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      Swept Out of Office by Covid, a Democratic Governor Eyes a Comeback

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      Steve Sisolak, the former governor of Nevada, says he is weighing a rematch against Gov. Joe Lombardo, the Republican who ousted him in 2022.Many Democrats performed better than expected in the 2022 midterm elections, bucking historical trends to hold on to key governor’s offices and House seats and to expand their majority in the Senate.One notable exception was Gov. Steve Sisolak of Nevada, who was weighed down by a backlash to the lockdowns he had ordered during the coronavirus pandemic and by the economic downturn that followed. Even as Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, a Democrat, squeaked out a re-election victory in Nevada, Mr. Sisolak became the only Democratic governor to lose that year, giving way to Joe Lombardo, a Republican.Now, as Democrats search for a direction after their November defeat and contemplate the best ways to oppose President Trump and his allies, Mr. Sisolak is considering a rematch against Mr. Lombardo. A former Clark County sheriff, Mr. Lombardo has stood as a Republican bulwark against the Democratic-controlled Nevada Legislature. He is up for re-election next year.Mr. Lombardo occupies a somewhat rare position in today’s Republican Party. Though he speaks favorably of the president, he distanced himself last year from the state party and its focus on debunked election conspiracy theories, and he was not an especially vocal presence on the campaign trail for Mr. Trump.In two phone calls this week, Mr. Sisolak, 71, spoke about a possible comeback attempt, the state of the Democratic Party and how the economic turmoil caused by Mr. Trump’s tariffs could affect Nevadans.Here is the conversation, condensed and edited.What have you been seeing in Nevada since you’ve been out of office, and how do you think Governor Lombardo has been doing?We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Autoworkers Union Chief Gives Trump’s Tariffs a Mixed Review

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      In an address to the U.A.W., Shawn Fain said a targeted approach could help bring jobs back to the United States, but he criticized universal duties.The head of the United Automobile Workers union voiced partial support on Thursday for the Trump administration’s tariffs, saying targeted duties on other countries could help bring some manufacturing jobs back to the United States.But the union’s president, Shawn Fain, described President Trump’s across-the-board global tariffs as “reckless.” In an address to U.A.W. members that was streamed on YouTube and other social media, he also strongly criticized the administration for firing federal workers and slashing key government agencies, and accused it of violating the civil rights of students and others.“We support use of some tariffs on automotive manufacturing and similar industries. We do not support tariffs for political games about immigration or fentanyl,” Mr. Fain said. “We do not support reckless tariffs on all countries at crazy rates.”The address appeared aimed at distancing the union leader from Mr. Trump. In previous weeks, Mr. Fain praised the White House’s tariff plans and faced some criticism for moving closer to an administration that often shows hostility to organized labor. He campaigned frequently and enthusiastically last year for former Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, often rousing crowds by referring to Mr. Trump as a “scab.”“We are not aligning everything we do with the Trump administration,” Mr. Fain said on Thursday. “We are negotiating with the Trump administration.”Mr. Fain used the address to repeat familiar claims that free trade agreements — in particular, the North American Free Trade Agreement — allowed corporations to move U.S. factories and jobs to low-wage countries. He said some 90,000 factories in the United States closed in the last 30 years, hollowing out once thriving manufacturing cities like Flint, Mich., and Gary, Ind.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Challenge to Trump’s Tariffs Funded by Groups Linked to Charles Koch and Leonard Leo

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      Among those opposed to President Trump’s tariffs on imports from China: a legal group funded by some of the biggest names in conservative politics.Last week, a Florida business owner challenged the Trump administration’s moves in court, arguing that her company, Simplified, which makes notebooks and planners, was harmed by the dramatic trade war with China that has only deteriorated further since the lawsuit was filed.Her lawyers are from the New Civil Liberties Alliance, a libertarian-leaning nonprofit that counts among its financial backers Donors Trust, a group with ties to the billionaire Leonard A. Leo, who is a co-chairman of the Federalist Society.The Federalist Society is an influential legal group that advised Mr. Trump through the confirmation of justices he appointed to form the current conservative supermajority on the Supreme Court, though some in Mr. Trump’s circle came to believe that its leaders were out of step with the president’s political movement.Another donor to New Civil Liberties Alliance is Charles Koch, the billionaire industrialist and Republican megadonor.In what appeared to be the first tariff-related lawsuit against the Trump administration, the founder of Simplified, Emily Ley, argued that President Trump overstepped his authority in February when he first imposed new import taxes on Chinese goods. Since then, China has retaliated with its own tariffs, and Mr. Trump has escalated the fight with more levies. All Chinese imports face a minimum tariff rate of 145 percent as of Thursday, a dramatic increase.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Attorneys General Sue Over Access to $1 Billion in Federal School Aid

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      The Trump administration abruptly cut states’ access to Covid pandemic funding for school programs, saying they’d had enough time to spend it.Sixteen attorneys general and a Democratic governor sued the Trump administration on Thursday to restore access to over $1 billion in federal pandemic relief aid for schools that was recently halted, saying that the pullback could cause acute harm to students.The suit, led by New York’s attorney general, Letitia James, and filed in Manhattan federal court, is one of the latest efforts by states to fight President Trump’s clawback of funding allocated to programs he does not want the government to support. The funding was part of a windfall of more than $190 billion that the U.S. Department of Education distributed to schools at the height of the coronavirus pandemic.The government’s reversal “triggered chaos,” the suit says. New York was one of the states with the most unspent money: over $130 million. California had more than $205 million in unspent money, and Maryland had $245 million, the most among the states that sued.“Cutting school systems’ access to vital resources that our students and teachers rely on is outrageous and illegal,” Ms. James said in a news release.The coalition’s filing on Thursday comes nearly a month after 21 Democratic attorneys general sued the administration for firing about half of the Education Department’s staff. Linda McMahon, the education secretary, said the move would help the department deliver services more efficiently.The White House also suspended millions of dollars in teacher-training grants that it argued would promote diversity, equity and inclusion, which prompted yet another suit from New York and other states.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      House Passes G.O.P. Budget After Conservative Revolt Collapses

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      The House on Thursday narrowly adopted a Republican budget blueprint for slashing taxes and government spending, after hard-line conservatives concerned that it would balloon the nation’s debt ended a revolt that had threatened to derail President Trump’s domestic agenda.Approval of the plan, which was in doubt until nearly the very end, was a victory for Republican leaders and Mr. Trump. It allowed them to move forward with crafting major legislation to enact a huge tax cut, financed with deep reductions in spending on federal programs, and pushing it through Congress over Democratic opposition.“It is time for us to act so that we can get on with the real work,” Representative Kevin Hern, Republican of Oklahoma, said during debate on the floor. “In passing this budget framework, we are unlocking the process to deliver on unleashing American energy production, permanently securing our southern and northern borders, and making tax cuts permanent for small businesses and working families.”But approval came only after a mutiny on the House floor on Tuesday night that underscored the deep divisions Republicans still have to bridge in order to push through what Mr. Trump has called his “big, beautiful bill.” It forced Speaker Mike Johnson to delay a planned vote on the measure after he spent more than an hour Wednesday night huddled with the holdouts, trying without success to persuade them to support it.The vote on Thursday was 216 to 214, with two Republicans opposing the measure. All Democrats present voted against the plan, which they said would pave the way for cuts to Medicaid and other vital safety net programs that would harm Americans, all to pay for large tax cuts for the wealthiest.“You target earned benefits and things that are important to the American people, like Medicaid,” Representative Hakeem Jeffries of New York, the Democratic leader, said, addressing Republicans. “And what are you doing it for? What is it in service of? All to pass massive tax breaks for your billionaire donors like Elon Musk.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump’s Tariff Reversal Calms Some G.O.P. Nerves, but Questions Linger

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      President Trump’s whipsawing tariff policy has prompted bipartisan alarm on Capitol Hill, where Democrats are outraged and Republicans are caught between their deep opposition to tariffs and fear of criticizing Mr. Trump.The president’s abrupt announcement on Wednesday that he would halt most of his reciprocal tariffs for 90 days just a week after announcing them allayed the immediate concerns of some G.O.P. lawmakers, many of whom rushed to praise Mr. Trump for what they characterized as deal-making mastery.But behind those statements was a deep well of nervousness among Republican lawmakers who are hearing angst from their constituents and donors about the impact of Mr. Trump’s trade moves on the financial markets and the economy. Some of them have begun signing onto measures that would end the tariffs altogether or claw back Congress’s power to block the president from imposing such levies in the future.“I’m just trying to figure out whose throat I get to choke if it’s wrong, and who I put up on a platform and thank them for the novel approach that was successful if they’re right,” Senator Thom Tillis, Republican of North Carolina, said of the sweeping tariffs on Tuesday during a hearing with Jamieson Greer, the Trump administration’s top trade official.On Wednesday, after Mr. Trump pulled back most of the tariffs but retained a 10 percent tariff rate for most countries and announced additional penalties on China, Mr. Tillis still sounded anxious. He said the move was likely to “reduce some of the escalation,” but added that there was still considerable work to be done to prevent another market meltdown.“We’ve got to get a deal before we get rid of uncertainty,” he told reporters soon after Mr. Trump announced the change in a social media post.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Southeast Asia, With Little Leverage, Seeks to Placate Trump on Trade

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      Southeast Asian leaders, their export-driven economies in peril, are trying to placate the president. “We may have to comply,” Thailand’s finance minister said.They were hit by some of President Trump’s most punishing tariffs, in one case as high as 49 percent. The new levies threatened to cripple their economies, which have prospered by making sneakers and tech goods for American consumers.So Southeast Asian countries like Cambodia and Vietnam rushed to appease Mr. Trump. They promised not to retaliate, unlike China and Europe. And they proposed to reduce or even eliminate their own tariffs on American imports.On Thursday, the region woke up to the good news that Mr. Trump had paused his “reciprocal” tariffs. The president suggested he had reversed course because of the market turmoil they had caused. Still, Southeast Asia is sticking with its conciliatory approach.In a statement on Thursday, the economic ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, known as Asean, said the 10-country bloc was “united in the opinion that retaliation is not an option.” (The ministers were in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, for a meeting that had been previously scheduled.)Despite Mr. Trump’s 90-day pause, the anxiety here is palpable. His tariffs, the Asean statement said, are “introducing uncertainty and undermining trust in the global trade system.” Millions of livelihoods in the region are on the line. Thailand’s finance minister, Pichai Chunhavajira, acknowledged that the White House had leverage over his nation in matters of trade.“This is how you negotiate,” Mr. Pichai said in an interview. “You start with an extreme measure and then ease your demand along the way. We may have to comply.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Egg Prices Continued to Rise in March

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      Egg prices have reached record highs as bird flu outbreaks have hit poultry farms and forced producers to cull tens of millions of hens.For weeks, President Trump has repeatedly boasted that his administration had managed to bring egg prices down. But new data on Thursday showed that egg prices at the grocery store continued to climb in March.Egg prices rose 5.9 percent over the month, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. They climbed at a slower rate, though, after rising 10.4 percent in February and 15.2 percent in January.Compared with a year earlier, egg prices are up 60.4 percent.Egg prices have reached record highs in recent months as bird flu outbreaks have hit poultry farms and forced producers to cull tens of millions of hens. But Mr. Trump, who had vowed to bring down grocery prices while on the campaign trail, has continued to claim victory on egg prices. This month, Mr. Trump said that egg prices had dropped 59 percent, and on Monday, he said that egg prices were down 79 percent.Consumers might not be feeling relief because the president is not referring to retail egg prices. He is instead pointing to the wholesale price of eggs, which has fallen by roughly half since the beginning of his second term.Wholesale egg prices dropped from a national average of $6.55 a dozen on Jan. 24 to $3.26 on April 4, according to data from the Agriculture Department. Wholesale egg prices are also down from a peak of more than $8 a dozen at the end of February.But the average retail price for a dozen large eggs reached $6.23 in March, up from $5.90 the month before, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More