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      Choosing Hospice Care, as Jimmy Carter Did

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      More from our inbox:Changing Our Election SystemReflections on the G.O.P. DebateReplicating the ‘Magic’ of CampJimmy and Rosalynn Carter in 1966. Mr. Carter is now in home hospice, surrounded by a loving family with the resources to care for him.Horace Cort/Associated PressTo the Editor:The Aug. 29 guest essay by Daniela J. Lamas, “A Fitting Final Gift From Jimmy Carter,” is a heartfelt tribute to Mr. Carter.While Dr. Lamas acknowledges hospice’s unpopularity (noting that “the very word ‘hospice’ so often conjures the idea of death and defeat”), she nevertheless makes a persuasive case for it.Hospice is not about giving up hope — it is about making the most of the time we have left. The key to a successful hospice stay is early enrollment, and the fact that Mr. Carter has already benefited from multiple months of care is a testament to this approach.Perhaps Mr. Carter’s real gift is helping us all to overcome our reservations and misguided stereotypes about hospice care. His example should make policymakers rethink current regulations so that all Americans might one day receive — and understand — the full benefits of hospice care.Michael D. ConnellyJohns Island, S.C.The writer served as the chief executive of Mercy Health (now Bon Secours Mercy Health) and is the author of “The Journey’s End: An Investigation of Death and Dying in Modern America.”To the Editor:The idealized fantasy of at-home hospice care is just that: a fantasy.Families who turn down at-home hospice care are right to do so. At-home hospice care is extremely lucrative for the hospice agencies precisely because they provide so little care while the families do all of the work. We were told not to call 911, and most of us do not have medical or nursing training and are on our own, in way over our heads, caring for a dying loved one who may well be in distress and is often frightened.My husband’s death was traumatic for the whole family. Based on my experience, I urge families faced with the heart-wrenching decisions around end-of-life care to consider the family’s needs and the patient’s needs — not the false advertising of the hospice agencies or the naïve recommendations of doctors who don’t live with the consequences.Deena EngelGreenwich, Conn.To the Editor:As a retired hospice nurse, I can totally relate to what the Carters are going through. It is hard for people to accept that the death of a loved one will be coming soon and that fighting against it in a hospital is an unnatural way to die, involving unnecessary and meaningless care at a high cost.Being at home (or sometimes in a hospice facility) surrounded by family and friends with comfort care is much better. Being awakened to be poked and prodded 24 hours a day in a fruitless and expensive effort to keep a dying person alive is just not a good way to go. Hospice can provide all the care that a dying person needs, with much less hustle and bustle.Part of the concern about hospice care is that it uses medications that are not always used in other practices. Morphine is still the best pain control available, and hospice uses it — carefully, with strict controls. Occasionally, hospice also uses ketamine, which has a very bad rap because of abuse of the drug, but is a potent pain control drug if used properly.Hospice care is well established in other parts of the world, but in the U.S. we have a hard time accepting death as being inevitable.It warms my heart that the Carters chose hospice care. It shows yet again what forward-thinking and thoughtful people they are, setting an example for others even in death. Godspeed, Jimmy!Michael OrlinDenverChanging Our Election SystemPhoto illustration by Boris Zhitkov/Getty ImagesTo the Editor:Re “To Improve Democracy, Get Rid of Elections,” by Adam Grant (Opinion, Aug. 23), about using lotteries to select our leaders:At first glance, Mr. Grant’s essay seems way too radical to even consider, but everyone should read and reflect on it.I, for one, am tired of constantly having to vote for the “lesser of two evils” to serve in a Congress filled with representatives who lack the basic qualifications and ethical compass to do their jobs.I am tired of the corruption in our current election system from gerrymandering, the anemic controls on campaign contributions and spending, and the infusion of shameless lying into what we call “spin” or “campaign rhetoric.”Add to that the ever-present possibility of hacks into our election systems, legislation to disenfranchise voters, and baseless allegations of voter fraud that undermine public confidence in our elections.We may not be ready to adopt Mr. Grant’s proposal, but it is an important subject for debate that should not be ignored.Bruce WilderNew OrleansTo the Editor:Adam Grant is right: Winning elections swells the egos of leaders, who imagine that they’re superior to everyone else. But so does the admission system at elite universities like the one where he and I work. The tiny fraction of applicants who get in are led to think they’re better than the vast hordes who got rejected.That’s why we should admit students using a weighted lottery, like the one Mr. Grant proposes for selecting political leaders. Students would need to demonstrate certain competencies to be considered. But their admission would also rest on luck, so they could no longer pretend that they earned their way here simply by merit.The education of our leadership class starts early. And we’re teaching all the wrong lessons.Jonathan ZimmermanPhiladelphiaThe writer teaches education and history at the University of Pennsylvania.Reflections on the G.O.P. DebateRepublicans watched a broadcast of the debate at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in California.Ariana Drehsler for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“From Party Stronghold, Debate Watchers Cheered Signals From a Post-Trump Era” (news article, Aug. 25) was perceptive. However, I’d like to add two important points.First, the Republican Party is finally making headway: Its candidates for president are starting to reflect the colors of America — white, Black and Asian, with one being a woman.The second is regressive. We saw very little civility between the candidates and from the candidates to the moderators. These people are running for president of the United States, our nation’s “face” to the world. Do we want that person to be crass, rude and disruptive?Jade WuCollier County, Fla.Replicating the ‘Magic’ of CampSilvia TackTo the Editor:As a devoted former summer camper myself, I appreciate all of the joys that Sandra Fox illuminates in her guest essay “There’s No Cure for Campsickness. That’s OK.” (Opinion, Aug. 21).Summer camps offer a kind of time-bound, immersive magic that, as Dr. Fox writes, can’t be replicated at home. But it’s also worth asking why kids have such a need for “an escape, an opportunity for self-reinvention and an invitation to be messier, weirder and just more myself” in the first place.Why can’t real life be more like summer camp? It can be, and already is (at least in some respects) for young people lucky enough to attend schools that are focused on helping them grow into the best possible versions of themselves. When learning is active, immersive and meaningful, kids become fluent in addressing real-world problems. In these schools, trust, strong relationships and a healthy, respectful community are prioritized as much or more than test scores.Long live summer camp! May its magic reach and serve every child. But real life can be magical too. In fact it must be, in order for young children to grow into capable, caring adults.Andy CalkinsGloucester, Mass.The writer co-directs the nonprofit education organization Next Generation Learning Challenges. More

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      The Articulate Ignorance of Vivek Ramaswamy

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      As our nation continues its march to 2024, a year that will feature not only a presidential election but also potentially four criminal trials of the Republican front-runner, I’ve been thinking about the political and cultural power of leadership. How much do leaders matter, really? What role does corrupt political leadership play in degrading not just a government but the culture itself?Let’s talk today about the specific way in which poor leadership transforms civic ignorance from a problem into a crisis — a crisis that can have catastrophic effects on the nation and, ultimately, the world.Civic ignorance is a very old American problem. If you spend five seconds researching what Americans know about their own history and their own government, you’ll uncover an avalanche of troubling research, much of it dating back decades. As Samuel Goldman detailed two years ago, as far back as 1943, 77 percent of Americans knew essentially nothing about the Bill of Rights, and in 1952 only 19 percent could name the three branches of government.That number rose to a still dispiriting 38 percent in 2011, a year in which almost twice as many Americans knew that Randy Jackson was a judge on “American Idol” as knew that John Roberts was the chief justice of the United States. A 2018 survey found that most Americans couldn’t pass the U.S. Citizenship Test. Among other failings, most respondents couldn’t identify which nations the United States fought in World War II and didn’t know how many justices sat on the Supreme Court.Civic ignorance isn’t confined to U.S. history or the Constitution. Voters are also wildly ignorant about one another. A 2015 survey found that Democrats believe Republicans are far older, far wealthier and more Southern than they truly are. Republicans believe Democrats are far more atheist, Black and gay than the numbers indicate.But I don’t share these statistics to write yet another story bemoaning public ignorance. Instead, I’m sharing these statistics to make a different argument: that the combination of civic ignorance, corrupt leadership and partisan animosity means that the chickens are finally coming home to roost. We’re finally truly feeling the consequences of having a public disconnected from political reality.Simply put, civic ignorance was a serious but manageable problem, as long as our leader class and key institutions still broadly, if imperfectly, cared about truth and knowledge — and as long as our citizens cared about the opinions of that leader class and those institutions.Consider, for example, one of the most consequential gaffes in presidential debate history. In October 1976, the Republican Gerald Ford, who was then the president, told a debate audience, “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford administration.”The statement wasn’t just wrong, it was wildly wrong. Of course there was Soviet domination of Eastern Europe — a domination that was violently reaffirmed in the 1956 crackdown in Hungary and the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. The best defense that Ford’s team could muster was the national security adviser Brent Scowcroft’s argument that “I think what the president was trying to say is that we do not recognize Soviet domination of Europe.”In a close election with Jimmy Carter, the gaffe was a big deal. As the political scientist Larry Sabato later wrote, the press “pounced” and “wrote of little else for days afterward.” As a result, “a public initially convinced that Ford had won the debate soon turned overwhelmingly against him.” Note the process: Ford made a mistake, even his own team recognized the mistake and tried to offer a plausible alternative meaning, and then press coverage of the mistake made an impression on the public.Now let’s fast-forward to the present moment. Instead of offering a plausible explanation for their mistakes — much less apologizing — all too many politicians deny that they’ve made any mistakes at all. They double down. They triple down. They claim that the fact-checking process itself is biased, the press is against them and they are the real truth tellers.I bring this up not just because of the obvious example of Donald Trump and many of his most devoted followers in Congress but also because of the surprising success of his cunning imitator Vivek Ramaswamy. If you watched the first Republican debate last week or if you’ve listened to more than five minutes of Ramaswamy’s commentary, you’ll immediately note that he is exceptionally articulate but also woefully ignorant, or feigning ignorance, about public affairs. Despite his confident delivery, a great deal of what he says makes no sense whatsoever.As The Times has documented in detail, Ramaswamy is prone to denying his own words. But his problem is greater than simple dishonesty. Take his response to the question of whether Mike Pence did the right thing when he certified the presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021. Ramaswamy claims that in exchange for certification, he would have pushed for a new federal law to mandate single-day voting, paper ballots and voter identification. Hang on. Who would write the bill? How would it pass a Democratic House and a practically tied Senate? Who would be president during the intervening weeks or months?It’s a crazy, illegal, unworkable idea on every level. But that kind of fantastical thinking is par for the course for Ramaswamy. This year, for instance, he told Don Lemon on CNN, “Black people secured their freedoms after the Civil War — it is a historical fact, Don, just study it — only after their Second Amendment rights were secured.”Wait. What?While there are certainly Black Americans who used weapons to defend themselves in isolated instances, the movement that finally ended Jim Crow rested on a philosophy of nonviolence, not the exercise of Second Amendment rights. The notion is utterly absurd. If anything, armed Black protesters such as the Black Panthers triggered cries for stronger gun control laws, not looser ones. Indeed, there is such a long record of racist gun laws that it’s far more accurate to say that Black Americans secured greater freedom in spite of a racist Second Amendment consensus, not because of gun rights.Ramaswamy’s rhetoric is littered with these moments. He’s a very smart man, blessed with superior communication skills, yet he constantly exposes his ignorance, his cynicism or both. He says he’ll “freeze” the lines of control in the Ukraine war (permitting Russia to keep the ground it’s captured), refuse to admit Ukraine to NATO and persuade Russia to end its alliance with China. He says he’ll agree to defend Taiwan only until 2028, when there is more domestic chip manufacturing capacity here in the States. He says he’ll likely fire at least half the federal work force and will get away with it because he believes civil service protections are unconstitutional.The questions almost ask themselves. How will he ensure that Russia severs its relationship with China? How will he maintain stability with a weakened Ukraine and a NATO alliance that just watched its most powerful partner capitulate to Russia? How will Taiwan respond during its countdown to inevitable invasion? And putting aside for a moment the constitutional questions, his pledge to terminate half the federal work force carries massive, obvious perils, beginning with the question of what to do with more than a million largely middle- and high-income workers who are now suddenly unemployed. How will they be taken care of? What will this gargantuan job dislocation do to the economy?Ramaswamy’s bizarre solutions angered his debate opponents in Milwaukee, leading Nikki Haley to dismantle him on live television in an exchange that would have ended previous presidential campaigns. But the modern G.O.P. deemed him one of the night’s winners. A Washington Post/FiveThirtyEight/Ipsos poll found that 26 percent of respondents believed Ramaswamy won, compared with just 15 percent who believed Haley won.The bottom line is this: When a political class still broadly believes in policing dishonesty, the nation can manage the negative effects of widespread civic ignorance. When the political class corrects itself, the people will tend to follow. But when key members of the political class abandon any pretense of knowledge or truth, a poorly informed public is simply unequipped to hold them to account.And when you combine ignorance with unrelenting partisan hostility, the challenge grows all the greater. After all, it’s not as though members of the political class didn’t try to challenge Trump. But since that challenge came mostly from people Trump supporters loathe, such as Democratic politicians, members of the media and a few Trump-skeptical or Never Trump writers and politicians, their minds were closed. Because of the enormous amount of public ignorance, voters often didn’t know that Trump was lying or making fantastically unrealistic promises, and they shut out every voice that could tell them the truth.In hindsight, I should have seen all this coming. I can remember feeling a sense of disquiet during the Tea Party revolution. Republican candidates were pledging to do things they simply could not do, such as repealing Obamacare without holding the presidency and Congress or, alternatively, veto-proof congressional majorities. Then, when they failed to do the thing they could never do in the first place, their voters felt betrayed.There is always a problem of politicians overpromising. Matthew Yglesias recently reminded me of the frustrating way in which the 2020 Democratic primary contest was sidetracked by a series of arguments over phenomenally ambitious and frankly unrealistic policy proposals on taxes and health care. But there is a difference between this kind of routine political overpromising and the systematic mendacity of the Trump years.A democracy needs an informed public and a basically honest political class. It can muddle through without one or the other, but when it loses both, the democratic experiment is in peril. A public that knows little except that it despises its opponents will be vulnerable to even the most bizarre conspiracy theories, as we saw after the 2020 election. And when leaders ruthlessly exploit that ignorance and animosity, the Republic can fracture. How long can we endure the consequences of millions of Americans believing the most fantastical lies?A note on reader mailI want to end this newsletter with a note of thanks. I deeply appreciate your emails. Every week I receive an avalanche of thoughtful responses, some encouraging, some critical. I want you to know that while I can’t respond to them all, I do read every single email. If you care enough to take the time to write, the least I can do is take the time to read. Thank you, truly, for your thoughts. More

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      Is It Time to Negotiate With Putin?

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      Ross Douthat, Carlos Lozada and Listen to and follow ‘Matter of Opinion’Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon MusicIt’s been 18 months since Russia invaded Ukraine. No true negotiations have happened. As the stalemate continues, what role should the United States play in the fight?This week on “Matter of Opinion,” the hosts discuss how the war is playing out at home and why the G.O.P. seems more interested in invading Mexico than defending Ukraine.Plus, a trip back in time to a magical land of sorcerers and “Yo! MTV Raps.”(A full transcript of the episode will be available midday on the Times website.)A photo illustration of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, as if printed in a newspaper, with one edge folded over, showing print on the other side.Illustration by The New York Times; photograph by Nils Petter Nilsson/GettyMentioned in this episode:“An Unwinnable War,” by Samuel Charap in Foreign Affairs“The Runaway General,” by Michael Hastings in Rolling Stone“First Person: An Astonishingly Frank Self-Portrait by Russia’s President Vladimir Putin,” by Vladimir PutinThoughts? Email us at matterofopinion@nytimes.com.Follow our hosts on Twitter: Michelle Cottle (@mcottle), Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT), Carlos Lozada (@CarlosNYT) and Lydia Polgreen (@lpolgreen).“Matter of Opinion” is produced by Phoebe Lett, Sophia Alvarez Boyd and Derek Arthur. It is edited by Stephanie Joyce. Mixing by Pat McCusker. Original music by Pat McCusker, Carole Sabouraud and Sonia Herrero. Our fact-checking team is Kate Sinclair, Mary Marge Locker and Michelle Harris. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta and Kristina Samulewski. Our executive producer is Annie-Rose Strasser. More

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      Biden Makes Lower Drug Prices a Centerpiece of His 2024 Campaign

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      President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act allows Medicare to negotiate some drug prices, a change that the pharmaceutical industry and Republicans have opposed for decades.As he heads toward a re-election campaign next year, President Biden is betting that his success in pushing for policies intended to lower health care costs for millions of Americans will be rewarded by voters at the ballot box.In speech after speech, Mr. Biden talks about capping the cost of insulin at $35, putting new limits on medical expenses for seniors, making some vaccines free and pushing to lower the prices of some of the most expensive drugs in the world.At the White House, Mr. Biden and his advisers have already begun to elevate the issue as a centerpiece of his agenda. And at his campaign headquarters in Wilmington, Del., aides are preparing television ads, talking points and speeches arguing that Mr. Biden’s push for lower health care costs is a stark contrast with his Republican opponents.“The president will have a very strong case to make,” said Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a member of the president’s national campaign advisory board. “Not only will people want to keep the benefits they have seen, they are going to want to get the benefits that are coming their way.”On Tuesday, the White House announced that the Biden administration will negotiate on behalf of Medicare recipients for lower prices on 10 popular — and expensive — drugs that are used to treat diabetes, heart disease and other chronic illnesses.The move was made possible by passage last year of Mr. Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which for the first time allows Medicare to negotiate drug prices for older adults, a change that has been opposed by the pharmaceutical industry for decades.Republicans also generally oppose giving the government the right to negotiate drug prices. But the candidates for the Republican presidential nomination have said little about the cost of medication, focusing instead on abortion, transgender medical issues and Covid lockdowns.In his speeches, Mr. Biden rails against the industry and his Republican adversaries in Congress, all of whom voted against the law that included the prescription drug provisions. Aides say it is an effective message.“Today is the start of a new deal for patients where Big Pharma doesn’t just get a blank check at your expense,” the president said at a White House event celebrating the change.Since signing the law a year ago, Mr. Biden has repeatedly called it one of his proudest legislative victories. But his approval numbers have hardly budged. And while polls show that the new policy is widely popular among Americans who know about it, they also suggest that far fewer people are even aware that the change was made.That is most likely because prices on just the first handful of drugs are not scheduled to actually drop until 2026 at the earliest, assuming Mr. Biden’s program survives legal challenges. Drug companies have filed numerous lawsuits against the administration that claim the law is unconstitutional. Court cases could drag on for years.In its lawsuit against the administration, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, an industry trade group, called the plan for negotiated prices “a government mandate disguised as negotiation.”Even if Mr. Biden’s plan goes into effect, older adults who have made the choice to ration their drugs will have to continue doing so until more than a year after the 2024 presidential election.Danny Cottrell, 67, a pharmacist who owns his retail pharmacy group in Brewton, Ala., said he regularly advised his Medicare patients on the ins and outs of the government’s prescription program. He welcomed Mr. Biden’s changes, but said it would be up to people like him to explain the complicated process.“I got to remind them, this doesn’t start till 2026,” Mr. Cottrell said. “And then also remind them this thing will change several times between now and then.”Neera Tanden, Mr. Biden’s top domestic policy adviser, said the White House was confident that the plan would survive the legal challenges.“It is absurd to argue that negotiation is unconstitutional,” she said in an interview. “There’s nothing in the Constitution that says Medicare negotiating drug prices is unconstitutional.”But more broadly, Ms. Tanden said that she and the president’s other advisers in the West Wing were determined to make the push for lower health care costs a central part of Mr. Biden’s message to Americans.And next September, just weeks before Election Day, the administration will announce the results of the yearlong negotiations over the first 10 drugs.“We plan to work extensively, to really remind folks of this issue,” Ms. Tanden said.For the people leading Mr. Biden’s re-election campaign, the political benefits of focusing on lower health care costs are clear.Some polls show that 80 percent of Americans support giving the government the ability to negotiate lower prices for Medicare, much the way it already does for veterans and members of the military.Campaign aides said talking about lower costs of drugs or limits on out-of-pocket medical expenses is one way to help Mr. Biden win support among seniors, who traditionally have voted for Republicans in greater numbers. That is especially important in battleground states like Michigan, Arizona, Georgia and Ohio, where increasing support among older adults will be critical in close contests.The campaign’s early television ads have included numerous references to the president’s efforts to lower health care costs. A spokesman for the campaign said the issue of health care would be a central feature of a $25 million ad blitz focusing on what the president has done to lower costs overall and make economic progress.Kate Bedingfield, who served as Mr. Biden’s communications director for the first two years of his presidency, said the issue had political benefits even when it came to appealing to people who do not benefit directly from the specific cost reductions.“It draws a really clear contrast with the Republicans, who have stood in the way and continue to stand in the way of getting more done on this,” she said.Representative Michael C. Burgess, Republican of Texas and a doctor, said Mr. Biden’s drug price negotiations were akin to government-imposed price controls that would lead to drug shortages.“This administration’s approach goes beyond ‘negotiation,’” he said in a statement. “Instead, it holds pharmaceutical companies hostage, jeopardizing their future innovation and the well-being of American patients.”Mr. Biden’s campaign aides said a debate with Republicans about the cost of medical care was one they were eager to have.“MAGA Republicans running for president want to repeal the Inflation Reduction Act, which would deliver a massive win for Big Pharma and increase costs for the American people,” said Julie Chávez Rodríguez, the president’s campaign manager, referring to Republicans loyal to former President Donald J. Trump.She said the choice in the election was between Mr. Biden and “a slate of candidates focused on extreme policies that put their wealthy donors first.”Robert Jimison More

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      N.H. GOP Fights 14th Amendment Bid to Bar Trump From Ballot

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      In New Hampshire, Republicans are feuding over whether the 14th Amendment bars Donald J. Trump from running for president. Other states are watching closely.New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary is quickly becoming the leading edge for an unproven legal theory that Donald J. Trump is disqualified from appearing on the ballot under the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.A long-shot presidential candidate has filed a lawsuit in state court seeking an injunction to keep Mr. Trump off the ballot. And a former Republican candidate for Senate is urging the secretary of state to bring a case that could put the issue before the U.S. Supreme Court.On Wednesday, Free Speech for the People, a liberal-leaning group that unsuccessfully tried to strike House Republicans from the ballot in 2022, sent a letter to the secretaries of state in New Hampshire, as well as Florida, New Mexico, Ohio and Wisconsin, urging them to bar Mr. Trump from the ballot under the 14th Amendment.These efforts employ a theory that has been gaining traction among liberals and anti-Trump conservatives: that Mr. Trump’s actions on Jan. 6, 2021, disqualify him under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, which bars people from holding office if they took an oath to support the Constitution and later “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.”The theory has been gaining momentum since two prominent conservative law professors published an article this month concluding that Mr. Trump is constitutionally disqualified from running for office.But even advocates of the disqualification theory say it is a legal long shot. If a secretary of state strikes Mr. Trump’s name or a voter lawsuit advances, Mr. Trump’s campaign is sure to appeal, possibly all the way to the Supreme Court, where the 6-3 conservative majority includes three justices nominated by Mr. Trump.“When it gets to the Supreme Court, as it surely will, this will test the dedication of the justices to principles of law, more than almost anything has for a very long time,” said Laurence H. Tribe, a constitutional law professor at Harvard who believes the insurrection disqualification clearly applies to Mr. Trump, “because they will obviously realize that telling the leading candidate of one major political party, ‘no, no way, you’re not eligible’ is no small matter.”However long the odds of success, discussion of the amendment is bubbling up across the country. In Arizona, the secretary of state said he had heard from “concerned citizens” about the issue, and the Michigan secretary of state said she was “taking it seriously.” In Georgia, officials are looking at precedent set by a failed attempt to use the 14th Amendment to disqualify Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from the ballot in the 2022 midterms.But New Hampshire has jumped out as the early hotbed of the fight.The New Hampshire Republican Party said this week that it would challenge any effort to remove Mr. Trump, or any other candidates who have met requirements, from the ballot.“There’s no question that we will fight, and we’ll use all of the tools available to us to fight anyone’s access being denied on the ballot,” said Chris Ager, a Republican state committeeman in New Hampshire. “And if there’s a lawsuit, we are likely to intervene on behalf of the candidate to make sure that they have access. So we take it very seriously that the people of New Hampshire should decide who the nominee is, not a judge, not a justice system.”Chris Ager, a Republican state committeeman in New Hampshire, shaking Mr. Trump’s hand at the state party meeting in January.Doug Mills/The New York TimesLate last week, Bryant Messner, a former Trump-endorsed candidate for U.S. Senate, who goes by Corky, met with New Hampshire’s secretary of state, David M. Scanlan, to urge him to seek legal guidance on the issue. After Politico first reported the meeting, Mr. Scanlan and John M. Formella, the state’s attorney general, issued a joint statement saying that “the attorney general’s office is now carefully reviewing the legal issues involved.”Other secretaries of state have also been seeking legal guidance.“We’re taking a very cautious approach to the issue,” Arizona’s secretary of state, Adrian Fontes, said in an interview. “We’re going to be consulting with lawyers in our office and other folks who will eventually have to deal with this in the courts as well. We don’t anticipate that any decision that I or any other election administrator might make will be the final decision. This will get ultimately decided by the courts.”Adrian Fontes, Arizona’s secretary of state, said his office had already heard from “concerned citizens” regarding Mr. Trump’s eligibility under the 14th Amendment.Rebecca Noble for The New York TimesThough the argument is particularly appealing to liberals who view Mr. Trump as a grave threat, most of the recent momentum on this topic has come from conservative circles.Mr. Messner, a self-described “constitutional conservative,” said he was seeking to create case law around the issue. He said he had not yet filed a legal challenge because he first wanted the secretary of state to open up the candidate filing period and decide whether he would accept Mr. Trump’s filing. He argued that the lawsuit filed on Sunday by a Republican candidate, John Anthony Castro, was unlikely to advance because the filing period has not yet opened.“Section 3 has not been interpreted,” Mr. Messner said in an interview. “So, my position is let’s find a way for this to get into the court system as soon as possible. And then hopefully we can expedite through the legal system, to get it to the Supreme Court as soon as possible.”The precedent is by no means settled. A case filed against then-Representative Madison Cawthorn, Republican of North Carolina, ended with Judge Richard E. Myers II of U.S. District Court, an appointee of Mr. Trump, siding with Mr. Cawthorn. The judge ruled that the final clause of Section 3 allowed for a vote in Congress to “remove” the disqualification and that the passage of the Amnesty Act of 1872 effectively nullified the ban on insurrectionists.But on appeal, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit overruled that argument, saying the Amnesty Act clearly applied only to confederates, not future insurrectionists. The case was declared moot after Mr. Cawthorn lost his re-election in the 2022 primaries.Other cases may also come into play. An administrative law judge in Georgia ruled that plaintiffs failed to prove that Ms. Greene, Republican of Georgia, was in fact an insurrectionist. And cases against Representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs, Republicans of Arizona, were similarly dropped.Advocates of the disqualification clause fear that judges and secretaries of state could decide that any case against Mr. Trump will have to wait until a jury, either in Fulton County, Ga., or Washington, D.C., renders judgment in the two criminal cases charging that Mr. Trump had tried to overturn the 2020 election.Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger of Georgia indicated that previous cases involving Ms. Greene would continue to guide his office, and that “as secretary of state of Georgia, I have been clear that I believe voters are smart and deserve the right to decide elections.”“In Georgia, there is a specific statutory process to follow when a candidate’s qualifications for office are challenged,” Mr. Raffensperger said in a statement. “The secretary of state’s office has and will continue to follow the appropriate procedures in state law for any candidate challenges.”There has been one settled case since Jan. 6 that invoked the 14th Amendment. In September, a judge in New Mexico ordered a county commissioner convicted of participating in the Jan. 6 riot removed from office under the 14th Amendment. He was the first public official in more than a century to be barred from serving under a constitutional ban on insurrectionists holding office. More

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      Ramaswamy Relies on Denialism When Challenged on Flip-Flopping Positions

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      In clashes with the news media and his rivals, the Republican upstart has retreated from past comments and lied about on-the-record statements.In his breakout performance in the Republican primary race, Vivek Ramaswamy has harnessed his populist bravado while frequently and unapologetically contorting the truth for political gain, much in the same way that former President Donald J. Trump has mastered.Mr. Ramaswamy’s pattern of falsehoods has been the subject of intensifying scrutiny by the news media and, more recently, his G.O.P. opponents, who clashed with him often during the party’s first debate last Wednesday.There are layers to Mr. Ramaswamy’s distortions: He has spread lies and exaggerations on subjects including the 2020 election results, the Jan. 6 attacks on the Capitol and climate change. When challenged on those statements, Mr. Ramaswamy, a biotech entrepreneur who is the first millennial Republican to run for president, has in several instances claimed that he had never made them or that he had been taken out of context.But his denials have repeatedly been refuted by recordings and transcripts from Mr. Ramaswamy’s interviews — or, in some cases, excerpts from his own book.Here are some notable occasions when he sought to retreat from his past statements or mischaracterized basic facts:A misleading anecdoteAt a breakfast round table event organized by his campaign on Friday in Indianola, Iowa, Mr. Ramaswamy recounted how he had visited the South Side of Chicago in May to promote his immigration proposals to a mostly Black audience.He boasted that nowhere had his ideas on the issue been more enthusiastically received than in the nation’s third most populous city, where his appearance had followed community protests over the housing of migrants in a local high school.“I have never been in a room more in favor of my proposal to use the U.S. military to secure the southern border and seal the Swiss cheese down there than when I was in a nearly all-Black room of supposedly mostly Democrats on the South Side of Chicago,” he said.But Mr. Ramaswamy’s retelling of the anecdote was sharply contradicted by the observations of a New York Times reporter who covered both events.The reporter witnessed the audience in Chicago pepper Mr. Ramaswamy about reparations, systemic racism and his opposition to affirmative action. Immigration was barely mentioned during the formal program. It was so absent that a Ramaswamy campaign aide at one point pleaded for questions on the issue. With that prompting, a single Republican consultant stood up to question Mr. Ramaswamy on his proposals.Trump criticismAt the first Republican debate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey accused Mr. Ramaswamy of changing positions on Donald Trump.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesIn one of the more heated exchanges of last week’s G.O.P. debate, former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey criticized Mr. Ramaswamy for lionizing Mr. Trump and defending his actions during the Jan. 6 attack.He sought to cast Mr. Ramaswamy as an opportunist who was trying to pander to Mr. Trump’s supporters by attributing the riot to government censorship during the 2020 election.“In your book, you had much different things to say about Donald Trump than you’re saying here tonight,” Mr. Christie said.Mr. Ramaswamy bristled and said, “That’s not true.”But in his 2022 book “Nation of Victims: Identity Politics, the Death of Merit, and the Path Back to Excellence,” Mr. Ramaswamy had harsh words for Mr. Trump and gave a more somber assessment of the violence.“It was a dark day for democracy,” Mr. Ramaswamy wrote. “The loser of the last election refused to concede the race, claimed the election was stolen, raised hundreds of millions of dollars from loyal supporters, and is considering running for executive office again. I’m referring, of course, to Donald Trump.”When asked by The Times about the excerpt, Mr. Ramaswamy insisted that his rhetoric had not evolved and pointed out that he had co-written an opinion column in The Wall Street Journal five days after the Jan. 6 attack that was critical of the actions of social media companies during the 2020 election.“Also what I said at the time was that I really thought what Trump did was regrettable,” he said. “I would have handled it very differently if I was in his shoes. I will remind you that I am running for U.S. president in the same race that Donald Trump is running right now.”Mr. Ramaswamy parsed his criticism of the former president, however.“But a bad judgment is not the same thing as a crime,” he said.During the debate, Mr. Ramaswamy also sparred with former Vice President Mike Pence, whose senior aide and onetime chief of staff Marc Short told NBC News the next day that Mr. Ramaswamy was not a genuine populist.“There’s populism and then there’s just simply fraud,” he said.By blunting his message about the former president’s accountability and casting himself as an outsider, Mr. Ramaswamy appears to be making a play for Mr. Trump’s base — and the G.O.P. front-runner has taken notice.In a conversation on Tuesday with the conservative radio host Glenn Beck, Mr. Trump said that he was open to selecting Mr. Ramaswamy as his running mate, but he had some advice for him.“He’s starting to get out there a little bit,” Mr. Trump said. “He’s getting a little bit controversial. I got to tell him: ‘Be a little bit careful. Some things you have to hold in just a little bit, right?’”Conspiracy theories about Sept. 11Since entering the race, Mr. Ramaswamy has repeatedly floated conspiracy theories about a cover-up by the federal government in connection with the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, a narrative seemingly tailored to members of the G.O.P.’s right wing who are deeply distrustful of institutions.In a recent profile by The Atlantic, he told the magazine, “I think it is legitimate to say how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the twin towers.”While he acknowledged that he had “no reason” to believe that the number was “anything other than zero,” Mr. Ramaswamy suggested that the government had not been transparent about the attacks.“But if we’re doing a comprehensive assessment of what happened on 9/11, we have a 9/11 commission, absolutely that should be an answer the public knows the answer to,” he said.Yet when Mr. Ramaswamy was asked to clarify those remarks by Kaitlan Collins of CNN two nights before last week’s debate, he backtracked and accused The Atlantic of misquoting him.“I’m telling you the quote is wrong, actually,” he said.Soon after Mr. Ramaswamy claimed that his words had been twisted, The Atlantic released a recording and transcript from the interview that confirmed that he had indeed been quoted accurately.When asked in an interview on Saturday whether the audio had undercut his argument, Mr. Ramaswamy reiterated his contention that the news media had often misrepresented him.“I think there’s a reason why,” he said, suggesting that his free-flowing way of speaking broke the mold of so-called scripted candidates. “I just don’t speak like a traditional politician, and I think the system is not used to that. The political media is not used to that. And that lends itself naturally then to being inaccurately portrayed, to being distorted.”Mr. Trump’s allies have used similar justifications when discussing the former president’s falsehoods, citing his stream-of-consciousness speaking style. His allies and supporters have admired his impulse to refuse to apologize or back down when called out, an approach Mr. Ramaswamy has echoed.Mr. Ramaswamy said that he was asked about Sept. 11 while discussing the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol and his repeated calls for an accounting of how many federal agents were in the field that day. His campaign described The Atlantic’s recording as a “snippet.”At the start of The Times’s conversation with Mr. Ramaswamy, he said that he assumed that the interview was being recorded and noted that his campaign was recording, too.“We’re now doing mutually on the record, so just F.Y.I.,” he said.Pardoning Hunter BidenIn one of many clashes with the news media, Mr. Ramaswamy accused The New York Post of misquoting him in an article about Hunter Biden.Kenny Holston/The New York TimesNo news outlet has been off-limits to Mr. Ramaswamy’s claims of being misquoted: This month, he denounced a New York Post headline that read: “GOP 2024 candidate Vivek Ramaswamy ‘open’ to pardon of Hunter Biden.”The Aug. 12 article cited an interview that The Post had conducted with him.“After we have shut down the F.B.I., after we have refurbished the Department of Justice, after we have systemically pardoned anyone who was a victim of a political motivated persecution — from Donald Trump and peaceful January 6 protests — then would I would be open to evaluating pardons for members of the Biden family in the interest of moving the nation forward,” Mr. Ramaswamy was quoted as saying.The next morning on Fox News Channel, which, like The Post, is owned by News Corp, Mr. Ramaswamy told the anchor Maria Bartiromo that the report was erroneous.“Maria, that was misquoted and purposeful opposition research with the headline,” he said. “You know how this game is played.”The Post did not respond to a request for comment.In an interview with The Times, Mr. Ramaswamy described the headline as “manufactured” and said it was part of “the ridiculous farce of this gotcha game.”Aid to IsraelMr. Ramaswamy clashed with Fox News host Sean Hannity Monday night when confronted with comments he has made about aid to Israel. Mr. Ramaswamy accused Mr. Hannity of misrepresenting his views.“You said aid to Israel, our No. 1 ally, only democracy in the region, should end in 2028,” Mr. Hannity said in the interview. “And that they should be integrated with their neighbors.”“That’s false,” Mr. Ramaswamy responded.“I have an exact quote, do you want me to read it?” Mr. Hannity asked.Mr. Ramaswamy’s rhetoric about support for Israel has shifted.During a campaign event in New Hampshire earlier this month, Mr. Ramaswamy called the deal to provide Israel with $38 billion over 10 years “sacrosanct.” But a few weeks later in an interview with The Free Beacon, a conservative website, he said that he hoped that Israel would “not require and be dependent on that same level of historical aid or commitment from the U.S.” by 2028, when the deal expires.Wearing masksIn the first few months of the coronavirus pandemic, the Masks for All Act, a bill proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont that aimed to provide every person in the United States with three free N95 masks, appeared to receive an unlikely endorsement on Twitter — from Mr. Ramaswamy.“My policy views don’t often align with Bernie, but this strikes me as a sensible idea,” he wrote in July 2020. “The cost is a tiny fraction of other less compelling federal expenditures on COVID-19.”Mr. Ramaswamy was responding to an opinion column written for CNN by Mr. Sanders, who is a democratic socialist, and Andy Slavitt, who was later a top pandemic adviser to Mr. Biden. He said they should have picked someone from the political right as a co-author to show that there was a consensus on masks.But when he was pressed this summer by Josie Glabach of the Red Headed Libertarian podcast about whether he had ever supported Mr. Sanders’s mask measure, he answered no.When asked by The Times for further clarification, Mr. Ramaswamy acknowledged that he was an early supporter of wearing masks, but said that he no longer believed that they prevented the spread of the virus. He accused his political opponents of conflating his initial stance with support for mask mandates, which he said he had consistently opposed.An analogy to Rosa Parks?Mr. Ramaswamy appeared to compare Edward J. Snowden to Rosa Parks before immediately distancing himself from the comment.Kayana Szymczak for The New York TimesWhen he was asked by the conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt on his show in June whether he would pardon the former U.S. intelligence contractor Edward J. Snowden for leaking documents about the United States government’s surveillance programs, Mr. Ramaswamy said yes and invoked an unexpected name: the civil rights icon Rosa Parks.He said that Mr. Snowden, a fugitive, had demonstrated heroism to hold the government accountable.“Part of what makes that risk admirable — Rosa Parks long ago — is the willingness to bear punishment he already has,” he said. “That’s also why I would ensure that he was a free man.”To Mr. Hewitt, the analogy was jarring.“Wait, wait, wait, did you just compare Rosa Parks to Edward Snowden?” he said.Mr. Ramaswamy immediately distanced himself from such a comparison, while then reinforcing it, suggesting that they had both effectuated progress of a different kind.“No, I did not,” he said. “But I did compare the aspect of their willingness to take a risk in order for at the time breaking a rule that at the time was punishable.” More

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      Giuliani Is Liable for Defaming Georgia Election Workers, Judge Says

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      The ruling means that a defamation case against Rudolph W. Giuliani, stemming from his role in seeking to overturn the 2020 election, can proceed to a trial where damages will be considered.A federal judge ruled on Wednesday that Rudolph W. Giuliani was liable for defaming two Georgia election workers by repeatedly declaring that they had mishandled ballots while counting votes in Atlanta during the 2020 election.The ruling by the judge, Beryl A. Howell in Federal District Court in Washington, means that the defamation case against Mr. Giuliani, a central figure in former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to remain in power after his election loss, can proceed to trial on the narrow question of how much, if any, damages he will have to pay the plaintiffs in the case.Judge Howell’s decision came a little more than a month after Mr. Giuliani conceded in two stipulations in the case that he had made false statements when he accused the election workers, Ruby Freeman and Shaye Moss, of manipulating ballots while working at the State Farm Arena for the Fulton County Board of Elections.Mr. Giuliani’s legal team has sought to clarify that he was not admitting to wrongdoing, and that his stipulations were solely meant to short circuit the costly process of producing documents and other records to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss so that he could move toward dismissing the allegations outright.Although the stipulations essentially conceded that his statements about Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss were false, Mr. Giuliani has continued to argue that his attacks on them were protected by the First Amendment.But Judge Howell, complaining that Mr. Giuliani’s stipulations “hold more holes than Swiss cheese,” took the proactive step of declaring him liable for “defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, civil conspiracy and punitive damage claims.”In a statement, Mr. Giuliani’s political adviser, Ted Goodman, slammed the opinion as “a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment.” He added that “this decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence.”Judge Howell’s decision to effectively skip the fact-finding stage of the defamation case and move straight to an assessment of damages came after a protracted struggle by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss to force Mr. Giuliani to turn over evidence they believed they deserved as part of the discovery process.In her ruling, Judge Howell accused Mr. Giuliani of paying only “lip service” to his discovery obligations “by failing to take reasonable steps to preserve or produce” reams of relevant information. His repeated excuses and attempts to paint himself as the victim in the case, the judge went on, “thwarted” the two women’s “procedural rights to obtain any meaningful discovery.”“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straightforward defamation case,” Judge Howell wrote.The remedy for all of this, she added, was that Mr. Giuliani would have to pay nearly $90,000 in legal fees Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss had incurred and would suffer a default judgment on the central issue of whether he had defamed the women.The lawsuit filed by Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss in December 2021 was among the first to be brought by individual election workers who found themselves targets of criticism and conspiracy theories promoted by right-wing politicians and media figures who claimed that Mr. Trump had won the election. The two women sued other defendants, including the One America News Network and some of its top officials, but ultimately reached settlements with everyone except Mr. Giuliani.The campaign of harassment against Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss came after Mr. Giuliani and others wrongly accused them of pulling thousands of fraudulent ballots from a suitcase in their vote-counting station and illegally feeding them through voting machines. The story of that campaign was featured prominently in a racketeering indictment against Mr. Trump, Mr. Giuliani and 17 others that was filed this month by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga.The indictment accused Mr. Giuliani of falsely telling state officials in Georgia that Ms. Freeman had committed election crimes in an effort to persuade them to “unlawfully change the outcome” of the race on Mr. Trump’s behalf. Other members of the criminal enterprise, the indictment said, “traveled from out of state to harass Ms. Freeman, intimidate her and solicit her to falsely confess to election crimes that she did not commit.”Last year, Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss — who are mother and daughter — appeared as witnesses at a public hearing of the House select committee investigating Jan. 6 and related what happened after Mr. Giuliani amplified the false claims about them.Although Fulton County and Georgia officials immediately debunked the accusations, Mr. Giuliani kept promoting them, ultimately comparing the women — who are Black — to drug dealers and calling during a hearing with Georgia state legislators for their homes to be searched.Mr. Trump invoked Ms. Freeman’s name 18 times during a phone call with Brad Raffensperger, the Georgia secretary of state, on Jan. 2, 2021. In the call, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Raffensperger to help him “find” 11,800 votes — enough to swing the results in Georgia from the winner, Joseph R. Biden Jr.“I’ve lost my name, and I’ve lost my reputation,” Ms. Freeman testified to the House panel, adding as her voice rose with emotion, “Do you know how it feels to have the president of the United States target you?”Mr. Giuliani has blamed his failure to produce documents to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss on his own financial woes. Facing an array of civil and criminal cases, Mr. Giuliani has racked up about $3 million in legal expenses, a person familiar with the matter has said.He has sought a lifeline from Mr. Trump, but the former president has largely rebuffed requests to cover Mr. Giuliani’s legal bills. Mr. Trump’s political action committee did pay $340,000 that Mr. Giuliani owed to a company that was helping him produce records in various cases, but he had still sought to avoid turning over documents to Ms. Freeman and Ms. Moss, prompting the judge’s ruling on Wednesday.The defamation suit by the women is only one of several legal problems Mr. Giuliani faces.In addition to the Georgia indictment, Mr. Giuliani is facing a defamation suit from Dominion Voting Systems, which has accused him of “a viral disinformation campaign” to spread false claims that the company was part of a complex plot to flip votes away from Mr. Trump during the 2020 election.Last month, a legal ethics committee in Washington said that Mr. Giuliani should be disbarred for his “unparalleled” attempts to help Mr. Trump overturn the election.He was also included as an unnamed co-conspirator in a federal indictment filed against Mr. Trump this month by the special counsel, Jack Smith, accusing the former president of plotting to illegally reverse the results of the election. 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      Struggling to Understand TV Dialogue? Join the Club.

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      More from our inbox:Airbrushing Older ModelsHaley’s Raised HandSea Life in CaptivityDerek AbellaTo the Editor: Re “Huh? What? There Are Ways to Improve the Sound on Your TV?” (Business, Aug. 18):As an American expat, I got a good chuckle out of Brian X. Chen’s article about poor dialogue sound quality in streaming. The premise, that using subtitles is a terrible inconvenience that diminishes one’s enjoyment of video entertainment, is one of those peculiarly American complaints that seem bizarre to many people overseas.In Chinese-speaking areas and other parts of East Asia, the wide variety of languages, accents and usages can make it tough to comprehend dialogue regardless of sound quality, so video nearly always comes with subtitles, whether it’s on TV, in a movie theater or online. Nobody here seems to mind.Indeed, the people in Malaysia who build the Sonos equipment that Mr. Chen praised must be thrilled that Americans will spend $900 on soundbars to avoid those irritating subtitles.Michael P. ClarkeTaoyuan City, TaiwanTo the Editor:We do not have to bring speakers to a movie theater to watch a movie and we should not have to put speakers on our TV sets to enjoy a television show. Modern television sets should come with high-resolution pictures and high-quality, audible sound. The quality of the sound is as important as the quality of the picture. We should not have to buy soundbars.Bill ChastainNew YorkTo the Editor:I’ve used closed captioning for a while now, not only because the sound quality on streaming services is far from as good as it should be but also because programs produced in England — many of the shows on PBS, which I like — use a lot of slang and hard-to-understand dialects.But a major problem is that some of the streaming services, like Netflix, have closed captions that are far from helpful. They come on well before or well after the spoken words, and too often they flash on so fast that it is impossible to read the entire line of dialogue.Michael SpielmanWellfleet, Mass.To the Editor:Brian X. Chen suggests that we can hear the dialogue in movies and television shows better by installing new equipment. Along with the attempts at improvements made by directors and sound mixers, producers might insist upon better diction from the actors.I’ve noticed this slurring and breathy quality in stage performers, too. Perhaps Broadway shows need closed captioning?Lawrence RaikenQueensAirbrushing Older ModelsRafael Pavarotti/VogueTo the Editor: Re “Do Supermodels Age, or Get Airbrushed Instead?” (Sunday Styles, Aug. 20):The timing couldn’t be more prescient. Just as Greta Gerwig’s irreverent blockbuster “Barbie” is sweeping theaters around the world, Vogue has released its iconic September issue featuring the likes of America’s supermodels — Linda Evangelista, 58, Cindy Crawford, 57, Christy Turlington, 54, and Naomi Campbell, 53 — on its cover.As Vanessa Friedman aptly remarks, they are “paragons of mature beauty whose years have seemingly been smoothed from their faces,” which “look so retouched that they seem more like A.I.-generated bots than actual people.” A Vogue spokeswoman claimed there was only “minimal retouching.” We know better.Although we can surely applaud Vogue’s decision to feature 50-something models on its cover, “retouching” them is perpetuating a big lie. It is, in effect, “Barbiefying” them. Barbie was the icon that fed upon young girls’ feelings of inadequacy. Now older women can gaze at Vogue’s cover and feel inadequate too. Thank you, Vogue.If Vogue, “the fashion Bible,” had elected not to retouch these mature beauties, it would have been a truly groundbreaking event. Certainly a missed opportunity.Thank you, Vanessa Friedman, for speaking truth to Vogue. As Ms. Gerwig’s Barbie comes to realize, “It’s time to change the Constitution.”Elizabeth LangerNew YorkThe writer is a co-founder of the Women’s Rights Law Reporter, the first U.S. journal devoted to women and the law.To the Editor:I laughed this morning reading Vanessa Friedman’s column at the silliness of an article criticizing the airbrushing of aging models. The fashion industry runs on unrealistic representations of beauty. Why should those standards be different for older models?I’ve attended fashion shoots where young models had terrible acne that was ultimately airbrushed out. It seems that, no matter how young or beautiful a model is, there’s almost always flattering lighting and image manipulation. The industry runs on fantasy.So, whether or not older models have their wrinkles airbrushed seems irrelevant if everything is unrealistic. This is commerce. They aren’t profiling women curing cancer. At least now they’re democratizing fashion to allow older women to put their best selves forward, too.I hope they can continue to do that without being criticized for tricks of the trade. I think focusing on airbrushing undermines how great it is that Vogue is keeping women over 50 relevant.Jenifer VogtDobbs Ferry, N.Y.Haley’s Raised HandJoe Buglewicz for The New York TimesTo the Editor: Re “Nikki Haley Is the Best Alternative to Trump,” by David Brooks (column, Aug. 25):Wednesday night’s Republican debate persuaded Mr. Brooks that Nikki Haley is the best alternative to Donald Trump. Yet while Mr. Brooks makes a convincing case that Ms. Haley is a preferable candidate to Mike Pence, Ron DeSantis and especially Vivek Ramaswamy, he fails to address the fact that Ms. Haley, along with every other candidate on the stage except Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, raised her hand when asked if she would support Mr. Trump if he is convicted of one or more felonies and is the Republican nominee.I would ask Mr. Brooks how Ms. Haley’s raised hand shows that she is “one of the few candidates who understands that to run against Trump you have to run against Trump”? And should that not, by itself, render her unfit to become the next president of the United States?David A. BarryCambridge, Mass.Sea Life in CaptivityLolita during a performance at the Miami Seaquarium in 1995. She has been in captivity since 1970.Nuri Vallbona/Miami Herald, via Associated PressTo the Editor: Re “Lolita the Orca, Mainstay of Miami Seaquarium for 50 Years, Dies,” by Jesus Jiménez (news article, nytimes.com, Aug. 18):I know I am not alone in grieving the tragedy of the kidnapping of this orca, also known as Tokitae, her decades spent in captivity, and her untimely death just when freedom and the possibility of being reunited with her family in the Salish Sea were close enough to touch. Her sorrowful life story hurts all the more because our human collective doesn’t seem to have learned a thing from it.Orcas remain endangered and continue to struggle to hear each other and catch dwindling salmon in polluted waters that are choking with boat noise from unceasing human commercial and recreational activity. Worse, the captive industry carries on, including in Seattle, which is intent upon building a shiny new shark tank to imprison even more animals.My hope is that Tokitae’s death will galvanize support against the captivity industry locally and beyond, and serve as a beacon of hope for other beings languishing in tanks simply so that they can be ogled by humans. Let’s honor Tokitae and her bereaved family by ensuring that nobody else has to suffer similarly.Stephanie C. BellSeaTac, Wash. More