The PointConversations and insights about the moment.
Editorial Board Member
For four years, Donald Trump and his allies have been injecting dangerous lies into the American bloodstream, claiming without any actual evidence that the 2020 election he lost was tainted by serious fraud.
As it turns out, there was indeed serious fraud in the 2020 election. On Thursday, one perpetrator of that fraud was sentenced to nine years in prison for her crimes. Tina Peters, the clerk of Mesa County, Colo., in 2020, tampered with voting machines in an effort to prove the election had been rigged against Trump. The data she allowed to be downloaded made its way to a presentation given by Mike Lindell, the pillow-hawking conspiracist.
“You abused your position, and you are a charlatan who used and is still using your prior position in office to peddle a snake oil that’s proven to be junk time and time again,” Judge Matthew Barrett said as he dressed down Peters for more than 13 minutes.
Amazing how our legal system is able to distinguish between real evidence and fake evidence, isn’t it?
I take no pleasure in seeing people lose their liberty, especially for such a long time. But sometimes it is necessary to protect the broader public and to send a message to others who would commit the same offense. Judge Barrett emphasized this point in handing down the punishment, which he opted for in lieu of a less severe measure like probation. Prison, he said, is “where we send people who are a danger to all of us, whether it be by the pen or the sword or the word of the mouth.” He continued, “It’s particularly damaging when those words come from someone who holds a position of influence like you.”
“I’m convinced you would do it again if you could,” he added in a final rationale for placing Peters behind bars. “You’re as defiant a defendant as I’ve ever seen.”
Now imagine the person sitting in the defendant’s chair is not a local election official but the former president of the United States. Judge Barrett’s words could be said verbatim to Donald Trump.
We can only imagine it for now, because Trump has avoided any legal consequence for his persistent lies, his stoking of the public mistrust and his incitements to violence. This is the fault of the Supreme Court, which immunized the president against almost all official acts in July, delaying what could be the most consequential trial in the nation’s history.
Emboldened by that ahistoric, extra-constitutional ruling, Trump remains defiant. No one needs to be persuaded he would do it again, because he already is. The only choice left is to defeat him at the polls a month from now, and then, if he is convicted at trial, he will face real accountability at last. As Judge Barrett said, prison is where we send those who are a danger to us all.
Opinion Columnist
This morning’s employment report was really, really encouraging. It allayed the concerns of many economists, myself included, that the Federal Reserve might have waited too long to cut interest rates and that we may be sliding into a gratuitous recession. And it showed that the U.S. economy continues to be in a very good place.
Before the latest report, there were a number of indications from surveys and other data that U.S. job creation may be slowing, perhaps to a worrying extent. One good report doesn’t completely negate those indications. But at least we can say that the feared slowdown hasn’t yet shown up in the jobs report, which is usually the gold standard.
Just look at where we are right now. Last week the Fed’s preferred measure of annual inflation came in at 2.2 percent, within a whisker of the target rate of 2 percent. Now we have unemployment of 4.051 percent (that 4.1 number you’re hearing is rounded up), slightly below the rate the Fed considers sustainable in the long run. If this isn’t a soft landing, I don’t know what is.
Since everyone is focused on the election, I guess I also have to observe that this report is good news for Kamala Harris. There will be one more jobs report a few days before the election, but it seems clear that she’ll be able to point to a very good economic record for the administration in which she’s serving. She has already eliminated Donald Trump’s advantage over who would be better at controlling inflation; now she can point to continuing vigorous job creation.
Oh, and one potential nasty October surprise has been neutralized with the suspension of the dockworkers’ strike.
All considered, a pretty good morning on the economic front, but a not so good one for people looking for bad news.
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Opinion Writer
Every Friday through the election, Michelle Cottle will highlight outstanding examples of misdeeds, outrageous statements and simply bizarre political behavior.
Donald Trump’s oldest son is clearly eager to carry on the family tradition of scaring the bejeezus out of voters through a rich mix of conspiracy-mongering and xenophobia.
In a sit-down on Fox News last Sunday, Don Jr. spewed out dark theories about immigrants and voting fraud at such a dizzying clip that even the host looked vaguely perplexed. But Jr. made sure to close with a firm nod to the great replacement theory: Rather than “doing what’s good” for the American people, he charged, Democrats “have said, you know what, we’re just going to replace you by bringing in 20 million unknown, unvetted, you know some of whom are murderers and rapists.”
No doubt “the eldest boy” made Dad proud.
Republicans effectively abandoned the mantle of family values when they embraced Trump. But their candidates are still desperate to play the part. How else to explain why Derrick Anderson — a single (though recently engaged!), childless man running for the House in Virginia — borrowed a longtime friend’s wife and kids for a photo featured on his campaign website.
God forbid JD Vance accuse Anderson of being a single, childless cat daddy.
It looks as though we may need an “Eric Adams Item of the Week” for the foreseeable future. This week, federal prosecutors noted that their investigative efforts continue to be hampered by an inability to get access to Adams’s cellphone, the passcode for which the mayor claims to have forgotten. But the bit from the Times report that caught my eye was a prosecutor’s assertion that there has been “a ‘significant issue’ of interference, citing a witness who he said had received a message from Mr. Adams instructing the person to lie to the F.B.I.”
Well, that sounds not so smart. “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” is a cliché for a reason.
Father down the Democratic food chain, a county judge in Texas was indicted late last week on misdemeanor charges of having used a fake Facebook identity — “Antonio Scalywag!” — “with intent to injure a candidate or influence the result of an election.” As the AP reports it, KP George was indicted after being served a search warrant that accused him of “working with his former chief of staff, Taral Patel, to use the ‘Antonio Scalywag’ alias to post racist social media posts” targeting George to drum up sympathy for his re-election race (George, born in India, is the first person of color to serve in his post).
Stirring up racial animus is despicable. Period. But also … “Scalywag”? It’s like the guy was begging to get busted.
As if the survivors of Hurricane Helene didn’t have enough to worry about. On Monday, Trump claimed at a news conference in Valdosta, Ga., that the state’s governor, Brian Kemp, had been unable to reach President Biden to discuss the recovery effort. Except Kemp, who clearly had not gotten the Trumpian memo about manure spreading, had said earlier in the day that he and Biden had, in fact, had a good chat on Sunday. “He just said, ‘Hey, what do you need?’” Kemp told reporters. “And I told him, you know, we got what we need. We will work through the federal process.”
Opinion Columnist
In the world according to JD Vance, immigrants are the root of all evil. During his debate with Tim Walz, he argued that they’re responsible for rising housing prices. Economists were quick to point out that his “evidence” was an out-of-context quote from a speech from one Federal Reserve official. Still, immigrants are people, and people need housing. So could the recent rise in immigration be a major factor in the recent surge in housing costs?
There are multiple reasons to say no; one of them, which I’ve been working on, is timing. Basically, most of the surge in rents took place in 2021, and a big jump in immigration began in 2022. Here are Congressional Budget Office estimates of net immigration in recent years, together with Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates of rent increases for new tenants (fourth quarter to fourth quarter):
Rents shot up as we came out of the pandemic slump; the big rise in immigration came later.
So what caused surging rents? There are longer-term issues, mainly a failure to build enough housing. But the most likely immediate cause of zooming rents was Zoom — that is, the rise in remote work. People working from home, on average, sought more home to work from. I know that this explanation is unsatisfying for many people because it doesn’t have any obvious villains. But it’s the best story we have.
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“So what?”
Those two words — which Donald Trump allegedly uttered on the afternoon of Jan. 6, 2021, in response to an aide who had rushed into the Oval Office dining room to alert him that the rioters he had summoned to the Capitol were now threatening the vice president’s life — should ring in the ears of every American voter, every American citizen, from now through Election Day.
The exchange appears in the 165-page brief that the special counsel Jack Smith filed this week with the federal court overseeing Trump’s criminal prosecution for his attempt to overthrow the 2020 election. Most of the material in the brief has already been made public. And yet I never fail to be shocked anew at the utter disregard Trump showed — not only for his own vice president or for the longstanding processes that guide vote counting but also for the 81 million Americans who rejected him that fall.
“So what?”
The words are, by themselves, disqualifying. And they are merely the tip of the iceberg. As the brief illustrates in damning detail, Trump knew for months before the election that he was likely to lose. He made clear well in advance of Election Day that he would not, under any circumstances, accept that loss. After the election, his top staff members told him repeatedly that he had lost; he responded by ignoring or firing them so he could lie to Americans about nonexistent voter fraud.
No one who lies, cheats and incites violence to stay in power should be allowed to hold public office again. Not anywhere, at any level. Yet here we are, one month out from Election Day, and the former president has a roughly even shot to return to the White House.
This never should have happened. Republicans in Congress should have joined Democrats to prevent Trump from running again. The Supreme Court should have allowed the Jan. 6 trial to move forward last spring. The American people should be going to the polls with a clear jury verdict on Trump.
We will not get that verdict, so we must deliver it ourselves. We, the American people, are now the jury — not of 12 peers but of more than 150 million voters.
Yes, we already did this once. Trump’s reaction was to reject the result. So we must deliver it again. We must approach the choice with the solemnity that jurors do when they decide a fellow citizen’s future. Only in this case, the future hanging in the balance is not a single person’s; it is the country’s.
American democracy is living paycheck to paycheck, and the rent is years overdue.
Opinion Writer
New spending data shows that some of the places hardest hit by Hurricane Helene weren’t bracing for it, possibly because people felt they were so far inland that they weren’t likely to get whacked. Climate change may require those attitudes to change.
In Tennessee, which isn’t used to hurricanes, people did far less stocking up than in Florida, which has plenty of experience with them. In Florida, grocery sales rose 14 percent, and gasoline sales were up 10 percent in the five days before the hurricane compared with the same period a year earlier. In Tennessee, grocery sales rose just 4 percent, and gasoline sales fell 13 percent from a year earlier.
The figures are based on card data from Fiserv, a Milwaukee-based payment-processing company, which ran the numbers for me.
Fiserv’s numbers aren’t adjusted for inflation. Gasoline prices nationally fell about 16 percent over the past year, so the volume of gasoline sold in Tennessee didn’t go down. On the other hand, it didn’t go up the way it did in Florida.
Gasoline sales fell about 5 percent in North Carolina and 6 percent in South Carolina ahead of the storm compared with a year earlier — again, a volume increase when accounting for the price decline but not a big one. Those states are more used to hurricanes but not in the inland portions that were hit hardest.
Fiserv also calculated the total card sales in certain metro areas in Helene’s path, not broken down by category. In hard-hit Asheville, N.C., there was no sign of stocking up. Card sales fell 0.7 percent before the hurricane compared with a year earlier. “Asheville is not a coastal city by any stretch,” Mike Spriggs, the head of consumer insights at Fiserv. “I don’t think those folks anticipated how much was going to happen, so their preparation was less focused and organized.” (It’s also possible that some families simply couldn’t afford to stock up.)
As hurricanes become more intense, more people in more places are going to have to reckon with the dangers they pose.
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Opinion Columnist
OK, how many of you noticed that Jimmy Carter turned 100 on Tuesday?
He’s the oldest living ex-president ever. And to be honest, it doesn’t sound as if he’s having a terrific time. Recently widowed — Rosalynn died almost a year ago at 96 — and living with home hospice care, Carter’s surely looking forward to voting against Donald Trump.
Thank you, Donald, for reminding us the one way you give Americans of all ages an opportunity for achievement.
Earlier this election year Americans were obsessed with age — President Biden’s age, to be precise. He’s 81, and even for fans it was sort of hard to imagine him dealing with some massive world crisis at 85.
Soon, Biden will be leaving the stage. (Be honest, does it take you a minute to remember he’s still in the White House?) The candidates to replace him are Kamala Harris, 59, and Trump, who at 78 is the oldest major party presidential nominee in history.
Harris and her running mate, Tim Walz, are pretty much the same age. They both were born in 1964, the year Trump graduated from high school.
We haven’t really talked much about Trump’s age, at least compared to the national obsession with Biden’s. But think about it: The Republicans now have a ticket in which the vice-presidential nominee is not just young enough to be the presidential nominee’s son; JD Vance, at 40, is also young enough to be Trump’s grandson. Why isn’t it a bigger issue? Probably because as a politician Trump has always been so crazy — well, ego-driven, attention-obsessed — that age seemed like the least of his problems.
But now that’s got to change. If voters felt 81 was too old for Biden, it’s hard to believe they can overlook 78 for Trump. Maybe we can turn the conversation to what he ought to do next. The ideal scenario is for a post-retirement life that’s even more fulfilling than what came before. Think about Carter winning the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002 for his good works in everything from building housing for the poor to traveling around the world to promote international understanding.
Well, I can’t quite picture Trump there. But maybe a reboot of “The Apprentice,” where he could fire an ambitious, upwardly mobile careerist under the age of 40 every week.
Opinion Staff Writer and Editor
Each Wednesday in The Point through the election, Katherine Miller highlights a revealing moment from a stump speech on the campaign trail.
Post-debate snap polls are always a little shaky, but one thing generally clear from the unusually calm vice-presidential debate on Tuesday is that it seems to have improved people’s views of both JD Vance and Tim Walz. That may be because of its general comity and more substantive nature, in addition to the splits on different issues.
Is agreeableness effective? Last month I was in North Carolina to do some reporting on Donald Trump, but had some time to kill so I drove to a Kamala Harris field office in Goldsboro, N.C., unannounced. As it turned out, the people there were setting up for a small event with Representative Jeff Jackson, a Democrat known for his earnest TikTok presence who is now running for state attorney general.
The event was a fund-raiser, which Jackson let me observe on the fly, for probably 30 or 40 people, mostly older couples. One woman told me that it was interesting to see which of her neighbors were Democrats, because she felt people had pretty much stopped talking about politics in this tense era.
For this audience of Democrats, Jackson talked a fair amount about plans to tackle scams and other more practical issues as attorney general, but also generally about character and a “backlash of basic decency.” Either character counts in this election, he said, or it doesn’t count at all. That’s obviously pointed, but this was the week the latest round of Mark Robinson news broke; Jackson also led his remarks by talking about how he had “really, really enjoyed working with people on both sides of the aisle. There was a lot to be gained in dropping my assumptions about who people are based on what I saw on the news.”
His parting thought along those lines was that voters needed to prepare themselves to take seriously an opportunity to unite people and to check their impulses for outrage:
We want you in the right head space. When we get through this, to seize this moment we have to broaden the appeal, to show people who were on the fence but chose to support us that they were right to trust us with their vote. … I want us all to be on the right page with that, because I know how much outrage drives the current energy in politics, but we’re going to have an opportunity to emotionally reset. Which means we have to start doing that now. And for people whose anxiety levels are super high? If you get home tomorrow and some poll comes out and it spikes your anxiety, and you just can’t handle it, I want you to give your anxiety to me. I will carry it for you, because I don’t have anxiety, I have confidence. This isn’t going to be the most important election of our lifetimes; it’s going to be the best election of our lifetimes. Once we get through it, y’all, it’s going to feel wonderful.
I am not sure if I’ve ever heard someone say, “This is going to be the best election of our lives.” It’s hard to know what kinds of messages work to make people vote or to change minds. While I do think there’s some evidence from the Trump/anti-Trump era that a scorched-earth strategy can form winning coalitions, this was an interesting glimpse at a different approach.
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Opinion Columnist
What you saw on Tuesday in the vice-presidential debate was an audition for the leader of the post-Trump Republican Party.
Over and over again JD Vance successfully distanced himself from his long, well-documented track record of inflammatory statements on everything from reproductive health to immigrants. Those Americans who tuned in to the debate saw an affable, reasonable Vance (no matter how many times he lied). That should terrify anyone who cares about democracy.
In many ways, Vance proved that there will be another Donald Trump, one who is just as sinister but far better produced for middle-of-the road voters. It does not matter if Vance was only pretending to align with Trump’s combative politics and disastrous policy proposals. What matters is that Vance has proved that he will change all of his fundamental beliefs in order to win.
I don’t mean the dreaded “flip-flopping” that is too often applied to a politician who dares to change her mind. I mean a deliberate strategy of supporting any position in the name of procuring power. That was Trump’s best political innovation.
Trump has lied, cheated, misdirected and inflamed not out of ideology but for the bald pursuit of power. Only two things have blunted his worst impulses: the legal system and his own boorish behavior. His ongoing legal troubles show his weakness. He is gluttonous — for attention, for money, for privilege. His boorish behavior has turned off a lot of voters who would otherwise vote for him.
Vance is the perfect solution to Trump’s self-inflicted political frailties. He is just as starved for power but not nearly as desperate for attention. He sells dangerous policy positions better to the kinds of voters who are tired of being embarrassed.
His debate answers were full of racist, sexist and classist dog whistles. He pronounced “illegal alien” with the cultured disdain of an elitist who knows exactly what the term conjures but pretends he does not. He relished ascribing America’s addiction to gun violence to mental health and urban criminality. His every elocution hid a trope as dangerous as that Willie Horton ad, but his affable delivery sowed doubt that he means any harm.
Vance does mean harm. He means everything that Trump means. He absolutely does want to abolish abortion, in practice if not in ordinance. He absolutely does want to delegitimize the federal government, pillage protected lands and blame every social ill on people who cannot defend themselves.
But Vance proved that he can deliver that harm without paying the reputational cost that has made Trump an effective but toxic politician. If Vance demonstrated what an Ivy League education does for your rhetorical sleight of hand, then Tim Walz demonstrated what happens when you refuse to play the game as it is being played. Vance worked the rules and the refs. Walz let him, instead relying on meandering stories about individuals’ lives that lacked moral and emotional impact.
With 33 days until the election, that should worry the Democrats and anyone else who cares about fair, free elections.
Opinion Senior Staff Editor
During the 1970s, the era of peak Pete Rose, Major League Baseball still maintained an air of innocence. Nary a betting booth was to be found in a stadium, game broadcasts had not a single FanDuel ad, and the leagues lacked an Official Sports Betting Partner.
Rose’s death at 83 on Monday evoked that distant era and brought on a good dose of cognitive dissonance. His fame rested equally in being one of baseball’s greatest players and one of its most disgraced. He was barred for life from the game in 1989 for regularly betting on baseball, including on his own Cincinnati Reds while manager. The door slammed shut forever at the Baseball Hall of Fame, where his entry would have been a sure bet.
But baseball over the long decades has lost that innocence, acknowledging that many fans have a financial interest in the outcome of games. The professional sports world, including M.L.B., has become deeply entwined with the gambling industry. The explosion began with a 2018 Supreme Court ruling overturning a ban on organized sports betting in most states. Monthly wagering grew from less than $50 million to more than $1 billion last year, according to figures cited by Charles Fain Lehman in The Atlantic, who chronicled the terrible social and economic cost to ordinary people, mostly on the lower rungs of society, from sports betting.
In that light, should we think differently about Rose’s shame? It’s hard not to.
Rose or any other player would probably earn a substantial suspension today for betting on baseball — still a cardinal sin, said Marc Edelman, a law professor at Baruch College who studies gambling. But it’s also likely that given the 180-degree change in the sports world’s attitude toward gambling in general, Edelman said, Rose might have earned reinstatement.
Except for another sin: For years, Rose lied about his gambling. He only publicly admitted to betting on the Reds in a book released in 2004. He defended his honor by noting he never bet the Reds to lose — but that in itself was a signal to bookies on a game’s likely outcome.
Certainly betting on a game by its protagonists is a corrupt act — even worse in a way than taking performance-enhancing drugs. Both are betrayals. But juicing is more like cheating and lying to the fans, while betting is also selling out your fellow players and undermining the whole endeavor.
In the end, we probably should not forgive Rose just because baseball moguls are now seeing dollar signs. “He violated the holy law,” said the writer Dan Okrent, who invented Rotisserie Baseball. “It’s the one thing everybody knows you can’t do.” But thanks to baseball’s embrace of the gambling industry, we may soon find other players sharing Charlie Hustle’s shame. As Okrent said, “There’s no question they’ve invited the monster in.”
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Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board
JD Vance has always had the ability to switch on and off the outrageousness, to sound reasonable, to paper over a bitter and hollow core with a velvet patter learned at Yale and in countless television appearances. That was the version of himself that he presented to a national audience at the debate on Tuesday night, and it was a world away from how he sounds when campaigning in front of MAGA crowds.
If you saw only this performance, you wouldn’t know it was the same candidate who has viciously demonized Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio; who has railed against those American women who have chosen not to have children; who said as recently as Saturday that the mass deportation that he and Donald Trump have planned is based on Christian principles.
His long experience in tailoring his answers for his audience made him seem, at a superficial level, more polished than Tim Walz, who didn’t have the commanding performance his supporters had hoped for. The sly Midwestern charm that has been so effective in his speeches and campaign ads was missing, replaced by a nervous intensity that led to puzzling answers and missed opportunities to remind viewers of Trump’s unfitness for office.
When Vance provided a non sequitur rather than an answer on climate change, for example — “The best thing to do is to double down and invest in American workers and the American people” — Walz could have taken a layup, explained that climate change really is about carbon emissions and reminded listeners of Trump’s multiple phony promises to save or build American factories. And he could have made clear that the Biden administration really has made an enormous investment in green energy and has saved far more manufacturing jobs than the Trump administration could have imagined doing.
He sped so quickly through his criticism of Vance’s vile comments about Haitian immigrants as criminals and pet eaters that he failed to explain that Vance and his boss have tried to drain legal immigrants of their humanity. And he let Vance get away with falsely claiming he never supported a national abortion ban or, bizarrely, that Trump “salvaged Obamacare, which was doing disastrously until Donald Trump came along.”
But Walz did have a few strong moments in the second half of the debate. He pointed out the nonsensical nature of the Trump-Vance plan to build housing on federal lands, most of which are nowhere near where denser housing is needed. And when Vance turned reality on its head by claiming that Trump “peacefully gave over power” upon leaving office, Walz at last rose to the moment and demonstrated the difference between Mike Pence and the man Vance was defending.
“This was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen,” Walz said. “It manifested itself because of Donald Trump’s inability to say — he is still saying — he didn’t lose the election.”
In the end, despite Walz’s disappointing performance and Vance’s masquerade, the debate is not likely to change the minds of many voters. There wasn’t much truth or fire on the stage, but there also wasn’t much damage over a largely forgettable evening.
Opinion Writer
JD Vance knows a woman. She’s dear to him. She’s from his Ohio hometown, and she had an unplanned pregnancy. “She felt like if she hadn’t had an abortion, that it would have destroyed her life because she was in an abusive relationship,” he said in Tuesday’s vice-presidential debate. Vance said that he and Donald Trump want to earn “the American people’s trust back on this issue.”
He further explained that they’re going to earn that trust back by making life more affordable for American families and by letting states decide their own abortion policies, because what people want in California is different from what people want in Arizona.
While I must admit that Vance’s delivery was incredibly smooth all evening, I don’t know that I believe that he really supports his “dear” friend who had an abortion; if she were unfortunate enough to be living in Idaho right now, she would not be able to make the decision she made in Ohio. A states’ rights approach often means stripping millions of women of their rights.
When Norah O’Donnell, one of the moderators, pointed out that Vance previously supported a federal ban on abortion, he claimed he had done no such thing. “I never supported a national ban,” he said. “I did, when I was running for Senate, talk about a minimum national standard.” But O’Donnell was correct. You can hear Vance say, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally,” on a podcast in January 2022. He also said he was “sympathetic” to the idea that there might need to be some kind of federal response if, after the fall of Roe, George Soros were to send airplanes to fly women from states with abortion bans to places where abortion was legal.
Vance said he wanted to help Americans build families through pro-family policy, like “making child care more accessible.” But when he had the opportunity to vote for an expanded child tax credit over the summer — a policy he claims to support — he skipped the vote.
It’s a shame Tim Walz did not do a better job articulating the Harris ticket’s positions on family policy. He was blustery and stilted all evening. Because even though Vance talked a very good game, I still don’t trust him — or Republicans in general — to help create a thriving America for mothers or their children. I don’t care how many women he claims to know.
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Opinion Columnist
The first half of the vice-presidential debate has been the strongest illustration in this campaign so far of why it made sense for Donald Trump to pick JD Vance as his running mate. The Ohio senator is delivering one of the best debating performances by a Republican nominee for president or vice president in recent memory and making a case for Trump’s record far more effectively than Trump has ever been capable of doing.
Vance’s performance has included a dose of self-conscious humanization, an attempted reintroduction to his blue-collar background and striking personal biography after weeks of effective Democratic attacks on his right-wing podcast commentary. It’s included some careful rhetorical tap dancing and policy jujitsu on issues like climate change and abortion. But mostly it’s just been an effective prosecution of the case against the Biden-Harris administration, focusing relentlessly on encouraging viewers to be nostalgic for the economy, the immigration landscape and the relative foreign-policy calm of Trump’s term.
Tim Walz, on the other hand, seems affable, well meaning and, relative to Vance, largely out of his depth. He’s spending too much time partly agreeing with his rival while making a much more haphazard case against Trump than Vance is making against Kamala Harris.
I think one question raised by this performance so far is why the Harris campaign has basically kept Walz away from one-on-one interviews while Vance has been out there dealing with hostile questions from Day 1 of his candidacy. It feels as though the Minnesota governor would have benefited immensely from spending some more time being grilled on the Sunday shows before he was sent out to do battle with a Republican vice-presidential nominee, who, whatever his other weaknesses, clearly knows how to debate.
Deputy Editor, the Editorial Board
Last week, Mayor Eric Adams of New York was accused by federal prosecutors of fraudulently obtaining matching funds from the city for illegal campaign contributions. On Thursday, Councilman Lincoln Restler of Brooklyn, the chair of the Committee on Governmental Operations, wrote to the city’s Campaign Finance Board, urging that Adams be removed from the finance program. Restler explains why in this interview, which has been edited.
Q: It’s striking that Adams is accused of abusing the very system designed to keep big money out of city politics.
A: The New York City campaign finance system is nationally renowned. It has been a model for cities and states around the country to democratize our elections, to allow for immigrant New Yorkers and low- and moderate-income New Yorkers to run for public office and serve in the most powerful positions in our city. Our campaign finance system has leveled the playing field and meant that it’s not just those who are connected to the rich and powerful who are in the key elected offices.
To what extent is the city’s campaign finance system based on the ability to trust candidates?
Fortunately, we have seen the contributions move in overwhelming numbers to an online donation system where it’s much easier to verify the identity of the donor. But I’ve introduced legislation that would require certain types of donations — cash donations, for example — to require additional verification of the donor by the Campaign Finance Board. There are certain types of donations where we see fraud much more commonly taking place, including on Mayor Adams’s campaign, and we need greater oversight and accountability of those donations to preserve public trust in our very generous taxpayer-funded matching system.
What can the Campaign Finance Board do to a candidate who has lied to the city and cheated the system?
These donations to Eric Adams from Turkish corporations and foreign agents and straw donors were flagged by the Campaign Finance Board during the 2021 campaign and he ignored all requests for information and documentation. There has to be meaningful accountability, and if you cheat the system as he has, you can’t continue to take taxpayer-funded dollars.
The integrity of our campaign finance system is at stake in how the C.F.B. holds Eric Adams accountable right now. If Eric Adams cheats the system repeatedly in the most flagrant ways and then continues to receive millions of dollars in taxpayer funding for his re-election campaign, what message does that send to every future candidate who’s intent on undermining the rules? I am hopeful that the decent people who run the C.F.B. will protect the credibility and reputation of our campaign finance system, and hold the mayor accountable and kick him out of our matching fund system once and for all.
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Opinion Columnist
Update, 2:15 p.m.: As forecast below, Iran launched nearly 200 ballistic missiles at Israel beginning around 12:30 p.m. Eastern time. The Israeli antimissile system shot down almost all of them, Israeli sources said, and while there was some damage the attack was not considered particularly successful. There are no reports at this time of extensive casualties.
The attack was executed by the Air Force of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards and was not an operation of the regular Iranian army or air force, according to Israeli sources. The Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian, was not informed of the attack until shortly before it began, the sources said, indicating that the Iranian regime is divided over the operation, which will probably add to the fractures in the government.
Israel’s ability to anticipate the Iranian strike and name the precise hour of the attack, and the fact that it was a revolutionary guards operation — not the regular Iranian armed forces under the command of the new president — demonstrates how deeply the Mossad, Israel’s cyber command, Unit 8200, and the Israeli Air Force have penetrated the Iranian regime and coordinated their defensive response. It means no Iranian leader can trust another anymore.
We may be about to enter what could be the most dangerous moment in the history of the modern Middle East: a ballistic missile war between Iran and Israel, which would almost certainly bring in the United States on Israel’s side and could culminate in a full-blown U.S.-Israeli effort to destroy Iran’s nuclear program.
That is the assessment I have gleaned from talking to Israeli intelligence sources, whose analysis is that Iran plans to launch a missile attack against Israel at 12:30 p.m. Eastern time, which is 7:30 p.m. in Israel. The attack is planned in two waves 15 minutes apart, and each wave will involve 110 ballistic missiles, the Israelis said.
The Iranian missiles are aimed at three targets. First, the headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence service, near Tel Aviv. Second, the Israeli air base at Nevatim, and third, the Israeli air base at Khatzirim; both bases are in the south of Israel in the Negev Desert. The Israeli officials are particularly concerned about any strike on Mossad headquarters because it is in the densely populated north Tel Aviv suburb of Ramat Hasharon. It is also not far from the Israeli defense intelligence headquarters, Unit 8200.
This information has been shared with me because the Israelis insist that they do not want a full-scale ballistic war with Iran, and want the United States to try to deter the Iranians by letting them know that if they do launch this missile attack, the United States will not be a bystander, and its response, unlike with the April 13 Iranian missile and drone attack on Israel, will not be purely defensive. In other words, Iran could be risking its entire nuclear program if this missile attack goes ahead.
I have not been able to speak to any senior U.S. officials to gauge their reactions, but will update this blog post as I do.
One might think that Israel is itching for this kind of war with Iran to finally take out its nuclear program and involve the United States. That is not my impression. A war of ballistic missiles could do enormous damage to Israel’s infrastructure unless virtually every missile is intercepted.
Could the Iranians be bluffing and intending to land the missiles in open areas in Israel? That is not the impression the Israelis have gleaned from their intelligence.
The Israeli intelligence assessment is that the Iranian people by and large do not want this war with Israel. There has long been discontent in Iran over the billions of dollars the regime has spent supporting Hamas and Hezbollah at a time when Iranian infrastructure is so dilapidated and the country’s economy is on its back. The message the Israelis hope the U.S. can convey to Iran is also that if they start this war and it leads to great destruction and death of Iranian civilians, it could also trigger an uprising against the regime.
In the last year we have seen red lines crossed left and right — from the savage Hamas onslaught on Israel on Oct. 7 to the Israeli pager attack against Hezbollah’s leadership and the assassination of its leader, Hassan Nasrallah. The Iranians feel their deterrence has been eroded and need to respond.
This is Code Red time. Because once you start crossing red lines, they all disappear.
Opinion Columnist
Every time California takes a big step on education, you have to brace yourself: Is this going to lead the country in the right direction, as it did with eliminating racial preferences in college admissions in the ’90s? Or will this send education in the rest of the country over a cliff, as with the whole language fiasco of the ’80s?
California’s decision this week to prohibit legacy admissions to private colleges and universities across the state should give reason to cheer. Legacy admissions are the nebulous but sometimes significant bump given to the children of alumni — that je ne sais quoi that might lead an admissions officer to place only one of two similar candidates onto the admit pile.
Legacies are not only one of the least fair elements of college admissions; they are also the least defensible. Asked in public to justify their continued existence, college presidents will offer vague paeans to community building and tradition. Asked in private, they will admit to what everyone already knows: Legacies are about money. Wealthy alumni often give to their alma mater with the tacit expectation that it will propel their borderline offspring over the finish line to Ivy League admission. It amounts to a significant source of fund-raising.
In other words, legacy admissions stand in opposition to ideals that most selective colleges and universities profess to espouse: Education as a force for social and cultural progress. Equality of opportunity and American egalitarianism. A significant driver of social and economic mobility for first-generation college students.
Some have referred to legacy admissions as “white affirmative action” and believe its elimination could help foster racial, ethnic and economic diversity. Others have noted that legacy admissions now stand to benefit the minority children of the first generations of affirmative action; some have cause to bitterly note that its demise comes at the very moment their kids stand to benefit. Others say that eliminating legacies won’t make much difference.
But if the larger goal is to make college admissions fairer and consistent with higher education’s core principles, legacy preferences must go. In this instance, California is taking the right kind of lead.
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Contributing Opinion Writer
In June of 2015, I was doing research at the Jimmy Carter Presidential Library in Atlanta when I was assigned to cover Donald Trump’s announcement of his candidacy. After he rode down the Trump Tower escalator, I needed some relief and found it by returning to the library. For the next five years, I found that turning the pages of the Carter documents brushed away some of the Trump toxins.
As Carter celebrates his 100th birthday on Tuesday, we shouldn’t think of him as a saint. No politician is humble and self-effacing. But Carter is a global humanitarian icon, a moral exemplar and the ultimate un-Trump.
The two former presidents know each other only slightly. In the early 1980s, Carter traveled to Trump Tower and asked Trump to contribute to the Carter Center. Trump said he respected Carter’s “nerve and guts” in asking for $5 million but gave him nothing. After Trump was elected, Carter, at age 93, hoped Trump would dispatch him to North Korea and offered Trump advice on dealing with China. But Trump predictably began trashing Carter, who later concluded that Trump “was put into office through Russian efforts.”
The contrast could not be starker. Trump is corrupt, chaotic and vulgar; Carter is honest, disciplined and respectful. Trump is a physically big man who acts small; Carter is a physically small man who acts big. Trump appeals to the worst in us; Carter to the best in us.
Trump is a nationalist and an authoritarian. Carter is an internationalist and devoted to the promotion of democracy. Trump has told thousands of well-documented lies; Carter promised in his 1976 campaign not to lie to the American people and — despite plenty of exaggerations — never did.
Trump’s a grifter who is selling gold watches; Carter’s an uplifter who lives in a modest home in Plains, Ga. Trump thinks he’s really smart; Carter actually is. Trump is on wife No. 3 and was found liable for sexual assault; Carter was married for 77 years and lusted only in his heart.
Trump refused to release his tax returns; Carter originated the practice. Trump botched his handling of the Covid pandemic; Carter (with the help of his wife, Rosalynn) convinced most states to require vaccination before children can enter school and has spent his post-presidency eradicating diseases and otherwise advancing global health.
Even the superficial similarities don’t bear scrutiny. Both Trump and Carter used racial code words in the past. But while Trump ditched dog whistles in favor of rank racism, Carter compensated for his absence from the civil rights movement by beginning the effort to bring diversity to the federal government. Both have been criticized for cozying up to dictators. But while Trump does it because the strongmen flatter him and share their tips on autocratic rule, Carter met often with dictators to broker peace, free political prisoners and — in Nicaragua and Haiti — persuade them to do what Trump would not: peacefully transfer power.
Carter recently told his grandson that he wants to stay alive so he can vote for Kamala Harris. Let’s hope his core decency and moral courage can help light our way forward in a direction that would make him proud.
Jonathan Alter is the author of “His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life.”
Contributing Opinion Writer
I’ve spent many contented decades listening to Stevie Nicks sing about gypsies, witches and white-winged doves, her gossamer lyrics and onstage twirls imported from some dream world gloriously estranged from the real one.
So I was jolted, to say the least, by her new song about abortion.
It’s called “The Lighthouse,” it came out Friday and it doesn’t specifically mention the medical procedure. But there’s no mistaking the meaning of lines such as “And all the rights that you had yesterday/Are taken away.” The music video for “The Lighthouse,” in fact, shows abortion rights demonstrators with signs saying “My Body My Choice” and “Keep Abortion Legal.”. And in a written statement released with the song, Nicks explained that she wrote it in response to the repeal of Roe v. Wade, as a rallying cry for women.
“This is an anthem,” she said.
It’s also an emblem — of a furious era in which even unlikely recruits are pulled into the political fray and politics spills into entertainment in ever odder and more frequent ways.
On the musical front, the most obvious example is Taylor Swift, whose romance with Travis Kelce has been cast as some kind of liberal political plot, whose image was used by Donald Trump in a social media post that falsely claimed that she’d endorsed him, and whose backing of Kamala Harris three weeks ago ended many months of speculation about when and how Swift would make her feelings about the 2024 election explicit. That she’d do so was considered an inevitability, although before 2018, Swift floated above politics.
Such floating is harder and harder. In just the past week, music megastars as different as Janet Jackson and Chappell Roan ended up in the middle of stories about the presidential campaign. Roan canceled gigs in New York and Maryland after being savaged online for her comments about finding fault with both the Democratic and Republican Parties. In mid-September, Linda Ronstadt felt compelled to issue a statement denouncing Trump and endorsing Harris after she learned that a Tucson, Ariz., music hall named after her was being used for a Trump rally.
Now comes Nicks, 76, with a new song inspired by … the Supreme Court. Back in 1983, in a single among her biggest hits, she commanded a lover to “stand back.” In “The Lighthouse,” she commands sister soldiers to “stand up.” That’s some journey. For America, too.
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