Because of its size, the organization is essentially without peer or competitor in its new role, but Ms. Butterfield likened its new focus to that of the Center for Campaign Innovation, a conservative nonprofit group — not a super PAC — that is focused on digital politics.Eric Wilson, the founder of the Center for Campaign Innovation, said Priorities USA’s change of focus “clearly shows that the way campaigns are going is around content creation and digital platforms.” While television advertising remains the best way to get a message in front of the most people, he said, “we are seeing diminishing returns on TV advertising — it’s becoming more expensive and less effective.”“Media fragmentation is a big challenge for campaigns,” Mr. Wilson said, noting that the Center for Campaign Innovation does not work with campaigns. “You’ve got platforms that are banning political advertising. How do we teach campaigns to create their own content? What are the ways you can get political ads distributed, in a world that’s set up to block political messages?”He added, “We spend a lot of time and investment figuring out how voters get information and why they make decisions.” (The Center for Campaign Innovation does not work with any campaigns.)Priorities USA was formed in 2011 and supported Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election campaign, Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and Mr. Biden’s 2020 campaign. It has relied on support from major Democratic donors; in 2020, former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York gave more than $19.2 million, campaign finance records show.The group has expanded in recent years and has run digital training programs and an ad tracking service for strategists. It has also reached beyond presidential campaigns to work on Senate campaigns and state elections, including the recent Pennsylvania Supreme Court race. More