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      Sometimes, History Goes Backward

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      Bret Stephens: Hi, Gail. I don’t know if you remember the Lloyd Bridges character from the movie “Airplane,” the guy who keeps saying, “Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit smoking/drinking/amphetamines/sniffing glue.” We were away last week and … stuff happened. Your thoughts on what appears to be the imminent demise of Roe v. Wade?Gail Collins: Well, Bret, I have multitudinous thoughts, some of them philosophical and derived from my Catholic upbringing. Although I certainly don’t agree with it, I understand the philosophical conviction that life begins at conception.Bret: As a Jew, I believe that life begins when the kids move out of the house.Gail: But I find it totally shocking that people want to impose that conviction on the Americans who believe otherwise — while simultaneously refusing to help underprivileged young women obtain birth control.Bret: Agree.Gail: So we have a Supreme Court that’s imposing the religious beliefs of one segment of the country on everybody else. Which is deeply, deeply unconstitutional.You agree with that part, right?Bret: Not entirely.I’ve always thought it was possible to oppose Roe v. Wade on constitutional grounds, irrespective of religious beliefs, on the view that it was wiser to let voters rather than unelected judges decide the matter. But that was at the time the case was decided in 1973.Right now, I think it’s appalling to overturn Roe — after it’s been the law of the land for nearly 50 years; after it’s been repeatedly affirmed by the Supreme Court; after tens of millions of American women over multiple generations have come of age with the expectation that choice is a fundamental right; after we thought the back-alley abortion was a dark chapter of bygone years; after we had come to believe that we were long past the point where it should not make a fundamental difference in the way we exercise our rights as Americans whether we live in one state or another.Gail: If we’re going to have courts, can’t think of many things more basic for them to protect than control of your own body. But we’ve gotten to the same place, more or less. Continue.Bret: I’m also not buying the favorite argument-by-analogy of some conservatives that stare decisis doesn’t matter, because certain longstanding precedents — like the Plessy v. Ferguson decision that enshrined segregation for 58 years until it was finally overturned in Brown v. Board of Ed. in 1954 — clearly deserved to be overturned. Plessy withdrew a right that was later restored, while Roe granted a right that might now be rescinded.I guess the question now is how this will play politically. Will it energize Democrats to fight for choice at the state level or stop the Republicans in the midterms?Gail: Democrats sure needed to be energized somehow. This isn’t the way I’d have chosen, but it’s a powerful reminder of what life would be like under total Republican control.Bret: Ending the right to choose when it comes to abortion seems to be of a piece with ending the right to choose when it comes to the election.Gail: And sort of ironic that overturning Roe may be one of Donald Trump’s biggest long-term impacts on American life. I guarantee you that ending abortion rights ranks around No. 200 on his personal list of priorities.Bret: Ha!Gail: When you talk about your vision of America, it’s always struck me as a place with limited government but strong individual rights. Would you vote for a Democratic Congress that would pass a legislative version of Roe? Or a Republican Congress that blows kisses to Justice Alito?Bret: I’ll swallow my abundant objections to Democratic policy ideas if that would mean congressional legislation affirming the substance of Roe as the law of the land. Some things are just more important than others.Gail: Bret, I bow to your awesomeness.Bret: Minimum sanity isn’t awesomeness, but thanks! Then again, Democrats could really help themselves if they didn’t keep fumbling the political ball. Like on immigration. And inflation. And crime. And parental rights in kids’ schooling. And all the stupid agita about Elon Musk buying Twitter. If you were advising Democrats to shift a little toward the center on one issue, what would it be?Gail: I dispute your bottom line, which is that the Democrats’ problem is being too liberal. The Democrats’ problem is not getting things done.Bret: Not getting things done because they’re too liberal. Sorry, go on.Gail: In a perfect world I’d want them to impose a windfall profits tax on the energy companies, which are making out like bandits, and use the money to give tax rebates to lower-income families. While also helping ease inflation by suspending the gas tax. Temporarily.Bret: “Temporarily” in the sense of the next decade or so.Gail: In the real world, suspending the gas tax is probably the quickest fix to ease average family finance. Although let me say I hate, hate, hate the idea. Not gonna go into a rant about global warming right now, but reserving it for the future.What’s your recommendation?Bret: Extend Title 42 immediately to avoid a summer migration crisis at the southern border. Covid cases are rising again so there’s good epidemiological justification. Restart the Keystone XL pipeline: We should be getting more of our energy from Canada, not begging the Saudis to pump more oil. Cut taxes not just for gasoline but also urge the 13 states that have sales taxes on groceries to suspend them: It helps families struggling with exploding food bills. Push for additional infrastructure spending, including energy infrastructure, and call it the Joe Manchin Is the Man Act or whatever other flattery is required to get his vote. And try to reprise a version of President Biden’s 1994 crime bill to put more cops on the streets as a way of showing the administration supports the police and takes law-and-order issues seriously.I’m guessing you’re loving this?Gail: Wow, so much to fight about. Let me just quickly say that “more cops on the street” is a slogan rather than a plan. Our police do need more support, and there are two critical ways to help. One is to create family crisis teams to deal with domestic conflicts that could escalate into violence. The other is to get the damned guns off the street and off the internet, where they’re now being sold at a hair-raising clip.Bret: Well, cops have been stepping off the force in droves in recent years, so numbers are a problem, in large part because of morale issues. It makes a big difference if police know their mayors and D.A.s have their backs, and whether they can do their jobs effectively. That’s been absent in cities from Los Angeles to Philadelphia to Seattle. I’m all for getting guns off the streets, but progressive efforts such as easy bail, or trying to ban the use of Stop, Question and Frisk, or getting rid of the plainclothes police units, have a lot to do with the new gun-violence wave.Gail: About the Keystone pipeline — you would be referring to Oil Spill Waiting to Happen? And the answer to our energy problems can’t be pumping more oil, unless we want to deed the families of the future a toxic, mega-warming planet. Let’s spend our money on wind and solar energy.Bret: Right now Canadian energy is being shipped, often by train, and sometimes those trains derail and blow up.Gail: Totally against trains derailing. Once again, less oil in general, however it’s transported.But now, let’s talk politics. Next week is the Pennsylvania primary — very big deal. On the Republican side, Trump is fighting hard for his man, the dreaded Mehmet Oz. Any predictions?Bret: Full disclosure: Oz played a key role in a life-threatening medical emergency in my family. I know a lot of people love to hate him. But he’s always going to be good in my books, I’m not going to comment on him other than that, and our readers should know the personal reason why.However, if you want to talk about that yutz J.D. Vance winning in Ohio, I can be quite voluble.Gail: Feel free. And does that mean you’ll be rooting for the Democrat Tim Ryan to win the Ohio Senate seat in November? He’s a moderate, but still supports the general party agenda.Bret: I like Ryan, and not just because he’s not J.D. Vance. I generally like any politician capable of sometimes rebelling against his or her own party’s orthodoxies, whether that’s Kyrsten Sinema or Lisa Murkowski.As for Vance, he’s just another example of an increasingly common type: the opportunistic, self-abasing, intellectually dishonest, morally situational former NeverTrumper who saw Trump for exactly what he was until he won and then traded principles and clarity for a shot at gaining power. After Jan. 6, 2021, there was even less of an excuse to seek Trump’s favor, and still less after Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022.Democracy: You’re either for it or against it. In Kyiv or Columbus, Vance is on the wrong side.Gail: Whoa, take that, J.D.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 Nebraska, a Trump-Inspired Candidate Cracks Open Divide in the G.O.P.

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      Charles W. Herbster’s bid for governor has set off a bitter fight for power in a state once known for its genteel politics.WAHOO, Neb. — In his run for governor of Nebraska, Charles W. Herbster is doing his best imitation of former President Donald J. Trump.His 90-minute stump speech is packed with complaints about illegal immigrants, stories boasting of his business triumphs, a conspiracy theory connecting China, the coronavirus pandemic and the 2020 election, and denials of the recent accusations that he’s groped women at political events.He even vows to clean up the “swamp” — but he means Lincoln, the state capital.Like his political role model — and chief backer — Mr. Herbster is proving to be a one-man political wrecking ball. In a state long known for genteel, collaborative politics and, for the last 24 years, one-party rule, Mr. Herbster’s bid has cracked his party into three camps, with Trump supporters, establishment conservatives and business-friendly moderates battling for power. A major donor for years to conservative candidates, Mr. Herbster has been abandoned by longtime political allies and seen his running mate quit his ticket to run for governor herself. The allegations of groping are coming from fellow Republicans.Behind all the drama is a question with resonance far beyond Nebraska. Mr. Trump’s endorsement of Mr. Herbster, a major donor to Mr. Trump’s political career, isn’t just the first-time candidate’s top credential — it is his campaign’s entire rationale. Mr. Trump’s name is on Mr. Herbster’s lawn signs, ads and billboards. Mr. Herbster spent Friday stumping across western Nebraska with Steven Moore, the former Trump economic adviser who is a minor Trumpworld celebrity.Mr. Herbster is about to find out if a Trump endorsement alone is enough to win a major Republican primary.“This is a proxy war between the entire Republican establishment in America against President Donald J. Trump,” Mr. Herbster, who campaigns wearing a white cowboy hat and a black vest bearing the logo of his cattle semen business, said in an interview Thursday. “Anybody who the establishment cannot control, they are fearful of.”Mr. Herbster, a longtime Trump ally who was with members of the Trump family during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, is running against Jim Pillen, a University of Nebraska regent who is backed by the state’s powerful Ricketts family political machine, and Brett Lindstrom, a youthful state senator who has consolidated support from the party’s remaining moderates and Democrats. More than 8,000 Democrats have switched parties in recent weeks to have some influence on a governor’s contest in an overwhelmingly Republican state. Polling in the final days before Tuesday’s vote shows the race is a three-way dead heat.One of Mr. Herbster’s rivals, Jim Pillen, is backed by Nebraska’s powerful Ricketts family political machine.Walker Pickering for The New York TimesIf Ohio’s recent Senate primary is a guide, the three-way race is working in Mr. Herbster’s favor. The Trump-endorsed candidate for Senate, J.D. Vance, won in a crowded field, taking less than one-third of the vote. (There’s precedent for this in Nebraska. Eight years ago, Gov. Pete Ricketts won the nomination with just over a quarter of the vote.)But Mr. Trump’s touch is looking less golden in other states, particularly in two-way contests for governor. In Georgia, former Senator David Perdue, Mr. Trump’s choice, is lagging far behind Gov. Brian Kemp in polling, leading Mr. Trump to distance himself from that campaign. In Idaho, the former president has backed Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin’s challenge against Gov. Brad Little. Ms. McGeachin has struggled to gain traction, and Mr. Trump hasn’t mentioned her since his endorsement in November.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.Mr. Trump has thrown his full weight behind Mr. Herbster. On Sunday, he traveled to Nebraska for a rally and appeared on a conference call for Herbster supporters Thursday night, where he cast Mr. Herbster’s rivals as “Republicans in name only.”“Charles was a die-hard MAGA champion,” Mr. Trump said on the call. “When you vote for Charles in the primary, you can give a stinging rebuke to the RINOs and sellouts and the losers who are so poorly representing your state.”Like Mr. Trump in the 2016 Republican presidential primary, Mr. Herbster is facing accusations that he has mistreated women and tried to use that fact to gain support. . Two women, including a state senator, publicly accused him of groping them at a political event in 2019. Mr. Herbster has denied the claims and broadcast a TV ad slamming his accuser.“Any allegation that was sent my way is 100 percent totally false,” he said in an interview.He has repeatedly blamed the accusations on Mr. Ricketts, a conservative two-term incumbent who cannot run again because of term limits. The Ricketts family has feuded with Mr. Trump. It spent millions on a last-ditch effort to block Mr. Trump from winning the Republican presidential nomination in 2016; Trump then said the family better “be careful.”Mr. Ricketts, who tried talking Mr. Trump out of endorsing Mr. Herbster last year, is blunt about his opposition to Mr. Herbster’s bid. He considers the groping allegations disqualifying. Should Mr. Herbster win the Republican nomination, Mr. Ricketts will not endorse him unless he “apologizes to the women he’s done this to,” he said in an interview.Mr. Trump has thrown his full weight behind Mr. Herbster, traveling to Nebraska for a rally on Sunday. He has called the candidate’s rivals “Republicans in name only.”Terry Ratzlaff for The New York TimesMr. Herbster was facing criticism well before the allegations. Some Republicans bristled at his focus on the sort of divisive cultural issues that don’t typically dominate the political conservation in the state. He campaigns on eliminating sex education in Nebraska’s public schools, cracking down on illegal immigration and curbing China’s influence.In July, his running mate, the former state senator Theresa Thibodeau, quit the ticket and later jumped into the race herself. She said Mr. Herbster had little interest in anything other than trying to emulate Mr. Trump.“If you want to lead the state, you should get your knowledge up on policies that affect our state,” she said on Thursday. “He had no initiative or willingness to do that.”But Mr. Herbster’s message resonated with Trump conservatives, and soon one of his rivals followed suit. Mr. Pillen, a 66-year-old former defensive back for the University of Nebraska’s football team with a grandfatherly demeanor, promised to ban critical race theory at the University of Nebraska and bar transgender women from participating in women’s sports or using women’s bathrooms.“Both the Pillen and the Herbster campaigns have focused on national issues of which they have little control over and they should have been more focused on state issues,” said former Gov. Dave Heineman, a Republican who was on Mr. Herbster’s payroll after leaving office. He hasn’t yet made an endorsement.Mr. Pillen downplayed Mr. Trump’s influence in the race.“Nebraskans, we like to figure things out and solve our own problems and think for ourselves,” he said.Mr. Lindstrom, a 41-year-old state senator who also played football for Nebraska, is running a campaign transported from the pre-Trump era. He highlights cooperation with Democrats in Nebraska’s unicameral legislature and, while he said he had no regrets about voting twice for Mr. Trump, said he’d prefer “a new face” in 2024.“The style and brand that’s going on in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Brett Lindstrom said of the Trump era.Walker Pickering for The New York TimesWhile Nebraska’s Republican primaries are typically decided by conservative rural voters who are deeply loyal to Mr. Trump, Mr. Lindstrom, a wonky financial adviser, is betting his campaign on appealing to urban professionals around Omaha — where Mr. Trump lost one of the state’s Electoral College votes to President Biden.“The style and brand that’s going on in the Republican Party right now has created a lot of wedges,” Mr. Lindstrom said. “That isn’t really healthy.”At a Wednesday fund-raiser for Mr. Lindstrom at an upscale Italian restaurant in Omaha, about half of the two dozen people interviewed said they voted for Mr. Biden in 2020. A handful had switched parties to vote for Mr. Lindstrom in the primary.Allen Frederickson, the chief executive of a health care company who became a Republican to vote for Mr. Lindstrom, said electing Mr. Herbster would make it hard to recruit workers to Nebraska’s booming economy, which has the nation’s lowest unemployment rate.“Trumpism would impact our internal and external image as a state,” he said. “We need Nebraska to be an appealing state from a business perspective.”Mr. Herbster makes little effort to appeal outside of the Trump constituency. He begins his speeches, whether to Trump-hatted supporters in Wahoo or bankers in the Omaha suburbs, by offering “greetings from the 45th president of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump.”Like Mr. Trump, Mr. Herbster casts doubt on the legitimacy of American elections. In Wahoo, he posited an outlandish theory about the former president’s loss.“This is the truth,” he told supporters. “The pandemic came from China. It was timed perfectly to make sure that they could rig the elections so Mark Zuckerberg could put $400 million into the toll the last four months of the election. Because whether you like it or not, they didn’t want Donald J. Trump to be president for two terms, that’s exactly what happened.”Mr. Herbster has little use for or interest in the traditions of Nebraska politics. He called for ending the state’s system of nonpartisan elections, eliminating the state board of education and said that, on his first day in office, he’d demand the tourism bureau change its quirky slogan: “Nebraska. Honestly, it’s not for everyone.”The question Nebraska’s Republican primary voters will settle on Tuesday is whether any of that matters — or matters more than Mr. Trump’s stamp of approval.“It’s everything,” said former Representative Lee Terry of Omaha, a Herbster supporter. “There’s a lot of Trump people in Nebraska.” More

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      Dr. Oz, Rallying With Trump in Pennsylvania, Meets a Damp Reception

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      The Republican Senate candidates J.D. Vance and Dr. Mehmet Oz rallied on Friday night in Pennsylvania with former President Donald J. Trump, seeking to replicate the endorsement boost that lifted Mr. Vance to a primary victory in Ohio — but enthusiasm for the celebrity doctor was middling at a wet and muddy rally.Three days after helping Mr. Vance capture the G.O.P. nomination in another Northern industrial state, Mr. Trump descended on western Pennsylvania to campaign in a rainstorm for a slate of MAGA candidates led by Dr. Oz, one of the front-runners in a race that could determine control of the Senate.Even with Mr. Trump’s endorsement, the reception for Dr. Oz was mixed, and boos had erupted earlier in the rally when the doctor’s name was mentioned. The Senate candidate sought to burnish his Trump bona fides ahead of the May 17 primary, and the former president vouched for him.“His show is great,” Mr. Trump said in his hourlong speech at the rally in Greensburg, southeast of Pittsburgh. “He’s on that screen. He’s in the bedrooms of all those women telling them good and bad.”Mr. Trump’s visit to Pennsylvania, a state where his re-election ambitions crumbled in 2020, came days after a leaked draft ruling from the Supreme Court signaled that it could strike down the landmark Roe v. Wade case.How Donald J. Trump Still LoomsGrip on G.O.P.: Mr. Trump remains the most powerful figure in the Republican Party. However, there are signs his control is loosening.A Modern-Day Party Boss: Hoarding cash, doling out favors and seeking to crush rivals, Mr. Trump is behaving like the head of a 19th-century political machine.Power Struggle: Led by Senator Mitch McConnell, a band of anti-Trump Republicans is maneuvering to thwart the ex-president.Post-Presidency Profits: Mr. Trump is melding business with politics, capitalizing for personal gain.Just the Beginning: For many Trump supporters who marched on Jan. 6, the day was not a disgraced insurrection but the start of a movement.But Mr. Trump never referred to abortion, exemplifying how many Republican leaders have been quiet on the issue for fear of repercussions in the midterm elections. Dr. Oz mentioned the issue briefly, saying: “Life starts at conception. I’m a heart surgeon. I value it.”In his speech, Mr. Trump aired a fresh round of grievances about the 2020 election and taunts for his political enemies, directing several at Dr. Oz’s chief rival in the Senate race, the former hedge fund executive David McCormick. “He’s not MAGA,” Mr. Trump said, referring to Mr. McCormick as a liberal Wall Street Republican.The former president’s other targets included the actor Alec Baldwin; Mitch McConnell, the Senate Republican leader; and President Biden. Mr. Trump played a video of Mr. Biden’s verbal miscues on several large screens.Dr. Oz, 61, presented himself as an early accepter of medical therapies promoted by Mr. Trump for the treatment of Covid-19, several of which were discredited by medical authorities as lacking efficacy and fraught with potential risk.“When President Trump would talk about these treatments, the press hated it,” Dr. Oz said. “And because they hated him so much, they were rooting against America in order to hurt him.”Mr. Trump said that Dr. Oz, like Mr. Vance in Ohio, had been the victim of an onslaught of expensive television attack ads by his opponents.J.D. Vance, who won his Republican Senate primary race this week in Ohio, also spoke at the rally in Pennsylvania.Kristian Thacker for The New York TimesMr. Vance, 37, a Trump convert who catapulted to a lead in the polls in Ohio — and to the G.O.P. nomination — after the former president endorsed him last month, accused those whom he characterized as establishment Republicans of being feeble in their opposition to the Democrats’ agenda.“There is a war for the soul of the Republican Party,” said Mr. Vance, whose reception at the rally appeared to be more energetic than that for Dr. Oz.Along with Mr. Vance, Mr. Trump praised J.R. Majewski, the surprise winner of a Republican House primary election on Tuesday in northern Ohio.Mr. Majewski has drawn attention for traveling to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, though he told a right-wing radio host in January that he did not participate in the violence. He has also expressed sympathy for believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement and floated doubts that the Capitol riot was driven by Trump supporters.The skepticism of the Trump faithful toward Dr. Oz was palpable at the Pennsylvania rally. When Guy Reschenthaler, the Republican congressman who represents Greensburg, announced his own endorsement of Dr. Oz, a large segment of the crowd booed. When an ad for Dr. Oz that attacked Mr. McCormick was played earlier in the event, there were more boos.Out of 20 rally attendees asked for their opinions on Dr. Oz, two said they supported him. The rest were nearly evenly divided between disliking him and saying they knew little about his candidacy.“I don’t know that I can trust him,” said Robin McDougal, an occupational therapist from Moon Township, Pa. “I like that Trump is endorsing him because I trust Trump — but I’ll tell you the truth, it took me eight years to come to like Trump,” said Ms. McDougal, who said she voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016.But Ms. McDougal allowed that she had perhaps been swayed by the negative ads that have blanketed the state throughout the primary. “I hear the stuff in the attack ads — is none of it true? Is some of it true?”Teri Flati, Ms. McDougal’s sister, was a bigger fan. She said she supported Dr. Oz “because of his position on Covid, and because he’s pro-life.” It did not bother her that he had only recently adopted a firm anti-abortion stance. More

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      Inflation concerns are at the center of an Ohio Senate contest.

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      Inflation and high gas, food and energy prices were among the top issues animating voters in this week’s primary contests in Ohio, where an intense general election battle for a Senate seat is now unfolding between Representative Tim Ryan and J.D. Vance, the author and investor. The race is expected to largely center on winning over establishment Republicans and working-class voters.Mr. Ryan, a Democrat, and Mr. Vance, a Republican, have both pledged to bring back jobs, rebuild Ohio’s manufacturing industry and withstand competition from China. But Mr. Vance’s stump speeches and ads have also included heavy appeals to social conservatives, with hard-right attacks on immigrants and transgender people, as well as digs at President Biden, whose low approval ratings are expected to hurt Democrats.“I’m sick of the president, Joe Biden, who will buy oil and gas from every single person in the world except for a middle-class southeastern Ohioan who’s trying to earn a living to support his family,” Mr. Vance said, to cheers, at an April rally with former President Donald J. Trump outside Columbus.Polls show that Americans, and Republicans in particular, are more concerned about inflation than at any other time since the 1980s. In Ohio, that worry was echoed at candidate events and forums, where voters often pointed to gas prices that had risen above $4 a gallon, despite other economic markers that have improved. The unemployment rate in the state was a low 4.1 percent in March, and Help Wanted signs have become commonplace outside storefronts, restaurants and gas stations across the state.At an election night event for former State Treasurer Josh Mandel, who came in a close second to Mr. Vance in the Republican primary, Matthew Kearney, 32, a partner at a law firm, said he supported Mr. Mandel because of his stances opposing abortion and “critical race theory,” the catchall conservative term for public school curriculums that focus on the functions of race and racism in American society.He also pointed to his pocketbook.“Inflation at the grocery store, gas prices,” Mr. Kearney said. “I think people are motivated to vote based on how that is impacting them.” More

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      In Ohio Senate Race, Democrats Pin Their Hopes on the Suburbs

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      J.D. Vance, the Republican nominee, enters the general election as the favorite. For Representative Tim Ryan, the Democrat, Ohio’s sprawling metro areas offer a possible path to victory.LORAIN, Ohio — J.D. Vance’s convincing victory Tuesday in the Republican Senate primary in this red-tinged state may have put an exclamation point on the power of former President Donald J. Trump’s imprimatur among conservative activist voters.But Mr. Vance, the shape-shifting author and venture capitalist — once a Never-Trump antagonist, then an acolyte of the former president — has one possible battlefield left for the general election: the suburbs.That is where Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat hoping to appeal to establishment Republicans and working-class voters, will have to drive up the vote to overcome conservative shifts in more rural parts of the state. The suburbs are also the places here and across the country where demographics are the most racially and ethnically diverse — and where Republicans are slightly more split, centrists often feel without a party, and many voters are only now awakening to the 2022 midterm cycle.In Lorain, a working-class, industrial city west of Cleveland, some of that budding interest was elicited by Mr. Trump’s sway in this week’s primary elections, and by news of a draft Supreme Court opinion that would overturn a woman’s right to abortion. At her desk at Dye’s Appliances, Tara Ortiz, 43, a co-owner and manager, shuddered over the thought that her daughters were on the verge of losing control over their bodies that she had long taken for granted.Tara Ortiz, who manages an appliance shop in Lorain, Ohio, has not yet chosen a Senate candidate.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesThe abortion news made the November election more intriguing, said Ms. Ortiz, who added that she was planning to vote when the time comes but had not yet chosen a Senate candidate. Her husband is a major Trump supporter, she added, but she leans Democrat.“I’m for whatever is going to make a better life for my children, and my Tom,” she said, referring to her husband.Understand the Ohio and Indiana Primary ElectionsTrump’s Grip: J.D. Vance’s win in Ohio’s G.O.P. Senate primary was a strong affirmation of the former president’s continued dominance of the Republican Party.How Vance Won: The author of “Hillbilly Elegy” got a big endorsement from Donald J. Trump, but a cable news megaphone and a huge infusion of spending helped pave his way to victory.Ohio Takeaways: It was a good night for Mr. Trump, and not just because of Mr. Vance. Here’s why.Winners and Losers: A progressive challenger was defeated (again) in Ohio, and a Trump-endorsed Pence (not that one) won in Indiana. These were some of the key results.A 20-minute drive east toward Cleveland, where wood-paneled homes give way to mansions alongside Lake Erie, Bay Village is among the suburbs and historically Republican communities across Ohio that have seen something of a liberal shift. Heading into a pharmacy with his 9-year-old son, Michael Edelman, 43, said Mr. Vance’s groundswell of support across the state was “a little terrifying.” But he said he believed Mr. Ryan could still have a path to victory if enough people show up at the ballot box in Ohio’s eight large urban centers.Michael Edelman of Bay Village, Ohio, voted for Tim Ryan in the primary.Brian Kaiser for The New York Times“If rural counties carry the state, he doesn’t stand a chance,” said Mr. Edelman, the director of education at Ideastream Public Media, which runs several local public television and radio stations.To be sure, Mr. Vance enters the general election season heavily favored against Mr. Ryan. Mr. Trump carried Ohio twice in far less favorable political climates, and with inflation surging and gas prices over $4 a gallon, the Buckeye State is not sheltered from the political winds.In Ohio’s old battlegrounds, where union families voted Democratic for generations, and Appalachian voters tended to shift their allegiances and parties, the Trump era appears to have locked down Republican support. Blue-collar counties that hug the Pennsylvania border to the east and Appalachian regions along the West Virginia and Kentucky state lines — which starred in Mr. Vance’s best-selling memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy” — were walls of support for him.“Trump changed the game here,” said Tom McCabe, chairman of the Republican Party in Mahoning County, where a decade ago Republicans were scarce and now they dominate.Representative Tim Ryan, a Democrat, needs to appeal to suburban voters.Jay Laprete/Associated PressRepublican Senate candidate J.D. Vance in Cincinnati after winning the nomination.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesFour years ago, Mr. Vance, working as a venture capitalist, was all smiles as he hitched a ride on a three-day bus trip, scouting investment opportunities in Youngstown and Akron, Ohio; Detroit and Flint, Mich.; and South Bend, Ind. — a tour that was organized by none other than Mr. Ryan. Mr. Ryan, at the time, was the popular congressman from Mahoning and Trumbull Counties, eager to show off progress, like the electric vehicle batteries being built in what he called Voltage Valley.That same year, 2018, Senator Sherrod Brown, a Democrat running for re-election, beat his Republican challenger, Jim Renacci, by 21 percentage points in Mahoning County.But in a very short span, the tables have turned. As president, Mr. Trump effectively stole what differentiated Ohio Democrats like Mr. Ryan from their national party — protectionism and heated anti-China rhetoric — while winning over social conservatives, especially conservative Catholics, with his opposition to abortion rights and attacks on immigrants and transgender people.Mr. Trump slipped by Joseph R. Biden Jr. in Mahoning County 50 percent to 48 percent in 2020, and Mr. Vance slid into Mr. Trump’s wake with scalding attacks on the free-trade policies of both parties as well as with anti-China rhetoric every bit as heated as Mr. Ryan’s. Mr. Vance’s biography — the son of a drug-addicted mother, he was raised by his grandmother in hardscrabble Ohio, joined the military and went on to college and Yale Law School — is every bit as compelling as Mr. Ryan’s tales of high school football stardom and a union mother who raised him on her own.“J.D. Vance is the worst possible candidate for the Democrats to go up against,” said Paul Sracic, a political scientist at Youngstown State University who specializes in the voting patterns of blue-collar Ohioans. “Democrats like Ryan because they think he can talk to these working-class voters and get them back. They’re not coming back.”A sign supporting former President Donald J. Trump still stands in Harveysburg, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesNot everyone likes Mr. Vance in the Mahoning Valley.“He says whatever he has to say to get done whatever he wants to do,” said Hank Zimmerman, 73, a retired union carpenter sipping a $1.25 glass of Genesee beer at the bar of the 90-year-old Golden Dawn on the weathered outskirts of Youngstown. “That’s J.D. Vance.”Understand the 2022 Midterm ElectionsCard 1 of 6Why are these midterms so important? More

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      Tucker Carlson’s Influence on America and Its Media

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      More from our inbox:J.D. Vance’s Victory, With an Assist From TrumpU.S. Help in Targeting Russian Generals in UkraineIf Madison Were Omar … To the Editor:Re “How Tucker Carlson Stoked White Fear to Conquer Cable News” and “Tucker Carlson Reshaped Fox News, and Became Trump’s Heir” (“American Nationalist” series, front page, May 1 and 2):Congratulations to The New York Times for an exceptional piece of journalism exposing Tucker Carlson for what he is — an insidious infection coursing through the veins of America.It’s been said that the demise of America will come not from without but from within. We have survived Father Coughlin, Joseph McCarthy and others like them.Fortunately there are more people in America like Mister Rogers than Tucker Carlson.Aaron R. EshmanSanta Monica, Calif.To the Editor:Has The Times learned nothing at all from the election of the former guy? The amount of free publicity given to him by The Times as well as other mainstream media helped propel him to the presidency. Now you are giving free publicity to a Fox News host.Have you never heard the saying “There’s no such thing as bad publicity”? I haven’t read a word of any of your articles about Tucker Carlson because I won’t spend a moment of my life to learn more about this awful person. Stop offering him what he wants more than anything: attention.Deborah WeeksNorristown, Pa.To the Editor:Is Tucker Carlson the problem, or is it the number of insecure Americans willing to accept and act upon his divisive, hate-filled and false commentaries?Glenn P. EisenHastings-on-Hudson, N.Y.To the Editor:I tuned in when “Tucker Carlson Tonight” premiered on Fox, in November 2016. And I have watched him ever since. This man is a breath of fresh air. He just says out loud what millions and millions of people are feeling. “Tucker Carlson Tonight” is my one hour of sanity.He is not going away. He will only get stronger.Mary D. BrownKirkland, Wash.To the Editor:Tucker Carlson: laughing all the way to the bank. His audience: cheering like never before. Fox: loving it. Republicans in Congress: Tucker for president. Vladimir Putin to his P.R. goons: Write down everything Tucker says.Earth to The New York Times and my fellow blue state people: Stop whining. We know he’s an evil genius, a master of propaganda, a liar and a con man. There’s a word for that. It’s called politics.The issue is not how awful this guy is. It’s what the Democrats are going to do to respond in kind with their own evil geniuses.Marc BloomPrinceton, N.J.To the Editor:Tucker Carlson is smart, he’s funny and he speaks in compound sentences. That’s why he has more than three million viewers. You just gave him another million.Antonia TamplinBronxTo the Editor:On Sunday I was surprised to see a front-page story on Tucker Carlson. I was stunned that it continued inside for several pages, with an additional exhaustive feature on his show’s content. Surprisingly, I read it all. I almost never watch Fox News, so I attributed my attention to the know-thine-enemy factor.I just opened Monday’s Times. There he is again. Yikes! Tuckered out, I’m flipping straight to Sports.Sandy TreadwellOjai, Calif.J.D. Vance’s Victory, With an Assist From TrumpJ.D. Vance on stage in Cincinnati after winning the Ohio Republican Senate primary.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “With Trump’s Nod, Vance Rallies to Win Senate Primary in Ohio” (front page, May 4):Donald Trump and his minions have turned our political system into a twisted version of “The Apprentice,” where the path to elected office begins with a trip to Mar-a-Lago to kiss Mr. Trump’s ring.In Ohio, J.D. Vance is the latest beneficiary of this deranged process, despite his previous “Never Trump” position. We know that many Republicans privately view Mr. Trump with contempt and understand the danger of his norm-busting antics, yet they continue to sacrifice their values to worship at the altar of Trump. Republicans appear willing to do and say anything to grab and hold onto power, no matter the costs to the country.Who could have imagined some Republicans praising Russia’s aggression, or railing against free trade, a generation ago? We are well on our way to minority rule in this country, and Democrats still play by rules that don’t seem to apply to Republicans any longer. It’s time to get rid of the filibuster so Democrats can make the most of what little power they have left.Dorothy SuppSycamore Township, OhioU.S. Help in Targeting Russian Generals in UkrainePresident Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and Gen. Valery Gerasimov, Russia’s highest-ranking uniformed officer. Ukrainians struck a location where General Gerasimov had visited, acting on their intelligence.Sergei Guneyev/Sputnik, via Agence France-PresseTo the Editor:Re “U.S. Helped Kyiv in Targeting Russian Generals” (front page, May 5):I can’t help but think that the newsworthiness of this information pales in comparison to the potential harm that its disclosure will cause.The U.S. is trying very hard to avoid direct involvement in the Russia-Ukraine war and the repercussions that Vladimir Putin would insist on enacting against it. Helping cause the deaths of Russian generals could certainly be perceived as having crossed that line.Does The New York Times take that into consideration when releasing such information?Neil RauchBaltimoreIf Madison Were Omar …Madison Cawthorn was previously fined for trying to bring a gun through airport security in February 2021.Cooper Neill for The New York TimesTo the Editor:Re “Police Accuse Lawmaker of Trying to Fly With Gun” (news article, April 27), about Representative Madison Cawthorn trying to bring a gun through airport security:Instead of this ultraright white man, imagine this story being about another professional American man, this one with swarthy skin and named Omar, who was twice caught trying to bring a loaded gun onto a commercial flight. Wouldn’t that guy be put on the no-fly list?Faith FrankelBoonton, N.J. More

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      How J.D. Vance Won in Ohio: A Trump Endorsement, a Fox News Stage and Money

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      A big endorsement was decisive, but a cable news megaphone and a huge infusion of spending helped pave the way to victory.CINCINNATI — It was only hours after J.D. Vance had announced his Senate campaign with an us-against-them speech last July that he stepped off the stage and sat down to make his case on one of the Republican Party’s biggest and most valuable platforms: “Tucker Carlson Tonight” on Fox News.Speaking from his hometown in Ohio, one that his memoir, “Hillbilly Elegy,” put on the map as a symbol of left-behind Middle America, Mr. Vance lamented the “elites and the ruling class” and how they “have plundered this country.”Mr. Carlson lapped it up — “I love that,” he beamed — and all but endorsed Mr. Vance’s campaign on the spot. “I probably shouldn’t say this,” Mr. Carlson said. “I’m really glad you’re doing it.”J.D. Vance on “Tucker Carlson Tonight” last July when he announced his run for Senate.Fox NewsThe victory of Mr. Vance, 37, in the Ohio Senate Republican primary on Tuesday was unquestionably fueled by the April 15 endorsement of former President Donald J. Trump, which catapulted Mr. Vance toward victory. But other factors had set the stage for the former president to play such a decisive role.Mr. Vance had received both behind-the-scenes and very public help: from Donald Trump Jr., the former president’s eldest son; from the not-so-quiet support of Mr. Carlson; and from the extraordinary and early investment of Peter Thiel, a Silicon Valley venture capitalist who is also Mr. Vance’s former boss.In the end, that group — Mr. Thiel, Mr. Carlson, and the two Trumps — formed a powerful alliance. Mr. Thiel’s $15 million appears to be the most ever spent by an individual megadonor to elect a single Senate candidate. Mr. Carlson’s program is the most watched on cable television and a trendsetter for conservative media. And the former president is the most popular politician in the Republican Party.Together, they helped deliver for Mr. Vance everything he would need for his Trump-toned, anti-corporate, nationalist message to succeed: funding, media attention and a late surge of momentum.Mr. Trump’s blessing was uniquely powerful in Ohio, where it effectively absolved Mr. Vance of his previous harsh denunciations of Mr. Trump — the focus of almost all the attacks on his campaign. Every race is different, and even Mr. Trump’s influence has limits: Mr. Vance won just over 32 percent of the vote, meaning most primary voters did not side with the former president’s pick.Still, given Ohio’s Republican leanings, Mr. Vance now enters the fall campaign as a favorite to enter the United States Senate largely owing his seat to the former president’s intervention.Supporters of J.D. Vance at a rally hosted by former President Donald J. Trump last month in Delaware, Ohio.Maddie McGarvey for The New York TimesMr. Vance’s emergence as a Make America Great Again standard-bearer in 2022 would have seemed unthinkable six years ago, when he was a self-styled “Never Trump” Republican and a fixture of the mainstream news media as a translator for liberals curious about the bombastic New Yorker’s cultural appeal. In early 2021, Mr. Vance sought to make amends. And it was Mr. Thiel who brokered and attended a meeting at Mar-a-Lago at which Mr. Vance began his rehabilitation and reinvention. Additional help came from the right-wing activist Charlie Kirk, a Trump favorite, who connected Mr. Vance with Andy Surabian, an adviser to Donald Trump Jr.An Inside Look at Fox NewsThe conservative cable news network is one of the most influential media outlets in the United States.Tucker Carlson: The star TV host stoked white fear to conquer cable news. In the process, he transformed Fox News and became Donald J. Trump’s heir.Empire of Influence: ​​A Times investigation looked at how the Murdochs, the family behind a global media empire that includes Fox News, have destabilized democracy on three continents.What Trump Helped Build: Together, the channel and Donald Trump have redefined the limits of acceptable political discourse.How Russia Uses Fox News: The network has appeared in Russian media as a way to bolster the Kremlin’s narrative about the Ukraine war.Leaving Fox News: After 18 years with the network, the anchor Chris Wallace, who left for the now shuttered streaming service CNN+, said working at Fox News had become “unsustainable.”While rival Ohio Senate contenders pressured, and sometimes pestered, the former president for his support, Mr. Vance’s lobbying effort was more restrained. When four other candidates traveled to Mar-a-Lago for a fund-raiser for a House candidate and were corralled into an impromptu pitch session with Mr. Trump, Mr. Vance was not there. Two people close to him said he had stayed away deliberately, to avoid being seen as just one of a cluster of aspirants.The contrast, at that point, could have been unkind: The early G.O.P. front-runner was Josh Mandel, a former state treasurer and two-time Senate candidate. Two businessmen were also in the race — Bernie Moreno, a car dealer, and Mike Gibbons, a financial executive — as was Jane Timken, a former state Republican chairwoman.All of them, along with Matt Dolan, a wealthy state senator, could draw on millions of dollars of their own or from old campaign accounts. In contrast, Mr. Vance was a first-time candidate with no real national donor network, and was not rich enough to finance his own campaign.His super PAC, which received $10 million from Mr. Thiel months before he even entered the race, would be crucial.But there was a legal complication: Outside groups may not privately coordinate strategy with campaigns. So the super PAC found a workaround, publishing troves of internal data on an unpublicized Medium page where campaign officials knew to find it. The existence of the site was first revealed by Politico.The degree to which the super PAC worked as something of an adjunct to the campaign itself is remarkable. According to documents it posted, the outside group “recruited, vetted and hired staff who later joined” the campaign, sent text messages and robocalls to build crowds for Vance events and even paid for online advertising that directed donations to the Vance campaign.Yet for all his cash, Mr. Thiel absented himself from the super PAC’s operations, never once speaking to Luke Thompson, who ran it, so Mr. Thiel could legally continue to speak with Mr. Vance as an adviser, according to Mr. Thompson.Peter Thiel at a Bitcoin conference in Miami last month.Chandan Khanna/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMr. Thompson called Mr. Thiel’s approach “a venture capital mind-set,” likening the campaign to a start-up. “J.D. is the founder and picks his team,” he said.Even with the early Thiel money, Mr. Vance relied on conservative media for attention, appearing on the programs of Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka.Appearances on Mr. Carlson’s Fox News program were most valuable of all.He has appeared on the program 15 times since July, according to Media Matters for America, often drawing heavy praise from the host. “Occasionally, you run into somebody who could actually change things,” Mr. Carlson said during an interview on the eve of the election. “That would be J.D. Vance.”“Tucker was really, really important,” Mr. Thompson said. “It meant that our guy had a platform to go and talk to primary voters in Ohio — and small-dollar donors nationwide.”Then came the attacks.For weeks last fall, the anti-tax Club for Growth, which supported Mr. Mandel, pummeled Mr. Vance for his past denunciations of Mr. Trump. Mr. Vance’s own super PAC found that Ohioans knew little about him besides that he had once opposed Trump. By December, David McIntosh, the Club for Growth’s president, had repeatedly urged Mr. Trump to back Mr. Mandel, warning him that Mr. Vance’s candidacy was doomed.Josh Mandel conceding the primary race to J.D. Vance on Tuesday night in Beachwood, Ohio.Brian Kaiser for The New York TimesMr. McIntosh evidently was persuasive: Speaking with advisers, Mr. Trump mulled whether to get behind Mr. Mandel, saying that Mr. Vance was “dead, isn’t he?”“I like J.D. a lot, but everyone just tells me those ads killed him,” Mr. Trump told one adviser.In hindsight, however, Nick Everhart, a Republican strategist based in Ohio, said that “being shoved out of the first tier of the race” might have been “the best thing that happened to Vance,” because the attacks on him largely stopped.Records from AdImpact, the ad-tracking firm, show that ads attacking Mr. Vance slowed to a trickle in December and then stopped entirely in February.When ads supporting Mr. Vance began to run, he gained traction, though he still trailed. By April 4, his super PAC posted a memo saying Mr. Vance was no longer “primarily associated” with his prior criticisms of Mr. Trump.“J.D. showed a lot of resilience in this race — and when the political class in the Beltway wrote him off as dead in the water earlier this year, he clawed his way back into contention to get President Trump’s endorsement and ultimately win through his sheer determination and natural political talent,” said Mr. Surabian, who, along with Jai Chabria, ran Mr. Vance’s campaign. Indeed, Mr. Trump was swayed in part by how Mr. Vance handled himself on television. In one debate, when Mr. Mandel and Mr. Gibbons went toe to toe, Mr. Vance scolded them, rising above the fray — and impressing Mr. Trump.Mr. Trump was on a golf course, editing his statement endorsing Mr. Vance, when NBC News reported he was about to issue it. Some of Mr. Trump’s advisers, working with Mr. Vance’s opponents, were lobbying the former president not to, but the report only solidified his decision.Mr. Vance also benefited from a more accurate picture of the electorate.Mr. McIntosh, of the Club for Growth, repeatedly argued to Mr. Trump that the former president’s pollster, Anthony Fabrizio, who was also working for Mr. Vance, had modeled the Ohio primary electorate inaccurately.The Club for Growth’s polling last weekend showed Mr. Vance receiving 26 percent of the vote. Mr. Fabrizio’s polling had Mr. Vance at 32 percent.Mr. Vance finished with 32.2 percent.Jeff Roe, a Republican strategist who worked with the Club for Growth in Ohio, called Mr. Trump before the polls closed on Tuesday to concede. He told Mr. Trump that the former president was “100 percent responsible” for Mr. Vance’s win, according to a person briefed on the conversation.In his victory speech Tuesday night, Mr. Vance thanked, among others, Donald Trump Jr., Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson and, of course, the former president.Shane Goldmacher reported from Cincinnati, and Maggie Haberman from New York. More

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      Four Opinion Writers on Roe, J.D. Vance and Trump

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      During a seismic week in American politics, one clear winner has emerged: former President Donald Trump. The three Supreme Court justices he nominated appear poised to deliver a long-sought victory to the right by overturning Roe v. Wade, after a draft of the anticipated Dobbs decision was leaked Monday evening. The next day, the “Hillbilly Elegy” author J.D. Vance won his race in the Republican Senate primary in Ohio after Mr. Trump’s endorsement resuscitated his sluggish campaign. What do the events of this week mean for both parties as they look ahead to the midterm elections? The Times Opinion writers Jane Coaston, Michelle Cottle and Ross Douthat discuss what this moment means for the U.S. political landscape with the Times Opinion podcast host Lulu Garcia-Navarro.Four Opinion Writers Ask After Vance Win and Roe Leak: ‘Is This Trump’s World Now?’The following conversation has been edited for clarity.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Before we get to the Ohio race, I think we really need to understand this leaked opinion and how it sets the stage for red states and red races.I think what’s been stunning to me is how surprised everyone is that this Supreme Court — with five conservative members who seem to have been expressly picked to deliver the end of Roe — seems ready to effectively end abortion access for millions of women.Obviously the leaked opinion by Justice Samuel Alito, published by Politico, is not a final draft. No official court ruling has come out. But it seems to me that far from ending the debate over abortion, this might supercharge it. What do you think? Do you think it’s going to be the galvanizing issue liberals hope it will be?Ross Douthat: First, I just want to stress that this is a leak of a draft opinion. Including on abortion, Supreme Court decisions have changed between the initial draft and the final ruling.However, I agree that it was always quite likely that you would get this kind of ruling from a conservative Supreme Court, and its effects are going to be the return of real abortion politics for the first time in decades. That will have some kind of supercharging effect just inevitably. Because if Roe falls, you immediately have laws on the books in various states that restrict abortion or make it illegal that will create debates within those states.But I think the reality is because we haven’t had these kinds of debates in so long, they are — even by the standards of our unpredictable politics — really hard to predict. I personally have been surprised, in a way, at how stable Texas politics has been since the Supreme Court allowed Texas effectively to restrict abortion after six weeks.My general assumption has been that there would be a substantial backlash and a big political opportunity for Democrats. But the evidence from state politics so far doesn’t prove that that’s real. To some extent, we’re just going to have to see what happens without having any recent analogies to tell us what’s likely to take place.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I want to play this tape of Senator Elizabeth Warren, speaking about the possible end of Roe at a rally here in Washington:I am angry because we have reached the combination of what Republicans have been fighting for, angling for, for decades now. And we are going to fight back.Speaking of opportunities for Democrats, as Ross has pointed out and as Senator Elizabeth Warren there says, this has been decades in the making. But fight back how? Options seem limited right now.Michelle Cottle: It looks like this is going to wind up being an issue that gets fought in the states for a while. There is legislation floating around Capitol Hill, but what the Democrats have passed in the House of Representatives is not going anywhere. Senators Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski have a pared-down codification of Roe, but that’s unlikely to go anywhere right now. It’s one of these things that I think at the federal level is just going to flummox people.Democrats are hoping that this will give them a boost in the midterms come November, but I don’t expect it to have a huge impact this time around. I think it could, though, going forward.The place where you might see it in November would be in the primaries, where Representative Henry Cuellar, who is a pro-life Democrat on the Texas border, is in a fight with a pro-choice challenger. Could this tilt that race just enough for Cuellar to lose and have a different Democrat going into the generals? I don’t know, but I don’t expect it to have a huge impact on the midterms in November.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: We know from our history in this country and what we see in other places where there isn’t abortion access, that women who don’t have abortion access will resort to illegal abortions, putting their lives at risk.It strikes me that all of this is happening while we have a Democratic president, a Democratic Senate and a Democratic House. Is there going to be a feeling that Democrats haven’t only fumbled, they’ve also roundly been beaten, and it could lead to a decline in support from their base? It could have the opposite effect of galvanizing them.Jane Coaston: It’s a complicated issue. A Gallup poll from 2021 found that the poorest Americans, who are most likely to suffer from a lack of access to abortion, are also more likely to believe that abortion is morally wrong.It’s worth remembering that this has been the carrot waved in front of social conservatives for 50 years. And now you’re hearing from a lot of conservatives that actually nothing will change. A conservative writer, Erick Erickson, said yesterday that this isn’t a big deal because nothing will change. They didn’t call them “Students for a 12-week abortion ban.” They didn’t call it “March for a 15-Week Abortion Ban.”This is going to be complicated for a lot of people, especially because they will see that there’ll be a clear difference between states like Connecticut and Colorado that have already provided abortion protections and Republican states that attempt to have an abortion ban, whether it will be a Texas-like system in which you are asking people to essentially inform on others, or just a straight-up ban.Voters have very conflicted views on abortion, but generally, they support people having some access to abortion.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I’m going to pick up on something you said. It is true that something like 80 percent of Americans think there should be some access to abortion. What that access should look like is unclear. But if Roe is overturned, that means that states will have the right to legislate on abortion access.Red states already have “trigger” laws in place that will immediately curtail abortion access for their residents if that happens. Some states are going to be doing one thing and other states are going to be doing a different thing. What does that mean for the unity of this country, where some citizens will have some rights and others won’t?Ross Douthat: I’m sorry to keep pleading agnosticism, but I don’t think we know. If you go back to the period before Roe was decided, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, this was basically the system that we were heading toward.There had been some liberalization of abortion laws in a number of states. There was a nascent pro-life movement that had pushed back against that and had halted and reversed that trend in other states. At that point, if you were looking at the landscape, you would have said, Well, this is sort of the federalist solution, right? This is the way the American system is set up to negotiate some deeply polarizing social issues.Now, that was also a landscape in which abortion had not been nationalized by the Supreme Court and had not then become a key driver of polarization between the parties. Back in the 1970s, you had lots of pro-choice Republicans and you had lots of pro-life Democrats, including Joseph Robinette Biden, now the pro-choice president of the United States.You had a landscape where you could imagine abortion policy being federalized, in the sense of being different from state to state, and also the two political parties not dividing over it.The fact that now the parties have divided over it so completely makes me suspect that the federalist strategy will be somewhat unstable and you will have constant pressure to have a national abortion policy from both sides, which will then implicate debates over the filibuster and everything else.The flip side of that is that lots of national Republican politicians have never been enthusiastic about talking about abortion, let alone legislating on it. A lot will depend on what happens in some of the bigger red states like Florida and Texas. Does the pro-life movement consider that an at least temporary victory?Or is that politically unstable? Is there a big backlash? Democrats have assumed that Texas is supposed to trend blue for a long time. So in theory an overreaching abortion ban in Texas could provoke the kind of backlash that Democrats have been looking for.Jane Coaston: It’s worth noting here that we don’t know what this will look like. We’ve seen that Senate Republicans passed around a memo on potential talking points and some of them include things like saying, We don’t want to put doctors in jail. We would never take away anyone’s contraception or health care. But you are hearing from other Republicans who are saying, for example, We do want to go after Griswold.Ross Douthat: Wait a minute. Which Republicans — outside of some traditionalist Catholic blog or something — are saying that they want to pass a law banning contraception?Jane Coaston: Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee. She brought up Griswold as being constitutionally unsound.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Griswold v. Connecticut, of course, is the case where the Supreme Court ruled that marital privacy protects couples against state restrictions on contraception.Jane Coaston: My point is that when you have something that you’ve been fighting over for 50 years, there are lots of tangential pieces that people have been arguing about. For instance, telemedicine and access to abortion-causing medications. And there are Catholics who argue that some forms of birth control are themselves abortion-causing medications.Michelle Cottle: We have no idea how this is going to play out, even with just the abortion restrictions. You were asking about rights and different rights for people in different states. I mean, the reality is there are some states where it’s virtually impossible already to get an abortion — where there’s one abortion clinic for the entire state. If you’re talking about surgical abortions, that has already become a matter of where you live.An interesting thing that we’re going to watch play out here — and it’s going to get really sticky, really fast — are medication abortions. Are you going to have a black market? How are states going to determine who’s getting what? When there are certain rules in place that allow for medication abortions, which now are upward of 50 percent of abortions. That’s one thing. But if you have states that have just outlawed them, it starts to get really complicated. Who are you going after? How are you going to enforce this? What happens if somebody crosses state lines to get these meds?We have no idea what the future landscape will look like, much less one step down the road with abortifacients or anything like that.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: What we have seen in other countries that restrict abortion is that women have illegal abortions and get their health put at risk. It’s not that the numbers of abortions necessarily go down. It’s that they may not be as safe.When you’ve had 50 years of abortion access, as you’ve had in the United States, if you take away those rights, as will happen to women in many red states, that is going to have serious repercussions. I don’t think that this will be the end of it. And I think it’s naïve to think that it will.Ross Douthat: I have to argue with you very briefly. There is a frequent pro-choice argument along the lines of: “Abortion restrictions don’t reduce abortion rates. They just lead to more illegal abortions.”We have a lot of evidence from the developed world — from the United States and Western Europe — that that is not true: that rich nations or states that have restrictions on abortions have fewer abortions. The abortion rate is higher in Scandinavia, which has more liberal abortion laws, than it is in Germany, which has more restrictive abortion laws in general.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Rich people will be able to get abortions, sure. But the disadvantaged will not.Ross Douthat: That’s not what I’m saying. I’m including the poor people within those rich countries.Jane Coaston: That’s a point worth making, as is the point that abortion rates in the United States have actually been going down. They reached a high, I believe, in the early 1980s.Ross Douthat: Yes.Jane Coaston: Each year we keep hitting record lows in the number of abortions.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Because we have sex education and contraception.Ross Douthat: That’s not what’s driving it.Jane Coaston: Also, fewer people are having sex in general — yay! [LAUGHS]Ross Douthat: That’s more of what’s driving it. The reason that the pro-life side supports restrictions on abortion is that there is a lot of evidence that restrictions reduce abortion rates. This is where I completely agree that the question of who is getting prosecuted, what is done with state power, makes a really big difference.But right now, you have states in the U.S. and countries around the world, including places like Chile, that have had restrictive abortion laws that have very low maternal mortality rates and very good records on women’s health. It is possible to restrict abortion without having the massive maternal mortality nightmare that gets brought up. It just requires public spending and sensible policymaking.Michelle Cottle: Which has no bearing on this society.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Indeed. If the pandemic showed us anything.Ross Douthat: Well, this is the United States of America.Jane Coaston: There have been conversations among social conservatives about a post-Roe environment. All of them seem to recognize that it would require spending choices that Republicans have historically not wanted to make. Expanding access to WIC, for example.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: WIC, the federal nutrition program that supports women, infants and children.Jane Coaston: Yeah. Expanding access to maternal care, because again, maternal mortality risks, especially around African American women, are very bad in the United States.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: As much as I’ve enjoyed this debate, we have something else to argue about, which is Trump and the Ohio race on Tuesday. Here is the victorious J.D. Vance after he won the Republican primary:Thanks to the president for everything, for endorsing me. And I got to say, a lot of the fake news media out there, and there are some good ones in the back there, there’s some bad ones, too, let’s be honest, but they wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s “America First” agenda. Ladies and gentlemen, it ain’t the death of the “America First” agenda.I think this story connects to our first conversation because we were talking about abortion, one of the original culture war issues. And here we have, with Vance victorious, someone who’s embodying Trump and his “America First” agenda.Michelle, you were just outside Cincinnati with J.D. Vance on the campaign trail, and with Donald Trump Jr. What stood out to you the most about the campaigning you saw?Michelle Cottle: The Vance clip you played basically captures the whole thing. The minute he got the nod from Trump, this race didn’t have anything to do with J.D. Vance or any of the other candidates. It became a referendum on Trump and Trump’s king-making ability.I watched Don Jr. appear at these events, and it was all about how Vance was the only Trump-endorsed candidate in this race. It was all about Trump, which is a testament to how far J.D. Vance has bent over to smooch Donald Trump’s backside, which is what a lot of the party has done — in fact, what most of the party has done. But it is still galling to watch.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Jane, you are from Ohio.Jane Coaston: Cincinnati, stand up!Lulu Garcia-Navarro: What does what Michelle is saying tell you about not only your home state but the direction of the G.O.P.?Jane Coaston: I talked to J.D. Vance back in 2016 when he published “Hillbilly Elegy,” and he told me that white working-class voters were frustrated and hungry for political leadership and that a lot of “political elites” hadn’t picked that up. He has since taken on the mantle of being a jerk. He has taken on talking about cat ladies and arguing about Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, because you have to sound like Trump in order for Trump to see you as being part of him.There is an idea that this is a part of Ohio, north of Cincinnati, where, in Vance’s view, things used to be better and now they are bad. And that it is the responsibility of someone — Vance or somebody else — to fix it, to make things better. And there is an idea that this was the fault of globalization or NAFTA or big business or something like that. And that the people who were like Vance used to be better. And now they aren’t better, but it’s not their fault.There are people who wax rhapsodic about working-class jobs, many of whom have never actually worked. You hear this when people talk about manufacturing jobs. My grandpa worked in a copper mill. It sucked and he died at 48. There’s this idea, this halcyon concept of an Ohio that once was. A Cincinnati that used to be.Michelle Cottle: This is what the Trump appeal was in general, the idea that these people had been left behind. This is why he played well in Pennsylvania. That is not an unusual concept. The problem with Trumpism is they’ve taken this kind of populist impulse and turned it into: “It’s the immigrants’ fault. It’s the Black people’s fault.” They’re blaming it on somebody else.Jane Coaston: It’s “the other.”Michelle Cottle: Yeah, they’re blaming it on China, too. It’s “the other.”Jane Coaston: It’s me, essentially. I did it. [LAUGHS]Michelle Cottle: At these rallies you don’t hear about abortion. You hear about how immigrants have turned central Ohio into the child trafficking capital of the world. It’s completely shamelessly, xenophobic.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Ross, you have made no mystery of your distaste for Trump’s style and its impact on the tenor of the G.O.P. What do you make of Vance’s win and what it signals about the post-Trump presidency era of the Republican Party?Ross Douthat: I should say, just as a preface, that I know J.D. Vance and so I’m trying to offer detached analysis. But the listeners should know that I do in fact know him.Jane’s narrative is broadly right: There’s a basic continuity in populous worldview between the Vance who was extremely critical of Trump, in ways that I still agree with, and the Vance who won his endorsement.But there is a difference, too. “Hillbilly Elegy” is more about an internal pathology in white working-class America than it is about the elite policy mistakes that hollowed out American industry. So there’s been some shift in emphasis, but the basic narrative of elite betrayal of the American heartland — I don’t think that’s something that Vance has flip-flopped on.Even when he was damning Trump in the past, the argument was always, Trump is tapping into real and legitimate grievances, but he is essentially the political opioid of these communities that have been hit so hard by fentanyl.That’s the background. Then Vance ran a campaign in which — unlike Josh Mandel, his big rival — he spent less time personally appealing for Trump’s support and more time in the MAGA-extended universe of Steve Bannon’s show, Tucker Carlson’s show, various podcasts and so on that are all extremely right-wing and extremely Trumpy.Politico had a really good piece about how the Trump endorsement came about. Not surprisingly, Trump didn’t respond well to Mandel and others begging for his endorsement, and he seems to have decided to endorse Vance because he watched the debates and thought that Vance looked the best on TV, which, as we know, is the most important thing for anything connected to Trump. That, and he saw Vance play golf and liked his swing. The entire future history of American politics may turn on whether Trump likes a Senate candidate’s golf swing.Jane Coaston: Ohio’s political winds have shifted significantly. I do think it will be interesting to see how Vance attempts to get at a broader audience, if he even attempts to. That is going to be a bigger audience, and one accustomed to Ohio Republicans like Rob Portman or Steve Chabot, who are definitely more Ohioan. We’re Midwesterners! We tamp down our feelings with lasagna. But that’s not what Vance does. His kind of online anger and online ire — I am curious to see how that plays out when he’s having to make an appeal to, well, not my parents, but people like my parents.Michelle Cottle: That’s one of the problems we’re looking at with America in a foul mood, though, right? Whether you think it’s because of the pandemic or inflation or whatever, Americans are sour, and when you are sour, you are spoiling for a fight and you are looking for someone to come and tell you: “You are right to be angry. This is not your fault. You have been taken advantage of, and I’m going to fix it for you.” Those are the headwinds that the Democrats are looking at.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: I’m going to wrap this up by asking for predictions, which I know everyone loves to do. This is mine: If politicians like J.D. Vance are elected into office in the fall, on the G.O.P. side, we’re going to have more of the strong culture-war G.O.P. presidential nominees in 2024, probably Trump or Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, who are drawn to these divisive issues. The Democrats have had trouble countering those narratives.What do you see coming down the line, in terms of our political landscape and what it might portend?Michelle Cottle: Historical trends made it hard for the Democrats not to lose ground in this midterm. They have not had a break with the pandemic or inflation or anything like that. I think they’re going to have a rough midterm, and then going into 2024, if for some reason Trump does not run, I think DeSantis immediately moves to the head of line and we’re looking at somebody like that from the Republican side. There’s no real indication that the Republicans want to move away from Trumpism in the near future.Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Ross? Trump is king?Ross Douthat: There’s no indication at all. For Republican voters in Ohio, the fundamental choice was between Josh Mandel, who was basically the Trump attitude but with the pre-Trump mix of economic policies — that’s why Mandel was endorsed by the Club for Growth and they poured all this money into defeating Vance — or Vance, who was channeling the Trump attitude, but with policies on trade and immigration and foreign policy that were much more like the shift that Trump brought.Michelle Cottle: They could have gone with Matt Dolan, who was running and who came in a tight third behind Mandel.Ross Douthat: Right. But that suggests that it’s not just the Trump attitude. There is a constituency for Trump’s issues in the G.O.P. that remains very powerful.Fundamentally, the Democrats’ problems are about inflation and the post-Covid recovery turning into an inflationary spiral that has real wages going down, even as people are making more money on paper. That’s the biggest problem.With the culture war stuff, those battles are a cycle of overreach and backlash. What we’re living through right now, especially with the critical race theory debates and gender in schools debates, is a backlash against the sweeping leftward movement that we saw late in the Trump era, where there was a transformation of elite institutions, particularly in the summer of 2020, along more dramatically progressive lines. The backlash to that was always going to have a certain amount of political running room.The question is — whether it’s abortion or transgender issues or anything else — where does that backlash end up overreaching in its turn? Or do Republicans have room to have a backlash and still win because Democrats haven’t found a good way to get back to the center themselves?Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Jane, I’m going to leave the last word to you.Jane Coaston: I’m so interested in how Republicans are using this moment to respond to cultural trends with politics. At a certain point you just can’t make everything you don’t like illegal. If you do, people will respond poorly because legally, that’s questionable. That’s morally questionable, too.A politics that’s “I just don’t want anyone to do something I don’t like” is going to make people mad.I’m not sure what’s going to happen in the midterms, but these trends of overreach speak to an idea. If Republicans have control of the Supreme Court or the House and Senate, will they still be thinking: “Why are people not more like us? Why are people not doing what we want?” And liberals can see that Democrats right now have perceived control and are saying: “Why can’t we do anything? We have nothing!” Both sides screaming at each other, “You have everything and we have nothing.”That’s a really bad state for our politics to be in, because it means that no one takes any responsibility for anything. That’s what makes me worried.Lulu Garcia-Navarro is a Times Opinion podcast host. Jane Coaston is the host of “The Argument” podcast. Michelle Cottle is a member of the editorial board. Ross Douthat is a Times columnist.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.Times Opinion audio produced by Lulu Garcia-Navarro, Alison Bruzek and Phoebe Lett. Fact-checking by Kate Sinclair, Adrian Rivera and Alex Ellerbeck. Original music by Carole Sabouraud. Mixing by Isaac Jones. Audience strategy by Shannon Busta. Our executive producer is Irene Noguchi. Special thanks to James Ryerson, Jenny Casas, Vishakha Darbha and Patrick Healy. More