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*Haley Gets a Trump Matchup, but Now Faces the Trump Machine*
As Nikki Haley celebrated Ron DeSantis’s departure from the Republican primary, Donald J. Trump turned his firepower toward his final rival.
With only about 48 hours left to campaign in the New Hampshire primary, Nikki Haley finally got the two-person race she wanted.
It might not live up to her expectations.
For months, it has been an article of faith among Ms. Haley’s supporters and a coalition of anti-Trump Republicans that the only way to defeat Donald J. Trump was to winnow the field to a one-on-one contest and consolidate support among his opponents.
That wishcasting became reality on Sunday afternoon, when Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida ended his White House bid.
And yet, as the race reached the final day, there was little sign that Mr. DeSantis’s departure would transform Ms. Haley’s chances of winning.
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Ms. Haley quickly learned that the role of last woman standing against Mr. Trump meant serving as the last target for a party racing to line up behind the former president.
Two former rivals in the race — Senator Tim Scott of South Carolina, and Mr. DeSantis — both endorsed the former president. The head of the party’s Senate campaign arm proclaimed Mr. Trump to be the “presumptive nominee.” And Mr. Trump’s campaign strategists vowed that she would be “absolutely embarrassed and demolished” in her home state of South Carolina, the next big prize on the calendar.
Campaigning across New Hampshire on Sunday, Ms. Haley and her supporters celebrated the DeSantis campaign’s demise.
“Can you hear that sound?” she asked more than 1,000 gathered in a high school gymnasium in Exeter, N.H., her best-attended event in the state. “That’s the sound of a two-person race.”
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Thirty-five miles north, in Rochester, N.H., Mr. Trump told his crowd to expect a victory so decisive it would effectively end the primary. “That should wrap it up,” he said.
Image
A view from a balcony in an opera house looking at Donald Trump standing and clapping on the stage. The stage has six American flags behind him.
Mr. Trump during a campaign rally at the Rochester Opera House on Sunday in New Hampshire.Credit…Doug Mills/The New York Times
Ms. Haley’s supporters in the state said they were feeling that pressure. Some worried aloud that she had pulled punches with Mr. Trump for so long that her aggressiveness in the primary’s final weekend would be inadequate to persuade flinty New Hampshire voters that she had enough fight in her to win against the brawling former president.
2024 Election: Live Updates
Updated
Jan. 22, 2024, 9:31 a.m. ET5 minutes ago
5 minutes ago
It’s New Hampshire primary eve. Here’s the latest.
G.O.P. voters said no to Tim Scott. His girlfriend said yes.
‘DeSanctimonious’ no more: Trump says he’ll drop his ex-rival’s nickname.
One Republican activist backing Ms. Haley said he kept his lawn sign in his garage because Mr. Trump’s victory felt inevitable. Another Haley backer, Fergus Cullen, a former chairman of the New Hampshire Republican Party, described his support for the former governor as unenthusiastic. He said he could not bring himself to defend Ms. Haley on social media or lean on friends and family to vote for her.
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“Too little, too late,” Mr. Cullen said about Ms. Haley’s prospects. “She had to inspire and engage unaffiliated voters, and I just haven’t seen her doing what she needs to do to reach that audience and turn them out in the numbers that she needs.”
Most polls during the past week showed Mr. Trump up by a dozen points or more. A Suffolk University/Boston Globe/NBC10 Boston daily tracking poll of New Hampshire voters showed Mr. Trump steadily adding to his lead over Ms. Haley, with a margin of 53 percent to 36 percent on Saturday.
Ms. Haley’s performance on Tuesday is likely to determine the future of her campaign — and possibly her political career. Anything short of a victory or narrow defeat would put pressure on her to drop out rather than face three weeks of punishing ads from the Trump campaign in her home state, where she is already behind.
Her best shot at survival is high turnout from New Hampshire’s independent voters, who make up 40 percent of the state’s electorate, while Republicans account for about 30 percent.
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The New Hampshire secretary of state has been predicting record high turnout on Tuesday, a scenario that both campaigns were claiming would bolster their chances of success.
Ms. Haley’s team believes a turnout surge would mean more participation from independent and moderate voters who are more likely to support her. They looked to Senator John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign as a model. Mr. McCain won the state’s primary by dominating independent voters and battling to a draw among Republicans, according to exit polls.
Ms. Haley, however, appears to be trailing by a large margin among Republicans, according to public polls. In the tracking poll, Ms. Haley led independents, 49 percent to 41, but was nearly 20 points behind Mr. Trump overall largely owing to his wide margin from Republicans, 65 percent to 25 percent.
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Nikki Haley takes a selfie with a supporter amid a crowd of people, most of them women.
Ms. Haley on Sunday with supporters in Derry, N.H.Credit…Ruth Fremson/The New York Times
Ms. Haley’s donors and allies argued Mr. DeSantis’s departure could reel in more donations and help her sharpen the contrast between herself and the former president. Both Ms. Haley and Mr. DeSantis struggled to find ways to criticize Mr. Trump without turning off Republicans who may be open to alternatives, but are still fond of him.
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But some longtime political operatives in the state suggested there might not be enough anti-Trump Republicans and moderate independents to make the numbers work.
“Haley has consolidated the non-Trump vote, but overtaking him is the Rubik’s Cube no one has been able to figure out yet,” said Matt Mowers, a former Republican House candidate from New Hampshire who was endorsed by both Mr. Trump and Ms. Haley.
As she delivered her stump speech on Saturday with new urgency, Ms. Haley’s attacks on Mr. Trump were sometimes softened by including Mr. Biden in the critique.
“What are Joe Biden and Donald Trump both talking about?” Ms. Haley asked, at her rally in Exeter. “The investigations that they are in, the distractions they have, the people they’re mad at, their hurt feelings, and they have not shown us one ounce of vision for the future — not one.”
Jane Freeman, 55, a retired flight attendant and undeclared voter in Exeter, scrunched her forehead and let out a sigh when asked about Mr. DeSantis’s endorsement of Mr. Trump.
“Trump is a tricky thing,” said Ms. Freeman, who voted for the former president in 2016 and in 2020 but now supports Ms. Haley. “I really wish he would have waited,” she said of Mr. DeSantis. Still, she said Ms. Haley had the right momentum and was continuing to win voters. “I am nervous, but truly, truly hopeful,” she said.
*Last Exit Before Trump: New Hampshire*
Tuesday’s primary election will probably decide whether there will be a race at all.
Let’s be blunt about the stakes of the New Hampshire primary on Tuesday.
If Donald J. Trump wins decisively, as the polls suggest, he will be on track to win the Republican nomination without a serious contest. The race will be all but over.
The backdrop is simple: Mr. Trump holds a dominant, 50-plus-point lead in the polls with just seven weeks to go until the heart of the primary season, when the preponderance of delegates will be awarded. His position has only improved since Iowa, with national polls now routinely showing him with over 70 percent of the vote.
Even skeptical Republican officials are consolidating behind the party’s front-runner. Ron DeSantis’s decision to suspend his campaign and endorse Mr. Trump is only the latest example.
The polling by state isn’t much better for Nikki Haley, the only remaining opponent for Mr. Trump. He leads Ms. Haley by at least 30 points in all of the states after New Hampshire until Super Tuesday. So without a monumental shift in the race, he will secure the nomination in short order.
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New Hampshire is the only state where we can entertain — however unlikely — the possibility that the race could be shaken up by enough to put additional states into play.
Why is New Hampshire the only real opportunity?
It’s the only state where the polls are even close. On average, Ms. Haley trails Mr. Trump by about 15 points in New Hampshire polls, 49 percent to 34 percent. That’s a comfortable lead for Mr. Trump, but there have occasionally been polls showing a single-digit race. It’s close enough to contemplate a Trump loss.
There is no other state where Mr. Trump leads the latest (often outdated) polls by less than 30 points. Not even Ms. Haley’s home state, South Carolina, appears competitive.
2024 Election: Live Updates
Updated
Jan. 22, 2024, 9:31 a.m. ET6 minutes ago
6 minutes ago
It’s New Hampshire primary eve. Here’s the latest.
G.O.P. voters said no to Tim Scott. His girlfriend said yes.
‘DeSanctimonious’ no more: Trump says he’ll drop his ex-rival’s nickname.
Trump’s polling lead over Haley
New Hampshire
15 pct. points
South Carolina
30
Wisconsin
34
Michigan
41
Ohio
48
North Carolina
51
Florida
52
California
52
Texas
53
Nevada
57
Tennessee
62
In states with three or more polls in the last three months.
Last Exit Before Trump: New Hampshire
New Hampshire is about as good as it gets for Haley. Her appeal is almost exclusively confined to moderate and college-educated voters, and New Hampshire is an excellent state for a moderate Republican. The state ranks eighth in four-year college attainment, and independent voters are allowed to participate in the primary. It has a moderate Republican governor who has endorsed Ms. Haley, not Mr. Trump. And in presidential primaries the state usually backs moderate candidates — think John McCain and Mitt Romney. While Mr. Trump won with 35 percent in 2016, the moderate-establishment candidates combined to amass 49 percent of the vote — more than in any other primary state in 2016 except for Vermont and Ohio, which was John Kasich’s home state.
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If she can’t win in New Hampshire, there is no reason to think she can win elsewhere.
Support for moderate or establishment
candidates in 2016 Republican primaries
52%
Vermont
49
New Hampshire
42
Virginia
38
South Carolina
37
Massachusetts
35
Michigan
30
Oklahoma
Arkansas
29
Tennessee
28
Alabama
24
Texas
23
North Carolina
21
California*
11
*The 2016 California primary was held after Donald Trump was the presumptive nominee; moderate-establishment candidates include Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, Chris Christie and Carly Fiorina. The states shown here are those with 2024 contests held on Super Tuesday or earlier.
It’s the only state that can create the perception of a newly competitive race. I’m not 100 percent sure whether New Hampshire is actually the No. 1 opportunity for a Haley victory. Maybe Vermont is a better one — though a recent poll says no — or the District of Columbia. What I’m sure about, however, is that none of those other chances could be treated as a “game changer” that could rekindle a tiny glimmer of hope for the potential opposition to Mr. Trump.
The first-in-the-nation New Hampshire primary receives tremendous media coverage, and it would only be amplified if Ms. Haley posted an upset victory. It’s early enough in the primary season that the state scoreboard would read “Trump 1, Haley 1” at the end of the night. In March, a win in a state like Vermont will not receive anywhere near as much media coverage. By then, a Haley win would also be drowned out by other Trump victories, perhaps even on the same night — or, if not, just a few days later with another primary result. New Hampshire, in contrast, will set the conversation for a month. There isn’t another election with both Ms. Haley and Mr. Trump on the ballot until South Carolina, on Feb. 24.
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Beyond New Hampshire
It’s important to emphasize that Mr. Trump would be an overwhelming favorite to win the nomination even if he lost New Hampshire. Ms. Haley is a classic factional candidate with narrow appeal to moderate and highly educated voters. It’s technically possible that New Hampshire will offer her an opportunity to broaden her appeal. But it’s not remotely likely that a conservative, populist, working-class party will swerve 50 points against a well-known former president toward the moderate, establishment candidate of highly educated voters over the next 45 days. Even if Ms. Haley won New Hampshire, she might still be the underdog in every other state.
And conversely, the race might remain contested in some sense, even if Mr. Trump wins New Hampshire decisively. Ms. Haley would presumably go on to South Carolina, where Mr. Trump leads by 30 points. But without New Hampshire to put the political wind at her back, there’s no reason to think she would be able to overcome this kind of staggering deficit. Instead, New Hampshire could put Mr. Trump on track for a 50-state sweep.
With a Trump win on Tuesday, the race would begin to have some of the characteristics of the Democratic primary. Yes, the front-runner faces a challenger. But no, it would not be realistic to believe the front-runner could be defeated by the usual means of campaigning on the trail and winning primary elections — with the obligatory caveat that Mr. Trump’s legal challenges might eventually offer a separate and novel way for him to lose down the line.
*Here Is One Way to Steal the Presidential Election*
What happens when you stress-test America’s system for electing a president? How well does it hold up?
After the assault on the nation’s Capitol three years ago, we worked through every strategy we could imagine for subverting the popular will by manipulating the law. What we found surprised us. We determined that the most commonly discussed strategies — such as a state legislature picking a new slate of electors to the Electoral College — wouldn’t work because of impediments built into the Constitution. We also concluded that the most blatantly extreme strategies, such as a state canceling its election and selecting its electors directly, are politically unlikely.
The scenario we see as the most alarming was made possible by the Supreme Court itself. In a 2020 decision, the court held, in our reading, that state legislatures have the power to direct electors on how to cast their electoral votes. And this opens the door to what we think is the most dangerous strategy: that a legislature would pass a law that directs electors to vote for the candidate the legislature picks.
The question now is whether there is any way to close that loophole before a stolen election slides through.
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The cases that led to the decision involved electors in 2016 who had voted contrary to their pledge. Recognizing that Hillary Clinton, the winner of the popular vote, would not be elected president, these electors worked to rally enough Republican and Democratic electors to vote for a Republican candidate other than Donald Trump, thus throwing the election into the House of Representatives.
Three electors from the state of Washington cast their votes for Colin Powell, the former secretary of State, rather than for Mrs. Clinton, who won the popular vote there. Mrs. Clinton also won the popular vote in Colorado, where one elector attempted to vote for John Kasich, the former Ohio governor who had run for the Republican presidential nomination that year. Those electors were punished by their states with fines and removal as electors. They challenged that punishment in the Supreme Court. (One of us, Mr. Lessig, represented the Washington and Colorado electors.)
The court ruled in favor of the states. The electors, the Supreme Court decided, had no constitutional right to resist the laws in a state that directed how they must vote. The court held that the states could thus enforce those laws.
The danger now is that this decision has created an obvious strategy for a state legislature seeking to ensure the election of its preferred candidate, regardless of how the people voted. The state legislature would pass a law that requires electors to vote as the legislature directs. The default would be that electors vote as the people voted. But the law would reserve to the legislature the power to direct electors to vote differently if it so chooses.
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Now imagine the election results in a state are close. Charges of fraud cloud a recount. Leaders in the state legislature challenge the presumptive result. In response to those challenges, the legislature votes to direct their electors to cast their ballots for the candidate who presumptively lost but whom the legislature prefers. Any elector voting contrary to the legislature’s rule would be removed and replaced with an elector who complied.
This is a critical innovation in the science of stealing a presidential election. There are plenty of mechanisms to ensure that the election selects the right slate of electors — recounts, contest proceedings and so on. But there are no protections against a state legislature simply ordering whichever electors are appointed to vote for the candidate that the legislature, and not the people of the state, choose.
The Supreme Court surely did not intend this result. Justice Elena Kagan’s opinion for the court ends with the promise that “here, we the people rule.” But the mechanism the court upheld means that it is actually the state legislatures that rule.
There’s little that can be done to eliminate this risk before the November election. Conceivably, a legislature could pass a law today openly asserting its power to direct how electors may vote, regardless of how the people vote. The justices then could act quickly to strike down that law, though the Supreme Court rarely acts to avoid such risks in advance. Absent that turn of events, in the rush between an election and the day when electors actually cast their votes, there may well be no time for the court to close the loophole that its opinion opened.
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The more effective strategy to avoid this result would be for political leaders to reaffirm the principle that should guide every policy adopted by the states: that the electoral results in a state should track the will of the people, not the partisans who command a majority in the legislature.
If partisans on both sides embrace that principle in good faith, we will have confidence in the results of the next election. But if they reject it, then this is just the most potent of a handful of strategies that might be deployed to flip the result.
Rather than waiting until after the next election to fix this flaw, Congress and legislatures should act now to intervene. We are confident of only this: It is a rocky road ahead.
*The Point Conversations and insights about the moment.*
Every Monday morning on The Point, we’ll kick off the week with a tip sheet on the latest in the presidential campaign.
As New Hampshire gets ready to vote tomorrow for a Republican presidential nominee, there are two clear takeaways for me after months of campaigning, debates, strategy and polling: Donald Trump’s popularity in the Republican Party is deeper and broader than his critics wish it to be, and Nikki Haley ran the wrong kind of race in New Hampshire.
As a result, I think Trump wins by double digits over Haley in Tuesday’s primary, leaving her with a modest second-place finish (anything 10 points or more down is modest) and a big choice to make about whether to campaign for another four-and-a-half weeks until the primary in her home state of South Carolina.
Trump could reach 55 percent of the vote or more tomorrow, thanks in part to Ron DeSantis dropping out on Sunday. DeSantis was polling weakly here, but still, about 60 percent of his voters name Trump as their second choice in the University of New Hampshire’s final poll of the race. One reason for that is Trump’s inevitability. His presidency is appreciated by a very large number of Republicans who liked both his own-the-libs style and the state of the economy, the border, and broadly world affairs under him.
At Trump’s campaign event Sunday night in the heavily blue-collar city of Rochester, the crowd’s love affair with the former president was much in evidence. People were laughing, applauding or nodding along at a rate of every other sentence, with the biggest cheers coming from his “drill baby drill” stock line, his promises to terminate D.E.I. programs and secure the border, and his attacks on Haley, President Biden, Hunter Biden and “beautiful, beautiful Hillary” Clinton.
But the New Hampshire electorate is different than Iowa’s — candidates regularly win one state and lose the other by a lot — and Haley seemed positioned for months to do well here.
Many voters here like fighters, mavericks and disrupters who show a measure of heart or vulnerability and talk frankly about the country’s problems and their opponents. Haley depended a lot on endorsements from the establishment and on the idea that campaign dynamics would somehow work in her favor, including Chris Christie dropping out or New Hampshire becoming a two-person race.
But she didn’t cast herself as an underdog, as a gritty fighter against the kingpin Trump, and she never challenged him in the kind of blunt or surprising ways that might have generated momentum for her candidacy. She often came across as a familiar, scripted establishment figure in a state that wants more from its candidates. Where Haley goes from here is becoming the big question of the week.
David Firestone
Jan. 21, 2024, 4:41 p.m. ETJan. 21, 2024
Jan. 21, 2024
David FirestoneDeputy Editor, the Editorial Board
Why DeSantis Couldn’t Take on Trump
The people who actually know Gov. Ron DeSantis had no doubt that this day would come. His campaign never took flight, forcing the early withdrawal that DeSantis announced Sunday afternoon. And that’s because of who the guy is, or specifically, what he isn’t: appealing.
“I’d rather have teeth pulled without anesthetic than be on a boat with Ron DeSantis,” Mac Stipanovich, a Republican lobbyist and strategist in Florida, told Mark Leibovich of The Atlantic in November 2022. As my colleague Nicholas Nehamas reported in June, “even supporters acknowledge that he is not a natural orator, and on the stump he sometimes calls himself an ‘energetic executive’ in a neutral monotone.”
You can occasionally get away with being boring or repellent as a governor, but it’s much harder to do in a presidential campaign. And that’s especially true this year, when DeSantis was running against a man who has bewitched an entire political party with smooth lies and impossible promises.
DeSantis ran an incompetent campaign, as NBC News documented today, but his big problem was that he thought he could run on a platform of substance, if you can call his anti-woke crusade that. For months he reminded voters that he had taken on Disney with his “don’t say gay” bill, kept books featuring L.G.B.T.Q. identity out of schools and fought against efforts to increase diversity in colleges and government. He falsely claimed his anti-vaccine efforts worked.
But polls repeatedly showed that almost no voters thought wokeness and transgender issues were high on the list of the nation’s top problems. As Lakshya Jain, who helps lead the website Split Ticket, told me in July, DeSantis misinterpreted what Florida voters were saying when they re-elected him in 2022 largely because of a good economy and a bad opponent.
Donald Trump is probably going to win the Republican nomination because he entertains his base with fantasies of strength and power, the essence of his cult of personality. To compete with him, it’s necessary to have a personality of your own. DeSantis doesn’t, and will soon disappear into the Florida swamps.
*Why Iran Doesn’t Want a War*
The war in Gaza has now gone where many feared it would, expanding into conflict in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and the Red Sea. With America’s repeated strikes against the Houthis in Yemen this month, fears of a larger regional conflagration are steadily growing.
Present in each of those arenas is Iran — and the question of whether Tehran and its powerful military will enter a wider war.
For years, Iran has provided funding, arms or training to Hamas and Hezbollah, which are fighting Israel, and to the Houthis, who have been attacking ships in the Red Sea. Iran has also launched its own strikes in recent days in retaliation for a deadly bombing earlier this month, claiming to target Israeli spy headquarters in Iraq and the Islamic State in Syria. It has also exchanged strikes with Pakistan across their shared border.
While Iran is clearly asserting its military strength amid the widening regional turmoil, that doesn’t mean its leaders want to be drawn into a wider war. They have said as much publicly, and perhaps more important, they have meticulously avoided taking direct military action against either Israel or the United States. The regime appears to be content for now to lean into its longtime strategy of proxy warfare: The groups they back are fighting Iran’s foes and so far, neither Israel nor the United States has signaled any interest in retaliating directly.
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At the heart of Iran’s aversion to a major conflict are the domestic issues that have been preoccupying the regime. The elderly supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, is seeking to secure his legacy — by overcoming political headwinds to install a like-minded successor, pursuing a nuclear weapon and ensuring the survival of the regime as an Islamist paladin dominating the Middle East — and that means not getting dragged into a wider war.
Mr. Khamenei’s government has been trying to keep his political opposition in check since 2022, when the Islamic Republic faced perhaps its most serious uprising since the revolution. The death of Mahsa Amini in the custody of the morality police tapped into widespread frustration with the country’s leaders and triggered a national movement explicitly intent on toppling the theocracy. Using brutal methods, the mullahs’ security forces regained the streets and schools, well aware that even unorganized protests can become a threat to the regime. Iran is also facing an economic crisis because of corruption, chronic fiscal mismanagement and sanctions imposed because of its nuclear infractions.
Even under less fraught circumstances, succession would be a delicate task in Iran. The only other time the Islamic Republic has had to choose a new supreme leader since its founding in 1979 was in 1989, when Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the father of the revolution, died. At the time, Mr. Khamenei worried that unless the regime got the process right, its Western and domestic enemies would use the vacuum at the top to overthrow the young theocracy.
Today, Iran’s Assembly of Experts, a body of 88 elderly clerics, is constitutionally empowered to select the next supreme leader. Much about that process is veiled in secrecy, but recent reports in Iranian media indicate that a three-man commission that includes President Ebrahim Raisi and the Assembly members Ayatollah Ahmad Khatami and Ayatollah Rahim Tavakol is vetting candidates under Mr. Khamenei’s supervision. While the process may be intended to look like an open search in the fractured political environment, it is almost certainly just staging for the installation of another revolutionary conservative into the job.
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To Mr. Khamenei, a fellow religious hard-liner would be the only candidate fit to continue Iran’s quest for regional dominance, or to lock in another key part of his legacy: the pursuit of a nuclear weapon. As the world has been focused on wars in Ukraine and Gaza, Tehran has been inching closer to the bomb — enriching uranium at higher levels, constructing more advanced centrifuges and improving the range and payload of ballistic missiles. At a time when the bomb seems tantalizingly close, Mr. Khamenei is unlikely to jeopardize that progress by conduct that might invite a strike on those facilities.
As he oversees the succession search and Iran’s nuclear ambitions, Mr. Khamenei appears to be content, for now, to let the Arab militias across the Middle East do what Tehran has been paying and training them to do. Iran’s so-called “axis of resistance,” which includes Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houthis, is at the core of the Islamic Republic’s grand strategy against Israel, the United States and Sunni Arab leaders, allowing the regime to strike out at its adversaries without using its own forces or endangering its territory. The various militias and terrorist groups that Tehran nurtures have allowed it to indirectly evict America from Iraq, sustain the Assad family in Syria and, on Oct. 7, help inflict a deeply traumatizing attack on the Jewish state.
As its proxy fighters inflame Israel’s northern front through sporadic Hezbollah missile strikes, instigate attacks on U.S. bases in Iraq and impede maritime shipping in the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden, Iran is likely hoping to pressure the international community to restrain Israel. And the imperative of not expanding the Israel-Gaza war, which has thus far guided American and Israeli policy, means that neither is likely to retaliate against the Islamic Republic — only against its proxies.
Of course, Hamas, which Israel has vowed to eliminate, is valuable to Iran. The regime has invested time and money into the group, and unlike most Islamic Republic proxies and allies, Hamas is Sunni, which helps the Shiite theocracy transcend sectarianism in the region. Liberating Palestinians, whom Iranian revolutionaries have been fond of since the Palestine Liberation Organization aided them against the Shah in 1979, is also at the core of the clerical regime’s anti-imperialist, Islamist mission.
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But for Mr. Khamenei, the home front will always prevail over problems in the neighborhood. In the end, in the event Israel were to succeed in its goal of eliminating Hamas, the clerical state would most likely concede to the group’s demise, however grudgingly.
Of course, the more conflict Iran engages in — directly or indirectly — also increases the chance that a rogue or poorly judged strike could send the violence spinning out of control — in a direction Iran does not favor. History is riddled with miscalculations, and there is a real possibility that Iran could find itself pulled into the larger conflict that it has sought to avoid.
But Iran’s supreme leader is the longest-serving ruler in the Middle East precisely because of his uncanny ability to blend militancy with caution. He understands the weaknesses and strengths of his homeland when he seeks to advance the Islamic revolution beyond its borders.
In other words, Mr. Khamenei knows his limits — and he knows the legacy he needs to secure for the revolution to survive his passing.
*Only Voters Can Truly Disqualify Trump*
Intense debate has accompanied the decision by the Supreme Court to review the decision by Colorado’s highest court to bar Donald Trump from the state’s primary ballots based on Section 3 of the 14th Amendment — about the precise meaning of the word “insurrection,” the extent of Mr. Trump’s culpability for the events of Jan. 6 and other legal issues.
I’m not going to predict how the Supreme Court will rule, or whether its ruling will be persuasive to those with a different view of the law. But there’s a critical philosophical question that lies beneath the legal questions in this case. In a representative democracy, the people are sovereign, and they express their sovereignty through representatives of their choice. If the courts presume to pre-emptively reject the people’s choice, then who is truly sovereign?
The question of sovereignty was central to the purpose of the 14th Amendment in the first place. The Civil War — unquestionably an armed insurrection — was fought because of slavery. That was the reason for the war.
But its justification was a dispute over sovereignty, whether it resided primarily with the people of the individual states or with the people of the United States, who had established the Constitution.
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The answer was settled on the battlefield, but it was ratified through the 14th Amendment, which defined who is a citizen of the United States and established that the “privileges or immunities” of same supersede any state laws that might abridge them. From now on, there would be no ambiguity: Under the Constitution, the people of the United States are sovereign, and this sovereignty supersedes the sovereignty of the people of the individual states whenever the privileges and immunities of the former are in conflict with the will of the latter.
Section 3 of that amendment was similarly enacted in order to secure federal supremacy. Rebel officers might well have retained strong popular support in the former Confederate states, but Section 3 prevented the rebellion from being continued by electoral means. The people of South Carolina might prefer to be represented by former rebels, but the people of the United States, whose sovereignty trumps South Carolina’s, forbid it.
Whose sovereignty, though, trumps the people as a whole?
Donald Trump is the overwhelming favorite to win the Republican nomination for president and has a close to even-odds chance of winning the general election. That would seem to have no bearing on his eligibility to run. If a majority of the country wanted Barack Obama or Arnold Schwarzenegger or Selena Gomez to be president, it would be out of luck. The Constitution renders them ineligible: Mr. Obama has already been elected twice, Mr. Schwarzenegger was not born a U.S. citizen and Ms. Gomez is under 35 years old.
For that very reason, though, those individuals aren’t likely to run — and if they did try to run, their ineligibility would be manifest, recognized by everyone. Similarly, former Confederate officers and officials, by serving in the Confederacy, had explicitly declared themselves insurrectionists. Congress passed a broad amnesty in 1872 to lift the penalties associated with the involvement of most in insurrection, including that imposed by Section 3 of the 14th Amendment; some individuals not covered by the amnesty petitioned successfully for the restoration of their civil rights, and in other cases the prohibition was simply not enforced. But the essential fact of participation in the insurrection was not in dispute.
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The situation with Mr. Trump could not be more different. An overwhelming majority of his party, and apparently about half of the country as a whole, considers him to be eligible to be president again. Moreover, these voters believe this even though, as President Biden said recently, “we saw with our own eyes” what happened on Jan. 6.
I count myself among those who consider Mr. Trump to be manifestly unfit to serve in any office ever again because of his actions on that day, even if he is not held criminally liable. But being unfit is not the same thing as being ineligible. What makes the Colorado Supreme Court — or any court — believe that it has a privileged understanding of those events that is beyond the capacity of the public to discern?
Perhaps the public is misinformed, or refuses to let itself be accurately informed, even at this late date, about what happened. The need for expertise and deliberation is why we have a representative democracy; the people do not act directly to make laws, but act through their representatives.
It’s notable in that regard, then, that impeachment — the remedy the Constitution provides for a president who violates his oath of office — does not involve the courts but the people, acting through their representatives. And the court of the people already had the opportunity to weigh in on Mr. Trump’s culpability for the events of Jan. 6. He was impeached an unprecedented second time by the House of Representatives for his actions on that day. But in the trial that followed in the Senate, Mr. Trump was acquitted.
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That does not mean he is innocent. But it does mean that the Colorado Supreme Court has, in effect, declared that it outranks the Senate, and can overrule that body’s decision.
Some Republican senators, including the minority leader, Mitch McConnell, effectively asked the courts to do just that during the impeachment debate. Arguing that they had no authority to try a president whose term had ended, they refused to consider the facts of the case. But this was not a principled view. The Senate had already voted separately on the question of jurisdiction, and a majority determined that they did have the ability to try a president whose term had ended. Once that question was settled by the Senate itself, senators who thought Mr. Trump was guilty, including those who voted the other way on the jurisdictional question, could vote their consciences on the matter at trial.
Since the senators still voted to acquit, it must be because they did not think he was guilty, or did not deserve punishment for his guilt. Or, reflecting gross cowardice, perhaps they did not want the responsibility for convicting him, and preferred the courts to shoulder that responsibility instead.
That’s precisely what the Colorado Supreme Court has decided to do. But in so doing, it has usurped the proper prerogative of the people. It is saying, in so many words, that the people’s representatives got it wrong in the impeachment trial, and the people themselves are incapable of seeing what is in front of their eyes. Therefore the court must save the people from the possibility of making a catastrophically wrong decision.
El asalto al Tribunal y el pleito de los claudistas
Salvador García Soto
Salvador García Soto
Salvador García Soto
SALVADOR GARCÍA SOTO
| 22/01/2024 |
04:06 |
Actualizada
04:06
El asalto al Tribunal y el pleito de los claudistas
Salvador García Soto
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La guerra de egos en la campaña presidencial de Claudia Sheinbaum, en donde hay una feroz competencia por ver quién le garantiza a la exjefa de Gobierno la mejor asesoría jurídica y se coloca la estrellita de ser el operador que le saque a la candidata de Morena la declaratoria de validez de la elección y su declaración de “presidenta electa”, fue lo que realmente provocó la reciente explosión en el Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación y el cambio en la Presidencia de la máxima autoridad que calificará la próxima elección presidencial y declarará ganadora o ganador de la contienda.
El asalto de los claudistas al Tribunal Electoral comenzó a principios de diciembre pasado con la formación de un nuevo “bloque” mayoritario de tres ministros que tomaron el control de la Sala Superior y solicitaron la renuncia de Reyes Rodríguez Mondragón, argumentando “pérdida de confianza” por presuntas irregularidades administrativas y por el manejo discrecional del presupuesto del órgano judicial. Las inconformidades que sí existían entre los magistrados por las políticas “de austeridad” implementados por Reyes y las diferencias particulares entre el magistrado Felipe de la Mata y el exmagistrado presidente, fueron el caldo de cultivo para que tres colaboradores y cercanos a Claudia Sheinbaum diseñaran y planearan la toma de la máxima autoridad electoral en México.
Arturo Zaldívar, exministro de la Corte venido a porrista del oficialismo; Salvador Nava Gomar, exmagistrado del Trife y asesor jurídico de Sheinbaum, y la actual ministra de la Corte, Yasmín Esquivel Mossa, fueron los tres claudistas que agitaron las aguas del tribunal y azuzaron el golpe de la nueva mayoría que obligó a renunciar a Reyes Rodríguez. Para ello aprovecharon muy bien el debilitamiento del Tribunal Electoral provocado por la estrategia del presidente López Obrador de ordenarle al Senado que no nombrara al magistrado faltante, que debía ocupar el espacio que dejó vacante José Luis Vargas, quien concluyó su magistratura desde el 1 de noviembre de 2023.
Un Tribunal de 5 magistrados, en lugar de 7, le convenía mucho más a la 4T porque para formar una mayoría que controlara a la Sala Superior en materia electoral solo se necesitan 3 magistrados en lugar de 4 o 5. Por eso, con la misma estrategia perversa que le aplicaron al Inai, la mayoría de Morena en el Senado le dio largas al nombramiento de las dos magistraturas pendientes y con ello abrió la puerta para que se concretara el asalto al Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación, que solo necesitó de convencer a tres magistrados de que formaran la nueva mayoría y depusieran al anterior presidente Reyes Rodríguez, a quien no le tenían confianza por sus vínculos con el panismo, para colocar en el cargo a alguien más fácil de controlar para el oficialismo de Morena.
El ascenso de la magistrada Mónica Soto, como nueva presidenta del tribunal que calificará las elecciones fue la culminación de esa estrategia y detrás de ella también hubo una feroz competencia entre los tres claudistas mencionados, Zaldívar, Nava y Esquivel, quienes se disputan no sólo la influencia como juristas con la candidata morenista, sino también el mérito de ser quien le venda a Sheinbaum que gracias a sus buenos oficios y a su operación política dentro del Tribunal, se logre sacarle su declaración de presidenta electa, y por ende la banda presidencial.
Desde el cuartel de campaña Arturo Zaldívar operó con el magistrado Felipe Fuentes, con quien tiene una relación dentro del Poder Judicial. Fuentes conoce como pocos el manejo interno del Tribunal y ya había operado internamente en el desconocimiento y las renuncias de dos expresidentes del Tribunal: Janine Otálora en enero de 2019, y José Luis Vargas, en agosto de 2021. En ambas remociones, el magistrado jugó un papel principal, tanto en el de Janine, cuando fue nombrado presidente interino por casi 11 meses, como en el de José Luis Vargas, a quien también sustituyó en agosto de 2021 para dar paso luego a la presidencia de Reyes Rodríguez, de quien también fue parte del bloque que pidió su salida.
El otro operador claudista que tuvo injerencia en el cambio de presidenta del Tribunal fue Salvador Nava Gomar, quien tiene una relación cercana con Felipe de la Mata Pizaña, actual magistrado de ese órgano y quien trabajó con Nava en la época que este fue magistrado electoral de 2006 a 2016. De la Mata fue otro de los protagonistas en la formación del minibloque mayoritario que solicitó la renuncia de Reyes Rodríguez. Curiosamente Reyes y Felipe de la Mata fueron muy cercanos y pertenecieron al mismo bloque durante varios años, junto con Janine Otálora, pero en los últimos meses tuvieron varios choques y diferencias que los llevaron hasta el rompimiento, por una colaboradora cercana de De la Mata que lo acusó de “proposiciones indebidas” y dejó su oficina para irse a trabajar con Reyes Mondragón.
Y la tercera operadora que metió las manos al Tribunal Electoral, también en busca de quedar bien con Sheinbaum, fue la ministra Yasmín Esquivel. Su relación cercana con la magistrada Mónica Soto Fregoso data de hace décadas y tiene que ver con la carrera de ambas en tribunales judiciales y administrativos. Es tan cercana esa relación que actualmente hay familiares de la magistrada Soto que trabajan en la Suprema Corte y en concreto en la ponencia de la ministra Esquivel.
Entre Zaldívar y Salvador Nava hay fuertes diferencias. A partir de que el expresidente de la Corte dejó tiradas la toga y el birrete para mostrarse finalmente como el simpatizante que siempre fue de la 4T, creyó que sería el principal asesor de Sheinbaum en materia jurídica y de justicia. Pero cuando el ministro renegado llegó a la campaña, Nava Gomar ya tenía más de un año asesorando a la candidata y elaborando sus denuncias y litigios en materia electoral y judicial, lo que no le gustó a don Arturo y comenzó un choque de egos y una competencia por encabezar el equipo jurídico de la candidata.
A ese duelo de dos se sumó la ministra Yasmín Esquivel, quien también busca quedar bien con su amiga Claudia Sheinbaum y ganarse su confianza en materia judicial y jurídica. Hoy en manos de esos tres abogados claudistas (dos con el título y una bajo investigación por plagio) está el control del Tribunal Electoral del Poder Judicial de la Federación. A cual más quiere agradar y complacer a la candidata y venderle en un futuro todavía hipotético, que fueron ellos dos o ella, los que le operaron el reconocimiento a su triunfo en el Tribunal y por ende los que le garantizaron, también eventualmente, que obtuviera la banda presidencial.
NOTAS INDISCRETAS… En medio de la guerra política que se vive en Tamaulipas, ayer el secretario del Ayuntamiento de Reynosa, Antonio Joaquín De León Villarreal, dio a conocer un documento en donde el Notario Púbico número 305 de esta ciudad, Francisco Garza Treviño, niega la validez del poder notarial presentado por el exgobernador Francisco Javier García Cabeza de Vaca para tramitar una carta de residencia en ese municipio. Según acusa el funcionario municipal, el notario Garza Treviño aseguró que es falso el Poder General con el que compareció Claudia Margarita Rodríguez Martínez a solicitar la constancia de residencia en nombre y representación de Cabeza de Vaca y agregó que dicho poder “por ser de actos de dominio, para su validez, debe de estar inscrito en el Registro Nacional de Poderes (RENAP) y no lo está”. Y de acuerdo con documentos presentados, la firma que aparece en el poder notarial, que desconoce el Notario 305 de Reynosa, habría sido falsificada, porque según el notario Garza Treviño el exgobernador Cabeza de Vaca no estuvo en su notaría a las 13:00 horas del día 23 de septiembre del año 2022 para otorgar un poder en favor de un tercero como se asegura en el documento y además dijo desconocer “como puesta de mi puño y letra, la firma que obra en dicho poder, ni el sello que aparece en el documento”. El tema es delicado no sólo por las acusaciones de falsificación que hace el notario, sino porque esa constancia de residencia, que se tramitó con un poder notarial presuntamente falso, es un requisito legal para que Francisco García Cabeza de Vaca pueda ser postulado como candidato a diputado federal por el Partido Acción Nacional, ya sea por la vía de mayoría o incluso por la vía plurinominal. Y si no cumple con ese requisito, a Cabeza se le podría cerrar la puerta de cualquier candidatura ya sea a una diputación o de una senaduría por Acción Nacional en el actual proceso electoral en curso. Eso sin contar que el haber presentado un documento apócrifo podría traer problemas para el exgobernador, ya que el artículo 250 del Código Penal para el Estado de Tamaulipas, contempla el delito de Falsificación de Documentos Públicos o Privados y, el artículo 251, la forma en que se castigará dicho delito, mencionando que, si se trata de un documento privado, la sanción a imponer será de 6 meses a 5 años de prisión y multas de 100 a 200 veces el valor diario de la Unidad de Medida y Actualización. Habrá que esperar la respuesta de Cabeza de Vaca a las graves acusaciones de falsificación que le hace el notario, pero por lo pronto, queda claro que alguien no quiere el regreso del exgobernador a la política nacional. ¿Será por miedo o por pura precaución?… Hablando de miedos, el que de plano no tiene miedo de violar la ley electoral o de plano la viola conscientemente es el gobernador de San Luis Potosí, Ricardo Gallardo Carmona. Y es que ayer domingo, en pleno acto oficial con el presidente López Obrador en su estado, y siguiendo el ejemplo del mandatario que predica que “no me vengan con que la ley es la ley”, ayer el gobernador Verde, aliado de Morena, gritó a voz de cuello y en presencia del inquilino de Palacio: “Ahora, las y los potosinos le decimos, señor presidente, que estamos con usted, y con la consolidación de la Cuarta Transformación que encabezará Claudia Sheinbaum Pardo en este año 2024. Ya confirmamos en San Luis Potosí, la alianza entre el Partido Verde, Morena y el Partido del Trabajo, para arrasar en el próximo proceso electoral”, dijo con total descaro el mandatario potosino. A ese paso, y si no hay sanciones ejemplares del INE, que con la señora Guadalupe Taddei se ha vuelto lerdo y complaciente con las violaciones legales, la contienda presidencial y federal terminará siendo una disputa sin ley o bajo la ley de la selva en el que gana el más fuerte. Y hasta ahora ese es el partido gobernante. Cómo se están pareciendo los morenistas al más viejo y rancio PRI… Escalera Doble mandan los dados para iniciar la semana. Muy buena señal.
*ATENTAMENTE*
*MAESTRO FEDERICO LA MONT*
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