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      Questions for Republican Debate: What Readers Want to Learn

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      More than 850 readers sent us their questions for the Republican candidates. Donald Trump was a hot topic, but not the only: “I don’t want to ask about the past,” one said.As the first Republican presidential debate nears on Wednesday night, we asked our readers a few simple things: What questions would you like to hear? What issues should be discussed? How will you judge the candidates?We heard from more than 850 readers, including devoted supporters of former President Donald J. Trump, Republicans who voted for him in the past but are now skeptical, die-hard Democrats and independents who said they were unsatisfied with all of their options in the 2024 race.Not surprisingly, Mr. Trump loomed large — even in his expected absence onstage. But many Republicans were also eager to hear how the candidates would handle policy issues including the war in Ukraine and migration at the nation’s southern border.Others were eager to hear what the candidates would do to bridge the country’s deep partisan divide. The responses have been lightly edited for clarity.Everyone wants to know about Trump.The former president has said he will not participate on Wednesday, but many readers wanted him — and his four criminal indictments — to be a major topic of conversation.For Democrats, the top concern was some version of the blunt question from Kerry Reardon in Fleming Island, Fla: “Yes or no, do you believe that the Democrats stole the 2020 election?”But Republican supporters had another question for Mr. Trump’s rivals: “What makes them able to defeat Trump, then Biden later on?” asked Austin Moon in Greenville, N.C.“What makes you think you are as tough as Trump?” asked Loretta Houdeshell, a Republican from Greenbrier, Tenn.Others wanted a simple yes-or-no answer to the following question: “Will you support the 2024 Republican nominee for president?”But skepticism about Mr. Trump also crept into Republicans’ questions. Kathryn Byrd, a Republican who voted for Mr. Trump in Missouri in 2020, wanted to know if the candidates thought that “those involved in the Jan. 6 riots should be held accountable, including but not limited to, former President Donald Trump?”Shannon Swindle, a Republican from Georgia, worried about the toll of nominating a candidate with legal baggage and wanted to hear candidates’ views.“How will they address the Trump indictments and what do they have to say if Trump is the Republican nominee, which I personally hope he is not. How do we move forward as a legitimate democracy when the Democratic Party is trying to imprison their main political opponent? What should we do to move forward?”Moving forward was a common theme for many voters, including Peter J. Cotch of Naples, Fla., who hoped the moderators would ask about the “impact of Trumpism on the public image of the Republican Party” and added that he was “a third-generation registered Republican” who had always supported the party’s nominee, but “couldn’t do it this time if it’s Trump.”Immigration and the war in UkraineRepublican readers had priorities beyond Mr. Trump. They often raised questions about the candidates’ positions on continuing to build a border wall and ending birthright citizenship (a change that would require a constitutional amendment).“How would you handle the border crisis moving forward and what would you do with the huge number of immigrants residing in the U.S. currently that arrived outside of our immigration laws?” asked Jane Roberts, a Republican in Florida.Asked what issues he would most like to hear about, Mark Greenstone of Winter Springs, Fla., wrote, “How will they specifically resolve preventing illegal immigrants from entering our country?”“Not just closing the border,” wrote Larry O’Neal of Tuscaloosa, Ala. “But actual changes to the immigration system.”Like many other voters, Mr. O’Neal was also eager to hear about the candidates’ views on the war in Ukraine, a conflict that has divided the G.O.P. between traditionalists and a new guard deeply skeptical of U.S. intervention overseas. Mr. O’Neal wanted to hear about “the risks and rewards by your position.”Josh Sacks, an independent voter in Falls Church, Va., said that he hoped to hear Republicans talk about the “limits of America’s commitment to Ukraine.”Can we all come together?A few Republican respondents asked what the candidates could do to bring their party together, but even more raised questions about national unity.“How are you going to help rebuild trust in our democratic system?” asked Nancy Parlette, a Republican in Maryland who said she wrote in the name of Larry Hogan, the state’s moderate G.O.P. governor at the time, for president in 2020 because she “couldn’t find anyone worth voting for.”“People are sick of all the hate, slander and backbiting,” Ms. Parlette added. “We want to be able to trust our president and our Congress to actually care about America more than about making themselves look great.”Susan Pichoff, a Republican from Alabama, said, “I don’t want to ask about the past.” Instead, she said: “I want to ask about, what are we doing to encourage people and unite this country? Because we are so divided and it’s sad.”George Adkins, an independent voter in Houston who voted for Mr. Trump, had a similar thought: “How do you plan to lessen the divide among Americans in both politics and race?”Ditch the talking pointsAnd, in what might be a perennial request, many voters said they wanted to be leveled with. Mr. Greenstone said he would judge candidates “by how direct and specific they answer questions as opposed to just providing answers that are scripted and vague.”“I will be turned off by a bombastic approach,” wrote Douglas Greenlee, of Huntersville, N.C. “I will respect a thoughtful approach even if the candidate says they do not have the plan developed as yet, but lay out parameters for what they would think about.”But few voters of any political stripe expressed high hopes for the night. Catherine O’Keefe of Hopewell Junction, N.Y., said she expected that “not a single candidate will say anything useful that is not a campaigned-approved talking point, nor will they provide an actual answer to any direct question.”Ms. O’Keefe, a Republican who voted for Joseph R. Biden Jr. in 2020, added, “Candidates will just try to score one-liners against each other.” More

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      Let’s Plant Wildflowers in the National Mall

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      More from our inbox:Indicted LawyersSununu’s ‘Wishful Thinking’End the Ukraine WarDeSantis and the IviesPain Patients Deserve Answers Evan CohenTo the Editor:Re “Fill the National Mall With Wildflowers,” by Alexander Nazaryan (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 11):What a timely and terrific idea Mr. Nazaryan proposes. Let’s replace the clipped, monotonous lawns of our National Mall with gardens of wildflowers, he writes. Create meadows! Variety and color! These fields would provide habitat for the bees, butterflies and other essential insects that are losing their homes to development and chemically maintained landscaping.And, incidentally, these 18 acres of gardens and meadows will pull tons of carbon from the atmosphere and bury it in the soil.What an opportunity to show visitors our national heritage of wildflowers. And what a chance to show young tourists how plants create a livable atmosphere for us.We can model our future on the National Mall. If millions of suburban gardeners and thousands of farmers follow suit in restoring lawns and fields to meadows of wildflowers and multi-crop fields, free of chemicals, we could be on our way to regenerate the earth and save ourselves a place in the future!Deborah Lake FortsonBrookline, Mass.The writer is a member of Brookline Pollinator Pathways.To the Editor:Alexander Nazaryan’s piece on wildflower lawns is wonderful to consider. A few photoshopped pictures of the National Mall full of wildflowers would have made it perfect.I am delighted with my wildflower lawn in Longmont, Colo., on a small residential lot. In 2022, my water bill was reduced by 25,000 gallons after I stopped watering my lawn, even though I maintained extensive flower and vegetable gardens. Mother Nature also helped kill the lawn by withholding any significant rain and snow for the first six months of 2022.This all followed a severe drought in late 2021, which contributed to a massive grassland fire in Boulder County that burned over 1,000 homes in December. I’d had enough of my lawn.Now I enjoy more colors, heights of vegetation and varied shades of green in our yard than I have ever had. The ground always seems damp, even with bright sun and low humidity, which is typical for our local climate. Birds and bees are all over it.We owe it to the planet for working its magic. Our monotonous and high maintenance green carpet was a poor substitute.David BishtonLongmont, Colo.To the Editor:I’m an ecologist in Washington, D.C., and I love low-water landscaping and wilding lawns — but the National Mall is land used for large events like concerts, Fourth of July fireworks, rallies, marches, protests, gatherings, sun bathing, soccer games, chasing kids around, kite festivals and more. And it’s used by hundreds of thousands of people for some of these events.It cannot be full of wildflowers and, no, wildflowers are not easy to maintain in this sort of scenario.There is a section by the Tidal Basin south of the Washington Monument where flowers are planted that the author may enjoy, though it’s a small lot. Wildflowers on the Mall, though, would remove space for us to play. And we do play!Yes, its maintenance is expensive — but the National Mall is not an ecological disaster. It’s an event space.K. SpainWashingtonIndicted LawyersClockwise from top left, attorneys, John Eastman, Rudy Giuliani, Jeffrey Clark and Sidney Powell.Photographs by Jae C. Hong/Associated Press, Eduardo Munoz/Reuters, Michael A. McCoy/Getty Images and Jonathan Ernst/ReutersTo the Editor:Re “Why Are So Many of Trump’s Alleged Co-Conspirators Lawyers?,” by Deborah Pearlstein (Opinion guest essay, Aug. 15):Reading Ms. Pearlstein’s excellent essay, I was reminded of Anne Applebaum’s observation in her book “Twilight of Democracy”: “Authoritarians need the people who will promote the riot or launch the coup. But they also need the people who can use sophisticated legal language, people who can argue that breaking the constitution or twisting the law is the right thing to do.”Stronger ethics rules and laws, bolstered by the prosecutions and bar expulsions we are witnessing, will help, but ultimately, the problem is more fundamental.What Ms. Pearlstein refers to as a root cause — increased polarization of the legal profession — may be better described as a lack of commitment to democratic principles and, in some cases, a simple lack of character.Michael CurryAustin, TexasTo the Editor:Deborah Pearlstein’s guest essay on the politicization of the legal profession is spot on and reflects the larger problem with the legal profession today: an erosion of ethics.An old joke claims that “legal ethics” is an oxymoron; it is not a joke today. I believe that this is the reason a decreasing number of lawyers are members of the American Bar Association; the ethics code of the A.B.A., and associated state bar associations, is not compatible with their practice of law.Thomas CoxRichmond, Va.Sununu’s ‘Wishful Thinking’Eric Thayer for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “If Republicans Narrow the Field, We Will Beat Trump,” by Gov. Christopher T. Sununu (Opinion guest essay, nytimes.com, Aug. 21):Yes, narrowing the field would help Republicans beat Donald Trump for the nomination, but Mr. Sununu is engaging in wishful thinking when he says that at this week’s debate, the other leading candidates should “break free of Mr. Trump’s drama, step out of his shadow.”That’s not possible for these debate participants, every one of whom will have signed a pledge to support the nominee — even if it’s Mr. Trump and even if he’s a convicted felon by November 2024.Moreover, even candidates like Chris Christie and Mike Pence, who now criticize Mr. Trump’s actions regarding the last presidential election, supported him all through the prior four years of his disastrous presidency.Mr. Sununu says the Republican Party needs to refocus “on a nominee dedicated to saving America.” In fact, it’s the Republican Party that needs saving from its current crop of leaders and candidates.Jeff BurgerRidgewood, N.J.End the Ukraine War Shuran Huang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:“Peace Activists Decide Ukraine Is an Exception” (front page, Aug. 15) correctly reports on how many progressive voices have been quiet on the war. But religious leaders, up to and including Pope Francis, as well as several faith groups like my own (Quakers), have been actively pressing to end the war and support the arduous work of peacemaking.Earlier this year, Pope Francis met with President Volodymyr Zelensky at the Vatican and called for a cease-fire and negotiations. Hundreds of religious leaders have now signed a letter in support of his call and are advocating an end to the war once and for all.You don’t have to be a pope or a pacifist to recognize the perils inherent in continued military escalation — for Ukrainians, Russians and the world. President Biden and Congress must invest much more in seeking a diplomatic path out of the conflict rather than relying on endless military aid. Peacemaking won’t be easy. It never is.But war is not the answer.Bridget MoixWashingtonThe writer is the general secretary of the Friends Committee on National Legislation.DeSantis and the IviesHaiyun Jiang for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “The Elites He Now Targets Gave DeSantis a Leg Up” (front page, Aug. 22):Ron DeSantis was so embittered by his exposure to elite liberalism at Yale that when he graduated, he went to Harvard Law School. You cannot make that up!Stephen T. SchreiberPrinceton, N.J.Pain Patients Deserve AnswersTo the Editor:Re “They Live in Constant Pain, but Their Doctors Won’t Help Them,” by Vishakha Darbha, Lucy King and Adam Westbrook (Opinion Video, Aug. 17):I’ve seen too many patients suffering from chronic pain who’ve been told it is in their heads or that nothing can be done. Believing that it’s acceptable to live with pain is unacceptable. If someone has pain, something is wrong. Ongoing pain after a previous trauma or surgical procedure may signal that a nerve is injured, which is an overlooked cause of chronic pain because it is hard to detect through imaging.Neuropathic pain, sometimes called the “invisible illness,” is the most common type of chronic pain, affecting one in 10 people. Yet many health care providers and patients don’t understand nerve injuries, how common they are, and the correlation to ongoing pain. It’s not unusual for people to see more than 20 providers before seeing a surgeon who specializes in nerves. This is not OK.People deserve to know that nerve injuries can often be surgically repaired. It’s time they get the answers and care they deserve.Adam B. StrohlPhiladelphiaThe writer is a surgeon at the Philadelphia Hand to Shoulder Center. More

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      DeSantis Defends ‘Listless Vessels’ Comments That Riled Trump Supporters

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      Mr. DeSantis brought a backlash over the weekend for comments that some of Donald Trump’s backers interpreted as insulting.Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida on Monday defended his remarks urging Republican voters not to be “listless vessels” that automatically support former President Donald J. Trump.Mr. DeSantis said in an interview with The Florida Standard, a conservative news outlet, last week that the conservative movement “can’t be about the personality of one individual.” “If you’re not rooted in principle, if all we are is listless vessels that’s just supposed to follow whatever happens to come down the pike on Truth Social every morning, that’s not going to be a durable movement,” Mr. DeSantis added.The comments quickly prompted backlash over the weekend from Mr. Trump’s campaign and supporters, who said the comments insulted his voters. Many likened Mr. DeSantis’s remarks to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 comments that half of Mr. Trump’s supporters fit into a “basket of deplorables.”A spokeswoman for MAGA Inc., Mr. Trump’s super PAC, Karoline Leavitt, said on Saturday in a statement posted online that “DeSantis must immediately apologize for his disgraceful insult.”Asked about the remarks during an appearance on Fox News on Monday afternoon, Mr. DeSantis said he was referring to members of Congress who had called him a “RINO,” or “Republican in Name Only.”“The people in Congress that I was referring to, that have attacked me and tried to say somehow that I was a RINO, they’re putting entertainment and personality over principle,” he said. “Our voters want us to stand on principle and fight for them.”Mr. DeSantis, who remains in a distant second place to Mr. Trump, has in recent weeks faced a series of campaign woes that included significant campaign staff cuts, stagnant polls and a leaked debate strategy memo. He has received frequent criticism from Mr. Trump and will most likely be the target of further attacks by others at the Republican National Committee debate Wednesday as the leading candidate onstage in Mr. Trump’s absence.“Looks like Ron DeSanctimonious just had his ‘Basket of Deplorables’ moment. Not good!” Jason Miller, an adviser to the Trump campaign, said Saturday on X, formerly known as Twitter.Representative Nancy Mace of South Carolina, who has been critical of Mr. Trump but has defended him more frequently in recent months, told Fox News that Mr. DeSantis’s comments occurred “while his numbers were tanking” and helped explain why other candidates, such as the entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy, were “on the rise.”“I don’t know why anyone running for president would put down half of the electorate and identify them, call them listless vessels, because they support the former president,” she said.Others in the presidential race seized the opportunity to criticize Mr. DeSantis as well. Mr. Ramaswamy wrote on Sunday that “the real danger to our movement is the rise of ‘listless-vessel’ robot politicians who blindly follow the commands of their Super PACs,” an apparent reference to the Never Back Down super PAC that has effectively taken over Mr. DeSantis’s campaign. The New York Times reported last week about a trove of documents that a political consulting firm associated with the super PAC had posted online. The documents described key details about how Mr. DeSantis might approach the debate, including suggested language for attacking Mr. Ramaswamy.Bryan Griffin, a DeSantis spokesman, pushed back and said Saturday that Mr. DeSantis’s remarks were aimed at Mr. Trump and his “congressional endorsers.”“The dishonest media refuses to report the facts — Donald Trump and some congressional endorsers are ‘listless vessels.’ Why? Because Trump and D.C. insiders feel he is entitled to your vote,” Mr. Griffin wrote on X.“That’s why Ron DeSantis will be showing up on Wednesday night to debate, and Donald Trump will not,” he added.Mr. DeSantis said in his Monday interview on Fox News that he had intended to emphasize what he saw as “one of the big problems with our party for many, many years,” which is that people “say they’re going to do certain things and then don’t end up following through.”He called for a focus, instead, on “delivering for the people that have put us into office.” More

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      Trump Allies May Be Kept Out of Fox News Spin Room After Trump Shuns Debate

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      Fox News, which is hosting the event, will allow aides only for the candidates on the stage.Former President Donald J. Trump’s plan to have prominent surrogates make his case in Milwaukee without attending the debate himself may already be hitting a snag as he clashes with Fox News.Mr. Trump’s campaign had previously arranged for prominent supporters to visit the “spin room,” where candidates and their allies interact with members of the media after the debate.But Fox News, which is hosting the matchup, will grant access to the spin room only to aides of candidates who are participating, according to a memo obtained by The New York Times. Aides of nonparticipating candidates will have access only if they are invited as guests of media organizations.“In addition to the (5) Spin Room credentials referenced in a previous email, we’ll also issue (1) Media Row credential to any participating candidate/campaigns,” the memo says. “Any non-participating candidate/campaign is welcome in the Spin Room or Media Row as a guest of one of the media organizations with positions in those locations, using one of their credentials.”The memo, which was first reported by Axios, does not mention Mr. Trump, and the restrictions apply to all candidates who aren’t participating — a category that also includes those who didn’t meet the donor and polling thresholds to qualify. In practice, though, it will affect Mr. Trump more significantly than anyone else, since he is the front-runner in the Republican primary and is actively trying to snub the debate while still getting its benefits.Mr. Trump’s decision to skip the first Republican National Committee-sanctioned debate of the 2024 race was a slap in the face to both the party and Fox News. Mr. Trump has frequently complained about Fox News’s coverage of him. He has recorded an interview with Tucker Carlson, who was fired from the network this year, that will post on X, formerly known as Twitter, during the debate.At least three senior members of Mr. Trump’s campaign — Chris LaCivita, Jason Miller and Steven Cheung — plan to attend the debate in person, The Times has reported.Among the prominent Trump backers planning to attend Wednesday’s debate are Kari Lake, the Republican candidate for governor in Arizona who lost last year and has loudly echoed Mr. Trump’s election lies; Mr. Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr.; and Representatives Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Byron Donalds of Florida.“Kari Lake looks forward to attending the debate, and if Fox thinks otherwise, they’re welcome to call her,” a senior adviser to Ms. Lake, Caroline Wren, told NBC News on Monday.The Fox News memo does not describe any restrictions on audience members, however, only restricting access to the spin room where reporters will be doing the bulk of their post-debate interviews. More

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      Debbie Mucarsel-Powell Challenges Rick Scott for Senate in Florida

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      Ms. Mucarsel-Powell, the first South American immigrant elected to the House, is one of several Democrats who have entered the 2024 race.Debbie Mucarsel-Powell, a Democrat who represented Miami for one term in the House after immigrating to the United States from Ecuador, stepped forward on Tuesday to challenge the incumbent Republican, Rick Scott, for the Senate in 2024.Flipping the seat could be crucial for Democrats to keep their narrow majority in the Senate, but their path to victory in what was once a quintessential battleground state appears to be difficult, according to independent projections.Ms. Mucarsel-Powell, 52, is seeking to become only the second Latina elected to the Senate, after Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, Democrat of Nevada.In 2018, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell upset Carlos Curbelo, a two-term Republican incumbent in Florida’s 26th District. She lost the seat in 2020 to Carlos Gimenez, who was mayor of Miami-Dade County.In a campaign introduction video posted on social media, she sought to cast Mr. Scott as a hard-line opponent of women’s reproductive rights who would seek to ban abortion nationally. She also criticized his past support for cutting Social Security and Medicare as a way to balance the federal budget and rein in the national debt. He later reversed that position.“Ya no más,” she said in Spanish in the video, meaning “no more,” and later added, “I’ve already fought guys like Rick Scott, and beat them.”Noting that she was the first South American immigrant elected to Congress and that she once worked for minimum wage at a doughnut shop, Ms. Mucarsel-Powell sought to draw an economic and cultural contrast to Mr. Scott.A former associate dean at Florida International University, she is the latest prominent Democrat to join the race, which includes Alan Grayson, a former representative, and Phil Ehr, a U.S. Navy veteran who unsuccessfully challenged Representative Matt Gaetz in 2020.Mr. Scott, 70, who is one of the wealthiest members of Congress, served two terms as governor before being elected to the Senate in 2018. Last year, he was the chairman of the Senate Republican campaign arm, but his long-shot bid to dislodge Senator Mitch McConnell as the minority leader fizzled.“We’d like to welcome yet another failed congressional candidate to the crowded Democrat primary,” Priscilla Ivasco, a spokeswoman for Mr. Scott’s campaign, said in a statement.Momentum in Florida has favored Republicans, who hold the governor’s office, the Legislature and both Senate seats. And in otherwise disappointing midterm elections for the G.O.P. last year, Gov. Ron DeSantis was re-elected in a landslide that laid the groundwork for his presidential candidacy. More

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      Ramaswamy’s Foreign Policy Approach Offers Rivals a Line of Attack

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      As Vivek Ramaswamy rises in the polls, fellow Republican presidential candidates are keying in on a number of policy pronouncements that veer far from the G.O.P. mainstream.Republican presidential rivals, looking to blunt Vivek Ramaswamy’s rise in national primary polls ahead of the first primary debate on Wednesday, have seized on the political arena where the upstart entrepreneur has strayed far afield from his party’s thinkers: foreign policy.Opponents have attacked Mr. Ramaswamy for his assertions that he would leave Taiwan to the Chinese once the United States has sufficiently expanded its domestic semiconductor industry and that he would allow Russia to keep parts of eastern Ukraine in order to entice President Vladimir V. Putin away from his military alliance with China. Most recently, he said he would curtail military aid to Israel after stabilizing the Middle East, perhaps the politically riskiest position yet.“This is part of a concerning pattern with Vivek,” Nikki Haley, the former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations now running for the Republican presidential nomination, said Monday about Mr. Ramaswamy’s Israel comments. “Between abandoning Israel, abolishing the F.B.I., and giving Taiwan to China, his foreign policy proposals have a common theme: They make America less safe.”Candidates have also looked askance at peculiar statements Mr. Ramaswamy made this month suggesting a government cover-up behind the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001; former Vice President Mike Pence said he was “deeply offended.”Mr. Ramaswamy, who has never held elected office or worked in government, expresses supreme confidence in his foreign policy views. He has cited as his models George F. Kennan, the architect of America’s Cold War global reach, and James A. Baker III, the American diplomat most credited for transitioning the world beyond the Cold War. He has vowed as president to go to Moscow the way Richard M. Nixon went to China.But in a political campaign, his positions may come off as naïve or bizarre — and easy to exploit. His tendency to answer any question posed to him has sent him down a rabbit hole of conspiratorial innuendo on Sept. 11. First, he told an interviewer, “I don’t believe the government has told us the truth” about the attacks. In a lengthy post on X, formerly known as Twitter, he subsequently explained that he was suggesting a deeper involvement in the attack by Saudi Arabia’s government.Then in an interview posted Monday in The Atlantic, he plunged deeper, asking, “how many police, how many federal agents, were on the planes that hit the Twin Towers?”His rivals’ criticisms in some cases have disregarded the broader context of Mr. Ramaswamy’s statements. His pledge to pull back military aid to Israel, made last week in an interview with the actor Russell Brand on the video platform Rumble that’s popular on the right, were part of a larger conversation on expanding Israel’s bilateral peace agreements with its neighbors that would make military aid less necessary.But caveats and context are often sacrificed on the campaign trail, and Mr. Ramaswamy said on Monday that he expected further foreign policy attacks on the debate stage Wednesday night in Milwaukee.“I personally think we should spend a lot of time on it,” he said in an interview, “instead of rehashing pre-canned lines on who is more anti-woke.”Mr. Ramaswamy on Monday framed the blowback from his critics as hostility from “a broken foreign policy establishment that is sanctimoniously steeped in the disastrous mistakes of the last four decades.”But his proposals are pushing the envelope, even for a Republican Party increasingly dominated by isolationism, and open to conspiracy theories.Among those proposals are a quid-pro-quo offer to Mr. Putin: He would promise to block Ukraine from joining NATO and freeze the battle lines in Ukraine, with Russia controlling Crimea and parts of eastern Ukraine, in exchange for a Putin break with China.Chris Christie, the former governor of New Jersey and a fellow candidate for the Republican nomination, slammed that position from Ukraine in an interview with The Washington Post this month, calling it “a false choice” and “a ridiculous statement.”Even as Mr. Ramaswamy promises to isolate China, he told the conservative broadcaster Hugh Hewitt that the United States would continue to defend Taiwan through 2028, when a Ramaswamy administration will have rebuilt the domestic semiconductor industry. After that, Mr. Ramaswamy said, the U.S. commitment to Taiwan would change.“You are saying ‘I will go to war, including attacking the Chinese mainland, if you attack before semiconductor independence. And afterward, you can have Taiwan?’” Mr. Hewitt asked incredulously.“Well, Hugh, I’m running to be the next president, and so I expect to be the president inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2025,” Mr. Ramaswamy answered. “So I’m wearing that hat when I’m choosing my words very carefully right now. And I’m being very clear: Xi Jinping should not mess with Taiwan until we have achieved semiconductor independence, until the end of my first term when I will lead us there,” he added, referring to the Chinese president.But his comments on Israel, in the hands of his rivals, could threaten his rising star, considering the centrality of Israel to many conservative voters, especially evangelical Christians. After Jewish and Israeli publications played up his comments on pulling back military aid, the conservative radio host Mark Levin responded on the social media platform X, “Not good. Awful, actually,” adding, “He threw Taiwan under the bus too.”In a lengthy response, released publicly as an open letter to the candidate, Matthew Brooks, the longtime chief executive of the Republican Jewish Coalition, said that “this is not the time for the U.S. to take an action that would be universally perceived by Israel’s enemies as a weakening of the U.S.-Israel relationship.”On Monday, Mr. Ramaswamy said he was “not surprised at the foreign policy establishment’s anaphylactic response to anyone who challenges the orthodoxy.”“Friends help friends stand on their own feet,” he said of his Israel policy.But for Republican rivals looking for a target who isn’t the front-runner, Donald J. Trump, Mr. Ramaswamy could be an inviting one. Polling averages put him in third place, and gaining on Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor who is in second. Other than Mr. Christie, Republican candidates have shied away from attacking Mr. Trump, convinced they will ultimately need the former president’s loyal followers.Foreign policy would be a safer line of attack against Mr. Ramaswamy than his domestic proposals, which align closely with Mr. Trump’s.“I’m not surprised they’re throwing the kitchen sink at me,” Mr. Ramaswamy said. “They’re threatened by my rise.” More

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      The Trump Indictments Are an Indictment of America

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      There are two ways to read the stack of indictments and impeachments the 45th president of the United States has amassed so far. They can be regarded, accurately, as America’s case against Donald Trump. Indictment is a legal action whereas impeachment is a political act, but when taken together the texts provide a singular and consistent case. They capture the progression of transgression evident in Trump’s political campaigns, his presidency and its aftermath, with each escape from accountability yielding a bolder and more reckless iteration of Trump.But the documents also reveal Trump’s case against the United States — dismissing America as a nation where politics serves as a defense against law and repudiating its people as easily and willingly misled, by ever escalating levels of deceit.Trump’s first indictment, for allegedly falsifying business records to conceal payments to women with whom he had extramarital affairs, offers an early and straightforward example of his deception. Concerned that the revelations would hurt his presidential campaign — or make him lose to Hillary Clinton by even more than expected or just antagonize Melania — he “orchestrated a scheme with others to influence the 2016 presidential election by identifying and purchasing negative information about him to suppress its publication,” per the statement of facts compiled by the district attorney of New York County. Whether or not that effort also involved violations of electoral or tax law, it succeeded in hiding “damaging information from the voting public.” In short, the indictment contends, Trump obscured the truth.Once in office, Trump’s power to deceive grew and his fear of exposure diminished. His attempted strong-arming of President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine in 2019 — dangling security assistance and a possible White House visit in exchange for “a favor” — was in keeping with his actions during the 2016 race, just more daring. He was still trying to improve his electoral prospects. But instead of using his own money to suppress negative stories, Trump was now withholding congressionally appropriated funds from Ukraine in order to generate negative stories about his potential 2020 general-election opponent, Joe Biden, and to feed the notion that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. The first article of impeachment in the Ukraine affair asserts that Trump “engaged in this scheme” — there’s that word again — “for corrupt purposes in pursuit of personal political benefit.”Another scheme, a bigger lie. This time, Trump didn’t just hide the truth; he sought to distort it. And even when “faced with the public revelation of his actions,” the articles of impeachment note, the president continued to “openly and corruptly” urge Ukraine to open investigations that would help Trump politically. Such shamelessness is possible only from a president confident that enough voters will share it.The recent indictment by the district attorney in Fulton County, Ga., covers a multitude of alleged crimes — like issuing false statements and filing false documents, forgery, conspiracy to defraud the state, solicitation of the violation of an oath by a public officer — but it comes down to a single corrupt purpose: Once Trump lost the 2020 election, the outgoing president sought to reverse or at least delegitimize the outcome.We experience Trump’s impeachments and indictments only in the order in which they came out, a sequence that does not neatly track the chronology or intensity of his misdeeds. Trump progressed from hiding reality with the hush-money payments (indictment No. 1), to remaking reality with the attempted shakedown of Ukraine (impeachment No. 1), to ignoring reality with his insistence that he had won re-election and that other officials should affirm that belief (indictment Nos. 3 and 4). The next step was obvious — to change reality by force. So came Jan. 6 (addressed in impeachment No. 2 as well as indictments Nos. 3 and 4, for those keeping score at home).Trump’s mendacity about the 2020 election was legal; as Jack Smith, the latest special counsel appointed by the Justice Department to investigate him, put it, “the Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud.” His alleged actions and conspiracies in furtherance of those lies — pushing officials to ignore the popular vote in their states, disenfranchising voters, encouraging fake slates of electors — were not, according to the indictment. And once the attempts to claim a counterfactual victory were rejected in the courts, in the states and by his own vice president, the call for violence was all that was left. “If you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore,” Trump declared on Jan. 6.That line was quoted in Trump’s second impeachment, in support of its lone article, incitement of insurrection. It was one of three utterances by the president included in the document. The other two were, “We won this election, and we won it by a landslide” (also from Jan. 6) and then a single word, “find,” from Trump’s request to the secretary of state of Georgia to manufacture more votes for him, just enough to win. Those quotes also show the Trumpian progression: The lie, the scheme to support it and the brutishness to enforce it.Trump’s indictment for retaining and concealing classified information after leaving office — and for obstructing the investigations into the matter — nicely captures the former president’s attitude toward truth and law. According to the document, when he consulted his lawyers about how to respond to a grand jury subpoena for any classified material in his possession, Trump asked, “What happens if we just don’t respond at all or don’t play ball with them?” (As if you can just ghost a federal grand jury.) He also wondered aloud, “Wouldn’t it be better if we just told them we don’t have anything here?”Isn’t it better just to lie? For Trump, the answer is almost always yes.Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who resisted Trump’s blandishments.Chip Somodevilla/Getty ImagesIn early 2018, the political activist Amy Siskind published “The List: A Week-By-Week Reckoning of Trump’s First Year.” Faithful to its title, the book numbered various misdeeds of the early Trump presidency — each norm and institution degraded, every truth or conflict of interest ignored — totaling thousands of offenses, large and small. The work was especially useful in a refresher-course sort of way; as I wrote then, “it is remarkable how much we can forget, in the shock of the moment, about the previous shock of the moment.”I thought about “The List” once again while reading and rereading the Trump indictments and impeachments. The descriptions of the former president’s alleged actions in these documents — even just a sampling of the verbs — offer their own refresher on the past seven years:Abused. Compromised. Persisted in openly and corruptly urging and soliciting. Served to cover up. Threatened the integrity. Betrayed his trust. Repeatedly and fraudulently falsified. Disguised. Endeavored to obstruct. Did knowingly combine, conspire, confederate. Pursued unlawful means. Used knowingly false claims. Publicly maligned. Refused to accept. Hid and concealed. Constituted a criminal organization. Falsely accused. And, of course, spread lies.One of the Trump era’s recurring questions (a bit quaint now) has been whether Trump lies knowingly or truly believes the untruths he professes. These documents leave little doubt that Trump was told, repeatedly, that his lies were just that, and by officials close to him. David French summarized the latest indictment against Trump in The Times this way: “The Georgia case is about lies. It’s about lying, it’s about conspiring to lie, and it’s about attempting to coax others to lie.”Much the same could be said of the other Trump indictments and of his impeachments, too. They’re all about his lies and about the country’s willingness to countenance them.There are individuals in these documents like Rusty Bowers, a former speaker of the Arizona House of Representatives, who, when Trump urged him to appoint new presidential electors from the state, responded: “I voted for you. I worked for you. I campaigned for you. I just won’t do anything illegal for you.” But there are many who believe and enable Trump’s lies, whether out of conviction, allegiance or expedience. His overwhelming lead in the early polling for the next Republican nomination and his current tie with Biden in a possible 2024 rematch exist despite — or, at times, because of — those lies.Trump’s impeachments in 2019 and 2021 did not yield convictions in his Senate trials, and now, after the indictments of 2023, new trials await. Yet even criminal convictions would not ease the political challenge that Trumpism poses. They may even exacerbate it.Senator Sam Ervin of North Carolina, in his individual statement appended to the 1974 report by the Senate committee on Watergate, warned that “law alone will not suffice to prevent future Watergates.” Ervin wrote that “the only sure antidote” is to elect leaders who understand the principles of our government and display the intellectual and moral integrity to uphold them. Their election is not in the hands of prosecutors or lawmakers, but of voters. Our choices, as Smith might put it, are also outcome-determinative.It is fitting that legal as well as political remedies have been brought to bear on Trump. His transgressions span both worlds and play out in the haze between them. Trump seems to hope that politics can save him from law. That belief is his indictment of both.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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      in Elections

      Democrats Root for a Rowdy G.O.P. Debate

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      Top Democrats, suddenly feeling a bit better about 2024, would love to see Republicans talk about a national abortion ban. They’re less excited about the inevitable Hunter Biden tirades.After a year of fretting about President Biden’s political standing and their electoral chances in 2024, Democrats are at a moment of high confidence as Republicans prepare for their first presidential debate on Wednesday.They will be watching with bated breath in hopes that the Republican candidates embrace the likely-to-be-absent Donald J. Trump, defend him over his four criminal indictments, endorse national restrictions on abortion and — in the Democrats’ dream scenario — call for cuts to Social Security and Medicare.Even without Mr. Trump onstage, Democrats see the Republican White House hopefuls as avatars for what they describe as a party in thrall to its extreme elements. Nobody is rooting for the debate to go off the rails more than Democrats praying for Mr. Biden’s re-election.“All I want these people to do is say the same stuff they’ve been saying on the campaign trail on national TV,” said Jim Messina, the campaign manager for President Barack Obama’s 2012 re-election bid. “Please continue to double down on a six-week abortion ban. That would be wonderful. Thank you for doing this.”Mr. Biden probably won’t watch the debate, a spokesman said, but odds are that his compatriots will. Here’s what Democrats are looking for from the Republicans on the debate stage in Milwaukee.Will they rally around a national abortion ban?Since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer, Democrats have used the abortion issue to turbocharge their voters — particularly in red and purple states like Kansas, Wisconsin and, this month, Ohio.Nothing would make Democrats happier than to see Republicans embrace a national ban on abortion during a nationally televised debate. When Mr. Trump held a CNN town hall event in May, the moment that had Democrats doing cartwheels afterward was not his continued denial of the 2020 election results, but when he took a victory lap for the Supreme Court’s decision.“I’d like to see a huge defense of President Trump and a full-on assault on reproductive freedom and abortion,” said Gov. Phil Murphy of New Jersey, a Democrat. “To me, that would be a gift that would keep on giving.”In reality, many of the Republican candidates have tended to be more cagey about the issue.Mr. Trump, at the CNN event, declined to call for a national abortion ban, and Gov. Ron DeSantis has also treaded carefully despite signing a six-week prohibition into law in Florida this year. But avoiding the subject may be tricky given former Vice President Mike Pence’s enthusiastic support for limiting abortion rights.How much do Republicans cozy up to Trump?Mr. Trump probably won’t be at the debate, but Democrats expect nearly all of the candidates onstage to make explicit plays for his share of the Republican base — a move Democrats hope will focus attention on their own efforts to brand the entire G.O.P. as the party of MAGA.“It doesn’t matter who ‘wins’ the debate on Wednesday, the MAGA Republican presidential candidates have all chosen a losing strategy that is extreme and out of touch with the American people,” Michael Tyler, the communications director for Mr. Biden’s campaign, wrote in memo to supporters on Friday.Mr. Biden has for months been on a mission to paint all Republicans as marching in lock step with Mr. Trump’s most loyal, hard-right supporters. On Wednesday, Democrats are hoping to see Republicans engaged in stylistic efforts to attract Trump voters.“I’m a wrestling fan,” said Jaime Harrison, the chairman of the Democratic National Committee. “I’m imagining a royal rumble on the debate stage, sort of a rehash of the debates in 2016 where they’re talking about each other’s mamas and all kinds of craziness.”But one lesson that has been abundantly clear in the Trump era of politics is that no other Republican can get away with the type of outrage and public shamelessness that Mr. Trump regularly evinces.Mr. DeSantis’s efforts to be a drama-free, more competent version of Mr. Trump have flopped so far. Vivek Ramaswamy, the biotech executive who has sought to portray himself as a millennial version of Trump, has risen in early polling but remains largely unknown.Will the Trump indictments be a focus?The biggest story about Mr. Trump is the one Mr. Biden won’t talk about — the four criminal indictments the former president is facing.The problem for the Republicans running against Mr. Trump is that many of their voters agree with his belief that the cases against him are politically motivated.Democrats on the sidelines have been left waiting, to little avail, for Mr. Trump’s G.O.P. rivals to make a case to their voters that the legal problems are politically disqualifying.“Normally candidates would be more than happy to point out if their opponent has been indicted four times!” Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota wrote in a text message. “They ARE running against him after all.”That plea is unlikely to get much airtime on Wednesday. Of the candidates onstage, only former Gov. Chris Christie of New Jersey — who is running an anti-Trump campaign that has won him new respect from Democrats — has made an explicit case that Mr. Trump’s indictments have merit and are bad for the party.What about Hunter Biden?One thing the Republican candidates are all but certain to do is equate Mr. Trump’s legal problems with those of Hunter Biden, the president’s son, who is facing his own special counsel investigation after a plea agreement on tax and gun charges fell apart last month.Democrats aren’t exactly popping popcorn for this scenario — it is an intensely painful episode for the president, and the prospect of a criminal trial isn’t appealing to them — but they are confident that any detour down a Hunter Biden rabbit hole will take emphasis away from issues that moderate and independent voters care about.“If Republicans want to make this election about attacks on the president’s family, it’s a losing strategy,” said Gov. J.B. Pritzker of Illinois, a Democrat. “It would be a mistake for them to make that an issue.”Democrats hope to dispel with the fiction that it won’t be Trump.Democrats widely view Mr. Trump as the easiest Republican candidate to defeat next year. Mr. Biden beat him once already, they reason, and Mr. Trump’s cascading legal problems and singular ability to repel moderate Republicans and swing voters make him the one they’d like to face.Mr. Trump’s dominance in polls of the Republican primary and the reluctance of most of his G.O.P. rivals to attack him have led most Democrats to conclude that Wednesday’s debate, along with much of the primary, are an academic exercise being held before next year’s Trump-Biden rematch.“I was just going to watch it for comic relief,” said Representative Jasmine Crockett, a Texas Democrat. “This is done. We are going to have Trump versus Biden 2.0. That’s what’s about to happen. Anyone who is kidding themselves into believing that they have a shot is just delusional.”And for the cast of candidates who barely qualified for the Republican stage, hoping that a standout debate performance would propel them to relevance — a TV show, a future cabinet post or maybe a campaign for some other office — a former presidential long shot had a piece of advice.“Learn how to count to 200,” said Representative Eric Swalwell of California, who, many people may have forgotten, ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. “Because that’s about the amount of seconds that you’re going to have to speak.” More