Good morning. The Trump administration is ramping up pressure on Cuba. And we’re learning more about the $1.8 billion fund. We have more below, including a wonderful obituary for Barney Frank. But before we get to it, I’d like to introduce Adam Kushner, my editor. He’s going to tell you about Democrats fighting with Democrats and Republicans fighting with Republicans.
Beyond beliefHere’s a puzzle: Both political parties seem monolithic, and they gather more and more fervent support from their voters every year. Yet inside each is turmoil. You wouldn’t expect that, just looking at the way Americans have sorted themselves into tribes with shrinking overlap. If you’re older, married, white, Christian or rural, you’re probably a Republican, the numbers show. If you’re college educated, urban, young, female or unmarried, you’re probably a Democrat. Animosity for people on the other team has intensified over the years. But the two cauldrons are simmering beneath their lids. Even as President Trump chases MAGA-skeptical Republicans from elected office, more than a third of G.O.P. voters want a new direction for their party, according to a new Times/Siena survey. At the same time, Democrats look strong in midterm election polls — even as their voters are miserable about the state of their party. Let’s look at what’s happening on each side. The rightMost Republicans still hold Trump as their lodestar. Only 37 percent of American voters approve of his performance, but three-quarters of Republicans and right-leaning independents do. Here is one measure of Trump’s power: Over the last decade, rank-and-file Republicans realigned to adopt his views. They made peace with tariffs, came to distrust national security and intelligence agencies, stopped worrying about the deficit and turned against foreign wars. But the poll showed that there are limits to fealty, as my colleagues wrote this week. Look at attitudes toward the Iran war, which haven’t mirrored Trump’s pivot toward interventionism:
The most independent-minded Republicans seem to be the young ones, writes Nate Cohn, our chief political analyst. Most of the ones under 45 think it was wrong to attack Iran, wrong to give Israel more economic and military support, wrong to focus so much on problems abroad. Even some congressional Republicans are bridling against Trump. Some may vote with Democrats to constrain Trump’s war-making powers, challenge his White House ballroom and dish out payments to people supposedly persecuted by previous Democratic administrations. They may stifle his pick for attorney general.
The leftThe other side is feeling the wind at its back. Registered voters prefer Democratic candidates over Republican ones by 10 points — a big lead! But that doesn’t mean they like the party. More than half of Democrats and left-leaning independents vented their frustration in the poll, our politics reporters write. The big reason is Trump. Just as he guides the right, he shapes the left: 58 percent of potential Democratic supporters think their party doesn’t fight him hard enough. So while Democrats have an opportunity this November to capture control of Congress, familiar fissures offer mixed guidance about how to seize that chance.
As candidates work to embody this potpourri of sentiments — think of Graham Platner in Maine, a brash ex-Marine who preaches the economic populism of Bernie Sanders — they are addressing what our politics reporters call “a combative, anti-establishment mood within the Democratic Party”: More than 80 percent of the party’s backers thought the political and economic system should be torn down entirely or needed major changes, and nearly 90 percent called the economic system unfair. It’s complicated to balance that idea with the preference of primary voters for moderate stances on immigration and crime. As my colleagues write, these divisions are “an early indication of the intraparty battles to come the moment the midterms are over.”
As part of the deal to resolve Trump’s lawsuit against the I.R.S., the Justice Department released a brief, one-page addendum this week declaring that the government was “forever barred and precluded” from auditing Trump’s taxes or pursuing claims against him involving “lawfare and/or weaponization.” Has Trump effectively pardoned himself? While the move is more complicated than a formal self-pardon, the Justice Department’s addendum may have that effect, Adam Liptak writes: The whole enterprise was a jarring shock to the conventional understanding of the constitutional system, raising what legal experts said were profound questions about presidential power. If the arrangement is allowed to stand, they said, Mr. Trump will have managed simultaneously to thwart Congress’s power of the purse and the ability of the courts to police the separation of powers. More on the deal
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Barney Frank, the sharp-tongued former congressman who represented Massachusetts in the House for more than three decades, has died at 86. Among his legislative achievements was the Dodd-Frank Act, the most significant overhaul of U.S. financial regulations since the Great Depression. He was also the first House member to come out voluntarily and he helped normalize being openly gay in public office. Read his obituary.
Trump’s $1.8 billion fund is the most blatant example of presidential corruption in modern times, the editorial board writes. On The Conversation, David French and Emily Bazelon discuss Trump’s fund, his poll numbers and some recent Supreme Court rulings. Here’s a column by Bret Stephens on how hatred of Israel has damaged Western institutions. The Times Sale ends soon: Expand your knowledge with our experts. Take advantage of our best offer and gain understanding and insight in every area of life. Just $1 a week for your first year of unlimited access to news, culture, cooking and more.
Been there: In 1991, The Times profiled 12 people graduating into what was the bleakest job market in years. Today, those graduates’ children are entering a work force in flux. Stranded: A humpback whale stuck in the Baltic Sea seemed to unite Germany in hope. Then came failed rescue efforts and finger-pointing. Your pick: The most clicked link in The Morning yesterday was about a woman who died after falling into a Manhattan manhole.
140— That is how many pounds of meat my colleagues on Wirecutter cooked during their latest test of gas grills. Eggplant, broccoli and veggie burgers added further weight. See which grill swept the field.
Women’s hockey: The Montreal Victoire won the Walter Cup with a 4-0 rout of the Ottawa Charge. This will be a big summer for the P.W.H.L., which plans four expansion teams. N.B.A.: The Oklahoma City Thunder tied its series against the San Antonio Spurs with a 122-113 win in Game 2 of the Western Conference finals.
I don’t know where you lay your head, but it’s been summer-hot in New York City, and I’ve been taking meals from the mid-August playbook: cold silken tofu with spicy soy dressing. There’s no real cooking involved. Just whisk together the ingredients for the dressing and spoon it over the tofu. Garnish with chopped scallions, cilantro and some roasted peanuts. Serve with rice.
Zayd Ayers Dohrn and Harriet Clark are children of radical activists, revolutionaries who fought in the 1960s alongside the Weather Underground and the Black Panthers. Dohrn and his parents spent his childhood on the run from the F.B.I., which had placed his mother on its Most Wanted list. Clark’s mother went to prison for her role as a getaway driver in an armored car robbery that ended in the deaths of a security guard and two police officers. Now the children have both written well-received books about their experiences — a memoir for Dohrn, a novel for Clark. The Times brought the pair together for the first time. “Almost all the ‘Weather kids’ and ‘Panther cubs’ and children of the movement who I know went into some form of art or writing or thinking,” Dohrn said. “I think it was trying to make sense of ourselves, our childhoods.” More on culture |
